Banning drivers who don't live in your city?

For some reason that escapes me, big companies, government agencies and other big organizations insist on being clustered in great urban masses even though we now have the technology to displace places of work more evenly throughout the countryside. Instead of having one great big building with say 3000 employees inside at a single location, there could be 30 small offices distributed all around that have 100 employees inside. I'm not talking around the city, or around a metro area, but around the country, or even around the world.

I consult for some of these types of companies. My official schedule is 50% on-site and 50% remote and is generally baked into our contracts. It's amazing how many of these companies that have limited or no remote work for their employees change their tune when they realize that having me on-site costs them an extra $2000/week or so and I end up on-site one week a month or less.
 
For some reason that escapes me, big companies, government agencies and other big organizations insist on being clustered in great urban masses even though we now have the technology to displace places of work more evenly throughout the countryside. Instead of having one great big building with say 3000 employees inside at a single location, there could be 30 small offices distributed all around that have 100 employees inside. I'm not talking around the city, or around a metro area, but around the country, or even around the world.

Big cities in America have been tripping over themselves to try to land the massive new Amazon HQ, but what if instead of just one great big HQ, they built 10, 20, or 30 smaller ones located in smaller towns dispersed hundreds, or even thousands of miles from one another sharing the wealth so to speak more broadly? Suddenly everyone's quality of life gets a whole lot better instead of worse. In addition, Amazon won't have to pay these employees so damn much to be able to afford living in an urban hell hole.

I guess they would have to get used to remote communications instead of face to face, but I believe it's worth the effort to transition. They would also have to give up the great big hundred story shiny monument to their corporate awesomeness, but again, I think everyone, including the top leadership of the company would be better off.

Unfortunately, even with today’s advanced technology, there is still very real value to having people together physically in the same place.

Many businesses that have tried to be highly decentralized and spread out have now pulled back in.
 
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Government’s job is behavior changes of drivers avoiding their other bad roads that are under construction? Huh. Who knew?
Governments job is to ban through traffic and isolate the town? Who knew?
 
Unfortunately, even with today’s advanced technology, there is still very real value to having people together physically in the same place.

Many businesses that have tried to be highly decentralized and spread out have now pulled back in.

Well, IMO we really, really need to keep trying. The stupid crap we have going now may be good for profits and amassing wealth, but it's not good for people. The people's well being living in a community should be more important than piling up cash. More and more people are being sucked into a very unhealthy way of living in pursuit of money.

We are often baffled by why somebody would pick up a rifle and try to kill as many people around them as possible, but I'm not. We have created an incredibly psychologically unhealthy society and instead of trying to make it better, each decade we double down and seem to work to make it even worse. In the 1930's, road rage was not a thing and mass shootings were not a thing. We need to get back to a time where these are no longer the norm. The way a lot of people have to get to work and how they are treated once they are there, really needs to change.
 
The way a lot of people have to get to work and how they are treated once they are there, really needs to change.

My last several jobs have been great as far as work/life balance at the office, but I really only got the commute locked in in the last 2.5 jobs.

2 jobs ago I was doing a 40 mile each way(about 40 minutes, freeway traffic) commute and my stress level was much higher at the end of the day than at the beginning. That job forced me to move and the new office location was 10 minutes from where I moved to, that was so much better.

Next job was 3 miles(15 minutes by car, 15 minutes by bicycle) and that was good too.

Now I work from home 50-75% and travel the rest. Working from home makes my commute a 5 second trip. Travel involves getting to an airport and getting to the customer, sometimes it sucks, sometimes it's great but once I'm on-site I'm typically in a hotel only a few minutes away from their office.

I'm never going to commute again unless I have to move to a city and walk a couple blocks(but I have 0 desire to ever live in a city.) Currently I'm sitting on the Oregon coast watching TV and listening to a storm with some light winds(only occasional gusts to 50kts or so) try and blow the house away.

My current stress level is great, biggest problems are figuring out when it will be dry enough to crawl under the house and cut some pipes to continue gutting a bathroom and adding some electrical, and figuring out when I need to get my plane to a 'big' airport for its 24 month pitot/static/transponder checks.
 
Well, IMO we really, really need to keep trying. The stupid crap we have going now may be good for profits and amassing wealth, but it's not good for people. The people's well being living in a community should be more important than piling up cash. More and more people are being sucked into a very unhealthy way of living in pursuit of money.

We are often baffled by why somebody would pick up a rifle and try to kill as many people around them as possible, but I'm not. We have created an incredibly psychologically unhealthy society and instead of trying to make it better, each decade we double down and seem to work to make it even worse. In the 1930's, road rage was not a thing and mass shootings were not a thing. We need to get back to a time where these are no longer the norm. The way a lot of people have to get to work and how they are treated once they are there, really needs to change.

And what they’re “going to work” for often isn’t making them happy, it’s just adding to their stress. And the place knows they need the job for paying those debts, thus the poor treatment. Sign up for another loan, and they extend it for another seven years... a nice new car to sit in traffic in.
 
Unfortunately, even with today’s advanced technology, there is still very real value to having people together physically in the same place.

Many businesses that have tried to be highly decentralized and spread out have now pulled back in.

I’ve worked for a number of them that did it right. And it does depend on the job, of course, but most companies that do it wrong also do one other thing VERY wrong, they have not a single clue to how measure effectiveness or productivity of their employees, and a culture of “if I see them doing something it must be productive” creeps into the heads of VERY lazy middle managers who also aren’t being measured correctly for leadership skill and effectiveness. Conversely the “if I don’t see them, they must not be doing anything” silliness also creeps in.

In general though, companies that can’t figure out how to manage remote workers were never managing in building workers well in the first place.

Funny thing is, companies have been managing remote workers forever in their Sales departments. They have real world metrics to hit, and real measurements, and they’re tied directly to compensation.

In most tech job roles the company that can’t figure out how to manage properly or measure effectiveness properly always falls into the “tickets are all the same amount of work” trap, and they start making “number of closed tickets” the goal, whether it makes the product better, cheaper, safer, or more appealing to the customer, or more profitable.

Getting a “ticket based” company to pull their head out long enough to realize, ticket 128464 is a million dollar profit increase to the company per year, versus the thousand other stupid and useless tickets that are open, is very very difficult. Often impossible.

Just one of piles of repetitive culture and measurement/assessment systemic problems that companies who can’t seem to do remote worker management, almost always do.

Another is not investing in GOOD remote communications technology. It’s possible to get a meeting to feel extremely face-to-face with the right video gear. Since I worked for a company that made the stuff, I’m biased, but we definitely ate our own dog food. If someone thought they needed to pay for travel, they were asked why with a very serious tone.

Hate to hurt fellow pilots, since full airplanes are their livelihood, but time wasted on aircraft going somewhere was VERY discouraged at that company. If you couldn’t give a very good reason you couldn’t use a video room, you weren’t getting travel approved. And yes, you needed office space for those, if you needed that level of interactivity. Kinda. At least five or six of our execs made room in their houses for the video rooms. They could take one of those calls that way and look like they weren’t just in their robe and slippers ten minutes before the meeting.

It did drive one funny culture thing though. If you did need to come to the office for a video meeting and the customer was ancient in their thinking about clothing, most of us would keep a button down shirt and jacket at the office and toss that on, while still in jeans or shorts even, under the desk line. LOL. Never stand up in a customer video conference with those customers. Hahaha.

The one area they went wrong, but it was understandable, was techs needed our multiple monitors and windows open to troubleshoot things. Video is a horrible medium for that UNLESS you’re screen sharing. Why? Because you’re going to just be looking at the side of my head while I’m reading things on the three monitors to the left of my camera, which was built into my desk phone. Enjoy looking at my ear.

The other minor mistake was video didn’t have the concept of “voice mail” or s screen that said “not here right now”. Our defacto standard was to point our cameras at a wall clock on our walls or cubical walls, so the idiot who called in the wrong time zone would see the office was dark and the clock time. Same with our home offices.

But definitely, no matter what, if you make it a priority, most travel can be replaced with good conferencing products. Not free ones, and not $20 USB mics and cameras. Still be cheaper than paying for the travel, though. Easy.
 
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I’ve worked for a number of them that did it right. And it does depend on the job, of course, but most companies that do it wrong also do one other thing VERY wrong, they have not a single clue to how measure effectiveness or productivity of their employees, and a culture of “if I see them doing something it must be productive” creeps into the heads of VERY lazy middle managers who also aren’t being measured correctly for leadership skill and effectiveness. Conversely the “if I don’t see them, they must not be doing anything” silliness also creeps in.

In general though, companies that can’t figure out how to manage remote workers were never managing in building workers well in the first place.

Funny thing is, companies have been managing remote workers forever in their Sales departments. They have real world metrics to hit, and real measurements, and they’re tied directly to compensation.

In most tech job roles the company that can’t figure out how to manage properly or measure effectiveness properly always falls into the “tickets are all the same amount of work” trap, and they start making “number of closed tickets” the goal, whether it makes the product better, cheaper, safer, or more appealing to the customer, or more profitable.

Getting a “ticket based” company to pull their head out long enough to realize, ticket 128464 is a million dollar profit increase to the company per year, versus the thousand other stupid and useless tickets that are open, is very very difficult. Often impossible.

Just one of piles of repetitive culture and measurement/assessment systemic problems that companies who can’t seem to do remote worker management, almost always do.

Another is not investing in GOOD remote communications technology. It’s possible to get a meeting to feel extremely face-to-face with the right video gear. Since I worked for a company that made the stuff, I’m biased, but we definitely ate our own dog food. If someone thought they needed to pay for travel, they were asked why with a very serious tone.

Hate to hurt fellow pilots, since full airplanes are their livelihood, but time wasted on aircraft going somewhere was VERY discouraged at that company. If you couldn’t give a very good reason you couldn’t use a video room, you weren’t getting travel approved. And yes, you needed office space for those, if you needed that level of interactivity. Kinda. At least five or six of our execs made room in their houses for the video rooms. They could take one of those calls that way and look like they weren’t just in their robe and slippers ten minutes before the meeting.

It did drive one funny culture thing though. If you did need to come to the office for a video meeting and the customer was ancient in their thinking about clothing, most of us would keep a button down shirt and jacket at the office and toss that on, while still in jeans or shorts even, under the desk line. LOL. Never stand up in a customer video conference with those customers. Hahaha.

The one area they went wrong, but it was understandable, was techs needed our multiple monitors and windows open to troubleshoot things. Video is a horrible medium for that UNLESS you’re screen sharing. Why? Because you’re going to just be looking at the side of my head while I’m reading things on the three monitors to the left of my camera, which was built into my desk phone. Enjoy looking at my ear.

The other minor mistake was video didn’t have the concept of “voice mail” or s screen that said “not here right now”. Our defacto standard was to point our cameras at a wall clock on our walls or cubical walls, so the idiot who called in the wrong time zone would see the office was dark and the clock time. ;) Same with our home offices.

But definitely, no matter what, if you make it a priority, most travel can be replaced with good conferencing products. Not free ones, and not $20 USB mics can cameras. Still be cheaper than paying for the travel, though. Easy.

Yes yes. I work only from a distance. My contract is commission only and there is no punching a time clock. I work as few or as many hours as pleases me on a given day and I average only part time which is all I'm capable of at this point in my life. The office doesn't worry about whether I'm sitting at my desk because my pay isn't connected to that. I can work days or weeks for nothing at all but then sit down one morning and find a quarter million dollars in five minutes. Office gets their cut and they send me my cut.

The pay is 100% tied to my productivity and 0% tied to whether I'm actually sitting at the desk which is ideal for distance working. I think it can be a problem otherwise. There really is value in being in the physical location with the boss, people can and do slack off if they're not being directly watched and if their pay is the same regardless of their productivity. You hit the nail on the head; management needs to figure out the real measurement and it is not whether you are sitting there; it is what you actually accomplish. And the effectiveness of the productivity of the employee needs to be the basis of their reward. Historically it has been too much associated with their presence at their station. While often their productivity was also taken into consideration, if you are straight salary or wage, too often you tend to descend to the minimum level needed to avoid being fired. Wanting promotions or bonuses can increase your productivity, but the biggest chunk of reward is the regular paycheck and that is too often measured by you simply being there, and performing the minimum required.

If the world is to transition to distance working, the whole paradigm should change. Say you are an on board (not contract) engineer. Rather than getting a salary for working 40 hours a week, your paycheck can be tied to the submission of portions of design, document completion, etc. with today's software and technology that kind of compensation could be tracked and managed, although not without problems. For that matter maybe the independent contractor engineer is more suited and why some companies are moving away from keeping such people on staff. A more volatile market is resulting in this anyway.

The downside to the independent contract model is you don't get the employee benefits. Health insurance is a big one and yet another reason in my opinion it was a huge mistake to make tax law so that companies started including health insurance as a benefit. And not having a regular paycheck of a set amount is also a problem, one that small business owners have always dealt with.

If you keep distance workers as actual employeees by instinct you want to make sure they put in their 40 hours but then we are back to the problem of tying their pay to performance.

Video is a partial solution. It's not quite the same as being face to face in real life. But I think we are on the right track. The model we've been using in the second half of the last century is becoming unsustainable. We are starting to see that the solution is NOT build more roads, because when we do they inevitably fill to capacity and we're back where we started only deeper into the mess. Mass transportation is not the answer because it doesn't allow individuals enough flexibility and independence.

We are fast approaching the level of technology that can make distance working the answer of the future. Maybe virtual reality gaming technology can be recruited to make video conferencing feel realistic and regain what's lost by not being there in person. Anyone who has grouped in an MMORPG knows that the experience is extremely realistic with leaders, followers, orders being given and jobs being done. When immersion is good, it is indeed virtually like being there.
 
What I was suggesting was not necessarily a future where everyone worked from home, but rather smaller office buildings where you would still have face to face and work stations, or offices, distributed around the country in more rural areas rather than every employee in the whole company stacked one on top another. So people would still need to commute to work, but it could be a short manageable commute in easy traffic instead of all of humanity trying to get to one area of the map.
 
What I was suggesting was not necessarily a future where everyone worked from home, but rather smaller office buildings where you would still have face to face and work stations, or offices, distributed around the country in more rural areas rather than every employee in the whole company stacked one on top another. So people would still need to commute to work, but it could be a short manageable commute in easy traffic instead of all of humanity trying to get to one area of the map.
While I see your point, the environmental impact of dispersing the masses throughout the rural areas would be pretty massive. Suburban sprawl would more or less replace farms. While I would never live in a city, I'm VERY glad that many people do, and enjoy it. It leaves the rural areas nice and empty for those of us that prefer that.
 
And what they’re “going to work” for often isn’t making them happy, it’s just adding to their stress. And the place knows they need the job for paying those debts, thus the poor treatment. Sign up for another loan, and they extend it for another seven years... a nice new car to sit in traffic in.
I once knew a COO of a company that embodied that attitude to a T. He encouraged the sales folks to go buy new cars, watches, bling because they had to pay it off, and that meant they needed to work hard. Had they bought from the company, it would have been "I owe my soul to the company store"
 
While I see your point, the environmental impact of dispersing the masses throughout the rural areas would be pretty massive. Suburban sprawl would more or less replace farms. While I would never live in a city, I'm VERY glad that many people do, and enjoy it. It leaves the rural areas nice and empty for those of us that prefer that.

Well, as a pilot, you may have noticed that there is actually quite a bit of empty space in our country, particularly out west.
 
Well, as a pilot, you may have noticed that there is actually quite a bit of empty space in our country, particularly out west.
As a person that has seen a city, there are a LOT of people. ;)
 
Well, as a pilot, you may have noticed that there is actually quite a bit of empty space in our country, particularly out west.

As a person that has seen a city, there are a LOT of people. ;)

I think @Dav8or wins this one. 3.5M square miles, 325M people.

The amazing part of the US land mass size is that Alaska is half a million square miles, twice the size of second place, Texas. My own beloved Colorado is only 103,000, a fifth the size of Alaska.

There’s plenty of room to spread out, really.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_population_density
 
There’s plenty of room to spread out, really.

No fences. That is why I enjoy living in New Mexico.

Alaska has a lot of space but most of the people live in a small area, and more people are moving to that area. Houses are a few feet apart in the state that has the most room to spread out....:dunno:
 
No fences. That is why I enjoy living in New Mexico.

Alaska has a lot of space but most of the people live in a small area, and more people are moving to that area. Houses are a few feet apart in the state that has the most room to spread out....:dunno:

Yeah, I know. I get it though... weather, no road infrastructure... sure keeps a lot of pilots employed... and kills more than the average... still, a truly amazing space and place. It’s too bad so many pack into Anchorage and a few other places.

Went to school briefly with a girl who grew up in Sitka in the 70s... she was in culture shock living in Greeley, CO. LOL.
 
Went to school briefly with a girl who grew up in Sitka in the 70s... she was in culture shock living in Greeley, CO. LOL.

I was in culture shock the first time I went to Sitka, which was last summer. A fairly modern town compared to parts of NM, and a very modern town compared to villages I am used to flying into in northwest Alaska....:lol:
 
I was in culture shock the first time I went to Sitka, which was last summer. A fairly modern town compared to parts of NM, and a very modern town compared to villages I am used to flying into in northwest Alaska....:lol:

Compare Kake AK to Petersburg AK and you will find a huge difference when only separated by 50 miles. Culture of dependency on government handouts and needing to work for a living can be clearly seen.
 
Ran across this, this morning. Think it was this thread where we talked about remote vs on-site workers.

Made me laugh because I’ve been rather outspoken about hating the entire “open office plan” work areas companies like because they think they’re cheaper than buying drywall and doors, too.

That, coupled with the option to work from home, has now finally highlighted that nearly 20% if office workers polled say they literally have no place quiet to go to concentrate on something. ROFLMAO.

Mixture of two stupid things makes for a reason to go somewhere else other than a useless custom built work place, to... wait for it... get some work done. Hahahahaha.

https://www.inc.com/brian-de-haaff/...-outperform-office-workers.html?cid=mustread7
 
Ran across this, this morning. Think it was this thread where we talked about remote vs on-site workers.

Made me laugh because I’ve been rather outspoken about hating the entire “open office plan” work areas companies like because they think they’re cheaper than buying drywall and doors, too.

That, coupled with the option to work from home, has now finally highlighted that nearly 20% if office workers polled say they literally have no place quiet to go to concentrate on something. ROFLMAO.

Mixture of two stupid things makes for a reason to go somewhere else other than a useless custom built work place, to... wait for it... get some work done. Hahahahaha.

https://www.inc.com/brian-de-haaff/...-outperform-office-workers.html?cid=mustread7
The cited reference is ironic because shortly after I opened it, a giant Microsoft ad filled the screen. It took me a little time to figure out how to get rid of it- just scrolled down. Then another ad started running, some video with sound. At that point, I just gave up and closed it. It seemed to appear as an advertisement masquerading as an article but I didn't look much due to the other distractions on that page.
 
Ran across this, this morning. Think it was this thread where we talked about remote vs on-site workers.

Made me laugh because I’ve been rather outspoken about hating the entire “open office plan” work areas companies like because they think they’re cheaper than buying drywall and doors, too.

I worked at a startup that had an open plan office, they had doors... on sawhorses... to act as desks. 99% of employees hate open plan offices, the other 1% are the ones who need to continuously interact with their coworkers for some reason.

Er, sorry, 99% of employees who do work hate them. Managers love them since they can just look out and survey their domain and make sure people are at least pretending to work.
 
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