Comment by saiya-jin | Hacker News Reader

Comment by saiya-jin | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

Another opinion from the other camp - WFH generally sucks. I have much more work to do, everything is less efficient because people have various remote issues, and whole remote connection is yet another thing on top of everything else that can fail and slow things down.

I ain't cheaping out on current quality of life by having massive commute and adding stress, so shaving off those 20 mins each way doesn't mean much to me. Work-life balance is better with clearly-cut 'theatre' for work and life, having commute as a separator.

Oh yes of course team work with remote is inefficient, was before and will be in the future till we wire our brains together. Having a whole team nearby makes everything so much faster, and I don't even go to the topic of different time zones.

The only benefit for me - more time with my baby. But in these super-short bursts till another interruption from work comes, and they do.

Another thing which I haven't seen mentioned much - people are much less active in general, this will without doubt have bad consequences on their long term health (although these will be hard to track precisely). I am trying to motivate myself into weight training at home 2x per week, running 2-3 times per week weather permitting and long walks on the weekend, but its much harder compared to having gym, and I know literally only my parents (whom I motivate myself to do so) that are so active. Everybody took the 'stay on the couch' too literally. But that's another topic and maybe this is very local to folks around me.

>people are much less active in general

Based on the US's obesity statistics, I don't think lack of access to a gym is Americans' problem.

Spending an hour plus commuting every day is probably more of a problem.

Between getting ready in the morning, getting kids ready, making dinner at night, putting kids to bed, that extra hour or two commuting is what replaces various other activities. And working too much in general.

>Spending an hour plus commuting every day is probably more of a problem.

Precisely. Tied to this is how we zone everything so dam far apart from another. It's ridiculous to have parking minimums within a 500' radius everywhere when there's no living minimimums. If most were able to bike or walk to work then we'd kill 3 birds with one stone: transportation cost, excercise, and environment all at once.

But not the biggest bird: As the income/wealth gap widens, people don't want to associate with the other socioeconomic classes, and they especially want their kids to mingle with other kids whose families are at or above their level (for obvious networking benefits).

This is the root cause for people commuting 1 hour plus everyday in the first place. You automatically sort your neighbors by who can afford to commute that far, and as a result, sort the schools your kids to go to.

To live as a community, people have to believe they are a community, and I don't believe this is possible with current levels of income/wealth/future potential gap. And the only solution I can think of is wealth re-distribution.

>Spending an hour plus commuting every day is probably more of a problem.

Hate to break it to you but a huge portion of Europeans also commute for one hour plus every day since they do it by public transport.

Not everyone lives in a quaint Dutch city 5 minutes bike ride away from work.

Yeah but by using public transit they still walk to the train/bus/trolley stations. In suburban America, people walk outside of their garage into their car and drive 1+ hour to their office.

That little bit of walking to public transit definitely helps with sedentary lifestyle.

I beg to differ. Most of my colleagues in Austria walk outside to their cars and drive to the office every day just like Americans.

The difference is they eat right and spend their weekend either hiking in the mountains or running or mountain biking or going to the gym.

So no, it's not the driving to work that causes the obesity problem, it's how you take care of yourself the rest of time that makes the difference.

Basically everyone living in the countryside drives a car.

Americans commute a lot more then Europeans on average. And also, the amount of physical movement you get when you go by car is much lower compared to when you go by public transport. Which is not like exercise amount either, but it makes difference.

Obesity is much more about eating too much than it is about exercising too little. A quick snack to reward yourself for going to the gym can easily contain more calories than the exercise burned.

I kind of knew this, but started really trying to measure calories in / calories out over the last year and i was surprised by how pronounced it is.

riding my bike home from work (a bit over 3k with >100m net elevation gain) burns less than a chocolate bar worth of calories.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com