My opinion, most of the united states communal infrastructure is a wasteland.

It is not just the US. 10 hour workdays (officially 7.8, but if you would actually 'just' do that and skip the 8am or the 6pm meetings you will not be keeping up with the Joneses and pay the piper) and spend 2-3 hours in commuting each day doesn't leave much for hobbies.

Meetings outside the working hours?! Where is this common?

Here we work 9-6, but even in the places I've worked on where unpaid overtime was common (otherwise you wouldn't keep up with the workload), no manager would have the gall to schedule regular meetings outside working hours.

> Meetings outside the working hours?! Where is this common?

If you have people in, for example, London and San Francisco, how can you possibly have a meeting inside both people's 9-5 working hours?

> how can you possibly have a meeting inside both people's 9-5 working hours?

Don't have 9-5 working hours? Having a meeting at 8 is okay, but that should mean people get to leave earlier as well.

You can always have meetings inside working hours if you’re prepared to expand working hours either side as much as needed like that!

In the modern international economy you’re going to have to be a bit flexible with hours.

Moving the hours around (from 9-5 to 8-4 or 10-6) is not expanding them, and it's already being flexible.

I don't get it then - you asked when do people have meetings outside normal working hours as if it was some sort of travesty that nobody would 'have the gall' to do, and now you're saying it's absolutely fine you just move your hours around...

PeterStuer, to whose post I originally replied, said those meetings were held outside working hours, so people effectively had "10 hour workdays".

I don't see why is it hard to understand the difference between having a 10 hour workday or having a shifted 8 hour workday.

> Meetings outside the working hours?! Where is this common?

In all FAANG companies I worked at when I had geographically distributed teams.

2-3 hours commuting is not the norm. The average commute in the US is around 25 minutes each way, so roughly 1 hour total. Super-long commutes are almost non-existent outside a handful of metro areas.

If you’re dealing with a very long commute, it might be worth it to move to a different metro, even if it requires a substantial pay cut. I think most people under-estimate the negative impact that a long commute has on their life.

It's true; China has the 996 problem, for instance.