Well, this article only underscores what we all have seen in the past years: remote working is better for employees (and potentially society as a whole, and the environment). Unfortunately companies prefer to have their employees less happy, but under tighter control, so tendencies to restrict remote work are getting stronger. Let's see if they manage to put the genie back into the bottle...
Early Remote Work Impacts on Family Formation
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Re: Early Remote Work Impacts on Family Formation
#32"affects"
Re: Early Remote Work Impacts on Family Formation
#33If the pandemic has demonstrated one thing, it is that I don't want to work in an environment where almost everyone is remote. It has become very clear that WFH workers take extra time off at random intervals during a day, and are typically hard to reach if you need to talk to them. Also, the smaller the children, the more likely it is they are subtly unavailable during work time.
This is not acceptable, even though I totally understand these people like that.
Some even have a 40 h job and admit openly that since they are doing WFH, they effectively have the whole day for their personal endeavors. Although in the story I am thinking about, there were no children involved. To the contrary, it is about a person 5 years away from retirement, and their boss has apparently given up wanting to legally fire them and trying to make them do meaningful work. So the solution was to push them off to WFH, and not think about the topic anymore.
Re: Early Remote Work Impacts on Family Formation
#34This is mildly good news, although I suspect that more evidence might be needed to nail the causality here.
> Remote work has the biggest effects on fertility for women who already have several children, and no effect on the fertility intentions of women who have no or one child.
This is the bigger concern though. I suppose no effect is better than a possibly negative effect which one may predict (intuitively you may meet your partner at work and that may not work so well when remote), but it is the more crucial segment to address.
Re: Early Remote Work Impacts on Family Formation
#35Found my wife and got married during the pandemic, have a 4-month old now and working from home 3x a week gives me the chance to see her grow. I would not be as happy if I had to commute everyday to work, even though i'm more of an extrovert and like to hang out with others. Being at home more also means I get to do more house chores. But the joy of seeing my baby grow is incredible! Yes, if you are at the office 24…
>Yes, if you are at the office 24 hours a day like Elon it's likely you'll do incredible things
That is a very optimistic outlook. Or the bar for incredible is lower than I think.
Re: Early Remote Work Impacts on Family Formation
#36Damn I love wfh. At some point my manager told me to not express my positive emotions so much because many people hated it, but man I loved it. My wife was studying so she was also at home, with the kids (then 4 and 8). Suddenly I could have breakfast with them, lunch, dinner, go for a walk with the kids and the dog in the middle of the day for an hour.
And now I still mostly wfh. Still loving it. Going to office 1-2 days a week, also loving that btw. Just, overall, loving the new balance. It feels so natural. Have to say, my commute of 1.5 hrs one way was killing me and I was, just before 2020, looking for other jobs, closer to home because of it.
Sure the ease of it all is enable by my wife being at home mostly, but she loves that. And she has the time to properly manange the restructuring of the old house we bought, and to do some handwork herself (applying insulation, arranging/negotiating with contractors etc.) Tbh, I think if my wife as as work focused as me, it wouldn't be so nice for both of us, so I get the struggles some people experience, but they were mostly when the kids were at home as well.
Re: Early Remote Work Impacts on Family Formation
#37I switched our whole company switched to remote back in march 2020; I became a father in 2022 and have no intention to ever switch back to the daily commute.
I was there for everything so far. But it's not only what I would have missed out on, but also there are so many situations with a baby where it is useful to have a second set of hands. I don't want to imagine what my wife would have had to endure, if I left her alone the whole day.
Re: Early Remote Work Impacts on Family Formation
#38I had my firstborn from my new fully WFH job, in the middle/tailend of the pandemic. It has totally been a blast having the little one around. I work in my living area which is open plan into my kitchen, so I get to see her learning how to eat out of the corner of my eyes when I'm in work meetings, etc. My personal suggestion: if you're working from home with children, don't try and seperate and go into the study; do…
Very similar situation (had first one 3 months before covid, second one during), our flat back then made me work from our living room, where they played. Absolutely amazing for bonding and I am sure they are better off due to it, but I can't say it has been beneficial for my work. But then again the same can be said about most others.
We have tons of global conf calls, its harder to do that with kids screaming in the background or demanding your attention. Good luck focusing on that hard task where it takes you some time to even get to mental model of given problem.
The thing is, when choosing priorities, I would have to be really messed up piece of sh*t of a human being to prioritize work over my own kids. So all good on that front. Now I work from my own study room as they are a bit older (and we moved to bigger flat) and its nice to have some privacy too
Re: Early Remote Work Impacts on Family Formation
#39Found my wife and got married during the pandemic, have a 4-month old now and working from home 3x a week gives me the chance to see her grow. I would not be as happy if I had to commute everyday to work, even though i'm more of an extrovert and like to hang out with others. Being at home more also means I get to do more house chores. But the joy of seeing my baby grow is incredible! Yes, if you are at the office 24…
There are countless of people like Elon (overworked) who have never achieved anything incredible in life, and will never achieve anything remarkable.
Re: Early Remote Work Impacts on Family Formation
#40Well, this article only underscores what we all have seen in the past years: remote working is better for employees (and potentially society as a whole, and the environment). Unfortunately companies prefer to have their employees less happy, but under tighter control, so tendencies to restrict remote work are getting stronger. Let's see if they manage to put the genie back into the bottle...
Just like with everything else nothing is universal.
My team and I are again dipping our toes to office and our office day is by far most productive day of the week for us.
Only problem is that we transitioned to "open smart office" over the pandemic, so we no longer have personal desks. However that too should be resolved by Q4 as renovations come to and end and hopefully we can carve out our own space again.