C/D: Living in the city, commuting to work in a suburb

This is obviously very different in a larger city, but in my area (about 425k or so in the entire metro area) I've done it before and am about to do it again when I move. I think it'll be about a 20 minute commute by car. In return, I get a fairly walkable neighborhood, proximity to major roads, and a mix of people.

I work at a larger company that has a corporate campus type of thing, with an on-site cafeteria, gym, etc. Several places nearby to eat lunch off campus, although pretty much all require a car to get to, so I'll head out a few times a week with friends/coworkers. It'd be nice to work downtown where I could walk to lunch or run errands by foot, but all things considered, it's a decent gig.

i do this

it's good. i mean i would prefer to be car-free but i really have few complaints.

Yeah, that would be my main guilt trip. Being completely car-free is a relative impossibility where I am, unless you live right off a major bus route, work downtown, and are able to shoehorn grocery shopping into your commute. I think I'd be annoyed if I worked in the suburban area with the giant shopping center and new development nearby, but my workplace is fairly surrounded by a park and some fields. There's no north/south freeway in town, only an east/west one, so I'm taking neighborhood streets all the way home. I can probably work from home occasionally this winter, so I might try for that if it gets obnoxiously snowy, avoiding the treacherous commute.

used to do this shit, which i later deemed dumb and inefficient.

90% of the time (i'm making this up btw) you will get paid a higher wage in the city for the same labor. unless you ~really~ love the company, take advantage of living in the city.

yeah my workplace is 30 miles dead west of my place on a major highway. really the only annoyance is navigating the streets in my neighborhood. i do most of my errands near home tho i fully admit that having easy access to suburban shit comes in handy every so often (if i wanna go to home depot or target or something)

my company has offices both in the city and the suburbs; i wouldnt make any more working in the city tho obvs there would be certain conveniences

I think the main corporate employer downtown that might hire me had a 10% paycut for all employees early this year -- my coworker who I helped hire back in March or so came from there and was glad he bailed out. I could go for a smaller company, the state, or a contract job, but those are harder to come by and with the latter I might end up being stuck in another random suburb (probably at w3lls f4rgo, ugh).

We now live in San francisco and my husband commutes (by public transport) to a small town on the East Bay. It's good that way round, although a lot of his friends at work have decided to live in the same town (it's cheaper) so we don't see much of them unless we trek over to there at the weekends. It's about an hour commute at the moment, which isn't ideal, but should get quicker once he gets a bike.

A bicycle, or a motorbike?

what town is it?

I've been doing this for the past 10 months - live in downtown Seattle, work in the outskirts of Redmond/Kirkland I usually take the bus - it's a long commute time-wise by either bus or car (min 1.5 hours one way) and at least I can read on the bus. The company cafe is pretty good, varied entrees with excellent soups and hot sandwiches. The main drawback is the office isn't on a main bus line - I take a standard bus to a transit center and then catch a DART bus that only runs 3 times in the morning and 5 times in the afternoon. If I miss the last one either way, it's a 2.5 mile walk. Next spring, maybe I'll get a bike to store at the transit center and ride that 5 miles to and from.

I've started doing errands over on the work-side: hair cuts, drug store, and banking mostly. I wish they'd let me get set up with a vpn, but the IT dept is weird about contractors.

xxp Pushbike! Quite glad he doesn't have to drive over the Bay Bridge atm.

if i ever got a contract at one of the big companies here, i'd do this... would be kind of a pain but probably worth it for the work. it'd probably also make me really want to buy a car.

commute-wise it's probably not any worse than my parents' commute from suburb to suburb, but eco-friendlier bc of buses.

I do the same thing as Not the real Village People's husband. Live in SF (by 24th/Mission, so right by BART) and commute to the East Bay (in my case, San Leandro). I hate it, to be honest. Working an 8 hour day, plus 1 hour lunch break, plus 1 hour commute each direction means that my day is spoken for, from 7am-6pm. I know I could have it worse, but it absolutely kills any energy or creativity in the evening, which is just when I want to be doing some *actual* work (ie. the hobbies I care about).
I dunno, I'm glad to be employed, but I like to record music and have hardly done any of that ever since starting this commute configuration, and I don't see that changing until I free up some more time during my weekdays.

"first world problemz"

Also San Leandro is a real bore.

sorta scary too

San Leandro is comically full of donut skid marks in a large number of parking lots and intersections.

classic.

i do this

it's a lot better than the reverse, rush hour-wise

Oh I'm definitely glad I don't do the reverse.

I do this, it's good cos: i. no shops so nothing to waste money on at lunchtime, ii. the area is in our national park so it's generally pretty pleasant, iii. lunchtime walks and runs are pleasant and not punctuated with cars, iv. trains are empty cos most people commute in the opposite direction

I've done this for years, when employed. I would love to work in the city, but Portland is a weird place, and most of the californian tech companies who moved up here wanted to bring californian suburbs with them, and so you have Hillsboro/Beaverton/Wilsonville/etc.

Also, one of the books about urban planning I read years ago made the observation that whenever companies relocate in a metro area, then tend to always head further out in the suburbs in the direction of the CEO's home.

I don't exactly do this, but I live in Western Queens and commute to Eastern Queens. I love the reverse commute and think that I save a lot of money by not being tempted by nice stores during my lunch break. It's kind of a drag at the end of the day though--it turns getting drinks after work in the city into an epic ordeal.

90% of the time (i'm making this up btw) you will get paid a higher wage in the city for the same labor. unless you ~really~ love the company, take advantage of living in the city.

― ♪♫(●̲̲̅̅̅̅=̲̲̅̅̅̅●̲̅̅)♪♫ (Steve Shasta), Wednesday, 11 November 2009 04:06 (2 days ago)

Have not necessarily found this to be true -- my old job paid considerably more for the suburban work that i did (which, granted, required more driving) than it did for the same job in the city. I think this was partly because it was media/journalism related and NYC is overflowing with qualified people desperate to work in that field.