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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

#111

Post by redisman »

ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #89
sJ646U9k6c6gME9 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Because the pandemic is forcing literally _everybody_ to work their tails off to figure out how to make remote work succeed. Once managers master that (and they will because they have no choice), it's a tiny, tiny jump to offshoring.

Are you talking about hiring professional software engineers full-time from other countries? I think that is actually plausible and I've seen it work at multiple companies. Buying services from a "offsourcing" shop on the other hand - always a complete disaster or literally more time managing them than to build it yourself.

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

#112

Post by redisman »

creaturemachine wrote: post #73
aspaceman wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!”

Its true. Dead silence is a sign of mischief in progress, but sometimes you'll peek in on them and they'll be doing the cutest, most harmless playing, all by themselves in some corner off in their own world, and for just that moment you'll think you have the best kid in the world.

Right but when 30% of the time they're about to eat a broken lightbulb or drop a bucket of paint on themselves it's hard to let (the checking) slide when you're busy.

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

#113

Post by redisman »

hombre_fatal wrote: post #60

WFH has some obvious trade-offs. But I'm not particularly sympathetic to all of them when office work has been the only choice for almost everyone. Some of the downsides of WFH that the article points out, like how our office coworkers incidentally become our social life (and now we don't have them), are also symptoms of larger issues that I don't think work should be tasked to solve. The social isolation of the yout…

My problem always was, hanging out with people from work - we always ended up talking about work during the evening. Sometimes cathartic but work also kind of creeps more and more into your free time.

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

#114

Post by hkt »

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'm a working parent and I don't want to go back. The hideousness of commuting has been brought home to me, all the time I spend away from my kid shown up for what it is: wasted. If I have to quit and find permanent remote work somewhere, I will.

Ultimately I don't feel responsible for the careers of the juniors, and feel they're being used as an excuse - the main thing about the cities is it's possible to meet people you want to meet and do anything you want to do. This includes tech groups, which provide social and professional opportunities. I've been to plenty myself, and wonder if it couldn't be the mainstay of progression and networking now.

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

#115

Post by redisman »

pelasaco wrote: post #7

I'm doing home-office since 2013 and I'm doing fine. Have my surf and social life in my routine. Work focused, produce more and spend less time trying to get stuff done. Cook daily is hard but sometimes a joy and a must if you want to leave healthy. I would never come back to a 5 days in the office routine. Never.

I've done 5 years, with about a year of half-office-half-home. You readjust and I think it would be really hard to fit in the commute into my day now. With covid I'm sometimes thinking it would be nice to go in for a day but that is probably just a general desire to do something outside of the safe routine.

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

#117

Post by hkt »

chadash wrote: post #23
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?

As a parent, yes. I prefer an office because there are fewer distractions. If you hear your kid laughing outside your office, it's hard not to want to take a look. Plus, my commute is me time, where i get to listen to podcasts/audiobooks and relax. Sure, if my commute were especially long, I might say otherwise, but that's a different discussion.

I spend my commute on a train for an hour. No more.

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

#118

Post by redisman »

slavapestov wrote: post #13

I think people who are opposed to remote work should be honest about what they really want. They're advocating for all tech jobs to be concentrated in a handful of cities (SF, NYC, Seattle), all of which suffer from a housing shortage.

Remote wasn't that rare in Seattle at least even before covid.

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

#119

Post by jankotek »

kelnos wrote: post #104
jankotek wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But daycare closed is a different problem. If childcare would be closed, and you still had to commute to office... WFH saved you in this case.

Sure, but childcare being closed and the requirement to work from home are being caused by the same thing this time. Childcare being closed in regular times is a rare occurrence; while it's annoying, people manage to work around it. Yes, that can be stressful, but it's just for one day out of however many. Right now it's every day. If childcare was running at normal capacity but parents were still working from home,…

Not really, many people still have to go to work, even with childcare closed. WFH is a privilige, not burden.

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

#120

Post by Aeolun »

andybak wrote: post #63
konjin wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 abo…

> Why is paying the CEO more a better use of money to paying an employee more?

I think the problem here is the one who decides who gets more is the CEO.

They tend to believe the employee will keep working for the same amount until they leave.

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