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

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

#191

Post by globular-toast »

samarthr1 wrote: post #174
achenet wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

not if those jobs entail good written or even oral communication skills. Native English speakers have a huge leg up on Indians and Eastern Europeans in this regard. For example, I imagine Coca-Cola is willing to pay more to have the person writing their ad copy be someone who has been immersed in American culture from birth.

A good portion of Indian engineers speak good English. Anecdotal evidence only though.

But a good portion don't, which makes hiring take a lot longer.

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

#192

Post by heassler »

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…

Going to the office means getting to know the people you work with to a meaningful level (there are other opportunities to do that besides meetings, such as having lunch together or going out for a coffee/walk) in a way that is simply not possible when chatting via google meets.

But there’s also the increased exposure to serendipity. Unexpected things occur in the office. Maybe you overhear a conversation that makes you think about your career, or during drinks after work you end up discussing a new cool startup idea with colleagues. None of this really happens when you stay at home.

Sure, there are pros to staying at home. You will have more free time and fewer distractions, among other things. But there are also massive perks to putting a bit of effort and going to the office sometimes. Those perks, admittedly, may be hard to understand for the average introverted, socially anxious software dev.

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

#193

Post by memonkey »

heassler wrote: post #192
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…

Going to the office means getting to know the people you work with to a meaningful level (there are other opportunities to do that besides meetings, such as having lunch together or going out for a coffee/walk) in a way that is simply not possible when chatting via google meets. But there’s also the increased exposure to serendipity. Unexpected things occur in the office. Maybe you overhear a conversation that makes…

My own anecdotal and I'm sure many others have experienced this before, but getting the culture right for remote work has been a great experience. I get to know people at a meaningful level. I remember being younger in high school and making meaningful relationships on the internet through chat rooms and video games that last to today.

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

#194

Post by chapium »

heassler wrote: post #192
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…

Going to the office means getting to know the people you work with to a meaningful level (there are other opportunities to do that besides meetings, such as having lunch together or going out for a coffee/walk) in a way that is simply not possible when chatting via google meets. But there’s also the increased exposure to serendipity. Unexpected things occur in the office. Maybe you overhear a conversation that makes…

I disagree on one point. I've spent much of my career working with remote offices over the phone and with desktop sharing. I have to say, group video conferences really don't cut it. However, one on one calls and video calls work really well and you can get to know your coworkers. Its so much better to have one on ones with others and not have each other worry about posturing in front of their peers. Group video calls are at least just as useless as group meetings.

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

#195

Post by bradlys »

Someone1234 wrote: post #164
Cederfjard wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Not everyone can afford the space to have a proper home office, for example. Because they have to live in expensive urban areas near their workplace. Their money would stretch much further if they could remote-work from rural areas.

Until rural areas cost of living goes up because 37% of people decided to move out to unsustainable rural areas.

Overall - moving to somewhere more rural is a fix for an individual looking to solve their financial problem but it is not a society wide solution. Rural homes are a net drain on society and are subsidized by city workers.

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

#196

Post by dudul »

flowersjeff wrote: post #157

This surprises...nobody? Except maybe bean counters/management types that need to show off perhaps. With that said, I do have concerns. These issues center around a shift in benefits offered as a result of this new paradigm ( hate using that word but ) around the nature of work. I.e. the gig everything economy coming to your job...soon Many folks in the US work a 9to5 not just for the pay, rather for healthcare and s…

2 thoughts.

First, "gig workers" can't work across the board. Companies working on products often need people to have deep understanding of the product. We all know how costly it can be to lose say a software engineer who has a few years tenure.

Second, if the gig-economy were to become very widespread, it may finally be a push to have a true, sensible market for health insurance in the US. If employers no longer pay insurance carriers/brokers to cover their employees, these carriers will need to come up with products people can afford.

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

#198

Post by humanwhosits »

30367286 wrote: post #162
ethbr0 wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd spin this around and cast it as a challenge -- regular, forced interactions with coworkers is minimally sufficient and retards some people from pursuing social activities outside the home. There are already a number of options in even the smallest town. I expect that will increase as more people move to WFH and seek social outlets. And at the end of the day "interacting with coworkers in the break room" is a pret…

>I'd spin this around and cast it as a challenge -- regular, forced interactions with coworkers is minimally sufficient and retards some people from pursuing social activities outside the home. Absolutely. Additionally, even getting to that set of regular, forced interactions necessarily consumes the limited time those people would have to pursue those social activities outside the home. That is, it's hard to have a…

Hybrid has all the downsides of office work, it's just less hours of it

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

#199

Post by UnpossibleJim »

onemoresoop wrote: post #113
UnpossibleJim wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For every one of you, how many people are priced out of living in the city and have to drive to a parking lot to take the train in, or want their kids to have some semblance of a yard so they live in New Jersey and do the same?

It's true and it's their choice of course. If I lived in NJ I'd surely own a car too. Sometimes I wish I had a car, especially on weekends so I and my family can do some outings but it's so expensive and cumbersome in NYC.

Oh, it's impractical to own a car if you live in NYC. There's really no point, unless you make stupid money or have a car fetish, or have some specific reason.

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

#200

Post by shagie »

cwmoreiras wrote: post #180
shagie wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Regardless, I feel employees should get paid for their commutes. This opens up way too many cans of worms - some of which (I feel) are very unfair. (Morning shift) I worked at SGI doing tech support on the "East" team. The teams were split up by timezone (we were all in Mountain View - where the Google campus is now). My shift started at 5am (no traffic at all) and I lived about 10 minutes away at that time of day.…

So do you think it's fine that people spend hours each day in service of their company and not getting paid for it?

This gets to the question "what is the employer paying for?"

Let me flip your question around - do you think that it is fine that one person is paid extra to live 2h away or that they should be paid twice what I get paid for effectively the same time spent in service of the company because I only have a 10 minute commute?

Alternatively, consider the person who commutes into the office 1h each way while I'm WFH and have effectively 0 commute. Let's say the wages are $50/h. Should they get paid an extra $100 a day because they are commuting rather than taking advantage of the WFH option?

On Wednesday nights I'd head to dinner with my family from the office. This involved going about 20-30 minutes out of my way from my normal commute. Should I get paid for that adjustment to my commute?

Alternatively, instead of taking route 1 home, I took route 2 home and did some shopping on the way (the route is actually faster sometimes, but less enjoyable and a harder drive), how does that factor into what I should get paid for my commute?

If I took a 15 minute deviation from my normal commute to drive through McD's for breakfast, should I get paid for 15 more minutes?

I'm older now than I was, and so prefer taking city surface streets that are properly illuminated and plowed in the winter rather than country roads. This was a change that I made to my commute back in '18. Should I get paid more because I changed my commute to surface streets? It's a 30 minute drive... I could switch to taking a bus, but that's 80-100 minutes each way (yea, the particular route options are awkward - two transfers for the fastest route).

When I was in Northern Wisconsin, there was a Hmong community that lived 45 minutes away from the office. Would it be fair for the employer to say "you must live within 30 minutes of the office because we're not going to be paying more than 1h/day for a commute"?

The "not paying for commute at all" is the simplest and (I believe) most fair way to approach the commute and issues of non-productive time, personal choices for transportation, personal choices for "where you want to live", and significant complications for overtime and verification of overtime. It avoids issues of outright discrimination of people who take public transportation or live certain distances from the office.

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