[oneplane]

I think they would be referred to as 'suckers' because they are spending time for their employer for which they are not compensated in that scenario (two options, both pay the same, but one requires you to sacrifice significant portions of your day for no compensation).

[Retric]

You negotiate compensation before accepting the job and generally have the option to move.

If anything it’s people failing to consider commute times when looking for work that’s the issue not company’s requirements. Going they will pay me 10k more per year but I’ll spend X more hours a week commuting is effectively being paid to commute.

[vidarh]

Hence calling them suckers. Doing the commute is fine, but not taking it into account is potentially seeking yourself short(even if you end up feeling forced to take an offer you feel doesn't take it into account - at least then you're aware).

[sokoloff]

Who are these people who are competent enough to hold an engineering position but do so without taking the facts of a commute into account?

[vidarh]

Given the low proportion of people I've extended employment offers to over the years who even try to negotiate terms or drill down into employment terms that might affect the value, I'd assume it applies to most engineers.

At some point I got a week more holiday than every other employee in the UK at my employer at the time because I was the only hire who had questioned a contract clause and gotten them to confirm my preferred interpretation of a woefully misleading clause in writing before signing, and when they later wanted to stick to the technicalities of how it was written I was able to just forward them an email from the COO confirming that in my case they'd agreed to my interpretation.

Most people seem to only pay attention to the headline amount, and then grumble about the consequences after the fact.

[pigbearpig]

Bill might like a long commute as much as Gladys likes to work from home. Hard to call Bill a sucker in that case.

[bdw5204]

The only reason I can imagine that somebody would genuinely like a long commute would be if they hate their home life and are trying to escape from it. They'd probably be better off just getting a divorce instead.

[coldpie]

My commute is about 40 minutes each way by bus, plus a 5 minute walk on both ends. I love it. I get outdoors for a short walk four times a day, I read books and magazines on the bus, see what's being built or new businesses opening around town, sometimes I get to meet neighbors and other commuters, or help out random strangers with directions or whatever. My commute to work is definitely a benefit to my life.

[ProjectArcturis]

If you had a remote job, would you take a 40-minute round-trip bus ride twice a day just for the enjoyment of it?

[coldpie]

No.

[vidarh]

Nothing stops you from doing that if you work from home, so while the trip might be a benefit to you, it is entirely orthogonal from whether you work from home or an office.

On the contrary, not being forced into the office let's you choose your journeys.

[coldpie]

This nearby comment does a good job explaining why that doesn't really work out for me: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39042945

[vidarh]

I can't help but feel that is a rationalisation.

[mikrl]

During the summer when I work from home I take a 20 minute walk at 8:30 (and water my tomatoes) and a 20 minute walk at 12:00 before settling back into my home office with lunch.

If I’m feeling up to it, I get another 30-40 minute walk in once it cools off in the evening.

I don’t mind driving in during the winter though, because then I don’t have to pay to heat my house (beyond 15C for the cat) for the day.

[askonomm]

This is the most institutionalized-minded answer I have seen.

[coldpie]

I don't know what this means, sorry.

[hospitalJail]

The human brain is incredible at rationalization.

[coldpie]

In this thread, hospitalJail discovers that some people enjoy leaving their basement :)

[helboi4]

Yeah I hate how the wierd basement dwellers are telling us how to handle our mental health. 99% of humans are not basement dwellers who don't like seeing people. People are becoming more socially awkward because our society is forgetting the fundamental social nature of human beings. So maybe some people think they like it. But the statistics don't lie - mental health is going off a fucking cliff. We're not meant to live like this. There are a few basement dwellers who are really that introverted, and there are some people who just have commutes that are THAT BAD (and that's bad town planning), but most people benefit from being outside our house for large portions of the week and having most of our communication being face to face. And that's just a fact.

[hospitalJail]

STRAWMAN Flag this. No one is arguging for isolation

I love to go to the park with my kids. I love going to parties.

I don't like sitting in my car unpaid to do work that doesnt require sitting in the car unpaid.

[Retric]

Reading on a long buss/train ride can be inherently pleasant. Similarly not all car commutes are stuck alone in traffic, I rather enjoyed commuting with my dad.

[vidarh]

I did once work with someone who intentionally found a job far enough from home that he could justify a "bachelor pad" in town and just go home to the family home at the weekends. I wonder what proportion of weekend commuters do it out of a desire to stay away vs. financial reasons.

[toast0]

I had a bike / ferry / bike commute a couple days a week for a while. It was nice to get that exercise in, and I enjoy ferry rides too.

[jimmydddd]

I've been WFH for 15 years and love it. My wife has been WFH for 3 years. While I do prefer WFH, I think there were benefits to us being apart during the work day and then catching up at dinner/evening. There are some downsides to being together 24/7, even in a good relationship.

[oneplane]

Gladys can drive around for hours at will, while Bill has no choice. Bill is still a sucker.

[sanderjd]

There can actually be significant value to limiting optionality. This is the solution to "the paradox of choice"; sometimes it's actually better to have fewer choices!

I find this very unintuitive and even mentally rebel at the idea when I think about it, but I still think it's true.

But for example, consider three scenarios:

1. Work from home, with a consistent habit of going on a ten minute walk and reading for half an hour before and after work. 2. Commute with a ten minute walk and half hour train ride, with a consistent habit of reading on the train. 3. Same as (1), but family responsibilities and other distractions end the moment work begins and begin the moment work ends. 4. Same as (2), but spend the train ride doom scrolling.

For me (1) is best but also unlikely because there are too many other "choices" of what to do before and after work, so in practice I end up doing (3).

But option (2) of commuting by train would actually be better than (3) despite having less optionality! I would have more wind-up and -down time each day, and get more reading done.

But the risk of option (2) is that there is still too much optionality; instead of reading, I could scroll crap on my phone. Removing that optionality somehow - by getting a dumb phone or some other solution to keep myself from this bad habit - would be another improvement.

Clearly it would be better to make better choices without limiting options, but human nature being what it is, it often turns out better in practice to not have the other options at all.

[pc86]

15 minutes is not significant.

[zer0tonin]

15 * 2 minutes a day 5 times a week is 100h+ by the end of the year

[pc86]

It's 1.4% of the year (assuming that 130 hours a year is correct I didn't check it). That's less than two ounces out of a gallon of liquid or less than half a centimeter out of a foot.

In what other things is 1.4% considered "significant?"

[dgfitz]

Taxes jump to mind. COL adjustments vs inflation for the past few years also comes to mind. Beating some measurable world record by 1.4% is probably a big deal. I'm sure there are more examples if you look for them.

[helboi4]

Bro nobody is spending 100% of their time being productive. we have to have transitional time. time going from one place to another is a net benefit because living in one box is anti-human. for me the cost of the time is so so worth it because i feel so much better seeing my colleagues in person. i become a shell of myself if i don't leave the house so losing the time is something i'm very okay with. its such a small amount of time to make my life 200x better.

[Novosell]

130h a year, assuming you work 5 days every week and that every commute is exactly 15min.

[miroljub]

You can read 10 books during that time. It's not like you need to sit there, do nothing and intensively hate your life 2 * 15 minutes a day.

[rkuodys]

Or, you know, it's 15min exercise which you need just the same :)