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Why Do We Still Commute?

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Re: Why Do We Still Commute?

#291

Post by cortesoft »

guelo wrote: post #286
moxious wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is it that the business is pushing the costs off? If you have a job, you're selling your labor. The commute is part of what you have to do to get your goods to market. Are you, as a purchaser of bananas, "pushing off the costs of transport" on to the seller? That seems silly considering the transporter prices that into the bananas, just like workers can price in longer commutes. Don't accept less money to travel…

If a workplace needs bananas then they have to pay for shipping to get it into the office. Labor is the only workplace input that walks in the door for free. I think a fairer deal would be if commute time counted against the typical 8 hours of work. That way everybody's interests would align around having short commute times.

I think most workers factor in the commute when they are looking for and choosing a job (I know I do). Now, we can argue that workers undervalue the time and money they spend commuting, but it is still not 'free' for the employer.

Also, not all of the commute cost is the fault of the employer. For example, my commute is a lot shorter than many of my coworkers, because I place more importance on a short commute than a cheaper, bigger house further away. My coworkers value having a bigger house more, so they live where the housing is cheaper but the commute longer.

How would your price this in? Would the people who commute further get to work shorter hours, just because I chose to sacrifice for a closer commute?

Re: Why Do We Still Commute?

#292

Post by throwaway7645 »

Symbiote wrote: post #240
throwaway7645 wrote: post #73

Blown away by how many people on here can walk to work. If you live in the South, most of our cities just aren't built that way. Most people have a 1/2 hour commute morning and night. Living downtown usually means ancient houses in an area I wouldn't consider very safe. Suburbs are terrible in other ways though.

The article was posted during the middle of the European working day.

Good point, thank you!

Re: Why Do We Still Commute?

#293

Post by s73ver_ »

wolco wrote: post #289
wpietri wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Excellent points. One further thought: > if you have personal discipline, good co-workers, and great leadership I agree this is true, and have seen a couple of high-functioning distributed teams. But a question for me: if we have those things, do we want to spend them on working from home? Personally, I'd rather have a modest commute and spend our discipline and leadership points on solving a problem in the world.

If you removed that perk those high functioning team members may not be able to produce at the same level at the office. Those leadership points may not go as far because you have to deal with a host of other issues. There are less sexual assaults and unwanted touching in purely remote teams. Less conflicts with culture, race and gender. Issues like Jim's lunch smells and is making Jan sick or Bob talk too loudly to…

I feel the first few issues can be greatly alleviated by simply taking those issues seriously, making it known that kind of behavior simply isn't tolerated, and following through if those things ever come up. That last one is the key, there. I don't know any workplace that doesn't say they take those things seriously, but actions speak louder than words, and if you're not prepared to terminate people who behave in that manner, then you're not taking it seriously.

Re: Why Do We Still Commute?

#294

Post by wolco »

gozur88 wrote: post #277
FullMtlAlcoholc wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

? Hourly workers who live further away dont get paid more.

In effect they do, because nobody would commute if there were a job that paid as much closer to home.

It is not true or everyone's pay would go up or down if they moved locations.

Re: Why Do We Still Commute?

#295

Post by sh87 »

chrxr wrote: post #271
sh87 wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can vouch for that statement. A daily standup that exceeds 30 mins, a grooming and planning meeting that extends all 8 hours of a day in a sprint with unclear stories, surprise bug triage meetings ranging between 30 mins to 2 hrs, meetings where I cant possibly contribute, updating user stories with questions about the story, convincing people on why we shouldn’t be working on backend and ui without well defined co…

It seems like you are highlighting business process / management problems rather than workspace problem. In my experience web conferences / hangouts overrun just as often as physical meetings. Are you suggesting that these meetings just wouldn't happen if people were not in the office, or that they would somehow be more efficient? If the latter, how might this be the case?

I am presenting instances of non productive rituals/tasks that constantly eat up my working hours. Working remotely allows me to mentally disconnect from such meetings and partially get mundane work tasks done e.g. reports, running testcases, emails to other teams, fix minor bugs, etc. which i constantly fail at when in a room with other physical people. Kinda sucks when i describe it that way but true.

Re: Why Do We Still Commute?

#296

Post by s73ver_ »

pascalxus wrote: post #270
imgabe wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It's a good idea in principle, but... Also, you have to remember, in places like the bay area, you can't just pick up and move closer to work. People have enormous incentives to never move: Proposition 13 means you get 5 times lower property taxes by staying put. Not to mention the enormous imbalance between housing and jobs. All the jobs are on the peninnsula and all the housing is in the east bay. All these problem…

And yet, we keep hearing about a shortage of developers.

Re: Why Do We Still Commute?

#297

Post by wolco »

bluGill wrote: post #202
dasmoth wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm going to disagree here. It's entirely possible to work effectively with others via mostly-asynchronous communication. Open source projects, as you point out, can be a pretty good example of this. I'd further argue that for some (I suspect many...) people work much better when they can have long stints of focus without fear of interruptions. Two-minute responses on Slack absolutely is a model that can work, and pe…

Open source projects work that way because we have to, not because we want to. Large projects have semi-regular meetups/sprints where they can all get together face to face. Small one muddle through and try to prevent the problems not meeting face to face causes.

Large open source projects may meet other members at conferences but rarely do you find a situation where everyone can be in the same location/country at the same time.

Re: Why Do We Still Commute?

#298

Post by s73ver_ »

gozur88 wrote: post #277
FullMtlAlcoholc wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

? Hourly workers who live further away dont get paid more.

In effect they do, because nobody would commute if there were a job that paid as much closer to home.

I don't really think you can say that. Labor is not a perfect market.

Re: Why Do We Still Commute?

#299

Post by wolco »

ryandrake wrote: post #217
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…

I think you're on to one of the major points. It would be great if companies could run entirely on asynchronous communication. Companies who do this well, and job functions that jive with asynchronous communication, can more easily support remote work. At some companies and with some jobs though, it's totally impossible. When Mr. Exec wants a status update, and he wants it RIGHT FUCKING NOW. I'm not going to E-mail y…

You can respond quicker in a remote setting because you are always connected. Good luck finding me at the office in two minutes.

Re: Why Do We Still Commute?

#300

Post by socalnate1 »

rwmj wrote: post #284
savanaly wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>We commute because businesses can push off the cost of commuting to their employees. This is a severe misunderstanding of the economics of the situation. Employees know that they're going to be spending time commuting, and they take that into account when they decide whether to take a job. In more academic terms-- that information is already informing the labor supply curve of which each individual is a part, and th…

The GP's point is that it's an externality for the company, and therefore they have no incentive to reduce the cost of commuting.

But this is wrong. It's not an externality for the company. Companies often often go out of their way to reduce this cost. Things like:

- Covering the cost of a FastPass

- Deciding where to locate a new office based on where employees live

- Offering a company shuttle from a train station

- "Google Bus" and other similar initiatives

- Offering a potential employee a higher salary because of their long commute time

These things happen all the time, and all bring a portion of the commute cost into the company.

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