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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

#261

Post by spookthesunset »

somehnacct3757 wrote: post #53
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…

Whether workers want it or not isn't going to be the deciding factor. Nor will it be a mental health issue. Just look at their years of ignoring studies about how open offices are bad for knowledge workers. Rather, it will be purely a financial decision. It comes down to whether employers are going to sign many-year leases for a social hangout spot for their employees. As well as accept liability during future COVID…

> As well as accept liability during future COVID outbreaks.

Yet somehow grocery store workers managed to work in their "office" and survive the last two years. Why do all these software developer people think they are so special?

It bothers me how many people use COVID as a means to push their personal agendas.

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

#262

Post by shagie »

cwmoreiras wrote: post #258
shagie wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ha…

Your examples have a level of granularity that borders on absurdity. We all know that what it comes down to is this: Company makes an offer, i.e. "One of the perks of this job is you receive a 2 hour daily commute stipend". Employee accepts or rejects that offer.

Why not raise everyone's salary by $100/day ($2,500/y) and call it even?

Less accounting to be done when someone's commute changes based on inclement weather, no needing to punch time clock when you leave and get home (or record milage on your vehicle), no difficulty with alternate commute choices (if I bike to work and it takes 1h rather than 30 min driving)...

What benefit to the employer is there to pay someone more if they live further away? What problem would there be if every employee was given the same pay increase regardless of where they lived?

It means that payroll has a lot less work to do too (rather than trying to keep track of everyone's commute).

If Meta HQ did this, would they be giving less to someone who lives in East Palo Alto rather than Gilroy (because of the "difference in commute")?

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

#263

Post by Apocryphon »

RandallBrown wrote: post #185
Bluecobra wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Didn't Microsoft give everyone their own dedicated office in those days? I thought I read/heard somewhere that is what spawned development of Outlook/Exchange. I agree about the distractions, it's extremely bad with the open office model and hard to get anything done for me. I would much prefer cubicles or dedicated offices.

I had my own office at Microsoft as late as 2013. It was by far the least favorite work environment I've ever had. It was lonely and unproductive for me, with a 15 minute - 2 hour commute depending on traffic. I came home from work angry every day. I have no idea how I lasted almost two years in that environment. I really enjoy open offices. My next job was all pair programming all the time. No assigned desks. You ju…

That's amazing to find someone who's actually in favor of open offices, but you are probably in the extreme minority, at least as these HN discussions go.

Couldn't you still pair program in personal offices? Not to mention it would allow for more discussion without background noise. Or what about offices for teams, if individual offices are too isolating?

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

#264

Post by unemphysbro »

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…

what was the merge code process like?

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

#266

Post by SketchySeaBeast »

30367286 wrote: post #251
tharkun__ wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A sufficient compromise would be to allow the people that want regular face to face interactions with coworkers to go to the office and do just that. Not sure what the culture is in your place but at my place everyone has their video on in calls, so there's always face-to-face communication (exceptions can apply of course in some circumstances but that is the general rule) that way. People that want that do go to the…

> But they do it with like minded people This is the main problem I see with your compromise. The self-sorting will create or enforce existing silos. The compromise is not only between you and your employer, but also between you and your coworkers. You might derive no value from face to face interaction, but your coworkers certainly do — and that includes you. I suspect that this self-sorting will result in a very lo…

But if I'm forced to come in for two days I'm going to go in, keep my head down, and get out, which is what I did 5 days a week before. The loud people have always and will always dominate those conversations.

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

#267

Post by vkou »

rebeccaskinner wrote: post #255
closeparen wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You are viewing remote work through the particular circumstance of the pandemic. Remote work before covid was very different, and I expect in time we'll get back to a lot of that. I worked remotely before the pandemic, and most days I still have ample opportunities to meet and talk to people. Most weeks I'd attend a meetup (I'm in a small city in the midwest and we still had plenty of events to cater to most any nich…

> You are viewing remote work through the particular circumstance of the pandemic.

Those particular circumstances of the pandemic haven't been with us for almost a year, now, ever since mass vaccination started. I hated WFH in 2020, and I hated WFH in 2021, and I still hate WFH today. Despite having no pandemic restrictions on what I can do today.

And even prior to vaccination, if you wanted to go out and do stuff, most establishments/businesses/travel options/etc were open since late 2020.

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

#268

Post by kkfx »

The fallacy reside in: "can be performed", witch do not state how they can, because so far most push "smart working" in the form of "get this laptop, this smartphone with a 4/5G plan and you are ready to work". That's obviously tend to fail and works just for people who have corrected the aim perhaps with a docking station, external monitor and external keyboard, having a spare room silent enough etc at personal level at company level it's even worse: most have no idea about remote work. The modern classic solution is having a big enough hw resources to keep a VDI infra asking workers to be on remote desktop all time, and again that's not a good idea even if seems to be the easiest.

Seriously facing such aspects and finally admit that "real" WFH means set up a home office, with relevant furniture, equipment, connections etc and organize the work to be done from remote pushing people on some proprietary platform in the hope to get a quick&done third party solution will not really push up WFH to something structural and good for all parties involved.

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

#269

Post by nluken »

unidosnuestros wrote: post #159
nluken wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> their coworkers are the only people they regularly interact with in-person This sort of self-alienation seems to be a pretty widespread problem larger than the in-person/remote debate. That said, it's probably better for those experiencing it to have some in-person socialization in the office than none.

How do you know they aren't travelling the world while "working from home"? Sure, they aren't keeping up with a set group of friends, but they are making new friends every day. The world is bigger than just your tiny little apartment. You can go to Latin America, where they share largely the same timezone as us, but you can play with turtles! Or rescue dogs! Or clean up after penguins (south of argentina). It's reall…

Sure you could use remote work to do things, but in practice most people don't. Forcing everyone back into the office without a good reason isn't a good solution, but I think that the option to work in person is an ideal situation to those who like to socialize with others. Personally, I have that flexibility and have started to take advantage of it by working while traveling. But I've observed of my WFH coworkers don't seem to, which goes back to the original point- the alienation is not a function of not going into the office. It's a separate issue that giving that option to people can mitigate.

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

#270

Post by renewiltord »

Adraghast wrote: post #100
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.

The interesting thing is that folks on HN who want to work from the office just say “I can see why you’re remote. Just not for me. I prefer to work in a team that’s all in-office” but folks on HN who want to work remote always go “It’s because you’re lonely that you can’t work remote. I have a loving wife and children. You are miserable and using coworkers as a substitute for social company.”

Like, dude, we get it. This is important to you. So go work where you find that. A bit tiresome to constantly come into these threads and listen to this endless repetitious nonsense.

Christ on a stick. Do you never tire of it?

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