notmything's comments

No it's not - there are very few companies that live and die by this - it;s not in any job spec I've ever seen and even if this is true for some companies, I never claimed this would work for all companies. You have cherry picked one thing from my overall argument.

1. This reduces the overall cost by some small percentage but I doubt it actually makes it free

2. In theory this is correct, are there any studies that actually show productivity gains for companies in this respect? (I think the real reason for this is because a lot of the valley companies are in the middle of nowhere and therefore it's not really feasible for employees to go looking for food). I recently visited the HQ of my company in Silicon Valley and I was not impressed by how far it was from everything else.

The problem would vanish if we moved from city living to small town living. We only have city living because everyone needs to get to their office which created high density housing near the city centre and urban sprawl everywhere else; both of those things would not be a problem if we moved away from city living and focussed on smaller towns instead; that way we could still have services centralised to a local community that works for everyone rather than having millions of people in one place which cause extreme mental distress for many people (see the mental health crisis).

I commute through the city, if one person crashes their car it impacts thousands of people getting home on time to see their kids before bedtime, how is that a nice way to live?

It would benefit many from a standards of living perspective. The lack of high density housing and removal of urban sprawl would mean that your child will actually know what a nice back yard is rather than having to live above one family and below another; rather than having to hear upstairs use the bathroom at 2am. I didn't care about that when I was 22 and living full on party / work lifestyle but I do care now that I'm 30 and have a child. I really don't like missing my daughters bedtime just because some idiot crashed his car on the bridge (at least once per week) on the way home.

By not adopting work from home, you really are making peoples lives worse, just because that;s not you today, doesn't mean it won't be you at some point - wait until you need to buy a house within a reasonable commute to the office; a whole lot of money for no space and living with people banging around above you!

Like I said, cultural changes required. Urban sprawl is currently worse for the environment than high density because people can't work from home. Urban sprawl happens around cities because people want a house and want to be as near as possible to work.

Imagine if we moved from having large cities that people lived around to a series of smaller towns. The urban sprawl that we currently have would not be a problem.

You need to stop thinking in terms of how things currently are and look at how they could be. Your social centre could be your town, your work would mostly be remote, no more urban sprawl just so everyone can be as near as possible to one square mile of central business district.

If I didn't have to work in the city, I wouldn't be living anywhere near the city, I'd pick a nice town in the north near to some excellent surf breaks; why would I even be living within the urban sprawl if I didn't need to be in the city? We're killing our planet, destroying our families and ruining our mental health. Do you think the urban sprawl around london (known as greater london) would exist if people weren't forced to commute into London everyday?

I get the bus to work: 45 - 60 minutes to travel around 13 kilometres. I bough my two bedroom apartment for around 1 million aussie dollars, if I choose to live further away, I could have got a 4 bedroom house with a pool for $700,000, or a 3 bedroom house without a pool for $500,000. The prices are driven up as everyone wants to be as close to work as possible.

For my million dollars I get to hear upstairs go the bathroom, my child gets woken up in the early hours by upstairs walking around in high heels after a night out. Every building on the street has a minimum of 6 - 8 apartments within so there's never any peace and quiet. Sometimes the bus has so many people I have to stand for nearly an hour.

Sometimes someone will crash on the bridge which will make me an hour late home which means I miss my kids going to bed. Mental health issues here are through the roof, the stress of high density living is literally killing people through depression and hypertension.

My child doesn't even know what a back yard is, that's a foreign concept to her. The only saving grace is that we're near to two beautiful beaches, without that I think I would have had a mental breakdown.

The whole "it'll only take a minute" issue that you seem to suffer from goes back to my cultural changes, one the culture has moved to work from home, the current working from home complaints will mostly be addressed. Also, let's not compare being in an office to going out for a drink, you can still go out and drink in your town with your friends in your community, again, cultural changes required.

You are correct - there is no push from anyone significant on this - this is one of the few things I think the Government should intervene in, heavily incentivised a work from home culture to the point where we can get rid of central business districts (in their current form) in every major city.

Other than very long term costs savings (and nobody thinks really long term), there's no money to be made from a big cultural shift that makes workers lives better.

Hence needing a cultural change - we can get the same effect remotely if we actually try.

When I was a fresh grad, I also learnt a tremendous amount from the people around me; I don't doubt our ability to get the same effect remotely.

The issues we have with everyone wanting to live in massive urban areas (near work) are not less important then you needing to figure out how to learn from home, that's the type of self centred thinking that gives us high density housing, pollution, unaffordable housing, long commutes, strained family lives, broken communities and mental health issues (also known as commuting / working from a central office).

It's a serious issue. Just because you don't see it working that does not mean it cannot work. How else are we to solve the living standards issues? We can't all be 24 year olds forever!

In response to your response (which I cannot reply to)- that's just one example. I did say that it may benefit some companies some of the time but I highly doubt that it's worthwhile enough to be a driver for EVERYONE to work from a central location in every company. That one time when something awesome happened at the office just doesn't outweigh the need to cut pollution, solve the housing crises and have better family lives.

America is experiencing its worst mental health and depression crisis ever, I would not be surprised if working conditions were a massive factor.

Companies should not live and die by water cooler conversations (and mostly don't).

I'm sure the cost of setting up the kitchens (capital expenditure) and the cost of keeping them running (operation expenditure) negate this saving. Are there any published figures?

It's a cultural thing - you're just not set up to do it well. Image the problems working from home would solve: housing costs, high density living, pollution, no commute time, improved communities, improved family life.

We need a cultural shift.

Ahhh, the old "ideas during casual talking" trope. In all my years I've never seen anything of significance come out of people talking over lunch - for most companies, the concept of unexpected collaboration based on overhearing something in the office just isn't true and is mostly not required.

I'm sure that sometimes unexpected collaboration may happen that might have a small tangible benefit to a company but I can guarantee you that most companies do not need this and the benefits of a work from home culture on the whole city and America's general mental health will be better than whatever new feature you cooked up over your company provided lunch.

imagine the problems working from home would solve: housing costs, high density living, pollution, no commute time, improved communities, improved family life.

The odd piece of collaboration that may come out of lunch chat is really not worth the pain that our cities and resident workers are going through. Can't afford a decent sized house? Probably because everyone wants to be close to work so you're priced out. You'll feel the pain when you get married and want kids; very long commute or sub-standard living conditions, great choice...

Like you said, I'm sure small things will be missed but employees having a great standard of living is likely going to do the company more good than not. I do admit that we would need a cultural shift for this to really work though.

Any bossy child is a bossy little [insert word here], not just girls.

I'm not familiar with work environments where women have to 'steep themselves in business passive'. My wife was never like that when I met her nor are most of the women I've worked with. Please show me where all these passive women are at work, might make my life easier...

She didn't think she was good enough to take up Comp Sci because the guys had a lot of bluster and seem to 'get things' quicker than her... Is that sexism?