To state the obvious, the more successful people are the more unlikely children fit into the schedule. If one is never home, beyond genetics, the success wont rub off onto the next generation. Work form the office seems a terrible long term plan.
Early Remote Work Impacts on Family Formation
211–220 of 267 posts
Re: Early Remote Work Impacts on Family Formation
#212Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 FWIW, I commuted through most of my son's childhood. I still made it home for those things you list. But, it did take optimizing house location/commute, etc. I certainly wasn't gone 7am-7pm. Even with 60 min of driving and 60 min for lunch, that's an 10 hour day.
> But, it did take optimizing house location/commute, etc To spell the quiet part out loud here, what you're describing is an extreme privilege in a world where homes near tech campuses often go for $1M+. New fathers aren't going to have a down payment for even $600k+. Tech at this point starts as a rich persons game which is why so many tech workers intermarry with other wealthy people. It takes two or a trust fund…
SV isn't typical.
No trust fund here. Parents are immigrants from a farming community in Scotland. I won't deny being more privileged than many, but my socio-economic background was typical professional middle-class (dad=engineer, mom=teacher, own their home, valued education, etc).
I live in the heart or Reston VA, work for a reasonably well-known (but not FAANG) company, and bought a typical 4 bed SFH when I was 26 for well under $400 (back in 2004). When my son moved out (2017), we sold that and bought a smaller TH closer to work for under $500 (which is now worth low-$600s). Sure, it's not the latest McMansion and I don't have a garage, but it's more than adequate.
Is that option available to an hourly retail employee? No, probably not. But, it's certainly available to just about any white-collar couple in the area.
Re: Early Remote Work Impacts on Family Formation
#213Earlier quoted context omitted.
~about half - https://www.mprnews.org/story/2023/01/10/npr-traffic-congest...
It's not the case around Boston. I directly experience the 1.5+ hours it takes me to commute into the city when I do. (As the article notes, Boston has some of the worst congestion.)
Yea I'm not discounting your personal experience, just statistically...
Re: Early Remote Work Impacts on Family Formation
#214I've been suspicious that the post-pandemic era will yield a new baby boom of sorts. It's probably too soon to see it in broad demographic data, but just in my group of friends, it seems like almost all married couples except those who had previously committed to definitively stay child-free are having kids. One third of the people under my direct manager have either taken parental leave since mid-2021 or are plannin…
I believe the calculation is that if you want a typical 2 child family, and want to avoid a geriatric pregnancy (post age 35), then 30 is basically when you have to start having kids to give your body a couple years of recovery between births (what doctors recommend).
Re: Early Remote Work Impacts on Family Formation
#215Earlier quoted context omitted.
You got me curious about the stats. For one way commute time the mean is 27.6 minutes, and only 22% spend more than 30 minutes. I'd be more interested in median commute time though. https://www.zippia.com/advice/average-commute-time-statistic... Edit: this has an interactive map of bad commute hotspots! https://www.ridester.com/average-us-commute/
27.6 minutes sounds absurdly low to me. Getting ready at home, getting in the car, parking it at the destination, and finally walking to my desk takes at least 10 minutes for me. Discounting the overhead doesn't make sense.
Getting ready at home doesn't take any longer if you're WFH or going to the office. Gotta shower and wear pants either way.
My old commute was 12 mile and consistently My current commute is a 1 mile walk that takes My dad's old commute was 5 miles/15 minutes. Mom's was similar.
Of my friends, 2 commute downtown (Flex Time/hybrid) for .gov positions. I can't think of any that commute more than 30 minutes each direction.
Edit - I'll add that almost all of us could take jobs downtown for more money. And either deal with the commute or move into more expensive housing closer in. It's a balance. We're lucky to be in a position to make that balance. But, just about any software developer is going to have that option (except perhaps in SV).
Re: Early Remote Work Impacts on Family Formation
#216Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Then children will have their parents again. In most developed countries, parents already spend more time with their kids than at any point in the past fifty years: https://ourworldindata.org/parents-time-with-kids (What they've sacrificed, at least in the US, seems to largely be non-work social connections and group participation.)
And yet, there’s plenty room to improve - especially for fathers.
I find it interesting that you feel the need to say that. At probably no point in US history are fathers spending more time with their kids than today. And yet our parenting culture is so toxic that we still feel the need to tell parents they aren't doing a good enough job.
Re: Early Remote Work Impacts on Family Formation
#217I 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…
My mileage varies a lot. I suppose it has to do with how each person's executive functions are wired, but personally, I absolutely cannot get into deep work while family stuff is going around in the same physical space.
I assume most people in here had the means to set up their own office / room through the pandemic? I for sure had to with a newborn on its way etc, it wouldn’t have been possible without that.
It’s an absolute joy each morning when I enter that personal, (relatively) quiet space, sitting on my Capisco chair with that beautiful 30” display in front of me…
Re: Early Remote Work Impacts on Family Formation
#218Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not the case around Boston. I directly experience the 1.5+ hours it takes me to commute into the city when I do. (As the article notes, Boston has some of the worst congestion.)
Yea I'm not discounting your personal experience, just statistically...
I'm sure it varies. I'm honestly surprised that Boston is so apparently back to pre-COVID levels given that there's a moderate amount of tech (even excluding pharma/biotech) in the city (mostly Cambridge).
Re: Early Remote Work Impacts on Family Formation
#219I will offer a contrarian take, not because I think anyone else in the thread is wrong, but because I think there’s more than one opinion here, and it’s not showing in the comments.
I have multiple children, and I hate (ok, strongly dislike) working remotely. I dislike the lack of separation between home and work, and how it makes my children feel like I’m “always working.”
I love the high-bandwidth communication and collaboration of in-person, as well as the way it naturally fosters empathy and community. It’s a better learning environment for most, and it makes work more fun for most.
I have been an outlier, I guess, and have only been able to find remote jobs for most of my decade+ SWE career. I have a dedicated office space and all the gear, so my dislike of remote has nothing to do with not being properly equipped for it.
I think people have a lot of valid complaints that are actually orthogonal to in-person work:
- Housing is too expensive. True! Not the fault of the office.
- Commutes take too long. True! Not the fault of the office.
- Housing units close to the office are often too small to be comfortable for families. Subjective, but many people feel this way! Also not the fault of the office.
The common theme here is that housing and transportation in America is broken. Utterly broken.
There is no technical or economic reason that we couldn’t have the majority of workplaces in neighborhoods where the majority of employees could comfortably live within a ten minute commute. And I submit that there is nothing better than getting to work together in real life while living comfortably within ten minutes of your workplace.
There’s nothing _wrong_ with remote work, and I think it’s great for it to be an option for those who want it (including all remote companies for those who want them). But remote isn’t morally superior to in-person work, despite the way many advocates talk about it. And an escape hatch from our broken cities is not the same as a solution.
It saddens me that more of us aren’t working seriously on the problem of fixing housing and transportation in the US, and instead are embracing bandaids.
FWIW I do what I can via my work with Strong Towns. If this is a cause that interests you I’d encourage you to read our material and consider becoming a member.
Re: Early Remote Work Impacts on Family Formation
#220Earlier quoted context omitted.
Now imagine if you had been able to have it all, the only cost being management not being able to see your bag of mostly carbon water physically respirate. I love having a house and yard, and never having to pollute the environment to shift my bag of carbon water to do the same work worse somewhere less adapted to my being. There will come a time when passions die about RTO and companies stop paying for real estate s…
> Then children will have their parents again. In most developed countries, parents already spend more time with their kids than at any point in the past fifty years: https://ourworldindata.org/parents-time-with-kids (What they've sacrificed, at least in the US, seems to largely be non-work social connections and group participation.)
For a grand total of 2.5 hours every day for the top of the scale.
Yeah, coming from a horrible situation, everything is an improvement. The article isn't very clear on what qualifies as "kids", but if teenagers aren't pulling the average down, that is still a very bad number.