Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Zoom and Gloom

economist.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 60 posts

Re: Zoom and Gloom

#11

Post by ballenf »

The chart showing worker's preferences seems awkward to me. At first it looks like "wow, people in the US really like working from home 4+ days a week." And then you wonder did they separate out "never" and "rarely"? The cynic in me wonders if lumping them together would have undermined the thesis of the article too much as it would have been a large plurality of all answers.

Or to put it another way, 60%+ of US people want to work remote 2 days or less per week.

That response lines up with my personal experience. While I like working from home occasionally, I don't want to work somewhere where I don't have a desk available 5 days a week.

Re: Zoom and Gloom

#12

Post by hinkley »

I am on the road to developing a nervous tick around people in my house trying to talk to me while I'm sharing my screen in a meeting. The mute button goes away from the screen, and the touch bar, and I just freeze up trying to recall where to find it.

Is there a handy solution for this or am I just screwed?

Re: Zoom and Gloom

#13

Post by gbrown »

hinkley wrote: post #12

I am on the road to developing a nervous tick around people in my house trying to talk to me while I'm sharing my screen in a meeting. The mute button goes away from the screen, and the touch bar, and I just freeze up trying to recall where to find it. Is there a handy solution for this or am I just screwed?

Get a microphone with a physical mute button, or see if you can configure “push to talk”.

Re: Zoom and Gloom

#14

Post by toomuchtodo »

hinkley wrote: post #12

I am on the road to developing a nervous tick around people in my house trying to talk to me while I'm sharing my screen in a meeting. The mute button goes away from the screen, and the touch bar, and I just freeze up trying to recall where to find it. Is there a handy solution for this or am I just screwed?

https://mizage.com/shush/

Re: Zoom and Gloom

#15

Post by easton »

hinkley wrote: post #12

I am on the road to developing a nervous tick around people in my house trying to talk to me while I'm sharing my screen in a meeting. The mute button goes away from the screen, and the touch bar, and I just freeze up trying to recall where to find it. Is there a handy solution for this or am I just screwed?

Alt+A in Zoom will mute it, I think it works if you aren’t in focus (although I can’t remember).

Re: Zoom and Gloom

#16

Post by boulos »

ballenf wrote: post #11

The chart showing worker's preferences seems awkward to me. At first it looks like "wow, people in the US really like working from home 4+ days a week." And then you wonder did they separate out "never" and "rarely"? The cynic in me wonders if lumping them together would have undermined the thesis of the article too much as it would have been a large plurality of all answers. Or to put it another way, 60%+ of US peop…

They did separate out never and rarely in the original research survey [1].

Edit: The question was "In 2021+ (after COVID) how often would you like to have paid work days at home?“ (surveying "2,500 US residents aged 20 to 64, earning more than $20,000 per year in 2019 carried out between May 21-25").

The results seem to be:

- 20% Never

- 19% Rarely

- 8.2% 1 day

- 11.1% 2 days

- 11.7% 3 days

- 5.4% 4 days

- 24.2% 5 days

from the diagram [2].

[1] https://siepr.stanford.edu/research/publications/how-working...

[2] https://siepr.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/styles/page-w...

Re: Zoom and Gloom

#17

Post by zwieback »

I wonder how Covid will affect labor mobility for white-collar jobs. Driving past the company logo each morning and being surrounded by corporate imagery all day must have some kind of effect.

Re: Zoom and Gloom

#18

Post by sojsurf »

hinkley wrote: post #12

I am on the road to developing a nervous tick around people in my house trying to talk to me while I'm sharing my screen in a meeting. The mute button goes away from the screen, and the touch bar, and I just freeze up trying to recall where to find it. Is there a handy solution for this or am I just screwed?

I recently learned that if you mute yourself in Zoom, the space bar acts as a push-to-talk button.

Re: Zoom and Gloom

#19

Post by mega_dingus »

hinkley wrote: post #12

I am on the road to developing a nervous tick around people in my house trying to talk to me while I'm sharing my screen in a meeting. The mute button goes away from the screen, and the touch bar, and I just freeze up trying to recall where to find it. Is there a handy solution for this or am I just screwed?

You're hosed if you're switching focus away from Zoom (i.e. presenting). The keyboard shortcuts (Alt-A or holding-space-to-unmute) only work when Zoom is in focus

I have 2 monitors, and drag the zoom controls to the non-presenting screen

Getting a headset with a physical mic is probably your best bet

Side note: noise-cancelling headphones are way more useful than you'd think. I delayed for 5 months before buying them, and regret every minute I didn't do it earlier. Doesn't help with the mic, but I didn't realize how much extraneous household noises contributed to my malaise.

Re: Zoom and Gloom

#20

Post by kelnos »

I feel like most surveys on this topic are not going to be a reflection of reality. People are tired of being at home for a variety of reasons, including child-care difficulties and their inability to do much/any socializing outside the home, plus added COVID-related friction when doing normal chores like grocery trips.

These stress points make people associate these unrelated negative things with "working from home", which, in normal times, need not be quite the negative experience. Sure, there are valid reasons to prefer working in an office: lack of a workspace at home, desire for professional social interaction, desire to separate work life and home life, etc. But I think a lot of people who are so negative about working from home right now would be more positive about it if the COVID-related difficulties were removed.

I'd like to see this survey repeated, say, a year after things go back to normal (or as normal as they're going to get).

Post reply on HN