3 ms·

Yep. Better for car pollution, better for urban house prices, better for the cost of gas, better for families/kids, and better for rural communities (as people

Yep. Better for car pollution, better for urban house prices, better for the cost of gas, better for families/kids, and better for rural communities (as people move out of cities, and take their relatively high salaries/disposable income with them). It does cause a short term shift as downtown support businesses (e.g. coffee shops, food, etc) have to move closer to where people live. But that is largely a return to what was normal 50 years ago anyway.

bboygravity 4y ago
But what about the team leader/manager's egos though?
- jcpst 4y ago
  Ah yes. That is the one benefit of the SHOW UP act- it does help the ego of managers.
  - toss1 4y ago
    >> it does help the ego of managers. Fix:: ... the ego of BAD managers I read some studies from a decade before COVID about remote work, and the upshot was that teams under previously under-performing managers indeed performed worse, but the previously higher-performing teams performed better. Makes sense because bad managers manage to the signs of work, not work itself - it the but in the chair, not talking to someone else, etc., whereas the good managers manage to their targets and DGAF about the signs. Send the poor manager's teams remote, and now they not only lack direction on real goals, but now they're also free of being hounded. Send the top managers' teams remote, and they have the same guidance, but less time and effort squandered commuting, less office interruptions, etc, and they improve. Considering the studies and recent experience, I'd almost consider it a test of a manager's skill - if they cannot manage a remote team productively, they cannot manage a local one. (Of course meanwhile, the right wing has gone fully into abusive leader attitude over any facts, and so squanders Congress' time with nonsense like this. Ugh) (Edit: typo)
- saghm 4y ago
  Good point, discouraging micromanaging and flaunting power is another benefit they didn't list
luckylion 4y ago
Worse for rural house prices though, right?
- sgt101 4y ago
  There's a lot of rural out there..
bobulous 4y ago
remote work is great but moving to a rural area or suburb is not better for the environment
- Someone1234 4y ago
  Wasn't something that was claimed. Reducing driving in better for the environment.
- atonse 4y ago
  Is that as cut and dry? Me living in a suburb is only "far away" if I have to commute somewhere far away daily. But if I barely drive ever, and work entirely remote, is it so bad to live in a suburb? Genuinely wondering.
  - mjmahone17 4y ago
    It’s not so bad if you are in fact walking most places and spending less time in a car. True it’s better than commuting somewhere far, but if you compare to living without a car in an urban core, it’s unlikely your footprint is smaller. Especially if you now live in a 3,500 square foot detached single story home that consumes a lot of heating energy, whereas in a city you’d have say 1,500 square feet with two shared walls and a shared ceiling/floor (basically you have a larger footprint based on insulation and exposed surface area). The problem is most US towns and suburbs are not set up to be core walkable, dense places, where you don’t even need a car to get home. There are exceptions (I can think of some Hudson Valley towns on train stations, where their core has mixed use multi-story attached housing), but that’s not the norm and is generally discouraged via zoning.
    - atonse 4y ago
      Totally true. And as I think about this more, I'm not thinking enough about other impacts of that sprawl: Sure, I'm not driving as much, but that's because I'm getting a lot of things delivered to me, so SOMEONE is driving around a lot on my behalf (and I'm having to pay for it too). Although with package deliveries, the impact is amortized by all the packages so the impact is probably less than if I had driven to the store, this isn't true of grocery and food deliveries. Those are about as inefficient as would be if I did that driving myself. The approach of thinking about suburbs/city/etc will all have to account for the new hybrid lifestyle of remote work now – where people are living in remote areas but still not driving that much either.
danaris 4y ago
Noting that I fully support remote work... Your last point does have a pretty big caveat, in that widespread strict residential zoning outright prohibits almost every kind of useful support business from setting up shop close enough to where many people live (that is, in the suburbs). The answer to this, of course, is "so let's get rid of that hopelessly strict zoning, which is bad for a host of other reasons, too", not "so remote work is still the problem".

bboygravity 4y ago

But what about the team leader/manager's egos though?

jcpst 4y ago
Ah yes. That is the one benefit of the SHOW UP act- it does help the ego of managers.
- toss1 4y ago
  >> it does help the ego of managers. Fix:: ... the ego of BAD managers I read some studies from a decade before COVID about remote work, and the upshot was that teams under previously under-performing managers indeed performed worse, but the previously higher-performing teams performed better. Makes sense because bad managers manage to the signs of work, not work itself - it the but in the chair, not talking to someone else, etc., whereas the good managers manage to their targets and DGAF about the signs. Send the poor manager's teams remote, and now they not only lack direction on real goals, but now they're also free of being hounded. Send the top managers' teams remote, and they have the same guidance, but less time and effort squandered commuting, less office interruptions, etc, and they improve. Considering the studies and recent experience, I'd almost consider it a test of a manager's skill - if they cannot manage a remote team productively, they cannot manage a local one. (Of course meanwhile, the right wing has gone fully into abusive leader attitude over any facts, and so squanders Congress' time with nonsense like this. Ugh) (Edit: typo)
saghm 4y ago
Good point, discouraging micromanaging and flaunting power is another benefit they didn't list

luckylion 4y ago

Worse for rural house prices though, right?

sgt101 4y ago
There's a lot of rural out there..

bobulous 4y ago

remote work is great but moving to a rural area or suburb is not better for the environment

Someone1234 4y ago
Wasn't something that was claimed. Reducing driving in better for the environment.
atonse 4y ago
Is that as cut and dry? Me living in a suburb is only "far away" if I have to commute somewhere far away daily. But if I barely drive ever, and work entirely remote, is it so bad to live in a suburb? Genuinely wondering.
- mjmahone17 4y ago
  It’s not so bad if you are in fact walking most places and spending less time in a car. True it’s better than commuting somewhere far, but if you compare to living without a car in an urban core, it’s unlikely your footprint is smaller. Especially if you now live in a 3,500 square foot detached single story home that consumes a lot of heating energy, whereas in a city you’d have say 1,500 square feet with two shared walls and a shared ceiling/floor (basically you have a larger footprint based on insulation and exposed surface area). The problem is most US towns and suburbs are not set up to be core walkable, dense places, where you don’t even need a car to get home. There are exceptions (I can think of some Hudson Valley towns on train stations, where their core has mixed use multi-story attached housing), but that’s not the norm and is generally discouraged via zoning.
  - atonse 4y ago
    Totally true. And as I think about this more, I'm not thinking enough about other impacts of that sprawl: Sure, I'm not driving as much, but that's because I'm getting a lot of things delivered to me, so SOMEONE is driving around a lot on my behalf (and I'm having to pay for it too). Although with package deliveries, the impact is amortized by all the packages so the impact is probably less than if I had driven to the store, this isn't true of grocery and food deliveries. Those are about as inefficient as would be if I did that driving myself. The approach of thinking about suburbs/city/etc will all have to account for the new hybrid lifestyle of remote work now – where people are living in remote areas but still not driving that much either.

danaris 4y ago

Noting that I fully support remote work... Your last point does have a pretty big caveat, in that widespread strict residential zoning outright prohibits almost every kind of useful support business from setting up shop close enough to where many people live (that is, in the suburbs). The answer to this, of course, is "so let's get rid of that hopelessly strict zoning, which is bad for a host of other reasons, too", not "so remote work is still the problem".