SV = technology region. SV != actual valley.

Just like Wall Street != actual street.

I do it every day.

Me too. Forty minute drive from Oakland to Menlo Park.

I would be troubled by the thought of spending 80 minutes each day trapped in a steel cage. That's 400 minutes per week, or about 300 hours per year just sitting in traffic.

Even if SV were the best place to be an engineer, it's hard to imagine it being worth sacrificing 300 hours per year.

A 10 minute commute is 25% of that, which is 75 hours per year, which is still a lot. But for me, there is a huge psychological difference between a 10 minute commute vs 40.

Is it worth it? What are the benefits?

Cutting commutes up into hours per year doesn't seem all that useful. Lots of stuff takes up what sounds like ridiculous amounts of time if you look at it like that. I'd rather look at it in terms of your day.

If you plan to spend 8-9ish hours actually working, and another 10 per day on sleeping, eating, shower, and other such necessities, that leaves about 5 hours of real free time. A hour and a half a day of commute time is a pretty solid cut into that. 20 minutes of commute time is hardly noticable. Personally, I'd sooner take the 10 minute commute and have that mental seperation between work time and off time than have an extra 20 minutes a day and work at home.

I've done a not-quite-so-bad commute, Seattle to Redmond, only 20-40 minutes on the way to work, 50-70 minutes on the way home. I found it soul-crushing. Most of the wait on the way home was in the line to get on the freeway. I became a worse person, unwilling to let other cars merge in, always assuming the worst of other drivers.

Currently I have a 20 minute pleasant bus commute to work, and I wouldn't go back to that commute. For me, it wasn't worth it.

You drove from Seattle to Redmond? Why would you do that to yourself. (Assuming you're talking about MS) why wouldn't you take the 545/542/Connector?

For about six months I commuted from south San Jose to Mountain View. It was a fucking nightmare. I will never in my life live in a situation that requires such a commute.

Of course, now I live in the midwest and am hating the weather. My commute? Not so bad. But I miss the weather.

I came to the conclusion last time I was visiting SV that Northern California actually has terrible weather, everyone there just calls it 'traffic.' ;)