9 ms·

Shorten the Workweek to Reopen Safely

95 points by jasunflower 6y ago

aphextron 6y ago
We just need to make the office an optional place that people can gather when they feel the need to. I have no problem at all working a 5 day 40 hours work week from home. But this nonsense of everyone waking up at the same time, sitting in traffic, and cramming into "open plan" work spaces has to go.
- tehjoker 6y ago
  I'm concerned that if we go this route on a permanent basis without a more powerful labor movement, it'll mean that work and home will seamlessly merge. Employer surveillance will enter the home and corporate domination will seep into every pore of our existence... and that's for white collar workers.
  - fiblye 6y ago
    If work from home ends up really sticking around, I'm sure plenty of cost-cutting employers will expect everyone to buy their own computers, but expect employees to all install keyloggers and monitoring software in order to work. And people will accept it, because they'll be fired if they refuse and someone more desperate will deal with it so long as they get paid at some point.
    - tehjoker 6y ago
      I hate to always be that guy, but this is the sort of situation in which one might wield the strike, a coordinated worker action, to prevent home spyware from being installed. If you work within a framework of uncoordinated individual action, domination of the individual by the interests of the corporation is the logical result.
      - fiblye 6y ago
        I'd like to hope that would happen, but I'm more afraid there'd be media/government complaints of "lazy workers with the privilege of working at home and doing nothing are STRIKING!" and people would eat it up. There are people out there saying a minimum wage of $7.25 is too high and we should get rid of it entirely. I think in many places, workers would fear they'll lose even more by striking for privacy.
        tehjoker 6y ago
        That's true. The anti-union propaganda would be present. The trick is making sure your message gets out there too and emphasizes the contradictions between the employer's desire and power to compel people to submit to invasive surveillance in their own homes and our rights to be free of such invasive measures through relatable stories. The people that take the side of the employer are broadly the corporate owned media, but when hearing the labor side of the story, the public is often sympathetic because the majority of people are workers, not employers. > There are people out there saying a minimum wage of $7.25 is too high and we should get rid of it entirely. Those people are not the ones being subjected to such wages. People's political analysis is largely directed by material self interest. The vast majority of the population is made of precarious workers who resent the people that would say that.
    - adrianN 6y ago
      Keyloggers and monitoring software are illegal even on employer issued computers in Germany afaik.
      - capdeck 6y ago
        It will all be done in the name of "security" - in this case you don't have to justify or even explain what security issue your are trying to solve. And security software vendors will helpfully lend you an amazingly designed fear-mongering powerpoint.
        adrianN 6y ago
        Even in the name of security you can't take away certain privacy privileges in Germany, as far as I understand the laws.
    - eikenberry 6y ago
      And those employers will suffer for it by getting sub-standard employee as the competent ones will find jobs at places that don't play big brother. They could possibly get away with it by paying exceedingly well. But that would afford workarounds, like buying a work-only computer for the spyware to live on.
      - adrianN 6y ago
        Maybe if you restrict yourself to programmers. Most office workers probably don't understand the implications of surveillance software and I doubt that many of them would go through the extra effort of using a separate computer.
    - JSavageOne 6y ago
      > And people will accept it I definitely never think about working at any company that wanted employees installing keyloggers. As software engineers thankfully we're in enough demand to where I don't see it getting that extreme, but I could see that scenario for more oversupplied industries. In any case, the requirement of that kind of surveillance software to do one's job should be made illegal.
      - TAForObvReasons 6y ago
        It's already happened in the freelancing / lower-level software work, time tracking apps and the like are common on upwork.
    - akhilcacharya 6y ago
      More likely that they'll just normalize RDP-ing into cloud desktops. I know someone that just joined my company that has to do this while his new work laptop ships.
  - icelancer 6y ago
    If WFH becomes permanent on any sort of meaningful basis, outsourcing companies are going to lobby very hard while companies are simultaneously trying to cut costs. People who are enjoying this WFH revolution would do well to think about secondary effects.
- kube-system 6y ago
  Many workplaces have been moving in this direction over the past decade. Not only do employees love it; there are also serious cost savings for employers. Pretty much everyone wants to go this direction. The problem is that there are still serious hurdles in place -- mainly due to the nature of the work, or cultural/interpersonal challenges.
  - adrianN 6y ago
    I think you're living in a bubble if you believe that everyone wants to go into that direction. At least here in Germany, butts in seats is still very important. The only office workers I know who can work from home during the pandemic are programmers. Everyone else still has to go to the office.
    - kube-system 6y ago
      I don’t think employees want to waste time commuting and employers want to waste money on real estate. The reason most people still go to the office is because of the hurdles I mentioned above. Yes, there is certainly a lot of work can’t be done behind a computer, or workforces that can’t effectively collaborate over a computer. But I don’t think that means they wouldn’t if they could.
- eweise 6y ago
  Sorry it won't happen. An office packed with humans is all about stroking the CEOs ego. Its just not the same seeing your servants on a screen vs packed together doing the boss's bidding.
  - abyssin 6y ago
    I disagree. Although offices can have their downsides, I personally can't work remotely because I find it so cold and boring.
    - Jaruzel 6y ago
      It's all about choice. Employees should be able to work in the environment that is best for their well-being. Happier employees tends to result in increased productivity.
      - esyir 6y ago
        It's also about productivity. If the employee functions significantly worse in a remote position, then extending that to them is going to be often a poor decision.
        JackMorgan 6y ago
        I feel like I'm struggling with this now: I have fought for a long time to get my team to be fully remote. After a year of partial WFH, now we're doing it full time. However, several people on my team seem completely incapable of self-regulation unless someone is making them show up. They're up at 3am working, but clearly only getting done >5% of what they'd otherwise do. A few others are getting done at least 120% more. Seems like different strokes for different folks is the name of the game, and some people for whatever reason just aren't in a place in their lives where they are responsible enough to handle the greater freedom of remote work.
  - JSavageOne 6y ago
    Yes this is true. Employers have so much leverage in this labor market, and nobody ever got promoted in a large corporation for promoting workers' rights. The only solution seems to be: 1. Universal Basic Income - ie. giving people the freedom to say no to sh*tty jobs rather than being forced to take the least bad offer 2. Make a law that gives employees the right to work remotely if their job can reasonably be done remotely
throwaway122378 6y ago
The article has no research or statistics that try to prove why or how this would work and what the marginal difference is over a full workweek.
- jasunflower 6y ago
  True. Apparently the author wrote a book about the topic, presumably that has some good citations, but one can only guess.
GuB-42 6y ago
Ok, good point, there is just one small detail: the "without cutting salaries" part. Employees will love it, that's for sure, but I don't think employers will get even. You are basically giving your employees a 25% raise on their hourly wage. There are success stories of companies that pay their employees above market value, either by paying them the same amount for less work, paying them more, or giving them particularly good perks. It is the idea of quality over quantity: by giving out preferential treatment, you get the best employees, and keep them motivated, and their increased productivity will make up for the higher cost. But there are success stories going the other way too: cheap, borderline slave labor and a high turnover. Sometime a high volume of low quality work is effective. But in most cases, the usual market value is what works best, that's why it is the market value. I am not saying that working less is bad, but it is a bit unfair to have the employer shoulder all the costs. Maybe make it half/half: 10% less pay for 20% less work.
- jasunflower 6y ago
  Measures like this could be packaged into preventative medical care, keeping employees healthy at the office keeps them out of the hospital.
- TomMckenny 6y ago
  Will there be objections from companies that have been part of the biggest stock rally in generations, large companies that took piles of the small business bail out money and, companies like Domino's that have thrived yet had to be forced to allow employees to wear even legally required masks?
ars 6y ago
Offices are hardly the problem areas to reopen - most of them can go remote. It's the places that can't go remote that is the problem, and those are exactly the places where they need to be open many hours, in order for customers to be able to come.
djhaskin987 6y ago
If everyone started working fewer hours for the same pay you would be effectively devaluing the dollar. You wouldn't actually be adding more value to the economy. Value in the economy is created by work and there is simply no substitute for that. Shortening the work week would simply make less value in the economy, making us all poorer and more idle. Too much idleness I can tell you leads to stress, even more stress than too much work. 40 hours is not too much work. To solve the problem in the article one could still cut the workforce by half that was present in the office simply by adding more work-from-home time for the workers which I find to be healthy my own experience anyway. our office is made similar overtures, saying when we go back to work lots of us. Be working from home as a way to tackle a space issue.
- elliekelly 6y ago
  Many people outside of Silicon Valley have temporarily (in theory) had their salaries cut. 20% less work for 25-30% less pay sounds like it devalues employee time far more than it devalues the dollar.
  - greglindahl 6y ago
    Are people inside Silicon Valley not having their salaries cut?
- adrianN 6y ago
  I'm pretty sure we're far away from too much idleness. 40 hours is too much work. 20 or so would be more than sufficient imho. That would give people time for hobbies and social interaction outside the office.
- nullc 6y ago
  You are making an unsound assumption that longer hours mean more economic output. In some kinds of jobs this may be true, but in others-- especially ones with substantial intellectual or creative components-- it isn't. In some cases studies have showed increased output from reduced working hours.
daxfohl 6y ago
Anybody else feeling like if we're young and healthy we should actively try to contract this thing, self-isolate for a few weeks, and be done with it? It feels almost like this would be the most socially responsible thing to do: reduce the effective R0 and allow things to start getting back to normality. I'm the farthest thing from a "reopen" protester. But I can't help thinking that as a young and healthy individual, this is a valid option that nobody is talking about.
- droopyEyelids 6y ago
  This made sense when it seemed like the flu- where you get it, and you die or you get better, end of story. Sars-2 is you get it, and then you get some amount of permanent damage to your lungs and cardiovascular system.
- tgsovlerkhgsel 6y ago
  The problem with that is, as far as I know, that: - COVID puts even some of the young and healthy into the ICU - there are reports of serious long term damage even in mild/asymptomatic cases, so you might be immune until the next big pandemic but your lungs may be busted forever
  - rimliu 6y ago
    I doubt there are any report of "serious long term damage even in mild/asymptomatic cases". First, because we simply do not have any data on long term effects for the simple reason that this thing is less than six months old. As for lung damage is it mostly caused by ventilation, not by disease itself. I doubt you get artificial lung ventilation if you got an asymptomatic case.
- forgot_my_pwd 6y ago
  This has been my thinking for a few weeks now. Aside from bringing us significantly closer to herd immunity, it would increase the pool of eligible plasma donors for plasma antibody therapy. And those are just the public health benefits. Saving millions of jobs and livelihoods is no small benefit either.
- 6y ago
forgot_my_pwd 6y ago
How many of us don't want to commute to the office 5 days a week, but also don't necessarily like the idea of working from home when not at the office? My personal ideal is a dedicated office space in a location very close to my home, like in the nearest downtown, where I would pay a certain amount per month in return for a set of days on which I could reserve personal office space. The issue with working from home for me is that I feel my personal life and work life become messy and entangled if I do too much work at home. Similar to how good sleep hygiene involves doing as few activities other than sleeping on your bed as possible, I feel for my mental wellbeing it's better to physically separate my work life and home life as much as possible.
- adrianN 6y ago
  If your work location is farther away than the nearest downtown you should look for either a new job or a new place to live imho. Commuting more than an hour a day is awful.
  - forgot_my_pwd 6y ago
    I live in a great town that's about an hour commute from the big city where I work. I would never make as much money as I do now (or find as engaging work) if I looked outside the city. I also have no interest in moving. Granted I don't hate commuting. Since I take the bus I get a significant amount of reading done.
- em-bee 6y ago
  that's what coworking spaces are for. and it's absolutely a good option, if you can find one near your home. of course it may add to your cost, depending on how much space you have at home
- JSavageOne 6y ago
  Definitely, I love to work out of coffee shops. Co-working spaces are another option (as a stingy person, I wish they were cheaper though). It's great to change one's work environment every now and then. When I used to work in offices, many days I'd be sick of my office and want to work somewhere else, if only to change things up.
tgsovlerkhgsel 6y ago
For those living (and planning to stay) in areas with high wage standards (like most of the Western world!), keep in mind that remote work also opens your job to competition from much cheaper places. Great for the people in those places, but your happiness to be able to skip the commute may quickly turn into a lot of unhappiness because you can't make a living wage anymore.
- JSavageOne 6y ago
  That's why we need something like a universal basic income to alleviate peoples' dependence on a job or wage. Outsourcing has already eliminated many peoples' jobs, that's a big reason why Trump and his anti-immigrant rhetoric got elected.
  - enitihas 6y ago
    Universal basic income will make the issue the parent talks about more prominent, not less. If you live in a high wage area, and everyone gets same UBI, your life quality will not improve.
pythonbase 6y ago
Applying the concept of hot racking on the offices sounds like a good way of embracing the "new normal" https://twitter.com/kashaziz/status/1257012120090292226 https://twitter.com/kashaziz/status/1257012120090292226
acd 6y ago
Social distancing to stop the spread binary version: Loop: 1) Work monday-friday 6 hours practise strict social distancing. Work remote if you can. 2) Weekend rest from social distancing see friends. Its like a binary four square wave with on / off. Reason: If we practice good social distancing the spread time of the Covid is five days.
- nsomaru 6y ago
  "spread time"?
- jobigoud 6y ago
  So you are assuming people may get infected during the week end and won't be infectious the next week end?
Proven 6y ago
The same tired socialist story about working less for the same amount of money. But using the government to enforce lower standards of competition internally doesn't help one compete against the less lazy workers abroad. Even if this worked, you'd eventually get laid off. And may I remind you it is immoral to use coercion to legislatively limit income of people willing to worker longer than you. You should be ashamed of yourselves.

95 points by jasunflower 6y ago

We just need to make the office an optional place that people can gather when they feel the need to. I have no problem at all working a 5 day 40 hours work week from home. But this nonsense of everyone waking up at the same time, sitting in traffic, and cramming into "open plan" work spaces has to go.

tehjoker 6y ago
I'm concerned that if we go this route on a permanent basis without a more powerful labor movement, it'll mean that work and home will seamlessly merge. Employer surveillance will enter the home and corporate domination will seep into every pore of our existence... and that's for white collar workers.
- fiblye 6y ago
  If work from home ends up really sticking around, I'm sure plenty of cost-cutting employers will expect everyone to buy their own computers, but expect employees to all install keyloggers and monitoring software in order to work. And people will accept it, because they'll be fired if they refuse and someone more desperate will deal with it so long as they get paid at some point.
  - tehjoker 6y ago
    I hate to always be that guy, but this is the sort of situation in which one might wield the strike, a coordinated worker action, to prevent home spyware from being installed. If you work within a framework of uncoordinated individual action, domination of the individual by the interests of the corporation is the logical result.
    - fiblye 6y ago
      I'd like to hope that would happen, but I'm more afraid there'd be media/government complaints of "lazy workers with the privilege of working at home and doing nothing are STRIKING!" and people would eat it up. There are people out there saying a minimum wage of $7.25 is too high and we should get rid of it entirely. I think in many places, workers would fear they'll lose even more by striking for privacy.
      - tehjoker 6y ago
        That's true. The anti-union propaganda would be present. The trick is making sure your message gets out there too and emphasizes the contradictions between the employer's desire and power to compel people to submit to invasive surveillance in their own homes and our rights to be free of such invasive measures through relatable stories. The people that take the side of the employer are broadly the corporate owned media, but when hearing the labor side of the story, the public is often sympathetic because the majority of people are workers, not employers. > There are people out there saying a minimum wage of $7.25 is too high and we should get rid of it entirely. Those people are not the ones being subjected to such wages. People's political analysis is largely directed by material self interest. The vast majority of the population is made of precarious workers who resent the people that would say that.
  - adrianN 6y ago
    Keyloggers and monitoring software are illegal even on employer issued computers in Germany afaik.
    - capdeck 6y ago
      It will all be done in the name of "security" - in this case you don't have to justify or even explain what security issue your are trying to solve. And security software vendors will helpfully lend you an amazingly designed fear-mongering powerpoint.
      - adrianN 6y ago
        Even in the name of security you can't take away certain privacy privileges in Germany, as far as I understand the laws.
  - eikenberry 6y ago
    And those employers will suffer for it by getting sub-standard employee as the competent ones will find jobs at places that don't play big brother. They could possibly get away with it by paying exceedingly well. But that would afford workarounds, like buying a work-only computer for the spyware to live on.
    - adrianN 6y ago
      Maybe if you restrict yourself to programmers. Most office workers probably don't understand the implications of surveillance software and I doubt that many of them would go through the extra effort of using a separate computer.
  - JSavageOne 6y ago
    > And people will accept it I definitely never think about working at any company that wanted employees installing keyloggers. As software engineers thankfully we're in enough demand to where I don't see it getting that extreme, but I could see that scenario for more oversupplied industries. In any case, the requirement of that kind of surveillance software to do one's job should be made illegal.
    - TAForObvReasons 6y ago
      It's already happened in the freelancing / lower-level software work, time tracking apps and the like are common on upwork.
  - akhilcacharya 6y ago
    More likely that they'll just normalize RDP-ing into cloud desktops. I know someone that just joined my company that has to do this while his new work laptop ships.
- icelancer 6y ago
  If WFH becomes permanent on any sort of meaningful basis, outsourcing companies are going to lobby very hard while companies are simultaneously trying to cut costs. People who are enjoying this WFH revolution would do well to think about secondary effects.
kube-system 6y ago
Many workplaces have been moving in this direction over the past decade. Not only do employees love it; there are also serious cost savings for employers. Pretty much everyone wants to go this direction. The problem is that there are still serious hurdles in place -- mainly due to the nature of the work, or cultural/interpersonal challenges.
- adrianN 6y ago
  I think you're living in a bubble if you believe that everyone wants to go into that direction. At least here in Germany, butts in seats is still very important. The only office workers I know who can work from home during the pandemic are programmers. Everyone else still has to go to the office.
  - kube-system 6y ago
    I don’t think employees want to waste time commuting and employers want to waste money on real estate. The reason most people still go to the office is because of the hurdles I mentioned above. Yes, there is certainly a lot of work can’t be done behind a computer, or workforces that can’t effectively collaborate over a computer. But I don’t think that means they wouldn’t if they could.
eweise 6y ago
Sorry it won't happen. An office packed with humans is all about stroking the CEOs ego. Its just not the same seeing your servants on a screen vs packed together doing the boss's bidding.
- abyssin 6y ago
  I disagree. Although offices can have their downsides, I personally can't work remotely because I find it so cold and boring.
  - Jaruzel 6y ago
    It's all about choice. Employees should be able to work in the environment that is best for their well-being. Happier employees tends to result in increased productivity.
    - esyir 6y ago
      It's also about productivity. If the employee functions significantly worse in a remote position, then extending that to them is going to be often a poor decision.
      - JackMorgan 6y ago
        I feel like I'm struggling with this now: I have fought for a long time to get my team to be fully remote. After a year of partial WFH, now we're doing it full time. However, several people on my team seem completely incapable of self-regulation unless someone is making them show up. They're up at 3am working, but clearly only getting done >5% of what they'd otherwise do. A few others are getting done at least 120% more. Seems like different strokes for different folks is the name of the game, and some people for whatever reason just aren't in a place in their lives where they are responsible enough to handle the greater freedom of remote work.
- JSavageOne 6y ago
  Yes this is true. Employers have so much leverage in this labor market, and nobody ever got promoted in a large corporation for promoting workers' rights. The only solution seems to be: 1. Universal Basic Income - ie. giving people the freedom to say no to sh*tty jobs rather than being forced to take the least bad offer 2. Make a law that gives employees the right to work remotely if their job can reasonably be done remotely

throwaway122378 6y ago

The article has no research or statistics that try to prove why or how this would work and what the marginal difference is over a full workweek.

jasunflower 6y ago
True. Apparently the author wrote a book about the topic, presumably that has some good citations, but one can only guess.

GuB-42 6y ago

Ok, good point, there is just one small detail: the "without cutting salaries" part. Employees will love it, that's for sure, but I don't think employers will get even. You are basically giving your employees a 25% raise on their hourly wage. There are success stories of companies that pay their employees above market value, either by paying them the same amount for less work, paying them more, or giving them particularly good perks. It is the idea of quality over quantity: by giving out preferential treatment, you get the best employees, and keep them motivated, and their increased productivity will make up for the higher cost. But there are success stories going the other way too: cheap, borderline slave labor and a high turnover. Sometime a high volume of low quality work is effective. But in most cases, the usual market value is what works best, that's why it is the market value. I am not saying that working less is bad, but it is a bit unfair to have the employer shoulder all the costs. Maybe make it half/half: 10% less pay for 20% less work.

jasunflower 6y ago
Measures like this could be packaged into preventative medical care, keeping employees healthy at the office keeps them out of the hospital.
TomMckenny 6y ago
Will there be objections from companies that have been part of the biggest stock rally in generations, large companies that took piles of the small business bail out money and, companies like Domino's that have thrived yet had to be forced to allow employees to wear even legally required masks?

ars 6y ago

Offices are hardly the problem areas to reopen - most of them can go remote. It's the places that can't go remote that is the problem, and those are exactly the places where they need to be open many hours, in order for customers to be able to come.

djhaskin987 6y ago

If everyone started working fewer hours for the same pay you would be effectively devaluing the dollar. You wouldn't actually be adding more value to the economy. Value in the economy is created by work and there is simply no substitute for that. Shortening the work week would simply make less value in the economy, making us all poorer and more idle. Too much idleness I can tell you leads to stress, even more stress than too much work. 40 hours is not too much work. To solve the problem in the article one could still cut the workforce by half that was present in the office simply by adding more work-from-home time for the workers which I find to be healthy my own experience anyway. our office is made similar overtures, saying when we go back to work lots of us. Be working from home as a way to tackle a space issue.

elliekelly 6y ago
Many people outside of Silicon Valley have temporarily (in theory) had their salaries cut. 20% less work for 25-30% less pay sounds like it devalues employee time far more than it devalues the dollar.
- greglindahl 6y ago
  Are people inside Silicon Valley not having their salaries cut?
adrianN 6y ago
I'm pretty sure we're far away from too much idleness. 40 hours is too much work. 20 or so would be more than sufficient imho. That would give people time for hobbies and social interaction outside the office.
nullc 6y ago
You are making an unsound assumption that longer hours mean more economic output. In some kinds of jobs this may be true, but in others-- especially ones with substantial intellectual or creative components-- it isn't. In some cases studies have showed increased output from reduced working hours.

daxfohl 6y ago

Anybody else feeling like if we're young and healthy we should actively try to contract this thing, self-isolate for a few weeks, and be done with it? It feels almost like this would be the most socially responsible thing to do: reduce the effective R0 and allow things to start getting back to normality. I'm the farthest thing from a "reopen" protester. But I can't help thinking that as a young and healthy individual, this is a valid option that nobody is talking about.

droopyEyelids 6y ago
This made sense when it seemed like the flu- where you get it, and you die or you get better, end of story. Sars-2 is you get it, and then you get some amount of permanent damage to your lungs and cardiovascular system.
tgsovlerkhgsel 6y ago
The problem with that is, as far as I know, that: - COVID puts even some of the young and healthy into the ICU - there are reports of serious long term damage even in mild/asymptomatic cases, so you might be immune until the next big pandemic but your lungs may be busted forever
- rimliu 6y ago
  I doubt there are any report of "serious long term damage even in mild/asymptomatic cases". First, because we simply do not have any data on long term effects for the simple reason that this thing is less than six months old. As for lung damage is it mostly caused by ventilation, not by disease itself. I doubt you get artificial lung ventilation if you got an asymptomatic case.
forgot_my_pwd 6y ago
This has been my thinking for a few weeks now. Aside from bringing us significantly closer to herd immunity, it would increase the pool of eligible plasma donors for plasma antibody therapy. And those are just the public health benefits. Saving millions of jobs and livelihoods is no small benefit either.
6y ago

forgot_my_pwd 6y ago

How many of us don't want to commute to the office 5 days a week, but also don't necessarily like the idea of working from home when not at the office? My personal ideal is a dedicated office space in a location very close to my home, like in the nearest downtown, where I would pay a certain amount per month in return for a set of days on which I could reserve personal office space. The issue with working from home for me is that I feel my personal life and work life become messy and entangled if I do too much work at home. Similar to how good sleep hygiene involves doing as few activities other than sleeping on your bed as possible, I feel for my mental wellbeing it's better to physically separate my work life and home life as much as possible.

adrianN 6y ago
If your work location is farther away than the nearest downtown you should look for either a new job or a new place to live imho. Commuting more than an hour a day is awful.
- forgot_my_pwd 6y ago
  I live in a great town that's about an hour commute from the big city where I work. I would never make as much money as I do now (or find as engaging work) if I looked outside the city. I also have no interest in moving. Granted I don't hate commuting. Since I take the bus I get a significant amount of reading done.
em-bee 6y ago
that's what coworking spaces are for. and it's absolutely a good option, if you can find one near your home. of course it may add to your cost, depending on how much space you have at home
JSavageOne 6y ago
Definitely, I love to work out of coffee shops. Co-working spaces are another option (as a stingy person, I wish they were cheaper though). It's great to change one's work environment every now and then. When I used to work in offices, many days I'd be sick of my office and want to work somewhere else, if only to change things up.

tgsovlerkhgsel 6y ago

For those living (and planning to stay) in areas with high wage standards (like most of the Western world!), keep in mind that remote work also opens your job to competition from much cheaper places. Great for the people in those places, but your happiness to be able to skip the commute may quickly turn into a lot of unhappiness because you can't make a living wage anymore.

JSavageOne 6y ago
That's why we need something like a universal basic income to alleviate peoples' dependence on a job or wage. Outsourcing has already eliminated many peoples' jobs, that's a big reason why Trump and his anti-immigrant rhetoric got elected.
- enitihas 6y ago
  Universal basic income will make the issue the parent talks about more prominent, not less. If you live in a high wage area, and everyone gets same UBI, your life quality will not improve.

pythonbase 6y ago

Applying the concept of hot racking on the offices sounds like a good way of embracing the "new normal" https://twitter.com/kashaziz/status/1257012120090292226 https://twitter.com/kashaziz/status/1257012120090292226

acd 6y ago

Social distancing to stop the spread binary version: Loop: 1) Work monday-friday 6 hours practise strict social distancing. Work remote if you can. 2) Weekend rest from social distancing see friends. Its like a binary four square wave with on / off. Reason: If we practice good social distancing the spread time of the Covid is five days.

nsomaru 6y ago
"spread time"?
jobigoud 6y ago
So you are assuming people may get infected during the week end and won't be infectious the next week end?

Proven 6y ago

The same tired socialist story about working less for the same amount of money. But using the government to enforce lower standards of competition internally doesn't help one compete against the less lazy workers abroad. Even if this worked, you'd eventually get laid off. And may I remind you it is immoral to use coercion to legislatively limit income of people willing to worker longer than you. You should be ashamed of yourselves.