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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

#201

Post by toomuchtodo »

oceanplexian wrote: post #134
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.

There is evidence that improved economic conditions and flexible work arrangements increase fertility in meaningful amounts. Is it enough to achieve 2.1 replacement rate? It isn't, but the evidence is robust that wealthier people do have higher fertility in some circumstances.

TLDR Fertility declines as countries urbanize, income rises, and women are educated and empowered to make more affirmed fertility choices, but also slightly increases when prospective parents feel economically secure enough to have a child, or more children (within some intent or desire band).

Higher incomes are increasingly associated with higher fertility: Evidence from the Netherlands, 2008–2022 - https://www.demographic-research.org/articles/volume/51/26 | https://doi.org/10.4054/DemRes.2024.51.26 - October 8th, 2024

More Babies For the Rich? The Relationship Between Status and Children Is Changing - https://ifstudies.org/blog/more-babies-for-the-rich-the-rela... - March 18th, 2024

> Yet the trend at the aggregate level of the whole country disguises trends that are emerging among individuals in these countries. In my new book, coauthored with Martin Fieder and Susanne Huber, Not So Weird After All: The Changing Relationship between Status and Fertility, we document that while in much of the twentieth century it was poor people in countries such as the United States who had more children than richer people, there is a new emerging trend where better-off men and women are more likely to have children than less well-off men and women.

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

#202

Post by graemep »

ben_w wrote: post #200
graemep wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On that basis Richard Dawkins matches the Christian part.

It is entirely unimportant how Richard Dawkins is categorised, isn't it? Last I checked, the "pro-natalist" part isn't there for Dawkins, so how other things modify a pro-natalist stance don't connect to anything.

I am suggesting that a definition of "Christian" that includes Richard Dawkins is flawed.

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

#203

Post by OnionBlender »

redwall_hp wrote: post #170
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.

They should start with over-employed executives in the C-suite of more than one company or sitting on more than one company's board of directors.

When I worked at BlackBerry, it pissed me off when CEO John Chen sent out an email telling employees that they need to be fully focused on their BlackBerry job. Meanwhile, he was on the board of directors of Disney and Wells Fargo while BlackBerry was failing badly.

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

#204

Post by salawat »

ryandrake wrote: post #198
redwall_hp wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They should start with over-employed executives in the C-suite of more than one company or sitting on more than one company's board of directors.

Yea, for some reason: Rich people sitting on multiple boards and running multiple companies is A-OK Poor people having to work 3 jobs to keep food on the table is A-OK But, middle class office workers working at multiple jobs is fraud and abuse and must be stopped.

Well... Yes. The middle class haven't been rendered sufficiently replaceable yet. Make no mistake, once you're deskilled, you'll be treated exactly like the poor. Have you not been keeping up? What do you think the whole AI craze is about? Perfecting transmute money->code for the wealthy without requiring the burden of hiring.

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

#205

Post by [deleted] »

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?

[deleted]

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

#206

Post by rectang »

throwaway21856 wrote: post #179
rectang wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

We only get one life. I admire the path you’ve taken.

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

#207

Post by ben_w »

graemep wrote: post #202
ben_w wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is entirely unimportant how Richard Dawkins is categorised, isn't it? Last I checked, the "pro-natalist" part isn't there for Dawkins, so how other things modify a pro-natalist stance don't connect to anything.

I am suggesting that a definition of "Christian" that includes Richard Dawkins is flawed.

You're the one who chose to combine Musk and Dawkins in the same group here with "cultural christian", that's absolutely a straw man if this is what you're doing.

I mean, your own link up there has a sub-heading of "Everyone has their own definition".

Especially when you're replying to "he seems to clear favor white Christian people and himself especially" rather than "is a Christian". Queen Victoria wasn't a feminist, neither.

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

#208

Post by lux-lux-lux »

pc86 wrote: post #157
vrganj wrote: post #98

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.

Why? The data supports it. Women were more likely to leave during RTO efforts than men. WFH being a massive boon for workers with childcare responsibilities or medical issues is widely recognized; there’s a reason why there was a baby boom during the pandemic. A lot of the backlash against WFH workers was blatantly sexist; remember all the rage against those “day in the life of a remote worker” type TikToks? Note how they got way, way more hate than the objectively worse ‘working’ several jobs or modern hustle culture scam stuff?

I don’t think it’s the be-all end-all explanation, but the shoe fits.

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

#209

Post by swed420 »

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…

Also:

* Less time wasted in commute/traffic, which adds up to a significant portion of your lifetime

* Lower vehicle expenses (car-centric people often forget just how much the total cost of ownership for vehicles really is)

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

#210

Post by Tade0 »

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.

I may or may not know a guy who bought a laptop identical to his work machine from place A to do projects for B while still physically being at A.
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