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The social and economic costs borne by young people without offices

theatlantic.com

61–70 of 154 posts

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

#61

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…

The small company CEO is a big one. Motivating people remotely is tough

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

#62
post #47
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 c…

I get what you’re saying and business is often like that, but buying employees computer equipment for their home office is common for example. Tech is also on the cutting edge of pampering employees in exchange for better work. Why not an increased salary for more space at home.

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

#63
post #47
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 c…

> Why would they pay you more than the minimum anyone than they would for any other cost center?

Maybe because you're a resource and not a cost center?

It's not always the case - some job roles are fungible - but I don't think that's the case with a typical HN denizen.

Let me put it another way. Why is paying the CEO more a better use of money to paying an employee more? Doesn't that build in a lot of assumptions about untapped value? And (at risk of getting out of my depth) paying the shareholders isn't the always the right thing to do. Don't most tech companies avoid giving dividends in favour of using the money to improve the share price? Which brings us back to employees and their potential value...

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

#64
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?

For many people it has.

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

#65
post #39

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…

I don't think it's a grand conspiracy. I think it's just that someone who's career is writing for the Atlantic isn't an intellectual heavyweight.

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

#66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I thought the hot dog carts were financed by the tourism board to make NYC look interesting on TV and movies. Do they have customers?

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

#67
post #9

As a recent graduate with an overseas job offer who has been left with no choice but to work remotely until Japan re-opens its borders to foreign workers, this really hits home. My student apartment is not equipped for this lifestyle. I do not have a home office in a sprawling estate in the suburbs on several acres of property where I can enjoy the sounds of nature. I live in a small apartment on a busy street surrou…

I started feeling the same way. The only thing that made me feel better was caring less about my performance at my current job. Once I accepted getting one rating or so lower than I wanted, it was very easy for me to stop thinking about work or working after 5PM. This might be hard since you just started your first job after college and, if you’re like me and most new graduates I’ve run into, are eager to please and succeed.

But it helps to take a step back from work emotionally sometimes. A typical career is 40 years and as long as you aren’t extremely lazy (which is like working 10hr/week, not just 40 or even 35) or rude you’ll do fine in your first job. Your real life isn’t waiting to start, it’s ticking along right now.

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

#68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I thought the hot dog carts were financed by the tourism board to make NYC look interesting on TV and movies. Do they have customers?

I like them. Also the $1 pizza places. Good shit

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

#69

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?

Parenting is weird. Haven’t you ever seen the parent whose kid goes quiet, and then they jump up in a panic? They know their kid is up to something horrible if they’re quiet now.... There’s lots of thoughts like that and plenty to worry about as a parent. It’s more than just “Shut up Johnny!”

Also just having your child survive is not raising them, people have gone from having an educational input from a trained teacher to being the sole carers _whilst they're working_. Sure whilst the kids aren't fighting/breaking stuff/eating badly they really like sitting on the couch all day but that's terrible for them.

I love home educating (far better when museums/parks/venues and things are open mind you) but I'm at work .. there's no education, not even childcare, it's babysitting level of care at best.

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

#70
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Commute can also be exercise/activity time.

That's less good than not-commuting and choosing when to have exercise time, unless you have low willpower

could do both too
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