> Contrary to the prediction of equilibrium location theory, we find a large negative effect of commuting time on people’s satisfaction with life. People who commute 23 minutes (one way), which is the average commuting time in Germany, would have to earn 19 percent more per month on average in order to be fully compensated.
When I worked in Manhattan, I spent the extra $1,000/mo. to live within a couple blocks of work, rather than a 45-min commute away off in Brooklyn like most people I knew. It's expensive to live next to work.
But here's the thing: I always felt guilty about it. That it was "unnecessary" money to spend, even though I had it. That it was irresponsible.
However, I knew from (painful) experience it was still the rational thing to do. Once you subtract time spent sleeping, at work, and "maintenance" (shower, tidying, etc.) you really only have maybe 5 hours a day of personal time max. If you commute 45 min each way... that's only 3.5 hours. And when you factor in that you need a couple hours to relax, eat dinner, etc. -- that's the difference between having time left over for a rewarding hobby or not, which qualitatively changes your life in a fundamental way, and keeps you sane at work. Whether it's going to the gym regularly, reading books, doing yoga or dance, whatever it is.
But it's still so hard to mentally justify paying such a premium for your own leisure time. It's really easy to tell yourself, no -- I'll save money, commute, and I'll still manage to find the time, it'll be enough... because you're optimistic you can have it all. But you can't. You'll lose your hobby or sleep or your happiness.
This is the justification for remote. You get the benefits of a full salary while avoiding close-to-work living costs and commuting time.
I spent a hellish couple of years in London living in a pleasant area but commuting to and from a startup near the centre, and since then I've been remote-only.
There are other trade-offs, but it's hard to beat for low stress levels and free time.
Commuting sucks, but so does living in a city. It's noisy and dirty and crowded. You can't own your own property and crime is much much more prevalent.
Owning a nice, quiet house in a nice neighborhood without the commute is just heaven, honestly. At least for me anyway.
As you note, there are a host of quality of life trade offs all wrapped up in this.
After briefly experiencing the 101 commute in bay area very early in my career, I decided I wasn't going to do it. Since then I've made a point to live close to work - which has affected both where I've lived and where I've worked, as I also decided I wasn't willing to live close to an office park in the middle of nowhere to make this work.
No regrets at all, although it has always involved some expense. I'm very aware I have been lucky in the options I've had though, this can be very difficult to arrange in some situations.
I normally don’t like the time = money idea (not all hours are equally valuable), but for a commute it makes sense. You paid about 40 bucks to get back 1.5 prime hours of your life, plus the mental stress.
This worked out for you great and there's no reason to feel guilty about it. I on the other hand choose to look at things differently. I spend 45 minutes on a buss to and from work and am eager to utilize the time for myself. I read, I draw and meditate. Another aspect that works out is living in a more peaceful neighborhood, nothing like the craziness in Manhattan. But, yes, sometimes the trade off is worth the money.
Are you taking a luxury bus to work? Because on public buses, the only thing I can do without getting motion sick is listening to an audiobook or a podcast. I can't imagine drawing on it.
Strangely enough, I drove an hour to work before and found the time to be relaxing, no one bothered me, I could listen to audiobooks or podcasts and it gave me time to decompress before I got home to my family.
As an introvert with learned emotional intelligence, I find it draining dealing with people all day and I for the most part liked the people I worked with.
When I worked less than 15 minutes away from work, I missed the down time. Especially since I had just gotten married, lived in an apartment and wasn’t use to coming home to three other people - wife and two (step)sons — and I love my family.
Now that we live in a much larger house, and my wife knows me well enough not to take it personally when so just want some alone time in our home gym, it’s better.
I bike to work which takes me 30 minutes each way. I consider this as my relaxation, workout time and time to myself to think. Of course I also have podcasts running. Sometimes Audiobooks too but that requires more focus.
When I lived in Austin, I lived 10 miles from work and paid $1,300/mo mortgage for a new construction 2,000sqft house. The commute was 14 minutes at ~85mph, mostly on SH 45 in a sports car.
This was when SH 45 first opened up, so things hadn't yet built up around it to clog it up. Not sure what traffic looks like these days.
I don't think LA has quite the same gradient problem. Rents are high, but every neighborhood (aside from straight up mansion neighborhoods where there aren't any jobs anyway) is going to have the same $1800-2000 1br apartments. Sometimes that apartment is nicer in some places, others more dilapidated, but the price point seems to be pretty constant all over town.
It's that time vs money tradeoff. If your life circumstances change... and I don't know what your situation is, but say you have a few dependents and you want them in specific schools or to have a yard or whatever... then the equation changes.
It's not necessarily an easy calculation to make since there are other subjective costs in choosing between two locations. I also decided to live very close to work and pay higher rent. It's not just higher rent though there is also greater noise, pollution, etc. I still think it outweighs the commute though. Commuting >1hr per day makes working feel much more like an awful grind to me.
Yep. I found a more expensive place closer to work that didn't necessitate me taking public transit regularly (though it is always an option if I need it) so I walk to and from work, and while the walk is about half an hour each way, it's always done on my own time.
Throwing on some music or a podcast helps me unwind while the exercise does its thing to clear my head. I also save 100+ bucks a month on a transit pass too, though my rent increase is not as bad as 1000+ a month, I feel in your case it is definitely worthwhile.
> I spent the extra $1,000/mo. to live within a couple blocks of work
My understanding of communing was people commute for longer for a 'better' house, but don't realise a 'better' house doesn't create happiness as much as a shorter commute.
It very much did for me. Even though I can find plenty of jobs in the burbs, I wouldn’t give up my larger house where my wife and I have plenty of space of our own.
I love spending time with my wife, but I’m also an introvert who really craves having my own space. Even when my parents come up and visit it isn’t intrusive since we have a guest suite downstairs.
Also the “better home” also means a better school district.
From the paper: An individual with a 60 minute commute has to earn 40 per cent more money to be equally satisfied with life as an individual who can walk to the office.
I found this very interesting, given the fact that I know a lot of people who work in major cities but live outside the city for financial purposes. Might make more sense to bite the bullet and pay high rent to live next to your workplace.
This is complicated for couples though, because it is hard for you and your partner to find employment in the same part of a city. So one of you will probably have to make a sacrifice.
I would be very interested in how remote work figures into all of this. Does the interaction with humans outweigh the benefits of being able to roll out of bed and be at the office?
This is basically how it happens in practice. Single people generally don't commute as much. People get this "happiness equation."
But, with a partner and kids, commuting becomes a greater good sacrifice. Depending on work location, a 60 minutes commute can mean a bigger house, better neighborhood and college savings.
Commuting affects kids too, they get less time with a more exhausted, stressed parent. Compromises are harder to make with five people.
This is one of the reasons urban architecture, with an eye to the economics of it all, are important. Architects tend to swim in abstract water. But, when they say things like "how people relate to and occupy their built environemt," I like to think they mean things like "*How people to get to work, and how awful it is."
IMO, these are exactly the kinds of measures we should have have governments, rather than gdp. Commute times/pleasantness, housing-share of income, etc.
For a city, knocking 10% off average commute time is on par with reducing crime rates or similar.
Cities often have rules that increase sprawl and help cause the long commutes.
Here are some:
- Not allowing mixed residential/commercial/office
- Setbacks from lot lines, especially front and side. They increase cost of roads, sewer, water, electric and increase commute times for... vague aesthetic reasons? The fire code thing is a non-issue if appropriate building techniques and materials are used.
- Not allowing simple density improvements such as duplexes/triplex/quadplex or garage attic apartments.
> This is complicated for couples though, because it is hard for you and your partner to find employment in the same part of a city. So one of you will probably have to make a sacrifice.
Yeah, I think this may be an under-appreciated factor. Also the cost and misery of moving house when you change jobs.
If the individuals literally walk into office, I also wonder how much of it is literally walking. I find walking has an outsized influence on my mood, much more than I expect a priori. (of course the stress from traffic and lost time must not help...)
I don’t consider working hours proper human interaction. It’s professional interaction. Working from home is not recommended for every personality type.
I lived out of a suitcase for 4 years preferring to hotel it rather than commute 1.25hrs each way. It worked for me because of the contracting arrangement legitimately let me take the employees non-reimbursed biz expense deduction for the out of town days. Living away from home sucked though, and when the president got pissed off at Hollywood and successfully lobbied to kill the non-reimbursed biz expense deduction it no longer made financial sense. On the bright side I see more of my family now.
It would be interesting to know if people, on average, actually do put those resources towards human interaction, and whether it improves their well-being overall.
"An individual with a 60 minute commute has to earn 40 per cent more money to be equally satisfied with life as an individual who can walk to the office"
This mixing of units is enough to call the whole paper into question. 60 minutes - by what mode. There is no reason you can't walk 60 minutes to work even though I don't know of anybody who does.
I have walked to work before, it took me about 40 minutes. I have also drove the same distance, takes about 12. I can take the bus which takes about 30 minutes (including 10 minutes walking to/from the stop). A helicopter could probably do it in 5. You can imagine other ways I could get to work with different travel times (practical is not a requirement).
I commuted for almost 20 years in the NY Metro area. My journey, on one of the least reliable mass transit lines, took 4 hours from my day... if it was on time. I was well-paid and lived in a nice home, in a great neighborhood. The real problem with this commute is it takes over your life. During the work week, there is no me time, no time for fun or hobbies. I would sandwich in workouts and some downtime to unwind daily, but I was deeply sleep-deprived. Sure, I slept on the train and meditated, but the lack of reliable transportation on a daily basis really retarded any progress on those fronts. And that impaired my ability to fully enjoy my family, actively participate in my kids' upbringing and to genuinely enjoy life. I kind of had it all, yet, that darn commute raised my stress levels so high, it was ruining every aspect of life. I drank more than I wanted, and endured marital discord.
Moral of the story is look at your commute as the top factor determining your quality of life. Think well and hard about that extra 30-60-90 minutes because it means a bigger house and backyard.
I've been doing the same for only 4 months and I can feel a lot of similar feelings beginning to set in. I have no idea how you managed it for so long!
I'm always surprised seeing so many people accepting to commute.
The time waste, the money waste, the environmental waste.
I guess they got sold on the idea they can listen to a podcast on the way to the office...
It's important to think about what we do. Even if we are taken by the storm of life. Pause, and think about what you are accepting to put yourself through.
Counterargument: in SF I'm always surprised by the number of people who choose to live in areas they dislike (ex: the Tenderloin), paying astronomical rent, and never being near green space, just for the sake of their commute.
I pay the price of a 1-hour commute each way every day, but I live in the Sunset right by Golden Gate Park (imo one of the best urban parks in the country), and every night when I get home I have the peace of the trees, while still technically being in the city and having plenty of walkable restaurants, groceries, and services. I also get 850 square feet for the same price that many in worse areas of the city pay for 350, and on the weekends I'm already right by the park and the beach. Additionally my wife and I both feel safe walking around at night and frequently go for walks after dinner, and when we lived closer to downtown we couldn't really do that.
In my experience people (myself included) tend to mostly deal with what's near them when thinking about spending their free time. That means for folks living _in_ the city they rarely end up experiencing the parks and never get away from the crowds that create such a feeling of anonymity. I didn't even know what I was missing out on until I made the move, and despite my frustrations with my commute I wouldn't trade it back and neither would my wife.
I wonder how much your comment applies outside of SF?
I live in Cambridge MA, walking distance to the biotech capital of the world, and I can't relate to any of your listed downsides of city living except the astronomical rent.
I guess I'm in the minority here, but I genuinely enjoy my commute to work. It's the sole reason I turn up.
With my new place of work I pass through rolling hills, farms, vineyards, rivers, and by the time I get to the office I am delightfully refreshed and my heart is pumping.
When I was in London I would traverse the same distance, but loved weaving through the narrow traffic, sprinting up the small hills, passing over the river and then racing through central, fighting through the markets, and feeling absolutely elated by the time I got into the office.
For this reason alone I always place myself at least 15km from my work place. Its a nice transition between working mode and home mode, and its a good way to separate the two.
Plus it's easier to justify home office to the boss on those super treacherous days.
Right, it's not like you could make your own path of walking, riding a train, a bus or your own car wherever you want, on your own terms by not having to commute every single day.
But hey, good thing you have a beautiful scenery on the way to the office. It's rarely the case for most commuters.
"With my new place of work I pass through rolling hills, farms, vineyards, rivers, and by the time I get to the office I am delightfully refreshed and my heart is pumping."
Wow, that's incredibly fortunate! I go up a bunch of urban hills in my old vehicle, people drive sub-optimally/selfishly often, and there's not ample parking so I park in a shady neighborhood to walk 3 minutes in to my office.
Or they are not willing to accept the loss of income stability from living in a place with lower commute times, which also end up having fewer opportunities to earn income. Plus once a spouse also needs to work, both people's income streams and future stability of the income streams have to be managed.
Due to increased volatility and concentration of places with sufficient income earning (and increasing) possibilities, this manifests itself as cities with lengthy commutes for all except the luckiest.
Edit: Also compounding this is that school quality is roughly a measurement of the income earning abilities or wealth of the children's parents. It's known to everyone that sending your child to a school with children who have lower income parents results in lower chances of success for your child. If you want to mitigate this, then your options are to send the child to a private school, which are very expensive in cities, or move sufficiently far away so that you are geographically too far from the children with lower income parents and so the public schools' children end up having parents that have similar earning potentials.
> I'm always surprised seeing so many people accepting to commute.
I'm more surprised by the surprise itself. For most, the better place to raise a family and the better place to work aren't near each other. Surely it is clear why the commute is an acceptable trade-off to optimize those other things.
It's important to think about why others do what they do instead of assuming it's irrational.
The trick to commuting is making the best of it. Then it's not a sunk cost or lost time. It's also not an environmental waste if you consider the alternative mode of transports.
I have the luxury of taking a 1.5 hour ferry ride in the morning and evening. I sometimes alternate and use the train for a 50 minute commute. Regardless I always get a seat and read a book or work on my laptop. In fact most of my productive work gets done on the ferry. Work is for socialising.
Wouldn't trade the commute for a shorter walk to work.
>The trick to commuting is making the best of it. Then it's not a sunk cost or lost time.
Assuming one wants to spend time with family/friends/exercise, and wants to sleep 6 to 8 hours, I don't see anyway to make a long commute not be lost time. I consider commutes part of my work time, as I'm not free to do what I want. I'm paying with my commute time + work time to buy free time.
If you commute by car you have to payon to the road and can’t do anything else. If you use public transportation it is probably too crowded and inconvenient to read a book or watch a podcast. Situations as described by you are exception, not the rule. Of course self-driving cars would solve this.
I think the issue is that a lot of people already live in Major metros where commute time is inversely proportional to rent and just accept it as a fact of life. This is why I refuse to move to LA, SF, NYC, Seattle, etc.
I currently live 15 min away from my job in Miami and pay less than $1k in rent. It is amazing being able to wake up at 8:30, dress and pack lunch and still get to work before 9am.
Most people here who have longer commutes are because they own homes and don't have the luxury of moving around like me, but then again, the own homes which is pretty hard in the cities I mentioned.
Honestly my first filter when job hunting is commute times and the price of rent within a 10 mile radius of the office.
Having had a 90 min commute at one point I realized that it just wasn't worth it unless you could have flexible hours to avoid rush hour and even then it's almost 900 minutes a week lost to "just" driving.
I hate commuting, but if my spouse's job preferences are in city A and mine are in city B, 50 miles from city A, commuting is the best possible option (vs taking inferior jobs or separating).
Right now, in the US, in many cities, we have minimum parking laws, that say you need X number of parking slots per commercial space or per work area, within some maximum distance of a couple thousand feet or less. And, yet there's absolutely no minimum living space/apartments/residentials to speak of.
This is completely backwards. We should have minimum living space requirements within every work place. If you want to regulate things, regulate it well: No places to live, then no places to work. If there were 1 place to live within 500 ft for every 1 job, then we wouldn't have this situation where most of the population has to commute 2 hours every day polluting the planet with overly long commutes that could be 10 or 20 times closer. Imagine the reduction in c02 if people were traveling 20 times fewer miles every day.
Which was some of the thinking behind the classic attempts at "company towns". On the one hand, yes reducing commutes is a public good, but directly or indirectly connecting your housing to the company you work for has it's own problems (including just the basic problem that your whole life shouldn't have to revolve around where you work). As with most things, you have to be careful what you incentivize.
the point is not that you would remain there forever. You want housing to be something that you can relatively easily switch from. but there should always be a close option, we dont want people getting stuck, commuting vast distances everyday
I've been working remote for 8 years and so my commute is 0 mins. But in my experience companies that allow remote work have caught on to this commute time==money dynamic and have adjusted their offered compensation accordingly. More than once have I had or heard the conversation that "well, you have the perk of no commute + living in a lower cost area, so based on that the compensation target for you is X - Y", where Y is $10-20k less.
The question I wrestle with: is it fair?
1. For living in a lower cost area, no. If I live in SF I benefit/pay a premium for living in a nicer area. That should have nothing to do with compensation (unless they are located in SF and need me close by).
2. For not having a commute, maybe. I think it is fair for a company to pay a premium to have someone onsite. But that premium should be the same whether I walk 5 mins to work or drive 50 miles.
I think it's a mistake to frame this with respect to 'fairness'.
If you were another company instead of an individual you would not be having this discussion with your employer.
Would they try to bring the price of IT equipment down, with the argument of a shorter delivery route, if they were doing business with a retail business close by their office?
For HR the best outcome is to get the best people possible for the lowest price possible.
The best outcome for you as an employee is to get the maximum compensation + benefits + bonuses for the least amount of your time/effort.
For the archetype factory employee, their value grows linearly with time spent working. For a knowledge worker the output of a small team of 10/20 people could generate orders of magnitude more, the time spent is not relevant what matters is the value adding output.
So if you want to think in terms of fairness don't frame it in terms of the 40 hours a week, frame it in terms of the profit generated or money saved as a direct result of your output.
> frame it in terms of the profit generated or money saved as a direct result of your output.
As I pointed out here[1] this is hard to do and no company does this. If you can find a way to quantify your value to the company, that's great. 90+% of the cases I've seen where people do it, they're making wild assumptions that no employer would buy, though.
> Would they try to bring the price of IT equipment down, with the argument of a shorter delivery route, if they were doing business with a retail business close by their office?
No, but they would bring the price down if they could buy it cheaper from a competitor. If you live in a low COL area, they could try to argue that they can find other employees in your area for whom they could pay less than what you demand, and those people would still get paid more than the average in that area.
There's a reason outsourced employees in other countries don't get paid as much as they do in the US. Do not expect that you can change that dynamic easily.
Of course, if you can demonstrate that it'll be hard for them to find a remote worker with your (perhaps rare) skills, then your argument would be more appealing to them.
Why should employers pay for that? It's the employee's choice where they live, not the company's. If the company bought some company housing and had employees live there, then your idea would make sense. But why should someone who chooses to live 2 hours away get paid more than someone who lives 5 minutes away?
However, I think there are some good arguments to be made about where the employers choose to locate their offices.
I live in NYC so perhaps I can give some perspective on why we put up with this. My commute is ~40 minutes from Brooklyn central, and relatively painfree. I work in Midtown. A lot of my friends commute 1 - 2 hours from South Brooklyn, and one co-worker is commuting from outside of Queens(!).
A lot of jobs that pay decently aren't located in the outer boroughs. We could move closer to the city but we simply don't make enough and/or don't have the skills to make enough. Rents, especially near train stops are reaching 2 - 3k easily. Also, many jobs are still on the fence about letting more staff work remotely, although tech is changing this. Thus, we put up with crowds, delays and smelly train cars.
I also live in NYC (Manhattan, specifically), and I read through this with my own lens: married, with a kid, another on the way. I live 13 blocks from my office.
Some things that cause me grief:
1. NYC's city income tax on top of federal and state tax
2. The competitive public school system that disadvantages many and doesn't appeal to my parental administration efforts either
3. The pay-or-wait-for everything kid-related -- 2s or 3s programs that ask for astronomical amounts of money
4. Swampy summer urban heat island
5. AIR quality that probably isn't as good as it could be. If you ever walk on Madison Ave. during morning or evening rush hour, you've inhaled the avenue-wide plume of diesel smoke that saturates the air
In some suburbs things flip in the other direction:
1. Public schools that are supported by high property taxes
2. Rather large fees for relatively shorter commutes --hundreds of dollars per month to commute 40 minutes to/from Grand Central or Penn
3. Lower income tax burden
I'm looking at houses in the suburbs now, and what's difficult to quantify is the level of happiness associated with gaining things like fresh air, extra space, a yard for kids to play and keep themselves busy, closer proximity to family (both sides), and etc.
I think there's lots of folks who positively and negatively value similar things and happily eat the commute time up (as me time, or personal time) in exchange for the some of the benefits I mentioned.
It has been noted that most people consider a commute about 30 minutes or least each way every day normal. Transport mode doesn't matter: primitive villages walk that long to their various fields or whatever. As we add faster modes of transport people move farther out to maintain that time.
>As we add faster modes of transport people move farther out to maintain that time.
Exactly, which is why widening highways to alleviate congestion is a waste of time and money. More people will just move farther out, canceling out all the savings had by adding the extra lanes.
The time savings get cancelled out, but that's an incorrectly narrow view of things. Everyone who moved farther away concretely benefits in terms of bigger and/or cheaper accomodations. There is still a net benefit, just not in commute time.
Let's do a thought experiment. Today, Highway A that links suburban region A to city B has 2 lanes and there are Y number of people that can make a certain commute in a certain amount of time.
We widen it to 4 lanes. We get 7-10 years of reduced congestion that steadily gets worse until we are at the same level of congestion.
Casting aside that temporary reprieve, which in itself adds value, the carrying capacity even at current levels of congestion has doubled, do we've now opened up another Y number of people with the option to make that commute.
So when it's all said and done, the number of people that can make that commute has doubled, even if the time it takes remains the same.
Still a win in terms of opening up options and mobility. More trucks can make deliveries. More people can commute to work.
It's a difference if you make a 30 min walk, pass by a bakery in the morning and the supermarket or a restaurant in the evening. You can't have that in the car, or train.
I have a 40 minute work to work that passes by a bakery. Sometimes I take the bus which passes right by that same bakery. Sometimes I drive which passes by the same bakery. I have stopped in that bakery while driving, and while walking, it make no difference. In fact the car is more flexible because a 5 minute detour lets me stop by a supermarket that is an extra 15 minutes while walking. (the bus only comes every 30 minutes so stopping in the middle to run errands isn't practical even though it detours to that supermarket)
I personally don't think 30 minutes would ever cause me some kind of issue. Currently my commute is 1 hour 10 minutes, through a combination of walking, bus and train (i live in europe) and I am rather unhappy with it, although it is something i've gotten used to.
Not sure why this is downvoted. People move farther as it becomes easier to commute.
Hence the suburban movement in the last 50 years or so.
Here in the bay area, real estate in the farther areas of east bay (e.g., Livermore) have been in high demand as there has been talks of Bart expansion to Livermore.
A solution is that is so much cheaper than building wider roads is just to allow easier upzoning and higher density buildings. San Francisco's housing problems are all self-imposed.
Readit News
When I worked in Manhattan, I spent the extra $1,000/mo. to live within a couple blocks of work, rather than a 45-min commute away off in Brooklyn like most people I knew. It's expensive to live next to work.
But here's the thing: I always felt guilty about it. That it was "unnecessary" money to spend, even though I had it. That it was irresponsible.
However, I knew from (painful) experience it was still the rational thing to do. Once you subtract time spent sleeping, at work, and "maintenance" (shower, tidying, etc.) you really only have maybe 5 hours a day of personal time max. If you commute 45 min each way... that's only 3.5 hours. And when you factor in that you need a couple hours to relax, eat dinner, etc. -- that's the difference between having time left over for a rewarding hobby or not, which qualitatively changes your life in a fundamental way, and keeps you sane at work. Whether it's going to the gym regularly, reading books, doing yoga or dance, whatever it is.
But it's still so hard to mentally justify paying such a premium for your own leisure time. It's really easy to tell yourself, no -- I'll save money, commute, and I'll still manage to find the time, it'll be enough... because you're optimistic you can have it all. But you can't. You'll lose your hobby or sleep or your happiness.
I spent a hellish couple of years in London living in a pleasant area but commuting to and from a startup near the centre, and since then I've been remote-only.
There are other trade-offs, but it's hard to beat for low stress levels and free time.
Commuting sucks, but so does living in a city. It's noisy and dirty and crowded. You can't own your own property and crime is much much more prevalent.
Owning a nice, quiet house in a nice neighborhood without the commute is just heaven, honestly. At least for me anyway.
I’d save time, but then I’d spend it driving into the city, anyway, to do most of the things I want to do.
After briefly experiencing the 101 commute in bay area very early in my career, I decided I wasn't going to do it. Since then I've made a point to live close to work - which has affected both where I've lived and where I've worked, as I also decided I wasn't willing to live close to an office park in the middle of nowhere to make this work.
No regrets at all, although it has always involved some expense. I'm very aware I have been lucky in the options I've had though, this can be very difficult to arrange in some situations.
As an introvert with learned emotional intelligence, I find it draining dealing with people all day and I for the most part liked the people I worked with.
When I worked less than 15 minutes away from work, I missed the down time. Especially since I had just gotten married, lived in an apartment and wasn’t use to coming home to three other people - wife and two (step)sons — and I love my family.
Now that we live in a much larger house, and my wife knows me well enough not to take it personally when so just want some alone time in our home gym, it’s better.
A distance of merely 5 miles can take rent in Austin from $2000 to north of $3500. San Diego and LA have similar (and worse!) gradients in places.
The problem is your rent competition is 4 tech bros rooming together. That's an awful lot of money pushing the prices up.
This was when SH 45 first opened up, so things hadn't yet built up around it to clog it up. Not sure what traffic looks like these days.
Throwing on some music or a podcast helps me unwind while the exercise does its thing to clear my head. I also save 100+ bucks a month on a transit pass too, though my rent increase is not as bad as 1000+ a month, I feel in your case it is definitely worthwhile.
Deleted Comment
My understanding of communing was people commute for longer for a 'better' house, but don't realise a 'better' house doesn't create happiness as much as a shorter commute.
I love spending time with my wife, but I’m also an introvert who really craves having my own space. Even when my parents come up and visit it isn’t intrusive since we have a guest suite downstairs.
Also the “better home” also means a better school district.
I found this very interesting, given the fact that I know a lot of people who work in major cities but live outside the city for financial purposes. Might make more sense to bite the bullet and pay high rent to live next to your workplace.
This is complicated for couples though, because it is hard for you and your partner to find employment in the same part of a city. So one of you will probably have to make a sacrifice.
I would be very interested in how remote work figures into all of this. Does the interaction with humans outweigh the benefits of being able to roll out of bed and be at the office?
But, with a partner and kids, commuting becomes a greater good sacrifice. Depending on work location, a 60 minutes commute can mean a bigger house, better neighborhood and college savings.
Commuting affects kids too, they get less time with a more exhausted, stressed parent. Compromises are harder to make with five people.
This is one of the reasons urban architecture, with an eye to the economics of it all, are important. Architects tend to swim in abstract water. But, when they say things like "how people relate to and occupy their built environemt," I like to think they mean things like "*How people to get to work, and how awful it is."
IMO, these are exactly the kinds of measures we should have have governments, rather than gdp. Commute times/pleasantness, housing-share of income, etc.
For a city, knocking 10% off average commute time is on par with reducing crime rates or similar.
Yeah, I think this may be an under-appreciated factor. Also the cost and misery of moving house when you change jobs.
I wonder if this harrowing 911 call sheds some light on this question:
https://www.newyorker.com/humor/daily-shouts/i-work-from-hom...
Depends on the personality of the person and the health of the rest of their social life.
Deleted Comment
It’s like longing for the interaction offered by a long flight. Chat with your neighbor, get on with your day.
Why not have social interaction with people you look forward to interacting with? (Does anyone go to the office to hang out on their day off?)
This mixing of units is enough to call the whole paper into question. 60 minutes - by what mode. There is no reason you can't walk 60 minutes to work even though I don't know of anybody who does.
I have walked to work before, it took me about 40 minutes. I have also drove the same distance, takes about 12. I can take the bus which takes about 30 minutes (including 10 minutes walking to/from the stop). A helicopter could probably do it in 5. You can imagine other ways I could get to work with different travel times (practical is not a requirement).
I'm farther away, at unicycle distance.
Moral of the story is look at your commute as the top factor determining your quality of life. Think well and hard about that extra 30-60-90 minutes because it means a bigger house and backyard.
The time waste, the money waste, the environmental waste.
I guess they got sold on the idea they can listen to a podcast on the way to the office...
It's important to think about what we do. Even if we are taken by the storm of life. Pause, and think about what you are accepting to put yourself through.
I pay the price of a 1-hour commute each way every day, but I live in the Sunset right by Golden Gate Park (imo one of the best urban parks in the country), and every night when I get home I have the peace of the trees, while still technically being in the city and having plenty of walkable restaurants, groceries, and services. I also get 850 square feet for the same price that many in worse areas of the city pay for 350, and on the weekends I'm already right by the park and the beach. Additionally my wife and I both feel safe walking around at night and frequently go for walks after dinner, and when we lived closer to downtown we couldn't really do that.
In my experience people (myself included) tend to mostly deal with what's near them when thinking about spending their free time. That means for folks living _in_ the city they rarely end up experiencing the parks and never get away from the crowds that create such a feeling of anonymity. I didn't even know what I was missing out on until I made the move, and despite my frustrations with my commute I wouldn't trade it back and neither would my wife.
I live in Cambridge MA, walking distance to the biotech capital of the world, and I can't relate to any of your listed downsides of city living except the astronomical rent.
With my new place of work I pass through rolling hills, farms, vineyards, rivers, and by the time I get to the office I am delightfully refreshed and my heart is pumping.
When I was in London I would traverse the same distance, but loved weaving through the narrow traffic, sprinting up the small hills, passing over the river and then racing through central, fighting through the markets, and feeling absolutely elated by the time I got into the office.
For this reason alone I always place myself at least 15km from my work place. Its a nice transition between working mode and home mode, and its a good way to separate the two.
Plus it's easier to justify home office to the boss on those super treacherous days.
But hey, good thing you have a beautiful scenery on the way to the office. It's rarely the case for most commuters.
Wow, that's incredibly fortunate! I go up a bunch of urban hills in my old vehicle, people drive sub-optimally/selfishly often, and there's not ample parking so I park in a shady neighborhood to walk 3 minutes in to my office.
Due to increased volatility and concentration of places with sufficient income earning (and increasing) possibilities, this manifests itself as cities with lengthy commutes for all except the luckiest.
Edit: Also compounding this is that school quality is roughly a measurement of the income earning abilities or wealth of the children's parents. It's known to everyone that sending your child to a school with children who have lower income parents results in lower chances of success for your child. If you want to mitigate this, then your options are to send the child to a private school, which are very expensive in cities, or move sufficiently far away so that you are geographically too far from the children with lower income parents and so the public schools' children end up having parents that have similar earning potentials.
I'm more surprised by the surprise itself. For most, the better place to raise a family and the better place to work aren't near each other. Surely it is clear why the commute is an acceptable trade-off to optimize those other things.
It's important to think about why others do what they do instead of assuming it's irrational.
I have the luxury of taking a 1.5 hour ferry ride in the morning and evening. I sometimes alternate and use the train for a 50 minute commute. Regardless I always get a seat and read a book or work on my laptop. In fact most of my productive work gets done on the ferry. Work is for socialising.
Wouldn't trade the commute for a shorter walk to work.
Assuming one wants to spend time with family/friends/exercise, and wants to sleep 6 to 8 hours, I don't see anyway to make a long commute not be lost time. I consider commutes part of my work time, as I'm not free to do what I want. I'm paying with my commute time + work time to buy free time.
I currently live 15 min away from my job in Miami and pay less than $1k in rent. It is amazing being able to wake up at 8:30, dress and pack lunch and still get to work before 9am.
Most people here who have longer commutes are because they own homes and don't have the luxury of moving around like me, but then again, the own homes which is pretty hard in the cities I mentioned.
Honestly my first filter when job hunting is commute times and the price of rent within a 10 mile radius of the office.
Having had a 90 min commute at one point I realized that it just wasn't worth it unless you could have flexible hours to avoid rush hour and even then it's almost 900 minutes a week lost to "just" driving.
I hate commuting, but if my spouse's job preferences are in city A and mine are in city B, 50 miles from city A, commuting is the best possible option (vs taking inferior jobs or separating).
This is completely backwards. We should have minimum living space requirements within every work place. If you want to regulate things, regulate it well: No places to live, then no places to work. If there were 1 place to live within 500 ft for every 1 job, then we wouldn't have this situation where most of the population has to commute 2 hours every day polluting the planet with overly long commutes that could be 10 or 20 times closer. Imagine the reduction in c02 if people were traveling 20 times fewer miles every day.
The question I wrestle with: is it fair?
1. For living in a lower cost area, no. If I live in SF I benefit/pay a premium for living in a nicer area. That should have nothing to do with compensation (unless they are located in SF and need me close by).
2. For not having a commute, maybe. I think it is fair for a company to pay a premium to have someone onsite. But that premium should be the same whether I walk 5 mins to work or drive 50 miles.
If you were another company instead of an individual you would not be having this discussion with your employer.
Would they try to bring the price of IT equipment down, with the argument of a shorter delivery route, if they were doing business with a retail business close by their office?
For HR the best outcome is to get the best people possible for the lowest price possible.
The best outcome for you as an employee is to get the maximum compensation + benefits + bonuses for the least amount of your time/effort.
For the archetype factory employee, their value grows linearly with time spent working. For a knowledge worker the output of a small team of 10/20 people could generate orders of magnitude more, the time spent is not relevant what matters is the value adding output.
So if you want to think in terms of fairness don't frame it in terms of the 40 hours a week, frame it in terms of the profit generated or money saved as a direct result of your output.
As I pointed out here[1] this is hard to do and no company does this. If you can find a way to quantify your value to the company, that's great. 90+% of the cases I've seen where people do it, they're making wild assumptions that no employer would buy, though.
> Would they try to bring the price of IT equipment down, with the argument of a shorter delivery route, if they were doing business with a retail business close by their office?
No, but they would bring the price down if they could buy it cheaper from a competitor. If you live in a low COL area, they could try to argue that they can find other employees in your area for whom they could pay less than what you demand, and those people would still get paid more than the average in that area.
There's a reason outsourced employees in other countries don't get paid as much as they do in the US. Do not expect that you can change that dynamic easily.
Of course, if you can demonstrate that it'll be hard for them to find a remote worker with your (perhaps rare) skills, then your argument would be more appealing to them.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21685035
I guess my belief that employers should pay for commute time of their employees wouldn't fly with them.
However, I think there are some good arguments to be made about where the employers choose to locate their offices.
A lot of jobs that pay decently aren't located in the outer boroughs. We could move closer to the city but we simply don't make enough and/or don't have the skills to make enough. Rents, especially near train stops are reaching 2 - 3k easily. Also, many jobs are still on the fence about letting more staff work remotely, although tech is changing this. Thus, we put up with crowds, delays and smelly train cars.
I hope this brings a bit more light into things.
Some things that cause me grief: 1. NYC's city income tax on top of federal and state tax 2. The competitive public school system that disadvantages many and doesn't appeal to my parental administration efforts either 3. The pay-or-wait-for everything kid-related -- 2s or 3s programs that ask for astronomical amounts of money 4. Swampy summer urban heat island 5. AIR quality that probably isn't as good as it could be. If you ever walk on Madison Ave. during morning or evening rush hour, you've inhaled the avenue-wide plume of diesel smoke that saturates the air
In some suburbs things flip in the other direction: 1. Public schools that are supported by high property taxes 2. Rather large fees for relatively shorter commutes --hundreds of dollars per month to commute 40 minutes to/from Grand Central or Penn 3. Lower income tax burden
I'm looking at houses in the suburbs now, and what's difficult to quantify is the level of happiness associated with gaining things like fresh air, extra space, a yard for kids to play and keep themselves busy, closer proximity to family (both sides), and etc.
I think there's lots of folks who positively and negatively value similar things and happily eat the commute time up (as me time, or personal time) in exchange for the some of the benefits I mentioned.
Exactly, which is why widening highways to alleviate congestion is a waste of time and money. More people will just move farther out, canceling out all the savings had by adding the extra lanes.
We widen it to 4 lanes. We get 7-10 years of reduced congestion that steadily gets worse until we are at the same level of congestion.
Casting aside that temporary reprieve, which in itself adds value, the carrying capacity even at current levels of congestion has doubled, do we've now opened up another Y number of people with the option to make that commute.
So when it's all said and done, the number of people that can make that commute has doubled, even if the time it takes remains the same.
Still a win in terms of opening up options and mobility. More trucks can make deliveries. More people can commute to work.
I have a 40 minute work to work that passes by a bakery. Sometimes I take the bus which passes right by that same bakery. Sometimes I drive which passes by the same bakery. I have stopped in that bakery while driving, and while walking, it make no difference. In fact the car is more flexible because a 5 minute detour lets me stop by a supermarket that is an extra 15 minutes while walking. (the bus only comes every 30 minutes so stopping in the middle to run errands isn't practical even though it detours to that supermarket)
Hence the suburban movement in the last 50 years or so.
Here in the bay area, real estate in the farther areas of east bay (e.g., Livermore) have been in high demand as there has been talks of Bart expansion to Livermore.