[notmything]

Hence needing a cultural change - we can get the same effect remotely if we actually try.

When I was a fresh grad, I also learnt a tremendous amount from the people around me; I don't doubt our ability to get the same effect remotely.

The issues we have with everyone wanting to live in massive urban areas (near work) are not less important then you needing to figure out how to learn from home, that's the type of self centred thinking that gives us high density housing, pollution, unaffordable housing, long commutes, strained family lives, broken communities and mental health issues (also known as commuting / working from a central office).

[rm999]

>high density housing, pollution

Low density housing and sprawl are actually worse for the environment btw. You have a clear bias against urban living. That's your opinion and that's totally ok, but the cultural trend is definitely back towards higher density urban living.

I'm a fan of periodic, 1-2 days a week remote work. But I don't like working on fully remote teams, and I've worked with managers who are very experienced and enthusiastic about it. Yes, remote working CAN improve quality of life, but it harms collaboration and communication and shifts a lot of burden onto the managers. This isn't cultural, it's simply what happens when you put people further apart.

To be clear, I dream of a day where collaboration remotely works really well. I'd like to live in a smaller city one day where I don't always have to worry about finding a job.

[notmything]

Like I said, cultural changes required. Urban sprawl is currently worse for the environment than high density because people can't work from home. Urban sprawl happens around cities because people want a house and want to be as near as possible to work.

Imagine if we moved from having large cities that people lived around to a series of smaller towns. The urban sprawl that we currently have would not be a problem.

You need to stop thinking in terms of how things currently are and look at how they could be. Your social centre could be your town, your work would mostly be remote, no more urban sprawl just so everyone can be as near as possible to one square mile of central business district.

If I didn't have to work in the city, I wouldn't be living anywhere near the city, I'd pick a nice town in the north near to some excellent surf breaks; why would I even be living within the urban sprawl if I didn't need to be in the city? We're killing our planet, destroying our families and ruining our mental health. Do you think the urban sprawl around london (known as greater london) would exist if people weren't forced to commute into London everyday?

[dave2000]

" Do you think the urban sprawl around london (known as greater london) would exist if people weren't forced to commute into London everyday?"

London exists as it does today for historical factors, such as importing, manufacture etc. Only recently has it been possible for more than a tiny fraction of the population to work remotely, and even today that proportion is so low it would make no difference overall.

[notmything]

cultural change required. London is busy and expensive because people need to be there, if they didn't it wouldn't be!

[dave2000]

If you don't work from home then clearly you'll have a commute; how long/expensive/stressful/environmentally damaging it is obviously depends on a number of factors. I don't work too far from where I live and I use public transport to get there, so I can read and listen to music, which means it's not remotely stressful. Working in an office means I can switch off when I leave; when I've worked from home I've got distracted so I feel like I should do more work to make up for it. People at home see me there and expect me to do non-work things because "it'll only take a minute".

I was talking about the `ideas via casual chat` thing, though, which is obviously entirely separate from any discussion about work/travel etc. It's different if you're remote because talking face to face is a different dynamic to talking over the phone/skype/irc/email etc. I mean I could sit and drink by myself at home and talk to other people who are also drinking alone at home; perhaps that's an environmentally way of relaxing after work; it would reduce drink-driving deaths, wouldn't it. It would also be a horrifically depressing insulating way of living and it's not for me.

[notmything]

I get the bus to work: 45 - 60 minutes to travel around 13 kilometres. I bough my two bedroom apartment for around 1 million aussie dollars, if I choose to live further away, I could have got a 4 bedroom house with a pool for $700,000, or a 3 bedroom house without a pool for $500,000. The prices are driven up as everyone wants to be as close to work as possible.

For my million dollars I get to hear upstairs go the bathroom, my child gets woken up in the early hours by upstairs walking around in high heels after a night out. Every building on the street has a minimum of 6 - 8 apartments within so there's never any peace and quiet. Sometimes the bus has so many people I have to stand for nearly an hour.

Sometimes someone will crash on the bridge which will make me an hour late home which means I miss my kids going to bed. Mental health issues here are through the roof, the stress of high density living is literally killing people through depression and hypertension.

My child doesn't even know what a back yard is, that's a foreign concept to her. The only saving grace is that we're near to two beautiful beaches, without that I think I would have had a mental breakdown.

The whole "it'll only take a minute" issue that you seem to suffer from goes back to my cultural changes, one the culture has moved to work from home, the current working from home complaints will mostly be addressed. Also, let's not compare being in an office to going out for a drink, you can still go out and drink in your town with your friends in your community, again, cultural changes required.

[dave2000]

It sounds like you have perhaps a few issues of your own to deal with. I've always lived in/around london and I know others who do and we're not going mad. I know a bunch of people from outside the UK who live here and they'd hate to have to live outside London; it's like another world here compared to the sticks in terms of acceptance of foreigners, access to culture etc. Sure, sometimes there's a problem with the train/road, but so what? Whatyagonna do? Shift your whole life around just to try and avoid that?

I don't know anyone who lives immediately near me so why i'd want to go for a drink with them instead of my colleagues is something of a mystery to me. I mean, I don't drink anyway, but, you know, coffee or whatever. In many cultures you'd not go out for a drink, what with them being pointlessly expensive; you'd invite each other round to your own place; drink supermarket priced beer, smoke whatever etc without having to deal with randoms getting all legal.

[notmything]

What have half of your points got to do with anything?

Not knowing who you live around is because that's not within the culture, if your life was based around where you live rather then where you work (and was the same for everyone) I'm sure that would change.

Your whole point about going for drinks or inviting people round is irrelevant; the point is people will be able to build local friend groups rather than work friend groups.

"Whatyagonna do? Shift your whole life around just to try and avoid that?"

Well, my whole life gets flipped around everytime I can't et home to my kids before they sleep because of an incident on the tube or the roads.

I think you mostly missed my point - you looked at your life today and decided that working from home won't work for you - you're completely ignoring all of the issues with central working locations.

Someone claiming these are my problems is nonsense; a lot of people feel the same; we are in a mental health crisis and families are under massive strain because fathers are away from their children for so long. Nobody is saying that you have to change but a lot of people are saying that the current system is causing serious issues to living standards.

Your comment about having to shift your whole life around is unreasonable and shows you haven;t thought about this outside of your situation. Every father I speak to, every couple that can't afford a house near work that I speak to, they all agree. Housing crisis, family crisis, mental health crisis; they are all heavily contributed to by this issue.

I used to be 22 and living in shoreditch, I didn't care about these issues back then either. When I don't get home in time to see my kids before bed tonight because some idiot crashes their car and delays thousands of people, I'll just say to my wife WHATYAGONNA DO!??? Can't be flipping my life around!!!