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The elite's war on remote work has nothing to do with productivity

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Re: The elite's war on remote work has nothing to do with productivity

#291

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

raydev wrote: post #260
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been working on an app, with a small team, of [mostly] non-tech folks. Most of our interactions are messaging (Slack, IM, etc.), with occasional Zoom calls. I T . I S . V E R Y , V E R Y , S L O W . I have never worked this slowly in my life. I literally cannot rush ahead, at my usual pace, because I make assumptions that are often wrong. A few days ago, we had an in-person meeting, at a local diner, and talked…

> A few days ago, we had an in-person meeting, at a local diner, and talked about the app for a couple of hours. What is your team doing differently with video calls that you don't end them with a complete list of items for everyone?

Oh, we get lists, but they are much shorter.

For example, I want to show them where a button needs to go, I simply hold up the phone, and point. With Zoom, we have a wrestling match over screen share.

Re: The elite's war on remote work has nothing to do with productivity

#292

Post by constantcrying »

camgunz wrote: post #262
rsynnott wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> - European social democracies are trending more socialist all the time Eh? Which ones? As a European this is very much news to be; not much seizing of the means of production going on. If anything, some divesting of the means of production; heavily regulated privatisation of state energy, transport etc monopolies has been going on all over Western Europe for a while. I realise that in the US, the colloquial definit…

There's a recent rightward shift for sure, but long term benefits are increasing, unions are gaining power, and you're seeing people use democracy to force industry to adopt green policies. This is the power dynamic described by socialism: people control companies, not the other way around.

>you're seeing people use democracy to force industry to adopt green policies

No, you are seeing governments force green policies against the will of the majority.

Re: The elite's war on remote work has nothing to do with productivity

#293

Post by constantcrying »

camgunz wrote: post #268
rhaway84773 wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.heritage.org/index/ranking This is a ranking of economic freedom which strongly aligns with capitalism. The U.S. ranks 25th behind European countries like Ireland, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Germany, Iceland, etc.

It looks like this ranks things like freedom to invest, trade, etc., none of which are incompatible with socialism.

Investment directly implies private ownership of the means of production.

Re: The elite's war on remote work has nothing to do with productivity

#294

Post by chaos_emergent »

lamontcg wrote: post #169
skwirl wrote: post #24

How are "the elite" forcing companies that do not own real estate and who rent their office space to mandate RTO? How are they forcing these companies to renew their leases when they expire?

The big fortune 100 tech companies are also commercial real estate owners and landlords. Look at all the buildings that Amazon owns and subleases in Seattle. Those executives absolutely have an incentive to be pushing RTO because of their commercial real estate risk. They also have an outsized bullhorn and the industry tends to watch what they do and report over what they do, and they have PR budgets which can get ar…

Thank you, this is a far more cogent model of the incentives and behaviors in place than all the conspiratorial essays on a boogeyman plurality conspiring against the working class.

Re: The elite's war on remote work has nothing to do with productivity

#295

Post by Kamq »

camgunz wrote: post #257
Kamq wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There are important differences between Denmark and the US though. On the human level, sure. On the level of "fundamental economic system" (which is, I believe, the line of discussion), there really aren't. They're both WEIRD countries with market based-economies and a social safety net. They both end up at the top of the lists on economic power (adjusted for population). The differences between them are political…

There are large differences though. The US poverty rate is 2.5x higher than Denmark's (15% to 6%). Denmark's life expectancy is 6 years longer. The kinds of policies you'd need to close that gap in the US would be transformative. > When comparing two different economic systems, you tend to see differences on the order of "mass-famines" and "percentage of the population involved in subsistence farming". There are plen…

> The kinds of policies you'd need to close that gap in the US would be transformative.

I disagree. When laid against things like the end of mercantilism, I don't think that qualifies as transformative.

I think the effects would look pretty much like the existing US system, because Denmark looks pretty close to the current US system by the standards we're talking about. If you want to argue they'd be fundamentally different, you can make a case, but I'd like to know why they would produce different results.

> There are plenty of capitalist countries that do a lot of subsistence farming.

Do you have some examples? The areas I'm aware of that practice subsistence farming, don't have a long history of leaving the means of production alone in private hands for very long.

Re: The elite's war on remote work has nothing to do with productivity

#296

Post by ilaksh »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #240
xyzelement wrote: post #225

The "article" rehashes the well repeated meme about propping up commercial real estate, with the only callout to productivity being the authors own self admitted "bullshit job". My counter would be as someone who is loving WFH as a new dad, it is obvious to me that as a group, teams are less productive when not face to face even though individuals may think they are crushing it. This is obvious to many people I talk…

I've been working on an app, with a small team, of [mostly] non-tech folks. Most of our interactions are messaging (Slack, IM, etc.), with occasional Zoom calls. I T . I S . V E R Y , V E R Y , S L O W . I have never worked this slowly in my life. I literally cannot rush ahead, at my usual pace, because I make assumptions that are often wrong. A few days ago, we had an in-person meeting, at a local diner, and talked…

Why were you not able to accomplish that with a Zoom video call or voice call?

Why was that not possible with a common Slack chat channel? Or a Trello or something?

A lot of times these problems boil down to people not being willing or able to dedicate the time every day to work on a project or communicate properly online. Often a combination for underfunded projects. And lack of written communication ability can contribute strongly.

I don't think that we should really blame remote for all of that.

Re: The elite's war on remote work has nothing to do with productivity

#297

Post by egl2021 »

nathias wrote: post #275
egl2021 wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can your boss tell? If they can, then you have no problem. If they can't, then you have a problem. This is the other side of "I'm so much more productive with WFH". Everyone who values WFH should be asking themselves how they will help their company measure productivity. Over time companies will find new ways to manage productivity, possibly by restructuring work to make measurement easier even if the tasks have to c…

well, I have 2x the capacity of guys in office with the same hours...

the question is: would your boss say the same thing?

Re: The elite's war on remote work has nothing to do with productivity

#298

Post by Kamq »

mindslight wrote: post #279
Kamq wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There are important differences between Denmark and the US though. On the human level, sure. On the level of "fundamental economic system" (which is, I believe, the line of discussion), there really aren't. They're both WEIRD countries with market based-economies and a social safety net. They both end up at the top of the lists on economic power (adjusted for population). The differences between them are political…

> On the human level, sure. On the level of "fundamental economic system" (which is, I believe, the line of discussion), there really aren't. One of the problems with this whole "debate" is that defenders of the status quo apply a huge motte and bailey to the definition of "capitalism". Both strawmanning any criticism of it as a rejection of all aspects claimed by capitalism, and also giving capitalism credit for sys…

> One of the problems with this whole "debate" is that defenders of the status quo apply a huge motte and bailey to the definition of "capitalism". Both strawmanning any criticism of it as a rejection of all aspects claimed by capitalism, and also giving capitalism credit for systems that share some aspects of capitalism even though they haven't gone all-in and let capital run roughshod over everything else.

This is a fair call-out, given that there's so much drive-by arguing on the internet.

I'm pretty sure I'm using a standard definition, but let me state the definition I'm using just to be as explicit as possible: A system is capitalist if it has private ownership of the means of production.

So, to give an example, a country would be a capitalist country regardless of their tax scheme/welfare spending so long as the means of production were privately held. Another country that nationalized industries (the oil industry is a common one) would be, at the very least, a mixed-economy, regardless of how free their markets are.

Given the above comments on Europe, I would argue that European countries do meet the definition of capitalist for the most part. While some European countries do completely nationalize a handful of industries, it's rare, and the majority of industries are privately owned, even if they are highly regulated.

Re: The elite's war on remote work has nothing to do with productivity

#299

Post by iiikz »

Every executive I’ve worked under in my career would jump at the opportunity to reduce facility and infrastructure cost if the productivity and other metrics for success were met with remote work. This doesn’t seem to be a reasonable argument.

Also, I can’t help but note that working from home is only really viable for specific categories of work. It is interesting to me how often those class of workers do not seem to recognize their privilege and make obtuse conspiratorial arguments about “the elite” - as if remote work is really available to all.

Re: The elite's war on remote work has nothing to do with productivity

#300

Post by davidw »

mindslight wrote: post #279
Kamq wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There are important differences between Denmark and the US though. On the human level, sure. On the level of "fundamental economic system" (which is, I believe, the line of discussion), there really aren't. They're both WEIRD countries with market based-economies and a social safety net. They both end up at the top of the lists on economic power (adjusted for population). The differences between them are political…

> On the human level, sure. On the level of "fundamental economic system" (which is, I believe, the line of discussion), there really aren't. One of the problems with this whole "debate" is that defenders of the status quo apply a huge motte and bailey to the definition of "capitalism". Both strawmanning any criticism of it as a rejection of all aspects claimed by capitalism, and also giving capitalism credit for sys…

If people actually bothered to read the link I posted, it is all about the lazy blaming of a wide variety of problems with specific solutions on a very hand-wavy "capitalism".

I know a fair bit about about the housing shortage for instance, and it's not "capitalism". It's a specific set of rules and institutions that cause the problem.

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