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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

#71

Post by givemeethekeys »

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.

There is also a whole cadre of Vice presidents that needed micro manager level oversight over their teams in order to feel fulfilled.

You don’t spend many billions on the offices for nothing.

I imagine there was some pressure from cities as well since many downtown businesses rely on foot traffic.

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

#72

Post by buellerbueller »

phlakaton wrote: post #32

Please do not use the occasion of the death of thousands of Iranians in a war we launched against them as some sort of illustrative point about return to office and birth rates in the West.

Yes, ignore the natural experiment that is unfolding before our very eyes, and gain nothing at all from the war that is causing it.

Like the saying goes: lemons -> lemonade

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

#73

Post by dfxm12 »

palmotea wrote: post #17

> Return-to-office is functionally anti-natalist policy beloved by “pronatalists”. > ... > The loudest “pronatalists” (Musk, Andreessen) spent two years killing workplace flexibility while funding nearly a billion in elite fertility tech. So the message here is SV pronatalists aren't actually pronatalists, because pronatalism is way down on their list of priorities, especially bar below the priority of "be an imperio…

On the topic of capitalism, one can't make money from wfh policies like one can from the "fertility tech" one funds. It's synergy, you see.

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

#74

Post by graemep »

hypeatei wrote: post #63
softwaredoug wrote: post #51

If I could afford to live 15 minutes from the office I 100% would go to an office. But housing, transportation, daycare costs make that impractical. If they really want me in the office, companies need to engage on these issues in the metros they live in. They need to clear NIMBY barriers to urban housing, support transit, and good parental leave.

> If I could afford to live 15 minutes from the office I 100% would go to an office. I live ~20 minutes away from my job and you eventually get tired of that, too. Car maintenance, bad weather, bad drivers, etc. grind you down little by little everyday.

20 mins walking or by public transport would be fine though? GP does not specify driving.

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

#75

Post by wahnfrieden »

bhouston wrote: post #20
jagged-chisel wrote: post #16

The one thing I can't find a quick is a definition for "pronatalist." The obvious definition without the scare quotes is "those in favor of families having children." But we have scare quotes and references to men who definitely desire extreme levels of control over others. It looks like "pronatalist" policy is "say you support increased birth rates while simultaneously being against any economic policy that would su…

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…

Some seem to use it as cover for being predators. Musk exposed his genitals to an employee without their consent, in a confined space without ability to escape, for instance.

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

#76

Post by saalweachter »

watwut wrote: post #62
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…

I have kids, so it seems obvious to me. It is much easier to coordinate kids related duties when at least one is at home every day. Things like, picking the kids up, taking them somewhere, being there when the kid comes home. When the kid is sick and not in school daycare, that one person can do supervision. A sick kid usually does not need super involved care whole day, but they cant be left alone whole day either.

Just being able to say "I don't commute every Thursday so if I make this commitment for a random Thursday six months from now, I won't need to adjust my schedule." takes a bit of the cognitive load off.

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

#77

Post by tho2i34u2347697 »

This is way more serious than Covid - there it was a demand-shock.

This is a supply shock - one with no alternatives. For people who aren't aware of just how much we depend on petrochemicals, see this video on the perils of peak-oil.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VOMWzjrRiBg

Peak-oil may have proved "false" (not quite - only that Hubbert didn't expect a bimodal distribution), but this is a good time to come out of our illusions, not only about the "unlimited"-ness of oil, but also about creating societies that are so toxically dependent on oil.

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

#78

Post by jmyeet »

This conversation is incomplete without bringing up transhumanism [1], which is basically just Silicon Valley themed eugenics [2]. It is the belief by SV billionaires that their genes are superior and their goal is to "gift" those genes to future humanity. It's why the likes of Elon Musk is the absent or no-contact father to so many children.

It's just vanilla (pardon the pun) white supremacy combined with the myth of meritocracy and prosperity gospel. By this I mean there is the belief that one's genes are superior because they're a billionaire. It then throw in some Nazi-era conspiracy theories like "Great Replacement" [3][4].

It's worth adding that pronatalists, as a general rule, don't believe in higher birth rates for everyone. It's inherently racist, just like banning abortion [5].

The irony is that the curent end result of this movement is that the absolutely dumbest and most incompetent people have ended up in charge because of it.

Just think about the sequence of events here. We had to WFH so companies could survive. Billionaires saw massive increases in wealth in Covid and, briefly, there was real wage growth. RTO mandates are part of a wider movement to suppress wages, combined with the permanent layoffs culture we're in now. It was never about productivity or culture.

And now because of the biggest self-own in American history (ie by starting an unwinnable war with Iran for literally no reason) we're going to see massive gas and diesel price hikes, higher food prices (because of fertilizer shortages) and higher prices for everything because of the fuel price hikes (just like 2021-2022). And now it's OK to WFH again?

It's hard to calculate how much harm and misery the wealthiest 10,000 people in the world inflict on almost 8 billion other people, so much so that the world would be demonstrably and immediately better were the billionaires actually garbage collected.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transhumanism

[2]: https://www.seenandunseen.com/transhumanism-eugenics-digital...

[3]: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/what-is-great-replacem...

[4]: https://archive.ph/Sp4WH

[5]: https://www.aclu.org/news/racial-justice/the-racist-history-...

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

#79

Post by vrganj »

graemep wrote: post #74
hypeatei wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If I could afford to live 15 minutes from the office I 100% would go to an office. I live ~20 minutes away from my job and you eventually get tired of that, too. Car maintenance, bad weather, bad drivers, etc. grind you down little by little everyday.

20 mins walking or by public transport would be fine though? GP does not specify driving.

I live 20 mins by public transport or by bike in an incredibly bike-friendly city.

Sometimes I just want to be at home to do deep thinking without anyone bothering me.

Sometimes the weather makes it so I don't leave the house.

Just let me decide where I work from.

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

#80

Post by tootie »

kirykl wrote: post #65

Drive to the office and sit on a video call you can hardly hear because the coworkers next to you are on their own video calls

I once took two planes to visit a client office so I could do a video call with them at their other office on the other side of the city I just flew to and then flew back home.

I once did a six-month project where I'd go the office to sit on zoom with my team in 3 other cities. One of those cities was our offshore dev team that we hired because they cost less and could do the job remotely. How the hell did CEOs get away with telling us that offshore dev teams would be fine because in-person collaboration wasn't necessary while simultaneously saying we all had to be in the office?

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