In the bay area the morning crush is anywhere between 6:45 and 11:45. I've sometimes tried the "man traffic looks really bad right now and I don't have any meetings in the morning, I'll wait until later to start my commute" and then check again at 10:30 and it's the same _or worse_.

I don't have any particular evidence that this is actually true, instead of just noticing patterns in randomness, but something that feels like it works more often than chance is commuting right after 09:00 or 10:00, on the theory that a significant number of commuters have deadlines on the hour, so traffic might be less immediately after the deadline. It's not completely reliable, so I'm skeptical that it's real, but it also makes a good enough excuse to get me on the road earlier than I would otherwise, so that's nice.

That's what I do. I commute to Kendall Square in Cambridge, MA. I get into the office at 6:30AM every day and leave by 2:30PM. It's still not a lovely commute---maybe 40 to 50 minutes each way---but it's half the time if I were forced to work 9-5. I pay for this with sleep. It's hard for me to get to sleep before 10PM. :-)

I tried that one job. Invariably managers would schedule meetings at 3:00, or someone would come to my desk at 2:15 with a task that just had to be finished that day.

Yeah it only works if people are willing to respect your time (and you're assertive enough to politely remind them when they forget).