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Why Do We Still Commute?

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Re: Why Do We Still Commute?

#151

Post by swat535 »

codingdave wrote: post #81

I worked from home for five years, and just this week started back into a job where I commute to an office. I don't love the commute, but I also don't agree that working from home is a universally better answer for me on a personal level. Everyone knows the benefits of working from home, but there are downsides as well. Fixable downsides, but they exist nonetheless -- it is easy to become a hermit. Easy to over-work.…

I too have both in office and remote and I agree with all your points regarding working from home.

However I must confess that the downsides of working from the office majority outweighs the other.

I can no longer focus. I am constantly pulled into meetings. I have 120 minutes of commute everyday.

When I get home I am too tired and can no longer spend quality time with my partner like I did when I was working from home. And above all my sleeping schedule has to fit the 9-5 schedule and it is very hard to adjust.

I also have to deal with the heavy Canadian storms during winter.

In the future I'm choosing remote work at a heartbeat and might even consider a salary cut to get it.

YMMV.

Re: Why Do We Still Commute?

#152

Post by mbrock »

Seems to me that this has a pretty intimate relation to the question of the "nature of the firm."

Why do we work in firms rather than as independent contractors making contracts with each other?

Why do we gather in rooms every day instead of working independently and emailing each other with low frequency asynchronous requests?

I don't really understand firms, to be honest...

I suspect it has way more to do with instinctual tribalism than any other rationalization.

Re: Why Do We Still Commute?

#153

Post by sokoloff »

ataturk wrote: post #123
twoquestions wrote: post #98

We commute because businesses can push off the cost of commuting to their employees. I'd personally be in favor of a "congestion tax" or somesuch for companies that force their employees to come in rather than work remotely. Commuting takes up energy and resources, and the congestion incurs costs on third parties (car accidents, higher gas prices, and the like). While it's debatable whether remote works for businesse…

Something has to happen--my commute is only 11 miles but it often takes 40 minutes because of a stupid bridge that has had every social engineering plot applied to it to no avail (HOV lanes with pay-to-use transponders being the latest fashion and cops to enforce the rules slowing everyone else down). My career has suffered because I have never wanted the stress of a long commute nor could I afford the real estate pr…

Not being effective enough is what puts you at risk of being dispensable.

Being remote might contribute to, or increase the risk of, not being effective, but it's not the most proximate cause.

Re: Why Do We Still Commute?

#154

Post by CNJ7654 »

I would never give up commuting for remote work to be honest. Having a clear, single place where you 'work' is important. When you leave work, it can leave your mind completely until you come back. There's no finishing something up in the home office after dinner, no work calls or texts or emails. You just go home and relax.

Re: Why Do We Still Commute?

#155

Post by scaryclam »

coldtea wrote: post #99
sidlls wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

None of the ones I've ever seen or used comes close to even approximating the in-person whiteboard experience.

Not even sure what that means. They let you write stuff (even with a pen, on a touch capable display) and have others see what you write (and even write/erase themselves). What else is missing? Standing in person before an actual whiteboard? Smelling the marker's ink? Maybe with the advent of cheap VR and smell-o-vision we'll get that too.

The writing part isn't really the main benefit of whiteboarding. Standing there, pointing at things and chatting about it is a really big part. Then there's the physical size. Quite often I find it much nicer to stand in front of a board and draw on a large scale. The current attempts at remote whiteboards are really not suitable replacements.

VR would a giant help as body language, gesturing and physical size all become much easier to see. Of course, that would require quite a leap forward in VR to accomplish that level of avatar.

Re: Why Do We Still Commute?

#156

Post by j_s »

ptero wrote: post #129
ransom1538 wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Working remotely requires the participants to be much more communicative because in such a setting communication for the most part doesn't just happen serendipitously, you have to work to make it happen. " Yes. Having managed remote teams and being a remote dev, it's all about response time . If someone slacks you, the response should be as quick as if it were verbal in the office. If it takes 2 hours to get a respo…

> If someone slacks you, the response should be as quick as if it were verbal in the office While this can work for some people, such "interruptible anytime" mentality may not be good for many workers. For example, when I am most productive I need to minimize, and ideally eliminate, disruptions. Such periods are short (2 hours at most for me), but I could do 90% of day's technical work in those 2 hours. If someone wa…

Schedule some time, maybe call it a meeting on your work-wide-visible calendar.

Re: Why Do We Still Commute?

#157

Post by ataturk »

bartedinburgh wrote: post #50

I think it's connected with the rise of bullshit jobs. If your job is well defined, e.g. make an app or a website design, you can do it anywhere in the world. The app/design is your deliverable that anyone can see and judge. If your job is a poorly defined "management" or "product ownership", with no real deliverable, how can your work be judged? Your job turns into convincing other people that your job is useful. Wo…

Somewhat true, but the kind of work my team does is complex coding around business requirements and it ends up taking two or three of us putting our collective heads together to work out solutions to problems. Looking at previous coding jobs I had, none were quite as complex, so YMMV.

Re: Why Do We Still Commute?

#158

Post by leereeves »

imgabe wrote: post #107
twoquestions wrote: post #98

We commute because businesses can push off the cost of commuting to their employees. I'd personally be in favor of a "congestion tax" or somesuch for companies that force their employees to come in rather than work remotely. Commuting takes up energy and resources, and the congestion incurs costs on third parties (car accidents, higher gas prices, and the like). While it's debatable whether remote works for businesse…

I've thought about this in the past. What if companies had to pay for the time you spend commuting? They'd have an incentive to hire people as close as possible, and support local policies that make it easier to live closer to work. On the other hand, employees would have an incentive to try to stretch out their commute as much as possible, to get extra pay for time "not working". I don't know how rampant that would…

Interesting idea.

Regarding the second point: Employees always have an incentive to try to stretch out their tasks, so employers already know how to minimize that behavior. If employers paid for commuting, commuting would be managed like other tasks.

Re: Why Do We Still Commute?

#159

Post by j_s »

marksellers wrote: post #124
ransom1538 wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Working remotely requires the participants to be much more communicative because in such a setting communication for the most part doesn't just happen serendipitously, you have to work to make it happen. " Yes. Having managed remote teams and being a remote dev, it's all about response time . If someone slacks you, the response should be as quick as if it were verbal in the office. If it takes 2 hours to get a respo…

Now if only people would stop using `@here` for every little thing, it'd be easier to separate "blue" notifications from "red" and Slack would actually be the perfect model of async communication. I could prioritize whether to pull myself from my current task to look or not. Doesn't work when people just write "@here, making nachoes" all day. `@here` should really be yellow. Only direct communications red. Or somethi…

Discord has a bunch of extra filtering built-in for their equivalent.

Re: Why Do We Still Commute?

#160

Post by j_s »

Some (especially those responsible for [young] children) semi-jokingly refer to returning to the office as their vacation from home life.
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