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Comment by askonomm | Hacker News Reader

I know back-to-office people like to pretend that commuting is this amazing thing, and that working in stuffy offices together whilst still staring mostly at a screen and communicating via Slack is somehow tons more productive than remote work, but I'm sure most people can see the obviousness that it's a net negative for mental health, no? And so if we know that, why are we still pushing for the unhealthy? Who cares about productivity when it comes at such a cost.

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I’m guessing a lot of pro office people optimized their life more for a short commute. I’ve stubbornly always been at most a 10 minute drive away and it was never that annoying to go in (open offices aside).

A lot of pro-office people, or just people in general that I know, would go insane if they didn't have people nearby to talk to every half hour or so. That seems the most compelling reason most of the time.

I guess pro-office people are all extroverts then. Really sucks for the rest of us.

So every time you change jobs you also change homes, or how does that work? Or you only look for new jobs near the old job? With an average turnaround of 2 or so years for a software engineer, I can't imagine having to move every 2 years.

Exactly. Every new job I have had involved a move. I now have a house and a short commute, but if I want to change jobs now, it will almost certainly have to be remote. And this was a consideration even before Covid. I really don't want to move again.

For me I just lived somewhere with a lot of companies close by. I’m not saying everyone can or should do this, I just think a factor in the large sentiment gap between people who think RTO is crazy vs people who think WFH is crazy might be that one group has put themselves through hellish commutes for years and the other hasn’t.

one of the biggest losses with commuting is the amount of housework that then doesn't get done. A half hour commute one way is an hour of my life I spend sitting every day. I would gladly spend half an hour a day cleaning house etc. if it meant I had a spare half hour to do fun things, instead I get home with just enough time to eat, shower, watch an episode of something and sleep. That's the real killer to mental health I think. You come home to a house with chores piling up, so things don't feel like a home, and you cannot find the willpower (after some time) to continue doing those chores at the expense of free time.

Is a 30 minute commute that bad? I feel like a lot of people mindlessly browse for 60 minutes a day at home. You could do that on your commute instead of at home and get housework done at home.

My commute, if I were to go in, is 40-60 minutes of intense, aggressive, vigilant driving. Parking (which I have to pay) and walking to the office then requires evading potentially violent people.

I'm not saying working in the office is a bad thing, I quite enjoy it, but when you have a commute like mine, not commuting the better option.

It is extremely frowned upon to mindlessly browse when you're driving a car.

And frankly when I used to take transit the busses and trains were so cram packed at rush hour I could barely move, nevermind hold my phone and scroll. It was often all I could do to keep from falling and squishing someone.

It also was more like a 40-60 minute commute each way, which I think is more common than a <30 minute commute in many big cities.

> frowned upon to mindlessly browse when you're driving a car.

Here, illegal. Traffic safety. Same goes for cellphone usage. Even on bikes.

But then perhaps OP was thinking bus, train, etc... but there you often have other problems like you mentioned, available space being the most important one. Smartphones seem to have solved that problem judging by the behaviour of my fellow commuters.

They seem to manage staring at a screen no matter how impossible the setting is and even regardless of the potential dangers of them being totally unaware of what is going on around them. Impressive, really.

30 minutes would require me to be paid very well. It’s also not just 30 min, but 30min with 5min being 2 standard deviations.

Being within 5min or even 10min of work/school/gym/grocery store and close family friends is such a game changer. Bonus if one or more is walking distance, especially close family/friends.

That mindless scrolling is not the same as staring at a wall, which is what commuting is more analogous to. Besides, my free time isn't spent on mindless scrolling unless I've had a long day and am mentally so drained that's all i am still capable of.

Don't forget how easy it is to skip grocery shopping or feel too exhausted to cook after your drive home, and instead hit a drive thru or order Skip The Dishes.

This has to be a factor as well.

Not many people like the commute itself. A few people do, as it may give them time to themselves. But people do like to work in the "stuffy" office. It takes them away from distractions at home. It makes it easier to separate home and work. It gets them out of the house and around other people. Personally I'm not one of those people, I prefer to work from home. But I don't think it is obvious that working on the office is a net negative.

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