4 ms·

> the pros of work from home life are incomparable to the cons The pros are mostly yours, and the cons are mostly your employers. The labor market is finally s

> the pros of work from home life are incomparable to the cons The pros are mostly yours, and the cons are mostly your employers. The labor market is finally shifting to the laborers having the leverage :)

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
shrimpx 5y ago
Mostly in digitized white collar work.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
jbhouse 5y ago
"the cons are mostly your employers" I'm not sure I would even agree with this. I have a better monitor setup at home, a quieter place to work and think, and I'm spending less of my day in pointless conversations for the sake of politeness. My employer simply gets more out of me when I work from home AND turnover is reduced. I think the pros outweigh the cons for employers, even if they don't care at all about their employees and even if we weren't in a tight labor market
- ashtonkem 5y ago
  You're measuring the cons in terms of labor productivity, which I am no longer convinced is what is driving executive behavior. Frankly, I think that executives get a big ego boost seeing hundreds of workers working in an office of their design, and they miss that. I think that's why their arguments for returning to the office come across as ... strange and unpersuasive; they don't actually have a productivity based argument for returning to the office and they're trying to shoe horn one in anyways.
gpm 5y ago
> and the cons are mostly your employers. This sounds like nonsense to me. If there are cons to the employer, that means I'm worth less and can demand less salary - the market might take a bit to adjust for that, but probably not long. It means that I'm going to be working for a less successful company, which is a lot less fun. Employers and employees are usually in a mostly cooperative relationship, this adversarial view of it just strikes me as wrong. (And no, before someone accuses me of being biased, I do not and have never run a company or anything like that)
- rewma 5y ago
  > If there are cons to the employer, that means I'm worth less and can demand less salary (...) During the industrial revolution, some employers saw that there were significant pros in employing children and working them 12 to 14 hours a day for a fraction of a grown man's salary. Not being able to employ children was a significant con. How did "the market" handled that? There's more to life than what's convenient to corporations, and the despair of self-hating employees to think that self-deprecarion is a competitive sport.
  - gpm 5y ago
    Government regulation is different because it forces everyone on the even footing, there is no-one to out compete you. Eliminating competition on the labor side of the market is also different, because while it hurts companies, it also makes employees be in higher demand. That's also a relevant difference here. So, your analogy is just a poor one... But while I'm at it, you'll notice that for the kinds of business that are easily shipped over seas (where the government regulations don't apply) and you can be outcompeted by people using child labor and paying below minimum wage (another case of government regulation) that did happen to an extent, see textile manufacturing for instance.
    - rewma 5y ago
      > Government regulation is different because it forces everyone (...) It really isn't. It just stops unscrupulous employers from abusing their employees. There are already plenty of tech companies that went full remote, and clearly they don't interpret that as a competitive disadvantage. The lockdowns also showed productivity increases and improvements in the quality of life and work/life balance. Therefore, returning to the office has absolutely nothing to do with productivity or company culture or dedication. At best, it's just lazy thinking enforced by strong-arming employees into positions that is overwhelmingly against their personal interests and quality of life.
pyrale 5y ago
I'm not even sure about this, tbh. At my work, like most other works, productivity didn't go down with remote, and the company saved massively on office space. It seems the people pushing for more office-time are in management, and this situation leads me to question the extent to which this change helps _their_ role rather than the company, and by extension their ability to manage their own conflicts of interest.
ser0 5y ago
I have to disagree with this. Working for a flexible work arrangement employer has made me appreciate the following alternatives to what I used to consider pros of working in the office. - Hall way chats are now Slack chats. These are more likely to be in the open and allow more participants. When gathering feedback or ideas this allows interested parties to participate asynchronously, which they may not have been able to do in person. - Quick tap on the shoulder assistance or conversations. These were always a little disruptive. With Slack statuses and huddles, I'm finding we can have explicit do-not-disturb signals and when everyone is ready, a quick low-friction way of having a discussion. - Group meetings. There was always a limit to the effectiveness of this depending on the make up of the group and the size of the group. Being forced online means it's even more obvious when people are not comfortable participating. The solution being more async collaborative RFC-style processes before meeting in Zoom to discuss only the points of difference. - Recordings. Often we would need to take notes, etc. Now everything can be recorded. Minutes are still good, but no longer need to be taken all the time. If the meeting was a bust and nothing of value was gained, you don't need to type it up. If something important was discussed, you don't have to rely on memory and can transcribe off the recording. All of the above I consider to be a benefit to both the employer and employee as it allows for greater flexibility in how and when we interact and automated digitisation means a much easier process of persisting and communicating institutional knowledge that is being created among a group.
- BobbyJo 5y ago
  I think you're reading "It's mostly cons for employers", when I wrote "most of the cons are the employers".

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

shrimpx 5y ago

Mostly in digitized white collar work.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

jbhouse 5y ago

"the cons are mostly your employers" I'm not sure I would even agree with this. I have a better monitor setup at home, a quieter place to work and think, and I'm spending less of my day in pointless conversations for the sake of politeness. My employer simply gets more out of me when I work from home AND turnover is reduced. I think the pros outweigh the cons for employers, even if they don't care at all about their employees and even if we weren't in a tight labor market

ashtonkem 5y ago
You're measuring the cons in terms of labor productivity, which I am no longer convinced is what is driving executive behavior. Frankly, I think that executives get a big ego boost seeing hundreds of workers working in an office of their design, and they miss that. I think that's why their arguments for returning to the office come across as ... strange and unpersuasive; they don't actually have a productivity based argument for returning to the office and they're trying to shoe horn one in anyways.

gpm 5y ago

> and the cons are mostly your employers. This sounds like nonsense to me. If there are cons to the employer, that means I'm worth less and can demand less salary - the market might take a bit to adjust for that, but probably not long. It means that I'm going to be working for a less successful company, which is a lot less fun. Employers and employees are usually in a mostly cooperative relationship, this adversarial view of it just strikes me as wrong. (And no, before someone accuses me of being biased, I do not and have never run a company or anything like that)

rewma 5y ago
> If there are cons to the employer, that means I'm worth less and can demand less salary (...) During the industrial revolution, some employers saw that there were significant pros in employing children and working them 12 to 14 hours a day for a fraction of a grown man's salary. Not being able to employ children was a significant con. How did "the market" handled that? There's more to life than what's convenient to corporations, and the despair of self-hating employees to think that self-deprecarion is a competitive sport.
- gpm 5y ago
  Government regulation is different because it forces everyone on the even footing, there is no-one to out compete you. Eliminating competition on the labor side of the market is also different, because while it hurts companies, it also makes employees be in higher demand. That's also a relevant difference here. So, your analogy is just a poor one... But while I'm at it, you'll notice that for the kinds of business that are easily shipped over seas (where the government regulations don't apply) and you can be outcompeted by people using child labor and paying below minimum wage (another case of government regulation) that did happen to an extent, see textile manufacturing for instance.
  - rewma 5y ago
    > Government regulation is different because it forces everyone (...) It really isn't. It just stops unscrupulous employers from abusing their employees. There are already plenty of tech companies that went full remote, and clearly they don't interpret that as a competitive disadvantage. The lockdowns also showed productivity increases and improvements in the quality of life and work/life balance. Therefore, returning to the office has absolutely nothing to do with productivity or company culture or dedication. At best, it's just lazy thinking enforced by strong-arming employees into positions that is overwhelmingly against their personal interests and quality of life.

pyrale 5y ago

I'm not even sure about this, tbh. At my work, like most other works, productivity didn't go down with remote, and the company saved massively on office space. It seems the people pushing for more office-time are in management, and this situation leads me to question the extent to which this change helps _their_ role rather than the company, and by extension their ability to manage their own conflicts of interest.

ser0 5y ago

I have to disagree with this. Working for a flexible work arrangement employer has made me appreciate the following alternatives to what I used to consider pros of working in the office. - Hall way chats are now Slack chats. These are more likely to be in the open and allow more participants. When gathering feedback or ideas this allows interested parties to participate asynchronously, which they may not have been able to do in person. - Quick tap on the shoulder assistance or conversations. These were always a little disruptive. With Slack statuses and huddles, I'm finding we can have explicit do-not-disturb signals and when everyone is ready, a quick low-friction way of having a discussion. - Group meetings. There was always a limit to the effectiveness of this depending on the make up of the group and the size of the group. Being forced online means it's even more obvious when people are not comfortable participating. The solution being more async collaborative RFC-style processes before meeting in Zoom to discuss only the points of difference. - Recordings. Often we would need to take notes, etc. Now everything can be recorded. Minutes are still good, but no longer need to be taken all the time. If the meeting was a bust and nothing of value was gained, you don't need to type it up. If something important was discussed, you don't have to rely on memory and can transcribe off the recording. All of the above I consider to be a benefit to both the employer and employee as it allows for greater flexibility in how and when we interact and automated digitisation means a much easier process of persisting and communicating institutional knowledge that is being created among a group.

BobbyJo 5y ago
I think you're reading "It's mostly cons for employers", when I wrote "most of the cons are the employers".