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The workers have spoken: They're staying home

computerworld.com

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Re: The workers have spoken: They're staying home

#111

Post by Aeolun »

bunderbunder wrote: post #10

I think that companies might have more success getting people back to the office if they had not also spent the past decade or two systematically updating offices to be beautiful to look at in CAD renderings but awful to actually occupy and try to work in. This move toward not giving permanent desk assignments to people who are required to be in the office also makes it worse. Open plan offices are a bit of a product…

I kind of like going to the office, but it was pretty depressing to work from a share office for a few days only to realize the work environment there is so much nicer because they actually need to compete on that…

Re: The workers have spoken: They're staying home

#112

Post by buildbot »

__MatrixMan__ wrote: post #75
ramesh31 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Companies get so much more out of people working from home - Microsoft has realized this and still broadly supports remote work. This is what I find so funny. We accomplished more in the two years of full remote than any period before or since. Half the company now runs on software built during that time. But management refuses to acknowledge the fact, and mandated RTO. I am 100% convinced that a full remote team ca…

I got to meet some of my coworkers in person for the first time recently and it was obvious that the structures re: who respects whom that we had built online were ignorant of meaningless physical details like how commanding a presence one has when they enter a room. This informed my new hypothesis: The people most in opposition to remote work are those who rely on charisma rather than other merits to remain relevant…

The team I work on was created at the start of covid, as we didn't all meet in person for the first time until 2 years later too - it was really funny to learn that one person on the team was like, 6'4! Nobody knew!

Re: The workers have spoken: They're staying home

#113

Post by JumpCrisscross »

nostromo wrote: post #64
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Median incomes have outpaced inflation over the last several years. https://www.axios.com/2024/02/05/wages-outpacing-inflation

No, wages have been falling since 2021 when accounting for inflation. https://www.wsj.com/articles/inflation-has-outpaced-wage-gro... Maybe this isn't that Axios journalist's field, but that huge spike of 9.1% annual inflation in 2022 won't be made up for by a 1% difference in 2024. Showing only the current rate and not the cumulative effects seems disingenuous.

> Maybe that Axios journalist isn't the smartest

You're both right. Real wages are down from the pandemic, but that's because they spiked massively due to the stimulus spending [1]. Real wages today are where they were in Q1 2020, which was the highest they had been since at least 1982.

Both the Axios and Journal charts are confusing because they're taking the first derivative of a complex curve.

[1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881600Q

Re: The workers have spoken: They're staying home

#115

Post by RiverCrochet »

jspash wrote: post #70
RiverCrochet wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not picky about the solution and of course it's a complex issue. - If a safe, reliable bus or train went to and from close to my house to close to the office, I'd take it. Key is safe and reliable. - If the roads were designed with enough capacity and planning in mind such that groups of vehicles are not stuck driving 15 MPH on a 70 MPH speed limit stretch of highway for 30 minutes or longer every day, that'd be…

I'm just curious, what about your local bus and/or train is not safe? Do you mean it could crash at any moment? Or it is usually full of unsavoury characters?

I don't have a local bus or train, what I provided were examples.

> Do you mean it could crash at any moment? Or it is usually full of unsavoury characters?

Both. Buses/trains should be secure places and properly maintained at all times.

Re: The workers have spoken: They're staying home

#116

Post by lcnPylGDnU4H9OF »

hadlock wrote: post #67
dfrey wrote: post #4

They have given us fuck all for raises during a period of rampant inflation and now they want to take away the one good thing that covid-19 did for workers.

I'm not sure if you got the memo, but you need to jump jobs if you want more money. This goes triple if you're not a top 5% worker. BLS has been tracking this number and it has skyrocketed in the last generation (Number of Jobs Held in a Lifetime): https://www.bls.gov/nls/questions-and-answers.htm

I must be missing something.

https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/nlsoy.pdf ("young baby boomers" age 18-56, years 1978-2020)

https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/nlsyth.pdf ("older millenials" age 18-36, years 1998-2021)

The "Chart 1" in both of those seems to be almost the same logarithm and the 18-56 "baby boomer" chart at age 36 appears to be roughly the same number of jobs. It might even be slightly higher in the baby boomer chart at age 36.

Re: The workers have spoken: They're staying home

#117

Post by com2kid »

bluebit wrote: post #106
com2kid wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is your office is 20 miles from your workplace. 20 miles is more than the entire length of Seattle. Heck it is more than the entire width of the Seattle Metro area (western most tip of Seattle heading straight east until it turns into farmland). There should be sufficient housing stock such that people don't need to drive 20 miles to work!

Cute that you think a person can just move house when they get a new job.

Historically that is what people did.

When tenure at a job was 20+ years, and a house could be paid off in 10 years, it made a ton of sense.

The fact that such an idea is absurd now is not because the idea itself is absurd, but because how we have structured our economy is absurd.

People shouldn't be wasting their lives commuting.

In older books they have kids and the dad coming back home to eat lunch together! Heck I have friends who grew up in countries where 20-30 years ago that was still the norm.

Re: The workers have spoken: They're staying home

#118

Post by LordKeren »

giantg2 wrote: post #6

That's the strategy. The places calling for return to office are mostly doing it to thin the herd. Make people voluntarily leave.

I wonder how many zombie firms we’re going to see fall apart when there is a significant economic downturn turn. A lot of companies calling for RTO are gutting morale and filling their halls with many contributors that are only too eager to leave the moment they can.

Selectively filing your company with dispassionate, or desperate devs may not be a good long term plan

Re: The workers have spoken: They're staying home

#119

Post by elric »

rqtwteye wrote: post #16
bunderbunder wrote: post #10

I think that companies might have more success getting people back to the office if they had not also spent the past decade or two systematically updating offices to be beautiful to look at in CAD renderings but awful to actually occupy and try to work in. This move toward not giving permanent desk assignments to people who are required to be in the office also makes it worse. Open plan offices are a bit of a product…

That’s the thing. If the office was actually a place where people could feel comfortable and collaborate, I would consider going there. But going to an open space noisy office talking on Teams to people all over the world doesn’t make much sense.

I once had to take a 4 hour trip to France to go on site to debug a customer's problem. As soon as I got there, my contact walked me into a meeting room, and promptly started a Teams meeting with a team in Paris. At no point was I allowed anywhere near their infrastructure: I had to dictate commands to one of the guys in the Teams call, who would then execute them.

I'm so glad I no longer have anything to do with those clowns.

Re: The workers have spoken: They're staying home

#120

Post by SoftTalker »

com2kid wrote: post #84
RiverCrochet wrote: post #7

It shouldn't take me an hour and 30 minutes in congested, underbuilt roads to drive 20 miles into the office. Cities and their wealthy politically-connected commercial office building owners have had decades to fix this problem. No sympathy.

The problem is your office is 20 miles from your workplace. 20 miles is more than the entire length of Seattle. Heck it is more than the entire width of the Seattle Metro area (western most tip of Seattle heading straight east until it turns into farmland). There should be sufficient housing stock such that people don't need to drive 20 miles to work!

Some people prefer not to live in a dense urban environment. It's cool when you're young and single. It sucks when you have a family.
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