But the environment matters a lot less than the fact that when I get home from work—which is a two hour commute each way (sorry, I can’t afford to live in downtown San Francisco)—I just feel like being mentally incapacitated.
This person spends 4 hours commuting each day. I would suffer from mental atrophy as well. If you work full-time, that's at least 8 additional hours per day down the drain, and that doesn't even include groceries, cooking, eating, taking a shower, etc. Barely any time is left if you want to get 7-8 hours of sleep. I think the soul-crushing reality here is that a commute like this is very unhealthy, and that he should change this by moving or getting another job.
Either the commute, or the long working day. The commute might be less soul crushing on a 6 hour work day.
In any case, I generally refuse jobs outside Amsterdam (where I live) unless it's Utrecht right next to the station. Otherwise the commute just gets too long. Sometimes a recruiter asks if there's really no way around that, and I tell them counting the commute as hours worked, meaning I'd be present at the office less, would work fine for me. I don't want to be forced to sacrifice private time for work.
This person spends 4 hours commuting each day. I would suffer from mental atrophy as well. If you work full-time, that's at least 8 additional hours per day down the drain, and that doesn't even include groceries, cooking, eating, taking a shower, etc. Barely any time is left if you want to get 7-8 hours of sleep. I think the soul-crushing reality here is that a commute like this is very unhealthy, and that he should change this by moving or getting another job.