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At JPMorgan, productivity falls for younger employees at home

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Re: At JPMorgan, productivity falls for younger employees at home

#131

Post by jrochkind1 »

golergka wrote: post #128
gotaran wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

About $450k all in (not FAANG but a mid sized public company in SF I'm sure you've heard of). Fwiw, it wasn't a terrible living space before the pandemic; it just isn't conducive to WFH situations. I'd found that rent controlled spot, and I was paying $1100/mo for a room in an apartment with a backyard, in-unit washer/dryer, and a dishwasher. As a single dude, I really didn't need anything else, I wasn't willing to p…

> living in a cramped space with 3 roommates in SF with no privacy > About $450k all in What.

OK, I'm out.

Re: At JPMorgan, productivity falls for younger employees at home

#132

Post by jrochkind1 »

chiefalchemist wrote: post #38
zepto wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you think he’s just lying about it? When I was a younger worker I certainly did slack off on Friday and Monday when I could get away with it. I’ve worked in more than one office where people started drinking on Friday afternoon in the office when the CEO was out of town.

Lying? He's saying what he needs to say to print more money. He didn't say it was _only_ the younger employees, did he? He's not a goal. He's got a narrative. Is anyone going to question him? And wreck their career?

Yes, I think we call that "lying".

Re: At JPMorgan, productivity falls for younger employees at home

#133

Post by r29vzg2 »

wsatb wrote: post #118
kortilla wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> in a world collapsing around me with no short or long term future. This is just your world-view being shaped by your “news” sources. Maybe get off of social media for a while or only follow people who do not talk about politics/current events. > but if I was working in finance? No way. People who say this tend to underestimate the importance of finance. For example, enabling easy mobile banking for tech illiterate…

> This is just your world-view being shaped by your “news” sources. Maybe get off of social media for a while or only follow people who do not talk about politics/current events. This is a good way to escape reality, but not much more. I've done this plenty of times, but the world doesn't stop moving because you're ignoring what's going on. You become ignorant, and that is far worse. > Don’t shit on fields you don’t…

> This is a good way to escape reality, but not much more. I've done this plenty of times, but the world doesn't stop moving because you're ignoring what's going on.

Unless you’re in a position to actually create change, I don’t see how following every single update to an unfolding news story helps you. I am not talking about being completely ignorant. There is a saying, important news will always find you.

You could try avoiding news, and letting the news find you. Just following that simple methodology will greatly change the perspective you have on the world, and your short term life.

Re: At JPMorgan, productivity falls for younger employees at home

#134

Post by PascLeRasc »

kortilla wrote: post #92
avolcano wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This has been a massive issue for me. I've had the same problem off-and-on over the past few years, whether in offices or at home. The work I do feels rather pointless in a world collapsing around me with no short or long term future. I at least sometimes get pulled back into feeling good about what I work on because it's a consumer app that does have a large userbase that depends on it for their happiness, and I do…

> in a world collapsing around me with no short or long term future. This is just your world-view being shaped by your “news” sources. Maybe get off of social media for a while or only follow people who do not talk about politics/current events. > but if I was working in finance? No way. People who say this tend to underestimate the importance of finance. For example, enabling easy mobile banking for tech illiterate…

I agree that the problems you mentioned are truly important. The issue is that most banks, and especially the giants like JPMorgan, are interested in making them worse.

[1] https://newrepublic.com/article/155212/worked-capital-one-fi...

[2] https://jpmadoff.com/victims/

[3] https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/the-9-bi...

Re: At JPMorgan, productivity falls for younger employees at home

#135

Post by gotaran »

golergka wrote: post #128
gotaran wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

About $450k all in (not FAANG but a mid sized public company in SF I'm sure you've heard of). Fwiw, it wasn't a terrible living space before the pandemic; it just isn't conducive to WFH situations. I'd found that rent controlled spot, and I was paying $1100/mo for a room in an apartment with a backyard, in-unit washer/dryer, and a dishwasher. As a single dude, I really didn't need anything else, I wasn't willing to p…

> living in a cramped space with 3 roommates in SF with no privacy > About $450k all in What.

Haha, well it's the same spot I was living in when I was making $120k + non-liquid RSUs. And since it was rent controlled, I never bothered to move. I'd be paying $3000 more if were to move into a 1BR, and I would rather spend that on travel, dates, and post-tax investments.

And anyway, an apartment that's fairly spacious can turn into a congested mess when everyone's WFH. Previously, all of us had tech jobs where we had dinner at work, did a post-dinner workout, went to happy hour, and such. On weekends, some of us would be on day trips to Napa, or at a dinner party, or some such thing like that. Now that everyone's more or less inside during business hours, organizing the fridge is like playing Tetris, walking in the house requires a level of spatial awareness driving in Manhattan does, and storing all the household essentials takes up even more space. Kitchen contention issues also come up all the time.

The getting more space vs. staying tradeoff is worth it now: I'd personally value each sq ft I have to myself more, and the rent differential is much lower too (rents in SF are crashing, and I'm not restricted to living in SF anyway). IMO, that wasn't a reasonable tradeoff to make pre-Covid.

Re: At JPMorgan, productivity falls for younger employees at home

#136

Post by Retric »

thirtyseven wrote: post #111
Retric wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting, I find on boarding easier with WFH teams because so much of that informal stuff gets documented. Transcripts of troubleshooting text only (slack/IM/etc) meetings for example are a gold mine. It’s really the mix of WFH in mostly face to face offices that’s difficult.

It's great if that stuff gets documented, but if your team didn't already have a culture of writing good docs, what makes you think they magically will develop one now?

It’s not that you end up with good documents, it’s that similar effort results in more useful documents. Pasting a long conversation into a document kind of a pain to work from, but it’s fast and a much better starting point than a vague description without any real context. The next person reading the document might be motivated to clear up any misconception they had, where starting from scratch seems like a huge effort.

PS: The second bit is surprisingly effective. I have created a few bare bones documents that ended up becoming very fleshed out in a year+ when some sends it back to me.

Re: At JPMorgan, productivity falls for younger employees at home

#137

Post by coronadisaster »

baron_harkonnen wrote: post #115
holidayacct wrote: post #76

Never believe stories like this, measuring productivity is an impossible problem. Microsoft spend something in excess of 3 billion dollars trying to quantify productivity in the 90s and they couldn't do it. One of my college professors worked on this exact problem for the Army in the 80s, they created a formal domain specific language for quantifying employee productivity it took them 20 years and several hundred mil…

> Never believe stories like this, measuring productivity is an impossible problem I want to start off by saying that I don't completely disagree with you, but all of us should take a step back and realize how an absurd of a position this is for us to be in a society. This immeasurability is inversely proportional to the tangible, real value created. You can, for example, absolutely measure to the dollar the producti…

> But as software products grow more complex and the actual value more vague

most popular software tend to decrease in quality with time... engineers are just looking for something to do and add stuff that can sometime be of negative value

Re: At JPMorgan, productivity falls for younger employees at home

#138

Post by actuator »

I used to enjoy short periods of remote work but I have hated WFH since it started during the Covid period.

- I miss talking with colleagues on things related to tech, but not necessarily related to the current task.

- Video meetings are exhausting to be a part of for resolving simple things. It was way faster to just talk in person.

- Video meetings feel less collaborative in general for open ended discussions, I see far fewer participation from teammates if it is not their own task.

- New employees who onboarded during Covid feel isolated as they didn't get to build personal rapport with others in the same or different teams.

- Interaction with people from different teams has almost disappeared, not everytime you had a new idea, you were actively looking for it.

- As much as I enjoy cooking, I hate that it feels like a chore at this point to do day in, day out.

- I hate that personal time and work time boundaries have merged and it seems like I am working at all hours and relaxing at all hours at the same time.

Re: At JPMorgan, productivity falls for younger employees at home

#139

Post by MikeTheGreat »

baron_harkonnen wrote: post #115
holidayacct wrote: post #76

Never believe stories like this, measuring productivity is an impossible problem. Microsoft spend something in excess of 3 billion dollars trying to quantify productivity in the 90s and they couldn't do it. One of my college professors worked on this exact problem for the Army in the 80s, they created a formal domain specific language for quantifying employee productivity it took them 20 years and several hundred mil…

> Never believe stories like this, measuring productivity is an impossible problem I want to start off by saying that I don't completely disagree with you, but all of us should take a step back and realize how an absurd of a position this is for us to be in a society. This immeasurability is inversely proportional to the tangible, real value created. You can, for example, absolutely measure to the dollar the producti…

> You can, for example, absolutely measure to the dollar the productivity of a plumber and you can easily compare two different plumbers

I'm curious about this idea.

What if plumber A shows up, quickly fixes something using existing, on-site materials, and ends up charging much less (no parts + 'quick' labor), and then the plumbing breaks again in X months.

What if plumber B shows up, takes more time and replaces a part of the plumbing, and ends up charging more (part(s) + more labor) but then the plumbing lasts for Y months, where Y >> X?

Which plumber is more productive? How does one convert the productivity to dollars?

Re: At JPMorgan, productivity falls for younger employees at home

#140

Post by [deleted] »

gotaran wrote: post #73
andreilys wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you thought about relocating from SF? Most of my friends, including myself, have taken advantage of the current WFH situation to find much better accommodations for themselves outside of SF. Obviously not an option for everyone, but for those that have it I would definitely pursue it.

Oh yeah, definitely. I held on to my place in SF because it was a rent controlled spot that I clinged on to, but with rents crashing and the quality of life in SF worsening, I've considered terminating my lease and putting my stuff in storage. Where did you move? A few months in a seaside town Airbnb would be nice. I could use the change of scenery.

[deleted]
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