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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

#231

Post by achenet »

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #214
achenet wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

join a sports activity. Free socializing, plus health benefits. :)

>Free socializing, plus health benefits. :) Not my experience. At sports activities where I live, people come to do sports, not really to socialize. Once the sport activity is over, most go home to their kids/wives/girlfriends/etc. At least in Germany where the focus is always on the activity at hand, and socializing with strangers is a distraction from the activity you came for. I practice 3 different sports right n…

my condolences. :(

I guess it may depend on the sport group. I've had good luck with the local Basic Fit (globo-gym type outfit, but the nearby branch has some nice people), and my weighlifting club, so perhaps you may find better luck in another sports group?

Back when I lived in Marseille, I actually made a few really nice friendships from hanging out at the Prado street workout park. It was on the beach too, which was really nice.

Climbing is also quite popular, and my local climbing gyms seem rather conductive to random social interactions that could lead to deeper friendships, although honestly I don't go very ofter (less than once per month), so perhaps that's just my perception.

That said, if you're more comfortable meeting people at work, perhaps you would be happier with an office job?

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

#232

Post by Retric »

closeparen wrote: post #218
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 don't particularly enjoy the forced, stilted chatter but I do get a lot of value from: a) Being obliged to put on clothes and leave the house. b) Spending a large part of the day at a change of scenery. c) Having other people there, around, ambiently. Spending 23 hours a day alone in your room + 1 hour for outdoor exercise, with occasional weekend visitation, is among the worst punishments the state has at its disp…

WFH don’t require working at home, you can work wherever you want.

Laptop + 5G means you can work outside for much of the year at a local park etc. You can do all that coworker social stuff with your friends rather than people you happen to work with.

Even if you do stay home skipping your commute and eating at home saves significant time and money every week you can use to again socialize with people you want to actually be around.

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

#233

Post by hn_version_0023 »

eropple wrote: post #48
foolfoolz wrote: post #12

i know it seems unlikely now but i think we will return to the office. not 100% of the time. not everyone was doing 100% before either. but a lot of people have switched jobs in the remote only era. we have experienced / are experiencing how little we know these new people. how little we feel connected to them. how strange it is to not make new friends at a new job that go beyond the work-friend level. i think most p…

I started a new job during COVID. I've met my coworkers twice (two of them three times). There are a solid four people out of an org of ~40 who I unhesitatingly consider non-work friends now. "You can't make friends over the Internet" hasn't been true for decades.

Indeed. How many of us have friends made through gaming over the ‘net? I’d wager 50%+

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

#234

Post by grardb »

30367286 wrote: post #219
lamontcg wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Hybrid is a sufficient compromise. No it isn't.

What is a sufficient compromise, in your view, that satisfies the need of some workers to have regular face to face interactions with coworkers and prevents corporations unprepared to manage a remote team from whipping back to full in-office? I do not want to put words in your mouth, but since you offered so few of them, I am tempted to believe you are one of the few lucky workers who has sufficient leverage to whole…

Assuming the word "hybrid" is being used to mean that an individual employee has to go into the office for at least some amount of time per week/month/whatever:

Here's the issue I have with the main argument I see against remote work, or rather the main argument I see in favor of forcing people to commute to an office ("satisfies the need of some workers to have regular face to face interactions with coworkers"):

I want to be at home, and I am fine being at home. Why should I need to go to an office because of a coworker's need for social interaction? I don't need that social interaction. To me, the argument always seems very self-centered from the point of view of pro-office people. Let the people who need that social interaction go to the office, and let everyone else stay home if they want. There's no reason that someone should be forced to go to an office because of the needs of other people, especially when those needs have nothing to do with work.

This is like arguing that I should be wearing a certain color of clothing because some people like to (or need to?) see that color. That's not my problem to solve for them.

I get plenty of social interaction outside of work hours. There should be zero expectation for me to spend more time, energy, and/or money (getting ready, preparing or buying lunch, commuting both ways, etc.) so that people who aren't my friends get to look at/talk to me in 3D.

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

#235

Post by deadbeeves »

onion2k wrote: post #181
weatherlite wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We are social creatures, there is something quite unnatural only interacting with your wife/kid or worse - with no one else at all, for weeks and months. If not the office, workers are better off using some social working space, but unfortunately WFH is so tempting and easy most will resort to that. Psychologically it's not ideal. Yes the office can be a pain, commute and what not, but loneliness could be worse.

We are social creatures, there is something quite unnatural only interacting with your wife/kid or worse - with no one else at all, for weeks and months. Offices are significantly less 'natural' than spending time with a small group of people. If you go back a thousand years or so many people lived their entire life within a mile or two of where they were born - they grew up, worked, got married, lived and died in a…

That "small" group would consist of something like 100 people, not 5. If you want to appeal to nature, it's less natural for your family to be your entire social circle, than for it to include casual workplace acquaintances.

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

#236

Post by coding123 »

hooande wrote: post #210
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…

If there is a large shift toward gig economy work, then the healthcare industry will shift as well. There's nothing preventing them from offering affordable healthcare to gig employees other than the status quo and their current profit models. Something the size of the insurance industry is going to shift about 5-10 years after the general market. So if you're worried about short term gigification of your job, you mi…

I think it's dangerous when we look at gigification as a "who cares it will work out somehow".

Imagine how up-in-arms if they gigified programming. It has already happened in places, but what if they wholesale a price per line of code?

This will get a lot of replies but honestly, a codebase that is spaghetti from gigification may be cheaper than non-spaghetti codebase at 100k - 200k/year * number of developers and work just as well for the domain it is in.

If you can put the "it won't work" aside - imagine they figure out that it does. That rage right now - how is that not applicable to the people getting gigified right now?

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

#237

Post by civilized »

weatherlite wrote: post #170
Adraghast wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

We are social creatures, there is something quite unnatural only interacting with your wife/kid or worse - with no one else at all, for weeks and months. If not the office, workers are better off using some social working space, but unfortunately WFH is so tempting and easy most will resort to that. Psychologically it's not ideal. Yes the office can be a pain, commute and what not, but loneliness could be worse.

> If not the office, workers are better off using some social working space, but unfortunately WFH is so tempting and easy most will resort to that. Psychologically it's not ideal.

I would caution against the presumption that people will do things that are "bad" for them because they're convenient and you have to force them to do things that are "good" for them instead.

In these comments you can see examples of people who are going to co-working spaces. Obviously they feel they need it and I support them. Personally I have no interest in going to a co-working space. I love my WFH solitude and autonomy, and 2021 was the most productive year of my life work-wise.

Is this psychologically bad for me, regardless of my own perceptions and experience? I suppose it's possible, but I don't think some random boss with the power to fire me unless I come into the office is a better judge of that than I am.

Random boss is not enlightened by virtue of being a boss. Surely anyone who has nodded their head to a Dilbert comic knows that by now. Random boss will do what's good for himself, not what's good for me.

Paternalistic, collectivist authoritarianism has dominated human thought for most of our history. It's only recently that individual autonomy and freedom have become more influential. I think that's a very good thing and I'm not going back.

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

#238

Post by dtx1 »

ethbr0 wrote: post #121
Adraghast wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

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.

Or,it allows people with social anxiety or depression a room for social interactions with very well defined rules and in an environment where people generally interact positively with you. I like the convenience of WFH too but I do miss cooking with my colleagues and their families on Wednesdays.

This might sound weird to you but living alone and having had parents that made every meal either a screaming match or a barrage of passive aggressive comments I enjoyed those lunches with my much more reasonable colleagues a lot.

Being essentially alone most days certainly didn't help with my depression and that makes other social interactions harder.

I still won't go back though, wearing trouser being optional at work is a worthwhile tradeoff

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

#240

Post by ChuckNorris89 »

achenet wrote: post #231
ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Free socializing, plus health benefits. :) Not my experience. At sports activities where I live, people come to do sports, not really to socialize. Once the sport activity is over, most go home to their kids/wives/girlfriends/etc. At least in Germany where the focus is always on the activity at hand, and socializing with strangers is a distraction from the activity you came for. I practice 3 different sports right n…

my condolences. :( I guess it may depend on the sport group. I've had good luck with the local Basic Fit (globo-gym type outfit, but the nearby branch has some nice people), and my weighlifting club, so perhaps you may find better luck in another sports group? Back when I lived in Marseille, I actually made a few really nice friendships from hanging out at the Prado street workout park. It was on the beach too, which…

How do you make friends at gyms? Here everyone has noise cancelling headphones on, focusing on their sets, and only staring at their equipment or their phone. There's no socializing with strangers going on on unless you brought your own friends, as everyone is busy to do their sets and go home.

And what's the difference between a gym and a weightlifting club? Here we have gyms, where there's free weights, machines and cardio equipment where you can do everything including weightlifting. Never heard of a weightlifting club. What do you do there besides lift weight like in any other gym? Is it done in a group or something?

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