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The social and economic costs borne by young people without offices

theatlantic.com

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Re: The social and economic costs borne by young people without offices

#41

Post by thesizeofa »

chadash wrote: post #8
supernova87a wrote: post #5

WFH has a huge difference in result depending on who you are, when you are (in your career), and where you are in a company (of organization). -- For the budding young developer who can't wait to show ideas to teammates and demonstrate being a go-getter by asking random questions and finding unaddressed issues to innovate on, WFH might be terrible. You're going to schedule time to fortuitously run into the senior per…

> And that's aside from the point that, when everyone is remote, you're also competing with the world who is also remote. Yup... once everyone is remote anyway, won't take too long for some manager to decide to offshore work to cheaper countries. Even if that doesn't happen to you, if it happens to enough people elsewhere it'll bring salaries down for everyone.

Just how incompetent are you if you can easily be replaced by a cheap inexperienced worker in india?

Re: The social and economic costs borne by young people without offices

#42

Post by thesizeofa »

sJ646U9k6c6gME9 wrote: post #35
chadash wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And that's aside from the point that, when everyone is remote, you're also competing with the world who is also remote. Yup... once everyone is remote anyway, won't take too long for some manager to decide to offshore work to cheaper countries. Even if that doesn't happen to you, if it happens to enough people elsewhere it'll bring salaries down for everyone.

Offshoring is not a new concept, and everyone knows it doesn’t work. How come offshoring hasn’t eaten my lunch yet?

Because you got skill and s/he doesnt. Hence it launches attacks on foreigners.

Re: The social and economic costs borne by young people without offices

#43

Post by fxtentacle »

bobthepanda wrote: post #37
fxtentacle wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For what it's worth, I also wondered if this was a reaction to tech companies going fully remote and canceling their office lease. Especially because we just had another article about how remote work is hurting small businesses 2 days ago, which started with the incredibly flawed assumption that people would stop going to local restaurants if they didn't accidentally walk past them on the way home from the office. An…

I mean, small businesses will be getting tanked, but mostly in office districts with very high lunch foot traffic; the assumption of the increased lunch custom is kind of baked into rents and the business model, and commercial leases are measured in years.

The way you said it, it seems like small businesses are being screwed over by real estate companies. That's a different cause than people not going to the office.

Re: The social and economic costs borne by young people without offices

#44

Post by bobthepanda »

fxtentacle wrote: post #43
bobthepanda wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, small businesses will be getting tanked, but mostly in office districts with very high lunch foot traffic; the assumption of the increased lunch custom is kind of baked into rents and the business model, and commercial leases are measured in years.

The way you said it, it seems like small businesses are being screwed over by real estate companies. That's a different cause than people not going to the office.

Really any restaurant model based on high, peaky lunch traffic is just going to get hosed.

So I would imagine that in the worst case scenario, some food models, like the lunch truck, the NYC hot dog cart or the NYC deli, are going to have some severe issues generating enough cash even just to play their employees, since they are low-margin, high-volume businesses. At current volumes they will never make enough money to cover even non-rent costs at <$5 a sandwich.

Re: The social and economic costs borne by young people without offices

#45

Post by Shivetya »

supernova87a wrote: post #5

WFH has a huge difference in result depending on who you are, when you are (in your career), and where you are in a company (of organization). -- For the budding young developer who can't wait to show ideas to teammates and demonstrate being a go-getter by asking random questions and finding unaddressed issues to innovate on, WFH might be terrible. You're going to schedule time to fortuitously run into the senior per…

and here I find the fact I no longer have the stress of traffic to offset most of my concerns plus it really is beneficial to my wallet.

So yeah, there are pros and cons but the parenting one is not truly fair in that the arbitrary handling of schools across this country is maddening in its own right. people who tend to be good at managing their own time are usually good at dealing with the children being around.

Re: The social and economic costs borne by young people without offices

#46

Post by luckylion »

benmller313 wrote: post #26
frompdx wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do think it is necessary. It's one thing to share your experience about remote work as the author does. It's something entirely different to interleave it with with vague concerns of economic hardship for younger people or stunted career growth for women. What is the purpose of this? In my mind I imagine a boardroom full of Don Draper types sipping scotch and smoking cigarettes fretting over the decline in office l…

Perhaps its not a web of lies and this situation really is hurting this persons career? I think it's usually a good idea to assume that there isn't a large misinformation campaign going on.

There has been a lot of selection going on until an article makes it into a newspaper though. The individual writer needs to want to write it, their editor needs to think it's a good idea, and there are plenty of chances for it to get pulled or rewritten in a major way. "It's just this person's opinion and by chance it landed in The Atlantic" does rarely happen.

It doesn't require a conspiracy, of course. I find it much easier to believe that it's essentially pre-chewed stuff a large audience can nod along to. No need for any agenda other than "I want eye balls on my article, and I want lots of them and I want the brains that are attached to share the article because that will get me more eye balls".

Re: The social and economic costs borne by young people without offices

#47

Post by konjin »

slykar wrote: post #40
supernova87a wrote: post #5

WFH has a huge difference in result depending on who you are, when you are (in your career), and where you are in a company (of organization). -- For the budding young developer who can't wait to show ideas to teammates and demonstrate being a go-getter by asking random questions and finding unaddressed issues to innovate on, WFH might be terrible. You're going to schedule time to fortuitously run into the senior per…

> For the small company CEO who relies on force of personality and everyone in the same room urgently working to get something done, WFH might be terrible. Working remotely for a small company with a few people from around the world and it's going fine. We are in contact when we have to be. I can cut distractions when I need to. No open space office bulshit. I was raised on IM. I'm fine communicating like this. If I…

>They should just pay you instead of paying the insane office rent.

Or pay the shareholders instead. Or the CEO. Or ... you are a cost center for your company. Why would they pay you more than the minimum anyone than they would for any other cost center? That said you should negotiate for an extra room as a part of doing business.

>I was raised on IM. I'm fine communicating like this. If I need to talk I can always call someone.

I finally got emacs connected to the corporate email server. My productivity went up 100% overnight. I'm debating setting it up for slack.

Re: The social and economic costs borne by young people without offices

#48

Post by ci5er »

ericmcer wrote: post #38
supernova87a wrote: post #5

WFH has a huge difference in result depending on who you are, when you are (in your career), and where you are in a company (of organization). -- For the budding young developer who can't wait to show ideas to teammates and demonstrate being a go-getter by asking random questions and finding unaddressed issues to innovate on, WFH might be terrible. You're going to schedule time to fortuitously run into the senior per…

I try to fight my primal instincts of jealousy, etc. but it really feels like a lot of the 'butts in chairs' type people like human resources, various managers, etc. have slowly cut back to basically responding to emails/messages and maybe working a few hours a week. If that is your definition of WFH being great than it is definitely going great for them. As a dev it has kinda shredded my desire to do large scale unp…

If so: Get promoted.

I love it, because it has cut my commute down 10 hours/week and my dedicated meeting time 10 hours/week. That's 20 hours. Now I can dedicate 5 hours of that to taking walks or naps or cooking healthy food. 5~10 hours of that for more work. And 5 hours for the company. Generally a win for everyone, I think.

Re: The social and economic costs borne by young people without offices

#49

Post by tayo42 »

sokoloff wrote: post #29
jankotek wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

》For the working parent whose productivity has been slashed by 50% and stress has gone up by 50% due to parenting obligations, WFH might be terrible. And working at office with 1 hour drive home, makes those parenting obligations somehow easier?

WFH parenting is made much harder with daycare workers and school teachers now WFH.

This is a covid problem though, not a work from home problem. In a normal world, possibly even next year, this will go away

Re: The social and economic costs borne by young people without offices

#50

Post by necubi »

frompdx wrote: post #39
fxtentacle wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For what it's worth, I also wondered if this was a reaction to tech companies going fully remote and canceling their office lease. Especially because we just had another article about how remote work is hurting small businesses 2 days ago, which started with the incredibly flawed assumption that people would stop going to local restaurants if they didn't accidentally walk past them on the way home from the office. An…

In this case I suppose I'll give The Atlantic the benefit of the doubt because they do clearly spell out their advertising and paid content guidelines in this document (pdf warning). http://cdn.theatlantic.com/static/front/docs/ads/TheAtlantic... They also make an effort to distinguish paid content from their editorial content like this article from College Board. https://www.theatlantic.com/sponsored/the-college-boa…

Clearly you are someone who strongly believes in the superiority of remote work, but is it really that hard to believe that there are people who disagree?

I'm a software engineer with no connection to the commercial real-estate industry, and I'm pretty sure I haven't been a "victim of a subtle PR campaign." And yet I find remote work alienating and psychologically difficult, and I'm eager for a return to the office.

In addition to just...not enjoying remote work, I agree with the author that it would have been especially hard to be remote when I was younger. I would have missed out on a number of opportunities and connections that have been very helpful to my career.

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