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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

#301
post #265

Wait till they find out 80% of office jobs are redundant.

I know right... If I could go through with (got health issues at the time) implementing automation of some stuff, then because of me hundreds of people would be out of their jobs... or at least that job. It would have saved the company a lot of money, too.

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

#302

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.

> 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 peopl…

I never said you have to force them, that's a philosophical question with no clear answer, I'm just stating a problem - which is called loneliness and solitude and which affects most people. Its very possible in your individual case 100% remote work is what's good for you, but it's not likely that its good for most people most of the time because it goes against everything we know about our nature and genes. Now if a person is 100% remote worker but he invests heavily in socializing then there shouldn't be a problem. The trouble is I don't think most people will do this, at least not enough. Many people lack discipline and have very weak will power; so many of us find it extremely hard to do the things which we know are good for mental well being - such as exercising, eating right and socializing with friends and family. We find it extremely easy and even addictive to do things which aren't great (or even bad) for mental well being such as Netflix binging, reading Twitter and eating junk food and not leaving the house for lengthy periods. The easy thing to do is just WFH and not bother with seeing anyone, because calling up friends is hard work. Sure, people will still see friends but not more than they did before they went WFH. It's mostly just gonna be people working from home, alone, or with a spouse if you're lucky. This is why I'm not incredibly optimistic.

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

#303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have all those too. But even when you are fully remote, and have a healthy outside social support system away from work, you cannot ignore the reality that is you spend the majority of your waking hours working alongside these people, often for the same goals and deadlines. It's a basic desire to connect with others we share our time with. Unless you are one of the rare people where you truly are a solo shop (even…

> It's a basic desire to connect with others we share our time with. I think you're creating a universal here where there is none. I have secure boundaries, and I can enjoy a coworker's company and work without having to be friends with them. And there's also an ugly side to this, where people don't want to have coworkers that they wouldn't want to be friends with. That's not some natural urge, that's something that…

How are you able to appreciate people in a specific capacity without feeling like you need to become buds with them?

How do you avoid forming many negative opinions about a person just because you don’t see them as socially interesting?

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

#305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think a lot of it is the exact circumstances of you office as well. All else equal I think I would actually prefer working in an office assuming that: 1. It felt like a "real" space (i.e. not a beige cubical farm) 2. Was not excessively loud 3. I had a comfortable chair/workspace 4. I could walk there from my house in under 20 minutes 5. There was no dress code 6. There was nobody there who I found deeply annoying…

Being able to walk there from my house in under 20 minutes is a big thing for me. If I am a 1-3 miles walk/bike ride, I would go to the office all of the time. Assuming its a safe comfortable commute. I hate driving in rush hour personally, any amount of distance. Also feeling like a real place is nice. I actually don't mind a cubical, though an office would be nicer. I really hate open office though, and open office…

Yeah, I don't mind a cubicle per se (especially compared to the typical open office) but I found the traditional cubicle farm offices, where everything is this bland, monochromatic beige color and lit with neon lights, very depressing.

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

#306

If everything you do goes in and out over a wire, some day your job will be either automated or offshored.

That's what a lot of people thought in the 2000s, but going by SV salaries the automate or offshore story hasn't really played out! Then again, horses seem to have lost their job in the early 20th century after cars came along, and their population just declined thereafter.

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

#307
post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 wh…

I think the problem is, since working fully remote means spending about twice as much time in formally scheduled meetings, and those meetings are significantly more draining on Zoom than in person, both I and the people I might socialize with feel a lot more drained at the end of the work day and less interested in doing anything non-vegetative. Previously we would go for dinner or drinks after work pretty often.

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

#308

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.

The effect is compounding too because those people will spend less time driving and idling their engines!

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

#309
post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 w…

Exactly, why should we allow someone else to make their problem our problem?

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

#310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 wo…

> Imagine how up-in-arms if they gigified programming

Programmers would be up in arms in love with gig work and demand it everywhere if it turned out to actually work. The main problem with WFH is that you still have to work a set hours per week, gig work is the ideal. If you want to work 80 hours one week and 0 hours the next week you can do so. Gig work also means no deadlines, no manager, no long term worries, just write code and get instant money and feedback. The only reason you don't see developers clamoring for gig work right now is that they don't think gig work is possible for development.

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