[ghaff]

Leaving aside commuting; we'll assume you and friends/partner are fine with only living, working, and socializing where you can easily get around by public transit, walking, bike, Uber now and then and restricting your choices accordingly.

Every half-way senior engineer I know (and I'm not even talking sales, system engineers/solution architects, product managers, and so forth) routinely travel to customer sites or branch locations that require driving under at least some circumstances.

Uber/Lyft have absolutely helped with some edge cases. I was at a work event just a couple weeks ago where my default in the past would have been to rent a car and I didn't because, while the venue was about an hour drive from the airport, I didn't actually need to drive once I go there.

It is absolutely the expectation at most jobs that you can drive if need be.

[kenneth]

I have never once in my career felt like I was held back by not having a car. The only occasion where driving was more convenient was during rare business trips where and we'd simply get a rental car.

If you're a white collar worker in NYC or SF, you're more likely than not not to own a car, or if you do, to use it almost exclusively for personal reasons and not for work reasons.

[ghaff]

NYC in particular is something of an outlier. In any case, this thread was about not having a drivers license, i.e. unable to rent a car.

As a counterpoint, I've frequently had to drive to customers, job sites, etc. but then I mostly haven't lived or worked in a city.

[kenneth]

I would say that suburban / rural America is more of the outlier. Most of the world's white collar workers work in transit-accessible cities, and the rest of the world is much less car-driven than the United States.

But yes, I'm in agreement with you that the DL is an essential skill and that not having it can be limiting.

[esoterica]

> It is absolutely the expectation at most jobs that you can drive if need be.

You're making a broad generalization based on nothing but personal anecdote. In my personal experience, on the other hand, I don't know a single person who has ever needed to drive for work.