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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

#191

Post by s1artibartfast »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #113
nostromo wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.stl…

Tangent:

How do you navigate Fred effectively? I can usually find something close to what I want, but not exact through Google searches of the site.

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

#192

Post by amh999 »

dylan604 wrote: post #51
moffkalast wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or get this, a bike (in case you live under ~10 km away). Just rolls the gym hours into the commute for double efficiency, and you can be always on time since traffic can't really affect you.

Not really sure how this is possible unless there are dedicated bike paths that use different roads than what the cars use. Otherwise, bikes get stuck at intersections just like cars do except for the asshats that think traffic rules do not apply bicycles causing more problems. Dedicated paths are only slightly less logistically than rail to install after roads have already been in use.

There are dedicated bike paths, separate from cars. Where they cross each other, there are traffic controls. And, as I understand it, in Amsterdam at least, any collision between a car and a cyclist is automatically the car driver’s fault: so drivers are very careful.

These countries have been doing this for a long time.

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

#193

Post by JumpCrisscross »

s1artibartfast wrote: post #191
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.stl…

Tangent: How do you navigate Fred effectively? I can usually find something close to what I want, but not exact through Google searches of the site.

> How do you navigate Fred effectively?

Kagi :P. I know the names of most of these data series, so it’s searching e.g. real weekly earnings fed fred.

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

#194

Post by surgical_fire »

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #34

I would be interested to hear from Indian, Philipino or other off- near- shore locations. Is this “give me WFH or give me death” actually just USA/European entitlement and Chennai Devs will gleefully work in air-conditioned offices (hopefully not open plan cubicle hell but nicely designed “WeWork-like” places) and discover the turbo-charge of a co-located mission locked team? Are we Western Devs about to learn a very…

This bullshit again?

Outsourcing is nothing new. Companies have been outsourcing jobs to cheaper locations for longer than I have been working. In fact, my first job was as cheap outsourced labor.

This comes and goes in waves, because outsourcing to cheaper locations have a lot of downsides too.

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

#195

Post by JumpCrisscross »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #184
betaby wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Housing costs are not included in measures of inflation. While they have gone up (almost certainly faster than inflation), they are not part of the inflation numbers that we hear in the news.

> Housing costs are not included in measures of inflation

Yes, they are [1][2].

[1] https://www.bea.gov/sites/default/files/methodologies/RIPfac...

[2] https://www.brookings.edu/articles/how-does-the-consumer-pri...

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

#196

Post by s1artibartfast »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #193
s1artibartfast wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tangent: How do you navigate Fred effectively? I can usually find something close to what I want, but not exact through Google searches of the site.

> How do you navigate Fred effectively? Kagi :P. I know the names of most of these data series, so it’s searching e.g. real weekly earnings fed fred.

thanks!

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

#197

Post by JumpCrisscross »

JohnFen wrote: post #162
danudey wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> then to an open office environment which was hellish enough that it got me to quite my job and vow to never work in such an environment again. We're moving to an open plan office design, to help people collaborate and interact in new emergent ways and improve productivity. Also, please don't talk to people at their desks, it's very distracting. Book a meeting room if you want to have a real conversation.

> to help people collaborate and interact in new emergent ways and improve productivity. I wish you the best, but if history is any guide then the result will be less collaboration and a decrease in productivity.

> if history is any guide then the result will be less collaboration and a decrease in productivity

Which history? Rome and Sparta had profligate (for the time) public benefits and didn’t do much worse for the wear.

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

#198

Post by pipeline_peak »

wseqyrku wrote: post #158
pipeline_peak wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Because you're just generating tokens as opposed to actually engaging in irl discourse inside the company, whatever that means for your field of expertise.

I'm not sure what you mean by "generating token", I'm guessing satisfying their requirements?

That being said, I don't see how meetings are any less engaging. There's still the exchange of ideas and opinions, that's what really matters.

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

#199

Post by JohnFen »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #197
JohnFen wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> to help people collaborate and interact in new emergent ways and improve productivity. I wish you the best, but if history is any guide then the result will be less collaboration and a decrease in productivity.

> if history is any guide then the result will be less collaboration and a decrease in productivity Which history? Rome and Sparta had profligate (for the time) public benefits and didn’t do much worse for the wear.

I mean the recent history of companies moving to an open office plan. It appears to me that most companies that have done this have seen the opposite of the claimed goals.

Of course, the actual goal is cost reduction, and on that count, I think the effort is a success.

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

#200

Post by wing-_-nuts »

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #34

I would be interested to hear from Indian, Philipino or other off- near- shore locations. Is this “give me WFH or give me death” actually just USA/European entitlement and Chennai Devs will gleefully work in air-conditioned offices (hopefully not open plan cubicle hell but nicely designed “WeWork-like” places) and discover the turbo-charge of a co-located mission locked team? Are we Western Devs about to learn a very…

>Are we Western Devs about to learn a very hard lesson?

I'm sure off/nearshore folks will happily take any work corp america gives them. My company is still remote and we've expanded significantly in 'near shore' hiring.

Industry wide, we may well be setting ourselves up for a 'hard lesson'. Our nearshore devs are actually pretty productive. I'm not finding nearly the same amount of friction that I've seen working with offshore devs that are in significantly different time zones. I don't see how tech TC doesn't eventually 'equalize' more with the rest of the world.

For me personally, I've had some recent 'come to jesus' moments losing some elderly family members and my own health issues that make me realize I should be working to live, not living to work. My current company is remote. I do not see me going 'into office' to satisfy the arbitrary whims of management. I'm old enough and well established enough that I can pretty much do what I like without worrying too much about the repercussions for my 'career'

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