281–290 of 508 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Obfuscating costs and increasing the complexity makes no sense. Variable rate tolling on roads to disincentivize unnecessary travel by individual car makes more sense.
Then the companies will just tell you to suck it up and pay the tax yourself, or they'll find someone else.
Therefore both employer and employee will be incentivized to locate in places with higher density housing to reduce costs.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
New York has one of the worst commute situations in the country, with an average of 36 minutes each way. The US average is 27 minutes. People commuting two hours a day are extreme outliers. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/22/realestate/commuting-best...
... Maybe? This might be a case where an average doesn't tell the whole story. 45-minute to hour-long commutes each way have been the norm for me pretty much the entirety of my 20-odd year career in Silicon Valley. For me the outliers were the folk who opted to live 2+hrs away to afford a single family home, and were still commuting in - some did it daily; some did it weekly, and couch surfed during the week. (The ot…
There is nothing more illogical in modern society than commuting to an office every day. Employees waste 2 of their 16 available waking hours in the non-productive commute while incurring significant financial costs (lease/insurance/fuel/energy) in order to support this patently absurd activity. Employers waste time and energy negotiating leases, re-arranging offices, purchasing AV equipment for meeting rooms, etc.,…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Very true. And I did some rough estimations on why my employer wants us in the office. They make $115k a month of employees buying coffee. That is only coffee, and that was a very conservative estimate of only 40% of employees buying only a coffee on an average of $2. This doesn't take into account parking we have to pay for, or lunch, or snacks.
> They make $115k a month of employees buying coffee ... parking we have to pay for, or lunch, or snacks Lol what? Why are they making you pay for these things?
What we get instead though, is ringing, ringing ringing. Can't get my power ordered. I can't get roofing ordered. Can't get call backs.
Things were more expedient pre-pandemic. I often do wonder too, is part of the reason company X is OUT of something isn't because the ship is late - or is it because the ordering person no longer sits in front of a giant pile of insulation and goes - oh crap, that is getting really low. I should order more. (And guess what happens if he calls to order more - ringing ringing ringing)
For my case, it was worse. When normalized to dollars, I spent nearly 2x more in HVAC expenses compared to driving's fuel costs, and that's with a modest commute (20 miles). Its much less energy intensive to air condition one large medium-density building than many smaller low-density buildings.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't intend to de-rail the convo, but this is an important one. > improve inter-family relationships It could , maybe, but it can also be a significant source of strife. It's tough spending all day, every day with someone. Because of that, you find that people are either looking for larger homes in order to have private work spaces or renting office space. Both of those shift the cost burden from the company to th…
This. FFS who wants to stay home to live and work!?!? I don’t understand WFH. the right way is to have better public transport and cheaper housing, not secluded lives.
Because "home", for me, while I've been working remotely since 1994, has been Indiana, to Puerto Rico, to Budapest. I go when I want, do a little schedule juggling maybe. And now I live in the tropics in the jungle on a mountain coffee farm - the best place to spend a global pandemic - and I still have an income.
I'll take my seclusion, thanks.
There is nothing more illogical in modern society than commuting to an office every day. Employees waste 2 of their 16 available waking hours in the non-productive commute while incurring significant financial costs (lease/insurance/fuel/energy) in order to support this patently absurd activity. Employers waste time and energy negotiating leases, re-arranging offices, purchasing AV equipment for meeting rooms, etc.,…
Very true. And I did some rough estimations on why my employer wants us in the office. They make $115k a month of employees buying coffee. That is only coffee, and that was a very conservative estimate of only 40% of employees buying only a coffee on an average of $2. This doesn't take into account parking we have to pay for, or lunch, or snacks.
There is nothing more illogical in modern society than commuting to an office every day. Employees waste 2 of their 16 available waking hours in the non-productive commute while incurring significant financial costs (lease/insurance/fuel/energy) in order to support this patently absurd activity. Employers waste time and energy negotiating leases, re-arranging offices, purchasing AV equipment for meeting rooms, etc.,…
You can flip that around too - If remote work was so great for productivity, all companies would switch to it? There really isn't any point arguing over it, because it doesn't change the current state of affairs.
My belief is that for remote work to gain mainstream adoption, you'll need a few trailblazer companies who establish a model of remote work where you can get everything done remotely - team building, motivating people, etc, etc.