
The Rise of the Outrageously Long Commute - recharge
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/10/extreme-commuting/408754/?single_page=true
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timetravel3r
What an odd sentence in the article: "But a more child-centered approach to
parenting also seems to be a factor, as these executives make other major
sacrifices in order to balance their professional and home lives."

I would argue that not having a parent at home in the evening (because they
are commuting) is the _opposite_ of child-centric. Yes, they get a nice
suburban home and parks, but what about parental bonding?

~~~
dclowd9901
And they kept saying "I didn't want to uproot my family blah blah." Is there
no value in exposing your children to unique and different experiences? I'll
have failed if my kids grew up in the same town/city all their lives.

~~~
iamphilrae
I grew up in the same small Scottish town my whole life, as did all my
friends. I'm now 32, live in London, have travelled the world, but best of
all, I still very regularly see my old school friends. Giving kids culture
growing up is one thing, but giving them the gift of being friends with the
same people since they were 3 is amazing. My uni friends have come and gone, I
barely see them, but I see my old school mates every few weeks and every time
it's full of laughter and reminiscing from a lifetime together.

My dad worked in the oil business in the 80s and 90s and spent months at a
time in places like Saudi, Norway, etc. In hindsight, I would never have
wanted to move around with him as a kid. Sure I would have liked him at home
more, but at least we all knew where home was.

~~~
tsotha
I agree with this. My dad was in the military, and we moved every three or
four years. I was always jealous of kids who had lifelong friends, and tired
of always being the new guy.

~~~
dclowd9901
Its unrealistic to have expected to make lifelong friends with people whose
only commonality you have is where you grew up.

~~~
tsotha
And yet a lot of people do just that.

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sjclemmy
I've done various commutes in my working life. Nothing beats being able to
walk to work:

1) It's not too far,

2) It's exercise - what's not to like?

3) It's always, ALWAYS, the same length of time. Which allows you to plan.

4) It's not too far.

My least favourite commute is on the British motorways, one day it could take
the minimum amount of time, the next it could be 4 times longer. This amount
of variation adds to working stress levels. It's really difficult to plan to
get something 'out of the way' in the morning when you don't even know if
you'll be there in time.

(btw, I walked to work this morning.)

~~~
mirceal
this

you never really truly appreciate what impact your commute has until you have
a 5 minutes walking commute.

I did this at some point for around 1 year. It was awesome.

3) above did not apply though. I had to cross a really busy street (i.e. car
traffic) and the pedestrian traffic light took around 2.5 minutes (I kid you
not). Depending on that damn traffic light my commute time could be 4 minutes
or 6+ minutes. Recall being really annoyed, to the point of hating the traffic
light.

~~~
omouse
Indeed, it's something you can really appreciate on a university campus where
most everything you need as a student is within 10 minutes of walking. Amazing
how easily we give that up for a fat paycheck and a mortgage.

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Sheepsteak
"…taking the 10-hour redeye on Sunday nights and returning on Thursdays. This
way, he says, he doesn’t have to uproot his family of 10 kids."

No wonder he spends most of the week away!

~~~
mirceal
maybe it's his family of 10 [binary] kids :)

and yes, 10 kids is can be overwhelming. hell, even 2-3 kids can be
overwhelming.

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technofiend
Is this the next "I work 27 hour days and never leave the office" thing people
will brag about? I understand keeping a family together is good parenting but
is choosing to spend 3-4 days a week elsewhere good parenting? I would
question that versus relocating them if needed.

~~~
cmarschner
Being at home tired Fridays to Sunday afternoons is not what I would call good
parenting. It means the wife (and I guess we're mostly talking about women
here) is carrying the family.

~~~
dwd
Spot on - the wife/partner carrying the family is the biggest issue in my
daily 4hr commute. Also an issue is just not able to be there in an emergency.
For example, my wife locked herself out of the house yesterday and fortunately
her parents who are close have a spare key. But children or pets get
sick/injured and you really need to be close and that is always a worry.

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chubot
Sorry to use this occasion to brag about my commutes for the last 10+ years: 6
miles, 4 miles, 2 miles, and 4 miles. For the last 7+ years it's been 100% by
bike.

A 20-25 minute bike ride is actually better than a shorter commute because you
get just enough exercise every day.

~~~
hobos_delight
Almost 1 year ago I gave up a 90-minute each way train commute in Sydney for a
20-minute cycle commute in Ireland (obviously there were other factors).

I love the freedom to come and go when I please, and not be held up by
seemingly random infrastructure failures that can ruin your whole evening.

I've actually found myself extending the bike route to get a bit more exercise
in (when it's not lashing that is).

~~~
kaitai
Yep. When's the last time a crash on the bike lane added 40 minutes to your
commute (unless it was your crash)? Construction on the bike lane = extensive
detour? Nope.

~~~
robbrulinski
I'm two years into my bike commute. I ran into a woman on the street as she
was not paying attention.

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shin_lao
Those very long commutes are actually the perfect way to be away from the
family while looking as someone who sacrifices everything for it.

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aaron695
Wait till cars become automatic. 4 hour per day commutes could become quite
normal.

It could really change the structure of living in cities.

~~~
skrause
A four hour commute with a self-driving car will be just as painful as four
hour communute with a train, except that the cost with the car will be much
higher. I honestly don't see self-driving cars changing a lot here.

~~~
raz32dust
Picture this - you could be sleeping in the car while it drives itself. It
doesn't sound so ridiculous then.

Anyway, I think telecommuting is going to be the norm pretty soon. Commutes
would themselves be rare. They might be a lot longer though.

~~~
skrause
Honestly, how many people can get up in the morning, get ready for work, go to
a car and then just fall asleep again? I guess the percentage of people who
will be able to sleep on a commute will be quite low; I know I wouldn't be
able to do that.

~~~
dagw
And even if you could, would you really want to go directly from waking up to
being at your desk?

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guard-of-terra
This is a stupid way of living our lifes.

Structuring your life quality, and structuring out cities for life quality,
should become the norm. We should be eager to sacrifice work efficiency.

Unfortunately our civilization took this wrong race-to-the-bottom turn where
instead of ten 30 hrs/week jobs we have four 70 hrs/week jobs. This is wrong
and unsustainable, and we're going to lose a lot of people to a combination of
burning out, family failures, suicides and other bad stuff.

In the century XXI, we should fight the network effect, not embrace it.

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pmiller2
And here I thought my hour commute was kind of long. I dread the thought of
even increasing it to 90 minutes.

I wonder if flying this much is ever a wise decision in light of the health
risks: [http://www.fastcompany.com/3050543/hit-the-ground-
running/wh...](http://www.fastcompany.com/3050543/hit-the-ground-running/why-
frequent-business-travel-is-so-bad-for-you)

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paulojreis
Tangentially to the article, this whole sacrifice of personal life is starting
to make me think about other options. And I don't even work long hours.

Last week I had to travel, to work abroad for that week. To be there on Monday
morning, I flew Sunday just after lunch. I missed around 25% of my weekend and
all the "after-work" time and activities I usually have. I just moved (within
the same city, a few days before traveling), and my girlfriend had to finish
the packing, cleaning and all that _fun stuff_ by herself.

It was not a big deal actually, as it doesn't happen frequently, but - with
this post - it got me thinking. Shouldn't we make a bigger deal of it? The
fact that companies expects this kind of commitment - very outside _working
hours_ \- reveals so much about the inequality in the employee-employer
relationship.

And I'm not even mentioning the fact that I work on a country where I'm paid
_x_ , but was traveling to work in a country where my fellow associates in
similar functions are paid 4-5 _x_. :)

~~~
cjhopman
It seems that the author assumes that readers uderstand that the comparison is
between the described lives/jobs with ones in the past where it was basically
you never see your family (or, more likely, you don't have one).

~~~
paulojreis
Yeah, sure, ergo _tangentially_.

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Jyaif
I would argue that it would be better for the kids to live abroad. They'd
become bilingual for free, and most importantly it'd give them perspective and
a better understanding of the world.

Unless his kids are planning to become professional American football or
lacrosse players, his justification seems very weak to me.

~~~
scottjad
The guy was born in Brazil, lived there till five, moved to the US, then lived
in Brazil for two years as a missionary, and is now doing business there. He
probably has a pretty good idea of how beneficial living in Brazil would be
for his family.

He's also very wealthy and can afford to give all his kids personal language
tutors if he/they want to learn another language. The value of knowing
Portuguese in the US is generally not that high (although obviously he's an
outlier). They can travel internationally whenever they want. If they moved
there, they wouldn't be living or going to school with your average Brazilian,
they'd be living in a wealthy neighborhood and going to an English-language
international school. They live in one of the wealthiest places in the US, so
they probably attend very good schools right now.

Since they're Mormon, many of these kids will end up being missionaries in
foreign countries and learning another language anyway and getting a decent
perspective on the world outside Connecticut since their living environment as
a missionary will be roughly equivalent to the average person wherever they're
assigned.

Don't underestimate the importance of high school sports to kids that love
them and are in high school. I'd rather my kids have four years of positive
team sporting experience than learn Portuguese. One can learn and grow from
sports in many ways even if they don't become a professional athlete.

As for what will best help their career, it's probably the stable familiar
living environment they currently have at a private school that will best
prepare them to get into a good college and do well there. Being good at
sports doesn't hurt either for getting into good colleges.

Finally, he can easily sleep in first class for the two direct flights he
takes per week and he can spend (potentially, we don't know how much he works
on the weekends) Thursday (not sure how much of the day), Friday, Saturday,
and Sunday with his family. He can also potentially video conference with them
every other evening. And they've probably come with him on occasion.

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yitchelle
Is it a coincidence that the folks mentioned in the articles are in high
profile high salary jobs? These folks has these commute already factored into
their salary package.

Here is a question, how many middle level managers or engineers are doing
these type of crazy commutes in the US?

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adrianN
This is crazy. I'd rather take a low paying job somewhere close if I can't
move for some reason than spending half my life commuting. Currently I feel
that my 20 minute bike commute is pretty long, but I couldn't find a nice
apartment closer to work.

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gerbal
How is this new? This is the sort of thing the wealthy and the C-suite have
been doing for decades. The internet makes parts of it a little easier, but
it's not novel.

The whole conceit of the Concorde was Executives could live in New York and
work in London or vice versa.

~~~
bryanlarsen
This is not just a 1% phenomenon. There are plenty of families where one
partner commutes 2-3 hours each way on the greyhound bus because they can't
find a job in the same town and can't afford to live on a single income.

~~~
danans
The examples in this article kind of are a 1% phenomenon. They are an active
choice made by the commuters to spend a lot on airfare and (presumably pricey)
accommodations, rather than just relocating their family to similarly
luxurious accommodations closer to their workplace.

In your example, you're talking about people for whom the choice of living
closer never presents itself, due to unaffordability.

The former is a luxury choice, the latter is a forced circumstance.

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omouse
I'm about to go from a 40min commute to an hour and a half commute (or so).
It's quite astounding how many people commute in from the suburbs to downtown
when it would be much easier and cheaper just to setup smaller offices in the
suburbs or allow more remote work.

It's also amazing to me that after 30+ years, the suburbs are barely built up.
It's somehow economically sustainable to move a bunch of people from point A
to point B but not to have point A built up with more shops, industry, etc.

~~~
adebtlawyer
Zoning won't allow it - the suburbs are not built up intentionally.

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lrvick
If you are optimising for having nice accommodations for your family, but
never see them, you get points as a provider I guess, but you fail at being a
parent or spouse.

I would of waaaay rather of lived in a trailer, and grown up actually having a
father around, instead of some distant workaholic male figure that is the
"great provider" that allowed an upper middle class lifestyle.

For some I feel being far away making money to send home is the easy way out
of having to actually be a parent.

~~~
saiya-jin
... and by providing kids too much you actually spoil them easily and make...
worse people out of them? or more likely they don't reach their potential as
human beings, at least not that easily.

I mean, look around you, there are usually plenty of people who had it damn
easy in life. this generates weakness. I am very happy I had to work my way up
by myself, no cash cushion, no free apartment when turning 18 etc.it builds
character to rely only on oneself, a priceless and one of most important
lessons in life.

I say give kids good sporting equipment, give them free quality education
(tricky bit in some places, but more expensive isn't automatically better for
them), love them, support them and give them freedom, and you are excellent
parent. rest is up to them.

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tylerpachal
Although I don't work remotely, I'm happy that the tech/software industry
seems to be one of the best industries for allowing people to work remotely. I
would guess that this is influenced by the nature of our work, and the
improvements in collaboration/communication/workflow applications.

Taking a 10-hour flight on a weekly basis would be too much for me, but then
again he is the founder of an airline, so maybe he enjoys the flight!

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ljk
This made me feel a little better about spending ~4hours a day on the bus
commuting... always envy people who leave comments like "even 20 minutes is
too long for me"

~~~
staticelf
You know.. IMO you shouldn't and you should consider to relocate or change
your job. There are probably towns / cities that allow for a great job and a
great place of living close enough that you don't have to commute for 4 hours.

I have as of now, approx. 20 minutes with the subway which I think is kind of
long. But in my new job (in the process of changing it) it will be less. At
summer time I will be able to bike to work in about 20 minutes.

Also, it is a more meaningful place of work IMO. You can do that kind of
change too.

~~~
ljk
Maybe it's just the beauty of being entry-level haha.... the stuff i'm working
on is pretty interesting so I haven't really thought about about till
recently, maybe i'll have to start thinking about it, thanks

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dba7dba
I think SOME people enjoy the long commute to be away from family
chores/responsibilities. If you have to make that LONG commute so that you can
provide for the family and miss out on doing laundry or doing dishes, hey
who's gonna complain?

You can love your family more than anyone else, but you still don't want to do
the chores.

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valdiorn
Hell, I'm already annoyed by the 20 minutes I spend on the tube here in
London.

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littletimmy
Why do people sacrifice their lives for their work?

It doesn't make any sense.

~~~
falcolas
For some folks, work is their life. It's the measuring stick by which they are
defined, so they make it their sole goal.

In the past, they were workaholics. Now they're just considered to be
"passionate".

