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

The social and economic costs borne by young people without offices

theatlantic.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 154 posts

Re: The social and economic costs borne by young people without offices

#71

Post by [deleted] »

andybak wrote: post #63
konjin wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>They should just pay you instead of paying the insane office rent. Or pay the shareholders instead. Or the CEO. Or ... you are a cost center for your company. Why would they pay you more than the minimum anyone than they would for any other cost center? That said you should negotiate for an extra room as a part of doing business. >I was raised on IM. I'm fine communicating like this. If I need to talk I can always c…

> Why would they pay you more than the minimum anyone than they would for any other cost center? Maybe because you're a resource and not a cost center? It's not always the case - some job roles are fungible - but I don't think that's the case with a typical HN denizen. Let me put it another way. Why is paying the CEO more a better use of money to paying an employee more? Doesn't that build in a lot of assumptions abo…

[deleted]

Re: The social and economic costs borne by young people without offices

#72

Post by jankotek »

ianhowson wrote: post #19
jankotek wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

》For the working parent whose productivity has been slashed by 50% and stress has gone up by 50% due to parenting obligations, WFH might be terrible. And working at office with 1 hour drive home, makes those parenting obligations somehow easier?

Yes. - Small children don't really understand "mummy's working, talk to me instead." Interruptions are death to productivity. Children can't interrupt you if you're not present. - Most daycares are closed or at reduced capacity. - Nanny services are harder to find and come with risks. - Time at the office is time resting from the kids, and time at home is resting from the office. If it's all one place, there is no re…

But daycare closed is a different problem. If childcare would be closed, and you still had to commute to office... WFH saved you in this case.

Re: The social and economic costs borne by young people without offices

#73

Post by creaturemachine »

aspaceman wrote: post #55
jankotek wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

》For the working parent whose productivity has been slashed by 50% and stress has gone up by 50% due to parenting obligations, WFH might be terrible. And working at office with 1 hour drive home, makes those parenting obligations somehow easier?

Parenting is weird. Haven’t you ever seen the parent whose kid goes quiet, and then they jump up in a panic? They know their kid is up to something horrible if they’re quiet now.... There’s lots of thoughts like that and plenty to worry about as a parent. It’s more than just “Shut up Johnny!”

Its true. Dead silence is a sign of mischief in progress, but sometimes you'll peek in on them and they'll be doing the cutest, most harmless playing, all by themselves in some corner off in their own world, and for just that moment you'll think you have the best kid in the world.

Re: The social and economic costs borne by young people without offices

#74

Post by paulryanrogers »

supernova87a wrote: post #5

WFH has a huge difference in result depending on who you are, when you are (in your career), and where you are in a company (of organization). -- For the budding young developer who can't wait to show ideas to teammates and demonstrate being a go-getter by asking random questions and finding unaddressed issues to innovate on, WFH might be terrible. You're going to schedule time to fortuitously run into the senior per…

- For the working parent whose productivity has been slashed by 50% and stress has gone up by 50% due to parenting obligations, WFH might be terrible.

This is not only WFH. I've done WFH before the pandemic and it was fine. Daycare and nannies are usually an option in normal circumstances.

This seems like pandemic-from-home to me.

Re: The social and economic costs borne by young people without offices

#75

Post by rbg246 »

chadash wrote: post #8
supernova87a wrote: post #5

WFH has a huge difference in result depending on who you are, when you are (in your career), and where you are in a company (of organization). -- For the budding young developer who can't wait to show ideas to teammates and demonstrate being a go-getter by asking random questions and finding unaddressed issues to innovate on, WFH might be terrible. You're going to schedule time to fortuitously run into the senior per…

> And that's aside from the point that, when everyone is remote, you're also competing with the world who is also remote. Yup... once everyone is remote anyway, won't take too long for some manager to decide to offshore work to cheaper countries. Even if that doesn't happen to you, if it happens to enough people elsewhere it'll bring salaries down for everyone.

They have had that option for twenty years already.

It hasn't happened because cultural fit is super important to a business if it wants to create a quality product.

Look at the areas where the services have been outsourced to overseas, it's support and maintenance of products and services, generally post-sales support where they don't care about the quality of the service or it's a company with a natural monopoly and they care more about saving money than providing a good service.

Having a hand picked team with unique interlocking skills is what creates a quality product, you can't do that if you are outsourcing entire teams overseas, you have no control on who you are hiring and quality.

Or at the least these problems are super difficult to overcome and probably the cost to overcome them is too much for anything less than a global company to get any savings out of doing.

PS I've totally generalised to make a point, there are 1000s of exceptions I am sure.

Re: The social and economic costs borne by young people without offices

#76

Post by dvtrn »

ericmcer wrote: post #38
supernova87a wrote: post #5

WFH has a huge difference in result depending on who you are, when you are (in your career), and where you are in a company (of organization). -- For the budding young developer who can't wait to show ideas to teammates and demonstrate being a go-getter by asking random questions and finding unaddressed issues to innovate on, WFH might be terrible. You're going to schedule time to fortuitously run into the senior per…

I try to fight my primal instincts of jealousy, etc. but it really feels like a lot of the 'butts in chairs' type people like human resources, various managers, etc. have slowly cut back to basically responding to emails/messages and maybe working a few hours a week. If that is your definition of WFH being great than it is definitely going great for them. As a dev it has kinda shredded my desire to do large scale unp…

It’s coincidental to my section of the universe you mention what you did in the first paragraph:

You are the third person this week I’ve heard make some commentary to that effect or another: “anyone else feel like WFH has made work easier for everyone else BUT engineering? My tickets haven’t slowed down an iota yet support and product queues are lower than I’ve ever seen them on the (Trello) board”

Re: The social and economic costs borne by young people without offices

#77

Post by dragonwriter »

dvtrn wrote: post #76
ericmcer wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I try to fight my primal instincts of jealousy, etc. but it really feels like a lot of the 'butts in chairs' type people like human resources, various managers, etc. have slowly cut back to basically responding to emails/messages and maybe working a few hours a week. If that is your definition of WFH being great than it is definitely going great for them. As a dev it has kinda shredded my desire to do large scale unp…

It’s coincidental to my section of the universe you mention what you did in the first paragraph: You are the third person this week I’ve heard make some commentary to that effect or another: “anyone else feel like WFH has made work easier for everyone else BUT engineering? My tickets haven’t slowed down an iota yet support and product queues are lower than I’ve ever seen them on the (Trello) board”

Other than initially temporarily getting pulled in to work support for Citrix for our large organization converting from almost 100% onsite to 100% remote with almost everyone who had been desktop dependent getting Citrix access overnight, I feel like WFH has made work as a dev easier. It hasn't reduced expected velocity, but it has reduced meetings that should be emails, drop-in interruptions, distractions from people doing conference calls on speakerphones in an an open office, facilities issues, and commute stress.

Re: The social and economic costs borne by young people without offices

#78

Post by dvtrn »

dragonwriter wrote: post #77
dvtrn wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s coincidental to my section of the universe you mention what you did in the first paragraph: You are the third person this week I’ve heard make some commentary to that effect or another: “anyone else feel like WFH has made work easier for everyone else BUT engineering? My tickets haven’t slowed down an iota yet support and product queues are lower than I’ve ever seen them on the (Trello) board”

Other than initially temporarily getting pulled in to work support for Citrix for our large organization converting from almost 100% onsite to 100% remote with almost everyone who had been desktop dependent getting Citrix access overnight, I feel like WFH has made work as a dev easier. It hasn't reduced expected velocity, but it has reduced meetings that should be emails, drop-in interruptions, distractions from peop…

I suspect it’s highly team-culture and org dependent, to be fair.

A friend in the American Southwest expresses just as you do: meetings have declined, “walk ups” have all but stopped and he’s more productive ever. My org? Literally the opposite in every listed factor.

In fact we had a meeting today as a functional team* about how we plan to put up some guardrails just for ourselves so we can get some shit done.

I am at least thankful to the Holy compiler our Director was on the zoom and has completely bought in and offered support because he sees the pain and agrees it’s a problem.

———

* it’s not as ironic as it sounds, this was our usual Friday afternoon “have beers and just vent about the week over zoom” meeting. It’s quite healthy for the six of us as a lot of good outcomes have resulted from the calls during COVID from a comraderie standpoint And have a Director who will go to bat where he can.

Re: The social and economic costs borne by young people without offices

#79

Post by pdfernhout »

paulryanrogers wrote: post #74
supernova87a wrote: post #5

WFH has a huge difference in result depending on who you are, when you are (in your career), and where you are in a company (of organization). -- For the budding young developer who can't wait to show ideas to teammates and demonstrate being a go-getter by asking random questions and finding unaddressed issues to innovate on, WFH might be terrible. You're going to schedule time to fortuitously run into the senior per…

- For the working parent whose productivity has been slashed by 50% and stress has gone up by 50% due to parenting obligations, WFH might be terrible. This is not only WFH. I've done WFH before the pandemic and it was fine. Daycare and nannies are usually an option in normal circumstances. This seems like pandemic-from-home to me.

Agreed on pandemic-from-home making things hard for parents suddenly trying to work from home and homeschool at the same time. And here is another aspect the article author may not be aware of: "How our housing choices make adult friendships more difficult" https://www.vox.com/2015/10/28/9622920/housing-adult-friends... "Our ability to form and maintain friendships is shaped in crucial ways by the physical spaces in which we live. "Land use," as it's rather aridly known, shapes behavior and sociality. And in America we have settled on patterns of land use that might as well have been designed to prevent spontaneous encounters, the kind out of which rich social ties are built."

Re: The social and economic costs borne by young people without offices

#80

Post by RandoHolmes »

slykar wrote: post #40
supernova87a wrote: post #5

WFH has a huge difference in result depending on who you are, when you are (in your career), and where you are in a company (of organization). -- For the budding young developer who can't wait to show ideas to teammates and demonstrate being a go-getter by asking random questions and finding unaddressed issues to innovate on, WFH might be terrible. You're going to schedule time to fortuitously run into the senior per…

> For the small company CEO who relies on force of personality and everyone in the same room urgently working to get something done, WFH might be terrible. Working remotely for a small company with a few people from around the world and it's going fine. We are in contact when we have to be. I can cut distractions when I need to. No open space office bulshit. I was raised on IM. I'm fine communicating like this. If I…

I think WFH is particularly difficult for young people, not because they don't have access to seniors (or any other such drivel), but because they often don't have the discipline necessary for it.

For example, I've been doing freelance work for well over 10 years now and I eventually started insisting on having an extra office with a strict policy of the room is for work only (even if not paying work). The thing is, a lot of people will recommend things like dressing up as if you're going into work, taking a walk around the block as a transition, and so forth. But for me I can literally walk into that room completely naked straight from bed and have no issues.

But the thing is, what works for me doesn't work for you (and vice versa). But I've had over 10 years to figure out what works for me, young people haven't.

That's where their challenge is at, not in trying to learn from mentors, which can still happen even remote.

And some people just can't do it because they don't have the discipline and never will. Those people will fail, but that's on them.

Post reply on HN