Walking or biking to work is quite nice for me when I live close enough to work. A good friend of mine loves her walks home from work, as she's told me many times.
When I've lived train distance, a 20min commute has been quite fine. I'd say neutral, which is sufficient to make the point.
I live near one of the subway stops in Boston (10 minute walk) and I absolutely miss my commute. Before the pandemic I would typically walk 7 miles a day, now I have to force myself to walk 3 miles.
Most of my hobbies would be in the city as well (meetups, concerts, board games, dating). All that has took a massive hit but the city is slowly coming back.
My current team prefers working remote and TBH I don't like it. I want to be in an office with others. It's nice having a clear separation of work and home. I don't like how companies are able to subsidize business costs (electricity, rent, maintenance, food, internet) through my home. They aren't reimbursing me for this, nor would I expect it.
I buy I might be in the minority but I like my commute a lot, I'm in NYC, it's a great 15-30 min buffer/bookend for my day, and I've started biking to work which I enjoy a lot.
I wonder how much of these remote vs. office convos are effected by the maybe unstated fact that commuting in the Bay is maybe especially bad?
I think almost the entire office vs wfh argument is based around commute quality. When I lived an hour drive from the office I hated going in and WFH was a blessing. Then I moved to the city and lived a 10 minute walk from the office and ended up going in half the time just because it was no bother to go in.
