Ask HN: Why don't I see gold at the end of the remote working rainbow?

Re:Ask HN: Why don't I see gold at the end of the remote wor... by ghaff on Wednesday October 19, 2022 @11:43AM (#33263837)

In the US, I have about a five minute drive to the nearby train station and then I'm something over an hour by train and subway into the city depending upon where I'm going. Aside from not being able to actually walk to the train station, I'm not sure how you improve on that given the distance no matter what country you're in. And having done that commute about 3 days a week for over a year, it was pretty bad even though I wasn't driving.

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Re:Ask HN: Why don't I see gold at the end of the remote wor... by z9znz on Wednesday October 19, 2022 @11:48AM (#33263907)

Your public transport options are not common for most US dwellers. There are 10s of millions of people in the US who don't have access to any real public transport, especially trains.

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Re:Ask HN: Why don't I see gold at the end of the remote wor... by ghaff on Wednesday October 19, 2022 @12:19PM (#33264390)

Yes, I think it probably is uncommonly good for the US--all the hate the MBTA gets notwithstanding. But that's sort of my point. The city has relatively good public transit that is pretty much as convenient to me as is reasonable. And the commute still sucks. (I'm pretty far out but not unreasonably so.)

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Re:Ask HN: Why don't I see gold at the end of the remote wor... by petsfed on Wednesday October 19, 2022 @01:48PM (#33265573)

I think the way to improve that is to somehow lower the cost of housing, such that workers can afford to live close enough to the office to minimize the time cost of commuting.

When I was commuting in the Bay Area, I'd walk half a mile to the local BART station (a walk I rather enjoyed), then I'd spend the next 90 minutes on a bus or train until I arrived at work. If I got to BART after 6am, I'd stand on the train for the first 60 minutes. Then I'd reverse the whole thing on the way home, although I typically got on the train early enough that I could sit the whole ride home. All of that, because that is what I could afford to do. The funny thing is, if I was paid at my hourly equivalent for all of that time spent commuting, I could afford to live closer to the office.

I don't know that I like working from home per se, but I definitely hated that I spent 1-3 hours a day, every day, traveling, when I could be doing something I wanted to do. My ability to have hobbies, or spend meaningful time with my family, is basically blunted by the fact that I can't afford to house my family close to where I work. Its better now that I'm out of the Bay Area, but it's still a problem, and will be a problem, for the foreseeable future.

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Re:Ask HN: Why don't I see gold at the end of the remote wor... by vladvasiliu on Thursday October 20, 2022 @02:54AM (#33271619)

I agree with you on principle. However, in practice, I don't know how that would work out. In places like Paris, for example, jobs tend to be very concentrated in a few hotspots. This is a nightmare for infrastructure, like you can imagine because everybody wants to get to the same place at the same time.

There were attempts to "distribute" this, but as far as I can tell, they didn't really work out as expected.

I still think that this distribution is the best approach, though, instead of building 200-story buildings around the office towers. And this distribution can take multiple forms, one of which is remote working.

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