Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

governance.fyi

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

171–180 of 316 posts

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

#171

Post by gmerc »

mitthrowaway2 wrote: post #105
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 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.

Such a bullshit narrative in data driven companies

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

#172

Post by myrmidon »

Macha wrote: post #86
darkwater wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because if both are at home working, well, you can have some couple time (also called "sex") during lunch break or at any given moment when there are no meetings etc. Ask me how I know it...

Deciding whether to have a child seems much less about finding the time for sex, than about thinking you have the time and resources for actually raising the child that you would have. The actual act is a rounding error in the time requirement.

I disagree. It is completely irrelevant if you can "afford" raising a child. Your children are not gonna die because you "can't afford" them in ANY western democracy once you have them.

Actual affordability of children has zero direct effect on fertility, the only thing that really matters here is "perceived affordability" (=> and by implication, effect on lifestyle)!

So if you can "trick" people into having more sex, then expecting higher fertility is quite reasonable, while decreasing the monetary cost of raising kids might not really help much at all.

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

#173

Post by scruple »

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 employer very successfully shipped a lot of brand new stuff during COVID when everyone was full-time remote. We made a lot of money off of those products. Then they sort of bragged about it. Then they instituted RTO. Now (I'm told, I'm at a megacorp so I'm far removed from these discussions) the executive team is bitching that we're not in office 5 days per week.

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

#174

Post by lo_zamoyski »

vrganj wrote: post #98
fhd2 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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.

Enabling women to be with their children during their early years is a good thing. Mothers are not replaceable by fathers or by strangers. You can do it, sometimes you must, but it's sub-optimal for young children. Being able to live on a single income during those years is fantastic, but when it isn't possible, WFH can be a big improvement.

(That being said, this isn't an excuse to be an absentee, deadbeat dad. Traditionally, most people lived in villages, living agrarian lives. Family life was much more involved. That meant both parents were generally present throughout the day. And with age, the fatherly role becomes increasingly important for development. The strict division of mom-in-suburban-home/dad-away-at-urban-office is hardly traditional or representative of historical realities.)

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

#175

Post by expedition32 »

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.

IMO it is just American business culture. Big boss tells peons what to do- very hierarchy based despite the nice break room.

And culture does not care about logic.

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

#176

Post by doom2 »

ryandrake wrote: post #151
lizknope wrote: post #144

My comment from a thread last week We saw how much less pollution there was during the pandemic https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2020/03/04/8110190 ... I worked from home but a few times I needed to go to my parents house during what used to be rush hour. Less than 5% of normal traffic and fuel demand dropped so much that prices were lower. My job went hybrid in 2022 and then return to office full time last…

> Take it one step further and give tax breaks to businesses that let employees work from home and close physical offices. At this point I'd rather use the stick than the carrot. Make employers 100% shoulder their employees' commute costs. Don't like it? Allow WFH or pay them enough to afford to live close to the office.

In some recent recruiter calls for hybrid positions in New York, I asked if the employer would pay for roundtrip Amtrak tickets 3x/week from where I live (a ~1.5 hour train ride). Of course the answer was no and I knew that already, but if the company policy is that all employees must live within 50 miles of the office, surely they know that a 50 mile commute by car could be as long or longer than an 85 mile train ride.

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

#177

Post by landl0rd »

My suspicion is that WFH/remote living doesn't increase fertility so much as pulling it forward. I.e. those who will have children already have them sooner and may be more likely to have the marginal child. Those who are single are probably likely to have fewer children and have them older.

This is a pretty terrible distributional effect, all things considered.

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

#178

Post by scruple »

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.

Through circumstance I went from a fully remote working arrangement to working for a place that's 5 miles down a single surface street from where I live (which, during commute hours pushes up to 15 minutes). I go in twice a week, but since we have kids it's mostly a wash. I still vastly prefer the 3 days per week that I work from home. The office gets very busy and very loud, especially in the afternoons.

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

#179

Post by throwaway21856 »

rectang wrote: post #161
throwaway21856 wrote: post #85

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.

Yup, that’s me! And it’s a rewarding life despite all the noise from anti-WFH ideologues. A string of open-minded startups have benefited from my labor.

I've been out of luck unfortunately. My experience is somewhat specialized, and the intersection of adjacent jobs with WFH all seem to want a different experience.

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

#180

Post by idreyn »

jmyeet wrote: post #78

This conversation is incomplete without bringing up transhumanism [1], which is basically just Silicon Valley themed eugenics [2]. It is the belief by SV billionaires that their genes are superior and their goal is to "gift" those genes to future humanity. It's why the likes of Elon Musk is the absent or no-contact father to so many children. It's just vanilla (pardon the pun) white supremacy combined with the myth o…

I think the more mainstream understanding of transhumanism is closer to "post-genics" than eugenics.
Post reply on HN