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Early Remote Work Impacts on Family Formation

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Re: Early Remote Work Impacts on Family Formation

#71

Post by lynx23 »

flangola7 wrote: post #60
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…

The thing that's not acceptable is micromanaging bosses and the attitude that business is more important than family.

If family is more important then your paycheck, why dont you resign?

Why should someone without a family invest more at work just because you consider work a secondary thing?

Re: Early Remote Work Impacts on Family Formation

#72

Post by humanrebar »

passwordoops wrote: post #47

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 s…

> Most are carried out by women, ...

Is that true? I can rattle off a list of male-dominated jobs that are absolutely not remote, like basically all the "trades" and a list of jobs popular with women that are at least somewhat remote friendly.

Does someone have evidence?

Re: Early Remote Work Impacts on Family Formation

#73

Post by cjmcqueen »

gampleman wrote: post #34

This 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…

My opinion is that people that already have kids and aren't afraid of managing/parenting children while WingFH have more availability and less stress.

Less affluent and people with no kids are using their time elsewhere, which sounds like people are doing more of what they want and less time traffic.

Re: Early Remote Work Impacts on Family Formation

#74

Post by ragebol »

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…

We had our first in June 202, so early in the pandemic. I was already WFH since 2019, my wife joined me in that while pregnant in March 2020.

I used to have my offic in the living room, but as soon as our son could walk IIRC, we moved the office. Office is now separate but reachable for the kids. But the separation is better for my concentration. What was my office in the living room is now the play area, filled with drawing, Lego, cars, and what-have-you.

WFH with small kids is perfect. No commute so I gain an hour a day. When I feel it's been enough work for the day, I'm cooking dinner 10 seconds later. If the kids wake up late, fine, I'll drop you off at daycare later after I did a bit of work. It's 5 minutes on the electric cargo bike anyways.

I don't think I could ever go back.

Re: Early Remote Work Impacts on Family Formation

#75

Post by humanrebar »

nextlevelwizard wrote: post #64
rob74 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

I personally do not see an issue with 3 office day mandate. Your job probably isn't so solitary that you don't need other people at all and at the office you get a lot of micro interactions that you wouldn't get otherwise. Just think when was the last time you randomly ran into a guy from the next department while getting coffee and you were just chit-chatting and one of you brought up a topic that helped the other?…

I want to be paid for the value I provide, not the GPS coordinates of my desk chair.

I think it's far from clear that remote workers are always, or even generally, providing less value than in physically present ones.

I know I had a lot more time to document and do other kinds of written collaboration, especially across the organization, when I was working more days per week remotely.

Re: Early Remote Work Impacts on Family Formation

#76

Post by christkv »

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…

Not American :), living in Spain though and until recently we had shit parental leave and flexible work schedules is something very recent.

Re: Early Remote Work Impacts on Family Formation

#77

Post by ZephyrBlu »

lynx23 wrote: post #67
dreadnip wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

I am not a dev. I need to coordinate with my coworkers during the day. And since we dont have documentation for every miniscule step a team mate performs, we need to actually talk to each other from time to time. I am sure as a dev, with sufficiently large work packages, WFH is just a breeze. But not in my job.

What's your job and why can't you co-ordinate async?

"remote but still sync" feels like a major failure mode of being remote to me. Being able to work and communicate async is important for productivity in a remote environment.

Re: Early Remote Work Impacts on Family Formation

#78

Post by j45 »

tyoma wrote: post #70
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…

I’ve also been working from home and very glad to have been there for my kids when they are young, but highly productive are not two words I’d use to describe the experience. I guess my time management and prioritization skill have improved by necessity, but the lack of uninterrupted quiet time is real.

Add someone navigating this after an overly productive decade of remote work, but not one that is healthy or sustainable to be well rounded to access the next level of growth in all fronts, I’m beginning to wonder if having a separate space on the property might be something to try out. Those pre made work pods look more and more interesting.

Re: Early Remote Work Impacts on Family Formation

#79

Post by Tade0 »

Almost every parent of 4+ that I know follows the same pattern: they live in the middle of buttfuck nowhere in a detached house in a low cost of living area and work remotely, while their spouse is a homemaker.

Our whole team is remote so toddlers sometimes participate in standups and that is fine - they lose interest after a few minutes anyway.

I can't imagine going somewhere every day and not participating in my child's development to the extent I am now.

This is the way - the more we push people to live in cramped, high-cost places, the less children they will have and the sooner we'll run out of people able to work, much less care for the aging population.

Re: Early Remote Work Impacts on Family Formation

#80

Post by humanrebar »

t344344 wrote: post #18

Nice paper. Now I can just point that return-to-office is sexist!

Anyone who thinks it doesn't have disparate impact probably never had to pump and store breast milk at work just to commute it back to a child at the end of the day.

And it also has disparate impact for people with disabilities. I promise you that people on chemo or with IBS are more productive not having to badge into the office several times per week.

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