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

37% of jobs in the United States can be performed entirely at home

sciencedirect.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 410 posts

Re: 37% of jobs in the United States can be performed entirely at home

#91

Post by giantg2 »

willcipriano wrote: post #49
paulcole wrote: post #5

100% of the jobs I want to do can be performed entirely at home, but I prefer to do 100% of them in an office.

Id be open to going into a office, but when I compare wages between jobs done from home and jobs that demand in office I'm not seeing a significant delta. Even if the drive was 15 minutes I'd want something to cover my costs and time. I was interviewing a month ago and I got a in office offer that was a little lower than the remote offer I had. I brought up that I'd be willing to come in for more money or some sort o…

"That made the choice for me."

Often the way they react is more important than the actual content. Seems like if they don't understand your concerns on this topic, they likely won't be amenable to your future concerns on other topics.

Re: 37% of jobs in the United States can be performed entirely at home

#92

Post by Cederfjard »

mwattsun wrote: post #67

5 of us wrote Microsoft Works for the Macintosh while working at home from 1984 to 1992. Without the internet, we got together as needed to merge code, usually once a month, but sometimes once a week. We talked on the phone. We went to Microsoft once in awhile. It was ideal and worked very well. Maybe it was just our personalities that made it work, but I am astonished that any programmer would rather go into the off…

Some people also don’t have living conditions at home that are conducive to being productive. Not everyone can afford the space to have a proper home office, for example.

Re: 37% of jobs in the United States can be performed entirely at home

#93

Post by jmyeet »

The lesson here is you can never really predict what will happen. This is important to remember when people make any predictions, particularly for doom and gloom scenarios.

Take the Black Plague, which killed an estimted 25-50% of the population of Europe. For those lucky enough to survive this was a huge boon for workers rights and wages [1].

There have no real increase in worker wages in 40 years [2]. The pendulum swings back and forth on any issue and we've swung too far towards unbridled capitalistic exploitation (IMHO). Labor organization (ie unions) led to things like a limited work week, safety in the workplace and so on. The flipside of that was corruption, resistance to change and so on. But ever since the farce of the Reagan trickle-down economics era, worker conditions have gotten increasingly worse (relatively) while the accumulation of wealth at the top is absolutely unprecedented.

So Covid has killed millions and this is of course tragic. But who knew that this would be the catalyst for the first real increase in wages in decades and the ability to redefine the outdated in-person work that wastes so much time on money on pointless commutes?

I'm glad that something good is coming out of this.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consequences_of_the_Black_Deat....

[2]: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/08/07/for-most-us...

Re: 37% of jobs in the United States can be performed entirely at home

#94

Post by foxyv »

paulcole wrote: post #75
foxyv wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I lived in some parts of Europe, then yes, I would totally love to go back to the office. But in the United States? I can't afford to live close enough to the office for a short commute (4-5x as expensive) and transportation is garbage. Worst of all, there is nobody else there. Our teams are spread across 8 different countries in so many different time zones. I would have maybe 1-2 office mates from my department.…

I’m in the US, choose to live in the least expensive and smallest apartment near a large-ish city so that I can have a short and manageable commute to both work and the things I enjoy doing. My transportation costs are essentially 0 — bicycle maintenance I can mostly do myself. My electric bill is $20-$50 a month. Sometimes $3 for a bus ticket. Plus no homeowner’s insurance, property taxes, maintenance, water/garbage…

I used to do that as well. But then my rent tripled in 5 years pricing me out of the area. I still miss my tiny apartment, but working from home is pretty nice too.

Re: 37% of jobs in the United States can be performed entirely at home

#95

Post by silisili »

stevenhubertron wrote: post #63

I don’t hate working in an office. I hate working in an “open plan” office where someone is always interrupting my work.

Same. Seems not too long before people started really hating offices, offices started being designed to make you hate them. Open offices, no walls, 'island concept' which sounds all fun and tropical until you learn it just means you no longer even have your own desk.

If companies want people back in offices, make them enticing. Have perks! Imagine everyone getting their own room, with a nice desk and maybe small couch and mini fridge. Having a shared personal assistant to take care of some things, work related or not. Heck, even something as small as a free daycare would be a huge motivator.

If you want people back, start treating them like people and not cattle.

Re: 37% of jobs in the United States can be performed entirely at home

#96

Post by paulcole »

willcipriano wrote: post #49
paulcole wrote: post #5

100% of the jobs I want to do can be performed entirely at home, but I prefer to do 100% of them in an office.

Id be open to going into a office, but when I compare wages between jobs done from home and jobs that demand in office I'm not seeing a significant delta. Even if the drive was 15 minutes I'd want something to cover my costs and time. I was interviewing a month ago and I got a in office offer that was a little lower than the remote offer I had. I brought up that I'd be willing to come in for more money or some sort o…

I’m actually the opposite. I’d take a 10-20% pay cut today to get an in-person job vs. my current remote job. I just haven’t been motivated to job hunt lately.

Re: 37% of jobs in the United States can be performed entirely at home

#97

Post by nickysielicki »

My workplace is trying to get people to come back in the next week or two and people are suspiciously taking a lot of vacation. ~30% of engineering is out today. Methinks they’re in for a very big surprise in 2 weeks, and I don’t think they’ll have the money to counter the offers that people will naturally field in this market.

It’s an unforced error.

Re: 37% of jobs in the United States can be performed entirely at home

#98

Post by jleyank »

This seems low as only jobs that require(!) F2F interaction with customers or coworkers can't be done remotely. This might come down to "mucking about with the hardware" being the dividing line - if you need the car, it's in the shop, otherwise you can do in on the road, via the Web, ...

Psychologically, companies and (older? extroverted?) workers won't agree with this, but it's not up to them to change. Change happens at its own pace and you can either yell at the tide or move with it.

Re: 37% of jobs in the United States can be performed entirely at home

#99

Post by eminence32 »

mwattsun wrote: post #67

5 of us wrote Microsoft Works for the Macintosh while working at home from 1984 to 1992. Without the internet, we got together as needed to merge code, usually once a month, but sometimes once a week. We talked on the phone. We went to Microsoft once in awhile. It was ideal and worked very well. Maybe it was just our personalities that made it work, but I am astonished that any programmer would rather go into the off…

Nothing anyone says in these comments should invalidate your own personal experiences and successes with your working arrangements.

But I have to admit I'm surprised to hear you say that you are "astonished" that any programmer would prefer to work differently.

2 things that I've learned from reading NH over the years: tech/programmer people are often very opinionated, and also have widely different opinions on just about everything :)

Re: 37% of jobs in the United States can be performed entirely at home

#100

Post by Adraghast »

mwattsun wrote: post #67

5 of us wrote Microsoft Works for the Macintosh while working at home from 1984 to 1992. Without the internet, we got together as needed to merge code, usually once a month, but sometimes once a week. We talked on the phone. We went to Microsoft once in awhile. It was ideal and worked very well. Maybe it was just our personalities that made it work, but I am astonished that any programmer would rather go into the off…

> I assume that some people are just very lonely and need face to face

Anecdata from Hacker News suggests this is true. A lot of lonely young men here freely admit their coworkers are the only people they regularly interact with in-person, and remote work takes that away from them.

Post reply on HN