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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

#141

Post by d357r0y3r »

godshatter wrote: post #77

I work in an admnistrative office on a university campus. Work from home was great for IT folks, but not so much for a lot of regular staff. Some people had young children that didn't understand that "you can't bother mommy or daddy right now" and it was a constant fight. Some of them had to use their own computers to connect to their machine at work through a vpn, and had a lot of trouble getting that to work. Some…

> But not everyone lives in an environment where they can just set up a chair on the deck and sip wine while they work on their items for the sprint.

That one product manager who posted a TikTok of her working by the pool has completely distorted people's view of what WFH is.

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

#142

Post by nextworddev »

wseqyrku wrote: post #134

By staying home, you're making yourself (even more) replaceable with bots. Note that a 'remote worker' is increasingly used as an analogy for bot performance. (edit: I should clarify that I don't mean it in absolutes, if you got a task at hand, wfh by all means, but I won't do zoom meetings, if you wanna talk, come to the place)

The reality is anyone’s replaceable with bots

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

#143

Post by chasil »

jmyeet wrote: post #18

For the longest time, we tech workers have convinced ourselves we're special. We believe we can act on our own behalf against our employer on equal footing. We start to believe in the myth of meritocracy. Remember the "Day in the Life" vidoes? When was the last time you saw someone showing their amazing workspace, the free food, the amentities and all that? A few years ago they were everywhere. Now? Nowhere. We are n…

> Now some of you think your WFH status is safe. You may even take a pay cut to continue WFH (even though it's objectively cheaper to employ people remotely). Trust me when I tell you that the flood waters are rising. You're just temporarily on the high ground. Your remote status won't last.

Alternately, I am concerned that a company who has seen office work go home can just as easily see it go offshore at vastly reduced cost.

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

#144

Post by burnished »

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?

Probably the latter. There doesn't tend to be good enforcement of social norms and etiquette on public transit.

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

#145

Post by JohnFen »

SoftTalker wrote: post #91
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…

> Office life post-COVID is an entirely new thing that's worse than what office life was like pre-COVID Yep. Now, on any given day, half the office is at home. So, even if you're there, you probably still need to use Zoom for meetings or collaboration. At that point, why? I don't like Zoom but if I have no choice I might as well be at home and not commuting in to a half-empty office. I still find some value in workin…

> I still find some value in working at work. I find it easier to focus

I'm jealous! For me, the office is where it's hard to focus. Once or twice a week, I even give up on getting anything done at all during the workday and just warm my seat, making up for the lost time at home that evening.

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

#146

Post by jmathai »

kelseyfrog wrote: post #29

We'll be writing about why this is for years. COVID gave people or in many cases made people re-evaluate what's important to them and many people concluded that their work-life balance placed too much importance on work. People had been thinking, what parts of their life were they willing to give up for work, but now the question of what parts of work are they willing to give up for their life is considered a valid,…

I think people realized, in part as a result of changes from Covid, that they don’t care about work as much as they thought. And when they evaluate what they are willing to give up moving forward, it looks a lot different than it did pre Covid.

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

#147

Post by pipeline_peak »

wseqyrku wrote: post #134

By staying home, you're making yourself (even more) replaceable with bots. Note that a 'remote worker' is increasingly used as an analogy for bot performance. (edit: I should clarify that I don't mean it in absolutes, if you got a task at hand, wfh by all means, but I won't do zoom meetings, if you wanna talk, come to the place)

>By staying home, you're making yourself (even more) replaceable with bots.

How so?

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

#148

Post by SoftTalker »

skywhopper wrote: post #98
gonzoflip wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it is just corporate profits the state and county sure piled on by increasing my property taxes 40% over the past 3 years. That's an extra $300 a month for me which is more than my car payment. edit: changed country to county

Did the value of your property also increase over that time period?

So the assessor says. But what does that have to do with how much tax reveneue the local government needs to operate?

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

#149

Post by Aeolun »

wseqyrku wrote: post #134

By staying home, you're making yourself (even more) replaceable with bots. Note that a 'remote worker' is increasingly used as an analogy for bot performance. (edit: I should clarify that I don't mean it in absolutes, if you got a task at hand, wfh by all means, but I won't do zoom meetings, if you wanna talk, come to the place)

Isn’t the goal to replace yourself with a bot? As long as the money keeps coming in.

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

#150

Post by lolinder »

betaby wrote: post #38
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

And at the same time people struggle to pay rent. Official inflation numbers doesn't correlate how 'median' earner spends its salary.

Does the median earner when considering the entire country struggle to pay rent? Or is it just the median earner in certain extremely expensive metro areas that happen to get a lot of focus in the media because that's where the journalists live?

The numbers OP cites can be 100% accurate and reflective of reality while it is still also true that people in the Bay Area struggle to pay for housing.

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