Back in my days of working in an office, I used to move to a new apartment every time I changed jobs so that I could stay within walking distance.
Being young and minimalist helped a lot with being able to pull it off, but I'd definitely recommend it for the benefits. Especially living downtown (Portland in my case) and having a short to medium sized stroll through the city to work, it's amazing what a difference it makes to your sanity compared to sitting in traffic for 45 minutes.
I would interview for jobs and the first thing I'd ask the recruiter was whether they were in Portland itself or out in the suburbs. They'd say "yeah, definitely Portland" then set up an interview and give me an address out towards Beaverton. I'd have to cancel.
Moving to LA, the difference was even more pronounced. I set up shop in a shabby little neighborhood in San Gabriel, the shortest distance across the sea of concrete that contained the office I was contracting at. They had guys driving in from the hills above Mission Viejo and even Yucaipa, 2.5 hours away. It was insane. Those guys never seemed overly happy with the situation. But I bet their houses looked nice.
Fortunately, we don't have to worry about this anymore. Enough shops have caught on to the benefits of having everybody remote that a fella can pick up a gig from anywhere in the world these days. I haven't commuted more than 50 feet in a decade.
It all falls down though as soon as you have any significant priority in your life other than work however. Just a partner who works elsewhere will put you in a quandry, and a family will totally do you over (schools immediately elevate to trump just about any other priority).
I think there's a lot to be said for living close to work, but there's even more to be said for cities investing well provisioned, fast and inexpensive public transport. The intangible benefits from a happier, more flexible, mobile workforce are huge. Where I live I am extremely fortunate: I am 45 minutes away from work by train, but 95% of the time I can sit down and work on my laptop for 80% of that time. So I see my "effective" commute as about 15 minutes.
I'm in strong agreement here. The character and nature of the commute play a huge role. There's a big difference between sitting in a train for 45 minutes and sitting in a car in traffic for 45 minutes. Being able to free your mind from the stresses of conducting a vehicle make a longer commute far more tolerable long-term IMO. Investing in public transportation is where it's at.
The flip side of this is to find a good company that is in the metro area, but not in the main city.
For example, my commute from Sherwood to Wilsonville is 20-25 minutes. Since I'm not trying to drive through Portland proper, I'm able to use a back road that has 2-3 cards on it during 'rush hour'.
So I'm able to get the big house and the short commute at the same time by have a starting and ending destination that is not where everyone else is.
Indeed. One of those early moves was into one of the run down apartments across the tracks from the Home Depot in Tigard, so that I could be walking distance to the little office park there.
Super cheap, and plenty of stuff around to do. Just not overly walkable or as pleasant as living in the Pearl District.
Then again, just like a fella can make up for a lot of unpleasantness given an extra 1-5 hours a day in free time, the same can be said for paying half the rent of a downtown loft. They still let you drive in to town on the weekends if you get bored of throwing darts at a plastic board and drinking Budweiser non-ironically. And working a software job while living in the "first month free" apartments, you can certainly afford to do so.
I commute by bike, my commute is easily one of the most enjoyable parts of my day, around 30 minutes each way, in all weather. Every day is like being a kid again, its exciting when it rains or snows or the wind blows or the sun is out.
I don't think commutes are the problem, its the typical mode of transport humans choose is the problem.
Yeah, the mode matters, but really 30 minutes is an easy commute regardless of the mode. If you were to spend, say, 90 minutes going each way, that would take its toll too. (Though there would also be benefits to getting that much exercise.)
I don’t know about that. I think the motivations you have for starting to commute by bike in the first place make a big difference.
In my case, I had been using public transit (buses) as transportation for more than ten years, and frankly, I was completely fed up with it. For my current commute, the buses would never come on time (either 10+ minutes late, or just a bit too early). Then, when I’d finally catch my first bus, it would always reach the last stop just late enough for me to see the second bus (that I’d have to transfer on to) reach the stop I’d have to get to and leave.
That’s not even mentioning all the other annoyances, like:
• (sometimes) waiting more than an hour for a bus to arrive
• the commute regularly taking 1.5 hours each way because the buses would regularly come too late or too early (on the very rare occasions when I’d catch both buses instantly, the commute would become a blissful 45 minutes; I truly treasured those days…)
• etc.
Finally, I got completely fed up of it and was desperately searching for some other way to get to my destination. After doing some research, I realized that I lived right next to a huge bike trail that could take me almost half the way, so I ended up getting a bike. Frankly, it was the best decision I’ve made in a long time. My commute is now 2 hours each way, but unlike the situation with the buses (where I was just waiting half the time), with the bike, I’m actually doing something (riding it), so the time passes by so fast, I always find it unbelievable when I realize that, somehow, two hours have just elapsed without me even noticing it.
Can I just vent for a second about how an early bus is so much worse than a late bus… and they have complete control over it too. A late bus will eventually show up. An early bus, well, you have no idea it was even early.
I actually know that bus stop! I studied for a time in Kiel, and the buses were very reliable.
I'm now in the DC suburbs. There are several different transit agencies that operate here, and some are better than others. Some do have signs like the ones in Kiel, but for the buses I take, this is what I get to deal with for signs: http://i.imgur.com/Zd2TNVG.jpg
I have enter the stop number on rideonrealtime.com, and then search. If I try searching for it today, I get an error, because the 14 bus doesn't run on Sunday (but they don't say that). Believe it or not, their desktop website is actually a little better than the mobile version.
Even in the fancy new transit hub that recently opened, the electronic signs only show the published departure times. At off hours, this is fine because they are generally accurate. During peak traffic times, however, they're completely inaccurate and you need to go to their terrible website to look up the actual time the next bus will arrive.
My personal experience is that mode definitely counts even if time extremes might override it. My bike commute is the same time as my car commute (Los Angeles). I for one vastly prefer the reliably 20 min biking to the 15-25 minutes of driving and dealing with traffic.
Similarly I used to opt for a longer public transit commute than a car because of the active engagement that I needed with traffic in the car.
Something like that for me, yes. 30 min cycling + 20 mins for showering, changing clothes. OTOH I save time from having to go somewhere and exercise, showering etc. after work just to stay in basic shape.
Definitely contributes to the overall time, but its not like you wouldn't have showered otherwise. Its not hard to shuffle your normal shower schedule around so that its not just a completely superfluous shower.
Same here (but 40-45 minutes). I actually find myself looking forward to the commute almost every day. Should have done this long ago. It helps being able to change clothes at the office though.
What kind of clothes do you use for rainy and cold/snowy weather conditions? Do you use different equipment (spikes) if it snows or there ice on the road?
I have a similar commute -- 30 minutes each way, in south central Wisconsin. I'm equipped specifically for my commute: For warm weather I ride a venerable old touring-style bike, and carry rain gear in a bag. For winter, I have an old mountain bike with studded tires. There's a lot of athletic clothing available for winter riding, but I just wear a ski jacket and snow pants. If it gets real cold, like below -10F, then I wear a ski helmet and goggles. I'm lucky that I don't sweat a lot. During the summer, I just start from home earlier than usual, and ride slower, so I don't have to take a shower when I arrive. Some kind of layer system can be helpful, because there are months where the temperature changes by 30 degrees from morning to afternoon.
Granted it takes some space to have more than one bike, but I have a garage. On the other hand, some folks just keep a second pair of wheels with the studded tires. When buying a bike for commuting, it's good to make sure that there's enough clearance for fenders and wider tires if desired.
I just have a "normal"(?) all-weather biking jacket (gore-tex or some similar material). For pants, I'm not into spandex tights (which seems all the rage these days), so I just have a pair of "out-doorsy" pants of some similar material as the jacket. If it's cold, I just put more layers underneath. For the undermost layer, it's worth to use these "technical" underwear, as you'll freeze like heck once you start sweating if you use cotton underwear.
I find that I manage with surprisingly little clothes even if it's cold, the main thing is to be covered up so that the cold outside air doesn't enter from sleeves etc. Aside from that, the most critical for me is shoes and gloves, I easily start freezing my toes even though I'm otherwise Ok. And if it's colder than, say, around -15C, some kind of face mask and glasses are good, otherwise your face freezes.
As for equipment, I have winter tires for my bike. I haven't bothered to acquire another pair of wheels, I just change the tires in the autumn and spring. My winter tires aren't any wider than my summer tires, so it gets a bit tedious if there's loose snow on the path. Most of the time it's fine, though. I don't have a separate "winter bike", I use the same bike both summer and winter (a cyclocross/touring kind of thing with drop handlebars etc.).
Until some idiot looking at a phone runs into you. Be safe out there, I've noticed a marked dip in driver quality between the past 10 years and prior. Though I think in part it's because I moved from the northern US to the south and I'm fairly certain driver education and lower quality of people in general plays a role. It's bad enough that I gave up riding my motorcycle entirely, death wish.
And people wonder why large swaths of the country are angry at the entitled sounding northeast with comments like the above. I grew up in the south and oddly enough the south I grew up in is now mostly people from the northeast. So either all the low quality people from the northeast moved to the south or you are letting prejudices get the better of you.
to be fair this is a common opinion the world over, not just the north-eastern US. the south has a pretty poor reputation globally - i'm pretty sure its an unfair assessment given that everyone i have met from the southern US seemed like a decent, normal person...
i think it stems from the perception that some of the stranger laws, viewpoints and customs are exceptionally backwards by the standards of most modern populations and are more popular than they are in reality. the religious fervour and gun loving being the two most obvious things that no other highly developed and civilised part of the world has and which are strongly associated with the southern US.
The irony of your statement is that most of the world gives Americans a hard time and considers them closed minded. If what you say is true, the rest of the world is doing the same thing. Do you also think everyone in California is like Kim Kardashian?
i think its pretty true - although its not just about close minded-ness. a lot of people do associate california with kim kardashian types - which i assume to mean pretty, fake and lacking in skills beyond entertainment value.
i try not to think this way myself... my own experiences clash with this sort of thinking a lot, but its a very common perception and its evidence is to be found in a lot of places sadly... helping to reinforce those perceptions.
It's true for the most part. I've lived and worked in France, I've been in ~11 countries and lived in Mexico as well. I speak 2 languages and my eyes are fully opened, not prejudiced against any region of the world. Including the southern US, I just speak to realities and my anecdotal experiences.
Which may be worthless, or anger people.. but I have more experiences than most so I tend to trust my own thoughts more than some politically correct statement about the southern US (where I live) not matching up with stereotypes.
The southern US is like the northern US but basically taking the trailer trash from the north and multiplying it many times over. That's the south in a nutshell.
Where there's smoke, there's fire. There's always some truth to rumors and stereotypes. I don't dislike the south or southerners, but when I said "lower quality of people" that was a poor choice of words. I should have said a general lower quality of education. I also think it's clear the general standards for anything in the south are lower than northern states. They'll give a driver's license to anyone south of the Mason-Dixon. I hate to say it but I think this is indisputable. I love southern folks as much as I do any other, they're very friendly and good people. Some are worse than others and the truly vile ones are no more a larger percent of the population than any other ethnic group's bad apples.
That said, I do prefer Mexicans to Americans of all stripes. Just a better culture, friendly, open, they take insults from Americans in stride and the insults never stop from my nation. Amazing people to be honest. Point being, my views are well-traveled and are not exactly some US-Yankee carpetbagger elitism that my initial statement suggested.
Interesting that you get downvoted for this comment. I cannot see why. Getting run over by a careless driver (and yes, looking at phone is a specific problem) definitely is a risk, at least in some places.
Where I live, I have dedicated bike/pedestrian paths so it's only a few intersections where I need to watch out. (a bit over 10 km, 25 min in the summer and 25-40 in the winter, plus the time it takes to shower and change clothes at both ends).
“If these numbers sound ridiculous, it’s because they are. It is ridiculous to commute by car to work if you realize how expensive it is to drive, and if you value your time at anything close to what you get paid.”
Well I commute by car for 30 - 60 minutes (one way) per day. It is about 30km distance. I know the costs, as I pay them into an account for repairs, gasoline and so on.
On the other hand the alternative would be 90 - 100 minutes (one way) of commute by train with (included) 20 minutes of walk. I would have to switch trains twice. Cost would be about half to a third of above cost.
My time and my sanity (sitting in a car, listening to podcasts and not encountering the mass of idiots in public transport) is easily worth that much to me.
> On the other hand the alternative would be 90 - 100 minutes (one way) of commute by train
Well, another alternative is to move somewhere closer to your current workplace and a fourth alternative is to get a job that's closer to your current home.
Do you have a family and kids? Do you enjoy living in the city?
I cannot bike to work, but I'm sitting on the back porch looking out over the marsh on this amazing Sunday morning. In the city, if I even had a porch I would be staring at someones back yard or the building next to me.
The slice of the population that can just take their pick of an arbitrarily large pool of choice jobs within cycling distance is really tiny. Others will choose to move around which works somewhat if one rents and has less stuff than I always did--and don't have SOs, kids, etc.
Not everyone has as much choice as a typical HN reader. Personally I'm completely on your side, I currently have a 15min bike ride to work. I only take the bus when bringing cake to work, everything else goes in the saddlebags :)
However, 25mpg isn't that crazy. That's about what my wife's 2005 CR-V gets in around-town, short-trip usage. I'm sure the newer ones are better than that, but paying $20K less for the car leaves enough money to invest that the gas is effectively free. (5000 miles/yr at 25 mpg is 200 gallons. At even ~$3/gal, that's $600. $600 is 3% of $20K and it's not hard at all to clear 3% on investments.)
Wish I had 3 investment properties like MMM then I could afford to say that driving is the main cost in my life, not rent pushed up by people like him taking a cut of my labour.
Rent is pushed up by other renters (competing demand), not by landlords (providing supply).
It's noble of you to wish you could also tie up a large amount of capital and use it to provide housing to tenants. I looked into it pretty hard, and the returns weren't nearly worth the hassles.
The vast majority of landlords are not building to supply, they are taking existing supply off the market and in doing so pushing up prices, forcing many to rent. One of the biggest issues in many western cities is not paying the mortgage but affording the deposit.
Landlords now who are making money bought in cheap 10 or 15 years ago. For them it's money for old rope.
MMM bought at least 5 years ago. He's full of it, suggesting things that save a few bucks here and there when he is taking a slice of the labour of 3 families.
What you call taking a slice of labor, I call providing shelter. That slice of labor is going to go to housing expenses one way or another.
House prices and rent are linked. Higher house prices demand higher rent to make the investment worthwhile for the landlord. High house prices provide a floor on rent (otherwise, landlords sell and the rental pool shrinks).
Higher rents provide a floor on house prices (when monthly rent rises to more than about 1% of purchase price, it becomes attractive to buy property to rent in areas without insane taxes).
What's common about both those upward pressures? That they are driven by the demand for housing units (of either sort) by people who want to live in a given area.
More people? More demand. More demand? Higher prices.
I have no connection whatsoever to MMM (other than generally agreeing with a lightweight version of his frugal teachings). I don't see how his being a landlord has any bearing on whether his general information is valuable or not.
House prices are set by credit availability. Rents are set by wages. I'm not agreeing with anything you are saying here and I don't want to waste more time on it. You seem to think it's simply market pressures which I think is naive.
Taken to the extreme exploiting land monopoly isn't "providing shelter" any more than serfdom landlords provided shelter. They extracted labour at state gun point if necessary.
We have a very extreme situation now dating back to pre 2008 when the banks went utterly wild.
House prices are indeed influenced by credit availability (and prevailing local wages, housing supply, housing demand, property taxes, purchase alternatives [like renting], school quality, and many other factors).
Rent is likewise a balance of many factors, including wages but also interest rates, house prices, rental supply, rental demand, property taxes, and other factors.
I'm not sure what you propose as a workable alternative. Banning renting of housing? Government dictated housing prices? Banning real property ownership? Something else?
Buying a house and renting it out is not a land monopoly in any meaningful sense of that phrase; otherwise, I'd have a "monopoly" on the shirt I'm wearing right now.
I prefer to have control over who lives in my residence (that's the same now as an "owner" (mortgagee) as when I was a tenant/renter). I assume most other people also desire that.
In order to accomplish that, we have a notion of property rights (the right to exclusive control of [including the right to exclude others from] the housing unit) and we allow those rights to be permanently or temporarily traded to others in exchange for money or other consideration.
Unless you don't care who lives in your housing unit from day to day, there's got to be some kind of property right in real property and a derivative right-to-exclude. If you want to call the right I have to my own house a monopoly on that particular property, you're technically right (the best kind of right). By that same argument, the corner gas station has a monopoly on selling the specific gasoline contained in its underground tank.
Land is indeed finite. That's one of the properties that makes it valuable.
I've got you all beat. My job is a 1 minute jog from my house. Less than a football field away. It changed my life. My entire life has been altered for the better and every few days I wonder why we stopped designing cute little European/American towns where you can walk everywhere. My former commute was driving 30 miles and 30 minutes to work.
From stress, to car insurance, to gas. All the bad things in my life have decreased. I have more time, feel healthier, and get more sleep. I haven't paid for gas or filled up my car in months. All from this seemingly small change. A 1 minute jog to work. I decided if I ever got a different job I would move to be as close as possible to it. The benefits are too enormous to overlook.
At first I loved it, for the same reasons you listed. But then I started to realize that living so close to work blurred the line between work and life. I couldn't mentally detach from the job after coming home. Even on evenings and weekends I'd think about work.
That's when I realized an important purpose that commuting plays, which is a transition period from work mode to life mode. So now my commute is 15 minutes: short enough that I don't go insane, but long enough to help me put some mental distance between myself and my job.
My commute into work is usually 17 mins. Going home I take a different but sane return route that is predictable and has less traffic but takes 25 minutes. I use my commute time to catch up on tech news and security issues via podcasts. I find this time very valuable. My wife works maybe 6 miles further intown than I do and her commute is 35 minutes in the morning and with no sane return route tends to be 45 to 65 minutes long.
My commute is good for me. Her commute wears on her. She is not tech focused so she does not listen to podcasts.
I would love to walk to work or ride a bike. But with olders kids and school choices being a driving force for where we live that is not possible yet.
We craft our day around the commute. We are up at 4:30 and at the gym by 5:20. We strive for 5 days a week at the gym. We probably average more like 4.5.
With the early rise I have to be in bed by 9PM to 10PM most nights.
Gosh now I'm thinking when my youngest goes to college I move much closer to work. Maybe even rent and not buy since I have 4 more years before I retire.
I'm also lucky at work. I have an office with a door. Power naps most days keep me productive in the afternoon.
The only US company I've worked at that was serious about a nap room was Groupon, but that changed part way through my stint there as the office became more crowded.
I once had a shorter commute, but you still have me beat in experience.
The office building I worked in had an abandoned caretaker's apartment on the roof. (For the Australians, it was in Sydney above the cinemas on George street.) I and a colleague nabbed it for basically nothing and commuted 30 seconds via elevator. It had some benefits, but honestly, it was weird to go entire days without leaving the building, and sometimes it felt like I was always at work.
I once had a "commute" from my bed to the adjoining room.
Now my commute is significantly longer, but most of it is on a train. I walk to the train station, and from the station at the other end to the office, and along the way I listen to music or podcasts or read books on my phone.
If I were driving it every day I would probably go mad.
Ditto for me on the South Coast UK: 4 mins walk from my house to the station, catch the 08.14 train, arrive at destination 08.37, then 10-15 mins walk to the office depending on whether I pop into a shop on the way.
I listen to the news on a radio and catch up with overnight emails from global colleagues on my Galaxy Note phone.
Sorry, I live the same distance from work. And let's be honest with one another, it's totally a 5 minute commute! We WALK 3 minutes to the office (+2 mins additional to grab a coffee enroute).
Most people think I have a crazy commute; perhaps I do. It may be worth it. I commute from the San Bernardino Mountains to Orange County. I wake up at 4:30am, eat a solid breakfast, leave the house at 5:30am, drive for 35 minutes to the train station, ride the train for 45 minutes, jump off, jog three blocks to the gym, work out for about 50 minutes, jog back to the train, get back on for 10 minutes, then walk for about 5 minutes to the office. So an hour and half ignoring the gym stop. I leave work around 4:30pm or 5:00pm, and get home about 6:30pm or 7:00pm (so about 2 hours to get home) and eat dinner with the family. I try to be in bed by 9:30pm.
What are the pros? I can work, read, or email on the train. I listen to audiobooks on the drive. I commute with co-workers and can either shoot the shit or have productive talks. I get paid 150% of what I would work more local. Where I live, I have an amazing view, wildlife from birds to bears, seasons, can have any pets I want (I recently started raising chickens that live in my yard during the day), literally zero crime, very decent schools, family in the area, ...
There are cons. I only get about one to one and a half hours at the most with my kids in the evening. I have zero time to do anything else during the week. I recently started experiencing one of the issues the articled called out: terrible sleep. Aside from a handful of nights, I've not gotten solid sleep in the last four months. That could be the commute, or diet, or anything else.
Could I move closer to work? Corona would not cut it (I could save maybe about 30 minutes but that marginal benefit does not balance out), so I would have to move to something in Orange County. The prices are crazy. I don't know how people live there. Rent is FOUR TIMES my mortgage. I don't make enough to have a mortgage out there as I would have zero disposable income and zero savings (if I qualified for a mortgage).
I've been doing this for five years now. If I could have a decent back yard, a mortgage that came in at 1/4 (or so) my income, and near a decent school, I would consider uprooting my family. I don't think that option exists.
The optimization I'd personally make in that case, rather than moving, is wfh 1-4 days every 2 weeks, and staying near work (hotel, Airbnb, sleep at office, etc) 1-4 nights/2 weeks.
(I've seriously considered commuting to or doing a startup from Seattle, Portland, Las Vegas, or Austin even though I'd need to be in SF for work or to meet with people several days per week.)
I went full-time remote from that kind of structure, and have reclaimed an incomprehensible amount of quality of life and daily time, compared to the slog you are rationalizing.
> I only get about one to one and a half hours at the most with my kids in the evening.
Does this include weekends? I totally empathize with your situation concerning prices, but as your kids grow into teenagers, they'll want their own independence so this time may decrease as it goes on, and the time you have now with them while they're young... it's not time you'll get back, unfortunately.
The author doesn't give the breakdown, but I'd be willing to bet that men are bearing most of this burden. There's a lot of discussion about women being paid less than men, but the fact is that there is a lot more pressure on men to favor positions than maximize income generation that women. I know dozens and dozens of men who commute to and from Greenwich CT daily while their wives work locally or stay at home. These men barely see their family, but they do it so that their childrens get a good education.
The costliest tradeoff for commuting is working out. It's hard to exercise after commuting due to general exhaustion from the work day. Waking up very early to work out before the commute can have bad effects productivity for that day.
I put a power rack in my home, trying to treat my fitness like I treat brushing my teeth. I just need a few more bits of equipment to ship in and I will see how it will compare to going to the gym and wasting all that time there.
I have a long commute (apparently I am a super commuter), and work out in the morning, as long as the train is not fcking late... again. I've noticed that crossfit in the morning gives me MORE energy throughout the day. Gone are the 3pm doldrums.
In London the argument for companies being in zone 1 is that meeting with people from other companies is easier. So for the few who have external meetings the entire company has to drag itself every morning and evening through the overcrowded, unpleasant London underground, arriving at work late, flustered, or miserable. What a way to start the day. If the companies moved only slightly out of centre, zones 2 or 3, the majority would be happier, and the few who meet outside would have a 10 or 15 minute, relatively pleasant, tube ride to get to a meeting.
Locating the office in zone 1 also allows people to live in lots of outer London areas. If you site the office in zones 2/3, you have to choose which bit of zones 2/3, potentially meaning people have to move house or commute even further. It's a higher cost to the company, but gives them access to a larger proportion of the labour market.
Under this document's classification of commuters I would fall into the 'extreme' category, travelling just over 1hr30m each way to get into Sydney from rouse hill in the west. I would say there is definitely a noticeable difference in my office between those of us who travel long distance and those who live closer to the office, usually in attitude and propensity to drink multiple coffees in a day.
Problem is, I would love a shorter commute, but my lifestyle is simply incompatible with life in an apartment or tiny, semi-detached town house, so I'm left with having a nice place to come home to but a long journey to get there, which for the most part I feel is a worthwhile trade so far.
>my lifestyle is simply incompatible with life in an apartment or tiny, semi-detached town house
But your lifestyle is compatible with spending 15 hours a week (60 hours a month, 700 hours per year, or the equivalent of 17 additional 40-hour workweeks annually) commuting?
It depends on the person, for me the restrictions of living in a flat (no music, no friends over late, no ability to knock down walls or paint) are a larger problem for me than a long commute. I have people around almost every night for dinners, movies etc. and can't see myself getting rid of that for the convenience of a short trip. Having enough space and green around for a nice place to have a family is also important.
I'm certainly not going to judge anybody's decisions when it comes to raising their children, but a long commute means many hours away from the kids. When they're grown, will they be more likely to remember the nice yard and school or the extra time spent with Mom and Dad?
I wouldn't mind commuting 1-2h if it was work hours, i.e I leave at 8 and drive + do phone calls, or work on a train for 1.5h, get to the office 9.30, work until 3.30, work 1.5h on my way home and can pick kids up at 5.
If I had to leave at 6 or come home at 7 when the kids are sleeping it wouldn't be worth it regardless of what job it is or how nice the house is.
You don't seem too annoyed by the commute, do you have a family? I don't yet, but I can't imagine basically not seeing my children because I spend the whole day working.
He's from Sydney. In Sydney, having a significant number of your colleagues (and yourself) doing monstrous commutes is incredibly normalised. The house prices and transport situation is just a nightmare.
You tend to not realise just how weird it is unless you moved to Sydney from somewhere else, or until you leave Sydney to go somewhere else...
/spent a year or so living there myself: my commute was actually about 30 mins (Hornsby - Chatswood), SO's was about 1 hour 15 mins each way into the CBD once walking time was added on...
That sounds very accurate from my experiences so far. The trains are significantly better than busses which is why I'm so excited for the new rail system going in near my house. To answer the question above, no, I don't have a family (yet) but I imagine this would make the decision significantly different in favour of time to spend with them.
As a visitor, catching trains in Sydney was great, but taking busses often meant very unpredictable timing, and extremely long travel times to get anywhere. I ended up taking a little over 2 and a half hours from the CBD to North Ryde.
My commute used to be either an hour by by car (10min) and light rail or 20-40min by motorcycle (carpool lane + dodging through traffic as I feel).
Sometimes the gloom and rain of Seattle just meant I couldn't bear to ride that day. Sometimes I needed to get some emails punched out or I just REALLY wanted to read a book. Even though it took longer I almost always felt more relaxed when I got home from riding the light rail. But I usually felt more ready to work when I rode in.
By the end of my time at that company I was riding my motorcycle about 90% of the time because I couldn't bare to give up 2+ hours a day to my commute.
When I left and started my own company the first thing I did was find an office space I could ride my bicycle to. It's actually faster to ride my bike than drive.
I commuted to a job in the big city (about 45 minutes away by car, an hourish by bus) for about 8 months.
I started the job in the fall, and riding the bus was fine, but as May rolled around and I saw the weather getting better and better and thinking about all the time I was stuck in a bus instead of outside, I realized it wasn't going to work out. (There were other things going on at the company too, but this was definitely the straw that broke this commuting camel's back.)
Living in the Pacific NW as an avid motorcyclist- it's been a semi bittersweet transition. It was 22.5mi from driveway to (free motorcycle) parking garage- which meant I was riding on average 425mi a week. I used to average MAYBE 2500mi a year, excluding summer road trips, before commuting every day on my bike.
Especially during the spring and summer- I missed that nice, gorgeous, Seattle morning ride as the morning transitioned from pre-dawn light. I'm probably going to have to find a really inneficient and long way to get to the office some mornings now that I think about it.
I've got a great pair of noise cancelling headphones I listen to, and I bought an iPad to read the news and watch some TV on the way. Occasionally I've just slept, but I've found that a lot harder on busses recently.
The experience of taking BART from Fremont, then MUNI, was very exhausting for me. Even assuming BART was running on time, there was at least 15-20 minutes of MUNI (riding and waiting) tacked onto my BART commute (Fremont->Civic Center). The MUNI part tended to really drag my spirits down.
I commute from Herndon VA into DC a couple times a week. It takes about 1:15 each way. But I ride the Loudon Country transit bus, which has decent-size seats and aisles. So as soon as I get on the bus, I pop open my laptop and work on whatever coding I need to get done.
The real beauty of it is that I don't bring a mifi card or anything like that, so I can't get online and read HN or whatever. Instead, if I run into an issue, I have to read the code of whatever I'm working on and experiment in the REPL to figure it out. So it's been really productive in a couple ways.
I wouldn't want to do it every day, since it makes for long days - but a few times a week it's not bad at all.
That's good to hear, I live 10 min from Herndon and had to drive to northern Arlington for a bit, with no traffic its 20minutes...But typically it was 1 hr each way.
I think the metro system needssom. Work to improve its service in DC. More of a NYC business model. 15-18 bucks a day is not realistic during peak times for commute and parking
For a bit over ten years I spent on average 1.5 hours each way commuting to NYC from Staten Island. The commute took a toll on me, on my marriage, and just my overall happiness. Inclement weather, an accident, or constant road construction would often increase a one-way trip to nearly 2 hours. I couldn't stay out late, because of the bus schedules, and if I fell asleep on the bus after a certain hour and missed my stop, there was no bus to take my back to where my connection to my second bus was. It was frustrating. Coupled with being too married to my job and overall stress, it led to separating from my wife.
I then moved right in to the city, a 15 minute walk to work. My overall happiness increased significantly. I could hang out with friends, stay out late if I wanted to - and I almost always found my place to be the place people would want to be at (somewhat opportunistic due to locality - but that's 100% fine by me). The price I paid was nearly quadrupling my rent. I felt like I deserved to treat my self to one year of this - and I quite enjoyed it - but the high rent was just not sustainable when you factor in alimony and past debt.
I then moved to a place about 30-40 minutes away from work. The commute was nice, the distance is about just right, and the rent was $700 less than my Manhattan apartment. I immediately saw a drop off in how many people would be coming to visit me - once again, I am fine with that and understand the circumstances there. The problem is that now my building is raising my rent by $300 - and the expensive commute costs really don't offer much savings compared to living in the city anymore - this spot has been "discovered" and will now just keep going up like the rest of the commutable areas to NYC.
So, this Monday, I am moving back to Staten Island - I will have twice the amount of space, dropping another $1000 from my current rent, and my commute will be about 1hr. I now have the opportunity to work from home a bit more, so by breaking up my week and staying home on Wednesdays, it will take the stress off of commuting in every day. A lot of the people I work with and manage work remotely - and they live all across the country - they don't have to worry about commuting in in the morning, and can live where they want to live -- sure, there are other disadvantages to working remotely, but as the availability of high-internet speeds and technologies make working remotely easier and more common place. As this improves, and more companies understand and embrace remote work mentality, I see the necessity of being chained to a big tech hub like SF or NYC to be far less important.
Because business in a city tend to be clumped together it's impossible for everyone to live close to their work. Cities don't have a large unused space between homes and work which people send hours crossing everyday.
Zoning tends to prevent that natural densification and mixed use, and NIMBYs want to protect their property values. People get long commutes because it's too expensive to live close to work.
And there's also not-so-mixed use eg in some German suburbs. Though by American standards, it's still very mixed. Ie you have to walk ten minutes to the nearest shop, instead of three.
I live in Mountain View and commute every day to San Francisco. This is more than 50 miles in each direction, and the freeways are terrible.
But since I have been doing it, for the past four months, my wife has bought me a whole set of new pants. Smaller pants.
I ride my bicycle about 2.5 miles on each end of Caltrain.
10 bicycle miles per day, with high consistency, has markedly improved my health.
10 bicycle miles is not much. But I push hard, each of those four separated segments, to be well winded.
I have always hated exercise, and never did it consistently. But I intentionally set myself up to be "forced" to exercise.
It is a 55 minute train ride on the front and 45 minutes on the back. And I get most of my best work done on the train. Because I catch 5:57am and the 3:37pm trains, I always get a good seat. My wifi is generally good.
So it makes for a relatively long day, but I physically feel better than I have in a long time, and working on the train and early in the office gives me a lot of high quality "heads down" time every day, which is so important.
As stated elsewhere, the commute itself is less important than the quality of the commute.
I've started to do this. I find myself cracking a grin when encountering traffic, it's magical. However, the risk tradeoff takes some willfulness to ignore. On Thursday, one of my moto-commuting co-workers was struck by an SUV that executed a surprise lane change. Laid it down at 60mph, escaped with barely a scratch.
Calculating mileage and maintenance costs is easy compared to factoring in your risk of bodily damage from your commute. Commuting on a motorcycle is fun, but I haven't figured out whether it's 'worth it.'
Before moving to Pittsburgh, I was commuting from Des Moines to Marshalltown in Iowa--60 miles, an hour's drive each way. I didn't drive, but it was still a pain and major time waster.
In Pittsburgh, I found a minimal-walking bus path that required a transfer. It made the path slightly longer than the 5.6 miles from apartment to work, but still roughly a tenth the distance of Des Moines to Marshalltown. Surprise--it took about an hour each way, and longer if, as was far too common, the first bus in the morning was late or the second bus in the evening was late. What's wrong with this picture?
I'm back in the Des Moines area now, and hoping for a much closer workplace.
Busses simply are the worst way of commuting. They're slow, they're shaking you around the most, they stop the most, they let in most cold air when stopping, they're usually the dirtiest and most unpunctual.
I can definitely agree that commuting for a long time each day takes a toll on your psychological health. My first 'real' job had a 1.5/2 hour journey each way, right through the centre of London and then out on the other side.
It was absolutely exhausting, and utterly killed any motivation for me to actually do anything what I got back in each night. Oh sure, I had ambitions when I started the journey each evening, but they were damn well as good as dead when I'd finished it.
Fortunately, my current commute is much better, only taking about half an hour a day and not involving the London Underground in any way. Could it be better? Probably, but it's reasonable enough for now, and isn't anywhere near as mentally exhausting.
Living nearer work? Forget it, a lot of companies here are located in the most expensive areas of the city. Unless your family are wealthy enough to pay for a luxury apartment in the city of London, or maybe somewhere likes Mayfair or Knightsbridge, you're likely going to be commuting to any job round here. Even the cheaper places have rents high enough you'd likely end up living on the breadline with a typical developer salary.
I consider myself extremely lucky to have a job in a city where I can afford (on my fresh-graduate salary) to live near the city centre, 15 minutes' walk from the office. I know I'll probably have to move further away if I find myself married with kids, but until then, I very, very much like where I am.
I commute for about 1.5h each way. About 40 or so of those is biking, the rest on a bus with wifi. The bike part is exercise I would have needed to do anyway. The bus part is either working, or reading things I would read anyway. Sure, I would prefer a shorter trip, but the trade off of being able to live next to a beach and go swimming after work is worth it for me. Not to mention few neighbours, no noise etc and other benefits of living in the country. Much happier since I swapped from a 30 min bike commute from the suburbs.
Why are we still commuting at all? The vast VAST majority of jobs can be done from home yet there is some sort of idea in management circles that if you're not in a cubicle you're not getting work done.
Think of how much better everyone's lives would be if only those who absolutely needed to be in an office (Doctors, mechanics, etc) went to work and everyone else just stayed home.
I worked full-time remote for four years. Now I work a job which expects me to be physically present in the office.
And... I'm kinda happy about the current job. Four years of being remote taught me how isolating it can be, how easy it is to end up feeling utterly detached from what my co-workers are doing, lacking in human interaction during my working hours, and being in an office and around people again every day has done a lot for me.
So I wouldn't be so quick to send everybody to work from home all the time.
The perfect balance for me would be commuting or traveling 1-2 days a week for meetings, and working remote the rest of the week.
When commuting 1h or more the time spent commuting should be spent doing phone meetings etc so you can start working as you leave the house, otherwise the work day can end up being 10-11h which is obviously not compatible with having a family.
I've done 2 days a week of 2 hour commute and 3 days remote. It works, sort of. The 2 days in the office gives the social interactions and keeps relationships smooth. The 3 days remote provides calm time for productivity.
However, I've also worked 5 days in office with 7 minutes bike ride. This is incredibly good. Every day is shorter.
I will optimise any new job for shortest possible commute - it's really a winner.
it can work: when you work in an office you just can't wait to get home. When working from home at 5pm you must leave the home :) Go in a park, go somewhere, anywhere. The problem is not that you work from home, the problem is that you stay in the same place all day.
i think you will find the vast majority of jobs require physical presence since they involve physically moving things or interacting with customers face to face.
most people do not work in an office environment. iirc about 10% of people work in production industries which means factories, building sites and mines etc. 10% work in social and health care which means hospitals, community centres and homes... 10% work in retail which means shops. 10% in leisure and hospitality which means restaurants, hotels etc. 5% work in agriculture which means farms, orchards, vineyards etc. 3% work in transport and warehousing... thats not quite a majority, but i can easily find around 48% of jobs are impossible to do from home...
Being young and minimalist helped a lot with being able to pull it off, but I'd definitely recommend it for the benefits. Especially living downtown (Portland in my case) and having a short to medium sized stroll through the city to work, it's amazing what a difference it makes to your sanity compared to sitting in traffic for 45 minutes.
I would interview for jobs and the first thing I'd ask the recruiter was whether they were in Portland itself or out in the suburbs. They'd say "yeah, definitely Portland" then set up an interview and give me an address out towards Beaverton. I'd have to cancel.
Moving to LA, the difference was even more pronounced. I set up shop in a shabby little neighborhood in San Gabriel, the shortest distance across the sea of concrete that contained the office I was contracting at. They had guys driving in from the hills above Mission Viejo and even Yucaipa, 2.5 hours away. It was insane. Those guys never seemed overly happy with the situation. But I bet their houses looked nice.
Fortunately, we don't have to worry about this anymore. Enough shops have caught on to the benefits of having everybody remote that a fella can pick up a gig from anywhere in the world these days. I haven't commuted more than 50 feet in a decade.