221–230 of 302 posts
Many of these cities are still using infrastructure from 60+ years ago that may have been sufficient back then, but now are woefully inadequate with populations many multiples larger.
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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.
Are you trying to buy, rent, or no preference? Do you have a family? Do you need public schools? Do you want a yard or are you OK with condos? What price range are you thinking? I've in Mass my whole life, I'll try and give advice.
My larger point is I used to live in the 4th largest city in the US and could afford a relatively new, relatively nice house for a pittance, a short distance from my office. I could spend more or less for a better school district, or use the savings for a private school.
Boston and SF seem happy saying "Good schools, affordable house, hellish commute - choose 2" to their residents.
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…
This was why I never got that much value out of being in Silicon Valley beyond my day job. So much of the hot new startup activity was in SF. I lived and worked in the South Bay. While I'd have liked to attend some tech talks in SF, it was not practical for me to leave work early to get there on time, and then figure out how to get back.
Let’s just get a few things straight regarding remote work: * Your job is not to “write code” no matter how much you wish it was that simple. Your job is to provide value for your company. * You provide much more value for your company when you’re available in-person than when you’re remote. You provide value to your coworkers who can communicate to you easily, effectively, and timely. * it’s much easier for your man…
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Yes, but I would put housing density above mass transit in efficacy.
I think many of the people making these huge commutes don't want dense housing, they want a big house with a yard and a garage.
Now that we have established you can't have it all, what compromise are you willing to live with? I know people who love their horses enough that they give up everything else to get the room for their horses. I know people who like night life enough that they give up horses so they can get that.
When thinking about compromise, remember that adding density can change the personal calculation. Right now density is expensive - my horse friends pay less for their housing - including the barn - than a much smaller living space in New York would cost. (care for the horses costs more than the night life in NYC) If you can bring the cost of density down it is fair to wonder who would give up the horse lifestyle for the things you could get with density.
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.
All I have is questions, but, could you imagine what % of workers can possibly achieve the optimal career path without noticeably impeding others? At what point does it become unreasonably competitive to align housing, work and family situations for everyone?
This is increasingly common in the Boston area as well. Cambridge/MIT is a massive biotech hub, meanwhile we have huge companies with many large offices in the downtown or in surrounding suburbs. Many workers live in RI, NH, or Central Mass, and getting to work for 9 am consistently will involve leaving at 730 for many, many workers due to congestion, construction, and the god-awful mess that is Boston infrastructure…
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This was why I never got that much value out of being in Silicon Valley beyond my day job. So much of the hot new startup activity was in SF. I lived and worked in the South Bay. While I'd have liked to attend some tech talks in SF, it was not practical for me to leave work early to get there on time, and then figure out how to get back.
Oakland offers a relatively short commute into SF, and it's affordable by west coast standards.
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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 dev…
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>yes, but by train, where you can actually accomplish a lot of things you cannot accomplish while driving. Most of the road warriors drive. Only a lucky minority live near where the trains run.
granted im working with a small sample size, but i live in NYC and everyone know that commutes in, and i mean everyone, drives to a train station and takes a train it, parking in midtown as high as 600/month, it makes no sense to actually compute it.
Those suburban people drove or took a NJ Transit bus because trains were not available. Some even formed neighborhood van pools, kicking in to rent a van and pay for insurance and parking.
But the fact that there are vastly more bus routes going into and out of the city is pretty firm evidence that roads are more comprehensive than rails.