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As the Pandemic Recedes, Millions of Workers Are Saying 'I Quit'

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Re: As the Pandemic Recedes, Millions of Workers Are Saying 'I Quit'

#181

Post by cmrdporcupine »

spacedcowboy wrote: post #122
cmrdporcupine wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For many of us it's actually been a wake up call about how important it is to be physically present with coworkers and a realization of how much the office actually does offer in terms of productivity and morale boost. I know this is a very unpopular opinion here on HN threads about this situation. And all power to the people who love remote work. But out of all the engineers I know personally and of all the people o…

I think that’s your personal bubble. Of all the google res I know, none of them want to go back to the office, and that’s probably just my bubble too. Personally I work at Apple, so I’m not getting the choice, but I am close to my vacation cap, so I’ll be “forced” to take a day off every fortnight; you can bet that I’ll be using an “in-office” day for that, so I’ll be working 5 days of every 10 in the office.

Well, I'm not in the Bay Area, I work out of Google Waterloo. So your experience might just be saying something about how crappy it is working in an office in the Valley.

I've personally never much enjoyed my trips to the Googleplex. :-) I like my own office much more.

Re: As the Pandemic Recedes, Millions of Workers Are Saying 'I Quit'

#182

Post by timbit42 »

kingsuper20 wrote: post #111
rossdavidh wrote: post #88

I have often worked remotely for years, but...I'm a contractor/consultant, and a programmer. I am unemployed several months out of the year, typically, and I am always intentionally short-to-medium term where I work. I fear that many of the people demanding remote work now, will be surprised when (not if) the first layoffs come, and they find out that the person who's in the office every day is more awkward to fire t…

Best point here. WFH is a hybrid between employee and contractor.

Expendable wage slave.

Re: As the Pandemic Recedes, Millions of Workers Are Saying 'I Quit'

#183

Post by lm28469 »

srackey wrote: post #134
dougmwne wrote: post #11

5 years ago I hit a burnout point and took a year off work. It was a huge perspective shift. I realized that my day-to-day of a rushed commute to work, a stressful and distracting office, thimble-deep coworker relationships and a life completely orientated around doing the above was an insane waste of my short time on Planet Earth. I reoriented my life around family, remote work, flexibility and balance. My quality o…

And also anecdotally, every professional office worker under ~30 I know has been absolutely miserable during this remote work experience, and is yearning to get back to the office - most for a full 5 days a week.

> every professional office worker under ~30 I know has been absolutely miserable during this remote work experience

I mean, we've been through major lockdowns/curfews/personal freedom restrictions, lots of people got sick, lots of people died, most non digital entertainment ceased to exist, most sports couldn't be practiced...

imho you can't pin point "remote work" as the main cause of why people felt miserable in the last few months

Re: As the Pandemic Recedes, Millions of Workers Are Saying 'I Quit'

#184

Post by afpx »

hypertele-Xii wrote: post #77
bamboozled wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nice you have the option

Imagine living in a society where basic income is guaranteed no matter what, and even its worst places - its prison cells - compare favorably to the finest hotels of other countries. You have so many options you feel constantly overwhelmed, stressing about making bad choices because everything your primitive heart could ever desire is not merely available, but plentiful and cheap. And it'll recruit you if you're not…

Write crappy programs, make crappy art and music, and write crappy stories. I'm low in talent, high in motivation.

Most people are probably low in talent and motivation (because lacking talent is demotivating).

Re: As the Pandemic Recedes, Millions of Workers Are Saying 'I Quit'

#185

Post by BTCOG »

Clickbait stub article. You aren't "quitting" by laterally moving from one slave job for an employer into another one remotely. Now, you're just enslaved in your own home! I've been working remotely for nearly 2 years now and work FAR more lately from home than the office. Quitting, the way that all these articles are making it sound would be changing your way of life. Quitting an office dev job to start working for another employer with deadlines and the same dev work from home really isn't quitting and it's just moving laterally into the same job.

Re: As the Pandemic Recedes, Millions of Workers Are Saying 'I Quit'

#186

Post by jandrewrogers »

mkr-hn wrote: post #112
dougmwne wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had no special circumstances, I just made a choice to put years of savings to work for myself immediately instead of in the uncertain future. I sold everything and lived simply. Not everyone could do it, but many could who think they can't.

Being able to save, especially for years, is a special circumstance. At least in the US where wages have been flat for quite a while even as cost of living skyrocketed.

Per the US government (BLS), the median household has the ability to save about $1,000 per month without changing how much they spend on ordinary costs of living. So not everyone can but most people can if they choose to. Of course, Americans are notoriously poor savers, which is the bigger culprit.

Re: As the Pandemic Recedes, Millions of Workers Are Saying 'I Quit'

#187

Post by mkr-hn »

jandrewrogers wrote: post #186
mkr-hn wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being able to save, especially for years, is a special circumstance. At least in the US where wages have been flat for quite a while even as cost of living skyrocketed.

Per the US government (BLS), the median household has the ability to save about $1,000 per month without changing how much they spend on ordinary costs of living. So not everyone can but most people can if they choose to. Of course, Americans are notoriously poor savers, which is the bigger culprit.

There is a 21 trillion dollar economy built largely on companies fighting over that $1000 with lies and manipulation from people who devote careers to outsmarting people.

Another thread on HN helpfully has examples of people refusing to go along with it. I don't think they're representative.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27629543

Re: As the Pandemic Recedes, Millions of Workers Are Saying 'I Quit'

#188

Post by disease »

rossdavidh wrote: post #88

I have often worked remotely for years, but...I'm a contractor/consultant, and a programmer. I am unemployed several months out of the year, typically, and I am always intentionally short-to-medium term where I work. I fear that many of the people demanding remote work now, will be surprised when (not if) the first layoffs come, and they find out that the person who's in the office every day is more awkward to fire t…

In my admittedly anecdotal experience, it's been a very long time since employers have had the luxury to be able to layoff software engineers.

Re: As the Pandemic Recedes, Millions of Workers Are Saying 'I Quit'

#189

Post by rorykoehler »

SavageBeast wrote: post #154
kingsuper20 wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Imagine living in a society where basic income is guaranteed no matter what, and even its worst places - its prison cells - compare favorably to the finest hotels of other countries." What I see are bored young males hanging out and getting in fights, not a whole generation of people learning cuneiform in their newfound free time.

Absolutely. There is no free lunch. UBI comes on the backs of the value adding class of society. Some people actually LIKE to work, hard as it is for some to believe. The Value Adding Class will have privilege thrust upon them in the form of paying for those young males to hang out and get in fights. Ive had the dubious honor of knowing more than one kid who was never going to have to work a single day in life owing…

This is a side effect of society overly focusing on money instead of knowledge as the primary success metric.

Re: As the Pandemic Recedes, Millions of Workers Are Saying 'I Quit'

#190

Post by vanderZwan »

the-dude wrote: post #100
vanderZwan wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The person you replied to wrote that all their clients "relocated any technical work they had in the UK to Poland or the Baltics" . That's not politics and bitter emotions, that's sharing their own anecdotal data. Of course, one could criticize generalizing based on that one data point, but that's a different thing altogether.

The comment you are commenting on literally(yes really) starts with blaming Brexit. How you can deny that is politics and bitter emotions is literally beyond me.

Saying that Brexit is the cause of something based on one's experience with clients, expressed in a way that suggests that it did not positively or negatively affect themselves in any way, does not strike me as particularly bitter, but suit yourself.
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