It saddens me that anyone thinks this is acceptable. I know some people don't mind it, but what a waste of your life to do this for any extended period of time.
My last CEO thought I was insane because I took a pay cut to swap a 90 minute each way commute for a 15 minute commute, but that's about 600 hours of extra time per year I get to spend with my wife and kids. 25 whole days.
Life is so very short. What value can you put on 25 extra days with your kids in a year. They're only going to be home for ~20 years. That's ~500 more days you get to have with them. An extra year and a half. It's a no brainer. There is no way you could pay me to give up a year and a half of my family.
There is no way you could pay me to give up a year and a half of my family.
You're very special if there is "no way" someone could pay you to trade "family time" for "work"!
By agreeing to participate in the work process, most people these days "give up" not 25 days a year, but full 100. Of course, there is a price tag they put on that time -- the salary.
This single-minded "family time is infinitely more valuable than work time" sentiment doesn't seem to match people's actions in reality. It looks more like some new-age signalling process; a (recent?) social phenomenon.
You are taking the argument to the other extreme: "Family time is SOOOO important, why are you even working? hypocrite"
Of course he has to "trade family time for work" aka salary. Of course he has to spend (probably) 40 hours a week (not including lunch/driving) to keep the bills paid... Everyone - except lottery winners, retired people, those lucky to be born into money, etc - has to do that.
But, as with anything, there comes a tipping point where the time spent isn't worth they money earned.
Assuming he was paid $100k (just a made up number), at 40 hours a week and 30 hours of driving, he would get paid ~$27/hour. (100k / 70 hours / 52 weeks)
If he cuts his pay to $75k (25% pay cut) and instead drives 30 minutes per day, he's now getting paid $29/hour (75k / 45 hours / 52 weeks). He "nets" less, but gets paid more per hour and has more time for "important" things.
Those are made up numbers, but for a "pay cut" he could get paid more per hour and have more time at home.
Does he quit because "family time is infinitely more important"? No... he's not an extremist that has to pull some basic, common-sense notion to an absurd degree. He made a trade off: It's called reality for most people.
No, I am replying to a concrete argument. I quoted it at the top of my post.
That the family-work ratio cannot be extreme, and is very much a personal tradeoff, was the whole point of my post. I am baffled -- what exactly are you arguing against? It seems you're agreeing with a vengeance.
Out of curiosity -- how was I supposed to read your original comment?
What I saw was the OP saying "I saved time commuting, all good" (doh). Then you came in with "no way you could pay me to give up family time", which sounds extremely... extreme.
If that wasn't the core of your message, what was?
Seeing people saying, "It's me time." is a bit disconcerting. Respectfully as an opinion, spending between 2 and 4+ hours a day sitting on a bus/train is not "me time". Why do I think that? Because of what I suspect the answer to this question would be: If you had 2 free hours at home would you spend it doing the exact same task that you would do for 2 hours on a bus?
I understand that a two plus hour commute is a choice and obviously there are people willing to accept it. But I am suspicious that the "me time" argument is in reality a rationalization to make what would generally be unacceptable appear acceptable.
And as an appeal to the emotional side, you have one life. Do you really want to spend 10% of your life on a bus every month?
I occasionally take the train to travel larger distances. Between a 2 hour flight and a 6 hour train ride, I will take the train. Because a 2 hour flight is not just a 2 hour flight. It's a 2 hour "dealing with getting to and through airports" plus a 2 hour flight, with the whole experience microchunked into a plethora of annoyances and issues that I will not have any chance to sit down on my computer and do anything.
In comparison, when I take the train, I arrive at the station a leisurely 15 minutes early. And I sit in a gigantic chair (compared to the plane) for those six hours. And they have free coffee and wifi. And the desk at my chair is not a baby's highchair platform, but an actually usable work surface. So I work.
And while the food isn't high quality, it's better than anything I've ever had on an airplane. Burgers and pizza and beer. Or fresh salads and coldcut sandwiches. Candy, granola bars, teas, water. It's a small convenience store.
No, I don't spend my time commuting. I spend my client's time commuting. Working on the train is the closest thing to teleporting I think any of us will come to in our lifetime.
You're spot on, but there is a use. It's sometimes handy to have a chunk of your life where you're forced to be idle for blocks of time. I loved taking the bus for that reason, because there was always a distraction at home, and I was busy at school. So the long (1.5 hour each way) bus commute was great for reading or just clearing out the mind (I'm an introvert, so long periodic stretches of isolation are nice).
Of course, I like being only 15 minutes from home. But I miss having that external crutch a bit.
I have a 3 hour commute (by express bus with comfy seats, etc.). Honestly, I just use the commute time as "me time", not too different from hanging out at home.
The long commute lets me be close to my parents, in a neighborhood my wife likes, $1100 rent for a 2 bedroom in NYC, etc.
I am in a similar situation and it's usually just fine, but it becomes difficult on days when I would be better off sacrificing that "me time" to do something else (chores, errands, family obligations, etc.). When that happens, the only thing I can cut back on to meet those obligations is sleep.
There are plenty of places in CT where you can get a decent 2BR for $1100, be walking distance from a Metro North station, and have less than a 2 hr commute.
3 hours is Albany. I pay about $800/mo for a 4b/3ba house there. When I used to be on the Amtrak a lot there was a fair number of folks doing that commute, mostly lawyers and construction guys.
90 minutes is Rhinebeck/Poughkeepsie. Plenty of country and suburbia places for $1100.
Never met a company that gave any sort of shit about how long it took employees to get there. I even once worked at a place that moved and added an hour to everyone's commute.
I suspect they don't. In those big companies, all they need to do in order to verify that "knowledge workers" are very hardworking is one of the biggest falsehoods ever are just 3 glimpses a day at any south bay campus parking lot: 9AM, 12AM, then 4PM.
Not to mention those "Working from Home" tech workers, who are most of the time not even at home and rarely working :P
I never got used to the Microsoft commute, and that was rarely worse than 90 minutes coming home. It sucked, it continued to suck, it never got any better, it ruined my day, I hated my life, and it felt so good to drive away on my last day of that terrible job knowing I would never again have to spend any time on SR520 if I didn't want to. (I avoided that road for years afterward, actually, even when it would have been the sensible route to wherever I was going.)
I'm not going to try to get used to it, never again. Life is too short to waste that much of it in hell. I won't even consider a job with a bad commute anymore. If that limits my employment prospects, so be it - I have a life to live!
Yeah, I have the same issue going south on I-405 in the afternoon. The road is clogged from 3 miles north of Bellevue and remains clogged until a couple miles south of I-90. I used to spend 50% of my commute time in that pile.
We really needed to build rail in the space where we added a toll lane.
I commute ~60 minutes each direction by car. My drive is simple: few minutes to main road from work/home... 55 minutes north/south on a single road... few minutes to work/home.
The time honestly dissapears... Podcasts and/or audio books.
The scary part is how much time is spent on "auto-pilot".
Was the connector not an option for you or have things gotten better? I commute in slightly off hours (7am and 4pm) and it consistently takes ~35 minutes door to door.
Do you subtract those hours from how much time you'd be in the office or do you spend 12 hours a day away from home every day?
I do about 2 hours a day when I'm not biking, but because we have a strong remote-work culture, I find myself working from home more and more, and expect to be fully remote pretty soon.
Like many "knowledge workers" I don't track my hours, but my job requires a certain amount of in-office time, and the length of my commute doesn't really affect that requirement.
I've seen many people on tech shuttles in the Bay Area get on the shuttle at 9 and get off the shuttle at 6. The shuttle is considered to be "in the office".
A lot depends on what you do during those hours, and what the work expectations are.
At one point in my life I lived a block from work, and put in 12-14 hours every day and fielded calls 2-3 times a week at 2-3am. That's no different than an 8-10 hour a day job with a 4 hour commute and pager duty.
When I was single it was ok - I had many friends at work and that was our life. I wouldn't try to do it with a family.
When introverts read or are productive on their commute, why not? But I currently struggle with a 30 min commute and have become a podcast addict.
It is ridiculous indeed. If your work can be done from home there is no reason to come to office apart from occasional meetings. Even things like scrum stand ups can be done via hangouts.
It saddens me that anyone thinks this is acceptable. I know some people don't mind it, but what a waste of your life to do this for any extended period of time.