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Comment by hugh4 | Hacker News Reader

Personally I'd find it incredibly lonely to work from home. Of course I have a five minute commute. If your commute is terrible, arrange your life better.

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> Personally I'd find it incredibly lonely to work from home.

Honest question: Why? Please be detailed. I could explain all the things that keep my home work from feeling lonely, but it'll be easier for me to stick to things relevant to you if i know exactly what is on your mind.

> Of course I have a five minute commute.

Five minutes from exactly where to where? Living room sofa in normal clothes to office desk with computer switched on and work software running? The exit of your apartment complex to the external door of your office building?

I'm sure you're being a little ... optimistic about your timing there.

> Of course I have a five minute commute.

You're suggesting people move from a place where they may be near the things they enjoy in their life, to work. That is not an improvement, that just shifts the pain from one end to the other.

I feel the same way. I'd go crazy if I worked from home. The distractions are much worse at home (wife, baby, dog), and I'd basically have to force myself to go out and get non-family human contact. Plus, most of my job involves meeting with people, and that tends to be more effective and efficient face-to-face. My productivity would probably be close to zero at home.

And my commute is 2+ hours each way. I would not trade it for working from home.

Sorry to say, but you're part off-topic and part naive. If your work explicitly involves meeting with people, then of course you can't easily remote that. That's the off-topic bit.

On the other hand, it is quite naive to claim that establishing an office in your living space, where you may only be disturbed for important things (hey how does not getting disturbed actually work out in your office?), is somehow a worse deal than throwing away an 8th of your week on commute. ( (2.125) / (24*7) )

The article is about what people lose when they work from home, and I was pointing out a few critical things I would lose if I worked from home. Feel free to disagree with me, but my response was not even close to being off-topic. Anecdotal, sure.

> Plus, most of my job involves meeting with people, and that tends to be more effective and efficient face-to-face.

That is only barely remotable, if at all. Bringing that up in a conversation about fulltime remote working is off-topic. It's as if you'd written "i work on a construction site, and let me tell you, moving those metal beams is hard via my ipad".

if you life in a high priced market that arrangement could be difficult to make.

This sort of comment is naive at best and rubbish at worst. Try raising 5 kids in a city like Houston Texas and having a 5 minute commute. Let's see how that plays out.

In no particular order you need to: get a job 5 minutes away. have your spouse do the same. hope that your company never moves or you never lose your job. purchase/rent a house large enough for 7 in a nice part of town in the part of town that meets the above parameters. Hope that the school zoned to said house is of good quality or find a private school that is also close by. Turn down offers for advancement in the name of organizing your life better. Uproot the kids and spouse when any of the above conditions cannot be met.

In Houston, houses are cheap enough that your spouse shouldn't have to work.

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