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Most employees of NYT won’t be required back in physical offices until 2021

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Re: Most employees of NYT won’t be required back in physical offices until 2021

#221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everybody should be you, if possible. Having enough savings to be able not to worry about the nearest future is not just a perfect option, it's a necessity.

Unfortunately it's not a realistic option for most people. If we're talking about "shoulds", then we should have a welfare state that covers these scenarios rather than putting the burden on individuals, many of whom will not have the means to implement it even if they wanted to.

It might be nice to have a strong welfare state that covered all possible scenarios. The problem is that it is fundamentally incompatible with the open-borders immigration that seems to be all the rage with some these days. Promise free money for nothing, and billions of third-worlders will be beating down your door. We might be able to afford something like that for all current citizens. We'll never be able to afford it for every single person who figures out a way to come to our shores.

This means that you have to choose one or the other. Both ways have people who lose, and it won't be pretty for them.

Re: Most employees of NYT won’t be required back in physical offices until 2021

#222
post #57
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

companies who ask their employees to take risks with their health, without a compelling reason, are destroying any sense of goodwill or morale. In the short term, that change might be invisible, but over the long-term it destroys businesses

It sends the message "I don't care about you" very loud and clear. Don't be surprised when your employees suddenly stop caring about your company

Yeah, a switch gets flipped that cannot be unflipped. It becomes a mercenary situation until you can exit.

Re: Most employees of NYT won’t be required back in physical offices until 2021

#223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's amazing how so many people/entities want to pretend that somehow the pandemic is less dangerous now than it was in March when we started all of the isolating/WFH. When in fact we have a lot more cases now, high levels of new cases and more than half the states have R0 > 1.0. https://rt.live/

Yes, but if you actually look at the death count, it has dropped in the past month and a half, despite re-openings: https://ga-covid19.ondemand.sas.com/ Georgia being one of the earliest states to re-open, continue to see their deaths plummet even as their case count increases. What's the reason for this? I don't know. Better testing, maybe. Maybe a less deadly version of the virus is propagating now. Not sure.

As klenwell said, deaths are very lagging. It could take weeks for a person admitted to a hospital to die so it shouldn't at all be reassuring that those numbers are going down. They are bound to rebound.

How is this downvoted? If you have evidence showing all of the new cases are from younger people or totally asymptomatic carriers go ahead and show it otherwise its literally a tautology, more cases = more deaths.

Re: Most employees of NYT won’t be required back in physical offices until 2021

#224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's amazing how so many people/entities want to pretend that somehow the pandemic is less dangerous now than it was in March when we started all of the isolating/WFH. When in fact we have a lot more cases now, high levels of new cases and more than half the states have R0 > 1.0. https://rt.live/

Yes, but if you actually look at the death count, it has dropped in the past month and a half, despite re-openings: https://ga-covid19.ondemand.sas.com/ Georgia being one of the earliest states to re-open, continue to see their deaths plummet even as their case count increases. What's the reason for this? I don't know. Better testing, maybe. Maybe a less deadly version of the virus is propagating now. Not sure.

It takes a while for people to die after infection. Give states like Georgia time to catch up. Their hospitals will be overwhelmed and the numbers of deaths will get there.

There is no "less deadly version of the virus". Treatment protocols have improved but that has not dramatically changed the odds of at-risk folks dying.

Re: Most employees of NYT won’t be required back in physical offices until 2021

#225
post #174

Remote work is such a fascinating leadership challenge given how dogmatic both sides have become. The tone of the debate is verging on a religious argument (on both sides), but it's all centered on work-related topics which typically don't engender such extreme responses.

"religious argument (on both sides)" Care to elaborate?

Yup for sure. I (generally) see two camps on the remote work debate:

- WFH / unlimited remote work is the future, forcing people to come into the office is oppressive.

- Remote work harms culture and collaboration, we all need to get back into the office ASAP as we can't be effective remotely.

Overall I've just been surprised at the intensity of the remote work discussion, and surprised that we don't see deeper analyses on cost of rent, employee retention rates, productivity across jobs, environmental effects of less commuters, etc. My point was simply that as this topic elicits strong feelings, it presents an interesting leadership challenge.

Re: Most employees of NYT won’t be required back in physical offices until 2021

#226
post #181

Remote work is such a fascinating leadership challenge given how dogmatic both sides have become. The tone of the debate is verging on a religious argument (on both sides), but it's all centered on work-related topics which typically don't engender such extreme responses.

A lot of individuals have very strong preferences. And those who want to go back to how things were also realize that, if many companies shift to a more patchwork employees can continue to WFH if they're able to and want to, many offices won't ever go back to the way they were. In addition, many feel (probably with some justification) that there's a real opportunity at the moment to influence policies that favor thei…

"In addition, many feel (probably with some justification) that there's a real opportunity at the moment to influence policies that favor their personal preferences. And you won't influence if you don't take a strong stand."

This is a great point, and that's exactly what makes this an interesting leadership challenge IMO.

Re: Most employees of NYT won’t be required back in physical offices until 2021

#227
post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but if you actually look at the death count, it has dropped in the past month and a half, despite re-openings: https://ga-covid19.ondemand.sas.com/ Georgia being one of the earliest states to re-open, continue to see their deaths plummet even as their case count increases. What's the reason for this? I don't know. Better testing, maybe. Maybe a less deadly version of the virus is propagating now. Not sure.

It takes a while for people to die after infection. Give states like Georgia time to catch up. Their hospitals will be overwhelmed and the numbers of deaths will get there. There is no "less deadly version of the virus". Treatment protocols have improved but that has not dramatically changed the odds of at-risk folks dying.

People have been saying that now for almost two months. Georgia started to reopen April 24th. It's not registering in the data.

Re: Most employees of NYT won’t be required back in physical offices until 2021

#228
post #218
post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They want to be "fair" to everyone Where I work, discussing salaries is strictly forbidden and grounds for dismissal. I demanded an increase and was told, "No. It wouldn't be fair to the others." I asked, "How would they know?" (weWantToBeFair) = enterprise(iWontCumInYourMouth)

That's an illegal policy (if you're in the US), FYI.

It's also illegal to fire someone for a disability or not hire someone because they are a minority but plenty of companies do it anyway.

Re: Most employees of NYT won’t be required back in physical offices until 2021

#229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is probably not the norm. I have a friend that works in a call center, and they've been working remotely during the pandemic. Her company won't pay for anything; she uses her personal laptop, personal consumer-grade Internet connection, etc. The consumer ISP doesn't provide their stated upload and download ever, and the ISP charged her $100 to come out and investigate the issue without fixing it. (You run a spee…

> You run a speedtest to their speedtest node, and it doesn't live up to what is advertised. How can the ISP turn around and charge the customer for telling them that!? Easy, the CPE equipment is garbage or placed in a shitty location. I'm a nerd, but my ancient wifi setup started to struggle with the entire family working and schooling all day. I upgraded to a Ubiquiti solution with multiple antennas and life is goo…

We are talking about wired performance here.

I worked on the CPE team for Google Fiber, and indeed, WiFi performance is something that we spent a lot of time on and never got perfect. The average ISP using off-the-shelf CPE doesn't stand a chance. I fear that the CPE is not the problem in my friend's case, and the ISP is just aggressively oversubscribing, and so nothing can be done. Switching to the business plan won't make a difference unless they drop all consumer traffic whenever the business subscriber needs to send and receive, and they are not charging enough money to lead me to believe they're doing that. I don't know anything about DOCSIS, though... I have worked at two ISPs and they both used GPON. The limitations of GPON, however, I understand well ;)

Re: Most employees of NYT won’t be required back in physical offices until 2021

#230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if enough employees simply refused?

I would really love to find out the answer to this question, but I don't think I'll be able to.

This is honestly why I love working at smaller companies in addition to feeling like you actually make a difference as an individual, but that's another comment..

I just said no, not comfortable with that. That was the end of it. The in-office was replaced with a call (that was later replaced with a chat on Slack as it turned out)

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