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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

#211

Post by bombcar »

lizknope wrote: post #140
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 f…

There has always been a "retire, come back as a consultant" flow, but it's a bit stronger now. Perhaps the healthcare savings are worth it for the company.

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

#212

Post by Gud »

Tade0 wrote: post #210
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.

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.

Smart advice!

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

#213

Post by bhouston »

delecti wrote: post #147
bhouston wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are a lot of flavors of "pro-natalist". For example Elon Musk is a "pro-natalist" but he seems to clear favor white Christian people and himself especially. Others are pro-natalist but have a general eugenics bent, rather than just white/Christian supremacy. And then others are pro-natalist in a more general sense, in that our culture in general should encourage at least rough replacement levels of fertility so…

I don't think those groups are as distinct as you're implying, certainly not in the US. I think there is considerable overlap, in the form of people who believe in the "Great Replacement" conspiracy theory. Essentially "we need to make sure there are enough white babies so that white people can outbreed ." That thought is inherently eugenicist because it implicitly holds that white people are "better" in some way. "C…

I guess I would like a distinction because I personally would like to avoid population collapse, thus I am pro-natalist in wanting a replacement level fertility, and I would prefer if that fertility was well distributed rather than highly concentrated in the most conservative religious folk. I do fear what will happen if we continue to shrink, it has to stop somewhere.

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

#214

Post by twodave »

estearum wrote: post #29
twodave wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It isn’t political.

For a huge number of pronatalists it absolutely is. And/or religious, which often also boils down to being political.

It isn’t exactly a red/blue issue is what I should have said. I thought given the parent I was replying to that was the implication anyway. You can make anything political, of course.

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

#215

Post by mikkupikku »

section_me wrote: post #188
Cthulhu_ wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I wonder how the transition from classic hammers to nail guns went for carpenters / framers.

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

#216

Post by rimunroe »

michaelsbradley wrote: post #110
Macha wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

And… that’s just not how the time factor actually works. If wife and husband are home during her most fertile time window in a cycle, she will instinctively “find him” for some magic moments that may not be particularly planned or even romantic, rather more characterized by a delightful and clumsy urgency.

> If wife and husband are home during her most fertile time window in a cycle, she will instinctively “find him” [...]

Have you known many couples who had trouble trying to conceive? There's a reason fertility monitoring strips, apps, etc. are such a huge market, and it's not because people are trying to avoid pregnancy.

> [...] for some magic moments that may not be particularly planned or even romantic, rather more characterized by a delightful and clumsy urgency.

I guarantee that if you interviewed couples who had been unsuccessfully trying to conceive for a long time a large number of them would strongly disagree with using "delightful" to describe the urgency of sex during the fertility window.

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

#217

Post by twodave »

BirAdam wrote: post #186
twodave wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Oh, and how do you propose politics is even able to have an impact? Force people to have sex with each other?

It may be an ideology but I don’t think this is a red/blue topic and certainly not a legislative one imo. It is more of a geographical issue and a byproduct of industrialism that isn’t really reversible, you just hope the ride down is more of a slope and not a cliff.

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

#218

Post by surgical_fire »

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.

Of course it was. It's not even well hidden.

If they had a shred of evidence that RTO was the eminently more productive, they would smugly rub our collective noses in it.

They don't have evidence. They have vibes and a profound hatred for the labor class. It irks them that suddenly common people had access to a benefit exclusive to them.

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

#219

Post by jeffreyrogers »

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?

I associate the concept of pronatalism with also wanting to be involved in your kids' lives, which Musk seems to have no interest in.

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

#220

Post by Esophagus4 »

LiquidSky wrote: post #118
rhubarbtree wrote: post #112

Everyone on HN: "people are so irrational, they never see the importance of embracing technology; why are people so close-minded? It's all vested interests. At least us nerds use _logic_ to evaluate the situation. All these idiots post-rationalising things." Also everyone on HN: "there is absolutely no good argument for working in an office and anyone who suggests it is evil."

The second one is mostly accurate, yes. There aren't really many good rational arguments for requiring full-time in-office attendance.

There are, you just don’t believe in them.

That’s different.

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