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Commuting Kills

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Re: Commuting Kills

#31

Post by stephengillie »

munificent wrote: post #22
rayiner wrote: post #18

The article argues for telecommuting to reduce commutes. I think a far less radical approach would be to open multiple offices and put teams in more affordable secondary cities. Modern technology has made it pretty easy to spread your organization across multiple offices. I work at an organization of less than 35 people that has offices in three cities. Outsourcing IT/HR/building administration makes it pretty low-co…

That works OK, but it increases the costs of reorganizing teams and projects. If your project structure changes frequently, it really helps if that just involves moving people from one room to another and not having to tell them to find a new home.

The other way to do this is basically a 100% remote company that owns coworking offices, and only lets employees cowork from there.

To rephrase, think if WeWork closed their doors to non-WeWork employees, and let their employees work from any WeWork, or from home.

Re: Commuting Kills

#32

Post by erispoe »

pekk wrote: post #13
dupe576 wrote: post #4

That's why I think everyone should bike to work if possible. It has little to no environmental impact and a positive health impact. And because you are killing two birds with one stone by exercising during your commute, you really aren't wasting any time.

The root cause of long commutes isn't a lack of biking, it is a lack of proximity. Riding a bike for two hours each way isn't an option for many people.

The solution is to increase density in the core parts of the Bay Area. Density reduces the distance between workplace and housing. Especially increased density around existing rail public transit (BART, Caltrain...) There is a lot of room for improvement here: Paris is thrice as dense as San Francisco despite having a 37m building ceiling.

Re: Commuting Kills

#33

Post by joesmo »

trjordan wrote: post #8

"...strong, rational and tangible reasons why an employee needs to be based on-site, rather than intangibles like culture, narrative or norms." What. This sentiment is exactly what's wrong with trying to push for more remote work. I don't think we have the tools, either technical or managerial, to build fully-remote companies that are as effective as in-person companies. There are niches where this is true, but they'…

I think the many successful businesses and open source projects that exist prove that not only do we have the right tools, but that real, successful, big projects can be and are completed with some or all of the contributors being remote.

Re: Commuting Kills

#34

Post by bbarn »

dupe576 wrote: post #4

That's why I think everyone should bike to work if possible. It has little to no environmental impact and a positive health impact. And because you are killing two birds with one stone by exercising during your commute, you really aren't wasting any time.

Yup. 9 miles each way, over the last ten years that's varied with different jobs, but I've managed to do it year round in Chicago. It's funny, when suggested, the gut reaction from a lot of people is to say why it won't work for them, instead of considering ways it might, even if used supplementally and not replacing alternatives completely.

Re: Commuting Kills

#35

Post by DannyBee »

" Brain power and productivity arrive instantly where they’re needed with zero transmission cost."

Except, it doesn't, because achieving productivity usually requires remote workers to be able to collaborate effectively, and whether they can or not varies wildly.

The author doesn't seem to get this - if remote workers were so amazing, and had been so amazing in practice, companies would use them more.

Companies do not want the expense of real estate, amenities, etc

Maybe the author should stop to wonder about "hmmm, i'm clearly not the only one to think of this idea, maybe this hasn't happened because there aren't a lot of huge success stories".

Re: Commuting Kills

#36

Post by ladzoppelin »

BjoernKW wrote: post #30
trjordan wrote: post #8

"...strong, rational and tangible reasons why an employee needs to be based on-site, rather than intangibles like culture, narrative or norms." What. This sentiment is exactly what's wrong with trying to push for more remote work. I don't think we have the tools, either technical or managerial, to build fully-remote companies that are as effective as in-person companies. There are niches where this is true, but they'…

> One of the most powerful ways of getting people working on the right things is to have them hang out with each other There are blatant examples to the contrary: Just look at most large organizations. Getting people to work on the right things isn't a matter of spending time together, it's a matter of company culture! In a company that's constrained by processes and pointless bureaucracy for bureaucracy's sake hardl…

You cant have people drive 2.5 hours to work however that does not make the parent comment incorrect. Working together is the better option and we need better tools for remote workers.

Re: Commuting Kills

#37

Post by OrwellianChild »

rayiner wrote: post #18

The article argues for telecommuting to reduce commutes. I think a far less radical approach would be to open multiple offices and put teams in more affordable secondary cities. Modern technology has made it pretty easy to spread your organization across multiple offices. I work at an organization of less than 35 people that has offices in three cities. Outsourcing IT/HR/building administration makes it pretty low-co…

For startups and new business, assuming you can draw talent, I can see this approach working... You also hear about this happening in Google Fiber cities, etc. Relocating people is a lot harder than relocating/decentralizing place-of-work, and making people go "rural" or "suburban" might not sell well for folks who are already city dwellers (i.e. the majority of the talent pool).

Re: Commuting Kills

#38

Post by rayiner »

munificent wrote: post #22
rayiner wrote: post #18

The article argues for telecommuting to reduce commutes. I think a far less radical approach would be to open multiple offices and put teams in more affordable secondary cities. Modern technology has made it pretty easy to spread your organization across multiple offices. I work at an organization of less than 35 people that has offices in three cities. Outsourcing IT/HR/building administration makes it pretty low-co…

That works OK, but it increases the costs of reorganizing teams and projects. If your project structure changes frequently, it really helps if that just involves moving people from one room to another and not having to tell them to find a new home.

I guess that depends on what you think the value-add is of offices versus remote working.

In our organization, the value-add is forcing everyone to be on the same work schedule, promulgating organizational culture, giving managers an idea of peoples' workload so they can load-balance, and meeting the need of people to socialize. We cross-staff on a per-matter basis, and we'll generally conduct inter-team communication over email and phone whether even when the team is within a few doors of each other. Email is efficient and asynchronous. We get together in person at milestone events, where, e.g., the whole team will fly in and take over a conference room for a day or two to prepare for a big upcoming event.

If you think the value-add of offices is facilitating informal, day-to-day inter-team communication, than obviously having people in different offices makes reorganization harder. And admittedly, its been years since I was on a software team. That said, even at that time, I found people dropping by my cube, instead of emailing, to ask a question about an API I restructured to be annoying rather than productive. It's PIO instead of DMA--a waste of clock cycles.

YMMV.

Re: Commuting Kills

#39

Post by jschwartzi »

ygrechuk wrote: post #16
dupe576 wrote: post #4

That's why I think everyone should bike to work if possible. It has little to no environmental impact and a positive health impact. And because you are killing two birds with one stone by exercising during your commute, you really aren't wasting any time.

Yeah, that's great, but here in NYC it's either freezing or hazy-humid for 2/3 of the year. Oh yeah, and my commute would be about 2.5 hrs each way, according to Google Maps.

Google maps is not very good at plotting bike routes or at knowing which streets are truly bike-appropriate. I frequently have to adjust any bicycle travel directions I get from them because they list a lot of busy 45 MPH roads with sidewalks as "bicycle friendly." This is in contrast to the multitude of slow residential streets that run to either side of the selected road. In fact, I've had Google Maps recommend that I bicycle downhill on a 50 MPH road because there was a sidewalk on one side. I was able to find a much slower, shallower grade about a mile south of where they wanted to take me.

It's awesome if you're in a car though.

Re: Commuting Kills

#40

Post by habosa »

frequent wrote: post #15

I started to walk to work more than a year ago (5km one way, about 45mins). Makes a world of a difference, as it gives me more or less two hours of exercise per day, time to get my mind on/off of work, call family/friends and other stuff. Bottom line for me - it's less the time spent commuting, than whether you can spend it in a useful way.

I agree completely. I take the shuttle from SF to Mountain View every day (I work at Google). It's about 70m door to door each way. For the first 6 months of work I was miserable, 70 minutes is way more time than I wanted to check my RSS and Email so I was bored. Boredom kept my mind on the commute, and thinking about the time made me angry.

I decided to use the time to read books as a new years resolution. Having at least 2h a day, 5 days a week to read books has made me fly through books faster than any other time in my life. I've already read 21 books since January and I actually look forward to my reading time now! I think if I had this time at home I would not be using it so peacefully/productively, I'd probably waste it on Netflix.

That said, 70m each way is more than I need. I think 30m each way would be the ideal balance of forced mind-clearing and reasonable work-life balance.

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