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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

#291

Post by vonseel »

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 prefer working in an office because it helps them stay disciplined and keep a better work/life balance. Perhaps I’m just speaking for myself here, but I tend to get lazy and feel like my life has much less structure as a fully-remote worker.

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

#292

Post by weatherlite »

tharne wrote: post #119

I really hope American businesses don't bring this headline to its logical conclusion... "37% of jobs in the United States can be performed entirely at home...by people in India or Eastern Europe for much less money"

It's already been happening and will increase for sure, but so far hasn't really affected salaries as far as I can see, U.S devs haven't felt a thing yet. If anything, salaries in East Europe went way up.

What I do fear is interest rate starting to rise and the implications of that on our industry but that's another thread.

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

#293

Post by odshoifsdhfs »

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…

Maybe try a more 'team' oriented sport? I have found padel tennis to be probably one of the most 'socializing' sports I have played (too much even for my tastes). The fact you have to play in pairs forces you to interact with someone, and is rare the game where a beer after to talk about it doesn't happen. (unless it is a weird hours).

I made also good social circles playing tennis and doing bjj, even though those are more 'individual' things, they seem to include a part of a social element to it as well.

Never tried dancing, but the times I did bouldering and crossfit, unless you were going in a group with already a beer planned after, they tend to be more start-end kind of things.

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

#294

Post by weatherlite »

deadbeeves wrote: post #235
onion2k wrote: post #181

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. 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.

Not sure why you're being downvoted, this is the truth. We are much closer to a pack of chimps than anything else, definitely not 2-3 family members (and even 2-3 members is optimistic considering divorce rate and plummeting child bearing) . We lived in groups of a few dozens of members for hundreds of thousands of years.

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

#295

Post by vonseel »

Cederfjard wrote: post #92
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.

I think if a company is going to be fully remote, they should provide an office budget to every employee, so you can either rent an extra bedroom / buy a bigger house / or rent space in a co-working facility.

Working from your bedroom with a desk crammed in the corner is a serious downgrade IMO from having an office with good vibes.

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

#296

Post by deadbeeves »

biomcgary wrote: post #281
closeparen wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was much more of a community life outside the home, with your fellow villagers.

In this case, the community is defined by the proximity to your home. Working at an office with a typical US commute is not remotely the same.

Working remotely from home is also a very different lifestyle, so I'm not sure what the argument is. Living as if it's the 1000 BC is not in the cards.

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

#297

Post by Apocryphon »

vkou wrote: post #290
rebeccaskinner wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As much as people want to pretend the pandemic is over, it isn't. The legal restrictions might have lifted in most places, but there's a big gap between that and things being back to how they were before- or how they'll be once we've actually hit the endemic part of covid and have a better understanding of what that looks like. You can still go to a restaurant today, or travel, and co-working spaces might be open, bu…

> As much as people want to pretend the pandemic is over, it isn't. No, it's not over, in fact we're at our worst rate of world-wide daily cases since November 2021. Believe me, I'm both a pessimist, and one of the more COVID-cautious people here. But in my region/anywhere I'd like to go, I can, and currently feel comfortable doing just about anything I want[1] - and have been for most of the past year (Sans Omicron…

> ... And yet, I vastly prefer going into work over WFH.

Could be just an imbalance between the pre-pandemic world and then two years of the pandemic world. It's quite possible if you had entered WFH when society was normal, there wouldn't be this sharp jolt.

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

#298

Post by mantas »

closeparen wrote: post #285
bcrosby95 wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I assume you don't have any friends or family outside of work that live close to you? My group of friends gets lunch together 3-4 days out of the workweek. We even sometimes do dinner with eachother during the week. Sometimes we do this with family instead - my wife's sister and parents live within 15 minutes of us. And we have kids that we lug with us.

I meet my friends for specific events (cycling, running, lunch, coffee, concert, theater, etc) lasting a few hours each on the weekends. I don't know anyone who wants to do those kinds of things on workdays, or to be "around" without a specific activity planned. It's something but it's still very little compared to working together.

In my whereabouts weekday evenings is where the fun social stuff goes (well, used to before pandemics). Group rides, group runs, orienteering events, bar trivia nights... You get most attendants on weekdays since on weekends many people are out of town (family, summerhouses, etc) and/or go to full-day events.

Theater performances or concerts are not uncommon on weekdays either. Touring artists just have to play on whatever day it turns out to be.

Also, once remote working with lax schedules become the norm, more opportunities will come up. E.g. I fondly remember times when my friends' and mine schedules would click and we could do quick morning rides.

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

#299

Post by bobbean »

monkeybutton wrote: post #84

Imagine the environmental impact of cutting out emissions from 37% of commuters for "free". We could do it today. Its been proven to work the last 2 years. It's such low hanging fruit it's mind boggling!

Oh my god, imagine the improvement in traffic for those who do have to leave their house for work.

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

#300

Post by Apocryphon »

deltree7 wrote: post #276
sharemywin wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not trying to be sarcastic. I genuinely asking. Why? I'm not a fan of the office because: 1. I don't like the commute 2. I have an office in my house, but at the "office"; I would be sharing some kind of space. 3. now that covid is less of an issue I plan on going to lunch more with freinds.

This could have never happened if Jeff and Sanjay were 'working from home' https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/12/10/the-friendship... Who knows Google would have been an also-ran Search Engine company if it weren't for those two solving the right scale problems at the right time. And no amount of 'Productivity Metrics' can capture these leaps in value creation because it truly is of the 'Unknown-Unknown' categor…

Most people are not going to be in the position, either in their role or the stage of they organization, to enact anything even remotely resembling that sort of innovation. Even when scaled down to their role and organization.
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