Recent comments in /f/boston

onehundredpetunias t1_jdn6yzt wrote

Reply to Boston transportation question by ViewDisconnected

Have you looked into Amtrak's Down Easter train? It leaves from Boston's North Station and could get you within 15-30 minutes of Hampton. Some car rentals do drop off service so that might be a workable option for you. And any of those towns served by the Down Easter would be more navigable than driving out of Boston.

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rainniier2 t1_jdn6vq0 wrote

Reply to How common was remote/hybrid work ,before COVID, in Boston? by Mei_Flower1996

I work in a bioinformatics related field and we were hybrid and remote pre-pandemic, mostly because we had offices and colleagues in multiple states. They struggled to enforce a hybrid 3 days in the office for folks near an office because we were already set up to meet virtually and senior management didn’t want to commute and weren’t in the office regularly. Periodic initiatives to hire near office locations failed because of the additional salaries and time required to find talent (especially Boston compared to elsewhere). That said, just 4 or 5 years ago we were doing telephone only conferencing without shared screens. So the tech has evolved quickly, to the point where I would say today for technical content virtual meetings are more productive and efficient than in person meetings. These days, rarely do I hear clients who tend to be more on-site companies say ‘sorry I’m late, I’m coming from another building’ or ‘I’m being kicked out of my conference room, gotta go NOW’ which was a daily or weekly occurrence pre-pandemic. Zoom first is here to stay.

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twowrist t1_jdn5aas wrote

Reply to Boston apartment rent for a single professional by phd_girl_sci

Caution: Many people from far away will say “moving to Boston” when it’s really “moving to a suburb of Boston”. Double check whether your office is located in Boston proper. The mailing address for the office will usually be good enough to confirm that.

Also, Boston, unlike many larger cities (such as London and New York City) didn’t consolidate as much urban land. Hence adjacent cities such as Cambridge and Somerville, as well as the town of Brookline, can be good choices, depending on exactly where your job is located.

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ReturnofSaturn615 t1_jdn4hel wrote

Reply to Public restrooms by BooksCatsNCoffee

Dunkin’s are my favorite bathrooms, they’re always single bathrooms. Worst case scenario you have to buy a munchkin but dunkins is on every corner, easy to spot too.

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TakenOverByBots t1_jdn31ar wrote

Reply to How common was remote/hybrid work ,before COVID, in Boston? by Mei_Flower1996

For education jobs, both teaching and university staff, absolutely not. Nobody worked from home. We just weren't set up to do much online. (There was a reason there are separate universities that advertise as purely online). We had to get courses available online very quickly, using ancient systems, and I don't think people fully appreciate how quickly we did this!

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phonesmahones t1_jdn2v25 wrote

Reply to How common was remote/hybrid work ,before COVID, in Boston? by Mei_Flower1996

We were at the office full-time before the pandemic, with a few exceptions, and if you really needed to work remotely once in a great while, you could, but it was frowned upon if it happened with any frequency.

When the pandemic hit, we pretty much went full remote. We don’t really have a policy for it now, and kind of handle it department by department, because some of us physically need to be on site to handle paperwork or product, and some of us don’t. We definitely streamlined some procedures and went online instead of on paper for a few things, which really were all things we could/should have been doing that way in the first place.

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