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

Commuting Kills

wordfence.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 70 posts

Re: Commuting Kills

#21

Post by upofadown »

douche wrote: post #6
dupe576 wrote: post #4

That's why I think everyone should bike to work if possible. It has little to no environmental impact and a positive health impact. And because you are killing two birds with one stone by exercising during your commute, you really aren't wasting any time.

Unfortunately, where I'm at, four or five months out of the year, it's below freezing and even if you could brave the cold, you'd be taking your life in your hands with the narrowed roads, drivers that cannot navigate snowy/icy conditions, and snowplows.

Fortunately more than one transportation mode exists. When I used to bike commute in Winnipeg I would just take the bus in the winter (4-5 months).

Also, fortunately, few people live in such extreme climates as us.

Re: Commuting Kills

#22

Post by munificent »

rayiner wrote: post #18

The article argues for telecommuting to reduce commutes. I think a far less radical approach would be to open multiple offices and put teams in more affordable secondary cities. Modern technology has made it pretty easy to spread your organization across multiple offices. I work at an organization of less than 35 people that has offices in three cities. Outsourcing IT/HR/building administration makes it pretty low-co…

That works OK, but it increases the costs of reorganizing teams and projects. If your project structure changes frequently, it really helps if that just involves moving people from one room to another and not having to tell them to find a new home.

Re: Commuting Kills

#23

Post by davidw »

dupe576 wrote: post #4

That's why I think everyone should bike to work if possible. It has little to no environmental impact and a positive health impact. And because you are killing two birds with one stone by exercising during your commute, you really aren't wasting any time.

I'm super happy with how our move back to the US has worked out: I'm working at a good company, and I ride about 15 minutes each way back and forth from work on my bike.

http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2011/04/18/get-rich-with-bike... - some of the benefits of bicycling.

Re: Commuting Kills

#24

Post by chuckcode »

trjordan wrote: post #8

"...strong, rational and tangible reasons why an employee needs to be based on-site, rather than intangibles like culture, narrative or norms." What. This sentiment is exactly what's wrong with trying to push for more remote work. I don't think we have the tools, either technical or managerial, to build fully-remote companies that are as effective as in-person companies. There are niches where this is true, but they'…

I would love to see better tools to help people collaborate remotely, or even just from a different building on the same campus. Certainly the rise of applications like slack and github show that the demand is there. Personally I'm surprised that most businesses haven't invested more time in collaboration tools since labor is such a big portion of the service economy's expenses.

I do think that remote work requires some culture and managerial changes as well but the success of many popular open source projects with remote teams shows that it certainly is possible.

Re: Commuting Kills

#25

Post by 300bps »

rayiner wrote: post #18

The article argues for telecommuting to reduce commutes. I think a far less radical approach would be to open multiple offices and put teams in more affordable secondary cities. Modern technology has made it pretty easy to spread your organization across multiple offices. I work at an organization of less than 35 people that has offices in three cities. Outsourcing IT/HR/building administration makes it pretty low-co…

I've worked in Wilmington, Delaware and I'm surprised any company chooses to have an office there. I had coworkers robbed at gunpoint a block from our office in the financial district, strong arm robberies of cell phones, angry and violent homeless people everywhere, etc. Add to that a high city wage tax and I just don't get it. I worked there for eight years and it seemed to just get worse and worse.

Very apparent how bad it was when DuPont of all companies even moved out of the downtown area.

http://www.newsweek.com/2014/12/19/wilmington-delaware-murde...

Re: Commuting Kills

#26

Post by justindz »

frequent wrote: post #15

I started to walk to work more than a year ago (5km one way, about 45mins). Makes a world of a difference, as it gives me more or less two hours of exercise per day, time to get my mind on/off of work, call family/friends and other stuff. Bottom line for me - it's less the time spent commuting, than whether you can spend it in a useful way.

I ride the metro for about 1:30 a day (part of which is walking to and fro), which I prefer to my prior driving commute of 25-30 minutes. I have had to increase my fantasy and sci-fi novel budget, however.

Re: Commuting Kills

#27

Post by ggchappell »

mmaunder wrote: post #3
ggchappell wrote: post #2

Long commutes are of course a problem. However, I am not sure the analysis method used in this article is really the way to look at this issue. The fact that lots of people spend 15 minutes sitting on their rear is not a serious problem, despite the fact that you can multiply that 15 minutes by millions of people to get a large number. The problem is that some people have very long commutes. 30 minutes or more is a p…

Hi. I'm the author of the post. The Census report you mention is cited by a lot of other posts out there re work habits. That definitely doesn't make it more credible - just wanted to mention that it's often cited.

I don't think there's any problem with citing an official Census Bureau report. Certainly they are the definitive source for statistics on the U.S. population. And I imagine the numbers in the report give a correct overall impression of commute times. However, I suspect the conclusions in the report as to the accuracy of the data are a bit overblown.

Re: Commuting Kills

#28

Post by rconti »

dupe576 wrote: post #4

That's why I think everyone should bike to work if possible. It has little to no environmental impact and a positive health impact. And because you are killing two birds with one stone by exercising during your commute, you really aren't wasting any time.

Yup! People complain that the bay area cost of living is high, but for me it's a quality of life issue. I'm able to bike to work 30 minutes each way. Sure it takes longer than driving (which I do on occasion), but it's a good workout. I can do it year-round, and it's not so warm or humid here that I show up at work dripping with sweat. Put the bike away, toss a hoodie over my t-shirt once I've cooled off a bit, and I'm set.

Re: Commuting Kills

#29

Post by ocb »

sandworm101 wrote: post #11
dupe576 wrote: post #4

That's why I think everyone should bike to work if possible. It has little to no environmental impact and a positive health impact. And because you are killing two birds with one stone by exercising during your commute, you really aren't wasting any time.

Biking is fine if you are a prof at a college campus, or the boss of some hip startup, but I cannot arrive at work sweating through a horribly wrinkled suit. We don't have showers. I have yet to meet anyone who has communized by bike in my city (Vancouver BC) for more than a few years without a major altercation with a motorvehicle. It might be healthy, but it is also physically dangerous.

Some places have lots of off-road bike trails. I live in Minneapolis and bike to work most days in the spring, summer, and fall (on a bike trail). The ground is flat, so it's easy to go 12+ mph without breaking a sweat.

Re: Commuting Kills

#30

Post by BjoernKW »

trjordan wrote: post #8

"...strong, rational and tangible reasons why an employee needs to be based on-site, rather than intangibles like culture, narrative or norms." What. This sentiment is exactly what's wrong with trying to push for more remote work. I don't think we have the tools, either technical or managerial, to build fully-remote companies that are as effective as in-person companies. There are niches where this is true, but they'…

> One of the most powerful ways of getting people working on the right things is to have them hang out with each other

There are blatant examples to the contrary: Just look at most large organizations. Getting people to work on the right things isn't a matter of spending time together, it's a matter of company culture! In a company that's constrained by processes and pointless bureaucracy for bureaucracy's sake hardly anything ever will get done, much less so the right things.

Long commutes are not a sustainable way of living and working. If we don't have the tools for making remote work a realistic option for most companies we simply need better tools.

Post reply on HN