Commute from Davis to South SF. Have you done or do it?

[Mack Knife]

Originally Posted by Indyking

I agree, but our initial idea was not about the money at all. The opportunities in SSF and Davis would be great for our carrers. That is a lot more important than money in my opinion because down in the road, if we can't stand the work-life balance, we had at least improved our carrers making it easier to leave. Having said that, none of that is more important than my family.

Have you thought about a short term vs a long term compromise? In the short term, your family life might suffer some but we're talking a year or less, for sure not any longer. Mix up some of the options others have offered here and see how things work out at the employer level. Perhaps with being on the inside you can leverage good hard work with a modified work schedule and work pattern using a combination of on-site, at home and local to you office situation. Many areas (Davis has them) have office space with all the amenities that could let you work in the professional environment yet eliminate say, 2 days a week of commute traveling. They have tele-presence equipment that makes a lot of remote working very easy and efficient. That could be a big difference and opening up the living arrangements you want.

From Davis, make the non commute days Tues and Thursday. Here is the reason. Many holidays fall on Mondays. As you build up vacation or personal time, every other week you take a Friday. Now look at the schedule and it is actually manageable, you are living a "normal" life as far as kids and wife are concerned and you're not killing yourself sitting in traffic.

Get a disposable car. Real disposable. Park it at a park and ride in Emeryville. Take the train from Davis to there and jump in the car, go to work. Return home same way. A reliable beater is just the ticket, no one wants to really steal it because it looks ordinary but make sure it runs like the wind. Some non-descript thing like a Nissan Sentra, few get stolen but they run forever. You take that across the Bay and to SoSF.

On the holiday weekends, you get the bonus of a nice three day weekend followed by you at home or at local office deal which is 4 straight days off. To make things palpable for the boss, cancel the Thurs non-commute and go in. It will be a short week anyway.

Like I said before, doing a straight 5 day a week thing is nearly impossible but thinking it through with lots of options you can probably figure something out that makes home life good and work life beneficial.

Stay away from the idea of riding a motorcycle to save time. I did it for years and aged twice as much as the time spent doing that. Pleasure is one thing, that 80 West/East thing is a disaster.

Good luck to you.