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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

#261

Post by pllbnk »

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.

Correlation is not causation. A huge part of this high birth rate is that in these poor countries people leave in rural areas, farming or doing similar work, this essentially “working from home”. They can have many children because they stay close with their families and also having more children is a survival strategy.

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

#262

Post by pllbnk »

dkarl wrote: post #81
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…

The other reasons given make sense to me, but I bet there is also some psychological benefit in having a regularly scheduled escape from home, and having a guilt-free excuse for it built in, which partly compensates for being forced to come in a few days a week. The contrast makes it easier to appreciate the company of your spouse and probably makes child-rearing seem less oppressive. People theoretically could manag…

Escape from home is healthy. But not when you are escaping into the office. It’s healthy to escape for a hike, for groceries, to take a walk, go to the gym, etc.

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

#263

Post by pllbnk »

subpixel wrote: post #117
nemomarx wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wasn't it pretty intuitive back in 2021 or so that wfh would make childcare easier? It's good to have exact numbers of course, but I can't see how anyone would think RTO wouldn't impact fertility or households in some fashion.

Actually paying someone to take care of your child 7-5 is easier, it's just wildly unaffordable and therefore less attractive.

I don’t understand the reasoning to have children if you don’t want to spend time with them and rather would pay someone to do that for you (not addressing directly at you). Being able to spend time with your child is a gift which passes by very quickly.

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

#264

Post by pj_mukh »

pllbnk wrote: post #259
pj_mukh wrote: post #127

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.

Not necessarily. We happily moved away to suburbs because we grew tired of the city noise and chaos. The child can stay outside, we have a proper backyard, there are barely any cars in the street. It was much more affordable but was a side effect rather than the main reason to move. And when both parents work from home, as we do, we are doing just fine with a single car. For those exceptional circumstances when we ne…

I moved away to Europe where there are none of those things and my child can walk himself over to a park 10x the size of an American backyard.

The chaos and noise (especially the car noise) are just an explicit choice American cities have made.

I really hope you get the irony of being a suburbanite complaining about there being too many cars in cities when most of those cars are suburbanites who’ve given up on improving the public transit in their cities.

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

#265

Post by pllbnk »

pj_mukh wrote: post #264
pllbnk wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not necessarily. We happily moved away to suburbs because we grew tired of the city noise and chaos. The child can stay outside, we have a proper backyard, there are barely any cars in the street. It was much more affordable but was a side effect rather than the main reason to move. And when both parents work from home, as we do, we are doing just fine with a single car. For those exceptional circumstances when we ne…

I moved away to Europe where there are none of those things and my child can walk himself over to a park 10x the size of an American backyard. The chaos and noise (especially the car noise) are just an explicit choice American cities have made. I really hope you get the irony of being a suburbanite complaining about there being too many cars in cities when most of those cars are suburbanites who’ve given up on improv…

I live in Europe. Each country is different but every large city is more or less the same. Sure you can’t compare London with Copenhagen for example but even in the latter case suburban life is much calmer.

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

#266

Post by senordevnyc »

LiquidSky wrote: post #128
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.

I know that this is Hacker News and so all rich and important people must be geniuses making only rational moves, but consider the slim possibility that most aren't very good leaders and make poor decisions. Maybe there's some 19D "soft layoff" motivation, but I suspect a large part is just about control and appearance. You spent all that money on offices so workers better be there. And what's the point of having you…

I know that this is Hacker News and so all rich and important people must be geniuses making only rational moves, but consider the slim possibility that most aren't very good leaders and make poor decisions.

Every single frontpage thread on WFH / RTO for years now on HN has dozens to hundreds of comments bitching about the obvious stupidity and narcissism of upper management to force RTO, which is obviously inferior in every way, at least according to HN.

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

#267

Post by pandaman »

rennokki wrote: post #241
mikkupikku wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Nail guns are tools, just like hammers. However, you have to know how to use it and to know how to adjust the pressure for the depth you need. It also costs money, much more than a hammer. And you can't use normal nails, you have to have a specific cartridge of nails, and you must know how to adjust it, and ultimately to not die. Now compare it again.

Nailguns are not as complicated as you think, anybody with IQ over 80 can be trained to the top proficiency in 30 mins. Same goes for other power tools, they are generally much easier to use and more productive than their human-powered equivalent. The effect of the construction industry adoption of those is in smaller crew sizes, which is also being observed in SW industry.

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

#268

Post by jasomill »

bombcar wrote: post #211
lizknope wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Doubtful it's healthcare, as unlike other benefits like stock options, consulting firms will have substantially similar healthcare costs that will be reflected in their fees.

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

#269

Post by whatshisface »

davidw wrote: post #239
Swizec wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 “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 fundamentall…

Tech has never been perfect, but there was a time when it felt more hopeful and optimistic and about building cool stuff. There's always been give and take with the money side of things that's necessary to keep fueling the building, but it feels like it all kind of went off the rails somewhere. I'd be fine with earning less (we're pretty frugal) to work in that kind of environment with good people.

You'd also be a lot more likely to keep that kind of job post-crash, by all means take it if you find one.

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

#270

Post by pc86 »

givemeethekeys wrote: post #255
pc86 wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe I'm just lucky but the worst micromanagement has always been from my direct supervisors, never VP-level. In my experience most at that level (especially when it's several layers removed from the ICs) do as little work as possible, and spend most of their time hanging out with other VPs and trying to move on to the next step. Are the tech firms the ones spending billions on office buildings? It's certainly not t…

When a company looks for a new office, cities give them subsidies to open office there. Those subsidies come with strings attached beyond, "please lease this office space". They expect additional foot traffic that the other businesses near the office would benefit from.

I don't think this is true, do you have a cite for this other than stories that make national news like Amazon's HQ? Even if it happens for more than outlier examples like that, this would only happen for huge companies that can meaningfully move the economy of large urban centers. So maybe top-5 level huge companies in mid-market cities, but 99.9999% of companies wouldn't qualify for that.
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