Our Self-Isolating Future: How working from home could reshape society • Hacker News Board

Re: Our Self-Isolating Future: How working from home could reshape society

#51

Post by api » Tue, Mar 24, 2020, 2:31 PM UTC

zxcmx wrote: post #23

api wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I realized after I had kids that a huge amount of "new urbanist" thought is driven by the young and childless and does not incorporate the needs of people with children or of children themselves. This falls under the same category. Without child care or some place for the children to go, it's absolutely impossible to work from home. If only one parent works it can be done, but if both parents have to telework it's a…

Our ancestors got their children working as soon as they were able. Farm work, piece work, factory work, whatever. Kind of frowned upon now.

It's not possible now. I'd say a good 80% of the work I do requires at least a year of intensive study and/or hands-on learning to even be capable of attempting and another 5-10 years to master.

Nowadays someone needs a minimum of four years of college to be able to do anything. You can't start contributing to society until you're 20. Everything easy has been automated or outsourced.

Re: Our Self-Isolating Future: How working from home could reshape society

#52

Post by smileysteve » Tue, Mar 24, 2020, 2:53 PM UTC

harikb wrote: post #41

gdubs wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s also been a week . Like you said, this is anything but a controlled experiment. People are trying to push through a lot of psychological stress right now. Families are suddenly responsible for homeschooling — 2 young kids and a toddler in our case. It’s a lot. If people look back at this period and use it to judge the effective remote work is, that would be pretty ridiculous. (Of course, some people who are fund…

About the open-office vs individual- in this particular case though individual offices would have been just as dangerous, since the ventilation system is all connected. although I agree the lower density of workers would have helped.

Squirm; While yes, air systems are shared, modern offices (and homes) have filtered (though likely not HEPA filtered) positive pressure outlets and there is a central (hallway or more typically edge of building) negative pressure return.

While this virus does survive in aerosol form, it is not strictly airborne; This means that a non HEPA filter will likely stop it and that, from the return side; it's more likely to settle on the carpet or furniture than particularly infecting a human.

The more likely issue would be meetings of more than 1 person in a poorly ventilated room with no airflow; where aerosol virus would linger.

Re: Our Self-Isolating Future: How working from home could reshape society

#53

Post by jtms » Tue, Mar 24, 2020, 3:31 PM UTC

bamboozled wrote: post #37

The minute I can leave my house and do some work in an office or cafe I'm there. WFH everyday is a joke. Disclaimer, I have done a lot of remote work.

Just because you and your specific likes and dislikes don’t agree with WFH everyday as a viable approach doesn’t make it “a joke”. I’m perfectly fine and productive with it.

Re: Our Self-Isolating Future: How working from home could reshape society

#54

Post by dawg- » Tue, Mar 24, 2020, 3:33 PM UTC

gdubs wrote: post #31

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #5

Outside of young, childless tech workers, this sudden remote work experiment is not going well for most people I know. This isn’t the controlled trial of remote work that these think pieces suggest. Instead, everyone is forcefully stuck at home without time to prepare. Parents are juggling childcare with getting work done, while fighting an uphill battle against IT systems that weren’t prepared for everyone going WFH…

It’s also been a week . Like you said, this is anything but a controlled experiment. People are trying to push through a lot of psychological stress right now. Families are suddenly responsible for homeschooling — 2 young kids and a toddler in our case. It’s a lot. If people look back at this period and use it to judge the effective remote work is, that would be pretty ridiculous. (Of course, some people who are fund…

I think maybe we don't need a controlled experiment. Maybe we need to embrace a situation where we are forced to adapt and come up with solutions on the fly.

Re: Our Self-Isolating Future: How working from home could reshape society

#55

Post by davidgh » Tue, Mar 24, 2020, 4:13 PM UTC

I have been WFH for more than a decade. I love it. Being a planned transition, I prepared for it, set things up properly, have appropriate separation, etc. If someone didn’t know, they would have no idea that I wasn’t in some type of office. No doorbells, kids screaming, dogs barking, because of a proper setup.

In spite of this, I have been pretty worthless the last couple of weeks, primarily due to all the distractions of what’s going on.

When you consider that for many people, WFH started immediately with little time to prepare a proper setup, who are also trying to figure out how to be part-time teachers, PLUS the distraction of the current state of events, I suspect that most companies that didn’t do WFH before the crisis will reconvene when this is all behind us and say “WFH was a disaster, productivity was trash, and we’ll never do it again.”

If that happens, it would be a sad outcome, because under proper circumstances WFH can be a great lifestyle benefit with equal or greater productivity than an office environment.

Re: Our Self-Isolating Future: How working from home could reshape society

#56

Post by Matrixik » Tue, Mar 24, 2020, 4:14 PM UTC

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #5

Outside of young, childless tech workers, this sudden remote work experiment is not going well for most people I know. This isn’t the controlled trial of remote work that these think pieces suggest. Instead, everyone is forcefully stuck at home without time to prepare. Parents are juggling childcare with getting work done, while fighting an uphill battle against IT systems that weren’t prepared for everyone going WFH…

I'm childless tech worker and I hate working from home.

I live in very small flat and I simply don't have space to separate work/home related stuff. I'm really struggling to focus on work task and when I finally do it I have problem to stop working (and end it too late). When in office someone will always ask why I'm still working or I will get hungry and food is waiting at home so I need to leave. Also video conferencing is poor replacement for talking with others.

Re: Our Self-Isolating Future: How working from home could reshape society

#57

Post by watwut » Tue, Mar 24, 2020, 4:29 PM UTC

zxcmx wrote: post #23

api wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I realized after I had kids that a huge amount of "new urbanist" thought is driven by the young and childless and does not incorporate the needs of people with children or of children themselves. This falls under the same category. Without child care or some place for the children to go, it's absolutely impossible to work from home. If only one parent works it can be done, but if both parents have to telework it's a…

Our ancestors got their children working as soon as they were able. Farm work, piece work, factory work, whatever. Kind of frowned upon now.

A lot abuse went on through.

Re: Our Self-Isolating Future: How working from home could reshape society

#58

Post by closeparen » Tue, Mar 24, 2020, 5:19 PM UTC

taneq wrote: post #45

joegahona wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been loving the comfort of working from home (childless), but I suspect you're right that it's not going well for most people. Most of my zoom meetings are disrupted by shrieks of needy children and a shocking number of cellphone ringing/notifications.

No sane person actually works from home with their young kids present, at least not in any real job. Until schools have their remote classes sorted out with actual teachers giving actual attention to students over video, nobody's going to be getting any quality work done.

Every last parent on my team of 100 has at least one child under five, so not even then.

Re: Our Self-Isolating Future: How working from home could reshape society

#59

Post by closeparen » Tue, Mar 24, 2020, 5:28 PM UTC

RHSeeger wrote: post #10

checker659 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I think this experiment is going to backfire. People are going to hate WFH/Remote work coming out of this it seems.

If it results in 1. Workers (that previously hadn't been remote) realizing that it has good parts and bad parts, that paying an extra 10%+ in rent/mortgage in order to get a proper home office can be the cost of working from home (and then the costs of utilities for a now non-empty home). That doesn't mean it's bad, just that it has pluses and minuses. 2. Companies realizing that people working from home _does_ have…

>paying an extra 10%+ in rent/mortgage

Where a one-bedroom is $4000, a two-bedroom is going to be $6500, not $4400.

Obviously a cheaper metro will have lower prices, but is the relative premium for an extra room also so dramatically lower?

Re: Our Self-Isolating Future: How working from home could reshape society

#60

Post by HeyLaughingBoy » Tue, Mar 24, 2020, 5:49 PM UTC

aivisol wrote: post #34

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #5

Outside of young, childless tech workers, this sudden remote work experiment is not going well for most people I know. This isn’t the controlled trial of remote work that these think pieces suggest. Instead, everyone is forcefully stuck at home without time to prepare. Parents are juggling childcare with getting work done, while fighting an uphill battle against IT systems that weren’t prepared for everyone going WFH…

One thing that stroke me yesterday looking at my 13-year old is that children actually suffer more than adults. While we are allowed to take occasional walk out of our homes ( groceries, etc), they are totally locked up - no friends, no school socializing, everything is virtual only. If this lockdown lasts for any long period of time, it might backfire badly on them.

This is a really good point that I think people will slowly figure out.

We live in a rural area with essentially no school age kids nearby, so we're very aware that during summer, Christmas break, etc, we have to arrange ways to keep our 10 year-old in contact with kids his age. In summer we usually sign him up for the in-school daycare a couple days a week so he can see his friends and we also arrange to visit other families with kids he knows frequently, trips to the park, library, etc.

However, in the current situation, that's all gone flying out the window. A least, because of where we live, there's lots of space to go outside and play without coming into contact with anyone outside this household. I shudder to think how quickly we'd all go insane trapped in a small apartment!