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?
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).
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
There is nothing mythical as having qualities that others don't have, and any context or system have a local maximum, which optimize for a certain kind of outcome.
My qualities would have me dead 200 years ago, but make me earn money and social status in 2022. It's not that I'm amazing, it's just the current context is very favorable to those qualities. So it's just a lot of luck, and being fit for certains things that happen to be advantagious in your environnement.
The myth is that the process is just and fair, according to some people moral standard. The universe doesn't care.
> 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.
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.
>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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
There are plenty of rich people who are completely unknown.
The inside of their house is a bit better decorated, and if they fly first class to a private resort, how are the neighbors going to know?
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?
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.
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.
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.
Half these problems stem from massive income inequalities in society.
The president of the Netherlands famously bikes to work, vs the US president who travels around with a security detail at all times.
> 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.
A problem stemming from income inequality. Organized crimes, such as kidnappings, start to occur in societies so unfair that being part of a crime syndicate seems like a good life choice for people.
If someone with 10 billion wants to feel safer, spend 9 billion improving the QoL in their chosen city. In an society of stark inequality, no amount of money can buy peace of mind, as you point out, money just buys physical security, and being protected from bad things happening is very different than not having to worry about bad things happening at all.
> Bob spends the majority of his birthdays alone, on the phone to my family member, often crying about how lonely he is.
I've had a few "wealthy", not rich, but 8 figure, friends and acquaintances. Perfectly normal house parties. The house is nicer, and the works of art on the wall are real, but nothing crazy. They also didn't flash their wealth around, very low key, nothing special until you opened the door and looked around carefully.
That said, I'm sure another couple 0's on the end of the bank account balance complicate things.
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.
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.
This phenomenon is extremely interesting. I other words, the billionaires we know of may be almost drama queens, who might (might!) have paid marketing agencies to capitalize on their personal name and image. They fell into the LinkedIn trap, which is certainly a side effect of having to climb the social ladder yourself. You could be Facebook’s anonymous CEO if you had attracted attention on the board’s characters instead of yourself, but you would have dissolved your power; Unless, of course, your family were already in the business and you had been able to rise collectively.
There's plenty of wealthy stealthy people around, who put a lot of effort into their business and not necessarily into themselves.
They'd fly right under the radar.
The following may not be a perfect example of the above, but just read up on the late Thomas Murphy and Daniel Burke ("Tom & Dan") of ABC. I find their no-nonsense no-bullshit down-to-earth frugal approach to business inspiring.
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.
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.
Evidently you missed the entirety of the post where I have said my family member is Bob's confidant and intimate friend. And the example of his close, childhood friend betraying his trust. And you just said it yourself.. a literal gunman broke into the kitchen of the Buffet's residence whilst they were eating lunch, but it's the wealthy individual's fault for not trusting enough!?
Did you get lost on the way to reddit, or something?
If you are a billionaire you can choose to become a boring old millionaire with $5m net worth, and not have those problems, so the additional benefits must be worthwhile.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
Very much this, but I've been lucky and riden the house price increases well to end up in a largeish place - but even then if I didn't have a garden office it would be hard.
Two friends if mine move to the nearest city and got a small one bed as they both do a lot out of the flat - theatre, movies, bars, sports etc - so the house was really a place to sleep and shower, plus eat and relax a little.
Home working for them meant losing space in their kitchen/livingroom/dining room - and having one of them work from the bed room.
Inner city UK flats are often very small, and still relatively expensive.
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.
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.
“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”.
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.
> We're not made to sit alone in a room in the middle of nowhere.
You seem to be implying that people's social lives revolve around work. A lot of us prefer to spend that effort on family, friends, and community during the other 72 hours of the week we are free instead.
I'm 43. Doing things with coworkers isn't even remotely appealing as it was 20 years ago, because at the end of the day they are coworkers and not friends (usually).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
If you have a parking lot you don't have to have a location in every suburb. People will just drive over from neighboring suburbs when they want falafel.
This is also why you don't see restaurants by office parks - if you want to serve the business lunch crowd, it's better to be by something like a Costco with a big parking lot that's mostly empty on weekdays instead of an office park that's all parked-up at lunchtime. Even absent parking-lot efficiencies, it's probably just optimal to be equidistant from all the office parks instead of next to one.
That's the challenge you face, really - out in the suburbs most people would rather drive 12 minutes than walk 7. I think people just see walking as a way to be cold and struggle to carry heavy things, so fuck it.
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.
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.
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
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.
You assume that the places I go are close to where I could live. Work from home so no travel there, supermarket is a mile away but I can't bike there because the roads are shit and the only time I go is usually after hours before the store closes and biking the dark is even more dangerous. Everything else I go to in my life is not very often and at least a 20 minute drive away.
My walking is to get me away from urban noise and people. My recreation takes me to places like get away from urban noise and people.
I find your travel time report interesting. I believe it that for where you go, it works. But I did a test with places I would go to in the Chicago area and none of them accessible by public transit and are typically an hour to an hour and 1/2 drive away (state parks). I test travel time by Google maps and driving is almost always significantly faster.
Yes I am glad that parts of Chicago were spared the insanity of interstate highways into urban spaces. It makes no sense doing that. Interstates should bypass urban centers. Although we should probably look at history as to what might happen. I suggest looking at what happened to urban centers that lost the competition for rail lines back in the late 1800s.
Another interesting experiment would be to map out the impact of replacing highways with train lines and full switching yards etc. that carry the same load of passengers and freight in the same timeframe.
I agree with you that we do need to work out a way to minimize costs of human existence both suburban and urban. We also need to fully account for all the externalities for both living spaces. We also need to reckon with there are country mice and city mice. We have very different values and very different physical tolerances in our living space.
We also need to look beyond the dichotomy of driving or walking but instead consider neighborhood delivery services for food and other ordered goods. see: https://www.businessinsider.com/lifvs-grocery-store-sweden-u.... I found this article interesting because I got a chance to see firsthand urban and rural Sweden and Finland this summer. Both places have food deserts of a sort. I don't fully grok it yet but it looks like people are comfortable with having only one or two vendors for a given item in a small store with a relatively small selection. There didn't seem to be the same "obsession" we have with getting a better price.
You're correct, people generally aren't too bothered if there are only a couple of choices, either of shops (e.g. two supermarkets) or products (two types of cereal bar).
I wouldn't in any way call it a food desert though. All the normal food for the region is available, the rest is just luxuries.
(And to the general point, people owning cars but mostly using them for recreation would still be a huge reduction in traffic, noise and pollution. That's not unusual for European city-dwellers, who often own one car and use it once or twice a week.)
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.
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?
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
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.
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?
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.
Fortunately with modern technology, you can run your own composting waste disposal, water from rainwater or aquifer, electricity via solar panels and batteries and the entire package is surprising affordable. That is to say cheaper than in urban 2000 square-foot condo.
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.
I have come to terms with the fact that any form of human civilization is not sustainable. We take more then we return to the Gaia ecosystem. At best we can be in balance once human existence returned to a pre-technological, nasty, brutish, and short lifestyle.
Boomers are blamed because of younger generation ignorance. There is an almost a willful lack of understanding of historical events that boomers lived through that shaped their lives and their finances. Looking from a point of older age to younger generations, anyone with half a brain can see the stressors and forces making their lives difficult. Yet we also see the the same forces that shaped boomers doubling down on shaping you. While there are some bright spots of Gen Z pushing back on power structures and winning, those wins are skirmishes because those in power were caught by surprise. In the next conflict, history of social change over the past hundred and 20 years shows that the next conflict will not be won so easily.
From my perspective, the generational you need to take control of politics in your future and stop putting your hands over your eyes and saying you have no control. Get out there, run for office, learn how your constituents live in what's important to them.
Remember, if you do not get elected and take your seat at the table, you will be ignored and nothing will change in your favor. Don't count on others to fight your battles for you.
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.
There is plenty of dense housing in prewar sections of Midwestern cities. Not as much as there used to be, unfortunately, but quite a bit, and available very affordably.
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.
>> 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.
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.
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.
It's kind of depressing that greenwashing is so effective: see companies like ConocoPhillips getting stellar ESG ratings despite their business models.
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.
> 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.
"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.
I think it is more out of habit than anything else. Office work has always been information based but it wasn't possible to get the information (aka paper) out of the office easily. For this reason, people had to be brought to the information.
I don't think we would have many office buildings if information work and telecommuting would have started at exactly the same time. No serious business person would invest in something that is plainly unnecessary.
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.
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)
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.
... 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.)
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!
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
Depending on how you make the journey, it isn't necessarily wasted.
For about a year I commuted around 30 minutes by train, from a station <5 minutes walk from home, and <5 minutes walk from the office. I liked reading books or the newspaper in the morning, and the same or staring out of the window on the way back.
It was a good transition between work and not-work. Driving requires too much concentration, cycling is somewhere in between, and working from home doesn't have any of this.
Every few months, generally if I feel I've been really unproductive, I'll walk home from the office (~50 minutes) just to enjoy the walk.
>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.
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.
>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.
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).
>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.
>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.
> 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
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.
> If remote work was so great for productivity, all companies would switch to it?
It's not just about gains in productivity (profit/surplus value) for companies*. It would be enough for remote work to be a net benefit for the whole society. Take the reduction in car traffic, the time savings, the pollution avoided, etc, and subtract an hypotetical loss in profit for capitalists. Still worth it? Then we're doing it!
> 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
Sure, but we can't wait for a handful of capitalists to take the lead on this. If it's important and necessary, governments should act and enforce it. The same way as we did for work safety rules, the 40h work week, the abolition of child labor and so on.
All of the labor rights we now give for granted, when enforced caused a reduction in the productivity of labor. Still, nowadays it would sound insane to advocate for a return to child labor in order to increase profits.
* Companies are abstract concepts without a will, so we can't really expect a company to take decisions. What we really mean here is capitalists. Capitalists are people, they have a will and the decisional power required to change things. We'll just refer to them as capitalists from now on.
I don't have anything to counter your points, we're in agreement :)
My argument had apriori assumptions for the general audience on HN (VC funded startups, FAANG/MAAMA folks, etc). We can start off with different assumptions, I have no problem with that. Ultimately, I agree that we should change laws as we see fit so everyone can flourish.
Nothing against you, I just think it's important to present a different set of assumptions since, as you noted, the general audience of HN tends to see things through specific lens.
When we all just give for discounted that there is only one valid point of view, we lose all the benefits of the discussion and just play reinforcement.
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.
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.
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.
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.
In the same boat. 15 minute walk to work. I miss having coworkers around, but I also understand that their commutes are much worse in many cases. I still prefer the office, even without the coworkers, because I don't want to turn my home into my office.
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.
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.
You know how some people are "40 years with the same company" kind of people? I'm that with the place I live. Over the last 40 years, I've managed to have a strangely broad and deep career, ranging from being an oceanography marine technician to a game developer. Sure, it's not the life of FAANG with golden perks, but maybe that's not what life's all about in high tech?
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.
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.
Seattle is #18. At peak rush hour it is 30-40mins, the main reason being that it's across a giant bottleneck of a bridge that also has ongoing construction; driving to suburbs that are not directly across the bridge would be faster. But, I don't drive at rush hour. "Start an 1-1.5 hours later" is much easier to grant than "WFH" :)
1) There are statistics that show the same is true for most workers. Commutes are 20-40 minutes. Most of those for whom this is not true either have uncommon priorities and trade-offs, are poor, are actively planning to move, or are just stupid. The uncommon priorities are uncommon; low-paying jobs mostly cannot be done from home; the temporary location mismatch is temporary; and avoiding people who are not poor but cannot figure out their living situation seems like a good reason to not offer WFH :D
2) I provided a number for peak rush hour, worst possible commute (bridge + construction), that I've actually done a couple times. FWIW I can drive to downtown in 25 minutes during rush hour, 10-12 minutes without, and that also would involve a bridge so a bottleneck.
3) An hour after rush hour is very different than 3am.
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.
Well, statistically most of people don't live "out there". To live out there is a choice... like, I know people who live in a mountain town because hiking/climbing is walking distance, or people who live in the country cause they want to keep a horse for regular riding (I think that was the primary reason?). Sure, their commute sucks, but for most people the only reason I can think of for living that far out is not being able to afford housing, and that is not typical for people who can WFH full time.
So, most people don't mind their commute. Also if I was hypothetically an employer, all other things being equal, wouldn't I rather hire people who don't have hobbies/things they are so committed to that they justify living "out there"? ;)
> Well, statistically most of people don't live "out there".
That depends.
HN seems to be a whole bunch of folks that are actually against the idea of living "out here" (not "there," to me). I find that interesting. I'm sure some demographic research would suggest why that is. I can tell you, from simply stepping out of my front door, that there are a lot of people, "out here," and I suspect that most of them work, somewhere.
> Also if I was hypothetically an employer, all other things being equal, wouldn't I rather hire people who don't have hobbies/things
Yeah, that's a pretty common mindset. "But why can't they all be slaves?" is what most corporate owners lament.
But if you want experienced, accomplished folks, you may find the pickings are a bit slim, in the immediate metro area. Might have to cast a wider net.
I lived in a city for a few years, and it was extremely convenient, but I was also unmarried, and ran a baseline stress level just below "squirrel on meth."
It seems that young people like being in the noise and bustle of a city, or close to it. Since tech has a real bad ageism problem, I guess that I shouldn't be surprised at the reactions.
But I am. I never thought of having a commute as something that defines an "old."
I have no idea where you got the impression I had age in mind. Most people commute between suburbs and cities, and this commute data is averages (and broken down by state, too - some states don't have many hip cities) - not people taking a lime bike from apodment to office.
What hustle and bustle? Campuses of the likes of Apple, Google, Microsoft, etc. are surrounded by layers of suburbs, populated (purely due to prices, both current and over time, considering who could purchase when) by "experiences, accomplished folks". They probably live the closest to office and have the shortest commutes.
Probably an East Coast/West Coast thing, then. We'll just leave it at that, eh?
I've lived on the East Coast for my entire adult life, and have experienced three metropolitan areas, and Not. One. Of. Them. had a 37-minute commute between an affordable suburb, and the center of the city.
Not. One.
I have managed to find jobs in the suburbs, which means they are probably not as high-paying as they could have been, in the city, but they worked out OK. Even then, I had ridiculous commutes (like 45 minutes to go 6 miles, in MD). My daily commute here, on Long Island, was 35 minutes to go 10 miles (for 27 years). That was from North Shore Long Island, to the center of the island. If I wanted to go to the city from here, it would have been at least 90 minutes, if I left at about 4AM (which many people around here do). 2-3 hours, in rush hour.
The thing about most companies on the East Coast, is they ain't real big on flexible hours. You need to travel during rush hour. The companies in the city can be a bit more flexible (I know of many people that work from 6AM-3PM), but the drive still sucks.
It's really weird to see people saying that this isn't happening, when it definitely is happening, and has been happening for decades, and I see it, every day. Miserable commutes have been a regular topic for discussion amongst my peers for as long as I can remember.
I have to assume there's some kind of cultural gulf. I definitely know that the tech industry is pretty sick with ageism, so that's a good bet. The people that live around me, are actually fairly well-off. The ones further East are likely to be lower on the food chain, and have much worse commutes.
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.
Nope - he was quite a family man, great dad, gave every minute that he was at home to his family.
The money was good - I'm pretty sure that was the motivation. Also part of his personality - he grew up in serious poverty and was driven to climb the ladder. And climb he did.
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.
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..
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.
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]
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.)
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.'
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.
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
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.
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.
Many things in life and in the world shouldn't be the way they are, but the reality in the field is very different and most of the time there's not much we can do about it.
Pairing was never a thing in any company I worked (in Europe).
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.)
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."
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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. :)
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.
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.
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
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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?
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.
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").
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.
> 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.
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.
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“.
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.
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.
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.
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).