"No form of transport requires less energy than telecommuting" is quite the statement. If your work force bikes or walks to work, pretty sure that has far lower energy requirements than having all of them telecommute.
Ask HN: Why isn't remote work advertised as a pro environment initiative?
291–300 of 508 posts
Re: Ask HN: Why isn't remote work advertised as a pro environment initiative?
#292There 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.,…
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...
You gain time not spent preparing for work as well and its important to note that public transit is another thing entirely.According to the same census.gov report sourced by that article public transit riders consumed 47 minutes on average and that doesn't even tell the whole story because transit schedules NEVER align perfectly with your work schedule meaning if you don't want to be late you are always going to waiting 7-8 minutes for a bus and then arriving 15 minutes early.
An hour each way including waiting time is perfectly normal for anyone who has relied on public transit.
Re: Ask HN: Why isn't remote work advertised as a pro environment initiative?
#293Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
> secluded lives. Remember that "pandemic remote work" is not at all normal remote work. I have a social life outside of my coworkers. I can work from places that aren't my home office - a cafe, a coworking space, whatever - even if it's just a couple hours to get out of the house. It need not be seclusion . > better public transport and cheaper housing Yeah, well, no argument from me here.
> I have a social life outside of my coworkers.
This. Even before the pandemic, when I had to waste two hours a day, every day, to go sit my butt in my employer's chair, all my "social life" was strictly with people other than my coworkers.
So being able to get those two hours back, even if not all of them but every other day, is a net gain for me. I can go for a walk, lift some weights, space out on the couch, whatever. It's also much easier to not always eat the same plastic lunch every day, or have to prepare things that are easy to reheat in a microwave.
Re: Ask HN: Why isn't remote work advertised as a pro environment initiative?
#294Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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?
It's a profit center.
Or is it a cost-centre because most people wouldn’t work under those conditions and so you don’t get the best people to make profit with?
Re: Ask HN: Why isn't remote work advertised as a pro environment initiative?
#295Earlier quoted context omitted.
... 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…
I think discussions about remote work and commuting bring out people with unusually bad commutes. And probably people with unusually bad commutes are in social bubbles where they think it’s normal, otherwise they wouldn’t sign up for it. But statistically, they are unusual!
It's fair to say that according to your own sources that the average commuter according to census.gov loses between 250-520 hours per year commuting if we don't count the 125 they spent getting ready for work. I think pointing out that most people are closer to 250 is quibbling over less than meaningful details.
It's a huge waste.
Re: Ask HN: Why isn't remote work advertised as a pro environment initiative?
#296"No form of transport requires less energy than telecommuting" is quite the statement. If your work force bikes or walks to work, pretty sure that has far lower energy requirements than having all of them telecommute.
I don't think that's correct, unless I am missing something?
Telecommuting: Turn on your PC in a room of your house and start work Biking/Walking to Work: Bike/walk to work and turn on a PC in an office.
What's the extra telecommuting energy expenditure? Servers for a VPN?
Re: Ask HN: Why isn't remote work advertised as a pro environment initiative?
#297Think about this from a business finance perspective. Companies have since the early 1900's built an economy around working in offices. Car manufacturers, car service and maintenance businesses, food service companies, commercial real-estate companies and oil and gas companies and many other sectors all have a stake in this game.
Then you have internal forces at play too. HR managers, and department managers don't look so useful when the majority of people never interact in real life. No matter how optimistic we look at the human condition, people have the desire to exercise power and control over others. With people working remote exercising power and control is harder. Additionally, you still have gen-x and boomers working, especially in management who have a different idea of work culture than millennials and gen-z. To the older generations working on-site is the only justifiable way to work. To them the notion of being at home for work is not real work.
There also appears to be a camp of management types who have seen evidence confirming that remote work doesn't work. They are going to stick to their position because they have evidence to support. I recently heard similar sentiments to Musk's take on remote work from Tim Pool, and a manager at my job. They are convinced that meaningful work can only happen in person.
So between those three main factors: Money, power, and bias of evidence the pitch for remote work being an environmental initiative gets drowned out. Really, makes you wonder if environmentalism is really that important for the business leadership class.
I personally believe work from home can be an amazing option for white collar work and for the right person. As a UI developer I love it. I don't get distracted by office stuff and get good flow often. I'm and expert at using online communication tools and desktop publishing tools so I can communicate my ideas and thoughts coherently remotely. However, I've seen some people not be able to manage themselves or have the skills to work from home.
Re: Ask HN: Why isn't remote work advertised as a pro environment initiative?
#298I'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
Anecdotally I see many people traveling more enabled by remote work (and a single flight can equal a full year of car commuting). And I feel many people use telework days to run errands or go to lunch more frequently often nearly matching commute miles in a day.
When else are you supposed to run errands? Here's my anecdotal driving activity after taking a remote position:
I used to drive every day of the week. Now, it's 3 days, on average. If I could walk or cycle to the gym (roads are 0% accessible for pedestrians), I could easily drop that to one or two days.
In terms of running errands, I've moved that to a "before work" activity. It's honestly amazing how smooth it all goes at 8:00am vs 5:30pm. Plus, I consider this a net positive for the community since I'm one less person clogging up the grocery store at their busiest time.
Re: Ask HN: Why isn't remote work advertised as a pro environment initiative?
#299Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Employees waste 2 of their 16 I suspect that you don't commute to a large city (either via car or mass transit). It's more like 4-6 hours. Crazy.
The average commute in a large city is definitely not 2-3 hours one way .
In Montreal, QC however, it easily takes 1.5-2 hours to go downtown and another 1.5-2h to come back.. especially during winter time. A lawyer friend of mine would leave his house at 6 AM to be at court by 9..
One starts to lose his sanity somewhere between the potholes, broken roads, construction, crazy drivers, freezing rain and no parking..
Re: Ask HN: Why isn't remote work advertised as a pro environment initiative?
#300Earlier quoted context omitted.
I commute from a large-ish city to its suburb, my commute is 15-18 minutes. Anecdotes are not data... average commute in the US is like 20-30mins. I suspect most people who can be fully remote (i.e. are not in service industry) can afford to move instead of commuting 3 hours one way.
According to this data, commutes are pretty much no big deal in all states. https://www.visualcapitalist.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/...
I'm always amazed at these datasets.
They tend to ignore things like the laws of physics.
When you live 40 miles away from your destination, there's no way that you'll get there in 37.7 minutes, unless you can do over the state speed limit, the entire time. And that doesn't even count things like congestion, traffic lights, and whatnot.
Frankly, I'm kind of amazed at the nasty reception that my post got. I do apologize for my choice of words, questioning where the person lives, but folks seem to have some kind of stake, in commutes being unnaturally short.
People live in the suburbs, so they can do things like raise families, send their kids to good schools, and enjoy the kinds of leisure pursuits that are only available to wealthy people, close to the city.
There's a lot of people, living out here. I know of several people that live in Wading River, and commute daily, to Manhattan.
This is a scientific community. Feel free to get your maps out, and figure it out.