Comment by preg_match | Hacker News Reader

Comment by preg_match | Hacker News Reader

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The way I view it is that personal time means time id spend if work didn’t exist. If work didn’t exist, I wouldn’t commute. So, to me, it’s work time.

Yes it’s “easier” (sometimes) than working, but it’s still time I dedicate to work. Its entire purpose exists because work exists.

I used to have a really gnarly commute (1.5 hours one way, so 3 hours total, 3.5-4 if there was an accident). The level to which it affected my finances is one thing, but it absolutely demolished my quality of life. I couldn’t socialize, sleep, or even cook for myself due to the exhaustion. And spending minimum of 12 hours a day sitting destroyed my body and mental health. Not to mention traffic is not peaceful, it’s stressful. You have to constantly be “on” and paying attention. Even a single second of distraction can be an accident.

I generally agree that commute should count as work time more often than not but its complicated when you can take advantage of the commute to get other things done near your work site or along the route. E.g. if you commonly stop to get groceries half way from work to your home then perhaps you would have needed to spend time for that trip anyway. But that's more of an excuse for a 30 minute or less commute, not for over an hour.

I absolutely think employee's would try to game it if companies paid out commute time. Some companies do pay out travel time, which is a similar concept. I think you just have to accept some amount of gaming, that's life.

On the employee side, the solution is to ALWAYS factor in your commute time. A job that pays 20,000 dollars more a year can easily not be worth it if the commute is insane. If you have to double your rent to make it work, it's probably not worth it.

I factor in commute like I factor in other benefits, like health insurance and PTO. My salary can't necessarily replace those, so they implicitly have a higher value than money alone. It would take a really nice salary to override them. And I think that's why we see absurd salaries in places like Seattle. They know employee's are doing this calculus, they can't afford to pay 100,000 like you can in, say, Texas.

I just wish I could have this discussion without finding out that the interlocutor has a top 2% percentile commute distance.

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