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Silicon Valley's "Pronatalists" Killed WFH. The Strait of Hormuz Brought It Back

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Re: Silicon Valley's "Pronatalists" Killed WFH. The Strait of Hormuz Brought It Back

#131

Post by Zigurd »

ben_w wrote: post #100
Zigurd wrote: post #87

If someone tells you they are a pronatalist, odds are they are actually a eugenicist. And they probably espouse other tech bro oddball philosophies and pseudoscientific beliefs. How did we get to this place where a small number of strange white men have soured an industry that used to give us marvels that expanded our freedom and made our lives better?

Basically all of human history can be described in similar terms, and it's not melanin-specific. If you can name a historical figure, they were probably some flavour of non-standard mental processing and beliefs. Even just coming up with "marvels that expanded our freedom and made our lives better" is inherently a non-standard position relative to how most people live and think.

What you're saying amounts to: ambitious assholes know they need better PR than people who just get the job done. In principle this is an approach open to anyone, but in modern America, it is just a clique of strange white men.

Re: Silicon Valley's "Pronatalists" Killed WFH. The Strait of Hormuz Brought It Back

#132

Post by defrost »

jagged-chisel wrote: post #16

The one thing I can't find a quick is a definition for "pronatalist." The obvious definition without the scare quotes is "those in favor of families having children." But we have scare quotes and references to men who definitely desire extreme levels of control over others. It looks like "pronatalist" policy is "say you support increased birth rates while simultaneously being against any economic policy that would su…

The author of the submitted content also wrote this:

Yes, I am a pro-natalist - https://www.governance.fyi/p/yes-i-am-a-pro-natalist

Like many 's, the group isn't seen as homogenous from within regardless of how smooth and unfeatured they appear from outside.

Re: Silicon Valley's "Pronatalists" Killed WFH. The Strait of Hormuz Brought It Back

#133

Post by [deleted] »

LiquidSky wrote: post #122
jeffreyrogers wrote: post #109

I don't think Musk and Andreesseen are who most people would associate with the concept of pronatalism. The headline was surprising to me because most of the people I know who could be described as "pronatalist" are strongly for WFH policies.

>I don't think Musk and Andreesseen are who most people would associate with the concept of pronatalism. Musk is for sure. Doesn't he have like 100 kids because he's constantly trying to get women to become pregnant by his sperm?

[deleted]

Re: Silicon Valley's "Pronatalists" Killed WFH. The Strait of Hormuz Brought It Back

#134

Post by oceanplexian »

rossdavidh wrote: post #50

"One or two hybrid days per week capture nearly all the fertility upside." That is an interesting point, and not obvious why it would be so. In fact, it kind of calls into question whether the whole relationship is causal. The people who were able to WFH longer were more often in high-income jobs (service workers never got to do it in the first place, it was almost entirely an office worker thing). They were thus mor…

> They were thus more likely to be in an economic position where they felt comfortable having another child.

Just a reminder that if you pull up a chart of countries with the highest birth rates, they all have poor economic conditions. If the theory that a better economy correlates with more babies then countries like South Korea would have the world's highest birth rate.

Re: Silicon Valley's "Pronatalists" Killed WFH. The Strait of Hormuz Brought It Back

#135

Post by applfanboysbgon »

I had no idea that WFH made an actually noticeable impact on birth rates, but it really drives home how completely fucking ludicrous our societies are. At any point we can just flip the switch and stop burning fuel for no reason. We've done it twice now, once for COVID and once for this oil crisis, and it turns out nothing changes, or better yet, things change for the better. We burn fuel to make people miserable commuting 1~2hrs of their life away every single day, to decrease life satisfaction, to decrease their productivity, to decrease birth rates. At any moment we can just not do that. And yet in normal circumstances, we keep doing that. Just because we can.

Re: Silicon Valley's "Pronatalists" Killed WFH. The Strait of Hormuz Brought It Back

#136

Post by Thlom »

subpixel wrote: post #117
nemomarx wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wasn't it pretty intuitive back in 2021 or so that wfh would make childcare easier? It's good to have exact numbers of course, but I can't see how anyone would think RTO wouldn't impact fertility or households in some fashion.

Actually paying someone to take care of your child 7-5 is easier, it's just wildly unaffordable and therefore less attractive.

I'm thankful I live somewhere I can pay $300/month for daycare. I think it's even cheaper now and capped at like $400 no matter how many kids you have in daycare.

We tried to have them at home while WFH a few months during covid when everything was shut down. That didn't work. lol.

Re: Silicon Valley's "Pronatalists" Killed WFH. The Strait of Hormuz Brought It Back

#137

Post by everdrive »

pj_mukh wrote: post #127
softwaredoug wrote: post #51

If I could afford to live 15 minutes from the office I 100% would go to an office. But housing, transportation, daycare costs make that impractical. If they really want me in the office, companies need to engage on these issues in the metros they live in. They need to clear NIMBY barriers to urban housing, support transit, and good parental leave.

This is the right answer. I have a child, work remotely and while I appreciate the flexibility, I kind of hate it for my career. The article is mostly vibe-y without any digging into why people with children need to commute from so far. It's rent, the answer is almost always rent. Its my rent, its my child-care workers rent, it my kids school-teachers rent. It's always rent.

It's also consolidation of jobs in big cities. When I was a kid you didn't need to move away from home to find a stable income. WFH could have solved that, but I think the cultural movement to relocating has just become too entrenched.

Re: Silicon Valley's "Pronatalists" Killed WFH. The Strait of Hormuz Brought It Back

#138

Post by axus »

hypeatei wrote: post #63
softwaredoug wrote: post #51

If I could afford to live 15 minutes from the office I 100% would go to an office. But housing, transportation, daycare costs make that impractical. If they really want me in the office, companies need to engage on these issues in the metros they live in. They need to clear NIMBY barriers to urban housing, support transit, and good parental leave.

> If I could afford to live 15 minutes from the office I 100% would go to an office. I live ~20 minutes away from my job and you eventually get tired of that, too. Car maintenance, bad weather, bad drivers, etc. grind you down little by little everyday.

I'm on a hybrid schedule, same "distance". With a balance of days between home and office, I no longer get tired of the commute.

Commute "distance" is definitely measured in minutes and not kilometers.

Re: Silicon Valley's "Pronatalists" Killed WFH. The Strait of Hormuz Brought It Back

#139

Post by scythe »

fhd2 wrote: post #93
hypeatei wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If I could afford to live 15 minutes from the office I 100% would go to an office. I live ~20 minutes away from my job and you eventually get tired of that, too. Car maintenance, bad weather, bad drivers, etc. grind you down little by little everyday.

What baffles me most about RTO is what it does to romantic partnerships. If both can find career advancing jobs in the same city, that's cool. But what if they can't? The options aren't great: 1. One of them takes a hit on their career for the benefit of the other. 2. Both move to an area with OK-ish jobs for both, sharing the sacrifice. 3. Both take optimal jobs wherever they are and move into a long distance relati…

I have been thinking that this is a reason why the megacities are winning. In the largest cities, a couple can cohabitate and both find jobs. In smaller cities, you have to get lucky, and if one partner's job falls through (which may be unavoidable) then you might have to move! In a one-income household you can live in a city with one industry. Two is a coordination problem. The eleven largest cities have reached escape velocity. Detroit is hovering right on the edge. Seattle has favorable climate and a port. Other cities are boom and bust.

Re: Silicon Valley's "Pronatalists" Killed WFH. The Strait of Hormuz Brought It Back

#140

Post by lizknope »

cosmic_quanta wrote: post #52

I will die on this hill: tech firms that mandated 5 days in the office was about soft layoffs, rather than a principled stance on individual performance under WFH. My "evidence" is that trading firms that kept raking in the money, and that benefit from maximum productivity of their employees, still generally have a hybrid work culture.

My company went back to 5 days in office in May 2025. Since then 8 people out of 100 in my office have retired. They were in the 55-65 age range and 3 of them directly told me that they would have stayed working if we stayed hybrid 3 days a week. So now we are hiring people and having to retrain them. Many of them are over 50 and were laughing at our 5 days in office. But our stock is high so I think they will stay for a few years and retire.
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