6 ms·

I secretly lived in my office for 500 days

146 points by 0cool 11y ago

mcculley 11y ago
I once worked 2nd and 3rd shift for a project that encouraged such hours because there weren't enough servers to handle the load for everybody during the day. A few mornings around 5:00 AM I heard a weird high pitched noise but it went away before I could figure out what it was. The next time it happened, I immediately hunted it down. I narrowed it down to the men's restroom and opened the door to find a man standing in the nude using a blow dryer. He was a contractor who had moved from another state. He had been sleeping in his truck and using the shower in the employee restroom every morning. I became less enthusiastic about hunting down the source of weird noises after that.
geomark 11y ago
Some years ago I worked at a large aerospace firm in the L.A. area. 20,000 people worked there and with that many people there are bound to be a few odd ones. Several lived in their cars in the parking lot. But the weirdest one was the guy who was living in the ceiling above his office. The story goes that one night a security guard noticed some movement in a hallway and went to investigate. He saw some wet footprints that led from the bathroom into an office and right up the wall. He pushed up the ceiling panel and found a room outfitted with lights, seat cushions and a sleeping bag. The guy had apparently been living up there for several months.
- pestaa 11y ago
  What a sad way to waste your life. I'm sure he had other options considering he worked in an office at a "large aerospace firm," right?
  - bigtunacan 11y ago
    I really don't get this attitude. It's not for everyone, but it's a great way to save money. Do this for awhile and you can save up to purchase a home outright or at least have a sizable down payment. I interviewed for a job in Chicago with a company where one of the employees lived in the office. Unlike the Salon article, this employee openly asked if he could live in the office to save himself the cost of rent. The employer had no issue with it. In his office there was a small basic cot that he slept on.
    - DanBC 11y ago
      > this employee openly asked if he could live in the office to save himself the cost of rent. The employer had no issue with. I'd be interested how it affects insurance.
      - bigtunacan 11y ago
        That's a good question, but I wasn't privy to that level of detail. In that instance though it was good for the employee and he didn't have to worry about hiding anything.
      - halviti 11y ago
        If the building is commercially zoned, doing this would technically be illegal. So if they found out this was a factor in something they would normally pay out for, you can be sure they wouldn't.
        DanBC 11y ago
        I'm pretty sure they wouldn't pay out even if he wasn't a factor. I think they'd try to claim that him being there makes the insurance invalid.
    - sliverstorm 11y ago
      I think it boils down to "work now, play later" vs. "work now, play now" philosophies. On the one hand you have the people who give 100% of their day to work, with the goal of building up F-U money and never working again. On the other hand you have the people who make less & save less and plan on working longer, but take more of their day for themselves. I don't think I can say either philosophy is wrong, but they definitely don't see eye-to-eye. They have different value systems.
      - crucifiction 11y ago
        If cumulative happiness over your life is the goal then the first one is clearly the wrong approach. The probability that you will die/become incapacitated/have health issues before you can either build up or enjoy for a long period of time that F-U money puts a discount on the entire end state.
  - geomark 11y ago
    I didn't know the guy but I heard he was an engineer and engineers were paid fairly well at that company so he should have had other options. Maybe he got taken to the cleaners in a divorce and was unable to afford a place to live. That was the issue with one of the guys who was living in his car in the parking lot.
    - noir_lord 11y ago
      Glad we don't have Alimony here,not that I plan on getting married anyway.
  - crimsonalucard 11y ago
    Wasting money on rent is the bigger tragedy.
    - seanp2k2 11y ago
      Yep, every time I sign a check for Bay Area rent, I consider how I'm in the wrong industry, since the land owners have to do very little to continue to extract rent from their one-time-purchase of land (I know, tax is a thing too, but pales in comparison to the returns they must be getting on the land). I'm not super interested in buying a house here, since >half a million for a tiny spot of land in the suburbs with a tiny 2-bedroom house that needs major repairs is absurd to me. I'd much rather live in an office while paying off a house in Fiji, then move into that in 20 years and work a lot less. Another alternative is living in an RV. I've considered this, and since Bay Area rent can pay off a really really really nice RV in ~5 years, it's s viable option. The biggest hiccup is where to park it; national parks would be awesome, but they're not free, Internet access is spotty, and it'd be a long commute every day. Even working remotely, month-to-month RV park communities can be over $500 a month, so that doesn't quite feel like you're beating the game of rent-seeking by property owners as much as I'd like. RVs also require maintenance and probably won't last as long as a house, but even if you get 20 years out of it, or buy it used and sell it where the depreciation is much less per month than rent would have been, you can come out ahead.
      - marktangotango 11y ago
        Mini van, parking garage :) I knew a guy on college who had mini van xe ked for camping, could easily do as a min rv.
      - crimsonalucard 11y ago
        Here's a plan I often thought about for living in the big city while skipping out on paying rent for an apartment: Spend about 10k for a used casita travel trailer. The trailer fits in an area the size of a compact car. Rent/buy a parking spot and setup the trailer. In the big city you can get gym membership to cover sewage and showers. For internet you can easily purchase some sort of cellular or wifi service. Almost everything I need would be covered. It's not for everyone but for myself, I have no qualms about small spaces, so I'd totally execute this plan if it wasn't for the complication of accessing the power grid. There's really no easy way to get a power line up into the trailer if it's in some parking garage. Perhaps solar? but that leads to other complications.
  - drhodes 11y ago
    It may seem like a waste of life to you. To me, it sounds like an adventure. Potato, Potatto, hakuna matata.
    - BorisMelnik 11y ago
      Agree. I slept in the ceiling (rafters) of my ex-girlfriends house. She lived with her mom, her mom hated me, this was 10+ years ago. I had to be at her house every day no later than 6pm to get up there, once I was up, I was up. I had to stay extremely quiet. I got a lot done and the WiFi signal worked. I couldn't talk on the phone, only text. In the end I ended up saving for an apartment and got my own place, and broke up with my girlfriend it just wasn't working out. It was a story and an adventure I'll never forget :)
bgroins 11y ago
The main problem I see that led to this situation is the author picking one of the most expensive places in LA to live, Venice Beach. The author could have chosen a much less expensive (but less glamorous) area, say in Koreatown or somewhere else inland. There are lower rent areas in LA, you just need to compromise your lifestyle a bit.
- ebiester 11y ago
  The compromise is losing 2 hours a day in your car. This is why I didn't take the job in LA.
  - melling 11y ago
    Google Maps says Koreatown and Venice Beach are 15 miles apart. Some time late in the 21st Century or early 22nd Century humans will realize that great mass transit can really make life more enjoyable, and that'll be a 15 minute commute. It's pretty amazing how bad things have to get before people wake up.
    - airza 11y ago
      By which you mean, Americans will realize it.. :)
      - nine_k 11y ago
        Specifically, West Coast Americans :)
    - bgroins 11y ago
      LA had an excellent bus system. I've been riding it almost every day for 7 years now. Also, the author already said he had a 20 minute commute, but didn't say to where.
    - waps 11y ago
      Having commuted to work in Brussels, a city often described as having great mass transit (and when it's not busy, that's absolutely true) Here's my observations : 1) despite not paying for itself (the state pays hundreds of millions yearly to make up for the losses of the public transport system) it's a little bit more expensive, per kilometer, than taking a car (train + metro vs gas). Even for longer distances, planes are actually cheaper than trains. If you get a company car and just pay for fuel, it's half the price. Otoh, parking in some places drives the price back up (but then you can park near a metro station and only use public transport for the last kilometer or so. Or a folding bike, I've had colleagues who did that). 2) when you want to use them to commute, they're not just busy, they're off the scale full. You can only stand and sometimes you miss your train because you literally can't squeeze in. (I tried first class for a week, but that makes it a multiple of the price of using a car, and you still need to stand) 3) the comfort level, compared to a car, is off the scale worse. You can take things along in a car, whereas there is a clear and very small capacity limit to what you can take on public transport. 40kg, backpack size, no more, groceries for a week is doable, furniture, electronics, not really doable (I tend to put those on a bike and walk home beside it). And I'm a 200 pound guy, I'd hate to think what the limits are if you're 80 pounds. 4) In Belgium you have one or two days per year where cars can't actually get around in the capital (frozen snow on the road combined with a lot of sloped roads makes it just too dangerous for cars, even if you walk you'll probably fall down painfully). A few more days accidents on the highways will mean you're late by 2-3 hours (I was once 7 hours late due to traffic). That is less than the days public transport doesn't work due to union actions. Because of the amount of times this happens, your boss will not, in fact understand. 5-10 days a year you can't get to work using public transport. With a car, 5 days a year you'll be 2 hours late and 1 day you won't show up. 5) If you calculate cars versus public transit capacities, it is obvious : cars scale better (I think this is mostly because car capacity expansions are cheaper for the government to implement, so they happen every time a rightist government comes to power in a given municipality, car capacity expansions happen, usually by diverting traffic. Public transport expansions happen once in a decade at best, and one line at a time. Recently a public transport line to the airport made traffic on a few lines much better) Imho, the solution to public transport is fast, efficient, driver-less, door-to-door, car sharing. That can work, and won't be bogged down into a morass of substandard service by unions. We need to improve matters, and I no longer believe buses and trains and even metros are the answer. Here's an article describing things from the perspective of a commuter http://www.uwgb.edu/dutchs/pseudosc/masstransit.htm http://www.uwgb.edu/dutchs/pseudosc/masstransit.htm
netman21 11y ago
I used to do this when I was an executive at a software firm in Boulder, Colorado. I maintained a home in another state but commuted to Boulder every week. For a while I had a great deal on a shared condo but when the owner sold it I was faced with staying in hotels or... sleeping in my cubicle under the desk. There was a shower for employees so I would just get up early and be ready to go by 6 am. No one ever discovered me in my sleeping bag.
- marktangotango 11y ago
  Why didn't you telecommute? I've often considered taking a high salary job in a high cost of living area ie san francisco, boston, or new york. And maintaining a residence somewhere cheaper. If one could arrange a schedule of four ten hour days it might be doable. The obvious problems are part time housing and travel ie air fare. How did you handle this? Has anyone done this?
- rpcope1 11y ago
  It's funny, for a lot of us, affording living in most of Boulder County (bar Longmont) is unfeasible even on a decent engineering salary. It's still crazy to me that housing prices and affordability near Denver/Boulder are starting to go the way of the Bay Area.
rafaelnonato 11y ago
I wonder what would happen if this form of housing became more popular. Maybe soon we'll be reading accounts about two office-overnighters who inevitably found about one another.
- w1ntermute 11y ago
  > two office-overnighters who inevitably found about one another That sounds like it could be the basis of a rom-com screenplay.
- xamuel 11y ago
  >I wonder what would happen if this form of housing became more popular. Simple. Due to liability/insurance/fire-safety concerns, it would be cracked down upon. Where not cracked down upon, it would develop into a shady black market.
- dghughes 11y ago
  It sounds like something Japanese people would do since apparently the commutes in Japan are horrifying long. Those capsule hotels in Japan have been around for quite awhile. I've thought of creating an apartment building of pod apartments it seems to be a Millenials thing to couch surf or share apartments.
  - logfromblammo 11y ago
    A capsule 2.2m high by 2.2m wide by 5.2m long will fit one to a 20' standard container, two to a 40' standard container, and three to a 53' road trailer. This is important to remember if you intend to build where manufacturing is cheap and transport to where land and rent is expensive.
  - jacalata 11y ago
    Seattle has aPodments - http://apodment.com/ http://apodment.com/
    - hedgehog 11y ago
mikro2nd 11y ago
There was a Doonesbury strip that did this. Seems to be too old for the doonesbury.com to have in their online archives, though.
runj__ 11y ago
I've slept in my office a few times and could probably do it for a month or so without anyone being mad about it. I'm not a morning person at all so being first at the office is a great feeling.
shanemhansen 11y ago
I've heard people who live with their parents proclaim how great it is. They don't have to pay rent or do their own laundry or anything us terrible materialistic people do. It's great for saving money. For reasons that I hope would be obvious I'm not interested in that sort of "lifestyle choice". This guy is worse because at least people who are mooching off their parents aren't literally stealing from them.
- ldd 11y ago
  I live with my mom and my sister and do the cleaning, cook daily for our lunch and dinner, sweep and mop the floor, buy groceries, handle bills, etc. Most of the people that I know that live at home do the same. How exactly are we mooching off our parents?
  - xkcd-sucks 11y ago
    Maybe there's a trend towards shaming families because families are economic structures which compete with governments and corporations?
- Retra 11y ago
  What is being stolen?
jqm 11y ago
I lived in a grape cooler on a grape farm for several months once (in the non-cooled part). It had a bathroom but no shower. I made one out back on a cement slab with a hose, a garden water wand and a tarp.
- kgabis 11y ago
  Paradise! (https://youtu.be/DAtSw3daGoo https://youtu.be/DAtSw3daGoo)
allemagne 11y ago
It might change for me in the future, but at this point in my life commuting seems really inefficient and annoying. It's not just the time lost while in your car (I listen to music anyway) but the stress of having to basically exist in two places. I appreciated the Thoreau references in the article. Perhaps moving into my office isn't the best simplifying solution, but it's a nice parable for improving daily routine.
- Chinjut 11y ago
  Mind you, Thoreau would probably abandon the office-drone life altogether...
peter303 11y ago
This was not rare in college. One school had a 364/24 library and students took over a study correl with their books and a few belongings. Others lived in closets or cars. I think the janitors knew but did not care. I did this a few times myself when there were gaps between residences and I run out of placed to crash.
- lotharbot 11y ago
  When I was in grad school, one of the other grad students lived in his office. We all looked the other way when he shifted the desks around (leaving a couple of the other grad student desks kind of cramped) to make room for a sofa. "Yeah, that'll be real comfortable to... sit on... while doing math. That's what it's for!" I'm pretty sure all of the faculty and staff in our department knew about it too.
  - pavel_lishin 11y ago
    I think there's a difference between doing this in your office, and an office you share with others. If I needed to stay late to study, or grade assignments, or whatnot, I would be pretty annoyed if my office-mate asked me to leave because it was his bed-time.
    - detaro 11y ago
      I think "throwing people working late out" isn't one of the things you get away with doing that.
peter303 11y ago
I read a couple of essays from googliers who did this. Google provides nearly all your needs in office- free food, recreation, laundry- save a many hour sleep spot. And people work and hang out 12, 15 hours then. So why pay high rent only to sleep and put up with terrible commute traffic. In the open office environment of new techs finding sleep spots is harder. But many sleep in their vehicles in a climate rarely freezing or roasting.
- ZanyProgrammer 11y ago
  If I got paid a Google salary, there's no way I couldn't afford to find an apartment in Santa Clara County. Note I didn't say fancy condo, 3 bedroom ranch house with two car garage and spacious lawn, or townhouse.
  - VLM 11y ago
    I talked to a google recruiter a couple years ago and if I took the job and moved to mountain view, my current lifestyle of "3 bedroom ranch house with two car garage and spacious lawn" would be utterly impossible, so goodbye. This was very close to the national peak of the housing bubble, things may have gotten better since then.
    - seanp2k2 11y ago
      It's pretty much impossible to find even the crappiest home here for under half a million. For what you describe, even if it's next to a freeway in a "bad" neighborhood with a crap school district, that'd be a few million easy.
    - ZanyProgrammer 11y ago
      The problem is that you insist on living the mid 20th century American Dream.
      - lawnchair_larry 11y ago
        Not really. That's current day for most of the US. It's SF that is broken.
hellbanner 11y ago
One day I got into work much earlier than usual. I didn't think anyone else was there until I started typing. A programmer who had fallen asleep in his chair awoke with a startle, then started typing himself. Funnily, he always left early in the day and was lauded by his teammates for doing the hard work in the morning when no one was around so he could concentrate.
digisign 11y ago
Must have been pioneer in this area. A bit over ten years ago I once had a good job in Santa Monica, but was tired of paying ridiculous rent for a shoebox that I was never at. So I packed up, slept in the underground parking garage, and went to the gym every day. Was in the best shape of my life and saved 40k that year, which I later turned into a 2-year trip around the world. Was definitely worth it.
- copsarebastards 11y ago
  How did that work for your sex life? Bringing ladies home to a van is my main reason for not wanting to do this.
  - Retra 11y ago
    Just don't date homeless women.
  - VLM 11y ago
    At $40K/yr savings, as long as you spend less than $770 per saturday night hotel rental you come out ahead (assuming you get lucky every single saturday night...) Something to think about when you have that kind of savings going on, is taking a weekend getaway every single weekend is quite affordable.
  - digisign 11y ago
    I think I was single the first half. I did meet a nice girl the second, but i strung it a long for a while, and even then she had low self esteem an so she didnt give me a hard time about it.
    - copsarebastards 11y ago
      What an unsavory answer. I guess I can kind of answer my own question, though. An adult woman who shares my values wouldn't care if I lived in a van.
      - 11y ago
kazinator 11y ago
I did that for just a little while, when going through a divorce. It was kind of fun. I had what I needed at work: shower room, place to sleep, Internet access. A fridge to keep groceries and a microwave oven too. I ate canned food, combined with fresh vegetables. I discovered that using a microwave, you can easily bring water to a simmer in a plastic container, and by that means, you can cook pasta very nicely. (I'm sure it saves energy compared to stove top pasta boiling. It takes about ten minutes (same) and the wattage of the microwave is not only lower, but you don't use it on full power.) Toaster ovens help too. If your office doesn't have one, just go out and buy one. You can revive a store-bought frozen casserole dish in one of those things.
austenallred 11y ago
I lived in my car under similar-ish circumstances. Was getting a company off the ground, needed to be in Silicon Valley to raise money, was unwilling to pay $800/month for a single terrible bedroom, and had read a lot of Thoreau and already given away almost everything I owned to vagabond around China. It's kind of a pain living on $200-300 a month, but it's really not that bad. You start to realize that most of the stuff people spend their whole lives working to buy they don't need. The forced routine of going to a gym is one I've tried not to get out of the habit of. I actually think it's a very healthy way of life, assuming you find a way to eat well. More here: http://austenallred.com/voluntarily-homeless-in-silicon-valley/ http://austenallred.com/voluntarily-homeless-in-silicon-vall... Now I have an apartment (am married with a baby on the way), but I put about half of what I earn into killing debt/building a savings. I'll be debt-free next month with 10k in the bank, having had 0 savings and 20k in debt a couple years ago. I only pay myself 50k/yr.
- ultimape 11y ago
  How do you eat well and not cost a ton of money? I imagine you don't get the opportunity to store food or cook it effectively.
justincormack 11y ago
I don't recommend doing it in a small startup in a small office where people come in early and stay late - we had someone trying to live and work nights in our office in Shoreditch years ago, and he did get noticed after a while.
facepalm 11y ago
Maybe companies could start offering that as a perk. Perhaps something like the Japanese Capsule Hotels? A place to sleep in the office. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capsule_hotel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capsule_hotel
cafard 11y ago
At the end of the 1980s, I worked with a guy who was forty, newly divorced after about twenty years of marriage, and out to have the early twenties that he considered he had missed. After hearing about a late-night burglar alarm once or twice in the building, I asked the programming section's administrative assistant whether this guy was living in his office. She looked away, and didn't want to discuss it. I don't think that he was destitute, just thrifty. He had, he said, a twenty-one-year-old girlfriend, but I suppose he couldn't stay with her all the time.

146 points by 0cool 11y ago

I once worked 2nd and 3rd shift for a project that encouraged such hours because there weren't enough servers to handle the load for everybody during the day. A few mornings around 5:00 AM I heard a weird high pitched noise but it went away before I could figure out what it was. The next time it happened, I immediately hunted it down. I narrowed it down to the men's restroom and opened the door to find a man standing in the nude using a blow dryer. He was a contractor who had moved from another state. He had been sleeping in his truck and using the shower in the employee restroom every morning. I became less enthusiastic about hunting down the source of weird noises after that.

geomark 11y ago

Some years ago I worked at a large aerospace firm in the L.A. area. 20,000 people worked there and with that many people there are bound to be a few odd ones. Several lived in their cars in the parking lot. But the weirdest one was the guy who was living in the ceiling above his office. The story goes that one night a security guard noticed some movement in a hallway and went to investigate. He saw some wet footprints that led from the bathroom into an office and right up the wall. He pushed up the ceiling panel and found a room outfitted with lights, seat cushions and a sleeping bag. The guy had apparently been living up there for several months.

pestaa 11y ago
What a sad way to waste your life. I'm sure he had other options considering he worked in an office at a "large aerospace firm," right?
- bigtunacan 11y ago
  I really don't get this attitude. It's not for everyone, but it's a great way to save money. Do this for awhile and you can save up to purchase a home outright or at least have a sizable down payment. I interviewed for a job in Chicago with a company where one of the employees lived in the office. Unlike the Salon article, this employee openly asked if he could live in the office to save himself the cost of rent. The employer had no issue with it. In his office there was a small basic cot that he slept on.
  - DanBC 11y ago
    > this employee openly asked if he could live in the office to save himself the cost of rent. The employer had no issue with. I'd be interested how it affects insurance.
    - bigtunacan 11y ago
      That's a good question, but I wasn't privy to that level of detail. In that instance though it was good for the employee and he didn't have to worry about hiding anything.
    - halviti 11y ago
      If the building is commercially zoned, doing this would technically be illegal. So if they found out this was a factor in something they would normally pay out for, you can be sure they wouldn't.
      - DanBC 11y ago
        I'm pretty sure they wouldn't pay out even if he wasn't a factor. I think they'd try to claim that him being there makes the insurance invalid.
  - sliverstorm 11y ago
    I think it boils down to "work now, play later" vs. "work now, play now" philosophies. On the one hand you have the people who give 100% of their day to work, with the goal of building up F-U money and never working again. On the other hand you have the people who make less & save less and plan on working longer, but take more of their day for themselves. I don't think I can say either philosophy is wrong, but they definitely don't see eye-to-eye. They have different value systems.
    - crucifiction 11y ago
      If cumulative happiness over your life is the goal then the first one is clearly the wrong approach. The probability that you will die/become incapacitated/have health issues before you can either build up or enjoy for a long period of time that F-U money puts a discount on the entire end state.
- geomark 11y ago
  I didn't know the guy but I heard he was an engineer and engineers were paid fairly well at that company so he should have had other options. Maybe he got taken to the cleaners in a divorce and was unable to afford a place to live. That was the issue with one of the guys who was living in his car in the parking lot.
  - noir_lord 11y ago
    Glad we don't have Alimony here,not that I plan on getting married anyway.
- crimsonalucard 11y ago
  Wasting money on rent is the bigger tragedy.
  - seanp2k2 11y ago
    Yep, every time I sign a check for Bay Area rent, I consider how I'm in the wrong industry, since the land owners have to do very little to continue to extract rent from their one-time-purchase of land (I know, tax is a thing too, but pales in comparison to the returns they must be getting on the land). I'm not super interested in buying a house here, since >half a million for a tiny spot of land in the suburbs with a tiny 2-bedroom house that needs major repairs is absurd to me. I'd much rather live in an office while paying off a house in Fiji, then move into that in 20 years and work a lot less. Another alternative is living in an RV. I've considered this, and since Bay Area rent can pay off a really really really nice RV in ~5 years, it's s viable option. The biggest hiccup is where to park it; national parks would be awesome, but they're not free, Internet access is spotty, and it'd be a long commute every day. Even working remotely, month-to-month RV park communities can be over $500 a month, so that doesn't quite feel like you're beating the game of rent-seeking by property owners as much as I'd like. RVs also require maintenance and probably won't last as long as a house, but even if you get 20 years out of it, or buy it used and sell it where the depreciation is much less per month than rent would have been, you can come out ahead.
    - marktangotango 11y ago
      Mini van, parking garage :) I knew a guy on college who had mini van xe ked for camping, could easily do as a min rv.
    - crimsonalucard 11y ago
      Here's a plan I often thought about for living in the big city while skipping out on paying rent for an apartment: Spend about 10k for a used casita travel trailer. The trailer fits in an area the size of a compact car. Rent/buy a parking spot and setup the trailer. In the big city you can get gym membership to cover sewage and showers. For internet you can easily purchase some sort of cellular or wifi service. Almost everything I need would be covered. It's not for everyone but for myself, I have no qualms about small spaces, so I'd totally execute this plan if it wasn't for the complication of accessing the power grid. There's really no easy way to get a power line up into the trailer if it's in some parking garage. Perhaps solar? but that leads to other complications.
- drhodes 11y ago
  It may seem like a waste of life to you. To me, it sounds like an adventure. Potato, Potatto, hakuna matata.
  - BorisMelnik 11y ago
    Agree. I slept in the ceiling (rafters) of my ex-girlfriends house. She lived with her mom, her mom hated me, this was 10+ years ago. I had to be at her house every day no later than 6pm to get up there, once I was up, I was up. I had to stay extremely quiet. I got a lot done and the WiFi signal worked. I couldn't talk on the phone, only text. In the end I ended up saving for an apartment and got my own place, and broke up with my girlfriend it just wasn't working out. It was a story and an adventure I'll never forget :)

bgroins 11y ago

The main problem I see that led to this situation is the author picking one of the most expensive places in LA to live, Venice Beach. The author could have chosen a much less expensive (but less glamorous) area, say in Koreatown or somewhere else inland. There are lower rent areas in LA, you just need to compromise your lifestyle a bit.

ebiester 11y ago
The compromise is losing 2 hours a day in your car. This is why I didn't take the job in LA.
- melling 11y ago
  Google Maps says Koreatown and Venice Beach are 15 miles apart. Some time late in the 21st Century or early 22nd Century humans will realize that great mass transit can really make life more enjoyable, and that'll be a 15 minute commute. It's pretty amazing how bad things have to get before people wake up.
  - airza 11y ago
    By which you mean, Americans will realize it.. :)
    - nine_k 11y ago
      Specifically, West Coast Americans :)
  - bgroins 11y ago
    LA had an excellent bus system. I've been riding it almost every day for 7 years now. Also, the author already said he had a 20 minute commute, but didn't say to where.
  - waps 11y ago
    Having commuted to work in Brussels, a city often described as having great mass transit (and when it's not busy, that's absolutely true) Here's my observations : 1) despite not paying for itself (the state pays hundreds of millions yearly to make up for the losses of the public transport system) it's a little bit more expensive, per kilometer, than taking a car (train + metro vs gas). Even for longer distances, planes are actually cheaper than trains. If you get a company car and just pay for fuel, it's half the price. Otoh, parking in some places drives the price back up (but then you can park near a metro station and only use public transport for the last kilometer or so. Or a folding bike, I've had colleagues who did that). 2) when you want to use them to commute, they're not just busy, they're off the scale full. You can only stand and sometimes you miss your train because you literally can't squeeze in. (I tried first class for a week, but that makes it a multiple of the price of using a car, and you still need to stand) 3) the comfort level, compared to a car, is off the scale worse. You can take things along in a car, whereas there is a clear and very small capacity limit to what you can take on public transport. 40kg, backpack size, no more, groceries for a week is doable, furniture, electronics, not really doable (I tend to put those on a bike and walk home beside it). And I'm a 200 pound guy, I'd hate to think what the limits are if you're 80 pounds. 4) In Belgium you have one or two days per year where cars can't actually get around in the capital (frozen snow on the road combined with a lot of sloped roads makes it just too dangerous for cars, even if you walk you'll probably fall down painfully). A few more days accidents on the highways will mean you're late by 2-3 hours (I was once 7 hours late due to traffic). That is less than the days public transport doesn't work due to union actions. Because of the amount of times this happens, your boss will not, in fact understand. 5-10 days a year you can't get to work using public transport. With a car, 5 days a year you'll be 2 hours late and 1 day you won't show up. 5) If you calculate cars versus public transit capacities, it is obvious : cars scale better (I think this is mostly because car capacity expansions are cheaper for the government to implement, so they happen every time a rightist government comes to power in a given municipality, car capacity expansions happen, usually by diverting traffic. Public transport expansions happen once in a decade at best, and one line at a time. Recently a public transport line to the airport made traffic on a few lines much better) Imho, the solution to public transport is fast, efficient, driver-less, door-to-door, car sharing. That can work, and won't be bogged down into a morass of substandard service by unions. We need to improve matters, and I no longer believe buses and trains and even metros are the answer. Here's an article describing things from the perspective of a commuter http://www.uwgb.edu/dutchs/pseudosc/masstransit.htm http://www.uwgb.edu/dutchs/pseudosc/masstransit.htm

netman21 11y ago

I used to do this when I was an executive at a software firm in Boulder, Colorado. I maintained a home in another state but commuted to Boulder every week. For a while I had a great deal on a shared condo but when the owner sold it I was faced with staying in hotels or... sleeping in my cubicle under the desk. There was a shower for employees so I would just get up early and be ready to go by 6 am. No one ever discovered me in my sleeping bag.

marktangotango 11y ago
Why didn't you telecommute? I've often considered taking a high salary job in a high cost of living area ie san francisco, boston, or new york. And maintaining a residence somewhere cheaper. If one could arrange a schedule of four ten hour days it might be doable. The obvious problems are part time housing and travel ie air fare. How did you handle this? Has anyone done this?
rpcope1 11y ago
It's funny, for a lot of us, affording living in most of Boulder County (bar Longmont) is unfeasible even on a decent engineering salary. It's still crazy to me that housing prices and affordability near Denver/Boulder are starting to go the way of the Bay Area.

rafaelnonato 11y ago

I wonder what would happen if this form of housing became more popular. Maybe soon we'll be reading accounts about two office-overnighters who inevitably found about one another.

w1ntermute 11y ago
> two office-overnighters who inevitably found about one another That sounds like it could be the basis of a rom-com screenplay.
xamuel 11y ago
>I wonder what would happen if this form of housing became more popular. Simple. Due to liability/insurance/fire-safety concerns, it would be cracked down upon. Where not cracked down upon, it would develop into a shady black market.
dghughes 11y ago
It sounds like something Japanese people would do since apparently the commutes in Japan are horrifying long. Those capsule hotels in Japan have been around for quite awhile. I've thought of creating an apartment building of pod apartments it seems to be a Millenials thing to couch surf or share apartments.
- logfromblammo 11y ago
  A capsule 2.2m high by 2.2m wide by 5.2m long will fit one to a 20' standard container, two to a 40' standard container, and three to a 53' road trailer. This is important to remember if you intend to build where manufacturing is cheap and transport to where land and rent is expensive.
- jacalata 11y ago
  Seattle has aPodments - http://apodment.com/ http://apodment.com/
  - hedgehog 11y ago

mikro2nd 11y ago

There was a Doonesbury strip that did this. Seems to be too old for the doonesbury.com to have in their online archives, though.

runj__ 11y ago

I've slept in my office a few times and could probably do it for a month or so without anyone being mad about it. I'm not a morning person at all so being first at the office is a great feeling.

shanemhansen 11y ago

I've heard people who live with their parents proclaim how great it is. They don't have to pay rent or do their own laundry or anything us terrible materialistic people do. It's great for saving money. For reasons that I hope would be obvious I'm not interested in that sort of "lifestyle choice". This guy is worse because at least people who are mooching off their parents aren't literally stealing from them.

ldd 11y ago
I live with my mom and my sister and do the cleaning, cook daily for our lunch and dinner, sweep and mop the floor, buy groceries, handle bills, etc. Most of the people that I know that live at home do the same. How exactly are we mooching off our parents?
- xkcd-sucks 11y ago
  Maybe there's a trend towards shaming families because families are economic structures which compete with governments and corporations?
Retra 11y ago
What is being stolen?

jqm 11y ago

I lived in a grape cooler on a grape farm for several months once (in the non-cooled part). It had a bathroom but no shower. I made one out back on a cement slab with a hose, a garden water wand and a tarp.

kgabis 11y ago
Paradise! (https://youtu.be/DAtSw3daGoo https://youtu.be/DAtSw3daGoo)

allemagne 11y ago

It might change for me in the future, but at this point in my life commuting seems really inefficient and annoying. It's not just the time lost while in your car (I listen to music anyway) but the stress of having to basically exist in two places. I appreciated the Thoreau references in the article. Perhaps moving into my office isn't the best simplifying solution, but it's a nice parable for improving daily routine.

Chinjut 11y ago
Mind you, Thoreau would probably abandon the office-drone life altogether...

peter303 11y ago

This was not rare in college. One school had a 364/24 library and students took over a study correl with their books and a few belongings. Others lived in closets or cars. I think the janitors knew but did not care. I did this a few times myself when there were gaps between residences and I run out of placed to crash.

lotharbot 11y ago
When I was in grad school, one of the other grad students lived in his office. We all looked the other way when he shifted the desks around (leaving a couple of the other grad student desks kind of cramped) to make room for a sofa. "Yeah, that'll be real comfortable to... sit on... while doing math. That's what it's for!" I'm pretty sure all of the faculty and staff in our department knew about it too.
- pavel_lishin 11y ago
  I think there's a difference between doing this in your office, and an office you share with others. If I needed to stay late to study, or grade assignments, or whatnot, I would be pretty annoyed if my office-mate asked me to leave because it was his bed-time.
  - detaro 11y ago
    I think "throwing people working late out" isn't one of the things you get away with doing that.

peter303 11y ago

I read a couple of essays from googliers who did this. Google provides nearly all your needs in office- free food, recreation, laundry- save a many hour sleep spot. And people work and hang out 12, 15 hours then. So why pay high rent only to sleep and put up with terrible commute traffic. In the open office environment of new techs finding sleep spots is harder. But many sleep in their vehicles in a climate rarely freezing or roasting.

ZanyProgrammer 11y ago
If I got paid a Google salary, there's no way I couldn't afford to find an apartment in Santa Clara County. Note I didn't say fancy condo, 3 bedroom ranch house with two car garage and spacious lawn, or townhouse.
- VLM 11y ago
  I talked to a google recruiter a couple years ago and if I took the job and moved to mountain view, my current lifestyle of "3 bedroom ranch house with two car garage and spacious lawn" would be utterly impossible, so goodbye. This was very close to the national peak of the housing bubble, things may have gotten better since then.
  - seanp2k2 11y ago
    It's pretty much impossible to find even the crappiest home here for under half a million. For what you describe, even if it's next to a freeway in a "bad" neighborhood with a crap school district, that'd be a few million easy.
  - ZanyProgrammer 11y ago
    The problem is that you insist on living the mid 20th century American Dream.
    - lawnchair_larry 11y ago
      Not really. That's current day for most of the US. It's SF that is broken.

hellbanner 11y ago

One day I got into work much earlier than usual. I didn't think anyone else was there until I started typing. A programmer who had fallen asleep in his chair awoke with a startle, then started typing himself. Funnily, he always left early in the day and was lauded by his teammates for doing the hard work in the morning when no one was around so he could concentrate.

digisign 11y ago

Must have been pioneer in this area. A bit over ten years ago I once had a good job in Santa Monica, but was tired of paying ridiculous rent for a shoebox that I was never at. So I packed up, slept in the underground parking garage, and went to the gym every day. Was in the best shape of my life and saved 40k that year, which I later turned into a 2-year trip around the world. Was definitely worth it.

copsarebastards 11y ago
How did that work for your sex life? Bringing ladies home to a van is my main reason for not wanting to do this.
- Retra 11y ago
  Just don't date homeless women.
- VLM 11y ago
  At $40K/yr savings, as long as you spend less than $770 per saturday night hotel rental you come out ahead (assuming you get lucky every single saturday night...) Something to think about when you have that kind of savings going on, is taking a weekend getaway every single weekend is quite affordable.
- digisign 11y ago
  I think I was single the first half. I did meet a nice girl the second, but i strung it a long for a while, and even then she had low self esteem an so she didnt give me a hard time about it.
  - copsarebastards 11y ago
    What an unsavory answer. I guess I can kind of answer my own question, though. An adult woman who shares my values wouldn't care if I lived in a van.
    - 11y ago

kazinator 11y ago

I did that for just a little while, when going through a divorce. It was kind of fun. I had what I needed at work: shower room, place to sleep, Internet access. A fridge to keep groceries and a microwave oven too. I ate canned food, combined with fresh vegetables. I discovered that using a microwave, you can easily bring water to a simmer in a plastic container, and by that means, you can cook pasta very nicely. (I'm sure it saves energy compared to stove top pasta boiling. It takes about ten minutes (same) and the wattage of the microwave is not only lower, but you don't use it on full power.) Toaster ovens help too. If your office doesn't have one, just go out and buy one. You can revive a store-bought frozen casserole dish in one of those things.

austenallred 11y ago

I lived in my car under similar-ish circumstances. Was getting a company off the ground, needed to be in Silicon Valley to raise money, was unwilling to pay $800/month for a single terrible bedroom, and had read a lot of Thoreau and already given away almost everything I owned to vagabond around China. It's kind of a pain living on $200-300 a month, but it's really not that bad. You start to realize that most of the stuff people spend their whole lives working to buy they don't need. The forced routine of going to a gym is one I've tried not to get out of the habit of. I actually think it's a very healthy way of life, assuming you find a way to eat well. More here: http://austenallred.com/voluntarily-homeless-in-silicon-valley/ http://austenallred.com/voluntarily-homeless-in-silicon-vall... Now I have an apartment (am married with a baby on the way), but I put about half of what I earn into killing debt/building a savings. I'll be debt-free next month with 10k in the bank, having had 0 savings and 20k in debt a couple years ago. I only pay myself 50k/yr.

ultimape 11y ago
How do you eat well and not cost a ton of money? I imagine you don't get the opportunity to store food or cook it effectively.

justincormack 11y ago

I don't recommend doing it in a small startup in a small office where people come in early and stay late - we had someone trying to live and work nights in our office in Shoreditch years ago, and he did get noticed after a while.

facepalm 11y ago

Maybe companies could start offering that as a perk. Perhaps something like the Japanese Capsule Hotels? A place to sleep in the office. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capsule_hotel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capsule_hotel

cafard 11y ago

At the end of the 1980s, I worked with a guy who was forty, newly divorced after about twenty years of marriage, and out to have the early twenties that he considered he had missed. After hearing about a late-night burglar alarm once or twice in the building, I asked the programming section's administrative assistant whether this guy was living in his office. She looked away, and didn't want to discuss it. I don't think that he was destitute, just thrifty. He had, he said, a twenty-one-year-old girlfriend, but I suppose he couldn't stay with her all the time.