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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

#181

Post by BirAdam »

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…

Anecdotal, but...

I have a commute that varies between 30 minutes and 2 hours (one way). I am in office 5 days each week, eight hours of work, and hour for lunch. That's 11 hours gone each day (sometimes more, occasionally less). Add in getting ready to go in, doing stuff around the house when I get home, and the only time that I am really available to my spouse is dinner and Saturday/Sunday. Due to the time lost, I end up doing household work at least one day each weekend. My spouse and I now have 1 full day together each week. Where in that is there really time for romance?

I can fully understand where even two days with more time and less stress would create opportunity for romance that otherwise may not exist.

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

#182

Post by grunder_advice »

ebiester wrote: post #158

I think the supply shocks is the part of the pro-natalist view that is hardest for me to accept. My counter-argument: the full expression of human achievement is not genetic; it depends on the resources given to the human; If we accept that someone cannot reach their entire potential if living in poverty, and we accept that a lot of the advantages of rich children are due to the environment and opportunities that wea…

I guess I'm pro-natalist. I do agree with you on the goal of eradicating poverty, although to me that's a goal in itself that does not need to be justified. But I don't agree that all people on earth are fungible, and a birth in Mongolia is the same as a birth is Sydney, Australia.

Your "human achievement" viewpoint is highly reductive. The culture of a place is maintained by it's local population. When you have a low birth rate situation to the point that you need to supplement the workforce with immigrants, that signifies that the local culture is slowly dying. While some mixing of cultures is beneficial, we should also try to perserve our local cultures. We should not turn every city in the developed world into a little NYC.

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

#183

Post by graemep »

ben_w wrote: post #101
graemep wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Christian? Musk says he is not religious. He has said he is a "cultural christian" - a description also used of themselves by a lot of people ranging from Richard Dawkins to Anders Breivik. https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Society/2024/1218/elon-musk-cu...

That would still match "[favouring] white Christian people". Or at least that part matches the "Christian" part, the other stuff Musk associates with seems to suggest at least some racial (and not simply cultural) biases in his thinking, e.g. how he regards DEI as being a promotion of undeserving people rather than a way to give equal opportunities to deserving people who are demonstrably under-represented given thei…

On that basis Richard Dawkins matches the Christian part.

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

#184

Post by Cthulhu_ »

rennokki wrote: post #165
mitthrowaway2 wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

As long as someone finished the assigned tasks for the day, idc if they want office or remote.

Thing is, who decides how many tasks someone can do in a day? What if they get paid for 8 but only work for one, but the manager doesn't know they do, and they never communicate their workload is too low?

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

#185

Post by isoprophlex »

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.

> The actual act is a rounding error in the time requirement.

this is patently wrong. getting pregnant isn't just something that magically happens once you decide you have enough money

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

#186

Post by BirAdam »

twodave wrote: post #26
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…

It isn’t political.

If people want their government services to continue to work without destroying the economies that support them, it absolutely is a political issue.

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

#188

Post by section_me »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #184
rennokki wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As long as someone finished the assigned tasks for the day, idc if they want office or remote.

Thing is, who decides how many tasks someone can do in a day? What if they get paid for 8 but only work for one, but the manager doesn't know they do, and they never communicate their workload is too low?

Same can be said for people using LLM agents to complete jobs faster than humans ever possibly can. It's not like they just fluked it. They've learned how to harness the capabilities of the tech. Now companies are introducing this stuff as a normal workflow but they are clueless as to how it actually works and expecting 10x output from people.

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

#189

Post by BirAdam »

XorNot wrote: post #3
toomuchtodo wrote: post #2

> WFH delivers more fertility impact than the entire U.S. early childhood spending apparatus, at zero taxpayer cost. It's (mostly) free! The tech bros just have to get over their status and control issues about forcing workers back into the office. Can they? Remains to be seen.

I mean Zuckerberg renamed his company Meta, then forced everyone back into the office. So I'd say outlook not so good.

Made me giggle so hard. Guy tells his company to create a virtual reality platform, says it can be used for work, forces employees back to office proving his product sucks.

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

#190

Post by mcphage »

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.

> My guess is that it was a reaction to the pandemic-era trend of "over employment"

I'm guessing the opposite: that these firms wanted to push back-to-the-office policies, and so either invented, or publicized, engineers doing "over employment", and that it wasn't a real problem that any of them actually faced.

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