> better for the environment

How can others not see it? I see a bunch of people, even on HN, pushing for lower emissions while rejecting remote work for whatever personal reason. I also see others wanting instead to force everybody into ultra high density living to avoid driving, while remote work cuts down on the biggest source of driving needs.

Ultra High Density Living is just the most eco-friendly way of living for the masses. Why would anyone think otherwise, if the same masses live abroad and spread out over vast land with their own infrastructure?

> Ultra High Density Living is just the most eco-friendly way of living for the masses.

You do not need to go to "ultra high" density, à la Manhattan or Hong Kong.

Once you get to densities of Paris, Stockholm, Amsterdam, Munich, Brussels—in the 50 people per hectare (20 per acre) range—there are diminishing returns:

* https://transportgeography.org/contents/chapter4/environment...

I would not call any of those "ultra high" (though perhaps others would?).

Paris - the city itself - is actually surprisingly high density, almost as high as Manhattan if you do not include the two very large 'Bois' (woods) that are technically part of the city.

I don't know where they get that 50/Ha figure. Paris is more dense than Seoul, with just over 200 people per Ha, or ~20k/km². Figure would actually have been higher at the 1999 date of the cited source, too. The city is (slowly) losing people.

Morgue drawer style housing is the most efficient.

I accept high density cities, but ultra high is misanthropic.

Unfortunately America seems to not be able to get its shit together in how it handles larger cities. Mass transit sucks, life threatening noise pollution, rents are too high, and homelessness abounds while many enter some sort of Stockholm syndrome and think these problems are overstated and defend the status quo. I want to keep living in a walkable high density area but greed, complacency, and outright ignorance destroys what could work for more people.

It is possible to be generally for lower emissions but value those "personal reasons" more. I would never voluntarily live in an urban area, dense or otherwise. Not willing to make that much of a sacrifice for the planet, sorry. I'm open to considering other ways to improve my carbon footprint, like working remote and not commuting, but living in a city is not one of them.

I think it is totally fine to live outside of cities. I did this also during corona times bcs of these non-sense rules. Just i do not think its more eco-friendly. Maybe on an individual level, but when all people do this, its not. Well, like with all luxuries.

I have nothing against remote work, but I don’t think it’s particularly eco-friendly in the US setting: the trend in the US has been increased suburbanization (and larger houses to accommodate home offices), both of which are probably worse on net for the environment that a single office building with central heating/cooling. Similarly: workers who move to the suburbs and drive to work only occasionally are still potentially driving more than they would be if they used mass transit in cities.

This doesn’t necessarily apply to other countries with better land use patterns, of course.

The US trend to suburbia predates really widespread remote working, right? I wouldn’t blame remote work for it.

Definitely. I’m not saying that remote work is to blame for suburbanization, only that it’s a new positive pressure supporting it.

> the trend in the US has been increased suburbanization (and larger houses to accommodate home offices)

My emissions 100% went up with RW.

I moved to Wyoming from New York, bought a roomy house. bought a car for the first time and fly constantly. The quality of life is great. And I still drop into the office every few months. But it’s no environmental panacea.

It would have to be a society wide calculation, and I doubt the vast, vast majority of people are going from zero driving to more driving like a NYC to suburbs migrant. More likely is people going from regularly driving 60min+ per day to sit at a desk no longer doing that drive, which is a net reduction in energy usage.

https://newsroom.aaa.com/2019/02/think-youre-in-your-car-mor...

> I doubt the vast, vast majority of people are going from zero driving to more driving like a NYC > to suburbs migrant

Going off property prices, it’s not negligible. (And going off labour prices, RW is clearly anti-agglomerational [1].)

[1] https://econ.vt.edu/content/dam/econ_vt_edu/seminars/fall-20...

Hard to say how the numbers ultimately work out. I guess we'll have to see what the net numbers look like for large cities in a few years. Anecdotally I do see a fair number of people I know who were living in cities, in part because it was convenient to their office, who moved out--including to rural locations--once they didn't need to regularly go into an office any longer.

I think the telling metric would be be the hybrid vs full time remote composition.

Even if full time rm is carbon negative, hybrid can be positive. Myself and many I know went from 10 min Daily commutes to 60+ min commutes 2-3 times a week.

Urban densification is definitely more eco-friendly than most suburbanization.

The emissions of cars for the US is much higher than most people expect at 1.7 billion tons, while air conditioning is about 117 million tons. A/C also peak matches solar, which makes the emissions for it easier to cut.

Heat is harder to get numbers on, but I also think most oversized suburban houses are in the sunbelt these days, plus I don't think a home office swings it too much from the baseline heating to keep the pipes from freezing.

> workers who move to the suburbs and drive to work only occasionally are still potentially driving more than they would be if they used mass transit in cities.

What?

There’s a personal anecdote as a direct comment beneath my comment, as an example of this.

To be clear: I’m not faulting people for this. But it’s an intuitive consequence of people moving their working space into their living space: having both means needing more room, which frequently means moving somewhere rural or suburban and driving more.

I used to live in the middle of Dublin and ride a bike to work.

Then I got a remote job and realized I could save a fortune by moving to a rural house an hour away.

But when I _did_ need to go to Dublin, I was sometimes driving instead of riding a bike (though sometimes I took the train, but I was very careful to make this an option and my neighbours would usually drive to go to Dublin)

While moving to a suburb had an increase in space as one of its boons, the primary driving force by far was housing costs. Reducing housing costs by half or more and locking that cost in by buying (no rent hikes) has dramatic effects on one’s ability to accumulate savings and work towards achieving true financial security.

If I could’ve found a decent apartment in the city for the same price as my house, I likely would’ve opted for the apartment instead because being within walking distance of essentials and things to do is very compelling. Unfortunately there’s not much in US cities that can be had for the same price, and what little can isn’t pleasant to spend extended amounts of time in as one does with remote work.

This doesn’t have to be a problem. In Tokyo for instance there’s plenty of suitable apartments for a decent price, especially if you’re ok with downtown being a 20m train ride away. We don’t build our cities like that, though.

> is better for the environment

I'm not sure that is always the case. When everybody is in the office, you save on shared resources such as lighting, printing and heating. Also, a certain percentage of remote workers will take the car during the day anyway, to buy lunch or groceries.

I can't imagine an office full of people driving their gas vehicles 50+ miles per day creates less pollution than those people being at home. Lighting costs are extremely marginal these days, so really heating/AC would be the big driver.

I know prices may not be a perfect corollary to pollution but people driving that much to work are pretty likely to spend more money fueling their vehicles than they are on electric + gas for their homes.

The vast majority of people don’t stop all power consumption at home just because they’re not at home. Even modern thermostats like Nest don’t save as much as they claim, usually.

These saving are completely blown away later that night when the lighting has to stay on so the office is not pitch black and the heating has to stay on so the pipes don't freeze. In what world is heating and lighting another building more efficient than not doing that?

I think a considerable amount of the anti-remote push is also on managers from GenX as well, and I think we've considerably obviated much of the incentive to retire for the top end of decision-makers since their fortunes are increasingly tied up in their investments anyway and the control they exert can be really abstract and thus not very difficult to keep up

Embrace it? Are there any stats on this? I didn't find any.

In my experience there are a greater degree of remote workers among the older part of the work force.

I work on a remote-first organisation and have previously done so (in pre-COVID times) and there are wins and loses. You lose the serendipitous meetings in the office, and have to deliberately schedule what could have been done by dropping by someone's desk. You also lose the fancier coffee machine.

> I hope employers will embrace remote work more once the baby boomer generation retires.

How does a janitor do remote work? A teacher? Restaurant workers? Hospital workers?

> However, healthcare workers and others in similar professions often don’t have the ability to work remotely. In fact, Healthcare workers in New York have the worst commute times of any profession at 52 minutes on average.

* https://jeremybney.medium.com/long-commutes-show-structural-...

If certain places are popular to live in, and the prices of residences gets priced up by high-income individuals, low- and mid-income people—who are often the (so-called) 'support workers' in those communities—are pushed out and often have long commutes to their jobs.

Not everything can be done over Zoom or an SSH session.

>Not everything can be done over Zoom or an SSH session.

Agreed. However, if everyone who is capable to work remote will decide to do so, it would free up lane capacity for those who aren't able to.

This would be akin to getting a free infrastructure upgrade for those who truly need it.

> Agreed. However, if everyone who is capable to work remote will decide to do so, it would free up lane capacity for those who aren't able to.

Less traffic reduce stress, but you still have distance to deal.

And that assumes you can drive, and you're not too poor or have some other factor which restricts your ability to own/operate a car.

> But when one train recently stopped for a sick passenger, her commute expanded to a mind-boggling three hours and 15 minutes. She was late. To make up the lost time, she stayed longer with her patient instead of picking up her granddaughter from school. She had to enlist a neighbor to do that — for $35.

* https://archive.ph/1a6y3 / https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/31/nyregion/health-care-work...

It would also reduce land costs in urban centers.

> It would also reduce land costs in urban centers.

That does not necessarily follow: some folks may prefer to live in an urban area (only) because they work in said urban area, and so want shorter commutes, but I'm sure plenty live in urban areas because (e.g.) like the amenities.

As a sysadmin I can easily do remote work, but would still live in an urban centre.

As per Jane Jacobs: people do not live in cities, they live in neighbourhoods. I think most folks who live in urban centres do so because they like the lifestyle first, and a shorter commute may be just a nice bonus. There are also lots of folks who 'reverse commute': live in the city and work in the suburbs.

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_commute

That may be true of people just out of school but my experience over a fairly large number of years was that relatively few people lived in the city and commuted out to a suburban office park. For one thing, even reverse commutes can be pretty slow in a city with a lot of traffic. I rarely drive into the city for evening events partly for that reason.

You definitely are not wrong, but remote work can also help the kind of individuals highlighted indirectly.

Perhaps a simple example is through remote work meaning fewer commuters, and so less traffic, less crowded trains, etc.

But also consider that schools and hospitals need to be near centers of population - if people are moving out of cities into smaller towns, then, over time, schools in those towns will need to grow, and those in the cities shrink, thus (one would hope) allowing teachers and hospital workers more affordable accomodation, close to their work too.

But, on the other hand, roles for janitors and restaurant workers may be reduced (if people are WFH and not needing office cleaning, and going out for lunch).

> If certain places are popular to live in, and the prices of residences gets priced up by high-income individuals, low- and mid-income people—who are often the (so-called) 'support workers' in those communities—are pushed out and often have long commutes to their jobs.

And thus wages should increase for "support workers", currently the lifestyles of those living in such high desireable areas are subsidised by those taking terrible commutes.

>How does a janitor do remote work? A teacher? Restaurant workers? Hospital workers?

Janitors and restaurant workers are good examples, however hospital workers can be hybrid; remote classrooms have been a real thing since the 21st century.

> How does a janitor do remote work? A teacher? Restaurant workers? Hospital workers?

One thing about these workers is there is a limit on density, and in many cases a strong correlation with the number of people who live nearby. There are only so many janitors you need, even for a large office building. Same with health care workers. The number you need is a function of the number of beds the hospital has, its size, and how busy it is - which has a large correlation with how many people live around it. Same with cooks. How many cooks you need in an area is limited by restaurants and kitchen space and how many people are around.

Not so with workers who could be remote. You can pack them in by the thousands and tens of thousands into cubicles in downtown skyscrapers. They in tern drive demand for cooks who have to come work downtown in an area they could not afford.

If you make the people that could be remote, remote you reduce this pressure. No longer are you packing tens of thousands of people in a very small, expensive part of town. This reduces the number of cooks you need in the very dense expensive part of town. This reduces the cooks who have to commute to a part of town they could never afford to live in.

In addition, with the reduced number of potentially remote workers who are paying extra to cut down their commute, you reduce the price pressure of housing.

Remote work reduces density, lowers price pressure, and increases the correlation of work to where people actually live.

So it benefits even the jobs that can’t be remote.

>Remote work eliminates commutes

For a minority of the workforce. The majority of jobs, especially the most critical ones (infrastructure), cannot be done remotely.

I wouldn't call office workers a minority - they make up more than half of american jobs [1]. Surely some proportion of these jobs require presence / face time, but even if you knock that number down to 40%, that's still a huge chunk.

1: https://www.dpeaflcio.org/factsheets/the-professional-and-te...

That link doesn't validate your assertion, unless the stat is deeply hidden.

I did see "professional", which has all sorts of categories, including "manager" and all sorts of sciences, etc. "Manager" can be someone managing a cleanup crew, a job site, scientists can be on boats, or in the woods, architects at construction sites, on and on.

A Walmart has several managers, some of which have no office. A Burger King has a few managers.

> is better for the environment and employees

It’s better for some employees.

Some people get more done and have more fun working in an office with other people.

Still, imho it is somewhat cruel that society has simply decided that extroverts can and should force introverts into socializing. "You need to attend this meeting in person because I insist" ist perfectly acceptable, while "you need to leave me alone because I insist" is considered rude, antisocial, "not a teamplayer" yadda yadda.

> Some people get more done and have more fun working in an office with other people.

It is not the job of employees to provide extroverts the ability to "have more fun".

> Still, imho it is somewhat cruel that society has simply decided that extroverts can and should force introverts into socializing

It's not more cruel than introverts forcing extroverts into not socializing.

> It is not the job of employees to provide extroverts the ability to "have more fun".

No, but if a company wants to retain employees who want to have fun at work they'll make decisions that lead to that.

Having fun at work is no more a right than not having fun at work is a right.

> It's not more cruel than introverts forcing extroverts into not socializing.

Well that's the point: Society has made it acceptible for extroverts to force introverts into socialising, but the other way round is somehow inacceptible.

> Having fun at work is no more a right than not having fun at work is a right.

Having or not having fun is no right in itself anyway. Companies that force introverts into situations they are uncomfortable with are eventually going to lose them. The extrovert's fun stops where it is actively harming the introverts. Undermining introverts' feelings by making them feel uncomfortable in order to have fun is harassment.

> Companies that force introverts into situations they are uncomfortable with are eventually going to lose them.

There's nothing inherently wrong with this.

Just like there's nothing wrong with extroverts quitting a job that doesn't provide them with what they want and makes them feel uncomfortable.

The business may be less successful after the introverts quit or they may be more successful after the introverts quit. It's the company's risk/decision.

> The extrovert's fun stops where it is actively harming the introverts

Not liking something and being harmed by it are 2 different things that are sometimes related. That's a very important distinction to make.

Neither the introvert nor the extrovert need to love everything about their job. They may hate some aspects of it! They may choose to stick it out or quit. Both are fine.