Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The growing inequality of who gets to work from home

hbr.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

191–200 of 209 posts

Re: The growing inequality of who gets to work from home

#191

Post by Broken_Hippo »

QuadmasterXLII wrote: post #97
Broken_Hippo wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it is neither. Otherwise, you'd see productivity being better in places that allow drug testing of normal employees and worse off in places that do not. But that's not the case: Retail employees in Norway aren't really less productive than those in the US. Plus, if it really were a productivity measure, why would you not drug test more professionals and salaried employees? Does their productivity not matter? Wouldn't…

You’ve got causation backwards, look at the norway vs US overdoses per capita

Do you think employer drug tests decrease overdoses?

Re: The growing inequality of who gets to work from home

#192

Post by rangestransform »

badpun wrote: post #99
afarviral wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who wouldn't agree that difficult work should be payed more? Work that requires the acquisition of skills should be payed a bit more too, no? There should be a system in place which determines the appropriate compensation, not arbitrary compensation as determined by the market.

1. I agree that difficult work should be payed more. For example, military service is as difficult as being a CEO (just in a different way), but pays a fraction of CEO's salary. 2. Should job requiring acquisition of skills pay more? Probably, but the discrepancy shouldn't be large. Most high-end jobs require 4 extra years of schooling (and thus forteited income) - whereas the job will be performed for 30-40 years. T…

So good parenting is an inequality that needs equalizing now?

Re: The growing inequality of who gets to work from home

#193

Post by Duanemclemore »

x3n0ph3n3 wrote: post #155
Duanemclemore wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gambling was verboten because of the presence of organized crime in the industry even where it was legalized.

Gambling is seen as a liability because gamblers often get into huge amounts of debt, which is what the FBI is really concerned about. Huge amounts of debt open people up to bribes and other corruption.

Exactly. Even in places where it was legal it was an easy way to get on the radar of organized crime, who would try to exert influence. It also could be an indicator of an affinity for risk-taking. And if there's anything they're trying to avoid in high level secret keeping... It's risk.

Re: The growing inequality of who gets to work from home

#194

Post by marcus_holmes »

phatskat wrote: post #179
marcus_holmes wrote: post #106

Yet more "please return to the office" pseudo-journalism bollocks. Front-line staff have to clock on, get their toilet breaks timed, get drug tested, have weird random shift patterns, have to work at least one day on the weekend, have to cover for colleagues by doing a 16-hour shift, get paid overtime, can't nip out for a doctor's appointment, etc, etc, etc. Happy for bosses to consider making the workplace more equa…

I don’t know which part of that article you read, but the main takeaways were to have front line workers have a better quality of work. Have managers onsite more, increase pay for frontline workers to compensate for not being able to commute, and shift to four day weeks instead of five to reduce commute. I agree that flexibility such as doctors appointments are important, and also that can be difficult if you’re one…

> Business leaders rightly worry that this divide could hurt morale among front-line staff, undermine perceived fairness, and create new rifts in the workforce.

This from the article. My point is that this is absolute bullshit. Front-line staff already have massive inequality of working standards, and have done for decades.

The need for people to go back to the office is not driven by some sudden compassionate drive to equalise workplace differences. It's driven by an entire class of asset for the very wealthy becoming almost worthless.

Re: The growing inequality of who gets to work from home

#195

Post by kbos87 »

> “…tested the model on a part of our sample that it was not trained on and found that it achieves a 98% accuracy rate in replicating the human classifications. Armed with our highly accurate LLM…”

So concerned with checking the box of incorporating AI into their work, the writer managed to quickly associate AI’s classification with “must be right”.

Re: The growing inequality of who gets to work from home

#196

Post by phatskat »

marcus_holmes wrote: post #194
phatskat wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t know which part of that article you read, but the main takeaways were to have front line workers have a better quality of work. Have managers onsite more, increase pay for frontline workers to compensate for not being able to commute, and shift to four day weeks instead of five to reduce commute. I agree that flexibility such as doctors appointments are important, and also that can be difficult if you’re one…

> Business leaders rightly worry that this divide could hurt morale among front-line staff, undermine perceived fairness, and create new rifts in the workforce. This from the article. My point is that this is absolute bullshit. Front-line staff already have massive inequality of working standards, and have done for decades. The need for people to go back to the office is not driven by some sudden compassionate drive…

I will agree that that particular part of the write up is suspect, who exactly said this beyond those nameless “business leaders” that are just now realizing remote work is a thing? I wouldn’t argue that frontline workers haven’t harbored some resentment to remote coworkers as remote work got more widespread, the framing of it being a new thing seems disingenuous.

The overall takeaway I got is that the better approach is to bring better value to the frontline workers to make up for the discrepancies in “fairness” - honestly, this should have been the thinking from the on-set.

> The need for people to go back to the office is not driven by some sudden compassionate drive to equalise workplace differences. It's driven by an entire class of asset for the very wealthy becoming almost worthless.

I didn’t see anything suggesting this as a remedy in TFA, though I’ll go read it again in a bit. Completely agree that the only reasonable defense of any push to end work from home is to make up for real estate investment

Re: The growing inequality of who gets to work from home

#197

Post by ProjectArcturis »

redcobra762 wrote: post #112
cracrecry wrote: post #48

So everybody needs to be miserable as if you are not miserable the rest of miserable people will look at you and say: That's not fair!! I am miserable so you must be miserable too! Of all the "arguments" used by hired Public Relations companies hired to spin "work from home" in a bad light, this is the most stupid argument I have ever heard. This makes me uncomfortable as probably because of that it could be the most…

Going to work shouldn’t make you miserable. If it does, consider a different career.

If you can't afford bread, consider eating cake!

Re: The growing inequality of who gets to work from home

#198

Post by ProjectArcturis »

dmezzetti wrote: post #78

My biggest question after reading the article is why did they use a LLM to do what is basically a binary classification task? Why not use a BERT-like standard text classifier?

An LLM is much easier to set up, sounds much cooler, and probably does a better job.

Re: The growing inequality of who gets to work from home

#199

Post by SkyPuncher »

Mountain_Skies wrote: post #114
throwup238 wrote: post #2

The same inequality exists with drug testing too. A lot of low wage roles get drug tested on a regular basis while higher paying careers don’t. Outside the military, pilots rarely get tested despite the fact they’re responsible for many more lives than fork lift operators or truck drivers (who often do get tested). Doctors pretty much only get tested if they botch a surgery or someone reports them. Lawyers? Wallstree…

Some companies require it for everyone. When I did consulting work for Home Depot, I was required to get a drug test. It didn't matter that I wasn't a W2 nor a 1099 for them but a W2 of a consulting company who HD hired to do a project for them, all of us had to be drug tested, with the reason being that Home Depot didn't think it was fair to test people working in their stores if the white collar people weren't test…

At a prior employer, they simple staffed these types of projects with people who could pass the test.

“you’ll get to work for X big client, but you’ll need to be drug tested”

Re: The growing inequality of who gets to work from home

#200

Post by cafard »

d0gsg0w00f wrote: post #134
jonathankoren wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This comment betrays the old and persistent idea that lower status people are inherently shifty and lazy, while higher status people are inherently more virtuous. Let’s say for argument’s sake that truck drivers proportionally engage in more risky behavior. This can be either the use of stimulants or simply driving tired. Why is that? Drivers’ — like many low status workers — jobs security is more precarious and are…

This comment betrays the old and persistent idea that lower status people are inherently shifty and lazy, while higher status people are inherently more virtuous. I think this is because people are applying survivorship bias. It's really difficult to make it to those status levels while abusing drugs and alcohol. And even if you party hard at the top you must be able to "handle your shit". Success at the top is a car…

I don't know much about this history of (e.g.) Wall Street. But for Washington, DC, I can think of a lot of people who made it pretty far up the ladder before booze caught up with them. Wilbur Mill was head of the House Ways and Means Committee. Sumner Welles was Under Secretary of State. Mendel Rivers was head of the House Armed Services Committee.
Post reply on HN