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    Entries in commuting (4)

    Wednesday
    Dec312014

    REPRISE: How far would you commute each day for your dream job?

    Note: The blog is taking some well-deserved rest for the next few days (that is code for I am pretty much out of decent ideas, and I doubt most folks are spending their holidays reading blogs anyway), and will be re-running some of best, or at least most interesting posts from 2014. Maybe you missed these the first time around or maybe you didn't really miss them, but either way they are presented for your consideration. Thanks to everyone who stopped by in 2014!

    The below post first ran back in June and was a good example of a non-robot, non-technology, and non-sports type post that for some reason seemed to resonate a little bit. It hit on a normal issue for careers and workplaces - commuting, and the challenges that really long commutes to work can present. The example in the post is pretty extreme, but I think it helps us think about the kinds of 'life' tradeoffs we are willing to make for 'work'.

     Happy New Year's Eve!

    ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

    How far would you commute each day for your dream job? 

    How far would you be willing to commute, (to keep it simple let's assume we are talking about commuting via driving your personal car), in order to work at your dream company/job?

    I have to admit it is not a question I have personally thought about very much these last few years as my 'commute', if you could call it that, has typically been taking a short flight of stairs to my lower-level office/lair/Fortress of Solitude.  But lots of folks, heck still the large majority I think, are making the pretty much daily grind to an office, store, warehouse or whatnot. Despite how much we like to talk about the nature and practice of work and workplaces changing, for most of us 'work' remains a place we physically go to just about every day.

    So how far of a drive is too far?

    I only thought about the question this week after reading a post on the LinkedIn blog titled, Inside Story: LinkedIn’s VP of Mobile on Driving in the Snow, Houzz and Anticipatory Computing. I clicked through to the piece because of the 'Anticipatory Computing' phrase, that just sounded really interesting and cool, but as it turns out the more interesting nugget from the post was about how this VP from LinkedIn (Joff Redfern) had a ridiculous commute his first four years with the company.

    How ridiculous? Check this Q and A from the piece:

    Q: What’s not on your LinkedIn Profile?

    A: During my first four years at LinkedIn, I had one of the longest commutes. I lived in Lake Tahoe, California, but worked out of headquarters in Mountain View, California. It’s about 250 miles each way, so I put over 110,000 miles on my car. That’s the equivalent of driving around the world more than four times. It gave me lots of time to think and one of the benefits is that I’m pretty awesome at driving in the snow. 

    Did I read that correctly? 250 miles each way to get to the office? Even taking into account the fact that there was probably no way Mr. Redfern was making a 500 mile round trip every single work day, even still, just a couple of times a week that kind of a grind will be almost impossible to sustain.

    How someone could manage a commute that crazy, and not go insane is kind of an interesting question I think, and you could substitute '500 mile commute' with, 'Has to work 18-hour days for a year in order to ship our first product'. I think there are at least three key elements you'd have to have in place in order to make it work:

    1. The work itself has to be an ideal (for you) combination of challenge/excitement/opportunity/reward that will set you up perfectly for the next 10-15 years of your career such that you simply have to bite the bullet and devote yourself to that work for a year or two (or four).

    2. You either have to have just about zero responsibilities outside of work (no spouse/significant other/kids/dog etc.) that might either literally starve (in the case of a dog) or be starved for attention (every other person in your life), since you are working all of the time. Or, you have someone in your life who has decided that they will take care of everything outside of work for you while you are working all of the time. I suspect it would be really tough for anyone to pull off a regular 500 mile commute if they had a spouse, a couple of kids maybe, at home that they actually wanted to see awake once in a while.

    3.  You have to be (reasonably) healthy before taking on such a grind. The combination of working crazy long hours and a long commute will start to break you down physically (and likely mentally too). You will eventually start eating poorly, not getting enough exercise, definitely not enough sleep and that combination starts to take a toll. If you are not set up to reasonably handle that kind of physical punishment you are more likely to end up in an ER somewhere than accepting a fat bonus check or a bunch of stock options for your hard work. Everyone can handle a long day or two or maybe five, but keep stacking them up, week after week and month after month? Good luck with that.

    So how far are you willing to commute for your dream job?

    Thursday
    Nov132014

    ECON 101: What do falling oil prices mean for you?

    I am a big mark for finance, economics, business news, etc. And one of the most interesting business/markets stories in the last few months has been the pretty dramatic decrease in the price of crude oil, and probably more importantly to you, me, and our workforces, the corresponding fall in consumer prices for gasoline.

    Check out the two charts below for some context: first, what has been happening with Crude:

    How about the average price of gas? Here you go:

    Pretty clear from these two charts what has been happening - crude oil has been on a pretty steep fall, dragging down the average price of gasoline along with it.

    What might that mean for the savvy HR/Talent professional? Three quick hits, then I'd love your thoughts.

    1. Compensation - the fall in gas prices is sometimes referred to as a 'free tax cut' for consumers. But if we spin that just a little, you can frame the drop in gas prices as 'off-cycle comp increase' for employees. Seriously, you can't actually say that out loud, but the truth is many of your employees have a few more dollars in their pockets each month. Maybe you (or a line manager) can feel a little more emboldened about calling back to the office some of your slacker telecommuters?

    2. Operations - If you are in the business of moving any kinds of goods around the country/world, then you are seeing a pretty steep decline in transpiration costs. In the same way that a fall in gas prices puts an unexpected few extra $$ in each individual's kitty, the decline in costs for truck, rail, and eventually even air shipment costs will be a benefit to many organizations. Keep an eye on that line of your shop's P&L, (you do review the P&L each month, right?), and see if you can't time your request for a new HR system/program/technology along with a bump in margin.

    3. Oil and Gas industry - Opinions seemed mixed on the overall impact to the US oil and gas industry, which has seen a remarkable renaissance of sorts in the last decade. At some point the price of Crude could fall to a point that jeopardizes domestic production. We are probably not (yet) at that point however. But there certainly could be a slowdown in the rate of growth in capacity and then the jobs that are being created in the US oil and gas sectors. 

    It is pretty cool to pull up to the pump and see prices on a continual decline. Heck, you may even now be able to fill up the tank in your monster SUV for less than three bills.

    But what is cooler still is to have an idea, an understanding, and an appreciation about what this kind of macro-economic trend means for your business and your employees. 

    What do you think, have falling oil/gas prices made any impact in your HR shop?

    Friday
    Jun132014

    How far would you commute each day for your dream job?

    How far would you be willing to commute, (to keep it simple let's assume we are talking about commuting via driving your personal car), in order to work at your dream company/job?

    I have to admit it is not a question I have personally thought about very much these last few years as my 'commute', if you could call it that, has typically been taking a short flight of stairs to my lower-level office/lair/Fortress of Solitude.  But lots of folks, heck still the large majority I think, are making the pretty much daily grind to an office, store, warehouse or whatnot. Despite how much we like to talk about the nature and practice of work and workplaces changing, for most of us 'work' remains a place we physically go to just about every day.

    So how far of a drive is too far?

    I only thought about the question this week after reading a post on the LinkedIn blog titled, Inside Story: LinkedIn’s VP of Mobile on Driving in the Snow, Houzz and Anticipatory Computing. I clicked through to the piece because of the 'Anticipatory Computing' phrase, that just sounded really interesting and cool, but as it turns out the more interesting nugget from the post was about how this VP from LinkedIn (Joff Redfern) had a ridiculous commute his first four years with the company.

    How ridiculous? Check this Q and A from the piece:

    Q: What’s not on your LinkedIn Profile?

    A: During my first four years at LinkedIn, I had one of the longest commutes. I lived in Lake Tahoe, California, but worked out of headquarters in Mountain View, California. It’s about 250 miles each way, so I put over 110,000 miles on my car. That’s the equivalent of driving around the world more than four times. It gave me lots of time to think and one of the benefits is that I’m pretty awesome at driving in the snow. 

    Did I read that correctly? 250 miles each way to get to the office? Even taking into account the fact that there was probably no way Mr. Redfern was making a 500 mile round trip every single work day, even still, just a couple of times a week that kind of a grind will be almost impossible to sustain.

    How someone could manage a commute that crazy, and not go insane is kind of an interesting question I think, and you could substitute '500 mile commute' with, 'Has to work 18-hour days for a year in order to ship our first product'. I think there are at least three key elements you'd have to have in place in order to make it work:

    1. The work itself has to be an ideal (for you) combination of challenge/excitement/opportunity/reward that will set you up perfectly for the next 10-15 years of your career such that you simply have to bite the bullet and devote yourself to that work for a year or two (or four).

    2. You either have to have just about zero responsibilities outside of work (no spouse/significant other/kids/dog etc.) that might either literally starve (in the case of a dog) or be starved for attention (every other person in your life), since you are working all of the time. Or, you have someone in your life who has decided that they will take care of everything outside of work for you while you are working all of the time. I suspect it would be really tough for anyone to pull off a regular 500 mile commute if they had a spouse, a couple of kids maybe, at home that they actually wanted to see awake once in a while.

    3.  You have to be (reasonably) healthy before taking on such a grind. The combination of working crazy long hours and a long commute will start to break you down physically (and likely mentally too). You will eventually start eating poorly, not getting enough exercise, definitely not enough sleep and that combination starts to take a toll. If you are not set up to reasonably handle that kind of physical punishment you are more likely to end up in an ER somewhere than accepting a fat bonus check or a bunch of stock options for your hard work. Everyone can handle a long day or two or maybe five, but keep stacking them up, week after week and month after month? Good luck with that.

    So how far are you willing to commute for your dream job?

    Ok, that's it - I'm out for the weekend.

    Happy Father's Day to all the Dads!

    Wednesday
    Jul242013

    Getting reacquainted with the nightmare that is commuting 

    I have to admit in the last few years I have become incredibly spoiled. Since 2010 or so, for the most part I have been a 'work at home' person, (when not on the road at really tough duty places like Las Vegas, Chicago, or the San Francisco area). I have not had to deal (much) with what the below chart shows, that about 95% of the rest of the American working population put up each day with the commute to and from their workplaces.

    Here's the chart I am talking about (hat tip to the NPR Planet Money blog), and I'll have some comments after the break...

    Source - US Census Bureau

    Notable in the Census Bureau stats on commuting is the decline over the last 50 or so years in the percentage of workers that work at home and the percentage that are using public transportation. The Census folks think that the  'work at home' dip over that time horizon is mostly due to the dramatic decrease in family farmers, (who mostly worked and lived on their own farms). The drop in public transport is chalked up to the rise of the suburban lifestyle which combined to put people farther away from the traditional pockets of employment in the city centers, and are simply not served with as many, or any, public transport options.

    Regardless of where you reside across the spectrum of commuting options, it seems to me that one thing is almost universally true - most of us loathe, dread, and hate our commutes.

    I thought to post about this today for two reasons, one, I had seen the NPR piece yesterday and found it interesting, and two, I've had to leave my cushy basement home office each of the last three mornings to take my son to a summer camp/program this week.  So instead of my usual groggy stumble down one flight of stairs to the coffee pot, followed by a slightly less groggy stumble down a second set of stairs to the office, I've had to join the other 84% or so of folks out on the road each morning, dealing with traffic, (admittedly not much), traffic lights, and everyone who is not as accomplished a driver as me, (everyone).

    And I have been reminded how horrible commuting is, even when it is 'good' by national standards, (the camp location is about 9 miles away, probably 20-25 minutes each way).

    What's the point of all this? 

    I guess to share the stats in the chart above as they were kind of interesting and surprising. Sometimes we 'work at home' folks socialize and collaborate with so many other work at home folks that we get deluded into thinking way more people also work at home than actually do. If you are working at home, even in 2013, you're the outlier.

    And second, to think about some ways we can make life a little better for the 84% in their cars, alone each day. Whether it's flexible starting/ending times to get people out of rush hour a little more, the chance to skip the road all together once a week or so and join us weirdos that work at home, or even some kind of little perk like onsite car washes, oil changes, tire rotations - that kind of thing. It seems to me that 84% of your workforce is likely starting the workday ticked off about something that happened on the road on the way in. That can't be good for those 8:00AM staff meetings.

    Commuting is horrible, even when it is easy, and even when you don't have to do it all that often.

    I could not imagine going back to that grind every day. 

    What can/are you doing to make your commute a little more bearable? Hit me up in the comments.