Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why Do We Still Commute?

citylab.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

331–340 of 400 posts

Re: Why Do We Still Commute?

#331

Post by imgabe »

maxsilver wrote: post #163
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…

> 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. I don't know. I worry that would immediately become a major form of discrimination -- it would inherently put anyone who was poor/middle-class or anyone with any sort of family/children at a huge employment disadvantage. L…

There's only so many hyper-wealthy people living close to cities. They already have jobs or have enough money that they don't need jobs. I don't think it's going to be feasible for any company to staff themselves with only hyper-wealthy people.

Re: Why Do We Still Commute?

#332

Post by s73ver_ »

gozur88 wrote: post #329
s73ver_ wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It's close enough over large groups of people. On average you're going to make more money doing the same thing in SF, for example, than you would in the East Bay.

I wouldn't be comfortable agreeing to that statement.

Re: Why Do We Still Commute?

#333

Post by happypanda »

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've been working from home for 6 years and am currently looking for a job I can commute to. I am productive at home but I miss the camaraderie that an office setting provides. Human interaction is important to me and it took 6 years of working from home, feeling isolated, to figure that out.

Re: Why Do We Still Commute?

#334

Post by sytse »

keganunderwood wrote: post #3
fwsgonzo wrote: post #2

I work from home as much as I can, but nothing trumps seeing your colleagues face to face. Text can also cause misunderstandings, and apparently no one likes video, at least in my company. I don't like video much either, though.

We could still work from home and have time where we meet our coworkers? I read somewhere that gitlab is trying out something like this. I'd love to learn wrist they conclude from this experience.

It is working really well for us! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e56PbkJdmZ8 is a good introduction video

Re: Why Do We Still Commute?

#335

Post by SNIPERBABY »

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 hate the commute as well! What a waste of life!

Re: Why Do We Still Commute?

#336

Post by notyourday »

FullMtlAlcoholc wrote: post #259
BeetleB wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>And that they probably are also not afraid to use that 'full bandwidth', disrupting everyone workflow, repeatedly, like calling an hour long team status update meeting for a communication that could have perfectly occurred in a 2 line email message. To be frank, people using IM to communicate with me disrupt my flow a lot more. They start a thread/conversation/request, and then are slow to respond, or disappear. You…

>They start a thread/conversation/request, and then are slow to respond, or disappear. That's the primary benefit of qorking remotely IMO. Not having to immediately stop everything im doing allows me to stay in flow state. It also improves the quality of my responses and solutions since i can let the request percolate in my head. Usually, I come up better answers when Im not actively thinking

And that's exactly why managers aren't interested in people working remotely.

Good managers ask when they actually need something and they expect those working for them to accommodate such requests immediately. That is why, after all, they are managers.

Re: Why Do We Still Commute?

#337

Post by EliRivers »

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…

My other half works in Singapore inspecting and certifying and maintaining ship hulls, and she pretty much has to go to the ship to do it. It seems kind of harsh to call that a bullshit job because she can't do it in the living room.

I can think of an awful lot more jobs that are pretty well defined but nonetheless can't be done in someone's living room.

Re: Why Do We Still Commute?

#338

Post by crdoconnor »

bluGill wrote: post #319
crdoconnor wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does a boss who does not know how to do your job assess your performance? Without intimate knowledge of the tasks you do they have no idea of what you are asked to do is intrinsically hard or you are simply doing it badly.

It doesn't matter. What matters is success. A good developer will be more successful in the marginal projects, and cheaper in the very worthwhile projects, but that is just a matter of dollars on the bottom line. The best developer in the world cannot save a stupid idea. The worst developers just ups how insanely profitable, and how long he need to wait a project must be before it is successful. The above assumes a s…

>If you have a team of developers it quickly becomes obvious. In fact a boss who knows nothing about programming is probably better able to judge if someone is doing a poor job in these cases

I've been on such teams and that isn't what happens. This is:

* Team mates do not like badmouthing their coworkers unless they do not like them. Hence, if a coworker complains about another coworkers' performance its as likely to be due to a personal problem as it is performance. Most coworkers also won't know each others' wages so they are in an even poorer position to judge relative performance.

* Managers without technical chops are incapable of distinguishing hard tasks from tasks that are being done badly or easy tasks and tasks that are being done well. They are incapable of distinguishing quality engineering from hackjobs that will blow up in 6 months. They will either default to just assuming every developer is more or less equally productive or use terrible proxies for productivity (like how late each developer stays at work or their scrum 'velocity').

* Good performers who do not have their achievements recognized will leave for better paid positions, leaving mediocre and poor developers. The quality of the product takes a dive. Profitability may also take a dive as a result if the industry is competitive and the quality of the software matters.

Re: Why Do We Still Commute?

#339

Post by posterboy »

stronglikedan wrote: post #310
wambotron wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Easy to procrastinate, easy to give false reports which then leads to regular overwork in the days just before a hard deadline. This isn't a remote problem. I see this _all_ the time with people at work now and I don't work remotely. This is more of a personal issue -- some people do it consistently, others don't. I never had that problem working remotely, and I don't pretend to be somewhere else in my regular repo…

Just my personal anecdote, but I have much more discipline in the office than I do at home. I get distracted by everything at home, and I procrastinate by doing things I couldn't do at work, like housework, watching tv, etc. I know myself enough to know that I cannot trust myself to work at home on a regular basis, and I'm more content with myself regarding my productivity at the office.

So, you are analog to a wild animal domesticated at the work place.

Re: Why Do We Still Commute?

#340

Post by poslathian »

mbrock wrote: post #152

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 inst…

Last years econ nobel prize winner pioneered research into this question. https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/economic-sciences/la...
Post reply on HN