From soft job to long commute

stuckmud26

I have been in my current job around 5 months in Limerick. Its a very soft gig in the sense that the work is considerably easy (Software Development in Test), the benefits are great (Decent salary, good pension, able to buy 5 days holidays to make up 30 etc) with very flexible working from home policies etc.

Now, the issue is that I just do not like my job. I was previously in a deep engineering role and moved home to Limerick to be close to family etc. To be honest, it is my fault as I had an inkling it wouldn't be for me.

A job has come up in Dublin that is very appealing. It is in a deep engineering role that would interest me.

The issue is living in Limerick. Would a commute from Limerick to Dublin be possible at all? Does anyone here do it? Or such a long distance. I am close to Limerick Junction so the train would not be an issue.Say I negotiated three days in the office and two at home, if that was even possible.

Or am I totally mad and just stick where I am..

Skyrimaddict

It's the downside of moving from a high functioning role to a softer one.
Look at work life balance if that makes sense or see can you take in some part evening work.

A commute up and down is not easy, I did it myself for 3 months and stopped

u140acro3xs7dm

It would depend on what part of Dublin too. Getting from Heuston to Leeson St or Baggot St will add on another 30-40 mins. Getting to Sandyford will add on well over an hour.

You would be better staying in Dublin for the 3 days.

kippy

Obviously only you can answer this but if it were me I would stay put.
That's a killer commute no matter how you look at it and while it might work out early on there is no way it is sustainable.

I'd try find other interests outside of work to keep my mind engaged and maybe look to progress to a different role within the same company that might be more engaging.
But again, that's just me. I've never done a long commute and commute time has always been a major factor in where I live/work.

aristotle25

Working in Dublin 2 days a week (say a Monday and a Tuesday) might just be manageable commuting once a week from Limerick but its not something you could sustain for years on end. But even on those days you will be getting up at what time, 4.30am? Finish work at 5.30pm and then either commute home or stay in Dublin? You need a better life balance.

What part of Dublin is the job, as someone else said you could be doing another hour in Dublin travelling depending where it is.

Take two days off work and try it out, get up early and get the train to Dublin and get to the street where you would be working. Stay in Dublin that night, get up and travel to the same street for 9am, and then commute back to Limerick the following day at rush hour time, see how you feel after.

stuckmud26

Thank you for all the posts so soon!

Yes, before this job I was in a high functioning role that was quite busy/stressful at times but enjoyable! Just not in the right location.

It would be in Dublin city centre, so not that far from Heuston, maybe 2km.

I know, I have been trying to work out the arithmetic in my head. If I could work on the train to reduce the work day etc. Then it gets very messy, for both myself and the employer truth be told.

kippy

stuckmud26 wrote: »

Thank you for all the posts so soon!

Yes, before this job I was in a high functioning role that was quite busy/stressful at times but enjoyable! Just not in the right location.

It would be in Dublin city centre, so not that far from Heuston, maybe 2km.

I know, I have been trying to work out the arithmetic in my head. If I could work on the train to reduce the work day etc. Then it gets very messy, for both myself and the employer truth be told.

There's also the significant cost involved.
No matter how you look at it, there's train tickets and associated costs of public transport and/or a car and all costs associated with that including parking/tax/insurance/diesel/maintenance. Then add in the issues that can happen with transport.
Then your time cost. If the commute is 2.5 hours each way, thats 5 hours a day or 25 hours a week on top of your work week.
You'd need to factor all that in.

Again, I'd be looking at expanding what you do outside of work or maybe look to do something different in the same place etc.

stuckmud26

kippy wrote: »

There's also the significant cost involved.
No matter how you look at it, there's train tickets and associated costs of public transport and/or a car and all costs associated with that including parking/tax/insurance/diesel/maintenance. Then add in the issues that can happen with transport.
Then your time cost. If the commute is 2.5 hours each way, thats 5 hours a day or 25 hours a week on top of your work week.
You'd need to factor all that in.

Again, I'd be looking at expanding what you do outside of work or maybe look to do something different in the same place etc.

Yeah, I really just glossed over the cost in my head but even from a monetary standpoint, its quite significant.

I think you may be right. Whatever way I look at it, there are significant downsides. The only upside is a more enjoyable/rewarding job, but I would probably start to detest it with the journey.

Really what gave me hope was this article in the IT;

irishtimes.com/life-and-style/people/the-lives-of-irish-commuters-i-m-in-the-car-up-to-5-hours-a-day-but-i-have-no-other-choice-1.3196003

I know it is no life though Something has to give and all that.

Diceicle

That commute would be a time-suck and suck in general - unless you were in Dublin 8 and could walk from Heuston train station. Even still thats a 2 hour train journey isn't it?
If you were REALLY into the Dublin role but didn't want to live here then I'd be looking at getting work from home full-time and being open to coming to Dublin at crunch times or key-meetings.
Also, that commute would be a killer if/when you start a family. Though maybe thats not on your radar right now.
I moved house recently and my commute has gone from 30 mins door to door to 1 hour (on a good day) 90 mins with schools in full swing. Its a pain and once I have a couple of things tied up I'm looking to campaign to work from home or work from another location.

kippy

stuckmud26 wrote: »

Yeah, I really just glossed over the cost in my head but even from a monetary standpoint, its quite significant.

I think you may be right. Whatever way I look at it, there are significant downsides. The only upside is a more enjoyable/rewarding job, but I would probably start to detest it with the journey.

Really what gave me hope was this article in the IT;

irishtimes.com/life-and-style/people/the-lives-of-irish-commuters-i-m-in-the-car-up-to-5-hours-a-day-but-i-have-no-other-choice-1.3196003

I know it is no life though Something has to give and all that.

It's definitely no life and the longer the commute the more things that can come into play to impact on the time taken.
If you look at the amount of time taken to commute and add that to your "work" hours, add in the cost of the commute, then work out your salary per week - it doesn't make sense in a lot of cases.

u140acro3xs7dm

aristotle25 wrote: »

Working in Dublin 2 days a week (say a Monday and a Tuesday) might just be manageable commuting once a week from Limerick but its not something you could sustain for years on end. But even on those days you will be getting up at what time, 4.30am? Finish work at 5.30pm and then either commute home or stay in Dublin? You need a better life balance.

What part of Dublin is the job, as someone else said you could be doing another hour in Dublin travelling depending where it is.

Take two days off work and try it out, get up early and get the train to Dublin and get to the street where you would be working. Stay in Dublin that night and commute back the following day, see how you feel after.

90 mins on a train from Limerick Junction seems sustainable at first glance. But once you factor in your journey to the train station, which is in a different county to you, so I'll conservatively say 20 minutes, add in train delays, as they are never on time, and another 30 mins the other end - that's 2.5 hours each way. Are you willing to spend 15 hours a week (nearly 2 working days) for a more satisfying job?

Also factor in the cost of getting to and from Dublin, I have done long commutes and it gets expensive, the train will cost you €40 or €50 a day. Then you come home tired and don't have the energy to get lunch together for the next day, it's easy to spend a tenner on lunch in Dublin.

The biggest cost of it all, will be your mental health. Getting up at 4:30am, back home at 7:30 or 8pm, you will eat dinner, then go to bed. For half the year, you won't see any sunlight except on lunch breaks - it's soul destroying.

stuckmud26

Diceicle wrote: »

That commute would be a time-suck and suck in general - unless you were in Dublin 8 and could walk from Heuston train station. Even still thats a 2 hour train journey isn't it?
If you were REALLY into the Dublin role but didn't want to live here then I'd be looking at getting work from home full-time and being open to coming to Dublin at crunch times or key-meetings.
Also, that commute would be a killer if/when you start a family. Though maybe thats not on your radar right now.
I moved house recently and my commute has gone from 30 mins door to door to 1 hour (on a good day) 90 mins with schools in full swing. Its a pain and once I have a couple of things tied up I'm looking to campaign to work from home or work from another location.

To be honest, I am looking at the commute from totally inexperienced eyes tbf. I have had a few jobs at this stage and the max commute I have had really is a 15 minute car/bus journey. Humans are great at rationalising things in their heads, especially when they have no experience of them!

The working form home thing full time is appealing, with travelling every two weeks or month. A very hard thing to convince though indeed. I would happily pay the 5k in train tickets to rent a small office or space in Limerick to work!

Padre_Pio

Absolute madness

Average train times Limerick to Dub is 2 hours 50 mins each way.

How much time from leaving your house, drive to station, park, wait at platform, get on train, get off train, and presumably walk or Luas to work?

Could be 4 hours from your door to desk. Worse on a bad day with train delays or whatever else.

So you're commuting 8 hours a day, working 8 and sleeping 5.

stuckmud26

Considering this is an understandable resounding "No", I have another question unrelated to commuting itself. For the seasoned corporate people on Boards!

There ARE roles in my company I would be very interested in taking up, unfortunately they are not in Ireland, in another part/org of the company on continental Europe. Now as all of these engineering roles are not related to being in a lab/having big equipment bar a laptop so really you can reside anywhere, in theory.

Has anyone ever applied for a role in the same company but a different team/section that is in another country, but worked from your home office?

I know this is very company specific but how realistic is it to lets say apply for a role with a team in Germany, but do the work from the home office? Assuming this role is totally unrelated to any of the teams in the home office. Say the Limerick office is all Sales teams and you apply for an Engineering role from Germany

It's certainly a tricky one, politically lets say as the current team manager who hired me would be perturbed that I wanted to leave the team/area of work and realistically couldn't help with any move as its an unrelated area of work.

If this is something that people have done before, at least I would have hope for the future

EDIT: Can I also just thank everyone for the detailed responses. I can feel a lot of people have either gone through these long commutes before or had thoughts and the wisdom is much appreciated!

Skyrimaddict

stuckmud26 wrote: »

To be honest, I am looking at the commute from totally inexperienced eyes tbf. I have had a few jobs at this stage and the max commute I have had really is a 15 minute car/bus journey. Humans are great at rationalising things in their heads, especially when they have no experience of them!

The working form home thing full time is appealing, with travelling every two weeks or month. A very hard thing to convince though indeed. I would happily pay the 5k in train tickets to rent a small office or space in Limerick to work!

TO be honest, I regularly turn down jobs in Dublin that add 20-40K per year to my salary at present, simply because the commute and extra costs would absorb what would be an extra 1-1.5K per month in my pocket.

As it stands now, I walk to work, get home at 17:00 LATEST each day, earn very good money for this and can now go back to a variety of sports that I gave up.
Is my job 100% what I want, no its not, not by a long shot, but its the choice I made to have the life I want. I think at this stage I have given up the idea of being richer than Bezos so am content with having enough money to go away for weekends at a whim and a nice house, all without Killing myself and work. No one ever said on the deathbed they wished they spent more time at work!

Good luck with your choice, but Limerick is starting to boom now, My own house has gone up over 120K in last 4 years as tech sector has grown ( Northern Trust thank you)

kippy

stuckmud26 wrote: »

Considering this is an understandable resounding "No", I have another question unrelated to commuting itself. For the seasoned corporate people on Boards!

There ARE roles in my company I would be very interested in taking up, unfortunately they are not in Ireland, in another part/org of the company on continental Europe. Now as all of these engineering roles are not related to being in a lab/having big equipment bar a laptop so really you can reside anywhere, in theory.

Has anyone ever applied for a role in the same company but a different team/section that is in another country, but worked from your home office?

I know this is very company specific but how realistic is it to lets say apply for a role with a team in Germany, but do the work from the home office? Assuming this role is totally unrelated to any of the teams in the home office. Say the Limerick office is all Sales teams and you apply for an Engineering role from Germany

It's certainly a tricky one, politically lets say as the current team manager who hired me would be perturbed that I wanted to leave the team/area of work and realistically couldn't help with any move as its an unrelated area of work.

If this is something that people have done before, at least I would have hope for the future

EDIT: Can I also just thank everyone for the detailed responses. I can feel a lot of people have either gone through these long commutes before or had thoughts and the wisdom is much appreciated!

This is something that I have done and I know a lot of other folks (especially working in larger multinationals) do.

stuckmud26

kippy wrote: »

This is something that I have done and I know a lot of other folks (especially working in larger multinationals) do.

Even when you are essentially leaving your team to join a team abroad that does something completely different from the home office? So I would essentially be a one man team in Limerick working for X team in Germany.

I have had recruiters come to me before offering me jobs abroad, then I suggest doing the job form whatever office they have in Ireland and it always gets shut down.

I just thought it would be a messy issue around orgs/budgets etc.

To be clear, my office in Limerick is a very small office (<75 heads) of a multinational.

kippy

stuckmud26 wrote: »

Even when you are essentially leaving your team to join a team abroad that does something completely different from the home office? So I would essentially be a one man team in Limerick working for X team in Germany.

I have had recruiters come to me before offering me jobs abroad, then I suggest doing the job form whatever office they have in Ireland and it always gets shut down.

I just thought it would be a messy issue around orgs/budgets etc.

To be clear, my office in Limerick is a very small office (<75 heads) of a multinational.

I can state for a fact that this happens in HP a lot.

Captcha

Work from Home? Modern companies, should enable this, even if its just 3 days a week

Burgo

I had to do a 2.5 hour commute for a few months, it really took a toll on my mental health and affected my relationship with my wife and kids as I was just so exhausted and irritable all the time. I was just miserable.
I now have a job thats an hour away, and can drop/collect my daughter from creche. Im in a much better place. I could never recommend doing a long commute as its just not worth it.

As to your follow up query. I'm sure since its a large multinational there is movement of staff between roles and locations, doest hurt to ask about a job you would like to and if you could do it remotely.
Dont suppose you would consider relocating to Germany for the job?

mirrorwall14

Look for international companies that allow remote working? My husband works from home for one such company. Dropped a 1-1.5hr commute into the city and the whole family has benefited from gaining those extra 2-3hrs a day

PhilOssophy

My advice to the OP is a resounding no also! Unless you could get the train @ 9am, work the whole way to Dublin, be in the office for a few hours, turn back and be home by 6 (unrealistic).
Alternatively, I'd say to take a week off, and do the commute. You would probably know after a week whether you could do this for the next few years.
But I agree with somebody above, being close to home in a less challenging / interesting job is much better than earning the big bucks and being killed in the process.

leex

Been there, done that also for nearly a year when on contract work. You definitely would not stick it for very long if you have a family. Friday nights and Saturdays can be taken over recovering from your long days all week and you will be "minding yourself" on Sunday in preparation for long week ahead.

Keyzer

Unless you can work from home 2-3 days a week, I wouldnt even entertain it.

Either stay in Limerick or move back to Dublin. A commute of this type would eventually wear you down.

ELM327

My commute is ~1hr each way when I go to the office. We have WFH at will.
I would suggest that my commute is too long. What you are proposing will kill you.

H3llR4iser

stuckmud26 wrote: »

I have been in my current job around 5 months in Limerick. Its a very soft gig in the sense that the work is considerably easy (Software Development in Test), the benefits are great (Decent salary, good pension, able to buy 5 days holidays to make up 30 etc) with very flexible working from home policies etc.

Can I ask how old you are, OP? Weigh very well what you wish for - as you get older, your priorities shift and you'll be wishing for a "softer" job.



Also, as someone in the field, I have to say...if the role of "software developer in test" is a "soft" one, the company doesn't have a good QA policy or a competent QA manager - it's a role that can go as "deep" as you wish it to be.


As for the commute - don't do it, end of the story. I live "only" 15 km from work (central Dublin), use public transit, and there are days it can take me 1.5 or 2 hours to get home; All you need is a bit of stormy weather or some arsehole deciding to take a walk on the DART tracks, a truck "striking" a bridge and everything stops. It has knock-on effects on the rest of the transport - people rush to buses and taxis, slowing them down and making them jam packed. No issue if you live locally, just go eat a bite or something, but it's a big issue if you're trying to catch a train to Limerick.

mlem123

I live in Dublin, but have to cross the city to get to work and it takes about 1.5-2 hours on buses everyday.. Would not recommend to anyone

Strumms

Padre_Pio wrote: »

Absolute madness

Average train times Limerick to Dub is 2 hours 50 mins each way.

How much time from leaving your house, drive to station, park, wait at platform, get on train, get off train, and presumably walk or Luas to work?

Could be 4 hours from your door to desk. Worse on a bad day with train delays or whatever else.

So you're commuting 8 hours a day, working 8 and sleeping 5.

^^^ this, you’d be crazy, as in certifiably so to do that commute and adopt that lifestyle. You’d be fit for nothing at the weekends when you have time off and during the week you’ll have zero time to do anything. NO quality of life whatsoever.

_Brian

Find stuff to do outside work that interest you and fulfill your life a bit more.

listermint

_Brian wrote: »

Find stuff to do outside work that interest you and fulfill your life a bit more.

This.

You are living through paid employment. You need to stop that.

You should either find other hobbies to challenge you or better still start your own business or consult to challenge you. Commuting across the entire country to be let's face it another paid head in a bunch of paid heads in a high stress job is pointless.

You want to be busy and there are endless other ways to do that.

Purple Mountain

ELM327 wrote: »

My commute is ~1hr each way when I go to the office. We have WFH at will.
I would suggest that my commute is too long. What you are proposing will kill you.

I moved home to my home place for 6 months once.
I had an hour each way driving. An hour was without traffic in the regional town I was going to the far side of.
So 5 days x 2 hours driving a mix of country and main roads.
It absolutely killed me.
I was like a cranky weasel.
I went back to renting in my work town soon after.