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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?

#91

Post by neutronicus »

humanrebar wrote: post #40
rr888 wrote: post #26

I 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.

Perhaps it doesn't apply to you, but it's natural for many (most?) to require larger or smaller places as needs of immediate family evolve. I don't know that larger places are necessarily optional or environmentally worse.

> I don't know that larger places are necessarily optional

Dogs are optional, and I hear people cite them as a reason to move to a bigger place all the time. It also seems like "get a dog" is the first thing a lot of people do when they get into a WFH situation.

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

#92

Post by adql »

chitowneats wrote: post #28
rr888 wrote: post #26

I 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.

I completely agree. Ever since WFH started I'm feeling this gravitational pull away from the city center because of cost of living and space considerations. If salary takes a nosedive this will become untenable for many. Mountains of research show that this will increase total emissions. It would be one thing if the U.S. was developing medium density suburban cores, but that seems to be on the table in very, very few…

If you could 100% WFH moving to just smaller city (instead of to suburbs of a bigger city) is always an option.

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

#93

Post by bamboozled »

luxuryballs wrote: post #86
lm28469 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would you heat a house if you're not in it. Do people really do that ?

because it’s more expensive to let it get cold and then heat it back up again

Any evidence to support this? I've heard otherwise.

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

#94

Post by myfavoritedog »

needlessly requiring people to move themselves into offices

I've been on multiple sides of this environment over my 3+ decades in the job market: managed people in office, managed people while I worked remotely, worked in an office, worked remotely (mostly for the last 13 years).

I'm very sympathetic to remote work, but my experience tells me that your "needlessly" is not well-founded.

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

#95

Post by neutronicus »

simonmesmith wrote: post #7

Similarly, 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…

Well, my city at least (Baltimore) has kind of evolved to "a place where hospitals are", and there's only so much health care you can do over Zoom

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

#96

Post by w0de0 »

Eric_WVGG wrote: post #88

The majority of advertising on environmental initiatives ("hey go out there and recycle" and that kind of crap) is funded by polluters to shift the conversation from a manufacturer problem to a consumer problem. You need to ask "who is advertising" and "who is the market." So let's say Zoom wanted to run an initiative like this… the market wouldn't be workers, it's be the bosses. So already you're talking about a tin…

> No billboards or tv spends, that's for the mass market

Neither the billboards for Brex on the drive to Mission from SFO, nor those for Boeing in the Washington, D.C. metro, nor those “for your consideration” on the Sunset Strip come Oscar season, are meant for a mass market. This doesn’t seem a sound premise.

In being so physical, billboards are hardly mass media at all. More big brochures.

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

#97

Post by goosedragons »

luminouslow wrote: post #9
hayst4ck wrote: post #4

What makes you so sure that commuting is more environmentally harmful than datacenters full of hardware and the construction and transport of said hardware and mining of raw materials for the hardware? Additionally, lack of commuting incentivizes un-environmental and inefficient suburban sprawl. I am not saying that's the case, but I don't buy that it's a strictly pro-environment win a-priori. If anything commuting i…

I don't know about you but we still use the internet/zoom etc. in the office so you still need datacenters >lack of commuting incentivizes un-environmental and inefficient suburban sprawl I dont understand this point, IMO commuting leads to more suburban sprawl? Also i think this is a very USA-centric problem.

Because if you don't have to drive to work in the city every day you're not going to care if your house is a 3 hour drive away. So you buy that new giant single family home with the large lot instead of the two bedroom condo that's in walking distance or the older townhome that has a sub-45 min driving commute. This might be a very North America problem but with the pandemic and the rise of WFH it's something that's been observed. The prices of homes outside the city have risen faster than those inside the city at least in Canada [0].

https://www.bankofcanada.ca/2022/06/staff-analytical-note-20...

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

#98

Post by ivan_gammel »

rr888 wrote: post #26

I 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“.

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

#99

Post by _joel »

swader999 wrote: post #47

It'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.

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

#100

Post by adql »

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…

From my experiences (everywhere from full office to full WFH), even in heavily technical low management environments it still feels more productive to do any of the planning stuff in person.

In my case small percentage of total time and making the 5% more effective to make the remaining 95% less effective doesn't seem like good tradeoff, just not having co-workers interrupt me because I'm near and know the answer is a blessing.

But from manager position I can see that, my 5-10% spent on meetings & related stuff is what they do maybe 80% of the time. Then again bringing 20 people to office just to keep one or two managers happy is also a waste.

> The cynic in me says execs can't force this decision because the senior management simply will come back and say 'we cannot be this productive with a fully remote team anymore'. I don't know but I for one cannot understand the irrational exuberance behind RTO.

Remote work does require shift of habits, training can help (maybe a niche here for company doing the training?) but it still takes time and effort if you did it in person for last 10-20 years

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