[HN Gopher] Ask HN: Why isn't remote work advertised as a pro en...
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Ask HN: Why isn't remote work advertised as a pro environment
initiative?
No form of transport requires less energy than telecommuting. Why
aren't there Zoom/MS Teams/Slack bill-boards on 101 and 880? Where
is everyone's outrage at needlessly requiring people to move
themselves into offices and the congestsion, waste, and
environmental damage it causes?
Author : cpeth
Score : 473 points
Date : 2022-11-21 09:44 UTC (13 hours ago)
| makz wrote:
| What we are being told at my company is that the corporate
| building has all of these green technologies, so it's more
| environmentally friendly to work there even taking into account
| commuting.
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| The environmental argument is sometimes used, but often (and
| often correctly) seen as someone who prefers remote work
| dishonestly slapping an environmental argument on it (dishonest,
| because the actual primary reason they're pushing for it doesn't
| match the stated primary reason).
|
| It isn't as clear-cut as you'd expect either - one argument I've
| heard is that in areas where air conditioning is a large
| contributor to energy use and homes are poorly insulated, someone
| staying home and cooling their home with an inefficient, small
| air conditioner may be worse than having that person commute to
| an office instead. This argument is often generalized and
| sometimes dishonestly used by people who prefer office work to
| argue that teleworking is actually bad for the environment.
|
| I found a meta-study
| https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/ab8a84/...
| that claims vehicle miles traveled _increase_ (because people
| move further away) while the studies generally claimed a
| reduction in overall energy consumption.
|
| Several studies claim grossly exaggerated environmental impacts
| for streaming/data transfers. I don't remember seeing it misused
| to dismiss the environmental argument for teleworking, but it
| wouldn't surprise me to see it. The worst offender here is the
| Shift Project, which overstated the results of their already
| flawed study by another factor of 8 in an interview, and then
| used that huge mistake to argue that their other mistakes aren't
| that relevant because they're small (compared to the initial
| mistake, not compared to their claimed impact).
| https://theshiftproject.org/en/article/shift-project-really-...
| twblalock wrote:
| In the Bay Area in 2020 we had rolling blackouts in the summer
| because the electricity used by air conditioners put more
| stress on the grid than normal. It was not a particularly hot
| summer, we just had everyone working at home.
|
| Most of our housing stock is not particularly energy efficient.
| Whole-house AC and heat instead of systems with multiple zones,
| big tank water heaters, ok but not great insulation.
|
| I'd buy the idea that working from home lowers emissions and
| gasoline consumption but also increases the consumption of
| electricity and natural gas.
| nunez wrote:
| A lot of places _are_ advertising it as a benefit.
| periheli0n wrote:
| WFH is indeed advertised as pro environment. It just isn't taking
| off very well for many.
|
| Change is hard and re-thinking work as an entirely online
| activity requires a lot of change.
|
| For some, their jobs which were fun before the pandemic now just
| suck because they don't get to meet people face to face.
|
| Some dread the long boring days WFH and spending time in back-to-
| back Zoom meetings where 90% of those attending have their camera
| off and do something else.
|
| Some are frustrated because their coworkers are slacking off WFH.
| Others are frustrated because their productivity at home is a
| disaster.
|
| But there is also a pro-environment factor of working in an
| office: In countries where buildings need heating, heating one
| office compound is more efficient than heating a hundred homes at
| the same time.
| rc_mob wrote:
| Because people with money are much much better at marketing and
| propaganda than a disjoint group of employees from 100s of
| different companies
| tyingq wrote:
| Because many large businesses with lobbying power don't want to
| be potentially called out as anti environment. They want the
| freedom to treat it like an employment perk if/when they choose
| to support it.
| balderdash wrote:
| If I telecommuted: Pros: - my company wouldn't need as much
| office space for me, but not none, so 80% space/energy savings, -
| also offset an 8 mile (x2 so 16mi) driving commute
|
| Cons: - I'd probably make up those 16mi of commuting in other
| ways (errands, driving to a lunch time hike, etc) - I'd need more
| space at home, and consume more energy (prob not fully offsetting
| the savings from work, but a meaningful part) - I'd probably work
| remotely from other locations more, increasing my air travel
| footprint meaningfully (which I think puts this in the red) - I'd
| probably cook more at home (while cheaper, is probably more
| energy intensive than a commercial kitchen per meal?)
|
| Doesn't feel like a huge net savings
| TheRealPomax wrote:
| "No form of transport requires less energy than telecommuting" is
| quite the statement. If your work force bikes or walks to work,
| pretty sure that has far lower energy requirements than having
| all of them telecommute.
| gadders wrote:
| I don't think that's correct, unless I am missing something?
|
| Telecommuting: Turn on your PC in a room of your house and
| start work Biking/Walking to Work: Bike/walk to work and turn
| on a PC in an office.
|
| What's the extra telecommuting energy expenditure? Servers for
| a VPN?
| TheRealPomax wrote:
| People not all using their own computers and internet
| connections, during meetings because they're all in the same
| room (or in a room with a single computer and internet
| connection), as well as people not all needing to each have
| lights, heating, etc. on at home because they're all in a
| shared building with (almost certainly more efficient) HVAC.
| postalrat wrote:
| Lower productivity through telecommuting. What should take 2
| weeks now takes 3. That's 50% more resources.
| hayst4ck wrote:
| What makes you so sure that commuting is more environmentally
| harmful than datacenters full of hardware and the construction
| and transport of said hardware and mining of raw materials for
| the hardware?
|
| Additionally, lack of commuting incentivizes un-environmental and
| inefficient suburban sprawl.
|
| I am not saying that's the case, but I don't buy that it's a
| strictly pro-environment win a-priori.
|
| If anything commuting is the daily theft of an hour of everyone's
| life, more so for drivers. "Get an hour of your life back every
| day" should be all the marketing that's ever needed.
| luminouslow wrote:
| I don't know about you but we still use the internet/zoom etc.
| in the office so you still need datacenters
|
| >lack of commuting incentivizes un-environmental and
| inefficient suburban sprawl
|
| I dont understand this point, IMO commuting leads to more
| suburban sprawl? Also i think this is a very USA-centric
| problem.
| hayst4ck wrote:
| Sure zoom is still used, but I would be surprised if it's on
| the same order of magnitude.
|
| I'm not trying to argue that commuting is more
| environmentally friendly, it's very likely not, only that I
| need a bit more substantiation than "it's obviously true,"
| and I particularly would want substantiation on the long
| term. I also would want to understand if electric cars are
| being accounted for.
|
| The reason not to live in the suburbs is a long commute to
| your office. Living in the city might make a commute walk-
| able. So a commute dis-incentivizes suburban sprawl.
|
| Definitely a USA problem. Cars are poison, literally and
| metaphorically. I don't think the average American has
| experienced what car-less living is like and how much better
| it is.
|
| My critique of your original post is that there are many
| reason's remote work might be better, but environmentalism
| probably isn't the strongest.
| zer0tonin wrote:
| My team is located in 3 different timezones. Using
| zoom/meet is a requirement for absolutely every single one
| of our meetings, whether we are in office or at home.
|
| Situations like this are extremely common in the industry,
| at least common enough to justify almost every company I've
| ever word equipping their meeting rooms with video-
| conferencing hardware.
| bluGill wrote:
| > The reason not to live in the suburbs is a long commute
| to your office. Living in the city might make a commute
| walk-able. So a commute dis-incentivizes suburban sprawl.
|
| Not anymore. Most jobs in a city are not in the center,
| they are in the suburbs as well. If you want a short
| commute you have to live in the suburbs.
|
| Note that in most cases (US - other countries are
| different!) there are zero places to live within walking
| distance of the office. Suburbs don't have mixed use zoning
| so it is illegal to live near where you work. While city
| centers might allow it (not all do) in theory, in practice
| rent is so high in the city center that common people
| cannot afford to live within walking distance of a job
| there. At least the city center has a form that supports
| transit, but you still can't walk there from home.
|
| Note that I said form not not density. Suburbs have plenty
| of density to support transit, but the way things are built
| mean a transit can't get to enough people.
| smaudet wrote:
| This may not be universally true, but voice-only makes a
| difference, too.
|
| Audio is very low bandwidth, but for work it is usually more
| than adequate. Screenshare, where important, is mostly just a
| matter of providing small diffs over time, it's usually much
| cheaper both to encode/decode than normal video streaming.
| You can also run it point to point in smaller calls, which
| means fewer hops and datacenters (more routers, perhaps, but
| you were going to need them anyway)
| AntiRemoteWork wrote:
| adql wrote:
| That's a nice excuse for when I want to just do what I want
| instead of staring at stupid camera just so someone can see
| me looking at them in the square on their screen.
| goosedragons wrote:
| Because if you don't have to drive to work in the city every
| day you're not going to care if your house is a 3 hour drive
| away. So you buy that new giant single family home with the
| large lot instead of the two bedroom condo that's in walking
| distance or the older townhome that has a sub-45 min driving
| commute. This might be a very North America problem but with
| the pandemic and the rise of WFH it's something that's been
| observed. The prices of homes outside the city have risen
| faster than those inside the city at least in Canada [0].
|
| https://www.bankofcanada.ca/2022/06/staff-analytical-
| note-20...
| nytesky wrote:
| Oh yeah sprawl is induced. If you only have to drive 2x week --
| you may tolerate a 50 mile commute vs before you aimed for 10
| mi. In that scenario no reduction in miles driven (maybe even
| more if you run errands during telework days) and greater
| incursion of development beyond the city.
| paulcole wrote:
| I don't understand who the advertisements are meant to reach as
| their audience?
|
| The companies? They care about profit not the environment.
|
| The employees? They are either already sold on remote work or
| don't like remote work.
|
| Whose mind is changed by being told the environmental benefits of
| remote work?
| seydor wrote:
| The companies? they care about their ESG image. "We support
| green, remote work" would be a nice touch
|
| The employees? Isn't that the whole point of the "corporate
| culture" BS?
|
| - The mind of those people who can't live without the daily
| commute to office
| paulcole wrote:
| What do companies care about more? Their ESG image or money?
|
| The employees don't need to be advertised remote work
| software. They either like remote work or they don't.
|
| An ad for "Slack is good for the environment" doesn't change
| anyone's mind.
| seydor wrote:
| By the same token "EVs are good for the environment"
| wouldn't change anyone's mind
| xkcd-sucks wrote:
| There was a big "Slack is where work happens" campaign, on
| billboards and expensive full page newspaper ads etc. By
| the same token that would also seem to have little purpose.
|
| Maybe these kinds of ads are made as memes to be repeated
| uncritically by decision makers with little specific
| expertise, or something like that
| Tade0 wrote:
| I actually don't know the answer to this question and what
| baffles me the most is hearing what urban/transport activists
| have to say about that - those I talked with either ignore it
| completely or argue that it's _worse_ because it "induces
| sprawl".
|
| I have quite a few people in my social circle who moved out to
| the suburbs/countryside and remote work was by and large
| considered only after they moved and found that they
| underestimated what an issue their commute would be(especially
| when traffic increased over time as it usually does).
|
| Personally I live in the city and still work remotely because
| it's more convenient than travelling to work daily regardless how
| close to the workplace I might live.
| Bilal_io wrote:
| The goal of remote work is not to drive everyone out of the
| city. It's a success if we allow enough people to move to the
| suburbs. Everyone benefits, including people that love the city
| life.
|
| Plus, remote work is still not the norm in every company, so
| it's difficult for someone like you and me to move to the
| suburbs even if we wanted to, because we can't be 100% certain
| our next jobs will be remote.
| Tade0 wrote:
| > Everyone benefits, including people that love the city
| life.
|
| That's what I've been saying, but I'm met with an attitude
| that doesn't accept anything short of what I see as a human
| pile-up with only the very rich owning real estate.
| naasking wrote:
| > I talked with either ignore it completely or argue that it's
| worse because it "induces sprawl".
|
| But, sprawl is only a problem because of commutes. If you had
| sprawl with lots of small, local commercial outlets, then
| that's just perfect. No long commutes to work and no long
| commutes to get life's necessities.
| Tade0 wrote:
| > But, sprawl is only a problem because of commutes.
|
| I agree to an extent.
|
| To be completely fair it is less efficient than densely
| packed cities in terms of energy and cost of providing
| services like sewage/garbage disposal.
|
| That being said I see it as a tradeoff like any other and
| believe people should have the right to choose how they live
| as long as they bear the costs of that.
| naasking wrote:
| Yes, there are some inefficiencies with sprawl. There are
| also mental health issues with dense cities.
| Tade0 wrote:
| 100% with you on that. I live 4km from the city centre,
| so essentially walking distance.
|
| I went there on the weekend. It's very lively, but I
| wouldn't want this sort of liveliness during the evening
| when the only thing I need is to wind down. I prefer
| living here, halfway from the centre to the city limits.
| naasking wrote:
| Exactly, that and issues like the lack of greenery that's
| consistently linked to poorer mental health outcomes,
| increased stress, etc.
| neutronicus wrote:
| Even if you stop moving people, you still have to move goods
| (and electricity, and sewage) which is less efficient if the
| people are spread over a larger area.
| naasking wrote:
| > Even if you stop moving people, you still have to move
| goods (and electricity, and sewage) which is less efficient
| if the people are spread over a larger area
|
| That's not necessarily true. Centralizing leads to
| congestion, for instance, to say nothing of the other
| failure modes of centralizing (single point of failure
| being the big one). I expect there is an optimal density
| for each of those, and it's not clear that "large city" is
| in that region.
|
| Losses in distributing electricity are fairly negligible,
| and distributed generation should be encouraged for some of
| the same reasons.
| braingenious wrote:
| Because of the amount of money parked in commercial real estate.
| Organizations that own office buildings tend to be _immensely_
| influential in local politics.
|
| This is an answer to both "Why is remote work currently not
| advertised as a pro climate environment initiative?" and "Why
| won't remote work ever be advertised as a pro climate environment
| initiative, ever, for the foreseeable future?"
|
| In a word: Rent.
| diebeforei485 wrote:
| I would be curious to know if remote work reduces overall VMT, or
| if commute VMT is replaced by higher VMT for daily tasks (if
| people move to Kansas or wherever, where things are spread out
| further).
| brandmeyer wrote:
| For my case, it was worse. When normalized to dollars, I spent
| nearly 2x more in HVAC expenses compared to driving's fuel costs,
| and that's with a modest commute (20 miles). Its much less energy
| intensive to air condition one large medium-density building than
| many smaller low-density buildings.
| driverdan wrote:
| That sounds like you're either running your HVAC at extreme
| temps or have very poor insulation.
| warkdarrior wrote:
| Or that he is running HVAC for his 2000 sqft house, vs
| running HVAC for his 180 sqft office space (where 180 sqft
| are dedicated to him out of some large space shared with
| others).
| [deleted]
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| Part of it is that he's comparing his work-from-home AC
| expenses to his work-from-office gas expenses. He's not
| factoring in the _company 's_ office AC bill, because he
| doesn't pay it.
|
| Also note that, at least in my case, I've got a cubicle
| farm at work. I can't just up the temperature for my 64
| sqft cube; I have to up it for an entire quadrant of the
| floor.
| brandmeyer wrote:
| Big family house in the suburbs with aggressive demand
| scheduling (ie, we let the temp float a fair amount when
| nobody is home) versus high-efficiency car.
| throwthroyaboat wrote:
| Could be, but it's also likely that 1x big HVAC is more
| efficient than 10x smaller units.
| medion wrote:
| Didn't Buckminster Fuller talk of the holistic energy cost of
| going to work? Summarizing that it cost less energy if you factor
| externalities to just stay at home? I can't remember exactly, but
| something along those lines...
| eloff wrote:
| Because people don't look at issues like climate change
| rationally. We're attacking the problem almost randomly based on
| what's politically expedient/ popular instead of what gives the
| biggest greenhouse gas reduction for the price.
|
| To phrase it another way, our governments are fucking stupid and
| it makes me sad.
|
| If we really care about this problem, we should attack it coldly,
| rationally, as an engineer or economist might.
| raxxorraxor wrote:
| It is really stupid, and I hate that people tend to cut random
| liberties because they could maybe affect the environment ever
| so slightly. In reality this is so insignificant, it looks more
| like a panic than an attempt to a solution. You also loose
| political capital for serious undertakings.
|
| Truth is that composting your tea bags isn't that relevant. We
| have to look at the large picture and see if we can curb the
| largest emissions (from which everyone profits).
| eloff wrote:
| Even just encouraging fracking (cheap gas vs coal means 2x
| reduction in carbon), or stopping to subsidize fossil fuels
| would make a massive difference.
| cableshaft wrote:
| Fracking is not sustainable (you're not going to be able to
| frack forever, we've already tapped a lot of the 'cheap
| gas' wells, future wells will eventually get prohibitively
| expensive, it already is very expensive and not even that
| profitable[1], and got a lot more expensive this year
| thanks to it requiring a specific type of sand that's now
| 3x the cost[2]) and is harmful to freshwater, not only by
| using a ton of it (average of 45 millions of gallons of
| freshwater per fracking well) but also because it mixes
| tons of chemicals in with the water it uses, making the
| wastewater toxic[3]. It also leaks a lot of methane[4],
| which is 80x worse for warming than CO2 emissions in the
| short term (CO2 stays in the atmosphere longer).
|
| "To determine the potential impact of fracking in the U.K.,
| a group of Manchester scientists ranked it and other energy
| sources, such as coal, wind, and solar, after considering
| environmental, economic, and social sustainability. Of the
| nine energy sources examined, the scientists found that
| fracking ranked seventh in sustainability.
|
| To make fracking as sustainable as energy sources higher up
| on the list, such as wind and solar, there would need to be
| a staggering 329-fold reduction in environmental impact,
| according to the researchers."[5]
|
| [1] https://www.barrons.com/articles/why-are-natural-gas-
| prices-...
|
| [2] https://sports.yahoo.com/sand-fracking-
| now-3-times-114500960...
|
| [3] https://cen.acs.org/environment/water/Wastewater-
| fracking-Gr...
|
| [4] https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/article/
| frack...
|
| [5] https://futurism.com/fracking-among-most-harmful-forms-
| energ...
| eloff wrote:
| It doesn't need to be sustainable, a short-term reduction
| in emissions it's also helpful and buys more time to go
| carbon free. It's a complete lie that we have to
| transition directly from our current state to zero carbon
| with no stops in between. Fracking is something really
| only done in the US. Doing more fracking internationally
| could really bring emissions down. Fracking has done more
| to reduce US emissions than all the climate change policy
| combined.
|
| The point you bring up about methane leaks is salient
| though, if you can't do it without leaking too much
| methane, it doesn't make sense. However, I don't think
| that's impossible. Taxing methane leakage and monitoring
| it from satellites, as one idea of how to do that, seems
| quite possible.
|
| Obviously it's also good to mitigate damage to the
| environment via waste products, etc, but that also seems
| to be possible with the right regulation and enforcement.
| [deleted]
| acapybara wrote:
| petermcneeley wrote:
| "The answer is out there, Neo, and it's looking for you, and it
| will find you if you want it to."
| moooo99 wrote:
| My guess would be that the target audience that buys these
| products (read companies) don't really care about the environment
| cameron_b wrote:
| Sounds like you need to pitch a campaign or buy some billboards
| AntiRemoteWork wrote:
| jfitzpa22 wrote:
| Some companies simply don't care about the environmental benefits
| of remote work; they want their employees located together in
| brick and mortar offices. Also, and while I agree that remote
| work seems the more environmentally friendly of the two options,
| I am unaware of any study that has compared the carbon footprint
| of telecommuting with that of the traditional commute. Does
| anyone know of such a study?
| lamontcg wrote:
| I keep arguing this.
|
| Also with distracted driving becoming so much more of a problem,
| and accidents increasing even though we've got driving assist
| technologies, the workers are running personal risk of
| debilitating injuries.
| rompic wrote:
| I asked myself the same thing and I'm afraid the effect is not as
| big as expected (in relation to other emissions).
|
| From https://www.agora-
| verkehrswende.de/veroeffentlichungen/wende... For Germany:
|
| The climate effects of home office were estimated for 40 percent
| of the workers, each with two home office days per week, were
| estimated to save 5.4 million metric tons of CO2 equivalent per
| year.
|
| This corresponds to 18 percent of percent of the emissions from
| commuting to work or 4 percent of the of total passenger
| transport emissions (Buttner and Breitkreuz 2020).
| rompic wrote:
| For austria: https://www.umweltbundesamt.at/news201221-1
|
| The result is a share of 25.8% (short-term) to 39.3% (long-
| term) of all employed persons in Austria who could in principle
| work from home on a permanent or temporary basis.
|
| By overestimating the work-related passenger kilometers, this
| results in a savings potential of about 300 kilotons of CO2
| equivalents per year, if about a quarter of all employed
| persons in Austria work from home for 40 % of the working time
| (or 2 out of 5 working days).
|
| Due to undesirable rebound effects, such as an increasing
| distance between home and work, induced traffic as a result of
| freed-up capacity, or increased capacities or increased leisure
| mobility, this potential can increase to 90 kilotons of CO2
| equivalents per year.
| deepGem wrote:
| Two main problems
|
| 1. Middle and senior management who don't want to lose control or
| be rendered less effective. 2. Engineers who are not trained in
| written communication and largely cannot autonomously move a
| group towards a goal without a lot of supervision.
|
| If you solve for no 2, then that acts counter to no 1 - because
| middle management will be questioned - why do we need you ? If a
| group of engineers can function on their own towards a common
| goal, then the manager's role is more or less rendered redundant.
| Sure there may be a need for psychological support but you surely
| won't need the current ratio of engineers: managers.
|
| There is a deep rooted old school interest in staying physically
| connected. This won't go away anytime soon. I am not debating
| whether that is right or wrong, but the general notion that 'we
| are better if we are physically together' still persists. I don't
| know if this is a genuine feel-good-together feeling or just a
| made up emotion to mask point no 1 above.
|
| I am flummoxed by how executive leadership is simply blind to
| these facts in most companies. I mean the CEO can declare a fully
| remote constraint sort of like the exact opposite of what Musk
| did at Twitter and drive productivity higher. The cynic in me
| says execs can't force this decision because the senior
| management simply will come back and say 'we cannot be this
| productive with a fully remote team anymore'. I don't know but I
| for one cannot understand the irrational exuberance behind RTO.
| adql wrote:
| From my experiences (everywhere from full office to full WFH),
| even in heavily technical low management environments it still
| feels more productive to do any of the planning stuff in
| person.
|
| In my case small percentage of total time and making the 5%
| more effective to make the remaining 95% less effective doesn't
| seem like good tradeoff, just not having co-workers interrupt
| me because I'm near and know the answer is a blessing.
|
| But from manager position I can see that, my 5-10% spent on
| meetings & related stuff is what they do maybe 80% of the time.
| Then again bringing 20 people to office just to keep one or two
| managers happy is also a waste.
|
| > The cynic in me says execs can't force this decision because
| the senior management simply will come back and say 'we cannot
| be this productive with a fully remote team anymore'. I don't
| know but I for one cannot understand the irrational exuberance
| behind RTO.
|
| Remote work does require shift of habits, training can help
| (maybe a niche here for company doing the training?) but it
| still takes time and effort if you did it in person for last
| 10-20 years
| gundmc wrote:
| What do you consider the role of a manager that makes it change
| significantly based on where their team is sitting?
| deepGem wrote:
| I didn't catch the question but I will attempt to answer
| based on what I understand.
|
| Role of a manager that will change significantly based on
| where the team is sitting - The ability to convey meaning and
| emotion over written comms and over video calls, to drive the
| team forward without being too mechanical about it.
| bonniemuffin wrote:
| One key role for a manager is being able to detect who's
| feeling unmotivated or trying to bullshit you or has
| something going on in their life that's affecting their work,
| so that you can dig in to understand more and address the
| issues proactively. When you casually see people in person
| every day throughout the day, it's easier to notice when
| someone's demeanor changes, vs. mostly talking on slack and
| having a couple of zoom meetings per week.
| helloharvey wrote:
| This kind of a comment where middle and senior management will
| be rendered useless (and therefore feel threatened) by
| communication-competent engineers is both prevalent on HN and
| absurdly wrong from a business organization perspective. Joel
| Spolsky's writing on this subject should be mandatory reading
| before people spout nonsense.
|
| If this is a website supposedly for startups, the audience
| missed that mark by a wide margin.
| jondeval wrote:
| It think this is mostly right. Within your point number (1), I
| see the problem as more to do with senior management.
|
| Specifically I think the major disconnect is not so much
| between middle managers and IC's, it's between executives and
| the rest of the org.
|
| Unfortunately I'm beginning to think that this is truly a case
| of misaligned incentives that may prove hard to fix. What I
| mean is that executives are directly incentivized to be in the
| office. Almost all of their career capital is tied up in
| relationships and patterns of decision making with other
| executives.
|
| Good day for a manager or IC - 'Wow, I really got a lot done
| today and I'm moving the team goals forward.'
|
| Good day for an executive - 'That conversation with Dan and
| Steve went really well.'
| beachtaxidriver wrote:
| I also think that junior new engineers are less productive
| remote, because they can't absorb the context and experience of
| their more senior coworkers.
|
| Probably the only group made more productive are senior
| independent engineers.
| sitkack wrote:
| > can't absorb the context and experience of their more
| senior coworkers
|
| How so? What prevents that? I don't believe it, but people
| like saying it without evidence.
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| My own experience as a junior during the forced WFH
| transition of the pandemic is, albeit anecdotal, proof for
| me.
|
| It sucked. If the company doesn't shift and completely
| overhaul its entire culture from the ground up to full
| remote including junior mentoring, it's difficult to see,
| especially from the managers and senior perspective who
| already know the "games" of the organization and the know-
| how to get their work done and be productive while
| advancing their career, just how much knowledge and
| development potential I missed out on as a remote junior.
|
| When I was in the office, I would pass by a coworkers and
| see some new development environment or tool on their
| monitor and I would ask them "Hey, sorry, what's that
| <thing> you use", "Oh yeah, it's a tool for doing X, it's
| very useful, you should try it.", "Oh neat, thanks". When
| we switched to remote I would have no way of seeing the
| tools others use that later help me also be more
| productive.
|
| Or when two of the most senior colleagues who sat next to
| me would be discussing some very high level technical stuff
| together, I would sometimes listen in and learn something
| new and sometimes ask them questions later about it and
| even volunteer to work on that if they need help. With the
| switch to remote, I have no chance of hearing 1:1 technical
| discussion calls between the seniors and find out new
| things or challenges they face.
|
| Basically, I was missing out on a lot of ideas, challenges,
| solution, technical development know-how, and became this
| anonymous avatar that needs to takes Jira issues as input
| and produce Gitlab merge requests as output, pigeonholing
| myself and stagnating my growth both as an engineer and
| inside the organization.
|
| I suspect these issues might be less common in startups and
| companies that have been built from the start as
| distributed remote, but are probably very present for older
| organizations that have always ben in the office, and
| switched to hybrid or remote because of the pandemic.
| ProZsolt wrote:
| I can completely understand your position, but it
| shouldn't be like that.
|
| I started my carrier as a remote employee before the
| pandemic. Pairing helped a lot to learn how others are
| working. Most of the technical discussions where public.
| Usually on slack or on GitHub (via RFC PRs). If somebody
| scheduled a meeting usually included the whole team as
| optional and encouraged juniors to listen even if they
| can't contribute. We planned our sprints together so
| everybody know what the team is working on.
|
| On the other hand I joined a new company during the
| pandemic which had similar issues. I wanted to help solve
| it, but they didn't even acknowledged it.
| Asooka wrote:
| Over the pandemic I could closely observe three junior
| developers.
|
| One was hybrid remote / on-prem with on-prem menotring and
| sadly they turned up not to meet our standards. I don't think
| the work arrangement impacted them.
|
| One was fully remote with their mentor fully remote as well
| and we hired them full-time.
|
| One was fully on-prem as much as they could, with a mentor
| who was almost fully remote. They were also hired full-time.
|
| So my experience is that there is no correlation between
| bringing junior developers up to speed and exactly where they
| work from. Communicating face to face and communicating
| remotely are different and require different skill sets, but
| that is down to the abilities of the individual mentors
| assigned to the individual juniors. Or put another way -
| every combination works best for some people
| dosco189 wrote:
| Because "Pro-Environment" messaging is neither about being
| preserving the environment, or about the environment. It's about
| co-opting the relevant ideal within the overton window to signal
| some form of ethically accepted form of compliance.
| lizknope wrote:
| We used to spend $400 a month on gasoline because we both
| commuted 25 minutes each way. During the pandemic that was down
| to about $100 a month. And when we _did_ have to go somewhere the
| traffic was so much lower so less wasting gas in stop and go
| traffic. I 'm supposed to go in 3 days a week. In reality I go in
| once a week for a few hours and no one cares as 90% of the people
| on my project are in other offices. I told my manager "What is
| the point of driving in to put on my headset and disturb everyone
| with my meetings while trying to block out the noise of everyone
| else on their meetings?" He couldn't argue with that so he hasn't
| pushed the in office thing.
|
| When I had an office with a door and window I liked going in. It
| was a good mix of seeing people and privacy. I hate the 1 year of
| cubicle stuff after 15 years in an office with a door. Then the
| pandemic hit and I really hate cubicles even more.
| akira2501 wrote:
| So.. if we gave you your office back and ripped out all the
| cubicles, maybe even had a nice view, would you be happy
| spending the $400 again? I'm honestly curious where you think
| the value/cost split is in this equation for you.
| MSFT_Edging wrote:
| Could I ask what you were driving that ~50 minutes of commuting
| a day would lead to 200 dollars in fuel?
|
| When I was doing the same during the pandemic, similar commute
| time, my car making 21ish mpg was only needing about 100
| dollars in gas a month. About 10 miles with more than a dozen
| stop lights.
| mod wrote:
| My full size 2015 GMC truck gets 22mpg on the highway. 18-19
| around town.
| bonniemuffin wrote:
| That seems like an unfortunate choice of vehicle to commute
| many hours per week alone in, unless maybe you work in
| construction and need to haul things to the site (in which
| case spending more on transportation seems worthwhile as a
| core part of the job function.)
| mod wrote:
| I would agree, however that's not my use case. I don't
| leave my property except about once per week. I do plenty
| of "truck stuff" without being in construction, though. I
| don't think you've hit all the use cases with "work in
| construction."
| darrylb42 wrote:
| Go into the office for enhanced collaboration they say.
| Everyone I work with is in different countries, so being in the
| office gains nothing. Being at home is much nicer.
| rr888 wrote:
| I live in a small apartment a short train ride from the office.
| It isn't big enough to work from home. If I worked from home I'd
| get a big house in the suburbs, and buy a car to get around. My
| environmental footprint would be much bigger.
|
| Edit - if I didn't have kids I'd totally have a beach house and a
| mountain house to live in. Maybe in different countries too.
| UnpossibleJim wrote:
| And that's fantastic for you, and I'm happy for you, but your
| WFH footprint will remain small and on average the total
| environmental footprint will go down because you aren't the
| average person. You happen to be an anomaly and we can't throw
| the baby out with the bath water, so to speak.
| m000 wrote:
| Also, working from home would reduce the demand for the train
| routes. This in turn would mean that the route would be
| scheduled more sparsely, or even discontinued*. Which would
| force more people to use a car.
|
| *And this is why management and operation of public utilities
| should be policy-driven rather than profit-driven.
| neutronicus wrote:
| FWIW, commuter demand has sort of a complicated effect on
| train routes.
|
| Commuters generally want heavy rail to get them from where
| their housing dollar goes farthest to where the highest wage
| is, and back, riding twice a day, usually over a significant
| distance. Fast trains, stops widely-spaced so they can hit
| top speed.
|
| This is at odds with local service for residents, who want
| trains with tightly-spaced stops and care more about
| frequency than speed. I live in a dense city with largely
| non-functional rail transit (Baltimore), and IMO part of the
| problem is that our public transit options can't decide if
| they want to be commuter rail or local service and wind up
| being terrible for both (too slow for commuters because it's
| light rail, too infrequent for local traffic because of the
| cost of running a bunch of trains out to the burbs).
| humanrebar wrote:
| If they're not commuting, they're also using the car less.
| m000 wrote:
| Yes, but those who can't WFH and used to commute by train
| may find themselves having to use a car again. Not to
| mention that this will force the use of cars for everything
| else, in addition to work commute.
| itake wrote:
| > If I worked from home I'd get a big house in the suburbs, and
| buy a car to get around. My environmental footprint would be
| much bigger.
|
| For me, WFH means I can walk/bike/drive to the local coffee
| shop or public library to work, but still live in a cramped
| studio apartment.
| chitowneats wrote:
| The amount of productivity I lose when trying to work this
| way, hunched over my laptop screen in a public place, is
| immense. An office, downtown or at home, is absolutely
| necessary. Are you a software engineer?
| itake wrote:
| I am SWE and Engineering Manager. I find open offices to be
| way more distracting b/c people discuss topics relevant to
| me (project work or even good morning hellos).
|
| Public libraries are quieter than my office and coffee shop
| noise is background noise.
|
| Lack of external monitors is a fair concern, but I found
| external monitors to be too distracting. I only need to
| look at one thing at a time. I don't want random things
| popping up on the screen next to me.
| chitowneats wrote:
| It's not the external monitor I'm looking for. It's
| single monitor larger than a laptop screen and a usable
| keyboard. I fold my laptop screen closed.
|
| Also, I want to be around for relevant conversations.
| Context switching is not an issue for me as long it's not
| unrelated to work (or something unobtrusive like
| "hello").
|
| To each their own I suppose.
| itake wrote:
| I carry around a Roost laptop stand and external keyboard
| and mouse, but setting them up and tearing them down
| every day is a bit annoying.
| [deleted]
| Karawebnetwork wrote:
| Don't you simply need an apartment with an extra room? That's
| what I am doing and it works very well. WFH wouldn't even be in
| my list of reasons as to why I should move to a house.
| humanrebar wrote:
| Perhaps it doesn't apply to you, but it's natural for many
| (most?) to require larger or smaller places as needs of
| immediate family evolve. I don't know that larger places are
| necessarily optional or environmentally worse.
| neutronicus wrote:
| > I don't know that larger places are necessarily optional
|
| Dogs are optional, and I hear people cite them as a reason to
| move to a bigger place all the time. It also seems like "get
| a dog" is the first thing a lot of people do when they get
| into a WFH situation.
| onion2k wrote:
| If I'm reading this correctly, you choose to live in a small
| apartment, suffer the commute on a train, and work in an office
| you'd prefer not to be in, just so you don't have to move to a
| big house in the suburbs with your kids.
| blululu wrote:
| You are reading a lot into the OP's statement. A dense city
| has a much smaller environmental footprint than a sprawling
| suburb. The statement is just about the relative
| environmental impact of the two options nothing more.
| raxxorraxor wrote:
| I doubt the footprint difference would be in any way
| significant. Depends on the city layout maybe, even with
| the additional logistical difficulties. For many it is well
| worth it to escape the noise of high-density residential
| areas, especially with kids or for people that just like
| nature.
|
| Your footprint is probably > 95% consumption anyway. I
| don't understand how high-density living seems to be so
| attractive to many here.
| agentultra wrote:
| Because the land use is that much more productive. High
| density cities pay for suburbs which are a net-drain on
| city finances and are terrible for the environment. The
| numbers in North America are pretty staggering.
|
| There are plenty of examples around the world where dense
| urban living can be rather pleasant. You can walk to get
| your food, kids can cycle around town, and you can sit
| and gather in public places that are designed for people
| instead of moving traffic.
| twobitshifter wrote:
| US cities don't do well without the suburbs, it's a
| symbiotic relationship, you can't separate the suburb
| cost from cities, suburban residents go to the cities to
| work where they register their economic value.
| agentultra wrote:
| How is it symbiotic? The developed, urban areas generate
| enough revenue to subsidize suburbs. Without those urban
| zones suburbs cannot generate enough revenue to provide
| the infrastructure and services they use.
|
| If the suburbs were to be re-zoned for more dense
| development and mix-use zoning I don't think the urban
| areas would see any drop in revenue. They would probably
| see an increase.
| Karrot_Kream wrote:
| It absolutely is not, it's a parasitic relationship.
| Enough suburbs are aware of this dynamic that their local
| leadership tries really hard to annex their suburb into
| the city so that suburbanites can vote to change policies
| in the urban area. Suburbs strong arming cities into
| annexation is a common theme in the US and Canada.
| raxxorraxor wrote:
| That can always be an argument. You could place all
| humans in Great Britain easily. Would perhaps be more
| productive as well. Imagine all the biotopes that could
| strive again. But it isn't a question about productivity
| and I believe the vast majority live in high density
| setups for utility. At least I do. It is nice enough but
| it remains a compromise.
|
| Not from the US, but expect this story about high density
| areas paying for the others is a stupendous political
| argument to get people angry at those suburbians and not
| too much else. The distribution of funds is probably
| unjust, but the solution is certainly not to bring
| everyone into high density living.
| agentultra wrote:
| The solution is to enable more mixed-use zoning and
| enable more dense development. The situation in North
| America is that we can _only_ build low-productivity,
| high-cost, environmentally damaging suburbs. Which, in
| turn, leads to noisy, polluted cities with high levels of
| traffic congestion, collisions, and massive amounts of
| unproductive parking lots.
|
| Plenty of European and Asian cities are good examples of
| how one can transform modern cities to be better balanced
| and pleasant for humans to live in.
| [deleted]
| blululu wrote:
| Consumption goes up when things are more spaced out.
| Electricity needs to travel farther on lossy lines. Water
| needs to be pumped over longer distances. Deliveries need
| to be sent to farther and farther points. Heating needs
| to cover a wider surface area. Unfortunately all of these
| relationship grow as a power law of density so your
| consumption must increase by a substantial amount with a
| more and more spacious development plan. A quick look at
| the CO2 emissions per capita of high standard of living
| countries quickly shows that expansive countries like
| Canada, Australia or the United States have much higher
| energy consumption than dense ones like the United
| Kingdom, Sweden or Japan.
| rr888 wrote:
| Yes I like my apartment. The commute is just a few stops. I
| like the office, prefer to WFH. I like the suburbs but wife
| would rather be in the city, I'm happy here too. The main
| point is that living in a city and commuting probably has a
| smaller environmental impact than WFH, which is the opposite
| of what OP is saying.
| ivan_gammel wrote:
| Why not living in the city in a sufficiently big apartment
| and working from home?
| Root_Denied wrote:
| That's cost prohibitive for the amount of space you'd
| need as compared with moving to suburban/rural locations.
|
| Possible? Yes, but not necessarily the best financial
| decision when cities seem to be allergic to increasing
| population density.
| NovemberWhiskey wrote:
| The message of the original post appears to be that _all
| other things being equal_ the poster would rather live in
| the suburbs in a larger home with a more carbon-intensive
| lifestyle. However, the misery of the commute from the
| suburbs to the office overwhelms that preference
| resulting in the decision to live in the city.
|
| i.e. the assumption that the reduction in commuting would
| not be offset by changes in other areas is unjustified.
| rr888 wrote:
| There are very few 3-4 bedroom apartments around but a
| townhouse or similar could work. Maybe I'm just stuck in
| a rut, I like my lifestyle right now and happy to
| continue. If I was WFH every day it just feels like it is
| artificially expensive to live in a big city and I should
| move. It opens a lot of alternatives which could be very
| good but I automatically ignore them because I'm happy
| right now. And the wife probably doesn't want that log
| cabin in the woods - so its easier not to think about it.
| :)
| parthdesai wrote:
| No, you're reading it wrong. They choose to live in a smaller
| apartment in the city, it's a *short commute* to office and
| don't have to drive 20-30 minutes for basic errands. Also,
| not every has/wants kids.
| moooo99 wrote:
| You are interpreting a lot into a very short comment,
| presumably based on your own preferences. Some people don't
| mind commuting or even enjoy it, some people prefer living in
| a decently sized apartment in a city instead of a single
| family home in the suburbs. It is a matter of preference and
| personally, I can see the appeal in the approach posted by OP
| throwaway2037 wrote:
| The GP wrote: <<a short train ride from the office>>
|
| You then transformed it into <<suffer the commute on a
| train>>
|
| I'm confused about that.
| chitowneats wrote:
| I completely agree. Ever since WFH started I'm feeling this
| gravitational pull away from the city center because of cost of
| living and space considerations. If salary takes a nosedive
| this will become untenable for many.
|
| Mountains of research show that this will increase total
| emissions. It would be one thing if the U.S. was developing
| medium density suburban cores, but that seems to be on the
| table in very, very few places.
| adql wrote:
| If you could 100% WFH moving to just smaller city (instead of
| to suburbs of a bigger city) is always an option.
| chitowneats wrote:
| U.S.A. really doesn't have walkable smaller cities outside
| of college campuses. If anyone has any suggestions I'm open
| to them.
| tluyben2 wrote:
| That seems more a US thing though because of how things are
| laid out? I picked my multiple places of living (EU) to have
| everything walking distance and I managed that for the past
| 30 years with wfh, city or not. We don't touch the car (or
| anything else) for weeks on end.
| closeparen wrote:
| Walkable places are the exception in the US. Most old small
| towns _were_ walkable at some point, and a handful of them
| have a walkable core preserved or restored, but otherwise
| it 's something you'd only find in the downtown area of a
| major city. The overwhelming majority of housing is car
| dependent.
| rr888 wrote:
| Definitely USA and Europe are built differently. I'd class
| most European city centers are medium-high density where
| smaller towns are still quite dense. Compare this to NYC
| where I am and Manhattan is higher density, but 2 hours
| drive away its normal to have a 4+ bedroom house on a big
| piece of land with bears and deer roaming around for a
| quarter of the price.
| fundad wrote:
| There must be ample apartments near train stops that take you
| to all the jobs so you're right.
| version_five wrote:
| Thanks for putting this concisely.
|
| I used to live in a small apartment and walk to work. Then when
| my wife and I both had to work from home, we ended up renting a
| big house because we still needed offices to work. Maybe there
| are some jobs & personal situations that allow one to wfh
| without additional space and costs - really though it's just
| shifting space around, often very inefficiently.
| adql wrote:
| I mean, just bigger apartment is also solution that doesn't
| have that much of an environmental impact (the space "wasted"
| is saved by less office buildings).
| DoughnutHole wrote:
| Additional space in a city is significantly more expensive
| than the same space in the suburbs because each square foot
| is in much higher demand.
|
| Some people like the suburban lifestyle, but the reason
| even people who prefer the amenities of cities move out is
| that it's the only affordable way to get a lot of space.
|
| The solution is vastly more urban construction to meet
| demand, but development and regulatory changes have been
| slow.
| ivan_gammel wrote:
| Your alternative sounds a little bit weird, given that you only
| need 5-8 sq.m. of extra space to work from home, maybe one more
| room. It doesn't sound like a small apartment vs big house plus
| car alternative, instead it sounds like ,,WFH is a privilege
| and I want to live like privileged class then".
| randomdata wrote:
| It does not seem that weird. He is saying the bigger home
| away from the hustle and bustle is his preference, but
| accepts a smaller home in the city because he is prioritizing
| his career in that location. If the career was mobile, there
| would be no reason to make that tradeoff.
| ivan_gammel wrote:
| If you can work from home, you have plenty of lifestyle
| choices that do not lead to a higher environmental impact.
|
| Choosing the one that will damage environment more is a
| luxury choice. It does sound weird to me that this is
| considered as the only alternative.
| randomdata wrote:
| There was no suggestion of it being the only alternative,
| just the choice he would choose if his career was no
| longer location bound. Someone else in the same situation
| may choose differently, but there was also no attempt to
| speak on behalf of others, only himself. There is nothing
| weird about people having preferences.
| bombcar wrote:
| Note the edit "if I didn't have kids" - being able to go to
| work can be an advantage there, because even if the kids are
| mostly at school or well behaved, you still are _home_ and
| they 'd know it.
| Someone1234 wrote:
| Because corporations are doing the majority of that pro-
| environmental advertising. I mean that both in terms of companies
| making changes (both real and greenwashing) and the News/Media
| corporations reporting on it.
|
| Telecommuting could be absolutely massive for reduced emissions,
| could bring down urban house prices, improve inter-family
| relationships, and revitalized suburban neighborhoods (e.g. more
| walkable areas). Plus increase wealth to relatively poor rural
| areas.
|
| Even some corporations are starting to realize that telecommuting
| isn't their enemy, but large ships move slowly, and recently
| we've been seeing a lot of "return to work" used as a way to
| conduct layoffs with lower negative PR/stock tanking. This isn't
| a byproduct but a goal of return-to-work (e.g. see Musk's text
| message conversation during Twitter-lawsuit discovery).
| makestuff wrote:
| Aren't suburban neighborhoods actually bad for the environment
| though. Also the lack population density makes it hard to
| support the infrastructure costs for a large area with fewer
| people.
| Spivak wrote:
| It's complicated, so yes because the reasons you state but in
| a world where significantly fewer people commute it becomes
| less of an issue and so it's a matter of changing the things
| we can change.
|
| So yes, wouldn't it be great people lived in denser
| environments? Oh yeah, but that's not the choice we're making
| today. The choice we're making is given that lots of people
| live a 20-60 minute drive from their jobs would we rather
| they commute into work or work remotely?
| anikom15 wrote:
| The incentive to live in a dense environment is being close
| to work. If work is at home then that incentive is gone.
| akgerber wrote:
| A dense environment also has a lot of daily destinations
| within walking distance. That's also very nice when one
| works from home-- either working from home in my Brooklyn
| apartment, or working from home at my parents' house in a
| Midwestern streetcar suburb where
| restaurants/coffeeshops/grocery stores/parks/bars are
| also a pleasant walk away.
| anikom15 wrote:
| The Midwestern environment doesn't have high-density
| housing though. That's what matters for conservation.
| 8note wrote:
| The incentive for living in a dense environment is that
| you get to use common infrastructure for power, water,
| sewage, health care etc, rather than running your own
| septic tank and so on.
|
| Even suburbia isn't dense enough to support those things
| rickydroll wrote:
| That is an incentive for somebody else who likes to tell
| other people how to live. Not for me. I bought a house in
| suburbia. My basement is filled with home lab, workshop
| (wood and 3D printing), indoor garden (wintertime leafy
| greens and starters for the spring), my partner's art
| studio in place to store telescopes.
|
| Our yard has rhubarb, asparagus, strawberries,
| blueberries, blackberries, apple trees. We are re-wilding
| the lawn to help encourage local insects and birds. I am
| working on my neighbors to shield their outdoor lights so
| that nocturnal creatures aren't messed up as much by
| nighttime lighting.
|
| I figured out once that for me to live comfortably with
| all of my hobbies/WFH, my partner and her son, I need
| approximately 2500 ft.2 of living/working space. I have
| lived in shit-a-brick 1500 square-foot urban apartments
| and it means isolation, earplugs so I can't hear my
| neighbors, and high blood pressure. I dropped all my
| hobbies and did nothing but work because the urban space,
| was for me, the embodiment of depression.
|
| Our neighborhood is dense enough for public
| infrastructure. Many rooftops around here have solar
| which is great for distributed power. Sadly my house is
| circa 1920 with the slate roof and there is no way on
| cover up that beautiful structure with solar panels.
|
| There are ways to build suburbia they give people room to
| live where they live. You just need a different
| perspective.
| oblio wrote:
| You'll probably hate to hear this, but your lifestyle is
| most likely not sustainable, both environmentally and
| economically.
|
| If you live in the average suburb/town.
|
| It's ok, it's nice for you, but you're just passing the
| buck to future generations.
|
| And look at the discussions surrounding Boomers, who are
| blamed precisely for this.
| deckard1 wrote:
| septic tanks?? You're talking about rural America. Not
| suburbs. The only suburbs I've seen with septic tanks
| were in neighborhoods sitting below the main sewer line.
| Because shit can't run uphill. Power and water? Do you
| know a single suburb not connected to the power grid or
| doesn't have running water? Do you live in the 1800s?
| Symbiote wrote:
| I think the GP's implication is that maintaining these
| things at low density is unaffordable, although I haven't
| looked for any figures to see if there's any truth in
| this.
| anikom15 wrote:
| I've lived in both the city and suburbia and suburbia not
| only had those things, but those things were _better_ in
| suburbia.
|
| Now eventually you do get into that problem in rural
| areas or areas that can't be densely inhabited (like the
| mountains), but there's no fundamental reason people
| can't live in five-bedroom mansions and have access to
| services.
| _huayra_ wrote:
| > and revitalized suburban neighborhoods (e.g. more walkable
| areas)
|
| Without other changes, this would not happen (in the US at
| least). The default would be every more cookie-cutter suburban
| sprawl, with the cul-de-sac-y construction of these
| neighborhoods creating a more labrynthian, difficult-to-walk
| place to live.
|
| Until there is more mixed-use zoning in the US, with high
| enough density to justify frequent public transit arrival
| times, WFH would only save the car and infra wear-and-tear (and
| pollution level) from commuting, but it would not necessarily
| create a "third place" automatically.
| rustybelt wrote:
| I disagree, yes zoning changes could be needed, but the
| presence of more daytime workers at home in suburban areas
| creates new opportunities for restaurants, coffee shops, and
| other conveniences that cater to those workers.
| neutronicus wrote:
| Right, so the main road will have a Starbucks off it
| dsfyu404ed wrote:
| Modern "mixed use" visions are sterile garbage born out
| of a well to do upper middle class filter bubble. The
| kind of hubris it takes to make these people think they
| can have just the parts of the economy they like would
| make a soviet central planner blush. It's like thinking
| steak "just shows up" in a supermarket but for
| macroeconomics.
|
| You will need all of those "unsightly" B2B businesses to
| underpin the restaurants, consumer retail, etc, etc, that
| you do want. And unless we invent teleportation the cost
| of distance is going to put a cap on how far the B2B
| businesses are from the customers they serve so they are
| going to need to be somewhat local too.
| Spivak wrote:
| I mean yes and. There's an entire industry of restaurants
| that cater to providing food to workers in business
| districts. They move to where the people are. I don't
| think suburban neighborhoods having hyperlocal businesses
| would ever be considered a bad thing.
| b3morales wrote:
| The restaurants are there and successful because of the
| density, though. The falafel shop around the corner from
| three multi-storey office buildings can't afford to have
| a location in every suburb that formerly sent workers to
| the business district.
|
| There's existing evidence for this: how many restaurants
| do you see in standalone office parks? A few perhaps, but
| nothing like what's downtown.
| richardknop wrote:
| So more small businesses by people living in the area
| would be encouraged (think small mom-and-pop shops)
| rather than multinational chain restaurants. It's a good
| thing.
| neutronicus wrote:
| Well, the comment up the chain implied that more demand
| for businesses would result in suburbs getting more
| walkable.
|
| I was implying that the demand would likely be met with
| strip-malls and residents would still drive everywhere.
| rickydroll wrote:
| I'm okay with the current suburban model in many ways. For me
| it would make a difference is dedicated bike lanes. I walk
| for exercise my neighborhood and the labyrinth is a welcome
| pattern to reduce boredom.
|
| Public transit will never work for me except under very rare
| circumstances. For what it's worth, I hate wasting my time
| traveling and cars are the only things fast enough make going
| anywhere vaguely tolerable. Amazon lets me avoid a lot of
| driving.
|
| I get that you want to change things in the world but the
| only way to do it is not to say "it should be..." But find
| out what public office you need to hold, run the campaign,
| win the seat and then start trying to change from there. Then
| I can tell you from experience that you have to start local
| like planning board or zoning Board of appeals. Gain the
| trust of the people on the board listen to what people want.
| Once they feel heard they will hear you. If you go in guns
| blazing, everyone including potential allies will dig in
| their heels and say fuck you and the horse you rode in on.
|
| Yes I've served on municipal boards and I have been told FU.
| Learned my lesson and then had my ideas heard. I didn't live
| there long enough to affect change but I learned a lot about
| local politics
| LucasBrandt wrote:
| I don't want to discount that you're largely content with
| the the suburbs as they're built today - that's fine and
| there's nothing wrong with enjoying it. I do want to point
| out that from my point of view living in a really dense
| area, some of the reasoning is contradictory.
|
| > I walk for exercise in my neighborhood
|
| > Public transit will never work for me ... I hate wasting
| my time traveling and cars are the only things fast enough
| to make going anywhere vaguely tolerable
|
| The suburban model doesn't allow people to live close to
| any of the places they go. I too dislike wasting my time
| traveling, but I don't have to: I can walk five or ten
| minutes to the grocery store, dentist, park, restaurants,
| etc. I end up walking a lot over the course of a week, and
| personally I also bike to further destinations (a lot more
| people would here too if there were protected bike lanes
| like you mentioned you want). My travel time _is_ my
| exercise time - no need to spend time on extra walks to
| accomplish that, and there's interesting things around me
| when I go from place to place. The subway or commuter rail
| can take me further away faster than a car when I need to
| go somewhere distant.
|
| But I'm lucky I can afford to live in a part of Chicago
| that hasn't been totally disinvested in over the last half
| century, like a lot of the city has. The state didn't pave
| a highway through the middle of it like they did to other -
| mostly black and brown - parts of the city to convenience
| suburban drivers.
|
| The suburban model that works just fine for you comes at a
| cost to society. We need to reckon with that and build more
| places where people aren't forced to drive for their day-
| to-day necessities and desires.
| bilekas wrote:
| > Musk's text message conversation during Twitter-lawsuit
| discovery
|
| I only saw this now :
| https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2022/09/elon-...
|
| It's actually kind of incredible how it all seems to work. The
| cringe too of the fawning is a good indicator why Musk feels he
| can do whatever he likes, including attempting to troll
| everyone on his board. It seems so juvenile.
| BiteCode_dev wrote:
| I don't think it's that weird, there not a lot of differences
| between people at the top or at the bottom.
|
| It's the fact that they were idealized that makes this dip
| into their intimacy so strange.
|
| But basically, those communications look a lot like ones that
| I would have with my own friends. And when I was a students,
| we were careful about spending 10 euros. Now, we have casual
| chats about buying a sauna for the garden, and if you think
| about it, it would sound crazy to someone making minimum
| wage.
|
| If I had billions, I would talk as casually about huge
| amounts for actions with big consequences, because I'm still
| ...me. And I would still make jokes like "you have my sword"
| since we quote LOTR for fun, not because of social status.
| What? You thougth billionaires were taking all their texts
| seriously?
|
| Also, calling people out for making mistake that cost you is
| kinda what everybody sane does. And apologizing to people
| when you made a mistake is not being submissive, it's being
| decent. Again, it reads like text I would send myself.
|
| All in all, it seems pretty standard human behavior to me.
|
| Now you may feel shocked that regular humans have so much
| power, but remember:
|
| - a lot of luck is involved
|
| - some skills like managing stress or being persistent may
| matter more than a lot others and those people may have much
| more than the average person
|
| - this is by design in our system, the problem therefore is
| not that humans are humans, but that our system promote
| profiles that you don't think deserve it
|
| - nevertheless, managing tesla or spacex is not something
| most people would succeed at, so there is probably some human
| traits those texts are not showing that make them capable of
| doing billions of dollars of operations
| eastbound wrote:
| > not because of social status. What? You thougth
| billionaires were taking all their texts seriously?
|
| And it's mind blowing to me that money can't buy a better
| iPhone, they all have to deal with fiddling with the cursor
| on HN, even princes in the Middle-East, no matter the
| height of the tower they're at the top of, _they use the
| same apps as us_.
| jasmer wrote:
| While it's fair to point out so many of the similarities
| between the people at the top and the bottom ... there are
| also differences. Notably, Musk is an outlier in many ways.
| The vast, vast majority of CEO's are highly conscientious
| at least in civil terms. They are 'restrained' if anything.
| BiteCode_dev wrote:
| Again, even if they have some qualities that make them
| different in order to achieve big things, I would expect
| a Gauss curve to represent most traits distribution at
| the top like at the bottom. While most people show
| restrain, a few will be exhuberant, no matter the sample.
| jasmer wrote:
| 'Restraint' is just something that separates Musk from
| regular CEO's.
|
| Most CEO's absolutely stand out otherwise.
|
| Here is John Chambers on Charlie Rose [1]
|
| Jean Liu [2]
|
| Just from those conversations you can see how way out
| from the norm they are.
|
| [1] https://charlierose.com/videos/27937
|
| [2] https://charlierose.com/videos/31044
| rhacker wrote:
| So, TLDR is One does not simply "drive" into mordor?
| stackbutterflow wrote:
| It's interesting that you start your post by demythifying
| these people only to close it by rebuilding the myth again.
| It's like we can't accept they are just like us posting on
| HN.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Important to note that wealth doesn't improve your character;
| it simply amplifies who you already are.
| beebmam wrote:
| Power corrupts.
| dehrmann wrote:
| The interesting point a nearby comment made was it
| corrupts those around you. That gets lost in that
| aphorism.
| api wrote:
| I think the mechanism is: it makes you surrounded by
| corrupt people and sycophants, which in turn over time
| corrupts you.
| User23 wrote:
| Lord Acton's maxim is "Power tends to corrupt and
| absolute power corrupts absolutely." The dumbed down
| paraphrases lose most of the insight. It's a little
| masterpiece of the English language, and as you note, who
| or what exactly is being corrupted, absolutely or
| otherwise, is intentionally underspecified.
| Jenk wrote:
| It's also incredibly lonely at times - despite being
| constantly surrounded by people - which I figure can warp
| your mind much like too much solitary confinement can. I
| don't say this from personal experience (un)fortunately, I
| say this as someone who has a family member that is a
| confidant of a billionaire from the middle-east (whom I'll
| refer to as Bob.) The family member is one of their close
| staff - travels with them everywhere and is in close
| proximity, daily - and possibly their most intimate friend
| as a result of this close proximity for the better part of
| 40 years, and the below.
|
| In Bob's life he is surrounded by sycophants waiting for
| handouts, never wanting to be seen to annoy Bob nor lose
| his favour. Bob does not know who to trust. He has had
| those that he considered real friends and deeply
| trustworthy turn out to be thiefs and liars. A former
| school friend was secretly living in one of Bob's holiday
| homes _for years_, successfully evading detection by Bob by
| using his friendship to know where and when Bob will be. He
| was using his ties to Bob (and Bob's success) to gain
| favour in his own business and was using some of this money
| to bribe Bob's staff into silence. Apparently the friend
| went full "villain in disguise reveals his secret vendetta"
| when Bob asked if the friend needs help. Bob was
| heartbroken.
|
| Maids, servers, and other staff are stealing things all the
| time - Bob maintains and reviews an inventory of stolen
| property with his security detail, with monthly targets...
| theft of his belongings is an ever present cost to Bob. e
| Bob's own family live an excessively sheltered life. His
| young children's best friends are their personal body
| guards - former military personnel that must be present
| around the clock as a stipulation of their kidknap/ransom
| insurance. This isn't a perceived threat, either. Bob's
| eldest son was abducted on at least one occassion, by a
| policeman no less.
|
| Bob's life is managed for him. His staff manage his diet,
| his wardrobe(s), his social diary, of course his work
| engagenments take him all over the world often with little
| notice. He is never entirely certain where he will be and
| when. He is a slave to his diaries.
|
| Bob spends the majority of his birthdays alone, on the
| phone to my family member, often crying about how lonely he
| is.
|
| All that for money seems like a lot to sacrifice. There's
| also a fascinating effect that happens when the cost of
| things are literally of no consequence. Sentimentality is
| the only measure of value and material objects are just..
| nothing but utilities.
|
| Anyway, I would safely assume being a billionaire is not
| all doom and gloom, but it certainly has a different set of
| life-problems.
| more_corn wrote:
| Imagine the world's tiniest violin playing a sad song for
| the billionaire who alienated himself from the world.
| Someone living in one of his many houses when he's not
| around! Scandalous! How about have one house and live in
| it. You can have money and not be an asshole about
| things.
|
| Warren buffet was once targeted by an armed gunman. The
| gunman burst into buffet's kitchen where buffet, his wife
| (I suppose she's also buffet) and another man were eating
| lunch. Little did the gunman know, the other man turned
| out to be buffet's hired security. The bodyguard being
| good at his job quickly disarmed and restrained the
| attacker.
|
| Why were they sitting and eating together? Because even
| though buffet was the richest man in the world at the
| time he behaves like a normal person and if there's a guy
| who's always around you invite him to lunch.
|
| I assure you, I need to know nothing more about the
| relationship to tell you that Warren Buffet trusts and
| respects this man. And the feeling is mutual.
|
| In conclusion: I recommend that Bob climb down off the
| high horse he thinks his billions require him to ride and
| join the rest of us in normal life. Connection is all
| around you, you have only to reach back out for it.
|
| As for sycophants, if you want people to be candid you
| have to give them a safe place to do it. Musk will soon
| learn that the people who criticized him were right and
| he shouldn't have driven them away.
|
| As for people wanting a handout. If your money is a
| burden to you there's an obvious solution.
| [deleted]
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| >Maids, servers, and other staff are stealing things all
| the time - Bob maintains and reviews an inventory of
| stolen property with his security detail, with monthly
| targets... theft of his belongings is an ever present
| cost to Bob.
|
| I can solve this problem for Bob.
|
| Live a more modest life and not have 10 homes with a
| million things in them. Maybe stick to first class
| flights, or even charter private flights when desired
| instead of owning a plane.
| idontpost wrote:
| blahblah1234567 wrote:
| Yep. I'd say the solution is: Live a modest life, and
| don't advertise your wealth.
|
| I doubt there is any law anywhere prohibiting a
| millionaire or billionaire from moving themselves and
| their families to a new place and living a middle class
| lifestyle under a new name.
|
| Advertising one's wealth is a signal for "I seek
| validation" and "Please appreciate me"/"Be my friend
| because I am wealthy"
|
| I doubt anyone is actually stopping Bob from quitting his
| job, moving to a new country, and living a quaint
| lifestyle.
|
| Personally, I've up and moved and gone to live in a tent,
| just to see what it was like and essentially test myself
| and test the lifestyle of a vagabond.
|
| It really showed me that, as a man, for the most part:
| you have no worth outside of what you provide for others.
| Men are expected to provide something for their
| community-- that is the basis of their social status:
| competencies (i.e. capable of productive things) and
| contributions.
| PeterisP wrote:
| For starters, the security issue won't go away by moving
| to a new place and living a middle class lifestyle under
| a new name, so they still would need to maintain that
| security staff which would make them obviously not middle
| class.
| polishdude20 wrote:
| It's not bobs wealth the want though. It's his
| connections. You can't just quit and move somewhere and
| expect your connections to be severed. Others will seek
| you out for your previous connections. Billionaires
| "know" you now. You have influence over them whether you
| like it or not.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| >Live a more modest life and
|
| in other words, don't be a billionaire. However Bob has
| evidently decided to keep being a billionaire which means
| he has to maintain and review stolen property etc.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| I am not aware of any rules requiring people to spend a
| minimum percent of their wealth.
| Jenk wrote:
| _E: parent edited their post from "I wonder if Warren
| Buffet has any of these problems" in case anyone is
| wondering why this post looks out of place._
|
| His wikipedia page documents how he and his family have
| disowned his granddaughter for revealing family secrets
| in an interview. So.. yeah, he probably does.
|
| You can bet he has kidnapping insurance on his family,
| too.
| [deleted]
| Jenk wrote:
| I dare say Bob has thought of this. But hey, it's easier
| to just armchair a complex problem away with a simple
| solution, than it is to acknowledge that complexity,
| amirite?
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| How is this a complex problem? Having to secure one's
| assets is a problem to even non human species.
|
| The thing that makes it simple is that all the things Bob
| has are purely unnecessary. So if Bob feels overburdened
| by the task of securing them, then the simple solution is
| to jettison them.
| polishdude20 wrote:
| Reminds me of turning on cheat codes in games. It get
| boring pretty quickly.
| andrei_says_ wrote:
| The increase of wealth and fame leads to an increase of
| isolation and decrease of safety and trust.
|
| Beyond a certain point, as a "known wealthy person", you
| will never know if a romantic partner cares about you or
| your wealth. Same for your friends. Relatives. Anybody.
|
| You will not be able to do things you've taken for
| granted - like go to the pub or to a restaurant or on a
| hike or ride your bike on the bike path - without
| additional effort and people.
|
| Very, very lonely and depressing.
| waboremo wrote:
| This level of fame paranoia is commonly talked about, but
| is also extremely hard to reach without actually trying
| and spending resources in regularly keeping your name in
| people's mouths. You can achieve a great level of wealth
| without anybody caring: see extremely wealthy families in
| most countries who 99% of people won't even recognize
| even if you show them a picture with their name under.
| [deleted]
| sharadov wrote:
| Excessive money brings lack of trust, the only way to
| solve this is give away the money - whittle it down to
| the 10s of millions and watch all the sycophants
| disappear.
| bilbo0s wrote:
| This.
|
| We need to learn that corporations care even less about the
| environment than they care about remote work. Invoking the
| environment to gain their support of remote work is just
| misunderstanding their priorities. The game is to make remote
| work attractive to them.
|
| You think Elon Musk wants to hear your spiel about the
| environment? Or does he want you to get back into your office
| and work a 16 hour day?
|
| If we want to get corporate america on the side of remote work,
| then we need to do it with dollars and cents. Not "indirect
| savings", not "improved morale", but concrete examples of how
| remote work is increasing their profit. (Even better, would be
| if it could increase their revenue as well. That would be a
| slam dunk.) We almost got there with the idea of lowering rent
| costs after the pandemic, but now it just seems that the idea
| of getting rid of office space in favor of remote work is
| getting a lot of push back. Maybe even backlash would be a
| better term.
| crypot wrote:
| Even the environmentalists don't care about the environment.
| 45000 people went to cop27.
| baxtr wrote:
| Which happened to be in a desert. They cooled the venue
| down so that people were freezing inside. What a joke.
| osigurdson wrote:
| >> Or does he want you to get back into your office and work
| a 16 hour day?
|
| I'm OK with working 16 hour days on something that matters
| (obviously burn out needs to be kept in check - it can't be
| done forever). I realize that I might be "wired" differently
| than others as I care a bit less about work life balance and
| more about accomplishment (not proud of it). I see no reason
| why this can't be done at the beach house however. In fact,
| I'm convinced it would be better as commuting is a burnout
| accelerator.
| ako wrote:
| Not sure how a 16 hour workday fits if you also need to
| sleep, shop, cook, clean, take care of the kids, keep in
| contact with your friends and family, and exercise.
| ljf wrote:
| It doesn't - unless you need very little sleep.
|
| I had a crunch delivery before we had kids, and it was
| hell. In the office by 9, leaving around 3 or even 4am.
| 'Luckily' the office paid for cabs and food and tried to
| make it as good as they good for us, but I didn't see
| friends, barely saw my wife and felt rotten at the
| weekends.
|
| BUT, we delivered some amazing work, was well
| compensated, and otherwise rewarded by the company. Many
| of those who did the work are still there and still rate
| it as a place to be. It was a one off that we all swore
| off repeating, but I don't regret it or the work we
| delivered.
| [deleted]
| JTbane wrote:
| It's kind of depressing that greenwashing is so effective: see
| companies like ConocoPhillips getting stellar ESG ratings
| despite their business models.
| krageon wrote:
| Exactly this is the reason, but I'll go even further and say
| that no corporation will advertise something "green" that might
| require actual effort on their part. The clear fact is that
| environmental impact is almost entirely the fault of
| corporations. Advertising for consumers to do anything to
| impact this is distracting them from the real issue: the
| corporations advertising to them.
|
| It is for this reason that you will never find anything that
| makes sense advertised as green or efficient. Corporations are
| things that exist solely to exploit: nothing in their core
| impulses moves them to be kind or understanding. Anything that
| makes it seem otherwise must be regarded with suspicion.
| opportune wrote:
| In my experiencing greenwashing is just as likely to be used
| to shame normal consumer behavior into reducing costs for
| businesses (do you really want those plastic utensils with
| your takeout? Do you really need to use that much water in
| your hotel room? Do you really need fresh towels every day?)
| as it is to actually help the environment.
|
| Most of the time corporations claim to be doing something in
| a carbon-neutral way it's because they are purchasing offsets
| where you just have to believe that they are actually
| computing the carbon costs appropriately and the offsets are
| "real" anyway.
| antifa wrote:
| > do you really want those plastic utensils with your
| takeout?
|
| There's a place where I always uncheck "include utensils"
| and they always give me 8 people's worth of them anyways.
| kmacdough wrote:
| At its core, "reduce" generally benefits both the
| environment and the bottom line. Additionally, many
| employees wish their company was more environmental, but
| cannot make their case unless it aligns with the business.
|
| A slight rewording of your point highlights the
| opportunity: change happens when business and environmental
| needs align. This means, the people's best (only) play is
| to craft policies and institutions that align business
| incentives with environmental goals (e.g. emission cap 'n
| trade, grants, etc.). For example, a central repository of
| public holistic impact assessments could force PR teams to
| focus on real impact over trivial greenwashing campaigns.
|
| While the national level gets the most focus, local/state
| governments can move move faster and serve as models for
| larger change.
| dougmwne wrote:
| This is it right here. There's been an enormous amount of
| blame shifting onto consumers, who have almost nothing to do
| with environmental impacts, as if not using plastic straws
| could have any impact whatsoever. This is intentional on the
| part of government as it confuses voters into thinking the
| problem has been solved or is a moral failing.
|
| Our leaders know full well that consumers and corporations
| have no power to act on this themselves. They will suck up
| any resources presented to them in the lowest energy
| configuration. Capitalism demands it. Regulation and
| governance is the only solution to tragedy of the commons.
| All else is noise being created by leaders who have been
| bought and paid for.
| jsight wrote:
| You only have to look at the relative scarcity of EV L2
| chargers at Disney properties to see this first hand. How
| many Earth Day commercials have they run over the years? But
| a few bucks to support their own customers is too much?
| ibejoeb wrote:
| I don't intend to de-rail the convo, but this is an important
| one.
|
| > improve inter-family relationships
|
| It _could_ , maybe, but it can also be a significant source of
| strife. It's tough spending all day, every day with someone.
| Because of that, you find that people are either looking for
| larger homes in order to have private work spaces or renting
| office space. Both of those shift the cost burden from the
| company to the individual.
| MarcoSanto wrote:
| This. FFS who wants to stay home to live and work!?!? I don't
| understand WFH. the right way is to have better public
| transport and cheaper housing, not secluded lives.
| heurist wrote:
| In my current house, my commute would be 1 hour each way if
| I wasn't working from home. I'd be leaving early and
| getting home late. I'd have no time with my wife, son,
| pets. No time for housework/extra projects. I did this
| commute prior to having a kid and it worked then, but it
| wouldn't work now.
| maerF0x0 wrote:
| > This. FFS....
|
| Not this FFS.
|
| Who says remote work means you have to stay home all the
| time? Stay home to work and make sure you leave at least
| once, ideally two or three times a day!
|
| In the morning for a walk or workout or coffee break.
|
| At lunch just to breath some air.
|
| At 5PM[1] sharp laptops closed to reconnect with some of
| your favorite humans, not necessarily the same ones you
| live with.
|
| [1]: or whatever hard stop you craft for yourself.
| msmenardi wrote:
| It'd also be nice if companies were forced to pay for time
| spent commuting
| aaronax wrote:
| So then their next move would be to mandate that you live
| within a certain commute range. I don't think we want
| that.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Obfuscating costs and increasing the complexity makes no
| sense.
|
| Variable rate tolling on roads to disincentivize
| unnecessary travel by individual car makes more sense.
| counttheforks wrote:
| Then the companies will just tell you to suck it up and
| pay the tax yourself, or they'll find someone else.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| And that someone else will also have to pay the tolls.
|
| Therefore both employer and employee will be incentivized
| to locate in places with higher density housing to reduce
| costs.
| asiachick wrote:
| why? you chose to take the job far from your house.
|
| if companies are forced to pay for the time commuting
| people will choose to live 20 hours away
| erik_seaberg wrote:
| Then to compete we'd have to move more often and pay more
| for less space to live even closer to the office.
| IOT_Apprentice wrote:
| People aren't going to get better public transport or
| cheaper housing in the USA. I want to stay home and live
| and work. I've done it once before over a decade ago and
| doing it now as a result of the pandemic and I love it.
| oblio wrote:
| > People aren't going to get better public transport or
| cheaper housing in the USA.
|
| Not with that attitude :-)
|
| Wasn't the US about a "go getter" attitude? I'm not even
| an American, but that's the general perception.
| bojo wrote:
| I agree with you that better public transportation and
| cheaper housing would be a respectable path towards a
| better society in general.
|
| However, please don't state that "the right way is to
| have... not secluded lives." Some of us absolutely enjoy
| the seclusion, especially this WFH Alaskan.
| oblio wrote:
| > Some of us absolutely enjoy the seclusion, especially
| this WFH Alaskan.
|
| The thing is, you do enjoy it.
|
| Just like people enjoy alcohol and tobacco or having
| cars.
|
| However, the real question is: is it really good for you,
| long term?
|
| I'm not sure the answer is clear cut. Humans frequently
| choose things which are actively harmful to them, at
| least long term.
| mikestew wrote:
| "You do enjoy it...just like alcoholics enjoy alcohol." I
| mean, assuming I'm reading this correctly, seriously? Let
| people enjoy their choices, and without pulling
| questionable comparisons out of thin air. Especially when
| we aren't given complete context, as with parent. Don't
| take one sentence and then turn around and say, "doesn't
| sound healthy".
| oblio wrote:
| The entire zeitgeist is that people are more and more
| isolated and lack a support network.
|
| We can put 2 and 2 together and figure out that physical
| isolation in environment where people live far apart from
| each other and drive everywhere is... isolating?
|
| And by the way, there are studies that show that even for
| introverts, socialization (even forced!) is ultimately
| good.
|
| We're not made to sit alone in a room in the middle of
| nowhere. We were born in caves filled with our
| tribesfolk, dozens and dozens of people living together
| in small spaces.
|
| Also, who said anything about alcoholics? Alcohol is just
| bad for you. Anything except for very small amounts has a
| ton of bad side effects. It's just "grandfathered in"
| (just like tobacco) and seen as socially acceptable.
| fknorangesite wrote:
| > secluded lives.
|
| Remember that "pandemic remote work" is not at all _normal_
| remote work. I have a social life outside of my coworkers.
| I can work from places that aren 't my home office - a
| cafe, a coworking space, whatever - even if it's just a
| couple hours to get out of the house.
|
| It need not be _seclusion_.
|
| > better public transport and cheaper housing
|
| Yeah, well, no argument from me here.
| vladvasiliu wrote:
| > I have a social life outside of my coworkers.
|
| This. Even before the pandemic, when I had to waste two
| hours a day, every day, to go sit my butt in my
| employer's chair, all my "social life" was strictly with
| people other than my coworkers.
|
| So being able to get those two hours back, even if not
| all of them but every other day, is a net gain for me. I
| can go for a walk, lift some weights, space out on the
| couch, whatever. It's also much easier to not always eat
| the same plastic lunch every day, or have to prepare
| things that are easy to reheat in a microwave.
| twobitshifter wrote:
| If you compare the economic costs of public transport and
| "cheaper" housing to WFH's requirement of an internet
| connection, it's much more cost effective to work from
| home. Now we could say that face-to-face interaction
| outweighs these costs economically, but you'd need the
| data, and at least in terms of commuting you'll never beat
| the ecological footprint of not going anywhere.
| znpy wrote:
| This only makes sense if you were born and raised in San
| Francisco, Seattle, Milan, London, Dublin, Munchen, Berlin,
| Amsterdam or some other big tech city.
|
| Otherwise your statement just doesn't make sense.
| Vivtek wrote:
| Me?
|
| Because "home", for me, while I've been working remotely
| since 1994, has been Indiana, to Puerto Rico, to Budapest.
| I go when I want, do a little schedule juggling maybe. And
| now I live in the tropics in the jungle on a mountain
| coffee farm - _the_ best place to spend a global pandemic -
| and I still have an income.
|
| I'll take my seclusion, thanks.
| ljf wrote:
| You are very right - I am very lucky to have a shed/office I
| can hide away in and get some great work done in. I'd say it
| is a far better and more comfortable space than any office
| I've worked in. But when I had to work at the kitchen table
| with my wife and family in other rooms in the house it was so
| much harder.
|
| For those with room, especially if you have a good sized
| commute, remote working is great (I really really value being
| able to eat with my kids and hang out in the evening), but
| you are right that if you are two people in a small 1 bed
| flat, or a few people in a house share, or just a family in a
| standard family house, then yes remote working is not always
| going to be a bonus.
| Asooka wrote:
| I can't imagine living in a home where every member doesn't
| have their own quiet/study/work space. I say this as
| someone who has lived most of his life in apartment
| buildings where that was a bit challenging, but definitely
| not impossible. I guess maybe if you are used to living
| your life outside of the house an just visit to eat and
| sleep you feel differently, but that's the beauty of WFH -
| you get to pick what best works for you.
| xwdv wrote:
| Alternatively, because of the expectation that partners will
| not be around 24/7, people may have been selecting sub-
| optimal partners. If remote work becomes the norm your
| standards for a long term partner may become higher as you
| need to ensure you do not get tired of being around them.
| wobbly_bush wrote:
| Interesting point. Would it reduce the "individualism"
| present in the US? I've always found it interesting how
| much companies market individualism (specially fashion
| companies). More intense individualism also makes it harder
| to find another person who can be tolerated due to their
| individualism.
| xwdv wrote:
| I find if a person's individualism is incompatible with
| yours, life can be harder for little to no increased
| benefit.
| silverpepsi wrote:
| Is the term "improve relationships" even appropriate as a
| "goal" when children are involved? As a 12-17 year old, there
| was nothing more awesome than having the house to myself, no
| parents. Relationships were better, as lower contact hours
| means less harassment and less use of each other as an
| emotional punching bag.
|
| However, contact hours are desirable for actual child rearing
| outcomes. Lingusitic development in the early years = has a
| huge impact on vocabulary development with college-educated
| parents and for older kids discipline... two brothers grew up
| being watched like a hawk by my mom. Two younger ones grew up
| as latchkey kids once she went back to work. Outcomes were
| quite different.
| bobwaycott wrote:
| > _Is the term "improve relationships" even appropriate as
| a "goal" when children are involved? ... lower contact
| hours means less harassment and less use of each other as
| an emotional punching bag._
|
| I'm really sorry this was your childhood. I can heavily
| relate, as I grew up feeling the same way.
|
| Now, 20+ years and two adult children later, I can say that
| the best thing I ever did as a parent was make building and
| improving my relationship with my children my top goal and
| priority from day one.
|
| They've never been my emotional punching bags, or my
| emotional support animals. I've always had my eye on where
| we are now--them being adults. This is the period I have
| been intentionally building toward since I was changing
| diapers.
|
| It means I focused on treating and considering them as
| their own unique and independent people since before they
| knew it. My childhood modeled what I absolutely did not
| want to repeat with my children. This meant I was
| responsible for modeling how to truly listen, respect, and
| support their thoughts and decisions; for creating a safe
| environment; for explaining myself clearly when necessary
| so they could understand me as a person, without resorting
| to "because I'm the parent"; and, most importantly, for
| apologizing when I was the one in the wrong.
|
| I've done a lot differently than I experienced growing up,
| and unless my sons are lying to me (which they don't do),
| it's made all the difference compared to the relationships
| they see among my parents and extended family.
|
| For most of their childhood, I worked from home. I believe
| it is part of why I built such a good and healthy
| relationship that's now the foundation of all three of us
| being adults--not least of all because when I screwed up, I
| could apologize and use all that time to _improve the
| relationship_ by resolving my mistakes, modeling the
| respect and love they deserved, and building a better
| future.
| deckard1 wrote:
| > It's tough spending all day, every day with someone
|
| You literally do this with coworkers in an office. Except,
| you didn't get to pick those people and you have to be even
| physically closer to them. The last office I worked in was an
| open floor plan and the guy three feet next to me typed so
| hard I thought he would break his keyboard. And he was on a
| rubber dome!! It was louder than the loudest mechanical
| keyboard. Before that I sat next to the sales department.
| They would talk loudly on the phone for 8 straight hours. One
| time my desk was next to the break room. You like hearing
| people talk all day long?
|
| > in order to have private work spaces
|
| With open floor plans the only privacy you get is when you
| put on your headphones. Anyone walking by still sees your
| screen and wearing headphones all day is not great for your
| health.
| ibejoeb wrote:
| Most people do not live around the clock in an office. Many
| people spend entire days at their homes because there is
| nowhere else to go.
|
| None of this goes to suggest that the bad aspects of
| offices are better.
| gwbas1c wrote:
| FWIW: I'm sure that heating and cooling my 3rd floor office
| negates some of my impact from telecommuting. I also have extra
| equipment in the office, and at home, that goes mostly unused.
|
| I've been working ~90% remote for about 8 years. It works for me,
| because I'm disciplined and honest, and because I have a job that
| can be performed remotely. It also works for me because I've been
| able to find good ways to have facetime with the people I work
| with; but I'm normally shy and prefer to work in isolation.
|
| Not every job can be performed remotely. Even jobs that can be
| performed remotely need facetime for helping people early in
| their careers start. Some people, unfortunately, aren't
| disciplined enough to work remotely.
|
| Other people are extreme extroverts and really, really need to be
| around a large group of people for most of their day. A good
| friend of mine, who works in a hospital, used to love his job
| until he was assigned work-at-home work. He hates it now, just
| because he's a major extrovert.
|
| There's another post in this thread from someone who lives in a
| small city apartment and commutes by train a few stops to their
| office. That's also environmentally friendly.
| osigurdson wrote:
| There is nothing more illogical in modern society than commuting
| to an office every day. Employees waste 2 of their 16 available
| waking hours in the non-productive commute while incurring
| significant financial costs (lease/insurance/fuel/energy) in
| order to support this patently absurd activity. Employers waste
| time and energy negotiating leases, re-arranging offices,
| purchasing AV equipment for meeting rooms, etc., in addition to
| paying the likely enormously expensive lease itself. The impacts
| on the environment, the number of hours of human life wasted in
| commute, the pointless buildings and associated costs to
| employers as well as the public infrastructure to support it
| (roads, trains, busses, etc.) are all incredibly wasteful.
| Surely, all of this could only be justified if physical presence
| had a dramatic impact on productivity. Yet, we cannot tell one
| way or the other if it actually improves outcomes.
| trap_goes_hot wrote:
| >Surely, all of this could only be justified if physical
| presence had a dramatic impact on productivity. Yet, we cannot
| tell one way or the other if it actually improves outcomes.
|
| You can flip that around too - If remote work was so great for
| productivity, all companies would switch to it? There really
| isn't any point arguing over it, because it doesn't change the
| current state of affairs.
|
| My belief is that for remote work to gain mainstream adoption,
| you'll need a few trailblazer companies who establish a model
| of remote work where you can get everything done remotely -
| team building, motivating people, etc, etc.
| deathanatos wrote:
| Except we have studies that show companies continue to adopt
| patently absurd and destructive behaviors? Prior to the
| pandemic, it was the open-office floorplan, and study after
| study said it was a failure on basically any metric:
| productivity, spreading of disease, stress...
|
| Now we have remote work, and we're starting to get studies
| that show the impact it has on productivity... (and thus far,
| the ones I've seen show favorable results!)
|
| Someday, scientists will finally reach the ultimate
| conclusion: that many companies routinely make poor short-
| term tradeoffs to their long-term detriment.
| trap_goes_hot wrote:
| >Prior to the pandemic, it was the open-office floorplan,
| and study after study said it was a failure on basically
| any metric: productivity, spreading of disease, stress...
|
| Certainly, I would respect a study that has been replicated
| multiple times and shown the same result. Links are
| welcome!
|
| >Someday, scientists will finally reach the ultimate
| conclusion: that many companies routinely make poor short-
| term tradeoffs to their long-term detriment.
|
| I don't believe you can make any "ultimate conclusion".
| When it comes to human psychology, group behavior, and
| other complicated topics, there is no 'optimal for
| everyone'. You have to find what works for _you_ in _your
| environment_.
|
| You can't hand-wave science into everything. Science is
| observational. It's about proposing a
| model/argument/position, and then collecting data to see if
| the model holds up. You don't fit data to the model.
| Changing what you do just so you can fit a model is wrong
| and bad science.
| osigurdson wrote:
| I can't imagine many startups opting to rent expensive
| office space when they don't have to. It's quite a tax on
| talent, especially if top talent doesn't want to be there
| anyway. Furthermore the prestige associated with having an
| office is kind of subdued at this point. Actually, I think
| most investors would probably think it is a mistake unless
| the physical space is truly needed for working with matter
| (not only information).
| alimov wrote:
| > You can flip that around too - If remote work was so great
| for productivity, all companies would switch to it?
|
| When you're flipping this pancake please remember that real
| estate prices and tax write offs weigh into the reasoning
| some companies employ when deciding their wfh policies
| trap_goes_hot wrote:
| Sure, but it also may be true that remote work is not
| necessarily better in every situation. I don't assume every
| manager is a fraud when they're wanting people to work from
| the office. I don't know their situation, so I would much
| rather grant them the decision.
|
| Ideally, you will have companies that are remote, non-
| remote, and hybrid - so a candidate can choose which
| company they want to join.
| itsoktocry wrote:
| > _If remote work was so great for productivity, all
| companies would switch to it?_
|
| My belief is that a lot of the people who get to make these
| decision _like_ the office, because they don 't suffer from
| the same externalities. In other words, many of the things
| that make commuting to the office suck ass don't necessarily
| pertain to the boss.
| trap_goes_hot wrote:
| >My belief is that a lot of the people who get to make
| these decision like the office, because they don't suffer
| from the same externalities. In other words, many of the
| things that make commuting to the office suck ass don't
| necessarily pertain to the boss.
|
| You have a valid point, but if one way is clearly superior,
| your competition is going to adopt it and start producing
| results faster/better. I don't really have a strong opinion
| on this - I work in manufacturing so remote work is not
| even an option for me and my team.
| ProZsolt wrote:
| Yeah, I wouldn't have problem going to the office if I can
| afford a penthouse in the city centre, 15 minutes from the
| office.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| _> Employees waste 2 of their 16_
|
| I suspect that you don't commute to a large city (either via
| car or mass transit).
|
| It's more like 4-6 hours.
|
| Crazy.
| TigeriusKirk wrote:
| For a while in Los Angeles I had a commute of around an hour
| each way. Even in that sprawling eternal traffic jam of a
| city, my friends and coworkers considered my commute to be
| notably long.
| elijaht wrote:
| The average commute in a large city is definitely not 2-3
| hours _one way_.
| prepend wrote:
| When I lived in New York. I left for the train at 545 and
| got to work between 830 and 9.
|
| I don't think this is the average commute, but millions of
| people do this every day.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| NYC was fun in my 20s, but I could not believe the older
| people I was working with spent ~3 hours per day
| commuting to and from Manhattan and NJ/CT/NY.
|
| Their entire life, Mon to Fri, was wake up, go to work,
| maybe spend an hour with kids or watch TV, go to sleep,
| and repeat.
|
| And they did not get paid enough to do it from age 30 to
| 55 or even 65. The only amount of pay that would be
| enough would be an amount that allows you to quit that
| nonsense life after a few years.
| Eupraxias wrote:
| I had a friend who's father did the 4 hours of commuting
| in/out of NYC every day. Used to visit a few times a
| year, and he did that every day M-F.
|
| As a Vermonter kid, I had a lot of trouble getting my
| head around how he stayed sane.
| oblio wrote:
| He didn't want to be with his family.
| mooxie wrote:
| Maybe not the average, but millions of people commute to a
| city like Atlanta every day. From the middle of Forsyth
| County in GA, where there are many exurbs of Atlanta that
| feed workers into the city, the drive is slated to be 1-2
| hours over 44 miles to downtown as we speak even now. And
| nothing is 'wrong,' currently - this is not some outlier.
|
| Many people that I know make this kind of drive in the
| Atlanta area, and that's not due to them all being in
| particular industries either. 1-2 hours to get across the
| city and into the suburbs/exurbs is a fact of life, and
| millions do it.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| Come to New York, then. I have sad news for you.
|
| DC was even worse.
| elijaht wrote:
| I'm in NJ- my commute into the city is an hour. Most
| people that I know of have commutes in the 30-90 minute
| range, throughout NJ, NYC, and Connecticut
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| I live in Western Suffolk County. I never commuted to the
| City, but many of my friends do.
|
| Driving is 90 minutes, if you leave at 5AM. Train is 2
| hours (including in-city time).
|
| Many folks commute from even farther East.
|
| Please don't tell me that I'm "insane." I would never
| have done that commute, myself, but have lived here for
| over 30 years, and have seen (with my own little eyes),
| people doing this every day.
| elijaht wrote:
| I did not call you insane- that was another commenter.
|
| I also don't doubt there are long commutes. However, I
| will assert that that is not the typical experience in
| New York, or elsewhere. No one in my at-work peer group
| has a commute that long, and no one in my outside-of-work
| friend group has a commute that long.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Does your peer group have kids and earns enough to buy a
| house in a suburb of NYC?
|
| Without kids, there is no reason for the commute. But
| putting kids in an upscale suburban neighborhood with
| other kids of similar earning parents is the reason that
| I saw people put up with that commute.
| crazygringo wrote:
| No, most people in NYC are not commuting 2-3 hours each
| way. That's insane to say.
|
| I know a _couple_ people who have done it -- living in
| deep Brooklyn far from the subway and teaching in the
| Bronx, or living deep in Staten Island and commuting to
| the Upper East Side -- but it is _extremely_ uncommon.
|
| The average NYC commute is 40 minutes. And only 10% of
| NYC workers have a commute longer than 60 minutes. [1]
|
| [1] https://www.geotab.com/time-to-commute/
| taeric wrote:
| I assert that most of the folks that claim insane large
| commutes have been bitten by what happens if you don't
| adjust how you commute to a place. This particularly
| bites people that move to a city, as they want to keep
| their car commute all too often. Similarly, it bites
| folks that move out of the city, as they want to stay on
| transit, but that drops in effectiveness as you leave the
| density.
| primis wrote:
| When I worked in NYC a few years ago, I was living in an
| apartment on Long Island, the LIRR was 1h30m on average,
| plus 10 minute drive to get to the train station, plus
| another 20 minute walk from Penn to 3rd ave where I
| worked. On rainy days I'd take the subway but there isn't
| a direct route so I'd have to change at times square so
| it always ended up taking longer than walking.
|
| Easily 2+ hours each way from door to door. And let me
| tell you, the LIRR is vastly overfilled during peak.
| You're lucky to get a seat for that 90 minute leg of your
| trip, and if you didn't, you were probably sardine packed
| in the aisle.
| TigeriusKirk wrote:
| I knew someone who commuted from Philadelphia to
| Manhattan every day. Worked in a museum, so it was her
| dream job but didn't pay much. Longest commute I've know
| someone to do daily.
| jcranmer wrote:
| https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publica
| tio..., page 7
|
| Average commute time in NYC MSA is 37.7 minutes, longest
| of any major MSA in the country. DC MSA is 35.6 minutes.
| Only ~23% of NYC have commutes longer than hour, and ~18%
| in DC.
|
| (Note: statistics are using 2019 data, so doesn't account
| for anything COVID related, and people who don't commute
| are excluded from the statistics.)
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| Must be nice to own a place in Dumbo or Nassau County.
|
| Out here, in the affordable section, it's not as easy.
|
| When I lived in the DC suburbs, 32 years ago, I lived in
| Gaithersburg, MD. I worked in Rockville (1 exit south, on
| I-270). Six miles, as the crow flies.
|
| My daily commute was 45 minutes.
|
| I-270 is a charming bit of tarmac. It's a 12-lane parking
| lot, that stretches from Frederick, to the Beltway.
|
| I have no idea where those stats come from, but they sure
| as hell don't reflect the reality, around here.
|
| Reality has a nasty way of not caring what the stats say.
| jcranmer wrote:
| I grew up in the DC suburbs (VA side). There's definitely
| a lot of people who have 40-minute commutes or the
| like... but 20 and 30 minute commutes are not reasonably
| uncommon. When I had to cross the river on the Woodrow
| Wilson (in the era they were building the new one, no
| less, so perma-construction), my commute was regularly
| about 20-30 minutes long, although morning was routinely
| shorter than afternoon (295 just crawls trying to get
| back onto 495).
| swat535 wrote:
| In Montreal, QC however, it easily takes 1.5-2 hours to go
| downtown and another 1.5-2h to come back.. especially
| during winter time. A lawyer friend of mine would leave his
| house at 6 AM to be at court by 9..
|
| One starts to lose his sanity somewhere between the
| potholes, broken roads, construction, crazy drivers,
| freezing rain and no parking..
| eludwig wrote:
| Average I don't know about, but my commute into Manhattan
| from Jersey was 2 hours, one way _door to door_. You have
| to count driving to the train station and the time it takes
| to get from the station to the actual office.
|
| That said, the actual train ride was approx 75 minutes.
|
| Even worse, I drove to Westchester for a number of years
| and that was 120 miles a day (60 one way) including a trip
| over the Tappan Zee! At least on the train ride I could
| read.
|
| I no longer live in the NYC area and certainly don't miss
| those commutes.
| sershe wrote:
| I commute from a large-ish city to its suburb, my commute is
| 15-18 minutes. Anecdotes are not data... average commute in
| the US is like 20-30mins. I suspect most people who can be
| fully remote (i.e. are not in service industry) can afford to
| move instead of commuting 3 hours one way.
| osigurdson wrote:
| According to this data, commutes are pretty much no big
| deal in all states.
|
| https://www.visualcapitalist.com/wp-
| content/uploads/2018/04/...
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| I'm always amazed at these datasets.
|
| They tend to ignore things like the laws of physics.
|
| When you live 40 miles away from your destination,
| there's no way that you'll get there in 37.7 minutes,
| unless you can do over the state speed limit, the entire
| time. And that doesn't even count things like congestion,
| traffic lights, and whatnot.
|
| Frankly, I'm kind of amazed at the nasty reception that
| my post got. I do apologize for my choice of words,
| questioning where the person lives, but folks seem to
| have some kind of stake, in commutes being unnaturally
| short.
|
| People live in the suburbs, so they can do things like
| raise families, send their kids to good schools, and
| enjoy the kinds of leisure pursuits that are only
| available to wealthy people, close to the city.
|
| There's a _lot_ of people, living out here. I know of
| several people that live in Wading River, and commute
| daily, to Manhattan.
|
| This is a scientific community. Feel free to get your
| maps out, and figure it out.
| osigurdson wrote:
| Yes, I'd like to see how this data was aggregated. It
| doesn't seem to resonate very well.
| adamsmith143 wrote:
| So actually not a large city at all? Hard to believe
| there's there's actually a commute from Suburb to Downtown
| in under 20 minutes during rush hour for any of the 20
| largest cities in the US.
| [deleted]
| hiAndrewQuinn wrote:
| An interesting implication of this is that there's probably a
| lot of money to be made in the long run in shorting present-day
| valuable city real estate.
| pugworthy wrote:
| It really depends on where you live. My (fortune 100 high tech)
| job has a 10 minute commute if I hit the lights right.
|
| Maybe the "illogical" issue is people living in high density
| massive population centers.
|
| To add, I live on a nice tree-lined street within walking
| distance of local schools and shopping. I don't live in some
| apartment near my place of employment.
| ProZsolt wrote:
| How easy would be for you to change employer with similar
| commute?
| akira2501 wrote:
| > Employees waste 2 of their 16 available waking hours in the
| non-productive commute while incurring significant financial
| costs (lease/insurance/fuel/energy) in order to support this
| patently absurd activity.
|
| It's not patently absurd, it obviously bring some benefit to
| their life to chose this, you're just ignoring those benefits
| to focus solely on the time and energy costs; which people
| gladly trade away in order to achieve these other benefits.
|
| > The impacts on the environment, the number of hours of human
| life wasted in commute, the pointless buildings and associated
| costs to employers as well as the public infrastructure to
| support it (roads, trains, busses, etc.) are all incredibly
| wasteful.
|
| This view is solely focused on the "information economy," and
| really doesn't make any sense once you start adding in light
| commercial or industrial activity. We built this infrastructure
| for a reason, and it wasn't solely to create a trap for white
| collar workers.
|
| > Yet, we cannot tell one way or the other if it actually
| improves outcomes.
|
| This is probably because most people do not view their lives as
| part of some giant "min-max" game designed to provide maximum
| benefit to everyone other than themselves.
| throwaway675309 wrote:
| "It's not patently absurd, it obviously bring some benefit to
| their life to chose this"
|
| For the vast majority of people in the last four decades
| working out of an office was not a decision up to the
| employees so I don't know where this is coming from.
| purpleblue wrote:
| What we really need is a more flexible time to leave.
|
| I come in at 8am and leave at 2pm, when my commute is about 1/4
| what it is during rush hour. Then I hope on for another couple
| of hours after dinner.
|
| This type of flexibility gives me the best of both worlds, I
| get to go into the office because I LOVE it, and HATE work-
| from-home, and I skip the commute.
| Eupraxias wrote:
| I also followed this model for a few years, and in
| retrospect, it was the ideal.
|
| I recommend this to anyone looking for a perfect 'hybrid'.
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| We just ran a giant 2 year WFH experiment. It didn't hurt
| productivity.
| layer8 wrote:
| In most cases, yes, but for me it's a 20-minute bike ride that
| arguably increases my health, and it enables face-to-face
| conversation with coworkers that video meetings aren't a real
| substitute for -- I say that after two years of having those. I
| wouldn't want to miss that.
|
| What we, as a society, should do, is to increase the
| possibility of working in walking or biking distance.
| ProZsolt wrote:
| I really miss my 2x20 minutes bike ride to wake up and
| decompress. Also lunches with coworkers.
|
| The problem I would have to live near where I would work
| (likely in the city center). Which means higher rents and
| smaller places. Also if I change jobs my options would be
| limited.
| thedangler wrote:
| Very true. And I did some rough estimations on why my employer
| wants us in the office. They make $115k a month of employees
| buying coffee. That is only coffee, and that was a very
| conservative estimate of only 40% of employees buying only a
| coffee on an average of $2. This doesn't take into account
| parking we have to pay for, or lunch, or snacks.
| osigurdson wrote:
| I can't imagine a dev shop not providing free coffee. The ROI
| has to be positive!
| chrisseaton wrote:
| > They make $115k a month of employees buying coffee ...
| parking we have to pay for, or lunch, or snacks
|
| Lol what? Why are they making you pay for these things?
| gman2093 wrote:
| Some places make money selling software, some places make
| money selling out their employees!
| osigurdson wrote:
| It is back to the coal mining days it seems.
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| It's a profit center.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| Or is it a cost-centre because most people wouldn't work
| under those conditions and so you don't get the best
| people to make profit with?
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| In the interviewing process they try to determine which
| potential employees will drink the most coffee.
| Jorengarenar wrote:
| You have to pay for the coffee?!
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| In many countries yes.
| triceratops wrote:
| If your employer makes you pay for coffee, you need a new
| employer. I know companies with terrible reputations on HN
| that nevertheless have free coffee and tea.
| closeparen wrote:
| New York has one of the worst commute situations in the
| country, with an average of 36 minutes each way. The US average
| is 27 minutes. People commuting two hours a day are extreme
| outliers.
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/22/realestate/commuting-best...
| michaelmrose wrote:
| You gain time not spent preparing for work as well and its
| important to note that public transit is another thing
| entirely.According to the same census.gov report sourced by
| that article public transit riders consumed 47 minutes on
| average and that doesn't even tell the whole story because
| transit schedules NEVER align perfectly with your work
| schedule meaning if you don't want to be late you are always
| going to waiting 7-8 minutes for a bus and then arriving 15
| minutes early.
|
| An hour each way including waiting time is perfectly normal
| for anyone who has relied on public transit.
| zhengyi13 wrote:
| ... Maybe? This might be a case where an average doesn't tell
| the whole story.
|
| 45-minute to hour-long commutes each way have been the norm
| for me pretty much the entirety of my 20-odd year career in
| Silicon Valley. For me the outliers were the folk who opted
| to live 2+hrs away to afford a single family home, and were
| still commuting in - some did it daily; some did it weekly,
| and couch surfed during the week.
|
| (The other outlier was the fellow who parked his Airstream in
| the back of the company lot until they told him he had to
| move.)
| closeparen wrote:
| I think discussions about remote work and commuting bring
| out people with unusually bad commutes. And probably people
| with unusually bad commutes are in social bubbles where
| they think it's normal, otherwise they wouldn't sign up for
| it. But statistically, they are unusual!
| michaelmrose wrote:
| It's fair to say that according to your own sources that
| the average commuter according to census.gov loses
| between 250-520 hours per year commuting if we don't
| count the 125 they spent getting ready for work. I think
| pointing out that most people are closer to 250 is
| quibbling over less than meaningful details.
|
| It's a huge waste.
| elgenie wrote:
| 2 hour round trip * 5 days/week * 48 working weeks/year *
| 20 years = 9,600 hours commuting. Assuming 16 hours awake
| per day, that's 600 days of your life over two decades.
|
| One might observe that if that's not an outlier, it ought
| to be.
| srveale wrote:
| Census says 10% of people have 1-way commutes over 60 mins.
| Not typical but certainly not "extreme outliers" either.
|
| And that's just commute time, which doesn't include getting
| dressed for work, gassing up the car, etc. (sure, WFH doesn't
| completely eliminate those, but the difference adds up across
| the population)
|
| https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2021/one-
| way-...
| SoftTalker wrote:
| I had a 60-70 minute door-to-door commute for several
| years. Fortunately about 45 minutes of it was on a train,
| with about a 10 minute walk on either end.
| xboxnolifes wrote:
| I love when people point out wrong info just so someone can
| make a stronger claim that is essentially the same point. 1
| hour a day wasted is still a lot of time.
| theshrike79 wrote:
| That 27 minutes of commute is most likely calculated from
| door to door.
|
| It doesn't include the fact that when you're working
| remotely, you can just plop your ass on the work chair
| wearing whatever you slept in. Log in, check your messages
| and go make some coffee, prep the kids for school and maybe
| change into something smarter before the first meetings of
| the day.
|
| You can also do chores while listening to meandering
| presentations on wireless headphones. If you're brave and
| cameras on isn't a culture in your company, you can do
| interactive ones by lugging your laptop or phone next to the
| dishwasher :D
| Chinjut wrote:
| "The idea of an office is almost offensively stupid. The
| business place. You come here to get on the computer."
| --InternetHippo,
| https://twitter.com/internethippo/status/1292842056008704000
| sytse wrote:
| With remote working you tend to have team-members more spread
| out. Bringing them together requires more travel. If this is by
| airplane it quickly cancels out the reduction in commute
| emissions.
| yogthos wrote:
| Back in 1964 Arthur C. Clarke predicted [1] that by the year 2000
| cities as we know them would no longer exist. We would live in a
| world of instant communication where we could contact anyone on
| Earth without leaving our home. This technology would make it
| possible for many people to conduct business without having to be
| present at a specific physical location. Today, we know the
| technology Clarke was talking about as the Internet. And while
| his technological predictions could not have been more correct,
| he severely underestimated the pace of social progress.
|
| Despite modern office jobs being done entirely on a computer,
| most workers are still expected to get up in the morning, battle
| the daily commute, and physically congregate at the office to
| work. Companies have given innumerable arguments for why this
| must be so, and until recently there wasn't an empirical way to
| test any of them.
|
| Unfortunately, it's often difficult to tell whether an argument
| holds water without running an experiment since ideas that sound
| great on paper can spectacularly fail in practice. However, the
| pandemic presented a unique scenario where it was no longer safe
| to continue following these practices resulting in a forced
| experiment of mass remote work across the world. We now know
| beyond a shadow of a doubt that remote work was possible all
| along, and a recent study shows that there is no loss of
| productivity associated with it. It would appear that the main
| barrier to remote work was the desire to stick with the familiar.
| Now that this valuable experiment has been run we shouldn't
| simply discard the results. Office workers should demand the
| ability to continue working remotely. There is no longer any
| justification to keep up the daily commute.
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KT_8-pjuctM&t=294
| saltcured wrote:
| Did you mean that he overestimated social progress?
|
| Consider that he'd already moved to Sri Lanka in the 1950s,
| ostensibly out of his love for diving. He was primed to see the
| benefits of WFH and telecommunication, and certainly able to
| exploit the flexibility in his own life and career.
|
| Ironically, with his adventurism and individualism, perhaps his
| imagination was too limited to think that many people are self-
| limiting. The companies you speak of are not abstract entities
| forcing the poor humans to live unwanted lives. They are the
| people---identifying with the rituals of office life and
| demanding conformance from one another.
| yogthos wrote:
| I'm saying that he overestimated how quickly our society
| would adapt to the possibilities created by technology.
| Companies are not abstract entities, but the rituals aren't
| decided upon democratically. Companies are run like medieval
| fiefdoms where a small group of people at the top rules by
| fiat over the company. This problem would be much easier to
| solve under cooperative ownership model where such decisions
| can be made collectively be the people doing the work.
| thecrumb wrote:
| This one is still so relevant:
| https://theoatmeal.com/comics/working_home
| swader999 wrote:
| It's because the whole climate thing is a ruse to scare us into
| cbdc/surveillance/control.
|
| Yes there's climate change, Yes there's human influence to it.
| And well sure as hell adapt to this slow moving challenge.
| enkid wrote:
| It's either a ruse or we will adapt. Can't be both.
| leesalminen wrote:
| There can be parties exaggerating the severity of an issue to
| lend credence to their proposed solution. Bonus points if the
| proposed solution won't solve the root cause, but will give
| more power and control over people to government.
|
| Kind of like Republicans on the southern border. The issue
| can exist, the extent of the issue can be exaggerated, and
| the proposed solution would do nothing to solve the root
| cause.
| _joel wrote:
| I'm glad the majority of the world disagrees with you.
| leesalminen wrote:
| China and India seem to disagree seeing that they will be
| firing up new coal plants for the next 3 decades, at least.
| That's a pretty big chunk of the global population.
| swader999 wrote:
| The elite sure do disagree with me publicly but still fly
| privately, buy up ocean frontage, ignore lower hanging fruit
| in favour of schemes that enrich them. And we all vote them
| in again and again.
| leetcodesucks wrote:
| I don't remember anyone voting to triple their electricity
| bills. I for one don't believe all the mega Corps advertising
| and social movements like cancer cell fake meat being better
| for the environment
| [deleted]
| rubyist5eva wrote:
| Because people don't actually care about the environment, the
| vast majority just say they do - until it's inconvenient to them.
| seydor wrote:
| Because it's so obvious it doesn't need advertising ;)
| Nickersf wrote:
| Think about this from a business finance perspective. Companies
| have since the early 1900's built an economy around working in
| offices. Car manufacturers, car service and maintenance
| businesses, food service companies, commercial real-estate
| companies and oil and gas companies and many other sectors all
| have a stake in this game.
|
| Then you have internal forces at play too. HR managers, and
| department managers don't look so useful when the majority of
| people never interact in real life. No matter how optimistic we
| look at the human condition, people have the desire to exercise
| power and control over others. With people working remote
| exercising power and control is harder. Additionally, you still
| have gen-x and boomers working, especially in management who have
| a different idea of work culture than millennials and gen-z. To
| the older generations working on-site is the only justifiable way
| to work. To them the notion of being at home for work is not real
| work.
|
| There also appears to be a camp of management types who have seen
| evidence confirming that remote work doesn't work. They are going
| to stick to their position because they have evidence to support.
| I recently heard similar sentiments to Musk's take on remote work
| from Tim Pool, and a manager at my job. They are convinced that
| meaningful work can only happen in person.
|
| So between those three main factors: Money, power, and bias of
| evidence the pitch for remote work being an environmental
| initiative gets drowned out. Really, makes you wonder if
| environmentalism is really that important for the business
| leadership class.
|
| I personally believe work from home can be an amazing option for
| white collar work and for the right person. As a UI developer I
| love it. I don't get distracted by office stuff and get good flow
| often. I'm and expert at using online communication tools and
| desktop publishing tools so I can communicate my ideas and
| thoughts coherently remotely. However, I've seen some people not
| be able to manage themselves or have the skills to work from
| home.
| jmcphers wrote:
| I used to have a job that required a daily commute, but didn't
| require any travel.
|
| I now have a remote job that I do at home, with an extremely
| modest amount of travel -- I see my teammates 2-3 times a year at
| conferences or meetups.
|
| It turns out that flying, even very occasionally, is worse for
| the environment than driving, and that my "eco-friendly" remote
| job leaves a bigger carbon footprint than my commuting job. A
| single person's share of a single cross-country flight once a
| year can emit more carbon than an ENTIRE YEAR of car commuting.
|
| Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/27/sunday-review/the-
| biggest...
| lm28469 wrote:
| I'm not convinced it is a net positive in the end. Especially for
| big companies, heating an office space with 500+ people is
| probably much more efficient than heating 500 individual houses
| for example
|
| Not everyone commute with an ICE vehicle too
| adam_arthur wrote:
| Yeah, but many offices are likely to be converted to other
| uses, rather than persist with partial occupation. Hotel,
| residential etc
|
| People often say it's cost prohibitive, but it's been done many
| times before, and valuations of Offices will get so depressed
| that conversions begin to look very lucrative
| kayodelycaon wrote:
| Large office buildings do not convert into hotels or
| residential all that well. Most of them have all of their
| plumbing and utilities in the central core. That's not easy
| to retrofit.
|
| They may also not be up to code for residential use.
| adam_arthur wrote:
| Many have been converted before, even in the recent past,
| Google it.
|
| https://www.washingtonian.com/2022/11/14/dc-area-leads-
| the-w...
|
| And plumbing and wiring a building is vastly cheaper than
| building a new one from scratch.
|
| Most modern office buildings are already designed so their
| tenants can orient the space however they like, Including
| adding/removing walls and plumbing/electric
|
| If you can buy office buildings at half the valuation of a
| similar square footage residential building, converting it
| will obviously be profitable. It was already profitable in
| many cases pre Covid before office became severely
| depressed. The valuation gap between residential and office
| has probably never been wider
| adql wrote:
| Yes but those people don't live in the office... the office
| wouldn't need to exist in the first place. Could be apartment
| block instead.
|
| Most people also like to come back to warm house so heating is
| running during the day
| Root_Denied wrote:
| Also if you have pets you can't really turn off the heat (or
| AC in the summer for desert areas), and children usually get
| home in the afternoon while people are still working.
| cableshaft wrote:
| > Most people also like to come back to warm house so heating
| is running during the day
|
| Also if you have pets you don't want it to be miserable for
| them. You might make it a couple degrees warmer/colder but
| not too much.
| nicbou wrote:
| A house used 100% of the time is more efficient than a house
| used 50% of the time + an office used 50% of the time.
| xboxnolifes wrote:
| But it's not a house used 100% of the time vs an office used
| 50% of the time.
|
| It's 100 houses used 50% of the time and 1 office used 50% of
| the time vs 100 houses used 100% of the time.
| postalrat wrote:
| A house used for what? Standing around?
| rg111 wrote:
| 500 individual houses would be heated anyway.
| lm28469 wrote:
| Why would you heat a house if you're not in it. Do people
| really do that ?
| christkv wrote:
| In Northern Europe you have to keep a minimum temperature
| or things like your pipes might burst when its -20C
| outside.
| neutronicus wrote:
| Well, you may live with other people who are in it when
| you're not, causing it to be heated anyway.
|
| But I guess the answer would be that people can't abide the
| thought of one uncomfortable minute in their own home, and
| don't bother figuring out how to program the thermostat.
| luxuryballs wrote:
| because it's more expensive to let it get cold and then
| heat it back up again
| bamboozled wrote:
| Any evidence to support this? I've heard otherwise.
| bombcar wrote:
| It depends on what you mean by "let it get cold" and how
| good your insulation is and a number of other factors.
|
| But thermal mass can be a big thing. My house isn't even
| all that well insulated, and when it is 0o F outside, it
| only drops about 10 degrees if the furnace is off all
| day.
| jahewson wrote:
| Yes it follows from first principles, a well-insulated
| house has a structure that is being heated and retains
| heat (like a pizza stone) as well as the air itself.
| Heating air inside a cold structure is quite different
| from heating air inside a warm structure. So your evening
| heating will have to work harder to warm the structure
| back up that was allowed to cool in the day. The air in
| the evening will cool faster and the heating will have to
| kick back on again, dumping heat into the structure.
|
| If you leave the heat on during the day (and that can be
| a few degrees lower) then you can keep the structure warm
| and avoid all that evening heat loss and cycling. But
| only if you have good insulation. Otherwise you're just
| dumping heat out into the environment. The other factor
| is how cold it is outside, if the temperature gradient is
| steep then it's harder to contain hot air.
| saltcured wrote:
| You can think about this at the limits. You could turn
| off the system for days, weeks, months, or whole seasons
| and allow the house to drift with the ambient
| environment. Then, you turn it on and recover to the
| conditioned mode. This certainly uses less energy than if
| you maintained it for that whole duration. This is
| because the loss to environment tapers off. It does not
| keep losing and reach some absurd extreme beyond that of
| the environment. Reducing the interval for the drift does
| not fundamentally change this equation. At the other
| extreme, you can do what a normal thermostat does now.
| The system is turned off for minutes and allowed to drift
| until it is called back into action. All other time
| intervals in between exist on a continuum. The maximal
| losses are when you try to keep the constant comfort
| level.
|
| As far as thermodynamics, you're always exchanging heat
| with the environment. Only the coefficients change with
| different insulation levels. And these losses correlate
| with the gradient between the inside and outside. When
| the gradient is zero, equilibrium means zero net heat
| transfer. When the house is allowed to drift towards the
| outside temperature, the total losses will be lower than
| if comfort were maintained through those same hours. The
| integral (sum) of these loss rates over time is your
| total energy loss and a good proxy for the total energy
| needed from the heating system to condition the space.
|
| The whole tradeoff is about comfort and convenience to
| have the space conditioned when you want it and to have
| an appropriately sized system for the needed load.
| Whether oversized or undersized, equipment may not
| operate efficiently if asked to operate outside its
| designed load level and duty cycle. It can also become
| unreliable with the wrong duty cycle, i.e. a small unit
| asked to run too long and too frequently or a large unit
| asked to run too infrequently and for too short a
| duration each time.
|
| That the equipment has to operate at a higher load during
| recovery does not imply that it actually uses more total
| energy in the daily cycle. That would only be true if the
| equipment is inefficient at the recovery load. An example
| where this is true would be a heatpump system with an
| auxiliary resistive heating element that engages in
| recovery. But, a gas furnace or a sufficiently large
| heatpump is likely more efficient in recovery since it is
| also working with a larger gradient until recovery is
| complete.
|
| It is common for basic clock-based, programmable or smart
| thermostats to allow for daily drift to save energy. They
| use a more comfortable set point during morning and
| evening hours when occupants are most sensitive and then
| allow some drift towards ambient during midday and
| nighttime hours when occupants are less likely to notice.
| This is precisely to leverage this tradeoff to have less
| total energy losses per day. They don't completely turn
| off but vary the set point so that the building is kept
| within a range where the comfortable and efficient
| recovery is possible. Depending on the day, this might be
| equivalent to turning off or it might just reduce the
| duty cycle slightly.
| Someone1234 wrote:
| Pets. Other family members. Plus the fact that you're
| "daytime" heating/cooling a home from 6:30-8:30 am and
| 3:30-10 pm anyway, and that modern or updated homes keep
| their temperature for several hours. So the debate is
| really over a few degrees for a couple of extra hours (Vs.
| heating an entire other building that may not otherwise
| exist).
|
| I know at our workplace heating on Monday mornings has to
| start several hours earlier than on Tuesday because the
| office lost almost all of its built-up heat from the
| previous Friday. I also know that they continue to run the
| heating on holiday-Fridays/Mondays because if they don't by
| the following Monday/Tuesday, the temperature will drop too
| low and could damage equipment.
| alistairSH wrote:
| Typical American house uses a heat pump (basically an AC
| run "backwards") with a single thermostat (bigger houses
| might have multiple complete systems).
|
| If you turned the heat off at 7am as you left for work, the
| house would probably be below 60 when you got home, and
| take most of the evening to reheat, only to be turned back
| down again at bed time. I don't know anybody who manually
| does any of this - at best, they have a smart thermostat
| that lets them schedule home/away time or uses cell phones
| as presence sensors. And even then, they'll lower the heat
| 5-8 degrees, not turn it off completely.
| jahewson wrote:
| No heat pumps are a new thing here. Not typical at all.
| Most people have gas furnaces.
| philwelch wrote:
| Heat pumps exist but they aren't "typical", at least
| depending on where you are. Gas heat is a lot more common
| in Texas.
| dont__panic wrote:
| That might be typical for new builds, but it varies a lot
| by region. Much of the northern half of the country is
| still burning propane, pellets/wood, or fuel oil for
| heat.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Most US homes use gas furnace for heating:
|
| https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/acs/
| justaman wrote:
| In northern states people have to leave their heat on
| during the day to avoid plumbing issues or to keep pets
| comfortable.
| luminouslow wrote:
| >heating an office space with 500+ people is much more
| efficient than heating 500 individual houses
|
| Citation needed. I would argue its very hard to make any
| general statement about this. In my case the office is much
| more wasteful than the space I use for remote work for a
| multitude of reasons.
| lm28469 wrote:
| I said I'm not convinced, it obviously isn't a general thing.
|
| A friend of mine spends 500+ euros per month on gas for
| heating since he works from home, no way on earth his office
| uses 500 per person and per month on heat
| VBprogrammer wrote:
| A 2kW electric heater can heat up any reasonable size
| office room up to a temperature where you are going to have
| to strip to your underwear (or turn it off) in under an
| hour in my experience.
|
| Even if it's on 8 hours a day constantly, 5 days a week, 4
| weeks a month that's 320kWh or just over PS100 a month at
| UK energy prices.
| dijit wrote:
| additional note: UK energy prices are currently the
| highest in Europe.
|
| not sure if that makes your anecdote out of date or if it
| puts further shade on the parents comment.
| [deleted]
| teh_klev wrote:
| I work from home full time, my gas bill is a fraction of
| that (~GBP100/month), and that's even accounting for the
| crazy energy cost increases we've seen in the UK.
| cableshaft wrote:
| In comparison, we have a 1600 sq ft home and only have $50
| USD gas bills lately. It's definitely been higher (at least
| double), but we've been learning to live with a colder
| thermostat.
|
| Granted this is the US, and natural gas is considerably
| cheaper here than in a lot of countries in Europe right
| now, so you probably need to at least double what I said
| anyway for Europe.
| mcv wrote:
| Is that EUR 500 for just the working hours? Because homes
| are also generally heated for other uses than work. Those
| reasons don't go away if you work at the office. If you've
| got a spouse working from home, or kids coming from school,
| that house is going to be heated anyway.
| lm28469 wrote:
| > Because homes are also generally heated for other uses
| than work
|
| I've never heard of anyone heating their home when not in
| it, given the other comments it seems like it's the norm,
| weird
| dont__panic wrote:
| For those of us who live in a place that reaches freezing
| temperatures for months on end, there's no choice. If I
| don't heat my house, my pipes will freeze and I'll be out
| thousands of dollars in repair work and damage.
|
| I turn the heat down to 55 or so (the lowest the
| thermostat will go) when I'm away for a few days. But
| I've never heard of anyone _not_ leaving their heat on
| some setting for this reason. Do you live somewhere that
| almost never drops below freezing?
| lm28469 wrote:
| > Do you live somewhere that almost never drops below
| freezing?
|
| Grew up in a place that reaches -25c pretty often and
| never heard of that. It's in europe though so we probably
| have better insulation. I could leave my house 3 days and
| no pipe would burst, I've never heard of anyone having
| burst pipes now that I think about it. When I went to
| school and my parents were at work we'd shut down the
| heating completely, we were pretty poor so there is that,
| but I don't remember being cold
|
| When I was in california we'd have to run heating full
| blast 24/7 to maintain 16c indoor so that my explain a
| few things
| scbrg wrote:
| The norms are different in different locations. Where I
| live (Sweden), I'd say pretty much everybody sets a
| comfortable temperature and keeps it at that.
|
| OTOH, our houses are generally heavily insulated, so
| while _heating_ a house is expensive, _keeping it heated_
| is relatively cheap. I 'm always amazed at the lack of
| insulation when I travel abroad. I never freeze as much
| as when I leave Scandinavia (no joke).
| mcv wrote:
| I stop heating when I'm not home, but my home doesn't
| lose heat very fast. Except for my home office, which
| seems impossible to heat.
| watwut wrote:
| > The most common way of heating here is that you have
| radiators set up
|
| Most people here would need to actively tweak it every
| time the leave the house and every time they come in. And
| do it separately for each room. Just from the way how
| heating works - you have valve in each room that you turn
| in order to adjust heating.
|
| Of course no one does it every day twice.
| lm28469 wrote:
| That's the system I have and that's how I do it, same for
| my family, we never leave it blasting if no one is home
|
| > Of course no one does it every day twice.
|
| Why not ? it takes like 5 seconds
| mcv wrote:
| I do. I turn up the heat in the morning and turn it down
| again in the evening. Smart thermostats can do that
| automatically, but my home office doesn't have a smart
| thermostat.
| alistairSH wrote:
| We lower the heat if nobody is home. But, that's the
| difference between 70* and 65*. With no heat, the house
| would eventually be 32* in the dead or winter.
|
| And we only do that because smart thermostats exist and
| use our phones as presence sensors. Without that, we'd
| have to manually lower the heat and I doubt we'd
| bother/remember.
| mcv wrote:
| I certainly wouldn't heat your home when nobody is home,
| but most people do return home after a day at the office,
| and many people don't live alone. That's what I'm
| referring to.
|
| Or do you demand that they live in the cold while you're
| at the office?
| gregoriol wrote:
| Most houses stay heated during the day anyway, remote work or
| not, it doesn't change the situation that much. And offices
| will remain heated whether there are full or only half of the
| employees actually in the building.
| nytesky wrote:
| Anecdotally I see many people traveling more enabled by remote
| work (and a single flight can equal a full year of car
| commuting). And I feel many people use telework days to run
| errands or go to lunch more frequently often nearly matching
| commute miles in a day.
| H1Supreme wrote:
| When else are you supposed to run errands? Here's my
| anecdotal driving activity after taking a remote position:
|
| I used to drive every day of the week. Now, it's 3 days, on
| average. If I could walk or cycle to the gym (roads are 0%
| accessible for pedestrians), I could easily drop that to one
| or two days.
|
| In terms of running errands, I've moved that to a "before
| work" activity. It's honestly amazing how smooth it all goes
| at 8:00am vs 5:30pm. Plus, I consider this a net positive for
| the community since I'm one less person clogging up the
| grocery store at their busiest time.
| leetcodesucks wrote:
| Could it be climate change does not exist and was fabricated by
| mega corps and the politicians they control to drive social
| movements they find convenient and which make us poor but ignore
| social movements that could also help their made up problem but
| make us happier and wealthier perhaps ?
| frebord wrote:
| Seriously. Not only do I only drive like 5 miles a week now I
| also only shower once a week!
| enknamel wrote:
| It needs more analysis to determine if it's actually a net
| positive on the environment. People may travel more in their day,
| live more remotely, houses (as far as I know) aren't as well
| built as offices and use more energy per sq ft during the day,
| etc.
|
| Technically if you want to optimize emissions reductions, you
| should eliminate homes, not offices. If everyone lived in the
| office we would all use less energy!
|
| Anyways, transportation for commuting is one of the smallest
| buckets of emissions. So if it is a net positive it's still not
| moving the needle in a meaningful way.
| Eric_WVGG wrote:
| The majority of advertising on environmental initiatives ("hey go
| out there and recycle" and that kind of crap) is funded by
| polluters to shift the conversation from a manufacturer problem
| to a consumer problem. You need to ask "who is advertising" and
| "who is the market."
|
| So let's say Zoom wanted to run an initiative like this... the
| market wouldn't be workers, it's be the bosses. So already you're
| talking about a tiny sliver of the population. No billboards or
| tv spends, that's for the mass market.
|
| Okay, now that you've identified the target audience, what do
| they respond to? "This way of working that most of you hate, it's
| happy days and sunshine?" No, they respond to money. The campaign
| that would resonate with bosses is "your office lease costs too
| much money." Environmental concerns wouldn't even measure up.
|
| Having said all this, I suppose one could make the case that
| remote-work-apps could advertise to "shift the conversation"
| amongst workers to demand remote-work for the sake of the
| environment, but I personally don't think anyone in America at
| least believes in this kind of grass-roots influence in business,
| that's too socialist.
| guywithahat wrote:
| > is funded by polluters
|
| If only those polluters would stop pointlessly polluting! Gee I
| mean why would they even do it? It's almost as if you're paying
| them to pollute for you so you can have that new laptop and
| fast shipping!
| w0de0 wrote:
| > No billboards or tv spends, that's for the mass market
|
| Neither the billboards for Brex on the drive to Mission from
| SFO, nor those for Boeing in the Washington, D.C. metro, nor
| those "for your consideration" on the Sunset Strip come Oscar
| season, are meant for a mass market. This doesn't seem a sound
| premise.
|
| In being so physical, billboards are hardly mass media at all.
| More big brochures.
| Eric_WVGG wrote:
| :) I haven't been to any of those places, but I was in LA
| last summer and saw "for your consideration" billboards
| everywhere. One might argue that those billboards also drive
| up the marketing for rentals, streaming and DVD sales... but
| anyway, good point.
| foundajob wrote:
| Yea, where's the "outrage"? Need more outrage. I mean, by golly,
| I have these *kiddos* who need their dad 24/7! What's with these
| young people who want to go into the office?
| rchaud wrote:
| Zoom's customers aren't the WFH people, but rather the IT and
| procurement managers that decide which tool to spend their
| 5-figure budgets on. Presumably their marketing efforts will be
| specific to that audience.
|
| It may be risky to throw up billboards talking about the
| evironmental benefit of WFH if your customer's CEO thinks that
| they should be back in the office.
| shtopointo wrote:
| Couldn't the opposite be argued as well?
|
| Everybody spending 8 more hours at home means so much more
| individual heating, whereas before, when you went into the office
| you'd turn the heating off.
|
| Also as someone else pointed, working remote leads to leaving
| small apartments in the city to move into larger spaces (houses)
| in the suburbs. Then you would need to use a car more to meet
| people, get groceries etc. Cities are much more carbon efficient.
| dr_petes wrote:
| This is just me, but I don't ever turn the heater on in the
| winter.
|
| I also live in Seattle where a majority of the homes weren't
| built with AC. Offices will run the AC units all summer long
| too.
| nightski wrote:
| At least where I live you can't turn heating off. Pipes freeze.
| Appliances get damaged. We keep it about 62F during the day in
| the winter whether we are home or not.
|
| We only get groceries twice a month. I only drive a 2-3k miles
| a year which is far below average in the U.S. and I owe it all
| to the lack of commute. Most of those miles are due to the fact
| that we own a cabin in another state which we visit in the
| summer as well and has nothing to do with the day to day.
| leipert wrote:
| Okay, on a personal level this can be tricky to calculate and
| it is highly individualistic.
|
| Example for Heating
|
| A German price comparison site has done the calculation and for
| their model - 20m2 home office and a yearly usage of ~2000
| litres heating oil for the whole apartment) - you would end up
| with ~4% higher usage [0]. That means that you have 80 litres
| more heating oil which is equivalent to roughly 80 days of
| commuting 20 km / day via car. The German average commuter does
| ~32 km / day [1].
|
| [0]: https://www.verivox.de/presse/modellrechnung-homeoffice-
| erho...
|
| [1]: https://www.postbank.de/themenwelten/beruf-
| vorsorge/artikel_...
| shtopointo wrote:
| Interesting info -- but I was mostly referring to the gas /
| oil consumed to heat up the office for 100 people vs. heat up
| 100 individual residences.
| erinaceousjones wrote:
| That to me feels like a very "US-centric" argument, although
| I'd still say it's a valid point. Over the pond here in the UK
| we're seeing an emergence more and more of Commuter-Town
| suburbia too, and personally I find it a worrying trend- new-
| build housing estates will cram a bunch of large, thin-walled,
| cheaply-insulated houses into a small area. Public transport
| links will be lacklustre. Large shops like supermarkets will
| probably be a walk away, but the design of the streets and
| roads will persuade many people that it's easier to drive 5
| minutes instead.
|
| I don't think the solution to _that_ is "commute to the office
| where it's more efficient to heat all of us", though.
|
| It's a long-term city-planning/suburb-planning, environmental
| architecture problem.
|
| What about buildings semi-recessed into the ground (bedrooms in
| basement, use the surrounding ground for heat storage, sky-
| lights to allow sunlight in)? What about further adoption of
| solar panels for water heating and supplemental electricity?
| What about "keeping the door shut so the heat doesn't
| escape"...? What about neighbourhoods using communal heat
| pumps?
|
| Then there's the fact that a helluva lot of us can't even
| _afford_ these houses you mention because the housing market is
| in crisis so we continue to stay in our smaller city flats
| despite our ability to work remotely.
|
| Like, there's a helluva lot more white collar office workers
| out there in Western civilisation who _aren't_ following that
| "get enough money, get a car, have 2.5 kids, move out to the
| 'burbs" life - don't forget about us.
| aembleton wrote:
| Maybe if you can get to the office via public transport or
| cycling it might make sense. But, if you drive then it's
| consuming more energy than heating the room you're in at home.
| simonmesmith wrote:
| Similarly, I often wonder why cities don't promote local
| telecommuting over building expensive public transportation
| infrastructure. Building one kilometre of subway costs anywhere
| from around $100 million to $1.6 billion
| (https://marroninstitute.nyu.edu/events/how-much-does-it-
| cost...), and then requires subsidies to run. Why not use this
| money to provide incentives for people to telecommute?
|
| And while some might say, "but then people who rely on public
| transit for things other than commuting to work would be hurt,"
| note that most public transit currently doesn't serve those
| people well because it's focused on work-related commuting
| patterns. Example: https://www.ualberta.ca/folio/2022/01/public-
| transit-service....
| TuringNYC wrote:
| >> Similarly, I often wonder why cities don't promote local
| telecommuting over building expensive public transportation
| infrastructure.
|
| Because if they promote it too much, they people move far away
| and the city loses the tax base. One extreme example is New
| York City -- they have a 3.5% _income_ tax. If you move into
| next-door NJ or CT, the city loses that 3.5% income.
| bombcar wrote:
| This is part of it - once you're telecommuting then one of
| the main things holding you to a particular _area_ is gone.
|
| And once telecommuting is common in a given company, the
| workers begin to disperse, first to "driving distance" and
| then to "anywhere in a reasonable timezone".
|
| We already saw how badly Covid hit city centers, perpetual
| work-from-home would be worse; causing a mini-Detroit in many
| cities.
| [deleted]
| kleinsch wrote:
| Bc local telecommuting means there's no city center, no
| commercial traffic there, no business tax base. Look at what's
| happening to downtown SF. You can debate whether it's taking
| the city in a good direction or not, but few elected officials
| are going to endorse their city becoming smaller or having less
| income.
| GrazeMor wrote:
| I don't think expensive public transport is the problem. It can
| be crucial for some people. The fact that the article says some
| people need "short stops on trips to and from work, short-
| distance trips and a higher frequency of trips" just means the
| public transport needs to be tweaked, not completely scrapped.
| goosedragons wrote:
| Yeah let's increase car dependence. Great idea.
|
| If people are mainly working from home then we can redirect
| public transit from business parks or whatever towards places
| people still want to go (e.g. shopping, nightlife, events) but
| without a car. Starving already often underfunded public
| transit is not the answer.
|
| Why not use the hundreds of millions spent on highways to
| subsidize people to work from home instead? Most commuters in
| North America are not using public transit but highways.
| foobiekr wrote:
| Subsidizing people in affluent, remote-work jobs is not a
| good allocation of resources. By all means, work from home,
| but subsidies should mostly help the people in the bottom two
| thirds of the income ladder.
| madsbuch wrote:
| This would appear to go into a much more fundamental questions
| about our society.
|
| Currently, when we see recession, we can increase government
| spending. This is usually done in infrastructure - we give
| people a job, and in return we get infrastructure, nice!
|
| But if we agree that infrastructure does not provide that
| amount of value we either need to figure other large scale
| projects that 1) provide value and 2) requires a lot of manual
| labor or we need to not found money distribution in work (an
| alternative could be UBI here).
| julosflb wrote:
| We shouldn't forget that only a small portions of jobs are
| eligible to WFH. How the vast majority of non remote workers
| will commute to work?
| david-gpu wrote:
| _> [Subway] then requires subsidies to run_
|
| I wish we used the same logic for roads/streets as well. Except
| for toll roads, which only get a partial subsidy, roads are
| fully subsidized by the taxpayer.
|
| Since others get fully subsidized roads for their private
| vehicles, I argue public transit should be fully subsidized as
| well.
| mcv wrote:
| Not all jobs can be done by telecommuting. It's a great
| solution for office work, but it doesn't work so well for
| manufacturing, retail or the service industry.
|
| > most public transit currently doesn't serve those people well
| because it's focused on work-related commuting patterns.
|
| Does it? Work-related travel is mostly during morning and late
| afternoon, but public transit also runs outside those hours. In
| my experience public transit works quite well for non-commuting
| travel. Of course this can vary wildly by country, but the
| claim that public transit only really serves commuters is not
| universally true.
| simonmesmith wrote:
| I don't know about universally true, so you may be right that
| there are exceptions, but as one example, such as linked
| above, public transit tends to underserve the needs of female
| caregivers who often need to make multiple short trips rather
| than two long trips each day.
| bluGill wrote:
| > the claim that public transit only really serves commuters
| is not universally true.
|
| It is always partially true, but each city is different.
| People who travel in the very early hours (like 2:30am)
| always have problems, (even the best cities run reduced and
| thus inconvenient service for maintenance reasons, most give
| up on transit completely). While those hours are not common
| it is safe to bet everyone reading this has had reason to
| travel at those times at least one night in their life.
|
| In far too many cities, (and not just in the US) additional
| service is run during the peaks. By additional service I mean
| they run more buses/trains as opposed something with more
| seats (that is longer). This means people who travel at non-
| peak hours have to be careful about when they travel to
| ensure there is service without waiting. Of course if the
| wait is still less than 5 minutes nobody cares, but as waits
| get longer - humans don't have time for that.
| neutronicus wrote:
| Well, my city at least (Baltimore) has kind of evolved to "a
| place where hospitals are", and there's only so much health
| care you can do over Zoom
| kompatible wrote:
| And at least Moore is planning to work with Scott in order to
| expand the public transit footprint Baltimore has (such as
| more than one light rail/metro line each and more BRT)
| throwaway14356 wrote:
| and like driving, you often cant scale to meet demand. Both
| also need replacements after x km.
|
| giant office buildings also have a giant impact. Those
| resources could have been homes or extra rooms to work from.
|
| then there is the whole fast food and fast everything along the
| road and various industries that busy themselves with
| appearance.
| LAC-Tech wrote:
| I've said it once, and I've said it again - learning nothing from
| COVID was a complete waste of a catastrophe.
| exabrial wrote:
| Probably because people get significantly less work done
| remotely... CEOs know this, multiple studies have shown this, and
| it's been a lot of people's experience as well.
| hotpotamus wrote:
| I feel like some sources might be in order. And I say that as a
| person who despises working from home.
| guywithahat wrote:
| I can't help but think you may not despise working from home,
| the only people who dispute wfh is less efficient are people
| who want to wfh or people selling article clicks to them
| adql wrote:
| I suspect most of that was due to company being forced to do
| remote coz of COVID and _of course_ without change of way of
| working that didn 't work very well.
|
| Some jobs are worse candidates for that too and if you force
| everyone to WFH of course that won't be positive.
| revskill wrote:
| Because most of workers have not enough pro-ability to adapt a
| remote working environment. More details, to work remotely
| efficiently, you need to:
|
| - Have good writing skills, because communication is asynchronous
| most of the time.
|
| - Task description needs to be as clear as possible ! You don't
| want to spend most of time to explain what the specification
| means.
|
| - Self-management and time management: How to do things
| concurrently without less help as possible from others ?
| adql wrote:
| It's a skill you can train. Just that most corporations that
| got shifted to WFH coz of pandemic didn't bother to train or
| revisit their processes. That's partly (the other part is
| managers clinging to their jobs) why some yell for coming back
| to office, the required work for the shift was not done and now
| performance suffers.
| Bilal_io wrote:
| Sorry if I am reading this wrong, but this seems to suggest
| that the solution is micromanagement.
|
| Even if working from office, I'd expect any professional to
| know how to communicate effectively, and is able to manage
| their time and tasks efficiently. If they cannot do it
| remotely, then I'd worry about their performance in the office
| also.
| jahewson wrote:
| Actually those are just the skills you need to work efficiently
| in any knowledge-work environment. The people who lack those
| just suck up everyone else's time.
| coding123 wrote:
| The only downside to all of this remoteness is the non-programmer
| workforce going remote. I do think people that pick up the phone
| pre-pandemic should be picking up the phone post-pandemic.
| Whether that's from their home or not, I don't care.
|
| What we get instead though, is ringing, ringing ringing. Can't
| get my power ordered. I can't get roofing ordered. Can't get call
| backs.
|
| Things were more expedient pre-pandemic. I often do wonder too,
| is part of the reason company X is OUT of something isn't because
| the ship is late - or is it because the ordering person no longer
| sits in front of a giant pile of insulation and goes - oh crap,
| that is getting really low. I should order more. (And guess what
| happens if he calls to order more - ringing ringing ringing)
| atlgator wrote:
| When institutions are so clearly hypocritical on policies such as
| this, you have to ask yourself whether the entire premise is a
| fraud.
| eimrine wrote:
| Who is supposed to be such an advertiser and such an advertisee?
| badpun wrote:
| > Zoom/MS Teams/Slack
| theknocker wrote:
| anikom15 wrote:
| I'm skeptical that the reduction in transportation outweighs the
| lost efficiency in having large amounts of people concentrated in
| single buildings.
| cmonagle wrote:
| While GHG emissions are not the only environmental metric, remote
| working (for most) likely results in a net increase of
| emissions.[0]
|
| 0:
| https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/2515-7620/ac3d3e/...
| nelsonenzo wrote:
| Idk, I thought it was mentioned in almost every article that
| discusses the pros and cons of remote work.
|
| Not all jobs can be remote though, so i'm not sure why one would
| expect all of work to be remote. That makes as much sense as 'no
| remote work at all'.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| > I thought it was mentioned in almost every article that
| discusses the pros and cons of remote work.
|
| But the point is, it's _not_ mentioned in almost every article
| that discusses trying to stop climate change.
| synergyS wrote:
| Non remote business should pay more in taxes bc of damage done to
| the environment.
| myfavoritedog wrote:
| _needlessly requiring people to move themselves into offices_
|
| I've been on multiple sides of this environment over my 3+
| decades in the job market: managed people in office, managed
| people while I worked remotely, worked in an office, worked
| remotely (mostly for the last 13 years).
|
| I'm very sympathetic to remote work, but my experience tells me
| that your "needlessly" is not well-founded.
| lezojeda wrote:
| Why do you need people in the same physical space than you?
| What can't be achieved via remote tools?
| bacan wrote:
| Corporate Mortgage Backed Securities
| rybosworld wrote:
| The initial covid lockdowns did result in a large drop in global
| emissions. Somewhere around ~2 Billion tons or about 5% drop for
| 2020.
|
| 2021 emissions were about equal to 2019 emissions. So there may
| be not much of an effect from remote work.
| nottorp wrote:
| To be slightly nasty:
|
| To be an environmental activist * requires a certain type of
| personality. The kind that thrives in groups and in public. Of
| course they wouldn't even think of working from home.
|
| * or any kind of activist for a cause actually. But that would
| decrease the nastiness.
| josefresco wrote:
| I'm surprised corporations haven't already reframed it with
| stories like:
|
| "Home energy usage SKYROCKETS as workers abandon the eco-friendly
| advantages of a shared work space"
| mikojan wrote:
| Everybody preparing their own meal requires more energy.
|
| Everybody heating their own workplace requires more energy.
|
| In general: Anything you do alone is more resource intensive than
| a comparable group activity.
| H1Supreme wrote:
| > Everybody preparing their own meal requires more energy.
|
| This applies to both office and WFH. When I worked in offices,
| 90% of my meals were prepared at home.
| tobr wrote:
| I'm just sample size = 1. I switched to telecommuting during the
| pandemic, which let me move away from the city. Instead of taking
| public transportation to the office and walking to the store, I
| now walk to the (home) office and take the _car_ to the store.
|
| So while I'm certainly spending a lot less time in total on
| transportation, the mode of transportation is much worse for the
| environment.
| adamsmith143 wrote:
| Probably not accurate. Presumably you don't travel half an hour
| to the store 5 days a week?
| Aldipower wrote:
| Because it isn't necessarily pro env, at least not everywhere.
| This has to be subject of larger studies I guess. Some thoughts.
| 1. If I WFH I need to heat/cool my apartment/house my self. This
| is much more inefficient than heat office spaces, if you take the
| people inside an filled office space into account. 2. The public
| transport is going and consuming energy anyways. 3. Zoom, Teams,
| etc is consuming a lot of energy due to servers and
| videostreaming. 4. Walking a little bit does not harm yourself
| and maybe saves medical treatment, which in itself harms the
| environment.
| orangepurple wrote:
| You have to heat your house or apartment anyway or your pipes
| will burst
| Aldipower wrote:
| No, they won't. Not sure were you are living? :)
| lemonberry wrote:
| Not to mention saving lives!! If I remember correctly traffic
| fatalities dropped a lot after the bust in 2008 and many people
| got laid off.
| taeric wrote:
| Oddly, it isn't quite that straight forward, is it? Specifically,
| you get some scale efficiencies for cities and office parks by
| having folks there. Especially in regards to getting food
| capabilities centralized. A cafeteria, I would think, uses less
| to feed a lot of people, than each of them using their own
| kitchen to store and prepare food.
|
| That said, I do expect it is still ahead in most measures. Is a
| good question and I would love to see a comprehensive analysis.
| Taylor_OD wrote:
| Great point. I'm going to start sourcing that as part of the
| reason I'm remote only.
| fancyfredbot wrote:
| Can you give a properly researched article showing the
| environmental impact of commuting outweighs the environmental
| impact of working from home? My guess is that this won't always
| be true and will depend on the type and distance of commute as
| well as the additional heating/cooling demand required to keep
| multiple home offices habitable.
| foundajob wrote:
| Probably not, OP hasn't left a single reply. Just dropped trow
| in our brains and moved on, classic HN move.
| stcroixx wrote:
| Because employers do not really care about the environment.
| They're pretending to because they think supporting the cause
| positively impacts their revenue. When they have a choice to make
| an impact, like now, they pass.
| dennis_jeeves1 wrote:
| >Because employers do not really care about the environment.
|
| This is the correct answer. Most environment related stuff (and
| other causes that are taken up) is mostly virtue signalling.
| bombcar wrote:
| Yep. You have to make the environmental goal correspond to a
| money goal of some sort.
|
| And this can be exceptionally difficult because it can be
| almost impossible to actually work out the long-term effects
| of things like "more people should work from home". It's easy
| to say "shutting down a coal power plant will reduce
| emissions" because they're so bad, but more remote workers
| could result in MORE pollution if it enabled more "working
| holidays" and therefore more flying. And that's only one tiny
| aspect of all the long-term changes that could occur.
| psychomugs wrote:
| The best part is when they deflect blame onto the individual
| and tell us to "do our part" while they guiltlessly continue
| their polluting practices. Just like they do with mental
| health.
| guywithahat wrote:
| Never thought I'd see hacker news argue so forcefully for the
| metaverse yet here we are
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