Is Commuting Time REALLY A Factor For Software Engineers?

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What is up? Heading home. It's Friday evening. I say evening like it's night. I just mean at the end of the day it's it's past noon. It's it's the evening. Whatever, you know. Uh we're going to go to the comments for the topic. Uh this one is about commuting. We're on code commute. So we're out here commuting. But the question is about uh how do I feel about 4 days a week commuting to work versus um remote. So I'll talk about this um give my perspective a little bit about what I've been doing. Obviously there's at least some amount of commuting. If it's code commute get it right. Um but we'll chat through that. Uh kind of how I perceive I don't know like the tradeoff that that comes with. So, we'll get to that. Friendly reminder for folks if you're new to the channel. This is primarily based on questions that you have.

So, leave them below in the comments. Anything on software engineering, career development, that kind of stuff, happy to try and answer, do my very best. If you need um to submit something privately because you'd like to be kept anonymous, you can look for Dev Leader on social media uh or Nick Cantino on LinkedIn. Dev Leader is my main YouTube channel that has C tutorials, free resume reviews, a podcast where I interview other software engineers, and a live stream every Monday 7:00 p.m. Pacific. Go check it out. Love to see you there. We got a lot of people from Code Commute coming over and it's a lot of fun. I think and if you're watching this, you'll probably think so too. So, okay. Um, commuting, right? So, for a little bit of background, I am at Microsoft right now. I've been at Microsoft for just under 5 years.

If we rewind though, uh, for my career, I worked at a startup before Microsoft that grew into a small business. I call it small business. It's like 250 300 people that range by the time I left. And um that was fully like the entire 8 years was like in the office, right? Um we I can't remember how many years into it we we started allowing like the odd person to work remotely. And it's not because we were against it, but it was more like we don't know what that means, right? Like as a as a small company, as a startup, right? There's a lot of stuff that you're just kind of figuring out. So we were like if if people start working remotely like we're not against it but we've never done it. We does that mean if we let one person everyone's going to try.

So we tried out a little bit. Um I think had okay success with it. It company grew. We ended up having like satellite offices. I say satellite I don't mean for that to be like I don't know minimizing the impact of the other offices just smaller in terms of scale. So that was the first time we started to be across same time zone even but across different physical locations uh more formally but for the most part like you know I worked for those eight years that was fully you know in office and uh so that's like I've been used to working that way for for a long time right and then uh when it came time for Microsoft this was during the time that we don't speak about when the entire entire world was shut down. So, um I'm from Canada originally. Uh you'll probably be able to tell because I probably talk funny and I say a boot and I will bring up Maple Syrup and things like that.

But, um I was in Ontario and when I had accepted the role for Microsoft, it was contingent on being in the United States, but also at the time they were like, "Look, we understand the world is in a bit of a weird spot." So, um, like you know, kind of let's take some time to figure out how you get here sort of thing. So, I started working remotely from Ontario. Headquarters is in Redmond. Uh, there's a 3hour time difference. So, uh, that was my first, uh, shift, a huge shift if you think about it, going from a smaller startup into, um, a big tech company and working remotely and having time zone differences. So, pretty pretty interesting. But um yeah, started working remotely and um then my my wife girlfriend at the time she actually was able to get her Oh, buddy, don't move. Oh, it's going to be bad.

What is this person doing? Oh, they had to pull over. That's why. So, you can't maybe you can't tell. We're trying to get onto the highway and the person in front of me was like slowing down, which is usually not what you want to do when you're merging into a highway. Uh, you want to do the opposite of that to match the speed of the other vehicles. So, they were going very slow. Someone came up beside us going much faster than both of us while they were trying to move over. almost caused an accident and then right after they ended up pulling over to the side of the road. So, I guess something was wrong. Can't remember what I was saying. Um, Microsoft, oh, my my wife girlfriend at the time, she ended up getting uh a job placement down here uh because she came with me.

Um, which is good. It all worked out, right? We're we're married. So, she moved down uh with me, but um it ended up being like in terms of like when we were going to come down, it's like I'm on my own visa. She got her own visa, so these are separate things. But it all it moved a little bit faster for her than we were anticipating. So, in my mind, I was like, I'm going to have to wait for her to do this. We got time. And then she's like, basically, I got my visa, like start date, I'm ready to rock and roll. And I was like, oh I have to like actually move my entire life. So like I needed to sell my condo, blah blah blah, get out of out of Ontario. So anyway, like I knew it was coming. I just didn't know that it was actually going to happen that fast.

So I ended up coming down to work in Redmond, which is super cool. Now, they moved me into corporate housing for the first uh I think it's like 30 to 60 days. I can't remember. I think it's 30 and then there's an extension for 60 or something like that. So, I got to live in corporate housing. And um the really interesting part about the corporate housing is that if I stepped across the street one like takes me more than one big step, but if I if I walked across the street, and I'm not exaggerating when I say walk across the street, um if I could walk across the street, I would be on Microsoft campus. So I went from you know across the country to Microsoft campus and uh the funny part is I was still working remotely. So I lived at like basically at the edge of Microsoft campus and I was still uh a remote employee.

Um when I was on my previous team at Microsoft and I was there for about three and a half years. I my team was between Mexico, the United States, and um I didn't have anyone that reported to me that like actively went into the office. There was um one guy would go in sometimes and uh otherwise like basically no one on the team was going in. And you don't have to like it wasn't mandated, not a problem, whatever. But I'm I'm bringing this up because as an engineering manager, I'm like, if I'm going to go to the office, I want to be around my team. So, there's no point if I'm going to travel into the office and then just get on calls. This is also pretty early on um when there were things still locked down. And I would say that even for, you know, collaborating with other people not on my team, there wasn't a lot of people that were in at the office.

Um I if I I can't even pinpoint when that changed. Like it's just over time it seems like it's gone back to what I assume is normal cuz I wasn't here before the dark days. But um anyway, so I ended up working mostly remotely even though I had moved across the entire country. which is kind of ironic, right? So, uh now on my on my other team that I'm on now, um we still have like I'm technically I'm like fully remote I think in uh the employment portal, I think. Uh but like I do have team members that go in and my greater team does go in pretty regularly. Again, it's not like every day. Some people do work fully remote, but because people do go in, I'm like, "Hell yeah." Like, I'm gonna go in some days. And so, my manager doesn't force it. He encourages it, especially when there's like things going on at the office, which I think is great.

But, um, it's never been like, "Oh, you have to be here or else." So, um, I do currently, uh, roughly two days a week that are, uh, in at the office. This week was three because we had a particular meeting this morning that was going to be more effective to be in person for a better discussion, I think. So, I went in. I'm just looking at the highway. This is outrageous. The fast lane is like a wall. It's going to be one of those drives home. There's probably an accident up ahead. Um, next week, for example, I'm on call in the morning, though. And when I'm on call, I generally don't go into the office because just to give you an example, uh if my on call shift, we've changed these up a little bit. My on call shift is from 6:00 a.m. till noon. And um that means like if if I were to drive into the office, I probably don't want to drive in before 6:00 a.m.

and if I'm going to drive in at like to get to work for 9:00 or for 10:00. Like that's in the middle of my shift when I need to be helping on call. And then if I'm going to drive in after my shift's done, that means I'm probably going to get to the office around 1. And I like I'm not gonna go to the office just for a small portion of the day like that. So anyway, I'll have a day or a week like next week where I'm not going in at all. Um but most days it's about two days uh sorry, most weeks it's about two days a week. So um fully, you know, embracing that kind of hybrid approach and uh pretty consistent schedule, but still um you know, still some flexibility, which is cool.

So the question is really around like what are my thoughts around like now that you have the background like what are my thoughts around around it and is that a factor in the job and I would say like at this point now that I've experienced remote work um and hybrid and fully in office I would say it is a factor um the reason I say that is because like I'll give you an example today right in this moment if I look at Google maps it says 43 minutes to get home. I've already been recording for I don't know like 10 to 15 minutes. So, it's going to take me roughly an hour to drive home on a Friday. Um there's also time like to drive in in the morning. There's days where there's tons of traffic. There's days where there's less traffic. But point is this is time that is I'm not getting paid for, right?

Like I'm on salary. I don't get paid for this and I'm not doing anything that I want to be doing. And to add a little bit of a disclaimer, uh this is why I started doing code commute, right? Is because without code commute, if I think about my my commute, I'm like this is literally it's a waste of my time. I don't mean the act of going to the office is a waste of my time. I mean literally doing this drive if I wasn't making content is a literal waste of my time. I'm not getting anything done. It's just I'm not making money from it. It's just consuming my time. And I am not about that life at all. Um I can remember when I had internships in university. Uh first few internships I took I was living at home and then I could I could drive uh to the the places I was working and I could save decent amount of money this way.

And um I remember I had an internship where it was like you know way in and way back would be like 50 minutes to like just over an hour like each way. So, it's an extra 2 hours every day of the week. It's an extra 10 hours of commuting where I'm doing literally nothing productive. Nothing fun, nothing good comes out of that. That's that's over a full workday. That's over an 8h hour workday and just driving doing literally nothing of value. Right. Then you I mean there's there's gas costs and stuff like that now that I'm like don't have an internship job. Like I'm concerned less about the gas costs. I realize for other people this could be you know maybe that's a big part of your expenses. I'm not so concerned. I drive a V8 twin turbo. Um it's not I I should be more concerned about the gas cost but in all seriousness it's like you know I that's not the thing.

It's the time for me. I don't want to be giving up time. So, because I'm someone who's made uh you know outside of work for me is content creation. That's a I don't want to like it's not I don't know if you call it a hobby like for me it is a thing I do on the side. I like trying to make content so it can be helpful. Yes, I have revenue streams that come from that. Like I have royalties from core sales and things like that. Um, I should pitch that more like on my my vlog channel, right? I should be saying, "By the way, I have courses, courses, buy courses." I don't really do that. I don't like being pushy with it, but um, so content creation is a thing I do outside of work. It's more than just a hobby. It's something I enjoy.

So, it's a mix between a hobby and like a side hustle and a revenue stream, whatever. Right? So, Where was it going? Where was it going with this? Um Oh, the the content creation. Thank you. I I'm sorry. I'm distracted because the this the fast lane was completely blocked and I just realized as soon as I got into it, it was completely opening. So my brain was trying to process like what's happening in front of me right now like how are we actually moving? So content creation for me is a big part and I'm able to like if I can use my commute time to make content like okay now I've been transparent on this channel like I definitely I don't make enough money in ad revenue of this channel to like to cover driving in this lane right I if that alone that could be a nice thing where I'm like, hey, look, I can try to make helpful content and answer questions and at least it covers my fast lane cost.

It doesn't, and that's okay. But, um, you know, the goal I always think about content creation is something that's like a long-term thing, right? There's a lot of benefits to it for me, uh, that aren't directly monetary, right? Like on my main for forget courses. Courses are the only thing, the course royalties, only thing that keep it green. If it weren't for course royalties, I'd be like losing hundreds of dollars every month on my main YouTube channel. I'd be losing a little bit of money filming code commute if that was the goal because the ad revenue doesn't pay for it. I have hosting costs, other like tools and things like that that I I would lose money on. Um I you know I it's not the actual act of making content. Number one, I want it to be helpful, right? Number two, by me creating content online, it is personal branding for me.

Uh when I've talked about this before, people have asked me, it's like I would love to be at a point in my content creation, I don't know when this actually happens or what that looks like necessarily, but a success metric for me in purely in content creation, uh no, let me frame it as like personal branding as a result of content creation is that people see me in that position and going like that's a person that we would want to hire based on what we see, right? That's how I know my personal branding's been successful in my opinion. So, if I if I'm not at a point where I constantly have people reaching out to me being like, "We really want you to like manage our teams." If I'm not there, I got a ton of work to do. And that's not to say because I need that so that I can switch jobs because I have to switch jobs.

I'm saying like to me that's a su it's a success metric that I've branded myself the way that I would like to be seen as and that I've reached enough sort of audience that this is a that it makes sense to do so. I don't want to be in a position where I ever have to be scrambling for work. I want to be in a position where I can say look look at the value I offer. You you want me for your team. So, oh boy. Don't don't be swerving like that, buddy. My goodness. I got to get the 360 camera back on cuz now that it's a little warmer, it's raining less. Anyway, okay. So it's a big factor for me now that I have tried you know all three hybrid fully remote in office and because it literally takes up my time. I value my time and that's worth something.

So you could do the math on it, right? But if I were like okay just let's make up numbers just for the sake of hopefully when I try to do the math I don't screw it up. If we assume I make $100,000 a year and I'm fully remote and let's just make, you know, I work 40 hours a week, that's it. There's there's nothing else fancy. There's nothing extra. Um, if it's $100,000 a year for 40 hours a week of just the only time I'm committing to work, as soon as you add in a commute, now there's extra time coming away from me that I am not getting paid for. So if it was an hour commute each way, right, that's an extra So an extra two hours a day on an 8 hour roughly day of work, right? That's an extra 25% time if I did my math right.

So I value my time. I'm not saying that other people don't, but like no one's going to say, "Oh, well, we'll pay you for your commute time." Right? So, if I needed to be if I was in a position where I was working fully remote and making $100,000 a year, if someone said, "Look, we need you to be in the office every day and it's going to my commute's going to take me an hour each way." I'm just making that up as a reference. I would need to make at least an extra 25%. That's it. I say at least because like there's extra cost. There's gas. There's the fast lane that doesn't pay for itself. There's wear and tear on the vehicle. There's the fact that just because I'm sitting in traffic or on a drive for an hour doesn't mean that there like when I have to come into the office, I need to make sure my lunch is packed.

I need to do other little things that add up every day. And it's a little bit, right? But that might be an extra 15 to 20 minutes of just doing stuff before I get to the office that like that adds up. So that's why I say a minimum of that much extra uh pay to make up for it. Now, in a given role, like I've already told you that when I switch teams, I switch teams. It's not like they they said, "Okay, like you know, we're going to pay you more to be on this team and you come in two days a week." No, like I I made the decision. I think the value is there even selfishly for me to go in 2 days a week. Selfishly, like purely on a selfish basis.

If I go in 2 days a week roughly on average, then I can get the benefit for me to be a better manager because I'll get more facetime with my employees to be able to work with other stakeholders if need be in the office, right? Like there's there's these benefits for me that I can see tangibly. So I'm okay to make that switch. So, I realize that kind of muddies the comparison that I gave earlier because it's like I just added an extra two days of commuting, but that's uh I'm trying to give you the framing for how I would approach if I needed to navigate jobs like that. Um with that said like if you know if I were entertaining other jobs just for the sake of discussion um if I were to go say I'm going to switch to uh Amazon or to

Google or something like that if they required me to be in the office um I would be thinking okay minimally I need to understand my commute time and then I need to see that much extra pay or it's not worth it for me to switch. But then the other thing that's on top of that is like if I'm switching between companies, regardless of my commute time change, like my expectation is that if I'm switching companies, I'm going to use that as an opportunity not just to get the same pay. Realistically, that would not be a goal of mine because, you know, again, minimally, if you're switching companies, there's going to be a lot of Oh, maybe not for everyone. Maybe it is just way better. But I was going to say there's extra stress, there's extra ramp up time, there's like the change is not comfortable.

So, I'm not going to want to experience discomfort unless I see some other type of like benefit to that. Um, that's why I mean for me that might be the case. Maybe for other people are like, "Man, I'll take a pay cut to get the hell out of where I'm at." So, everyone's going to be different. But point is that for me, I'd want to see uh a pay increase by default and to to make it worth me to do the switch. And if there is a requirement to be in the office, my commute time's got to be a factor there because if that's not all adding up, my overall quality of life will be reduced. The number on paper might look better, but the reality is I have less time now.

Might be a different story if code commute was making me tons of cash and I was like, "Hey, I get to commute core commute commute more and um they say commute core the first time commute more and make more videos and then like get more money from it like would be lovely. I just I don't think that's I would love for that to happen. I don't think that's going to happen. I'm going to keep doing these though. Um, and you know, got to accept that it's likely not going to be a case where more commute time is going to be valuable for for making code commute a, you know, a breadwinning kind of activity for me. So definitely um you know I I want to make sure that wherever I go next um no I I I was I got to take that back. I was going to say that they they need to have hybrid but like I would I would do fully in office.

Pay's got to be there and the commute's got to be reasonable. I would do every every day in office. Um, fully fully remote. Okay, here's the thing. Fully remote with no opportunity for an office. Now that I've experienced some hybrid, I I'm not against it, but I actually if in terms of preference, I would want hybrid. That's a hard one now that I'm I'm trying to walk through it. I was going to say my preference would be hybrid, mostly remote, some opportunity to go in office. And now I'm like fully remote or in office only. Um I still think I I don't know if I can give up the flexibility of working remotely to be honest. I think that where I'm at now is like in my life is like that I need that flexibility. It's hard to It's hard to have it then to give it up fully.

But like I said, if the pay was right, I drive to the office every day. I don't think I have a problem with that. So, uh, yes, the the short answer to this question that I've been rambling on is that it is a factor for me. Um, I'd consider all three options, I suppose, and pay has to kind of match up with that because, uh, at this point, I'm not I'm not commuting more for like forced by an employer to not have my my compensation match that or else, like I said, the quality of my life will be reduced because I have more time. I'm not with my wife. I'm not, you know, building things. I'm not playing video games. I'm not doing the things that I could be doing with my own spare time. So, I hope that helps. Um, yeah, thanks for watching. And a reminder, if you want questions answered, leave them below in the comments.

Happy to try and answer. Otherwise, send them into Dev Leader on social media. And a friendly reminder, I'll let you know that I have courses for sale on domerain. You can check out dotrain.com. Uh I have C programming courses and then some uh more soft skill related courses for your software engineering journey. Take care and I'll see you next time.