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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

#91

Post by graemep »

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…

Christian? Musk says he is not religious. He has said he is a "cultural christian" - a description also used of themselves by a lot of people ranging from Richard Dawkins to Anders Breivik.

https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Society/2024/1218/elon-musk-cu...

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

#93

Post by fhd2 »

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.

What baffles me most about RTO is what it does to romantic partnerships. If both can find career advancing jobs in the same city, that's cool.

But what if they can't? The options aren't great:

1. One of them takes a hit on their career for the benefit of the other.

2. Both move to an area with OK-ish jobs for both, sharing the sacrifice.

3. Both take optimal jobs wherever they are and move into a long distance relationship.

With kids in the mix, it becomes even harder, you might want to be around family to have a support network etc.

RTO mandates generally seem pretty tone deaf about this aspect.

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

#94

Post by graemep »

ignoramous wrote: post #69
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…

> you've ever been a parent with a young child at home, your estimate of how much work you could do would be possible is a lot more modest Believe Switzerland allows professionals to choose the percentage of work time they want to sign up for. For instance, if 100% is 8h, 5d/week, 80% would be 4d/week. The parent can then both take 80% each & have 2 work days free for childcare.

Which means that kids can be with a parent, or both, for all of most days. That is a huge benefit for them and the parents.

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

#95

Post by ben_w »

tootie wrote: post #80
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 a…

> 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?

Hopefully those particular CEOs are now in line for being replaced with an AI.

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

#96

Post by [deleted] »

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.

[deleted]

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

#98

Post by vrganj »

fhd2 wrote: post #93
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.

What baffles me most about RTO is what it does to romantic partnerships. If both can find career advancing jobs in the same city, that's cool. But what if they can't? The options aren't great: 1. One of them takes a hit on their career for the benefit of the other. 2. Both move to an area with OK-ish jobs for both, sharing the sacrifice. 3. Both take optimal jobs wherever they are and move into a long distance relati…

It's because there's a lot of overlap between people thinking "those damn lazy workers better get back to the office so they don't slack off" and people thinking "a woman's role is in the household, raising children and cooking".

Regressive attitudes tend to not come alone.

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

#99

Post by throw4847285 »

It's too bad nobody likes Freud, because all the discourse around pro- and anti- natalism reveals a rich vein of sexual and other anxieties that are the true content of the "debate" outside of the handful of David Benatars of the world making rigorous (if niche) arguments.

I would say that the healthy response is to promote human autonomy alongside policies that show that a society cares about its most vulnerable, but what do I know.

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

#100

Post by ben_w »

Zigurd wrote: post #87

If someone tells you they are a pronatalist, odds are they are actually a eugenicist. And they probably espouse other tech bro oddball philosophies and pseudoscientific beliefs. How did we get to this place where a small number of strange white men have soured an industry that used to give us marvels that expanded our freedom and made our lives better?

Basically all of human history can be described in similar terms, and it's not melanin-specific.

If you can name a historical figure, they were probably some flavour of non-standard mental processing and beliefs.

Even just coming up with "marvels that expanded our freedom and made our lives better" is inherently a non-standard position relative to how most people live and think.

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