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Most employees of NYT won’t be required back in physical offices until 2021

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Re: Most employees of NYT won’t be required back in physical offices until 2021

#301
post #5

Meanwhile, my employer has said zero remote work once the state transitions into the next phase. They want to be "fair" to everyone, including those who have positions that cannot be performed remotely. So, you have a co-morbidity? Nope. You have no childcare suddenly? Nope. It's startling how stuck in the 1980's some people are. Just absolutely astonishing.

I've heard two C-level guys with two separate German SMEs say that the only part of their workforce that hadn't handled remote work well was middle management. The people doing the actual work were happy WFH and simply getting stuff done. Senior management / C-level types were content seeing sales figures and general output from afar. Middle management struggled because they had a hard time judging work estimates for…

"they had a hard time judging work estimates"

They had a hard time justifying their existence.

Re: Most employees of NYT won’t be required back in physical offices until 2021

#302
post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

their profits oh no

It's how the world works. Now, it probably isn't as correlated to butts-in-seats as mid-management would like to pretend it is, and maybe those people don't deserve bonuses for being bad mid-managers, but after the US just blew $2T+ on speculative bailouts, I do think that the goose is required to lay a few golden eggs.

Much like 8-hour workdays, weekends, or parental leave, I'm excited for us to discuss reforming parts of how the world works to make things better for everyone.

Re: Most employees of NYT won’t be required back in physical offices until 2021

#303
post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Georgia death rate graph that you link to is sort of an odd case; there's apparently a variable lag between the occurrence and reporting of a death, sometimes up to a month - When a death is reported, they place it on its occurrence date on the graph, not on the reported date. As a result, it will appear from this graph that deaths are always declining whether they are or not - the more recent deaths have not yet…

>As a result, it will appear from this graph that deaths are always declining whether they are or not Most deaths are reported relatively quickly. If there were, as an example, a 2x increase in deaths it would show on the graph within a few days. It would show as something like a 1.8x increase before trickling up to the full 2x over the following weeks.

Death lags new case by as much as a month (due to time from infection to death). So we won't really know if there is an increase an death due to the new cases for a number of weeks after we see a rise in cases.

Re: Most employees of NYT won’t be required back in physical offices until 2021

#304
post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the part that gets me, too. Here's a summary I put together of where the US stands on the latest "reopen" benchmarks: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vQSSp19amBFU... It varies region to region. I'm in Orange County, CA. (You may remember us from such recent news events as...) This was Huntington Beach weekend before last (probably much the same this weekend, too): https://www.reddit.com/r/Coro…

I am in south-ish (north palm beach) Florida and went to the beach the past few weekends. Fortunately it was nowhere near has busy as that picture. We haven't had much issue finding a spot with enough space to feel socially distanced. We also went to Longhorn for dinner yesterday and they had everyone pretty spaced out (every other booth, no seating at center tables). All the restaurant employees were wearing masks.…

Hello neighbor!

Re: Most employees of NYT won’t be required back in physical offices until 2021

#305

Ask HN: do you make any distinction between "working from home" and "working from home during a pandemic"? I see a lot of people arguing that WFH is the new normal, citing long reopening timelines, their own preferences, increased productivity, Twitter's policy change, etc. But just a few years ago, IBM and Yahoo radically curtailed their WFH policies, and they made (what seemed to me to be) pretty credible arguments…

I am unsure this is the answer you were looking for but I do make a distinction. I've been working remotely for 10+ years, and the 3 months of lockdown were the worst I've had, for the simple reason that _my family was locked in with me_. I am sure remote working is not for everyone, but I like it. Yet, I live in an apartment, my kids can't go out to play and can't be expected to behave all the time, me and my spouse…

This seems to be the primary issue I see at work right now. People without kids are loving wfh and people with kids are struggling with distraction causing some of them to come back to the office just to work remotely with the rest of us.

Re: Most employees of NYT won’t be required back in physical offices until 2021

#306
post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There was no interest in building bridges during it's building, Republicans were laying out the dynamite, and spent a hell of a lot of wasted effort after Trump took office trying to trigger that dynamite. So what's the point? One could argue that Republicans were responding in kind. You would disagree (as would I, but that doesn't matter). This kind of endless litigation only polarizes us--we each permit our own e…

Obamacare didn't actually need Republican support, but Obama did try to reach out an olive branch to the right, and it was stomped on repeatedly. It is very hard to empathize with conservative capitalists, libertarians or the alt right, when much of their policies seem to be based on a lack of empathy. It's also kind of sad that rioting, protests and raw anger over recent social issues has been more effective at movi…

> when much of their policies seem to be based on a lack of empathy

This is a misunderstanding. The difference is not in the presence or absence of empathy, but rather in how that empathy is expressed: private interaction or government programs. The libertarians are not lacking in empathy; they just don't see it as a suitable justification for political action.

Of course, if you only discuss the problem from a political angle, and consider only political solutions, then it would indeed seem like they aren't interested in solving it at all, when in fact they are very interested in finding a solution—just one that doesn't involve force.

Re: Most employees of NYT won’t be required back in physical offices until 2021

#307
post #255
post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally I can't wait for this to come back to normal: being inside an office for 9 hours every day helps me be productive and focus.

I guess it depends on your WFH situation. If you live in a big enough house to have a dedicated office room, probably it is better to WFH. If you live in a studio, where you do everything in a single room, then it is better to go to the office to change the scene a bit.

idk. I basically have my office in my bedroom right now and I find it to be fine. I guess what helps is I already had 2 large monitors and a second hand high end office chair so I find this setup just as good as my one in the office just without the standing desk. I guess what helps is I live with 5 other adults so I don't feel like I am missing any kind of social element that I would have got at work.

Re: Most employees of NYT won’t be required back in physical offices until 2021

#308
post #5

Meanwhile, my employer has said zero remote work once the state transitions into the next phase. They want to be "fair" to everyone, including those who have positions that cannot be performed remotely. So, you have a co-morbidity? Nope. You have no childcare suddenly? Nope. It's startling how stuck in the 1980's some people are. Just absolutely astonishing.

I've heard two C-level guys with two separate German SMEs say that the only part of their workforce that hadn't handled remote work well was middle management. The people doing the actual work were happy WFH and simply getting stuff done. Senior management / C-level types were content seeing sales figures and general output from afar. Middle management struggled because they had a hard time judging work estimates for…

Yeah definitely. It's almost like an enforced maker schedule.

In workloads that are more collaborative it's less clear though.

>people doing the actual work were happy WFH and simply getting stuff done.

I felt the same effect in my personal productivity too (real or not). Not convinced it worked on a team level. More duplication, more teams doing incompatible work etc. Sure getting stuff done...just the wrong stuff half the time (and very proud of their productivity!). Ironically resulted in me micromanaging them more (remotely) because the organic/grassroots collaboration & coordination is just gone.

Re: Most employees of NYT won’t be required back in physical offices until 2021

#309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've seen, so many times in my career, a system being built with blood, sweat, and tears over the course of 6 to 12 painstaking months -- and then the system being "given away" to someone over the course of a couple of beers at a happy hour. (that is, management re-org / re-assignment) When I was co-founder/CTO I never acted this way, because frankly it didnt make sense. But it happens so often in real life, I wonder…

That is a different problem that deserves its own thread of discussion, not buried under my reply.

Totally agree. But imagine how much the problem becomes exacerbated when you have some employees in the offices, and others not!

Re: Most employees of NYT won’t be required back in physical offices until 2021

#310
post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My generally-pretty-friendly workplace has recently had quite a bit of viciousness about: a) bbatsov's response to calls for Rubocop to be renamed b) The use of "master" as the canonical branch's name in our main git repo c) Linking to xkcd #75 (which uses the c-word) (the link was provided in response to a thread about mixed levels of profanity)

When bikeshedding meets virtue signaling you know you're in for a good ride

I have to admit I have a weakness for reading but not participating in these shit-hit-the-fan github threads. So many people arguing over something so trivial.
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