241–250 of 411 posts
Yeah I'm good in my home, thanks.
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I never understood why anyone would spend hours traveling each day just so they can sit in front of a computer in another place for a while and go back home. Glad the world has caught up with this being complete nonsense!
Because it doesn’t take me hours, I live a reasonable distance from the office. I find the office a much more pleasant space to work from.
I have gone back to the 30 min commute. I do not care for the commute part. The office bit is 'nice'/whatever as it is as I tell the people I work with 'toy distraction free'. As all of my cool things I like to mess with are at home.
But honestly they are paying me a decent salary and part of the deal is I do what they pay me for, for a few hours of the day. I am selling my time for money. If they want to pay for that I am fine with it. They want to pay me to 'work from home' I am fine with that too. It is is 'their dime'.
I could be convinced to commute to a satellite office that's not affected by rush hour traffic. There's a lot of real estate available in the burbs. These don't really exist though, and their expense far outweighs their benefits. The problem is that companies expect employees to be mobile when they are not. It's called putting down roots for a reason. Pulling kids out of school, buying a new house is very disruptive.…
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> point people at the stats in Scandinavia where a huge chunk of childcare costs is borne by the state, and yet the birth rates are dropping. What, the state that raises its funds by draining resources from families? The state paying for childcare can't make it cheaper to raise children; it just means everyone is living with the costs that they were already going to have to pay. On average, if the cost of raising kid…
It's cheaper to raise kids since you would already have paid the cost in taxes if you didn't get kids. The important metric is the difference in cost of having kids vs not having kids, and since daycare is heavily subsidized, the difference is small. Same things go for schools, food in schools, universities, et.c., they are all "free", as in paid for by everyone in proportion to their wealth, instead of individually…
It isn't cheaper to raise kids. They're actually losing more under the socialised system because they still have to give up enough resources to raise the kids and now also to cover inefficiencies in the government program. On average everyone would be worse off. Or you're going to be taxing grandma so instead of her providing helpful childcare services she has to go and work at McDonalds to make up the difference or something. Society is geared towards supporting children already - routing the resources through the state or through the family can't make it easier. Men work to support families, women work to support families, grandparents have nothing better to do than support families. The resources were already tagged to support families. The government can't magic more resources into existence if raising kids is expensive. They'd be taxing families so instead of using the resources to support their families, the resources are being ... handed out to support families. There are no gains, so it isn't going to help.
State spending can reallocate; I can see some potential success in using childcare to free up high performing parents. But if the problem is median experience, reallocation can't do much.
Postscript The taxes in these countries are no joke. Young families are losing a lot more to the tax system than the "free" childcare makes up for. If you traded the free childcare for paid childcare and low taxes, they'd likely be in a much better position to have kids. [Taxes] approx. = [Cost of Services] + [Admin Costs] + [Cost of Rorts]. That isn't making it easier to fund a family.
We had this discussion. I wanted the same "luxuries" as at home: - 200 sqf dedicated room with my own toilet, shower and kitchenet - Basic lab equipment: 4 tables, 10 screens, 6 computers... Nothing crazy, under $20k total - Soundproofing, video conferencing equipment, 1Gbps uplink - Compensation for time and expenses I would spend on commute - Window with a nice view It did not go down very well.
And yet, you can have all of that at home without much effort. My setup is significantly less elaborate than yours, and still not something any company seems willing to replicate any more. I don't think either is excessive, obviously my own setup I don't consider excessive since I spent /my own money/ to make it so. It's insanity that any company would expect you to return to the office and accept anything less.
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(I often try and struggle to explain my thoughts on this, but I'll try again.) I keep hearing here in the UK that the reason people aren't having kids is because it's so expensive, and I do what you do -- point people at the stats in Scandinavia where a huge chunk of childcare costs is borne by the state, and yet the birth rates are dropping. My theory on this, and one that I personally felt as well, is that there's…
Women in the west are guilt tripped into having careers now and looked down on for being stay at home parents full time. Men have always been in this boat. Why would they have more kids when neither parent has time for the ones they already have? So we see them end up with 1-2 kids instead of many
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> You're not forced to work at any particular company This is just false. People can be stuck at a company for a variety of reasons.
I’ve never met a good programmer who didn’t always have a trail of unsolicited job offers following them. Obviously there are many situations, but I think many people can be selective about where they work.
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I disagree. I work from home as a new dad of a nearly 8 month old girl now. The first 3 months I took off work to be a full time dad, but since then I've returned back to a 4 day work week and when I work Monday to Thursday I am not distracted by my baby girl at all. I have a separate room as an office, if the door is closed then it means no interruptions. My wife is still on maternity leave so she is free to do the…
Sorry to say but sweet docile 8 month old girl is EZ mode and very different from a 3 year old boy running around banging on your office door demanding your attention every 20 minutes. Source: have 3 yo boy and 7 mo girl, even with stay at home mom to help. The girl’s presence is almost unnoticeable during work hours unless I want to see her, it’s fully under my control. The boy is a totally different story. Wouldn’t…
I work from home and strongly support working from home, but interruptions from kids are a serious challenge with no easy solution if you're the only parent/person/adult physically in the house at the moment.
IMHO the best thing for both parents and employers to do is allow flexible hours. if you want to work from 6 am to 10am, then be off for 6 hours and resum then from 4pm to 8pm, that should be easy (barring important meetings, etc).