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

The future of work is not threatening your employees

warzel.substack.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 71 posts

Re: The future of work is not threatening your employees

#31

Post by whack »

Unpopular opinion - is the CEO really threatening her employees? Or talking more abstractly about the downsides and ramifications of people deciding to work remotely? Ie, downsides that people would face at many/most companies, not just her own. I read the original article with a more charitable assumption, and the latter is how it came across to me.

"If you park in my driveway again, I will have your car towed" - very clear threat.

"If you go around parking in people's driveways, you run the risk of having your car towed" - maybe a threat, maybe not, depending on how the person says it

"I understand that you parked in my driveway yesterday, because of an emergency. No problem. But if you continue doing it regularly, please be aware that I might need to have your car towed, if I urgently need to use the driveway myself" - I suppose this is a threat too, but probably justifiable.

Maybe others would consider this to be cynical, but I've always considered compensation and job stability to be directly correlated to the amount of value you provide as an employee. If an employer thinks that remote-working will reduce the amount of value I bring to the company, I would certainly expect that to have an impact on my career growth. If my manager tells me this directly, I would thank him for the upfront feedback. I would also consider working for a different company that has a different perspective on this topic... the exact same way I shop around for employers that offer the best work-life balance. But either way, there wouldn't be any hard feelings on my side, and I'm puzzled by the outrage around this article.

Re: The future of work is not threatening your employees

#32

Post by LocalH »

Muromec wrote: post #13
davesque wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lol, really? A pandemic doesn't count?

One could argue that being shut off from in-person interaction is not as big of a challenge, as escaping a genocide or being drafted into an army to fight $ideology on the other side of the globe. Pandemic is sure bad, but not "half of all men in your country being killed in war" bad.

One could also argue that the reduction of in-person interaction is in some ways worse, if not as heinous, because of the long term harm that it will cause.

Re: The future of work is not threatening your employees

#33

Post by throwaway3699 »

paleotrope wrote: post #7
davesque wrote: post #5

Seems like there are a lot of ways that employers are effectively blaming their employees for COVID. Some of the anecdotes in this article really resonated with me. It does feel "super shitty" when you feel as though you've been barely holding it together during what has undoubtedly been one of the most difficult years of the previous century and yet your employer seems to feel entitled to hold you to the usual stand…

"during what has undoubtedly been one of the most difficult years of the previous century" That seems a bit hyperbolic.

I had two family members die of COVID, moved house 3 times (including several months couch surfing) and burned out at work while having daily panic attacks due to being locked indoors and isolated for months alone.

I don't think elements of this experience were uncommon.

Re: The future of work is not threatening your employees

#34

Post by rconti »

davesque wrote: post #5

Seems like there are a lot of ways that employers are effectively blaming their employees for COVID. Some of the anecdotes in this article really resonated with me. It does feel "super shitty" when you feel as though you've been barely holding it together during what has undoubtedly been one of the most difficult years of the previous century and yet your employer seems to feel entitled to hold you to the usual stand…

I work in tech, and my company has bent over backwards to help us. Dozens of extra days off I'm having a hard time even using, an extra 4 days off a year (one per quarter) where the whole company is off, constantly reminding us ourselves and our families come first, and encouraging others to be understanding that our coworkers might be working unusual schedules as they juggle remote-learning kids, childcare, elder care, and other life priorities during such a difficult period.

It's not everywhere, and maybe it's not even the norm, but surely other companies are supportive of their employees as well.

Re: The future of work is not threatening your employees

#35

Post by autokad »

whack wrote: post #31

Unpopular opinion - is the CEO really threatening her employees? Or talking more abstractly about the downsides and ramifications of people deciding to work remotely? Ie, downsides that people would face at many/most companies, not just her own. I read the original article with a more charitable assumption, and the latter is how it came across to me. "If you park in my driveway again, I will have your car towed" - ve…

agree, I think tech employees should be weary of remote work. We'll probably see even harder interview process and less pay / benefits as a result.

Re: The future of work is not threatening your employees

#36

Post by rickspencer3 »

paleotrope wrote: post #7
davesque wrote: post #5

Seems like there are a lot of ways that employers are effectively blaming their employees for COVID. Some of the anecdotes in this article really resonated with me. It does feel "super shitty" when you feel as though you've been barely holding it together during what has undoubtedly been one of the most difficult years of the previous century and yet your employer seems to feel entitled to hold you to the usual stand…

"during what has undoubtedly been one of the most difficult years of the previous century" That seems a bit hyperbolic.

It's been a pretty rough year for DC residents to be fair. Between BLM protests, the gangs that drove to the city literally to fight with them, then a literal insurrection, I think it's possible that for this group, it's up there in terms of difficult years in the last 100. Oh, and then there was the pandemic on top of that.

Re: The future of work is not threatening your employees

#38

Post by marcosdumay »

Is this a veiled threat or a Maquiavelic warning?

I really can't tell, but the meat of the difference is that the warning would be about what other people will do, not himself. (So it makes sense to publish a warning on the media, but it makes much less rational sense to publish a threat. But there's no reason to be sure he is acting rationally.)

Anyway, it's a very narcissistic comment. CEOs will do what the competition for labor allows them to do, the ones that do anything more will fail. There's a huge and complex society deciding those factors, he (or the ones he is warning about) does not get to choose.

Re: The future of work is not threatening your employees

#39

Post by jay_kyburz »

I think one of the consequences of work from home culture will be less of an emphasis on how many hours you work, and more focus on what you produce, and how that can be monetized.

What this means is that a good manager will farm work out all over the place finding the right mix of quality / quantity / price.

People will not be paid salaries, they will be paid per unit of work.

Rather than interviewing people to join your family, businesses will be running a continual review of work producs and more carefully measure that mix of quality / quantity / price. Each cycle letting go the least desirable contractors and giving new contractors a try.

On-boarding new contractors will be streamlined, and how fast the contractor gets started will be the first quality control checkpoint.

Re: The future of work is not threatening your employees

#40

Post by floren »

jay_kyburz wrote: post #39

I think one of the consequences of work from home culture will be less of an emphasis on how many hours you work, and more focus on what you produce, and how that can be monetized. What this means is that a good manager will farm work out all over the place finding the right mix of quality / quantity / price. People will not be paid salaries, they will be paid per unit of work. Rather than interviewing people to join…

Well, that would certainly be what it took to finally make me buy a farm and leave tech forever, so maybe I should be on board!
Post reply on HN