Tech workers who fled to Tracy, Livermore, or San Jose for bigger homes during remote-work years are now facing brutal reverse commutes back into the Peninsula. Is the employer being reasonable, or has the definition of an acceptable commute permanently changed?
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Add your commentI do this commute. Tracy to Mountain View. Every. Single. Day. We're talking 2.5 to 3.5 hours EACH WAY depending on whether there's a fender bender on 580. I moved out there in 2021 because my wife and I finally had space for a real home office, a yard, a dog. Now I'm basically a ghost in my own house. I leave before my kids wake up and get home after they're in bed. Someone tell me what the point of a bigger house is when you never see it.
The VTA and Caltrain situation is genuinely embarrassing for a region that considers itself a global tech hub. If these companies ACTUALLY cared about RTO they would be lobbying hard for better transit infrastructure instead of just mandating badge-ins and patting themselves on the back. Put your money where your mandate is.
can someone explain to me why we're debating whether a 3 hour commute is 'reasonable' as if that's even a real question lol. it's not reasonable. it never was reasonable. we just pretended it was reasonable for so long that we forgot it was insane. the pandemic gave people a glimpse of normalcy and now employers want to take it back. call it what it is.
I moved from San Jose to Sunnyvale just to cut 20 minutes off the drive and my rent went up $800/month. Do the math on whether that makes financial sense. I did the math. It does not make sense. Nothing about any of this makes sense.
Just moved here from Austin six months ago for a role at one of the big campuses off Shoreline. Renting a tiny 1BR in MV itself specifically to avoid this conversation and paying an absolutely criminal amount of money for the privilege. You want to know if the commute from Tracy is a dealbreaker? The rents in Mountain View ARE the dealbreaker. Pick your poison.
Hot take incoming: if you chose to move to Tracy knowing this job was always going to be in Mountain View, this is honestly on you. Remote work was never guaranteed to be permanent and the offer letter said nothing about working from a field in the Central Valley forever. Harsh but true.
^ okay respectfully this is confidently incorrect. 101 north from SJ to MV was parking lot territory by 7:15 every single morning before covid and it is absolutely back to that now. i sat in the Brokaw on-ramp for 40 minutes last tuesday. last TUESDAY. not a holiday, not a special event. a regular tuesday in march.
born and raised in mountain view, watched it get absolutely hollowed out by tech campuses and now people are complaining about commuting INTO it lol. the irony is not lost on me
My grandpa used to commute from East San Jose to work at Lockheed in Sunnyvale in the 60s and he thought nothing of it. Different era obviously but I think we've just collectively decided our tolerance for any inconvenience is zero. That said I also think 3 hours each way is genuinely not compatible with having a life so I dont have a clean answer here.
Actually Highway 101 northbound from San Jose into Mountain View is one of the easier Peninsula commutes if you time it right. People are being dramatic. Leave by 7am and you're fine, traffic doesnt get bad until closer to 8. I've done way worse commutes in this area.
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