161–170 of 316 posts
One WFH scenario I've never seen brought up is trying to hold a career while needing to care for elderly family members. That's not something people can just choose not to do, if family cultural norms require it.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's because there's a lot of overlap between people thinking "those damn lazy workers better get back to the office so they don't slack off" and people thinking "a woman's role is in the household, raising children and cooking". Regressive attitudes tend to not come alone.
"RTO is sexist" is a hell of a take.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Correct, the term "pronatalists" is in scare-quotes, suggesting that their belief/concern is fake.
Pronatalists are outwardly concerned with birth rates while simultaneously railing against immigration while simultaneously begging for more H1-Bs. The implication is really "we need more white babies" but always taking a back seat to "I need more money".
No, and I think that's a slander. If you look at the numbers, birth rates are falling everywhere. There's no fecund area pumping out babies at a rate to use immigration to solve the labor component of the birthrate problem. And even the most fecund area may drop to sub-replacement rate in a generation or two, if the follow the patterns of everywhere else. It really is a global problem.
And the progressive immigration solution is kind of imperialist: exporting problems from rich countries to poorer ones, who are even less equipped to deal with them (e.g. "let's export our trash to Africa and plunder its youth").
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.
“True work only happens in person with human collaboration! Everyone must come back”
2 years pass
“Oh wow we can replace everyone with a chatbot this is amazing”
narrator: It was the interest rates all along. Many of these tech businesses are fundamentally bad, the ROI is smoke and mirrors, energy shocks and bad macro-economics are coming, and investors are starting to ask hard questions.
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 guess is that it was a reaction to the pandemic-era trend of "over employment" where a small number of remote workers bragged about clocking in simultaneously to multiple jobs. Employers may have decided that their employees' physical body was the only unique identifier that couldn't be duplicated.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
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.
Plus I need the ability to deduct my transport cost from taxable income.
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.
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 guess is that it was a reaction to the pandemic-era trend of "over employment" where a small number of remote workers bragged about clocking in simultaneously to multiple jobs. Employers may have decided that their employees' physical body was the only unique identifier that couldn't be duplicated.