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

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

#61

Post by HeyLaughingBoy »

formercoder wrote: post #15
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 agree. If anything business travel and in office time will increase - we’re gonna realize how great it is to be in the same room.

It depends. On the days I've WFH in the past, it was clear that I could concentrate better. Now that I've been doing it for a week, there's no contest: I am definitely far more productive working from home, even though at work I have an office to myself. The interruptions, hallway conversations, miscellaneous noises are all gone. I can choose to temporarily ignore an email or a Teams notification; I can't ignore a noisy label printer screeching from across the office.

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

#62

Post by joquarky »

bitwize wrote: post #18

What self-isolating future? In the USA, as soon as coronavirus blows over the boss will say: "Okay, back to work. I need you in the office during core business hours." And hour+ long commutes will come back with a vengeance. It's part of American work culture. It's a form of virtue signalling. By showing up at the office every workday, early in the morning, you are indicating your commitment to the company and to del…

> By showing up at the office every workday, early in the morning, you are indicating your commitment to the company and to delivering value for their investment in you.

There's a term for that:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presenteeism

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

#63

Post by [deleted] »

dominotw wrote: post #48
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…

childcare workers won't be 'working from home' so not sure how this woould be a problem once the scare is over. Unfortunately ppl with children are usually against company wide WFH flexible policies. I am guessing is just jealously. I have a coworker right now that asks ppl working from home in the morning meeting " oh so you are working from home today", so annoying. Ppl with children please don't ruin it for the re…

[deleted]

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

#64

Post by [deleted] »

mjevans wrote: post #29
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…

Work / Family + Life is out of balance; I really hope that's what we, collectively, learn. The lack of time for child care is the problem. I've observed a sibling that does have children being severely taxed daily (in occasional video calls across the country). It isn't the working from home aspect that's broken, it's how little time "a normal job" affords parents, or even those of us who've yet to find a life partne…

[deleted]

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

#65

Post by RHSeeger »

closeparen wrote: post #59
RHSeeger wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I was playing it safe and assuming a family adding one more room to a multi-room house. The 10% is on the low side. Where I live, it's an extra $100,000 between a 3 bedroom house and a 4 bedroom (or adding a bonus room), and then bump that up another $50,000 for the total cost after mortgage interest, utilities, etc. But nobody (that goes into an office) seems to want to believe it costs $150,000 to work from home (but then you save some on commute costs, so there's that). My manager actually made a comment about how it must be nice to save money by working from home (commute costs). I laughed.

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

#66

Post by projektfu »

api wrote: post #22
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 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…

It sort of makes you wonder where we went wrong. Other social forms had children integrated into the things adults do.

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

#67

Post by mrlala »

coldpie wrote: post #32
jrumbut wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I'm two weeks into this and badly miss my office. Edit: no children either, just easier to work with people in the same building sometimes.

Yep, me too. Early 30s and childless. I've never liked working from home, and now I'm forced to do it. It sucks. I like having someone looking over my shoulder (look what I'm spending time on right now!). I like having a bus to catch at 3:00 so my day ends right there. I like having a commute that separates work from home. I like having people to talk to and make jokes with. I like having separate work and home compu…

>Early 30s and childless. I've never liked working from home

I'll chime in here.. perhaps you don't like working from because you are childless? In my opinion it's the the opposite of what people are thinking... I think you would find that the people who like working from home are ones with kids (let's say >5 where they can at least take care of themselves long enough without worry of instant death.. infants/toddlers are obviously an exception here, unless you have a stay-at-home spouse and a separate part of the home).

The reason is that when you have kids you have a day-to-day schedule with them that is vital for the family's sanity. Your kids also will start to have schedules like school & activities. Also, you simply want to see and spend time with your kids. Being gone/unavailable from the moment you wake up until 6pm might not be an issue for people when they are a little younger without kids, because they still have the whole night to do whatever. I was like that in my 20s. I worked until 6/7pm and I didn't mind at all. I had plenty of energy afterwards to unwind without basically a care in the world.

In my late 30s with young kids, I am supremely lucky to work from home (I have done this full time for like 7 years so this is nothing new to me). I get to spend a LOT more time with my kids, take care of the house (billions of more things to do with kids around), and all that jazz without worrying about being fixed into a schedule where I would never see them.

I guess I could go on and on.. but that's my view on all of this.

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

#68

Post by CodeCube »

closeparen wrote: post #59
RHSeeger wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

yes ... $4000 US Dollars for a one bedroom is literal crazy talk. Obviously, people are willing and able to pay those prices right now because they have to live specifically there to get those specific jobs. But if they could work remote, they could live anywhere their heart desires ... closer to family, closer to friends, closer to nature, closer to a local music scene, closer to the beach ... whatever their heart desires.

Obviously many people have laid down roots in those extremely high cost of living areas at this point so just moving can be tough, but we need to spread out man, cause $4000 a month for a tin can just ain't a good life.

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

#69

Post by linsomniac »

Accacin wrote: post #4

I'm lucky enough to be able to work from home, and I'm having mixed feelings about it. As usual, there are pros and cons to everything. Pros: - Able to be at home all day, feel I have more flexibility. Cons: - I miss cycling to work. - I miss getting out the house - I miss chatting to colleagues - I miss lots of indirect help from other developers. I might feel differently if I had to drive to work, as I hated that.…

Today I set up a "lunch chat" in Jitsi and invited my coworkers during our standup. We ended up having a great discussion, and an unintended benefit is that our user advocate from our parent company that is only in our office once a week was able to join as well.

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

#70

Post by closeparen »

CodeCube wrote: post #68
closeparen wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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?

yes ... $4000 US Dollars for a one bedroom is literal crazy talk. Obviously, people are willing and able to pay those prices right now because they have to live specifically there to get those specific jobs. But if they could work remote, they could live anywhere their heart desires ... closer to family, closer to friends, closer to nature, closer to a local music scene, closer to the beach ... whatever their heart d…

Even if the absolute numbers are lower, I would still expect to see a premium of closer to 60% for an additional bedroom.
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