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Half of American workers would rather work from home forever: poll

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Re: Half of American workers would rather work from home forever: poll

#241

Post by stronglikedan »

_curious_ wrote: post #196
gspr wrote: post #29

I wonder if this is related to the long commutes Americans have gotten used to. I'm not in the US, and while I would say I definitely appreciate the flexibility of being able to work from home (or from "not the office") every now and then, and I do like the present drop in meetings, I cannot fathom how people stay sane without a variety of other people around. My productivity has definitely dropped, and it feels like…

Sounds like you have not yet developed the mindset/means to adapt...but you can if you choose to!

I can adapt to a hot poker in the eye, but I would never choose to. ;-)

Re: Half of American workers would rather work from home forever: poll

#242

Post by mountainboot »

dx034 wrote: post #32
jve wrote: post #16

> Half of all Americans want to continue working from home following the coronavirus That is a VERY rough (actually false) sentance, considering they have only surveyed ~500 Americans out of 205'950'000+ population at working age. > We surveyed over 500 Americans...

IF done right, 500 can be representative. Although considering the number of jobs out there combined with age groups and gender, I guess you'd need a few thousand carefully selected participants to get valid results.

No need to carefully select participants. If you do random sampling with a large enough sample, the proportion of all subcategories should reflect the population at large.

Re: Half of American workers would rather work from home forever: poll

#243

Post by snow_mac »

BigJono wrote: post #201
flatline wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My work is all meetings all the time, now. I’m on the phone most of the day. Little things that used to take 20 minutes now take an hour. I used to enjoy working from home a couple days a week because I got some peace and quiet and knew I could catch back up with people when I returned to the office. I went from loving to hating my job in the last three weeks. I am also constantly distracted by having the kids around…

The problem is 100% with the way software is developed these days. Every company trains their staff to be as unproductive as possible with open plan offices, all the productivity is coming from quantity over quality, with every hire and every hour of training reflecting that. Working from home is great if you have autonomy and can build a chunk of software with minimal oversight. But if your dev process revolves sole…

Easy solution to this problem; find a new company to work for that does remote working well

Re: Half of American workers would rather work from home forever: poll

#244

Post by bart_spoon »

jve wrote: post #192
CydeWeys wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should look up polling theory. You don't need to talk to every member of a population, only a representative sample.

My point was that sample size is too small. According to Standard Occupational Classification [ https://www.bls.gov/soc/ ] there are 459 broad occupations. Multiply that by age group and you still haven't tossed a coin even a single time for every combination of occupation/age group.

And OP's point is that you don't necessarily need to have representation for all of those occupation/age group combinations. It's highly unlikely there isn't high amount of overlap in perception among those occupations. There's going to be supersets of those occupations that are fairly homogenous. So you really don't need a huge sample of respondents and coverage of all of those possibilities. You just need the makeup of the sample to be reasonably representative, and that's the problem with this poll. Seems like it was conducted in a way that the respondents are not representative.

Re: Half of American workers would rather work from home forever: poll

#245

Post by bart_spoon »

nck4222 wrote: post #9
nerdbaggy wrote: post #3

The 25-34 age range had the most “Yes” I want to work from home. I wonder if experience made the later years want to not work from home, or what caused that.

Children probably. Don't get me wrong, I love being home and spending time with the family more, it's really the best part of this experience for me. But there's no way I'd be able to be as productive as expected under normal circumstances. I'm lucky if I get 4 hours in.

But surely actually working from home wouldn't involve taking care of your children all day. When you actually go to work, your children are presumably not sitting at home unattended all day, correct? You either have a spouse who can take care of them, they are in school, or they are in daycare. So working from home shouldn't be any different, and the only reason it is now is because all of those things are closed due to the pandemic.

Re: Half of American workers would rather work from home forever: poll

#246

Post by mikestew »

agumonkey wrote: post #220
gspr wrote: post #29

I wonder if this is related to the long commutes Americans have gotten used to. I'm not in the US, and while I would say I definitely appreciate the flexibility of being able to work from home (or from "not the office") every now and then, and I do like the present drop in meetings, I cannot fathom how people stay sane without a variety of other people around. My productivity has definitely dropped, and it feels like…

I'm not from that generation but I wonder if people in the 50s or 60s saw long commute as a proof of progress and something to look for. Meaning better and cheaper cars, more "opportunities", bigger companies and centralized hubs far away, etc etc

I'm in my 50s, and I have struggled to keep commute times to a minimal my entire life. I currently am working for less than I am accustomed to simply because I have a private office and a 20 minute commute (or a reasonable 30 min. bike/scooter ride). A little less money won't kill me, but one more rush-hour commute across that WA-520 bridge just might.

I can't say that my parents differ on this topic. I'll note that your comment was not the easiest to parse, so perhaps I misunderstand you.

Re: Half of American workers would rather work from home forever: poll

#247

Post by t3rabytes »

veggieburglar wrote: post #232
t3rabytes wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Brevard, NC. All of my family is from there and lives there and the trails are good, hard to say no to. Helluva road trip for you from CA tho.

Yeah Pisgah and DuPont are awesome. Lots of miles of fun out there. It’s also not inconceivable.... especially now that both my MTB buddy (and best friend) and I are both unemployed. One of the reasons I live where I do is access to the Santa Cruz Mountains, but that’s all closed down at the moment. Edit- there’s probably Gucci dirt out there right now too!

It would be! But DuPont is closed by the state and the Forest Service has closed some of the trailheads in Pisgah, so :/

If you ever head out this way to ride, let me know! I'm on Twitter @ my HN username -- hit me up!

(I live in central NC right now)

Re: Half of American workers would rather work from home forever: poll

#248

Post by mfer »

FalconSensei wrote: post #147
mfer wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did when I started working from home. I was lucky to have a manager who knew about habits and patterns to fix that. A lot of this isn't about going to work but about our habits and patterns. For example, I have a room I go into and close the door. When I am in there I am working. When I am out of there I'm not. It's like a mental switch. I also use some tricks to keep be from being distracted like a pomodoro timer.…

> I have a room I go into and close the door That would be awesome to have, unfortunately, I live in a small 1 bedroom apartment. So I either work on the living room, were the TV and my wife are, or on the bedroom :(

I would suggest trying headphones. Noise canceling ones if you have them. Makes it easier to ignore the distractions around you.

Re: Half of American workers would rather work from home forever: poll

#249

Post by [deleted] »

gspr wrote: post #29

I wonder if this is related to the long commutes Americans have gotten used to. I'm not in the US, and while I would say I definitely appreciate the flexibility of being able to work from home (or from "not the office") every now and then, and I do like the present drop in meetings, I cannot fathom how people stay sane without a variety of other people around. My productivity has definitely dropped, and it feels like…

[deleted]

Re: Half of American workers would rather work from home forever: poll

#250

Post by barry-cotter »

eru wrote: post #230
barry-cotter wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suggest you look up more recent research on the hedonic treadmill and winning the lottery and losing a limb specifically. I’m very confident winning the lottery durably raises life satisfaction and that it takes years, not months for losing a limb to be mostly but not entirely gotten over.

Sorry, ignore the bit about limb and lottery. That was for explaining the hedonic treadmill. The point was that commuting seems surprisingly resistant to the hedonic treadmill.

Entirely resistant if I remember correctly. You don’t get used to commuting, you forget what it feels like not commuting, like you don’t get used to feeling like crap because you don’t exercise or are sleep deprived, just forget what normal feels like.
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