This is one of the reasons I left Google. I did not like being one of the “exceptions” to remote work. I was anticipating some team dynamic problems going forward.
The growing inequality of who gets to work from home
101–110 of 209 posts
Re: The growing inequality of who gets to work from home
#102Earlier quoted context omitted.
What is bad? Stating that her company would find this to be an unacceptable standard of service quality? Sharing experiences and opinions on HN that are unpopular? I didn’t complain to the worker, the company, or give her any attitude about it. None of that would have helped me get my task done. They have other agents who are more professional, so next time I could get routed to somebody else. To answer your question…
> It’s 2024- it’s really easy to do either one It's easy if you earn $100k+ of course. It's not easy with $40k in a two-bedroom house with a toddler as a single parent. "But then, she's not supposed to have that job if she can't do it," I can already hear you say. To that, I'd say sure, you could do that, if you're willing to pay for a several year long maternity leave from your taxes until the parents can place thei…
She’s not supposed to have that job (from home) if she can’t figure out voice isolation software or alternatively buy an appropriate headset.
Even minimum-wage construction workers know that they’re gonna need to invest a bit up front into work stuff.
Re: The growing inequality of who gets to work from home
#103The other day I phoned a service provider and the lady’s kid was babbling in the background and a children’s show was playing throughout the call. I couldn’t get off the phone fast enough. Either invest in voice isolation or don’t work from home. Functionally this lady brought her kid to my home office and blasted a cartoon during our meeting. Is this harsh of me and an unpopular opinion? Yes. I agree that Human bein…
Sounds like you take work too seriously.
Re: The growing inequality of who gets to work from home
#104WFH isn't inequality, WFH is a perk.
Re: The growing inequality of who gets to work from home
#105Earlier quoted context omitted.
Perhaps a reason for this is that not everybody agrees that drugs are all that bad. Half of silicon valley allegedly is micro-dosing all sorts of things and apparently benefiting from that. Steve Jobs famously advocated using LSD. The Vietnam war famously had a lot of drug abuse. WW II soldiers and leadership were consuming epic amounts of amphetamines. And that wasn't just the Nazis. Companies aren't testing for thi…
> Perhaps a reason for this is that not everybody agrees that drugs are all that bad As an explanation, this is implausible to the point of impossible. The same employers drug test lower-level employees but (e.g. in the warehouse) but don't test other employees (e.g. in the office). Amazon drug tests warehouse workers but not AWS engineers. It is difficult to come up for a coherent theory for that that includes "as a…
If you are lifting heavy boxes in the warehouse and you are on drugs, you can physically harm someone. There is no way to directly correlate using drugs and performance of an engineer, for all we know, small infrequent drug use improves performance ( not talking about abusing drugs heavily)
Re: The growing inequality of who gets to work from home
#106Yet 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 equal, but let's start by making front-line staff's lives easier rather than making everyone else's lives harder.
Re: The growing inequality of who gets to work from home
#107The other day I phoned a service provider and the lady’s kid was babbling in the background and a children’s show was playing throughout the call. I couldn’t get off the phone fast enough. Either invest in voice isolation or don’t work from home. Functionally this lady brought her kid to my home office and blasted a cartoon during our meeting. Is this harsh of me and an unpopular opinion? Yes. I agree that Human bein…
this is a cultural problem. in asia and africa people take their kids to work all the time. part of this is because parents can't afford childcare, but part of it is also: "why not?". i find our western attitude towards kids disturbing. after living 15 years in china i have come to realize that western, and even more so the european, and especially the german and austrian attitude towards work and school is much more…
The biggest benefit of working from home, which i have been doing since my older daughter (now an adult) was an year old. Self employed too, so have flexibility. I also home educate which would not have been as easy without working from home.
My last employer had childcare available onsite at work, and that should be more common too (I did not use it because my now ex did not work, but still very good for a lot of my colleagues).
I also find it sad how little time many parents have with their kids. We really need to make employment a lot more family friendly in general.
Re: The growing inequality of who gets to work from home
#108The other day I phoned a service provider and the lady’s kid was babbling in the background and a children’s show was playing throughout the call. I couldn’t get off the phone fast enough. Either invest in voice isolation or don’t work from home. Functionally this lady brought her kid to my home office and blasted a cartoon during our meeting. Is this harsh of me and an unpopular opinion? Yes. I agree that Human bein…
Sounds like you take work too seriously.
Eh, some of the people I know with the worst WLB are people that do not take work that seriously during working hours. They end up living at the office basically because it takes longer for them to finish their tasks and they also end up with their social life/break time tied up in the company.
In this case, if it is disruptive enough to the call then that makes it take longer to get done what you need to do. The quicker you get done what you need to do, the quicker you are done with work. I'm not a fan of judging things just because they are "unprofessional" but there are unprofessional things that actually make everyone else's lives more difficult.
Re: The growing inequality of who gets to work from home
#109Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think that this is partly because in Europe taxation is progressive and it quickly becomes quite high. (In the UK £100k-£120k is effectively taxed at 60%+ more if you have young kids) So there is a point where giving someone 10k take home pay rise costs the business much more than giving a frontline worker a 10k take home pay rise. But an EV car in the UK is taxed 98% less than the same amount in cash. Rest zones,…
The kid tax is at 50k, if you have student loans and 2 kids the marginal tax at 50-60k is 69%, then back to 42% for 60-100, then upto 62% 100-125, then 40% upto 150, then 45% above that. (Numbers approximate)
It's also worth noting that £100k in the UK puts you firmly into the top 5% of earners (according to the IFS anyway).
Re: The growing inequality of who gets to work from home
#110Earlier quoted context omitted.
> How many airplanes crashed due to The pilot being on drugs? As long as testing is uncommon you could say that number will remain at zero or near zero simply for lack of data. You comment implies but doesn’t state explicitly that you think truck drivers are more likely than pilots to be on drugs, is that true though?
Based on likely social setting difference due to salary difference plus the fact that truck drivers go through seedy places and do many long stretches alone, compared to pilots frequenting airports and hotels, and always working with a crew, I'm sure truck drivers use more drugs than airplane pilots. If you are not sure of this, I think your mind is "too open".
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 monitored more. Therefore, they’re more likely to engage in risky behavior in a desire to simply not be fired.
Now let’s get back to pilots. Is it just that airline pilots are a high status job like ceo? Not entirely. Pilots are essentially no different than truck drivers in the sky. Ironically, it’s because planes themselves are tracked by a competent and vigorous government agency, that employers can’t put the same pressures on pilots that they can on truck drivers.