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Early Remote Work Impacts on Family Formation

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Re: Early Remote Work Impacts on Family Formation

#41

Post by VBprogrammer »

Simon_O_Rourke wrote: post #25
jossclimb wrote: post #12

I have been remote for 11 years now and have two children 9 and 12. I can't imagine what it would have been like if I had spent the week out commuting between the hours of 7am to 7pm, we would have lost out on so much bonding time with their daddy being an integral part of their life. I managed to be highly productive, build a career, yet be there for bath times, tucking into bed, school plays / sports days, nursing…

Well said! Did you ever in that time get any pushback from an overzealous boss about going back to the office?

I've been remote since our youngest turned 1 year old due to the pandemic. I honestly can't imagine what life would have been like otherwise.

The year I spent before that I was lucky to see her at all during a day. She wasn't awake before I left (except for the inevitable screaming during the night) and we kept her up late so I could feed her a bottle before she went to bed.

I think it's a huge win for equality and family life. Any boss will have to wrestle WFH out of my cold dead hands.

Re: Early Remote Work Impacts on Family Formation

#42

Post by em-bee »

lynx23 wrote: post #33

If 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…

their boss has apparently given up wanting to legally fire them and trying to make them do meaningful work

so they didn't have any serious work assigned to them, and you wonder why they have the day free for themselves?

they are subtly unavailable during work time. This is not acceptable

when i am focusing on coding i am also unavailable. please don't expect me to be available any time you shout. i am not your personal assistant.

Re: Early Remote Work Impacts on Family Formation

#43

Post by dreadnip »

lynx23 wrote: post #33

If 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…

> This is not acceptable

Why? I'm a software engineer working in an agency and I work exactly like you're describing. If I feel like going on a run, I'll mark myself as AFK and go on a run. If I feel like closing my laptop at 3 and go shopping, I'll work later in the day when I'm not busy.

I still deliver on my deadlines and contribute more to the company than most colleagues. If you ping me on my phone I'll probably reply at any given time, and I put emphasis on written communication about issues I'm handling. Ideally, I've already written down all of the information you'd want to talk to me about.

This "style" works really well for me.

Re: Early Remote Work Impacts on Family Formation

#44

Post by lotsofpulp »

ideamotor wrote: post #14
drekipus wrote: post #5

I 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…

What's funny is that when my wife became pregnant I had a near panic to find a place so I could have a dedicated area to focus. And we closed on that very house last week. Our baby is only one month old, but I can already feel what you are talking about. Where we are now is basically one giant room, and I actually like it so far. Whoops. Well, at least the "study" in the new house is a large converted garage that has…

Enjoy that peaceful phase, it will not last long.

Re: Early Remote Work Impacts on Family Formation

#45

Post by eequah9L »

xyzzy123 wrote: post #11
iso1631 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Once they were old enough they didn't need constant supervision. Trying to work from home with a toddler was a nightmare. That's odd, I had no problem with working from home with toddlers, but I wasn't trying to do two full time jobs, on any given day either I was dedicated to looking after the kids or my partner was. Looking after a toddler is a full time job.

Setup matters a lot, eg if you have a separate room to go to or a standalone unit in the back yard. Kids are "sticky" (once they get into your office for any reason it can be difficult to get them out again). Number of kids matters, their ages matter, their needs matter, sometimes they "get loose" while carer is busy with one (e.g. putting to sleep), and carers need breaks too. For my particular situation, I can get…

Plus kids are generally noisy, in a way that's optimized to get your attention as a grown-up. I had to move out to an external office. There were more reasons than just noise -- we were also expecting a second one, and this was a two-bedroom apartment, it wouldn't work one way or another. But noise and attention were what pushed me over the edge to start looking for a nearby office for rent. I can't imagine getting much done with a toddler in the corner of my eye, as another commenter here puts it. Though I suppose work substance matters, too. If you are in meetings all day, sure, I guess that could work.

Re: Early Remote Work Impacts on Family Formation

#46

Post by the_gipsy »

lynx23 wrote: post #33

If 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…

First off, there is a huge difference in being 100% available and not outputting work. They are not exclusive. I WFH with people with babies and kids and they absolutely exceed expectations.

Second, people in office can be just as unavailable or unproductive as from home. There are a million ways to slack off or be intermittently absent.

Third, it's a matter of gender equality too. If the childcare is split 50% then one simply cannot work like someone without kids, or one needs someone else to take care of the kids. If it's not split then 99% it's the women who stay at home while the men build their careers.

Re: Early Remote Work Impacts on Family Formation

#47

Post by passwordoops »

This is all true, and I do feel very lucky to have a WFH arrangement, but I always think of the people who have jobs that cannot be remote - hospital, care takers, teachers (right now). Most are carried out by women, earning low wages, doing what's been termed "essential" work.

There is a definite bifurcation between the (generally upper) laptop class and the (generally lower) caretaker class. I'm not sure what the solution is (shorter work weeks, flexible scheduling, etc), but everytime we pat ourselves on the back for pulling off remote work this comes to of mind to me

Re: Early Remote Work Impacts on Family Formation

#48

Post by peppermint_gum »

cultureswitch wrote: post #17
Lolaccount wrote: post #4

Elon Musk: "Get back to the office, we're going to prove we're badass by going through productivity hell!" Elon Musk: "Population rates are collapsing and it's a crisis we need to address!" EIG: https://eig.org/remote-work-family-formation/ Billionaires should be banned from speaking on anything other than their areas of expertise. They get an outsized platform to spout absolute nonsense on topics outside their core…

I hope you're suggesting that in jest. Realistically though, the better way to address the problem is to progressively tax capital, no matter the income. A top bracket of 5% of capital gone per year will pretty much solve all but the most efficient of billionaire problems. And progressively tax inheritance in a similar way too.

I don't think it's a good idea, because of the second order effects. Assuming this tax can't be evaded (which, to be fair, is a pretty big assumption), high net worth individuals will be paying >100% tax rate. This means they will have to quickly sell the stock they own to afford the tax. And who will be able to buy it from them? This guarantees a complete, permanent crash of the stock market.

And this is just one of the problems. What about high-capital-low-margins businesses like retail stores and, especially, farmers?

Also, assessing the net worth of a person is incredibly hard. How much is a private company worth? One might think it's easy because Forbes does that, but they're mostly pulling the numbers out of thin air.

Re: Early Remote Work Impacts on Family Formation

#49

Post by rob74 »

nextlevelwizard wrote: post #40
rob74 wrote: post #31

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...

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.

That's all good, as long as you are free to choose the way of working that is best for you and your team. What I am talking about is companies mandating e.g. 3 office days per week for everyone, even if for some it makes no sense at all (neither business-wise nor personally).

Re: Early Remote Work Impacts on Family Formation

#50

Post by nextlevelwizard »

Thlom wrote: post #24
christkv wrote: post #3

Besides remote work I think more flexibility for part time work would be helpful.

What about paid parental leave, cheap child care and more flexible work schedules? I manage fine to be involved in my kids life even though I'm working from the office most of the time. Only have 20 min commute though. If I need to follow the kids to the doctor or dentist or meeting with their teacher or whatever during the work day that is no problem (I work from home most of the times when that is needed though). I…

Always need to remember that most vocal people about WFH are Americans who have hours and hours of commute time with very strict office times and just plain expectation of doing 9 to 10 hours of work per day.

Taking remote days was never an issue for me and spending 15 minutes commuting to the office isn't a big deal and around these parts people always looked me funny if I was in the office past 15:00.

So the expectations of what "office work" means is wildly different.

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