What Happened After Silicon Valley Tried to Make Telecommuting Permanent (eastbaytimes.com) 114
California's state air quality mandates require each region to have a feasible plan for a 19% reduction in emissions by 2035. But "after a barrage of criticism from Silicon Valley businesses and Bay Area mayors, Metropolitan Transportation Commission planners have backed off a requirement to have employees from big companies work from home three days a week," reports the Bay Area News Group.
Instead a compromise plan approved unanimously by commissioners last week "calls for big companies to have 60% of their employees take sustainable commutes — by transit, bike or carpooling — by 2035."
Lawmakers, mayors and the business community railed against the remote work mandate, saying it would undercut the Bay Area's economy and encourage large companies to re-locate to cheaper regions. Transit supporters said work-from-home requirements would cut train and bus use without clear proof it would reduce the mileage of vehicle trips and emissions. The new proposal calls for no more than 40 percent of a company's workforce to commute by auto on an average workday by 2035. Farms and employers with fewer than 50 workers would be exempt.
The plan encourages companies to subsidize transit passes, bikes, on-site employee housing, and commuter shuttles, as well as helping workers afford housing in walkable, transit-rich communities. Many large tech companies like Google and Facebook already provide shuttles and subsidize transit for their workers. It also suggests companies discourage workers from single-vehicle commutes by reducing parking spaces and raising parking fees, compressing work schedules and eliminating personal desks in favor of shared work spaces.
The new proposal was designed with input from state lawmakers, the mayors of San Francisco and San Jose, county supervisors, and officials from the tech industry and transit groups, MTC commissioner Nick Josefowitz said. "This is a much more effective policy," said Josefowitz, chief of policy at the regional think tank SPUR. "This is figuring out how to do it better with everybody at the table." Gwen Litvak of the business coalition Bay Area Council said the work-from-home mandate would have hurt urban centers and businesses. "The compromise will help revitalize downtowns, and gives business critical flexibility to have workers carpool, use public transit, ride bikes or walk, or even work remotely, but by their own choice," she said.
San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo said the revisions better reflect how his city is evolving — from a suburban, car-centric culture to a city focused on developing a dense commercial and residential core supported by a robust transit network... Liccardo said part of Silicon Valley's success springs from having talented employees working side-by-side, exchanging ideas and innovations. Remote work reduces some creative energy.
"We cannot impose mandates that contradict the laws of human nature and the laws of creative industry," he said.
Instead a compromise plan approved unanimously by commissioners last week "calls for big companies to have 60% of their employees take sustainable commutes — by transit, bike or carpooling — by 2035."
Lawmakers, mayors and the business community railed against the remote work mandate, saying it would undercut the Bay Area's economy and encourage large companies to re-locate to cheaper regions. Transit supporters said work-from-home requirements would cut train and bus use without clear proof it would reduce the mileage of vehicle trips and emissions. The new proposal calls for no more than 40 percent of a company's workforce to commute by auto on an average workday by 2035. Farms and employers with fewer than 50 workers would be exempt.
The plan encourages companies to subsidize transit passes, bikes, on-site employee housing, and commuter shuttles, as well as helping workers afford housing in walkable, transit-rich communities. Many large tech companies like Google and Facebook already provide shuttles and subsidize transit for their workers. It also suggests companies discourage workers from single-vehicle commutes by reducing parking spaces and raising parking fees, compressing work schedules and eliminating personal desks in favor of shared work spaces.
The new proposal was designed with input from state lawmakers, the mayors of San Francisco and San Jose, county supervisors, and officials from the tech industry and transit groups, MTC commissioner Nick Josefowitz said. "This is a much more effective policy," said Josefowitz, chief of policy at the regional think tank SPUR. "This is figuring out how to do it better with everybody at the table." Gwen Litvak of the business coalition Bay Area Council said the work-from-home mandate would have hurt urban centers and businesses. "The compromise will help revitalize downtowns, and gives business critical flexibility to have workers carpool, use public transit, ride bikes or walk, or even work remotely, but by their own choice," she said.
San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo said the revisions better reflect how his city is evolving — from a suburban, car-centric culture to a city focused on developing a dense commercial and residential core supported by a robust transit network... Liccardo said part of Silicon Valley's success springs from having talented employees working side-by-side, exchanging ideas and innovations. Remote work reduces some creative energy.
"We cannot impose mandates that contradict the laws of human nature and the laws of creative industry," he said.
Funny! I don't know any IT workers who (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Funny! I don't know any IT workers who (Score:4, Insightful)
"We cannot impose mandates that contradict the laws of human nature and the laws of creative industry," he said.
Sorry, that was a typo. Please substitute the corrected quote:
"We cannot impose mandates that would impinge on the ability of large corporations to make staggering profits at the expense of everything else" he said.
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"We cannot impose mandates that would impinge on the ability of large corporations to make staggering profits at the expense of everything else" he said.
That's why Silicon valley companies got hold of the law and "fixed it for you"...:
"It also suggests companies discourage workers from single-vehicle commutes by reducing parking spaces and raising parking fees, compressing work schedules and eliminating personal desks in favor of shared work spaces."
Ka-ching!
Ka-ching!
That last bit about compressing work schedules [atlassian.com] (a.k.a., moving to 10-hour workdays and a 3-day weekend) ... well, employees work close to 10 hours everyday ... so why change ?
Re:Funny! I don't know any IT workers who (Score:5, Interesting)
would pass up any opportunity to work remote whenever practical...
Yes, especially from foreign countries, where they will work for half the going rate.
And we all know exactly what can and can not be done remote.
Since the world of IT hasn't been completely outsourced by Greed, yes. We do know what can, and can not be done by remote workers.
That said, the retort from California is bullshit. In no way is a forced commute where there is zero need for one, helpful to any part of the environment, which is allegedly what we're all about these days, right?
"The compromise will help revitalize downtowns..."
Yeah, how about we "revitalize" the concept of "downtowns" instead. Perhaps we stop trying to turn them into endless concrete jungles where you must profit off every fucking square inch. And if an employee can work remotely permanently, then leave them to work efficiently in the same damn building they're already living in. Most employees don't live within walking/biking distance, so Greed becomes rather obvious when the Transportation Mafia walks in the room to cast a vote...
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Yes, especially from foreign countries, where they will work for half the going rate.
Did you know that the United States of America is a foreign country? It's true, ask any randomly selected person on the planet and the odds are very high that they will tell you that America is a foreign country. Now, whether any randomly selected person wants to work for an American country is a different matter. A lot of them do, but a lot of them do not. If the American company is paying better than local companies and has good working conditions then sure, but don't assume there is an entire planet full
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It depends on what "remote work" means. Non-pandemic, travel around and work out of the local coffee shops by day? Sure. Work from my house instead of an office with free, set up for me, coffee? With the distractions from home and the difficulty maintaining "work mode" vs. "play mode." No thank you. I prefer a physical separation.
Now that separation can be a coffee shop or a quiet bar. But in the house, no thanks.
Re:Funny! I don't know any IT workers who (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't know any IT workers who would pass up any opportunity to work remote whenever practical. And we all know exactly what can and can not be done remote.
Well, here's one. I've been working in IT since 1997, and since 2010 in the valley.
In my experience, and YMMV, it pays to be in the office at least 2-3 times a week. Meet up with the team, brainstorm ideas in a room with a whiteboard, go out for lunch and discuss that pesky issue we've seen for a while now. Oh, and not to mention to catch up on the latest work-related gossip (did you hear that so-and-so left to join some shady startup?).
Try all you want, but that shit simply does not work on Zoom.
On the flipside, it also pays to work from home at least 2-3 times a week. Implement those ideas without constant bothering by Mike from accounting, or Susie from HR who wants you to take yet another Respectful Workplace training so she can tick her tickboxes.
It's all about a healthy mix.
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Back in the day you went to the computer.
Even though I have been a self employed programmer for over 30 years. I am as modern as it gets
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I can agree with this, the question is which 2-3 days per week. Everyone has a different schedule, and having "no meeting X day" is very hard so you're going to be taking some meetings from home anyway. As more people adapt, the value of the in-office time (when most people are present) declines.
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Don't forget: "...eliminating personal desks in favor of shared work spaces"
They're demanding lower quality work!
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would pass up any opportunity to work remote whenever practical. And we all know exactly what can and can not be done remote.
Since I have a reasonable commute (10-minute drive) and coworkers that I like working with, I would prefer to go to the office. My home is too small for a home office. With the current Covid-19 rules requiring work at home, I work in my living room, with no desk, using my laptop. My work cubicle is much better, not to mention quieter.
I do like working at home occasionally, but being required to work at home all the time would not be good for me ergonomically or socially/emotionally.
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If it can be done over a network, it can be done for 1/3 the cost in India.
Be careful what you wish.
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Re:So half the bay area lost their jobs? (Score:5, Insightful)
We introverts are enjoying a certain amount of Schadenfreude. It's been an extrovert's world for too long. We enjoy being alone or with our families. No more pretending politeness when we get trapped into socializing, when we'd rather work in peace and quiet, without unnecessary interruptions.
Re:So half the bay area lost their jobs? (Score:5, Interesting)
We introverts are enjoying a certain amount of Schadenfreude.
2020 has been, by far, the best year in modern "civilization." I put "civilization" in quotes, because, until now, we've lived in very evil societies:
1) We forcefully take parents away from their children for many hours a day.
2) Most parents have to have questionable strangers raise their babies so the parents can make a living.
3) We require our children to get up unnaturally early so we can squeeze them into scary, abusive disease chambers to politically indoctrinate them into becoming good little slaves. If they learn anything useful, that's purely coincidence.
3) We forcefully squeeze adults together into disease chambers for 8-10 hours a day, with people we couldn't care less about (and who couldn't care less about us), and penalize everyone when they inevitably get sick (either physically or emotionally).
The list of evils goes on and on. Long live the Coronavirus scare!
Re: So half the bay area lost their jobs? (Score:2)
This is a weird perspective. I very much appreciate all the things the child experts have brought to our son since he started nursery at 10 months old. Neither of us are experts with very young children and could not have given our son the social aspects of nursery and pre-school, nor do we have the same resources at home. We also weren't able to teach him to sleep/nap or eat as effectively as they did. Ultimately it's a mix of direct parenting and delegation and he seems happy and well adjusted. Neith
Re: So half the bay area lost their jobs? (Score:5, Interesting)
My wife and I are atheists and we chose to remove our daughters from public school for one year to give home-schooling a try. It was difficult and, ultimately, we put them back into public school after the one year trial, but it was a positive experience for everyone involved. Our daughters are now adults and tell us they learned more in that one year than they did in all of their public schooling.
The word "indoctrinate" gets thrown around a lot, and comes with certain implications of malevolence. So I looked up the definition:
"Indoctrinate: verb
to instruct in a doctrine, principle, ideology, etc., especially to imbue with a specific partisan or biased belief or point of view.
to teach or inculcate.
to imbue with learning."
Source: https://www.dictionary.com/browse/indoctrinate
By the definition of the word, it seems that *any* education must necessarily "indoctrinate."
We chose to give homeschooling a try because we felt that public school was wasting a lot of time on subjects that were irrelevant, not focusing enough time on the fundamentals and, yes, we do have certain ideological views about the nature of reality as an objective absolute with reason being our fundamental tool for knowing reality and for surviving within it. Yes, we have views about the role and purpose of government in society (doesn't everyone?) and we wanted to be able to take the time to teach those ideas to our children - whether they ultimately chose to agree with them or not.
I don't consider myself to be a conservative but I do know many. I have conservative family and friends and while I have no doubt that some of them want to give their children an orthodox religious upbringing and feel like public school (by the necessity of separating church and state) undermines that goal, I also believe that a lot of them are just very into family values. The mothers *want* to be stay at home parents and spend as much time with their children as possible. There's nothing wrong with that, nor is there anything wrong with not wanting that. But I think there's a fundamental divide between what conservatives and progressives value in terms of family, and that leads to misunderstandings and straw-men such as "They're just religious nuts who want to indoctrinate their kids and hold women back." That assumption is nonsense and one who imbues it can make no claim to being the rational one since it is, by literal definition, "wilful ignorance."
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We chose to give homeschooling a try because we felt that public school was wasting a lot of time on subjects that were irrelevant, not focusing enough time on the fundamentals....I don't consider myself to be a conservative....that leads to misunderstandings and straw-men such as "They're just religious nuts who want to indoctrinate their kids...
If you want to convince us you're not a conservative religious nut, maybe don't tell us that you're homeschooling your kids and limiting their education due to your ideology?
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1. I'm not trying to convince you of anything.
2. I really couldn't care less what you think.
3. You quoted me and then proceeded to put words in my mouth, words that the quote directly refutes (the quote explains our choice, not mentioning anything to do with ideology). This makes you look like the nut.
4. You have no basis to accuse us of "limiting their education." You have no idea what lengths we went to to provide a structured, guided and informed curriculum nor what outside expertise we sought.
5. "Conser
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Heh. And public school systems don't indoctrinate?
There is a reason that required attendance is important to socialist economies. It frees up adult workers thereby expanding the labor pool, it creates jobs for some of the labor pool that is so inclined, and decreases attachment to the familial social structure, allowing a more malleable and mobile work force (no people fighting to keep their ancestral homes).
As we see with this legislation, the primary concern of the oligarchy, whether with a
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Lol. Ask someone with kids how they enjoyed home schooling them this spring. There's no "force" required to separate the vast majority of parents from their children for many hours a day.
Re: So half the bay area lost their jobs? (Score:2)
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Who peed in your Cheerios?
Trumptards did. They peed in yours too in case you hadn't noticed.
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Now, feel free to go lick all the doorknobs you want, Trumptard.
Those are quite some interesting conclusions you're reaching, which speak volumes about who you are.
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We introverts are enjoying a certain amount of Schadenfreude. It's been an extrovert's world for too long. We enjoy being alone or with our families. No more pretending politeness when we get trapped into socializing, when we'd rather work in peace and quiet, without unnecessary interruptions.
^^^^Pretty much this
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What are the people living in Walnut Creek and commuting to Silicon Valley supposed to do?
1. Work from home and go insane from being alone all the time
They pay the California tax to live there, and dealt with that fucking commute before. They're already insane. Why the hell would the world care if they're bored too.
4. Fucking Move
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What are the people living in Walnut Creek and commuting to Silicon Valley supposed to do?
1. Work from home and go insane from being alone all the time
2. Move to SV where rents are already too high and drive up the price of rent 3x
3. Quit
4. Don't take work there in the first place.
In a similar situation on the eastern side of the country, I could have taken work in Washington DC, and made a lot more money. But the quality of life? Much more expensive to live. The commute? Nothing like getting in the post noon traffic in the DC area, especially on a Friday.
Plus the problem of living some place that's a lot cheaper to live in is that it's one of those solutions where the person is trying to "have it all". Spending hours every day in their
Zoning (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Zoning (Score:4, Insightful)
Ah. The 21st Century mill village.
Re:Zoning (Score:5, Funny)
Ah. The 21st Century mill village.
Yes that model would work very well with the overall plan:
Pay the workers in a mill currency that will only be accepted at local mill stores. This will ensure that workers will only shop locally, within walking distance, and not travel in cars to shop elsewhere. Thus even further reducing emissions.
Hey, and why not require companies to have 60% employees who are not allowed to own cars . . . ?
Re: Zoning (Score:2)
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Re:Zoning (Score:4, Informative)
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Re:Zoning (Score:5, Interesting)
A rather obvious unmentioned thing is to encourage apartment complexes next to tech campuses.
There is no need to "encourage" the construction of apartments.
They just need to be legalized.
Under current regulations, there is about a 0% of getting approval to build high-density housing anywhere near the tech campuses.
Re:Zoning (Score:4, Interesting)
Why haven't all the people who hate the high bay-area real-estate prices and the lack of housing done what every group in America does and formed a PAC? Get together, get everyone who doesn't like the high bay area real-estate prices (which might well include the tech companies themselves since they probably would be in favor of having their workers living closer to work as well) and form a group to basically say "we will donate to whichever local politicians can get the zoning changes and get more residential build".
Or heck, try and get a ballot initiative going (assuming that's a thing in the bay area) to try and get changes that way...
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The people who live in the districts in question fear change, and don't want people with less money than they have to be able to afford to live in their neighborhood.
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Because the PAC ends up fighting some of the richest and best financed interests in America. PACs are great when you can get a lot of money together to fight against nothing, not so much when it's a bunch of workers vs tech CEOs.
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I would have thought the tech companies wouldn't be particularly happy with bay-area real-estate prices either given the impact on their wages bill due to needing to pay higher prices to actually get workers (and there is probably an impact on productivity as well from the commute)
I suspect the only people who like bay-area real-estate prices are the people who own bay-area real-estate. (who to be fair are probably fairly powerful in their own right)
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The real solution is for people to stop having so many children
Housing prices are highest where birthrates are lowest.
Have you ever been to San Francisco? You will see plenty of singles, DINKs, and gay couples. But children are so rare that a confirmed sighting of one makes the evening news.
DINK = Double-Income No Kids.
Re:Zoning (Score:4, Insightful)
You'd either have an apartment complex relying on a specific company's success to keep full, or the company itself would run it placing thier workers under the corporate thumb 24/7 and risking one entity able to take both their income and housing away.
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We definitely have zoning in the Netherlands... However, we have zoning at walkable distance for uses that can coexist, not at 'car friendly' distance. You'll find places with shops and small office businesses (small commercial zoning) sprinkled throughout the habitational zones (which also include cafes, other buildings for leisure, religion and other off-work pastime stuff) with only a few parking places for the odd visitor. And, of course, functional public transport (at most 15 minutes wait for at mos
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A rather obvious unmentioned thing is to encourage apartment complexes next to tech campuses. In fact, encourage all sorts of mixed use zoning. This will enable people to simply walk to work, walk to the grocery store, walk to the clubs, etc. They won't need a transit solution. Being able to walk to work would be major quality-of-life thing for me.
You're right, but I do want to point out that it works better for childless people, and especially single people. Those of us raising the next generation of techies find ourselves with spouses' jobs distanced many miles from our own, and driving the kids all over the place to boot.
We personally live in an urban area and bike or walk a lot, but it's definitely a less attractive part of the bargain than it would be for somebody single.
In other words (Score:4, Interesting)
Clean air is only important if it doesn't impact the tax money the cities rely on or the businesses who make their money off of people who commute to work. From TFA:
"Lawmakers, mayors and the business community railed against the remote work mandate, saying it would undercut the Bay Area’s economy and encourage large companies to re-locate to cheaper regions."
Now that most of us have had a big helping of what it's like to not waste lots of hours each week commuting, though... there may be no stuffing that genii back into its bottle. Those cities and businesses may need to adapt, or die - regardless of any new policy plans and statements.
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"Lawmakers, mayors and the business community railed against the remote work mandate, saying it would undercut the Bay Area’s economy and encourage large companies to re-locate to cheaper regions."
I noticed that sentence too. By no means should the companies reduce economic inequality by moving jobs to the countryside. All wealth must be compressed into the smallest area possible.
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Now that most of us have had a big helping of what it's like to not waste lots of hours each week commuting, though... there may be no stuffing that genii back into its bottle.
Indeed. My WFH has already been extended past the year mark from when I last walked out of my building. If we can thrive during a pandemic doing WFH, what's the justification for dragging us back into the office?
I've got a 10 second commute in pajama pants and pets that come visit me during the work day. I work in sometimes too-bright sunshine, with fresh air and delicious cheap coffee. You'll need to drag me kicking and screaming back to the office.
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The law of unintended consequences (Score:5, Funny)
"Good morning, young man in a bike helmet"
"Oh hullo, this is my first day. i am ESTO for Mr X"
"Oh great, the lounge is over there, leave when you feel like lit"
"And do what?"
"Sign out and ride home"
"So what is an ESTO?"
"Minimum wage Executive Substitute Transport Offset, of course"
"?"
"you ride your bike in so one of of our execs can drive their wankmobile in, and we meet our 50% renewable transport requirement"
"glad I got that degree from MIT"
"Piss off kid, some of us have work to do"
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This will give companies excellent excuses to fire workers because they cannot help to meet the quota:
"You're too old to ride a bike!"
"You're too fat to fit into a carpool vehicle!" Note, about two-thirds of Americans are are obese or overweight.
"You're wheelchair bound and can't take public transportation!"
Hey, speaking of wheelchair folks, they need bigger, gas-guzzling Wheelchair Accessible Minivans. California could ban wheelchair ramps everywhere. This would encourage wheelchair folks to stay
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If you're having to try to punish people to force them to adopt a different form of transportation that they clearly don't want to take, you're not improving their quality of life. If you want other people to use alternative forms of transportation without hurting people's quality of life, make them good enough that people choose to use them. If you cannot succeed at that, the failu
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If you live in a country that can be considered developed and still have wheelchair inaccessible public transportation devices than I pity the state of your nations public transportation infrastructure.
We transitioned to proper wheelchair accessible public transport decades ago. I haven't seen buses without low floors and a wheelchair friendly entrance since the turn of the millennium and trains at least had wheelchair assistance on demand even earlier. Nowadays most of them are wheelchair accessable as wel
love working from home? (Score:5, Interesting)
Eventually someone will ask why if your job can be done from Muncie, Indiana can it not be done from Mumbai, India?
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Re: love working from home? (Score:3)
Someone has already thought of that, I assure you. Executives are not unaware of India. Telecommuting was already a thing before; I know people that work at Google that spent some number of days at home every month for various reasons.
As someone that works with remote teams, concurrency is a huge deal. I donâ(TM)t need to be in the office to discuss a technical issue with my team, but being able to diagnose something or ask questions in real time is a big deal. Any remote team needs to be largely auton
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Eventually someone will ask why if your job can be done from Muncie, Indiana can it not be done from Mumbai, India?
Let me count the ways. If I'm in Muncie, I speak English natively. I understand American culture. I understand American business culture. A thousand unwritten things need not be written.
I'm in an American timezone. I can be sued under American laws, if need be.
There's an easy remedy for that question (Score:3)
And eventually someone will ask why we don't just tax the shit out of companies that do that. Libertarians doing that vague "nice job you have, shame if something happened to it" dance are a bunch of idiots who have failed to grasp the realignment that started in 2015 and really kicked off in 2016. So let me explain it to you:
A strong majority of the American workforce wants either left-wing or
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India and China are already getting too expensive. A lot of stuff is shifting to Vietnam, the Philippines, and Africa now.
This is what happens with globalization. As we shift investments to other countries, they quickly develop and stop being cost competitive. They don't need to go through all the steps we did to get to where we are, so they can do it a lot quicker. A lot of poor countries are jumping to solar + batteries and a 4G network for comms, skipping the build-out of power, fiber, and phone line inf
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Is it really an outflow of wealth if we are getting product back? It has enabled nearly everyone to afford a cell phone, large screen TVs .. things like that. It has made things more attainable. If production was forced to stay in the US it wouldn't have enabled things to be so widely available. It might even be that we're ripping off those countries by giving them currency that they won't be able to get a lot of stuff with.
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Gotta stop and think why production is more expensive in the US:
-Standards for working conditions
-Standards for environmental protection
-Labor regulations and unions
-higher minimum wage (soon)
These are good things for the most part, and free trade / globalization completely bypasses all of that and allows big business to sell $thing at higher profit while the pollution and slave labor happens out of sight/mind. Trees native to North America are cut down, shipped to China, turned into furniture, then shippe
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Eventually someone will ask why if your job can be done from Muncie, Indiana can it not be done from Mumbai, India?
This is an easy one to answer: The legal systems between two sovereign nations are not conjoinable.
Obviously, the business does not care if it hurts the employee, so that doesn't matter... but what recourse would the business have if the employee hurt it? Are you going to sue Rashid for 30 million dollars when he fucks your business over by selling business secrets? Will Rashid be thrown in jail?
Trust is the main issue here. While you can't really trust your local employees, you know for sure that you can p
In 15 years.. (Score:3)
Re: In 15 years.. (Score:2)
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Most people haven't tried electric cars, but once they do, they won't want to drive anything else.
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Most people don't want to drive electric cars, and they don't touch what ethanol can do as far as carbon footprint.
$15/gallon and $800/month insurance premiums for that not-an-electric-vehicle luxury? Yeah, we'll see what most people don't want 15 years from now.
Most people don't want to fly commercial either, but I'll be damned if the friendly skies aren't full of cattle cars.
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Most people don't want to fly commercial either, but I'll be damned if the friendly skies aren't full of cattle cars.
Yep. Just about everything people hate about air travel, with the exception of turbulence, pretty much only applies to regular commercial airlines. Charter/private flights bypass pretty much all of the hassle.
(Had the privilege of traveling on such a flight once... If I was a billionaire with "people" to arrange things for me, chances are I'd never fly commercial again.)
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$15/gallon and $800/month insurance premiums for that not-an-electric-vehicle luxury? Yeah, we'll see what most people don't want 15 years from now.
So you just pulled some fantasy numbers out of your ass and present them as fact? Hey, I can do that too! $15/kwh electric bills and $800/m insurance premiums for that battery based electric vehicle? Yeah, we'll see what most people don't want 15 years from now. I guess you should go read up on what's possible with Ethanol. Especially what Boeing found and is selling today to the airline industry.
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Most people don't want to drive electric cars
Most people don't know what they want. Most people haven't been in an electric car and felt the amazing acceleration the smooth torque, the lack of shitty gearboxes, the quiet engines, the low maintenance requirements or the ability to get in your car knowing that the tank is full without having to go to some dirty shitty gas station.
Hell most people were happy with their horses. Just how many of those do you see on the road today.
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I'm sure there will be non-electric vehicles for sale 15 years from now, especially in the US, and in any case ICE cars being sold over the next 14 years are still going to exist long after 2035. Taking those vehicles off the road helps to reduce emissions. Also, the fact that a person could be using solar doesn't mean that everyone is using solar, and it seems unlikely that electricity will be entirely emission-free by 2035.
We will eventually get to the point where all transportation is carbon-free, but it
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I'm sure there will be non-electric vehicles for sale 15 years from now, especially in the US, and in any case ICE cars being sold over the next 14 years are still going to exist long after 2035.
I'm not sure there will be. I think it's likely there will still be a primary market, but not guaranteed.
This isn't because I'm a huge electric fan (I am) but because our entire ICE vehicle market is predicated on profitability and availability. If either of those start to falter, the entire network of mining, refining, distributing, and selling fuel plus the entire network of ICE car part manufacture, assembly, delivery, sales, and maintenance is in jeopardy.
In 5 years if 10% of the vehicles on the road ar
Re: In 15 years.. (Score:1)
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Yes. While electric cars do produce an order of magnitude less than combustion engines, electric cars do still pollute (tires, brakes, etc.) and require constant maintenance of roads (occupy space and highly polluting, too). Electric cars are a large chunk of reduction, but the problem will still be there unless there is a significant reduction in the number of cars itself.
Batteries needs heavy industrial processes to be built and the carbon footprint is pretty bad. Granted, it's in the fixed cost of the car and can be spread over the lifetime of the car, but still, a brand new electric car has already produced quite a bit more CO2 than a "regular" one has.
Mixing up two subjects (Score:2)
40% commuting by car is not the same as 60% commuting by transit/bike/carpool. Rather, it means 60% commuting by transit/bike/carpool *or working from home*.
This is a target that's not so hard to meet. From what I have heard, large parts of the tech sector will go to 2 or 3 days per week working from home (=40-60% of their commutes) for most employees (not all). That covers most of the 60%. Shuttle buses, which are already popular at the tech companies, cover a lot more. And some people will take transit or
Understandable protectionism (Score:5, Insightful)
This is entirely understandable protectionism. Telecommuting would destroy Silicon Valley: First, people would live somewhere more pleasant and more affordable. The housing market would collapse. Then the companies themselves would see that there is no particular reason to have huge office complexes there; they could have much smaller facilities, located almost anywhere.
Personal anecdote: I have spent the last months working in a tiny mountain village, with gorgeous views and lots of hiking trails. About once every two weeks, I make the trek to the office "just because", but even that is not really necessary. Why would I want to go back to living in the city, daily commuting, the press of people? I know: the incurable extroverts miss socializing at the coffee machine - great, they can go into the office. The rest of us can get our work done, and then go for a hike.
After Corona, a huge increase in telecommuting is inevitable.
Re: Understandable protectionism (Score:2)
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Telecommuting would destroy Silicon Valley
Kind of ironic given an industry built on destroying other industries
Anyways, not so long ago these companies were the bad guys, remember? People hating on Google's bus routes. Complaints about the price of apartments and houses. Clogged highways.
This pandemic has inadvertently provided a solution to the problem.
It's doubtful people are going to return to once again be told how to live their lives?
15 Years from now is not a policy (Score:2)
If any plan addressing the atmosphere is viable, how progress within some fraction of a goal (in this proposal, fifteen years) could not be given measure is suspicious. What
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Semantics (Score:2)
"calls for big companies to have 60% of their employees take sustainable commutes â" by transit, bike or carpooling â" by 2035."
Currently 54 percent of Googles workforce already works remotely, receives no benefits, doesn't receive a check from Google nor have they participated in the wealth they have helped create. So, does that mean it will take 15 more years for them to stop treating them like red headed bastard children?
It's been 4 years since a collective of US AGs postured intent to investig
Re:Semantics (Score:4, Interesting)
As the old saying goes, "Any time you get something for free, you're the product."
Remember that Google's business model is notsimply indexing pages for search purposes. It is, rather, building a vast and detailed model of their un-paid employees, sorry, users, and then selling that model to advertisers.
Every time you use a Google service, you are working for them without pay. Doesn't mean that you should suddenly stop, just that you should only do so with your eyes open.
People with jobs mine enough to work from home (Score:2)
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It's better for the people who live in the town to build a bypass, at least in the long run. And with some careful marketing (and not especially clever, even) you can capture those people who are passing by even though they have the option to blow right past your shitty little podunk town. Do the research to find out who is going where when, put ads for those businesses on billboards before your town, and make your town look cute and hip. Clean up the main road through town that people will need to use to g
Last Bastion of Incompetent Management (Score:5, Insightful)
What I've learned is that those managers who insist on staff being "line of sight" and in the office tend to be the least secure and the least competent you will ever work for.
Sometimes it's an ego thing: they want to walk in to a vast open plan office and see heads and think "All those people work for me". Sometimes it's an insecurity thing: they feel they don't know enough and need to have their little gaggle of 'experts' on hand to take their questions. Sometimes it's a power trip thing: "my department is bigger than yours". Or sometimes it's simply a practicalities thing: if you want the larges managerial office with the glass walls and the corner plot overlooking manicured gardens, you need the largest headcount working for you.
I haven't come across a single valid reason for having a technical team in the same place. We used to think that having a "war room" for running major technical problems/faults was a good idea. We've since learned that doing this virtually is much, much more effective. We used to think that having on-site workshops was a good way to share knowledge, but we do more face-to-face work remotely than we ever did in the office. Some companies still run in-person classrooms for formal technical training, but in my field the vast majority rely on crappy CBT (Computer-Based Training), so that's no longer a justification for meeting in person. Indeed, in some cases I've found that having a colleague work remotely is a *good* thing, when that colleague might not be good on an interpersonal level [for example, not be great with personal hygiene, might have a habit of invading personal spaces, or cube squatting when you want to do work.
By their definition, large office complexes create traffic headaches: the entrances and exits to car parks become choke points, annoying employees. The feeders that connect the car parks to public roads come to a near-standstill.
What the Silicon Valley set are really clinging to with this nonsense is that they are somehow relevant, or special. Some have invested heavily in providing "on-campus" services [such as laundries and catering], specifically because they figure that people will work on site longer - in other words, for as much as it costs a company money to do those things, they figure they are getting more back from you in return. They are buying off local public officials to utter their nonsense, but the great truth they fear is obvious: that if you can work remotely, then being in Silicon Valley is irrelevant.
And it is.
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By their definition, large office complexes create traffic headaches...
Until I read this I totally had forgotten that my work decided we needed more "security" about a...year ago? Year before COVID? God is time fucked up now.
Anyway, we all had company IDs, but they decided that they needed to have a security guard checking them. Now, the building isn't particularly secure, and it wasn't designed to be. So they locked all of the normal doors that people could come in, and funneled us all through the main entrance so we could wave a badge in the general direction of a $10/hr mor
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I have a hunch that the big Valley employers rely on the presumption that you have to go there to "make it" as part of the mechanism to attract the talent they want. And pay valley property prices? Or property tax prices? No thanks. Sooner or l
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We used to think that having on-site workshops was a good way to share knowledge, but we do more face-to-face work remotely than we ever did in the office.
I'm with you everywhere except for this sentence here. Face to face work and workshops are two different things. The latter is easy to do remotely with technology. The former is not. If your workshop was easily superseded by something online you had a very poor workshop. There's a whole world of benefit to being able to interact physically with the space around you to share knowledge.
Workshops and training were two things which very much suffered on the remote working mandate at our work. Personally a bit o
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I do miss the sort of brainstorming sessions we'd do when we were engineering new solutions or designing configurations of tech to meet business demands. They're still possible on line, but you can't beat handing a whiteboard marker around and letting everyone contribute to a solution... that part is more about inclusion and team-building than it is about finding the solution.
Because it's harder to do that as we're all working remotely [pretty much my
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What I've learned is that those managers who insist on staff being "line of sight" and in the office tend to be the least secure and the least competent you will ever work for.
Completely agree with this statement, based on my own experience.
Myself and my entire team have been working remotely since the start of the pandemic, over 8 months now, and we get as much (if not more) done with everyone much happier not having to waste 1-2 hours commuting every day.
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I manage a small team of mostly mid-twenty year old developers. I literally said to them "I don't give a shit where or when you work, as long as you're proactively communicating with each other and getting the work done on time".
Ever since then, they've all been in the office every single day. What the hell.
Not enough houses = not enough affordable houses (Score:4, Interesting)
The Bay Area is a crazy place. We want to companies to have offices here, but we don't want to add more housing to make up for the increased demand. We don't want these workers to commute either.
I used to be in San Jose, and it has been called a "bedroom community" for Silicon Valley for many years. (For example, this article from 2009: https://www.newgeography.com/c... [newgeography.com]). Nothing has changed much, except that the commute is worse, and the houses are more expensive.
Living in a remote area in rat infested houses with barely holding infrastructure costs a lot. Living near the actual workplaces are extremely hard. A burned down house sells for over $900k, homes near Apple campus are easily over $2m, regardless of age or quality. It is so bad, even highly paid engineers were living in vans: https://www.vox.com/2015/10/22... [vox.com]
There is a simple solution to all these: build more homes. build apartments. build high rises.
We have about two million housing units deficit. Yes, we need not to build 10 or 20 thousand more homes. We need to build *a lot*.
But nobody seems to want them in their city. Just the money making big business offices.
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There is a simple solution to all these: build more homes. build apartments. build high rises.
We have about two million housing units deficit. Yes, we need not to build 10 or 20 thousand more homes. We need to build *a lot*.
But nobody seems to want them in their city. Just the money making big business offices.
The politicians and activists would prefer implementing rent control and dictating to landlords how they can use the property they own. Liberal politicians understand power and regulation, but do not understand basic tenants of supply and demand economies. They think they can legislate "affordable" housing by edict rather than admit the problem isn't greedy landlords, but government policy that restricts (zoning) and/or discourages (excessive fees, taxes, expensive standards, etc) demand driven developmen
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Don't mandate, encourage (Score:2)
Lawmakers are generally drunk on their own power. If they hadn't proposed a "mandate," there wouldn't have been a backlash.
Instead, simply structure incentives such as taxes, building codes, etc., to make it advantageous to allow employees to telecommute. Businesses tend to look at the bottom line, and if allowing telecommuting is cheaper for them, a "mandate" won't be necessary, and a backlash could be avoided.
What of park and rides? (Score:3)
The new proposal calls for no more than 40 percent of a company's workforce to commute by auto on an average workday by 2035.
There seems to be no allowance for park and rides, which are arguably the best way to handle suburbs. Drive 5-10 minutes to a train station, park there, get whisked into/out of the city center. No highway traffic and no clogged city streets, and the bulk of the commute is mass transit. Would they count this as a car commute or mass transit?
Sounds fun... (Score:1)
Exactly what I want. Deal with the hassle and inconvenience of mass transit just to go to a workplace without personal desks and forced shared work spaces. What is it with politicians that want to dictate how people live? I'm betting those that are proposing such things do not intend to personally put up with such conditions for themselves.
I've been working from home for seven years. While it has its advantages, I often do miss being in an office. Having distinct separation between home and work is a b
Converting old supermarkets to corporate sites (Score:2)