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Ask HN: Why isn't remote work advertised as a pro environment initiative?

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Re: Ask HN: Why isn't remote work advertised as a pro environment initiative?

#411

Post by nightski »

shtopointo wrote: post #405

Couldn't the opposite be argued as well? Everybody spending 8 more hours at home means so much more individual heating, whereas before, when you went into the office you'd turn the heating off. Also as someone else pointed, working remote leads to leaving small apartments in the city to move into larger spaces (houses) in the suburbs. Then you would need to use a car more to meet people, get groceries etc. Cities are…

At least where I live you can't turn heating off. Pipes freeze. Appliances get damaged. We keep it about 62F during the day in the winter whether we are home or not.

We only get groceries twice a month. I only drive a 2-3k miles a year which is far below average in the U.S. and I owe it all to the lack of commute. Most of those miles are due to the fact that we own a cabin in another state which we visit in the summer as well and has nothing to do with the day to day.

Re: Ask HN: Why isn't remote work advertised as a pro environment initiative?

#412

Post by erinaceousjones »

shtopointo wrote: post #405

Couldn't the opposite be argued as well? Everybody spending 8 more hours at home means so much more individual heating, whereas before, when you went into the office you'd turn the heating off. Also as someone else pointed, working remote leads to leaving small apartments in the city to move into larger spaces (houses) in the suburbs. Then you would need to use a car more to meet people, get groceries etc. Cities are…

That to me feels like a very "US-centric" argument, although I'd still say it's a valid point. Over the pond here in the UK we're seeing an emergence more and more of Commuter-Town suburbia too, and personally I find it a worrying trend- new-build housing estates will cram a bunch of large, thin-walled, cheaply-insulated houses into a small area. Public transport links will be lacklustre. Large shops like supermarkets will probably be a walk away, but the design of the streets and roads will persuade many people that it's easier to drive 5 minutes instead.

I don't think the solution to that is "commute to the office where it's more efficient to heat all of us", though.

It's a long-term city-planning/suburb-planning, environmental architecture problem.

What about buildings semi-recessed into the ground (bedrooms in basement, use the surrounding ground for heat storage, sky-lights to allow sunlight in)? What about further adoption of solar panels for water heating and supplemental electricity? What about "keeping the door shut so the heat doesn't escape"...? What about neighbourhoods using communal heat pumps?

Then there's the fact that a helluva lot of us can't even afford these houses you mention because the housing market is in crisis so we continue to stay in our smaller city flats despite our ability to work remotely.

Like, there's a helluva lot more white collar office workers out there in Western civilisation who _aren't_ following that "get enough money, get a car, have 2.5 kids, move out to the 'burbs" life - don't forget about us.

Re: Ask HN: Why isn't remote work advertised as a pro environment initiative?

#413

Post by mcv »

scbrg wrote: post #106
lm28469 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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).

I stop heating when I'm not home, but my home doesn't lose heat very fast. Except for my home office, which seems impossible to heat.

Re: Ask HN: Why isn't remote work advertised as a pro environment initiative?

#414

Post by anikom15 »

8note wrote: post #364
anikom15 wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The incentive to live in a dense environment is being close to work. If work is at home then that incentive is gone.

The incentive for living in a dense environment is that you get to use common infrastructure for power, water, sewage, health care etc, rather than running your own septic tank and so on. Even suburbia isn't dense enough to support those things

I’ve lived in both the city and suburbia and suburbia not only had those things, but those things were better in suburbia.

Now eventually you do get into that problem in rural areas or areas that can’t be densely inhabited (like the mountains), but there’s no fundamental reason people can’t live in five-bedroom mansions and have access to services.

Re: Ask HN: Why isn't remote work advertised as a pro environment initiative?

#415

Post by Asooka »

beachtaxidriver wrote: post #132
deepGem wrote: post #79

Two main problems 1. Middle and senior management who don't want to lose control or be rendered less effective. 2. Engineers who are not trained in written communication and largely cannot autonomously move a group towards a goal without a lot of supervision. If you solve for no 2, then that acts counter to no 1 - because middle management will be questioned - why do we need you ? If a group of engineers can function…

I also think that junior new engineers are less productive remote, because they can't absorb the context and experience of their more senior coworkers. Probably the only group made more productive are senior independent engineers.

Over the pandemic I could closely observe three junior developers.

One was hybrid remote / on-prem with on-prem menotring and sadly they turned up not to meet our standards. I don't think the work arrangement impacted them.

One was fully remote with their mentor fully remote as well and we hired them full-time.

One was fully on-prem as much as they could, with a mentor who was almost fully remote. They were also hired full-time.

So my experience is that there is no correlation between bringing junior developers up to speed and exactly where they work from. Communicating face to face and communicating remotely are different and require different skill sets, but that is down to the abilities of the individual mentors assigned to the individual juniors. Or put another way - every combination works best for some people

Re: Ask HN: Why isn't remote work advertised as a pro environment initiative?

#416

Post by [deleted] »

Jenk wrote: post #374
lotsofpulp wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not aware of any rules requiring people to spend a minimum percent of their wealth.

E: parent edited their post from "I wonder if Warren Buffet has any of these problems" in case anyone is wondering why this post looks out of place. His wikipedia page documents how he and his family have disowned his granddaughter for revealing family secrets in an interview. So.. yeah, he probably does. You can bet he has kidnapping insurance on his family, too.

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: Why isn't remote work advertised as a pro environment initiative?

#417

Post by _ea1k »

krageon wrote: post #229
Someone1234 wrote: post #46

Because corporations are doing the majority of that pro-environmental advertising. I mean that both in terms of companies making changes (both real and greenwashing) and the News/Media corporations reporting on it. Telecommuting could be absolutely massive for reduced emissions, could bring down urban house prices, improve inter-family relationships, and revitalized suburban neighborhoods (e.g. more walkable areas).…

Exactly this is the reason, but I'll go even further and say that no corporation will advertise something "green" that might require actual effort on their part. The clear fact is that environmental impact is almost entirely the fault of corporations. Advertising for consumers to do anything to impact this is distracting them from the real issue: the corporations advertising to them. It is for this reason that you wi…

You only have to look at the relative scarcity of EV L2 chargers at Disney properties to see this first hand. How many Earth Day commercials have they run over the years? But a few bucks to support their own customers is too much?

Re: Ask HN: Why isn't remote work advertised as a pro environment initiative?

#418

Post by leipert »

shtopointo wrote: post #405

Couldn't the opposite be argued as well? Everybody spending 8 more hours at home means so much more individual heating, whereas before, when you went into the office you'd turn the heating off. Also as someone else pointed, working remote leads to leaving small apartments in the city to move into larger spaces (houses) in the suburbs. Then you would need to use a car more to meet people, get groceries etc. Cities are…

Okay, on a personal level this can be tricky to calculate and it is highly individualistic.

Example for Heating

A German price comparison site has done the calculation and for their model – 20m² home office and a yearly usage of ~2000 litres heating oil for the whole apartment) – you would end up with ~4% higher usage [0]. That means that you have 80 litres more heating oil which is equivalent to roughly 80 days of commuting 20 km / day via car. The German average commuter does ~32 km / day [1].

[0]: https://www.verivox.de/presse/modellrechnung-homeoffice-erho...

[1]: https://www.postbank.de/themenwelten/beruf-vorsorge/artikel_...

Re: Ask HN: Why isn't remote work advertised as a pro environment initiative?

#419

Post by AnimalMuppet »

nelsonenzo wrote: post #407

Idk, I thought it was mentioned in almost every article that discusses the pros and cons of remote work. Not all jobs can be remote though, so i'm not sure why one would expect all of work to be remote. That makes as much sense as 'no remote work at all'.

> I thought it was mentioned in almost every article that discusses the pros and cons of remote work.

But the point is, it's not mentioned in almost every article that discusses trying to stop climate change.

Re: Ask HN: Why isn't remote work advertised as a pro environment initiative?

#420

Post by enknamel »

It needs more analysis to determine if it's actually a net positive on the environment. People may travel more in their day, live more remotely, houses (as far as I know) aren't as well built as offices and use more energy per sq ft during the day, etc.

Technically if you want to optimize emissions reductions, you should eliminate homes, not offices. If everyone lived in the office we would all use less energy!

Anyways, transportation for commuting is one of the smallest buckets of emissions. So if it is a net positive it's still not moving the needle in a meaningful way.

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