A lot of places _are_ advertising it as a benefit.
Ask HN: Why isn't remote work advertised as a pro environment initiative?
101–110 of 508 posts
Re: Ask HN: Why isn't remote work advertised as a pro environment initiative?
#102Similarly, I often wonder why cities don’t promote local telecommuting over building expensive public transportation infrastructure. Building one kilometre of subway costs anywhere from around $100 million to $1.6 billion ( https://marroninstitute.nyu.edu/events/how-much-does-it-cost... ), and then requires subsidies to run. Why not use this money to provide incentives for people to telecommute? And while some might…
>> Similarly, I often wonder why cities don’t promote local telecommuting over building expensive public transportation infrastructure.
Because if they promote it too much, they people move far away and the city loses the tax base. One extreme example is New York City -- they have a 3.5% income tax. If you move into next-door NJ or CT, the city loses that 3.5% income.
Re: Ask HN: Why isn't remote work advertised as a pro environment initiative?
#103Because most of workers have not enough pro-ability to adapt a remote working environment. More details, to work remotely efficiently, you need to: - Have good writing skills, because communication is asynchronous most of the time. - Task description needs to be as clear as possible ! You don't want to spend most of time to explain what the specification means. - Self-management and time management: How to do things…
It's a skill you can train. Just that most corporations that got shifted to WFH coz of pandemic didn't bother to train or revisit their processes. That's partly (the other part is managers clinging to their jobs) why some yell for coming back to office, the required work for the shift was not done and now performance suffers.
Re: Ask HN: Why isn't remote work advertised as a pro environment initiative?
#104Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
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.
Why not living in the city in a sufficiently big apartment and working from home?
Re: Ask HN: Why isn't remote work advertised as a pro environment initiative?
#105It's because the whole climate thing is a ruse to scare us into cbdc/surveillance/control. Yes there's climate change, Yes there's human influence to it. And well sure as hell adapt to this slow moving challenge.
I'm glad the majority of the world disagrees with you.
China and India seem to disagree seeing that they will be firing up new coal plants for the next 3 decades, at least. That’s a pretty big chunk of the global population.
Re: Ask HN: Why isn't remote work advertised as a pro environment initiative?
#106Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is that € 500 for just the working hours? Because homes are also generally heated for other uses than work. Those reasons don't go away if you work at the office. If you've got a spouse working from home, or kids coming from school, that house is going to be heated anyway.
> Because homes are also generally heated for other uses than work I've never heard of anyone heating their home when not in it, given the other comments it seems like it's the norm, weird
The norms are different in different locations. Where I live (Sweden), I'd say pretty much everybody sets a comfortable temperature and keeps it at that.
OTOH, our houses are generally heavily insulated, so while heating a house is expensive, keeping it heated is relatively cheap. I'm always amazed at the lack of insulation when I travel abroad. I never freeze as much as when I leave Scandinavia (no joke).
Re: Ask HN: Why isn't remote work advertised as a pro environment initiative?
#107I'm not convinced it is a net positive in the end. Especially for big companies, heating an office space with 500+ people is probably much more efficient than heating 500 individual houses for example Not everyone commute with an ICE vehicle too
Yes but those people don't live in the office... the office wouldn't need to exist in the first place. Could be apartment block instead.
Most people also like to come back to warm house so heating is running during the day
Re: Ask HN: Why isn't remote work advertised as a pro environment initiative?
#108I 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.
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.
Re: Ask HN: Why isn't remote work advertised as a pro environment initiative?
#109I 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.
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“.
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.
Re: Ask HN: Why isn't remote work advertised as a pro environment initiative?
#110Probably because people get significantly less work done remotely… CEOs know this, multiple studies have shown this, and it’s been a lot of people’s experience as well.
I suspect most of that was due to company being forced to do remote coz of COVID and of course without change of way of working that didn't work very well.
Some jobs are worse candidates for that too and if you force everyone to WFH of course that won't be positive.