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People should have an option to go fully remote, not be forced to do X number of days because reasons. This is the problem that remote work solves. It gives yo
by 5350-uiop-1130 5y ago
People should have an option to go fully remote, not be forced to do X number of days because reasons.
This is the problem that remote work solves. It gives you some sense of autonomy so that you don't feel like a completely subservient slave.
Also you said objectively it has not been proven but your subjective opinion is that it's better to be in office. What I will counter is that remote is almost certainly better for the environment and social mobility two things which have been destroyed for our generation.
Being forced to live in expensive cities, pay extortionate rent or be held hostage by a mortage and suffer the misery of public transport, yeah no thanks.
- blub 5y agoSoftware developers are not completely subservient slaves. But some of them are certainly obnoxious prima donnas and like throwing tantrums about their oh so terrible working conditions.
- omniscient_oce 5y agoIronic that some of the highest paying jobs out there are also the jobs that are most easily performed at home. Software dev really seems to be one of those win/win/win scenarios when it comes to jobs. Of course, there will always be a litany of complaints online because there's always something to complain about, but still.
- 5350-uiop-1130 5y agoit seem that "completely subservient slave" caused some controversy. it wasn't my intention to demean real slavery, like the factory workers sub-contracted by google and apple. perhaps "completely subservient." would have been better and less redundant :)
- bradleyjg 5y agoWhat I will counter is that remote is almost certainly better for the environment Being forced to live in expensive cities … and suffer the misery of public transport, yeah no thanks. In your attempt to throw everything against a wall to see what sticks you’ve contradicted yourself. Living in dense cities and taking public transportation is good for the environment. You want to work from home—own that instead of trying to pretend you are fighting for some great moral cause.
- SuoDuanDao 5y ago>Living in dense cities and taking public transportation is good for the environment. Citation?
- shagmin 5y agoComparing one group of people that live in a dense area, and can take a bus to/from work and other places, versus another group of people that each drive a separate car over a much longer distance to/from work and other places. Not to mention the efficiency of heating one large building over lots of small buildings and things like that. I don't think this is much of a contested thing. https://www.acogok.org/why-transit-matters-environment/ https://www.acogok.org/why-transit-matters-environment/
- SuoDuanDao 5y agoI bet it'd be more of a contested thing if there were more environmentalist intellectuals living in the countryside seeking to justify their lifestyles. How far does each population's food travel? How often does the average person in either location travel by plane? What is the lifecycle cost of treating water in a concentrated location versus local wells? What are the positive effects of human activity on the environment in either local? There are a lot of factors to consider when making that comparison, and if you're going to criticise upstream commentators for handwaving justifications of their own lifestyles, it seems important to consider more the availability of public transit.
- easytiger 5y agoComparing highly paid office work with slavery is incredibly insulting.
- Hnrobert42 5y agoYou could either be genuinely insulted or just trawling the internet policing it for misused words. It’s hard to tell which is the case.
- easytiger 5y agoAnd you could be trolling the internet trying to police any opposition to concepts, however ridiculous, that you find favourable to your philosophy. The word cannot either have been misused as people have subsequently expended great energy defending its use.
- NKosmatos 5y agoSlavery is a strong word but in reality this is what we office workers are, modern day slaves and that’s how I understood it, as an analogy. They pay us for our work&time and they “own” us for these 40-50hrs/week. Remote working is not the silver bullet and for sure it’s not suitable for all, but for some of us it’s a life changing opportunity. Remote working opened a new door and gave us new possibilities, allowing us a little bit more freedom on many aspects of our jobs, thus making the whole thing more tolerable. After all that’s the expected flow of our modern lives for most of us: study, work, die.
- blub 5y agoMore like modern day blowhards. Here's what modern day slavery looks like: "Harassed, insulted and raped – that is everyday for thousands of women working in tomato and strawberry fields of Spain, Italy and Morocco. The vegetables and fruits they harvest are sold in German supermarkets and all over Europe".
- mise_en_place 5y agoSlavery is perhaps not the right word, but prisoner could be. That’s why they are called “golden” handcuffs. Very few people escape this prison, but it is indeed possible and doesn’t require going out into the woods and becoming a hermit. To continue the analogy, isn’t the jailer/warden also a prisoner? He too is stuck in the prison, perhaps for different reasons but stuck nonetheless.
- nannal 5y ago> What I will counter is that remote is almost certainly better for the environment and social mobility Neither of which have an appreciable business use in the near to mid term & are therefore totally irrelevant to an employer.
- dt3ft 5y agoTo the contrary, I prefer to work for employers who are kind to the environment and I'm quite sure my entire generation feels the same. In fact, I long for the day when the last business harmful to the environment shuts its doors.
- johnnyanmac 5y ago> I'm quite sure my entire generation feels the same. they may agree, but may not have the fortune of choice. Not everyone is being well compensated in a cushy office space. Google people certainly are, but that's a small slice of an industry that's a slice of an entire society.
- catach 5y agoIn a competitive job market, employers are motivated to care about that which attracts and retains employees.
- codemac 5y ago> People should have an option to go fully remote, not be forced to do X number of days because reasons. This.. this is exactly what Google did - everyone had the option to go fully remote.
- Aeolun 5y agoHuh? From the article it seems that this was something you had to request and get approval for (with 15% denied). Somewhere else I remember reading this would also cut your salary by 10%.
- UncleMeat 5y agoThe salary cuts depend on where you live. If you work remotely near your original office, there is no pay change. Some people did have requests denied. In my org, every single person who applied was approved. It is easy to change teams at google, so people who really want to work remotely can make it happen.
- CydeWeys 5y ago> Somewhere else I remember reading this would also cut your salary by 10%. It totally depends on where you're living. It could even be a salary increase if you were previously working in a lower CoL office but have since moved to a high CoL region -- in that case your salary would increase. There's definitely no blanket single figure that applies (in either direction) to people who go fully remote. E.g. my grand-boss is a fully remote worker based out of Manhattan. He's getting the highest pay tier.
- lol_me 5y agonobody said otherwise?
- ddlutz 5y agoThe title does "Google mandates workers ...". Have to read further to know there is an option.
- namdnay 5y ago> so that you don't feel like a completely subservient slave Are we still talking about Google?