90-minute ‘super commutes’ more common as Bay Area housing shortage intensifies • Hacker News Board

Re: 90-minute ‘super commutes’ more common as Bay Area housing shortage intensifies

#211

Post by replicatorblog » Wed, Apr 25, 2018, 6:44 PM UTC

ducster696 wrote: post #30

seibelj wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, this is because you chose to live extremely far away! There are plenty of places in Massachusetts that are closer and affordable, with decent schools. Every employee I've had who commuted from NH to Boston wound up pretty miserable because of the commute.

There aren't that many places left out there between NH and Boston that are on the affordable scale. Do you have a couple towns in mind that are fairly affordable still? I have been looking in the suburbs of Boston and when I switched it up to look at Southern NH it was crazy the changes in prices as well as how long the houses have been on the market.

Depends a lot on your definition of affordable. Assuming a budget of $500K, a desire for 3-bedroom+, a commute to Boston/Cambridge, and access to a strong school system, these are the towns I'd consider:

+ Acton: there are a couple dozen 1,500 sqft. split levels that come on the market per year. Good commuter rail access to the red line. Top 20 state school system.

+ Andover/Burlington/Frankling are all top 50 school districts, have a limited selction of affordable, though mostly much older houses. You're still looking at an hour to boston, but if you want to work at Oracle, iRobot, Philips, etc. you'll be right there.

+ Westford: You'll find a decent stock of older 1,000-1,500 sqft. places. Top 20 state school system. Horrible commute into Boston proper, but not bad if you work on the 95/128 belt.

Medford and Malden are gentrifying, the former more quickly than the latter, but you're making a pretty big trade-off in terms of school quality.

If your office is walking distance to South Station, or North Station, there are some farther flung suburbs with commuter rail access that would be workable. E.g. Newburyport has a cool seaside vibe and a commuter train into the heart of the city, though you're looking at an over an hour of travel time.

Southern NH is iffy. Windham is the main town for families, has reasonable prices and houses go very quickly in terms of sales. Salem, Hampstead, Pelham, Derry, Londonderry, not so much. You could theoretically commute from Nashua, but that seems insane to me.

If you can afford something in the $750K range you'll find ok townhouses in hip cities like Somerville and Arlington. That sum will get your foot in the door of a fixer-upper in tonier towns like Winchester and Lexington.

As you might be able to guess, I'm in the market as well, so if you've got any advice on hidden gems of towns, I'm all ears :)

Re: 90-minute ‘super commutes’ more common as Bay Area housing shortage intensifies

#212

Post by nathan_long » Wed, Apr 25, 2018, 6:47 PM UTC

kolpa wrote: post #119

nathan_long wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I feel sorry for people whose jobs actually require them to go somewhere, and who are stuck in traffic behind a thousand nerds whose jobs arbitrarily demand a commute, and who have to compete with those highly-paid nerds to buy a house.

> whose jobs actually require them to go somewhere This jobs exist where they are because the "nerds" work there. They could choose not to work at those nerd-service jobs (forcing nerds to buy there food closer to home) or form a union to demand higher pay, or organize and build housing there. Also, "nerd" is unhelpful trash talking.

> This jobs exist where they are because the "nerds" work there.

Right. And here's one nerd who goes to lunch a couple times a week in a not-huge town far from the Bay area, supporting the ability of restaurant managers to not live there, either.

> Also, "nerd" is unhelpful trash talking.

I meant it to be humorous but not derogatory. I'm a programmer.

Re: 90-minute ‘super commutes’ more common as Bay Area housing shortage intensifies

#213

Post by eloff » Wed, Apr 25, 2018, 6:48 PM UTC

sushisource wrote: post #175

eloff wrote: post #117

If you're doing this, your almost certainly choosing a suboptimal career path. I think most of the times you could optimize your job and location and come out ahead economically. That's not the only consideration, but it's tough to imagine the 90 minute commute winning on quality of life factors.

Yeah, that's one of the pieces that's never made sense to me. Like the woman in the article. There really isn't a closer Red Lobster or similar restaurant you could work at?

It amazes me how people get comfortable in a rut and just stay there. I think we're averse to change by nature, but that attitude does us no favors.

Re: 90-minute ‘super commutes’ more common as Bay Area housing shortage intensifies

#214

Post by sampo » Wed, Apr 25, 2018, 6:49 PM UTC

dionidium wrote: post #197

sampo wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it'll only stop when everyone says enough is enough and leaves Or, alternatively, when enough people start voting in politicians who would allow building lots of new homes in central locations. Manhattan has 3.9× the density of San Francisco. At Manhattan density, the City of San Francisco could house 2.5 million more people.

To forestall responses decrying "Manhattanization," remember that every borough of New York City (except Staten Island) has a higher population density than San Francisco. San Francisco could add a couple hundred thousand people if just got as dense as Queens. At Brooklyn's density, the population would double.

Also building like Paris (France) or Barcelona (Spain) would add 1.7 or 1.1 million people to San Francisco.

Paris: 2.9× density, Barcelona: 2.2×.

Re: 90-minute ‘super commutes’ more common as Bay Area housing shortage intensifies

#215

Post by jasode » Wed, Apr 25, 2018, 6:50 PM UTC

raverbashing wrote: post #201

jasode wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Then maybe everyone creating textual output for a living wouldn't have to transport their physical body to an office. Remote work hasn't taken off on a large scale because massively successful multi-billion dollar companies like Google/Facebook/Amazon/Apple/SpaceX were not built with remote workers . You get (relatively) minor companies touting it such as Automattic and Basecamp. Those smaller businesses haven't ach…

Red Hat and Canonical have achieved great success with a lot of remote workers. Heck pretty much the entirety of Linux and its ecosystem is remote. All I hear is excuses and lack of willingness to work remotely, coped with lack of experience on how to make it work. From all sides. The secret is following the procedure and working remotely even if the person is sitting next to you. (I don't mean get into a video chat…

>Heck pretty much the entirety of Linux and its ecosystem is remote.

I'm a full 100% remote worker and I would never bring up "Linux development" as evidence for businesses to adopt remote work. If remote work evangelists want to argue for the benefits of work-from-home, please do not use Linux as an example because it undermines credible business thinking. As I've said before[1] and paste again here:

Open source development as "obvious" proof of remote work superiority is often brought up but proponents don't realize they aren't the same. E.g. open source project like Linux kernel where volunteers choose what they want to work on, with little or zero effects on careers for missing deadlines has different dynamics than businesses.

If we want to convince businesses to adopt remote work, the Linux kernel is not a relevant example. Businesses have:

1) finite budget

2) deadlines

3) pressure to innovate for marketplace acceptance or go bankrupt

We need a better explanation for why business-related success of Google Pagerank/Bigtable, Apple iPhone, Facebook, etc comes more from teams in the office rather than remote workers on Skype. The Linux project -- even though it is "successful" -- is not that explanation.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15047805

Re: 90-minute ‘super commutes’ more common as Bay Area housing shortage intensifies

#216

Post by irrational » Wed, Apr 25, 2018, 6:50 PM UTC

jarjoura wrote: post #36

spyspy wrote: post #16

The sad fact is that long as people are willing to put up with this nothing is going to change. The crazy rents and terrible commutes sound insane to anyone living elsewhere but people are continuously more than happy to continue doing them to work at companies that haven't been priced out yet either. It's not an issue of social mobility either, since people living in the bay area are some of the most socially mobile…

Very few places on the planet are as temperate and offer so many options to escape into nature as the Bay Area. I agree that something has to change, but trying to convince people that the only answer is to move away is a non-starter for the majority of the population, especially those who want to live here.

I don't know. I've lived all over the country from the east to the west from the north to the south and the midwest and I've found that every area has things to recommend it.

Re: 90-minute ‘super commutes’ more common as Bay Area housing shortage intensifies

#217

Post by Steltek » Wed, Apr 25, 2018, 6:50 PM UTC

replicatorblog wrote: post #89

seibelj wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, this is because you chose to live extremely far away! There are plenty of places in Massachusetts that are closer and affordable, with decent schools. Every employee I've had who commuted from NH to Boston wound up pretty miserable because of the commute.

Serious question, what towns would you recommend. I don't deny I'm making a consumer choice, and said so in my comment. When I lived in Houston, I lived in a beautiful flat, a 20 minute walk from my office, and did so making the equivalent of $18/hr. I can't think of many places that'd be possible in the Boston area.

Well, a walking commute like that is probably not going to happen in Boston without tradeoffs. I think extremely few people are lucky enough to have a commute like that in the US. That said, Cambridge has a the highest percentage of "pedestrian" commuters in the country.

Anyway, off the top of my head: Medford, Quincy, Braintree. Schools might not knock it out of the park like Lexington but they're not crap either. A decent MA school is better than a lot of "good" schools in other states. However, a "tiny" house is in the eye of the beholder. I'd consider 1500sqft pretty decent whereas some people would want 2000+ with an attached garage, which is incongruent with urban living. The "real T" access alleviates a lot of commute woes; T delays are blown out of proportion compared to the daily car-crash-induced traffic jam.

Re: 90-minute ‘super commutes’ more common as Bay Area housing shortage intensifies

#218

Post by acdha » Wed, Apr 25, 2018, 6:50 PM UTC

GuiA wrote: post #50

nathan_long wrote: post #18

Oh, tech companies. If only there were a way to have conversations about, create, and transmit computer programs using some kind of long-distance network. Maybe we could break the data up into "packets". Just thinking out loud here. Then maybe everyone creating textual output for a living wouldn't have to transport their physical body to an office. We can dream.

The article interviews a restaurant manager and a construction site superintendent. Non tech workers are significantly more affected than tech workers, because they cannot afford to live closer to their place of employment, and do not have access to the perks (work from home, shuttles, etc.) that tech workers have.

Yes - one of the biggest perks simply being more flexible hours. If you show up 15 minutes late there are penalties in many jobs but the average tech worker won’t even notice unless they’re late for an important meeting or the on-duty admin when something breaks.

Re: 90-minute ‘super commutes’ more common as Bay Area housing shortage intensifies

#219

Post by majewsky » Wed, Apr 25, 2018, 6:50 PM UTC

reaperducer wrote: post #110

rhacker wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Once there are unlimited remote jobs, the theory is they can live next door to the restaurant and construction site again. At least over the long term. In the meantime - that is playing out in smaller towns where remote employees are living.

>the theory is they can live next door to the restaurant and construction site Yes, because construction sites remain under construction for 10-20 years. /s Not everyone wants to find a new home every month.

> Yes, because construction sites remain under construction for 10-20 years.

We're getting there.

Re: 90-minute ‘super commutes’ more common as Bay Area housing shortage intensifies

#220

Post by ghaff » Wed, Apr 25, 2018, 6:51 PM UTC

jacobkg wrote: post #3

I commuted 90 minutes each way for a year (120 miles round trip) in SoCal. The time spent driving wasn't that bad; I spent that time listening to books on Audible. The problem was everything else that had to give because I was spending that time driving. I couldn't cook dinner or spend much time with friends. It was tough to stay after work or develop friendships with coworkers because we were so geographically separ…

I was between 1 and 1.5 hours for about 18 months once. It wasn't too bad as I only ended up going in maybe half the time between working from home and travel and being able to take the train if I wanted. The fact that I was working in the city for the first time took some edge off too, especially in the summer.

But I wouldn't have wanted to do it long-term. As you say, it's just too big a chunk out of the day.