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This applies everywhere: just because a job or business has existed does not mean it has a right to exist forever. This is not being harsh on people; it's just

This applies everywhere: just because a job or business has existed does not mean it has a right to exist forever. This is not being harsh on people; it's just a reality. The blacksmiths in the horse and buggy days saw demand for their services fall when time and technologies changed. The coal miners began losing their jobs when we realized that coal as fuel was more harmful than it was beneficial. History is full of valid jobs which later became unneeded or "invalid". Remote work can increase efficiency by eliminating artificial inefficiencies. Not having to drive to work reduces fuel consumption and lengthens the time between car repairs or replacement. This obviously is a financial loss for the economy because it shifts the balance back from money to time. The same goes for office space: less office space need reduces demand which reduces rents (and amount of space leased). However, that cost can be offset some as home working can increase demand for larger homes. Even so, a slightly larger home is still probably less cost than a commercial space which goes unused for 12+ hours per day. It smells like much of this anti-remote-work conversation (not TFA, but the topic in general) is because the people accustomed to being in charge have a fear of losing control. The manager who rules by force or threat has much to fear of subordinates who are out of sight. However, the manager (leader) who works together with a group of people toward a common goal has little to fear. Some companies operate very successfully even when management cannot observe the workers. The alarms and complaints we hear are almost certainly from the bad group. Eventually that group will be like the dinosaurs.

chii 4y ago
> This obviously is a financial loss for the economy it's not, because the money that was otherwise spent (wasted) can now be deployed else where. Otherwise, why not increase the GDP and economy, by periodically just breaking every window? The replacement is gonna cause huge growth!
- amalgamated_inc 4y ago
  > Otherwise, why not increase the GDP and economy, by periodically just breaking every window? The replacement is gonna cause huge growth! Omg this is genius! Does Jerome Powell know about this?!
- friendzis 4y ago
  Wellllll.... debatable. This argument of expense rerouting is a bit flawed. Suppose working from home saves one some money that they spend elsewhere. Working from the office they spend that money on fuel, indirectly spend on road maintenance, directly spend on vehicle maintenance where the shop in turn spends on parts and tools and so on. The money one spends circulates in the economy much longer and reaches more actors until it eventually falls back into original pocket. Working from home then they buy more items that have been manufactured in China, spend eating out where restaurants pay mostly wages and farmers, making the chain much shorter. There are different economic health considerations for different spending habits. While not exactly a loss it's not entirely equal too.
  - chii 4y ago
    > The money one spends circulates in the economy much longer and reaches more actors until it eventually falls back into original pocket. that's a total assumption being made. Who knows how the money from an office worker's commute gets dispersed. It's likely too difficult to track exactly. And it's irrelevant to the person how this dispersion happens or why. All they need to care about is that they've eliminated a source of inefficiency, and thus have extra money for either investment or different consumption.
    - teamonkey 4y ago
      > All they need to care about is that they've eliminated a source of inefficiency, and thus have extra money for either investment or different consumption. ...or prices rise to balance out the extra money.
  - saiya-jin 4y ago
    I'd say roads that need less maintenance are a win long term, otherwise we go back to original argument about breaking all the windows. The rest... pure speculation from poster's own limited view, the world is more complex than 'I stay home so just order more stuff from China', definitely not true for me. I can chip in mine - ie during travel restrictions forced to buy in more expensive smaller local shops for whole family. One heck of help for local economy. Spending vacations much closer, meaning tons of money flow back to local economy. Having time to plan and do some home repairs with local workforce. And so on, random tiny examples have little significance in hyper complex situation that is called reality.
- satoru42 4y ago
  It is said that in many cities in China the governments actually did something similar. They broke parts of the roads repeatedly so that they could rebuild them later.
  - ChuckNorris89 4y ago
    That's how local corruption works in Eastern European cities. New mayor gets elected, so good streets get torn up and re-paved, so that his friend who runs a local construction company gets a lucrative government contract above market rates. Rinse and repeat every time we get a new mayor. It's a tried and tested way of legally shoveling public taxpayer money into well connected private pockets. I've seen similar corruption scandals in Western Europe as well, since the owners of construction companies and city leaders tend to not be strangers to one another, so I don't expect China to be any different here.
    - dcow 4y ago
      SF too.
    - 988747 4y ago
      Yes, and it's also funny that they will re-pave the street, and then few months later it turns out that some water pipes need to be replaced, so the freshly re-paved street is torn up again. Then, few months later, new fiber cables needs to be put in the ground, so guess what?. Re-paving becomes one of the best businesses in such town :)
      - bluGill 4y ago
        A few cities have someone who's job it is to coordinate between all the groups that have/want something under the streets so when the streets are torn up (which needs to happen every 20-60 years depending on how long the chosen pavement type lasts) everyone with something under the road goes out and does whatever they need. The city I'm in now puts everything in the area between the streets and the sidewalks. I don't have a sidewalk yet because there are some thing that will be going in next summer.
- bryanrasmussen 4y ago
  >Otherwise, why not increase the GDP and economy, by periodically just breaking every window? The replacement is gonna cause huge growth! I believe by classical Keynesian theory that would indeed create economic growth?
  - dgb23 4y ago
    Is there a model that incorporates utility outside of “people are willing to pay for it”?
    - bryanrasmussen 4y ago
      I can't remember her name but there was an economist who IIRC was Australian and made a critique of classical Keynesian economics based on an accounting model that you need a debit column to be able to balance out loss of raw materials, environmental degradation etc. For example if an oil tanker sinks you should be able to calculate the loss of value the environmental damage represents as well as the additional value that replacing that ship represents. Can't remember much beyond that though.
- f6v 4y ago
  > Otherwise, why not increase the GDP and economy, by periodically just breaking every window? Starting wars to fuel arms industry worked just fine so far.
  - danuker 4y ago
    Bonus points if you loot oil or some other resource.
  - ChrisMarshallNY 4y ago
    Sounds like Zorg’s speech: https://youtu.be/KXwqUMkXFiI?t=50 https://youtu.be/KXwqUMkXFiI?t=50
  - lotsofpulp 4y ago
    The distinction is breaking someone else’s windows. Plus you need to win, not just start the war, and extract some resources from the someone else.
    - pokepim 4y ago
      [dead]
    - ilostmyshoes 4y ago
      That's why wars that don't involve the US are a cash cow. Just sell them weapons! Ez money
  - chii 4y ago
    The war in afghanistan (and to a degree, iraq 2nd invasion) was largely a waste, but these are not the same as the broken window fallacy.
    - red-iron-pine 4y ago
      Waste? Depends who you ask. All of the counties around Washington DC are the richest in the US. Like, literally, search for "richest counties in the US" and notice how many DC 'burbs are in the top 10 (and top 20). But as mentioned that's the taxpayer getting fleeced, not the broken window fallacy.
- red_trumpet 4y ago
  Sure. Just like planned obsolescence causes more growth for those who produce appliances.
- antihipocrat 4y ago
  Exactly, the local suburban businesses are loving the extra foot traffic, at the expense of less foot traffic in downtown areas. I'm sure home delivery services are benefiting too. The suggestion that the general economy is suffering because of people WFH doesn't make much sense, spending is just reallocated. .. Now if people were saving any money previously spent on commuting and eating out, then that would reduce GDP expenditure. The high levels of inflation suggest this isn't the case.
  - bequanna 4y ago
    Right, and in my experience urban retail is often high cost, low quality. Some of the dirtiest stores/restaurants you see are in urban centers. They could get away with this because they had a captive group which was previously forced to be in that location with relatively few options.
    - thatsamonad 4y ago
      > Right, and in my experience urban retail is often high cost, low quality. Some of the dirtiest stores/restaurants you see are in urban centers. This may depend on your area but this hasn’t been my experience. I used to commute into downtown Portland for work and we had a great selection of options for lunch and happy hours, a plethora of food cart options which were great and affordable, and a number of decent bars where you could meet a friend for drinks afterwards. Now I work from home in the suburbs and, while I wouldn’t trade being remote for anything, the food options here mostly consist of bland fast food and chain restaurants. One of the things I miss the most is grabbing a decent lunch with a coworker and breaking up the monotony a bit.
    - dumpsterlid 4y ago
      [dead]
  - wink 4y ago
    Not exactly sure how representative I should feel, but before, working in the city center, a lot of shops/restaurants got my foot traffic, and since I've been WFH it's mostly my local grocery store that gets all the money.
- badpun 4y ago
  > it's not, because the money that was otherwise spent (wasted) can now be deployed else where. Not neccessarily, people have less costs now, so some people can now just choose to work less - which would shrink the economy.
  - mejutoco 4y ago
    Having less costs is not clear to me. Might be assuming commute with a car (very US-centric). Paying for all the coffee, snacks, lunch, proper office setup might not always be expensed by the employer and incur extra costs. But let's say, on average, it is true that now employees have less costs because of working remotely. Lower costs could have other consequences, other than people working less: general inflation; inflating rents/property prices; lower salaries for the same job; longer working hours (officially or not) I think what you mention is one possible effect, but there are many and it is not clear which one dominates.
  - chii 4y ago
    > so some people can now just choose to work less that's good - they're able to recover some of their time. Just because this "own time" doesn't count towards official GDP, doesn't mean it isn't an improvement.
  - carlosjobim 4y ago
    Working less is the purpose of the economy.
    - teamonkey 4y ago
      This is a scorching-hot take. Would you care to elaborate?
      - badpun 4y ago
        That's easy. We work to get stuff. The better the economy, the more stuff we get for less work input. The ideal that we're slowly getting asymptotically closer to is a world where we get everything for no work at all.
- HPsquared 4y ago
  It's not really about the money itself but the amount of work done. If people get less work done, that's less value added. Less 'stuff' is produced but the same wage is paid - regardless of what happens with inflation. Whether that's good or bad is another question, as is the question of whether it even is happening or not.
  - mejutoco 4y ago
    It seems false to assume that people work less when working remotely. That is far from obvious. I personally think it is false, and have not seen any justification of it. I understand arguments about people not eating business lunch near the office. Although it looks like home delivery and extra home office snacks, coffee, etc. would also cause spend, just in different areas as before. Additionally, in places where the state pays for healthcare, having less stressed workers, having less traffic accidents (I assume, since less commutes) might overall decrease the amount of money spent on health and save some money for the state too. It is not an easy thing to model IMO.
    - lynx23 4y ago
      I recently listened to a casual conversation between two women talking about their husbands WFH behaviour. The general undertone was: "Yes, he can now do this or that time-consuming hobby because he can claim WFH while actually driving from A to B". Just an anecdote, I know, but this is not the first time I overheard people cheering over the personal advantages of WFH.
      - sw104 4y ago
        Those gentlemen would probably also waste time in an office environment. You're just substituting wasting time at work with wasting time at work (from home). In the office I work in, walking past anybody's desk you see procrastination window and tabs quickly disappear. Either that, or people don't even bother hiding it (except from management). If people working from home didn't manage the same workload at home, it would hopefully be noticed in a competently run company. If those gents can fit in a few more hobbies in that time as well, power to them. If the company is run so incompetently that they don't notice you're not meeting goals/project deadlines, or providing low quality work, then that's the managements fault. Remote or in-person work isn't the main argument I think. There's more to it, which makes remote/in-person a good start for improving things. Working 9-5 (if you're lucky to work that) 5 days a week is insane, even for something you're passionate about (which most aren't). Our views on employment, notably:- - The amount of time it takes out of our days and lives (70%+ of your adult life) - The mundanity and pointlessness of (let's face it) most jobs - The additional time lost to commuting to an office to sit amongst a 50/50 cast of people you like/dislike. - The damage many jobs do to your health, both physical (back, eyes) and mentally from lack of stimulation or burnout. When you take a step back to analyse it all, to accept this is like a form of mental illness. If I took my favourite hobby and treated it the same way that a job is treated, after a couple of years it wouldn't even be a hobby anymore.
- rubyfan 4y ago
  The argument I hear mostly from the ‘remote work is bad’ crowd is that there is highly valuable intangible benefit to collaboration in real life than collaboration remotely. I can get behind the idea that remote work is not as effective especially when forming a new team or assimilating new team members. However the thing that the ‘remote work is bad’ crowd get wrong is the distribution of collaborative work and deep individual work. My experience is that in person collaborative synchronization is needed far less than even once a week. In person touch points with a white board and plenty of getting to know each other as humans time is super valuable… and in my opinion 2-4 times a year in needed, not 3-5 days per week.
  - edude03 4y ago
    It heavily depends on what kind of work you do and your relation to others though - if most of your work is deep work done by yourself of course less time interesting with others makes sense but if you're a team lead for example...
    - rubyfan 4y ago
      I’d agree that someone in a lead role must have more collaborative time but I think IRL collaborative time needed is still significantly less than imagined by the ‘remote work is bad’ crowd. In my opinion IRL is more needed for negotiation, handling uncertainty, new team formation, business development, etc.
- stuaxo 4y ago
  GDP is such a damaging measure to use for anything, we need to stop.
- snikeris 4y ago
  This is the same fallacy that people make when they think that war is good for the economy. They somehow imagine that people are better off when we spend money bombing eachother.
- benlivengood 4y ago
  Not every expense or purchase has the same multiplicative effect on GDP. The more value that is added at each stage of production, the more GDP is created by consumer spending (cooking vs. eating out). GDP also captures none of the value created and consumed within the household (cooking, herb gardens, childcare by parents, etc.).
jrumbut 4y ago
This is probably true to an extent, but I do think this analysis fails to capture the very real upheaval that happened in the life of a hypothetical blacksmith or wainwright that ended up at a car factory. A job isn't just a financial transaction. It's part of a person's identity and a social outlet. There is a career progression that they had planned on, they made choices about where to live and all kinds of other things based on this career they thought they were going to have. So even if they are making the same money, they might be very unhappy and this unhappiness may end up being expressed in antisocial ways that end up costing society money. In the transition from wagons to cars, the increased productivity of cars papered over all these losses. Eventually everyone had to admit it was for the best. I'm not sure remote work will do the same thing. We'll see, but in any planning it's important that we look at externalities and factors that are difficult to quantify because otherwise we risk running roughshod over what really matters to people.
- ok_dad 4y ago
  What really matters to me is spending time with my family. Fuck executives and management that would force me to go to an office to do the exact same things I do at home now. Upheaval be damned.
  - acdha 4y ago
    I get where you’re coming from but just because some of the criticism of working from home is in bad faith doesn’t mean it all is. Many American cities were hollowed out by white flight in the 1950s and 60s as people moved to suburbs, taking a great deal of economic activity with them. The balance which kept that from being an immediate disaster was business-related spending but that came at a steep cost as infrastructure was built for car commuting at the expense of neighborhoods, quality of life, and hefty maintenance costs. This was arguably a major long-term mistake but I understand why mayors all over are panicking at the thought of that system crumbling, leaving them with all of the costs and half the downtown economy. I don’t think the entire country is turning into Detroit but it’s going to be bad anywhere that they can’t take a different path. Setting up some kind of larger tax zone to pay for at least the broader infrastructure costs could help but many suburbs were specifically designed to prevent that and few have enough slack in their budgets to help in any case.
psychoslave 4y ago
>Eventually that group will be like the dinosaurs. Dinosaurs prospered for million years, you know? And only global scale mass extinction ended their reign. So, though it appears we do are well on the road for such a huge collapse, I’m not sure your analogy was the best one here. :D
Laaas 4y ago
What if the government helped people switch jobs after they're made redundant?
- shagie 4y ago
  They do, and try to... just most people don't take advantage of that. Look up the equivalent of the Department of Workforce Development for your state and find the employment and training section. For example: https://dwd.wisconsin.gov/det/ https://dwd.wisconsin.gov/det/ and https://dwd.wisconsin.gov/dislocatedworker/ https://dwd.wisconsin.gov/dislocatedworker/
  - Laaas 4y ago
    Thanks, I wasn't aware of this, but in hindsight it neems obvious. I think it's very unfortunate though that we have an economy where redundant pieces attempt not to disappear even if society is worse off. If people replaced by X technology could be assured that their QoL would not drop noticeably after being made redundant, we could likely forgo much unnecessary conflict between the worker class and upper class. Maybe it's impossible to do it while making sure the dislocated workers can be productive elsewhere, as I imagine many might not want nor be able to go through education again.
blub 4y ago
The pro remote work viewpoints on HN seem like experienced developers, probably with families, often with terrible commutes externalizing the costs of what’s apparently good for them personally to their colleagues and peers: * removing an outlet for socializing for people that are new to the area / country and don’t have friends. * lack of face to face team bonding for new employees. * lack of personal social contact for an activity we typically spend 1/3 of our day on. * reduced ability to learn by absorbing what happens around oneself. * higher competition for junior and mid-career positions from other countries. New employees, particularly at the beginning of their careers are disproportionately negatively affected by remote work. And while many of the disadvantages I’ve mentioned above can be mitigated, remote work nudges all these aspects towards the negative. These nudges when applied at large scale add up. Like anything, remote work has downsides which are often downplayed by those with an interest to gain an advantage for themselves.
- Viliam1234 4y ago
  I can imagine a different solution that would allow work from home and still solve many of the problems you mentioned. The idea is to decouple "the company you work for" from "the place you work at" for everyone, including those who want to work in an office. Basically, coworking places everywhere. You sign a contract with the company. You either work from home, or find a coworking place where you rent a desk, or coordinate with some of your colleagues to rent a desk at the same place. You could make a different choice on different days. > removing an outlet for socializing for people that are new to the area / country and don’t have friends The coworking places would have quiet desks, and also rooms to chat, with sound isolation. Whenever you want to get social, you walk to the room, and socialize. You can meet people who work at the same company, or people who work at different companies. When you feel like working again, walk back to your desk. > lack of face to face team bonding for new employees People working at the same company could agree to spend one day in a week at the same coworking place. This could be flexible, like if the company has 1000 employees, but your team has 10, only those 10 people need to coordinate together. > reduced ability to learn by absorbing what happens around oneself Either coordinate with your colleagues, or share the screen remotely. I learned a few things by watching my colleagues do things on their computers in a different country. > higher competition for junior and mid-career positions from other countries Well, yes. More opportunities for someone means more competition for someone else. That said, many companies found out that hiring people from other countries has its own challenges, so you will always have an advantage of being local.
svsaraf 4y ago
(I wrote the article) Thanks for this comment - I think the economic point is spot on. I think the fear of losing control is a fair summary - unfortunately there is some evidence of a selection effect that might mean employers do have something to fear. https://www.fractional.work/p/showing-face-is-more-important-than https://www.fractional.work/p/showing-face-is-more-important...

chii 4y ago

> This obviously is a financial loss for the economy it's not, because the money that was otherwise spent (wasted) can now be deployed else where. Otherwise, why not increase the GDP and economy, by periodically just breaking every window? The replacement is gonna cause huge growth!

amalgamated_inc 4y ago
> Otherwise, why not increase the GDP and economy, by periodically just breaking every window? The replacement is gonna cause huge growth! Omg this is genius! Does Jerome Powell know about this?!
friendzis 4y ago
Wellllll.... debatable. This argument of expense rerouting is a bit flawed. Suppose working from home saves one some money that they spend elsewhere. Working from the office they spend that money on fuel, indirectly spend on road maintenance, directly spend on vehicle maintenance where the shop in turn spends on parts and tools and so on. The money one spends circulates in the economy much longer and reaches more actors until it eventually falls back into original pocket. Working from home then they buy more items that have been manufactured in China, spend eating out where restaurants pay mostly wages and farmers, making the chain much shorter. There are different economic health considerations for different spending habits. While not exactly a loss it's not entirely equal too.
- chii 4y ago
  > The money one spends circulates in the economy much longer and reaches more actors until it eventually falls back into original pocket. that's a total assumption being made. Who knows how the money from an office worker's commute gets dispersed. It's likely too difficult to track exactly. And it's irrelevant to the person how this dispersion happens or why. All they need to care about is that they've eliminated a source of inefficiency, and thus have extra money for either investment or different consumption.
  - teamonkey 4y ago
    > All they need to care about is that they've eliminated a source of inefficiency, and thus have extra money for either investment or different consumption. ...or prices rise to balance out the extra money.
- saiya-jin 4y ago
  I'd say roads that need less maintenance are a win long term, otherwise we go back to original argument about breaking all the windows. The rest... pure speculation from poster's own limited view, the world is more complex than 'I stay home so just order more stuff from China', definitely not true for me. I can chip in mine - ie during travel restrictions forced to buy in more expensive smaller local shops for whole family. One heck of help for local economy. Spending vacations much closer, meaning tons of money flow back to local economy. Having time to plan and do some home repairs with local workforce. And so on, random tiny examples have little significance in hyper complex situation that is called reality.
satoru42 4y ago
It is said that in many cities in China the governments actually did something similar. They broke parts of the roads repeatedly so that they could rebuild them later.
- ChuckNorris89 4y ago
  That's how local corruption works in Eastern European cities. New mayor gets elected, so good streets get torn up and re-paved, so that his friend who runs a local construction company gets a lucrative government contract above market rates. Rinse and repeat every time we get a new mayor. It's a tried and tested way of legally shoveling public taxpayer money into well connected private pockets. I've seen similar corruption scandals in Western Europe as well, since the owners of construction companies and city leaders tend to not be strangers to one another, so I don't expect China to be any different here.
  - dcow 4y ago
    SF too.
  - 988747 4y ago
    Yes, and it's also funny that they will re-pave the street, and then few months later it turns out that some water pipes need to be replaced, so the freshly re-paved street is torn up again. Then, few months later, new fiber cables needs to be put in the ground, so guess what?. Re-paving becomes one of the best businesses in such town :)
    - bluGill 4y ago
      A few cities have someone who's job it is to coordinate between all the groups that have/want something under the streets so when the streets are torn up (which needs to happen every 20-60 years depending on how long the chosen pavement type lasts) everyone with something under the road goes out and does whatever they need. The city I'm in now puts everything in the area between the streets and the sidewalks. I don't have a sidewalk yet because there are some thing that will be going in next summer.
bryanrasmussen 4y ago
>Otherwise, why not increase the GDP and economy, by periodically just breaking every window? The replacement is gonna cause huge growth! I believe by classical Keynesian theory that would indeed create economic growth?
- dgb23 4y ago
  Is there a model that incorporates utility outside of “people are willing to pay for it”?
  - bryanrasmussen 4y ago
    I can't remember her name but there was an economist who IIRC was Australian and made a critique of classical Keynesian economics based on an accounting model that you need a debit column to be able to balance out loss of raw materials, environmental degradation etc. For example if an oil tanker sinks you should be able to calculate the loss of value the environmental damage represents as well as the additional value that replacing that ship represents. Can't remember much beyond that though.
f6v 4y ago
> Otherwise, why not increase the GDP and economy, by periodically just breaking every window? Starting wars to fuel arms industry worked just fine so far.
- danuker 4y ago
  Bonus points if you loot oil or some other resource.
- ChrisMarshallNY 4y ago
  Sounds like Zorg’s speech: https://youtu.be/KXwqUMkXFiI?t=50 https://youtu.be/KXwqUMkXFiI?t=50
- lotsofpulp 4y ago
  The distinction is breaking someone else’s windows. Plus you need to win, not just start the war, and extract some resources from the someone else.
  - pokepim 4y ago
    [dead]
  - ilostmyshoes 4y ago
    That's why wars that don't involve the US are a cash cow. Just sell them weapons! Ez money
- chii 4y ago
  The war in afghanistan (and to a degree, iraq 2nd invasion) was largely a waste, but these are not the same as the broken window fallacy.
  - red-iron-pine 4y ago
    Waste? Depends who you ask. All of the counties around Washington DC are the richest in the US. Like, literally, search for "richest counties in the US" and notice how many DC 'burbs are in the top 10 (and top 20). But as mentioned that's the taxpayer getting fleeced, not the broken window fallacy.
red_trumpet 4y ago
Sure. Just like planned obsolescence causes more growth for those who produce appliances.
antihipocrat 4y ago
Exactly, the local suburban businesses are loving the extra foot traffic, at the expense of less foot traffic in downtown areas. I'm sure home delivery services are benefiting too. The suggestion that the general economy is suffering because of people WFH doesn't make much sense, spending is just reallocated. .. Now if people were saving any money previously spent on commuting and eating out, then that would reduce GDP expenditure. The high levels of inflation suggest this isn't the case.
- bequanna 4y ago
  Right, and in my experience urban retail is often high cost, low quality. Some of the dirtiest stores/restaurants you see are in urban centers. They could get away with this because they had a captive group which was previously forced to be in that location with relatively few options.
  - thatsamonad 4y ago
    > Right, and in my experience urban retail is often high cost, low quality. Some of the dirtiest stores/restaurants you see are in urban centers. This may depend on your area but this hasn’t been my experience. I used to commute into downtown Portland for work and we had a great selection of options for lunch and happy hours, a plethora of food cart options which were great and affordable, and a number of decent bars where you could meet a friend for drinks afterwards. Now I work from home in the suburbs and, while I wouldn’t trade being remote for anything, the food options here mostly consist of bland fast food and chain restaurants. One of the things I miss the most is grabbing a decent lunch with a coworker and breaking up the monotony a bit.
  - dumpsterlid 4y ago
    [dead]
- wink 4y ago
  Not exactly sure how representative I should feel, but before, working in the city center, a lot of shops/restaurants got my foot traffic, and since I've been WFH it's mostly my local grocery store that gets all the money.
badpun 4y ago
> it's not, because the money that was otherwise spent (wasted) can now be deployed else where. Not neccessarily, people have less costs now, so some people can now just choose to work less - which would shrink the economy.
- mejutoco 4y ago
  Having less costs is not clear to me. Might be assuming commute with a car (very US-centric). Paying for all the coffee, snacks, lunch, proper office setup might not always be expensed by the employer and incur extra costs. But let's say, on average, it is true that now employees have less costs because of working remotely. Lower costs could have other consequences, other than people working less: general inflation; inflating rents/property prices; lower salaries for the same job; longer working hours (officially or not) I think what you mention is one possible effect, but there are many and it is not clear which one dominates.
- chii 4y ago
  > so some people can now just choose to work less that's good - they're able to recover some of their time. Just because this "own time" doesn't count towards official GDP, doesn't mean it isn't an improvement.
- carlosjobim 4y ago
  Working less is the purpose of the economy.
  - teamonkey 4y ago
    This is a scorching-hot take. Would you care to elaborate?
    - badpun 4y ago
      That's easy. We work to get stuff. The better the economy, the more stuff we get for less work input. The ideal that we're slowly getting asymptotically closer to is a world where we get everything for no work at all.
HPsquared 4y ago
It's not really about the money itself but the amount of work done. If people get less work done, that's less value added. Less 'stuff' is produced but the same wage is paid - regardless of what happens with inflation. Whether that's good or bad is another question, as is the question of whether it even is happening or not.
- mejutoco 4y ago
  It seems false to assume that people work less when working remotely. That is far from obvious. I personally think it is false, and have not seen any justification of it. I understand arguments about people not eating business lunch near the office. Although it looks like home delivery and extra home office snacks, coffee, etc. would also cause spend, just in different areas as before. Additionally, in places where the state pays for healthcare, having less stressed workers, having less traffic accidents (I assume, since less commutes) might overall decrease the amount of money spent on health and save some money for the state too. It is not an easy thing to model IMO.
  - lynx23 4y ago
    I recently listened to a casual conversation between two women talking about their husbands WFH behaviour. The general undertone was: "Yes, he can now do this or that time-consuming hobby because he can claim WFH while actually driving from A to B". Just an anecdote, I know, but this is not the first time I overheard people cheering over the personal advantages of WFH.
    - sw104 4y ago
      Those gentlemen would probably also waste time in an office environment. You're just substituting wasting time at work with wasting time at work (from home). In the office I work in, walking past anybody's desk you see procrastination window and tabs quickly disappear. Either that, or people don't even bother hiding it (except from management). If people working from home didn't manage the same workload at home, it would hopefully be noticed in a competently run company. If those gents can fit in a few more hobbies in that time as well, power to them. If the company is run so incompetently that they don't notice you're not meeting goals/project deadlines, or providing low quality work, then that's the managements fault. Remote or in-person work isn't the main argument I think. There's more to it, which makes remote/in-person a good start for improving things. Working 9-5 (if you're lucky to work that) 5 days a week is insane, even for something you're passionate about (which most aren't). Our views on employment, notably:- - The amount of time it takes out of our days and lives (70%+ of your adult life) - The mundanity and pointlessness of (let's face it) most jobs - The additional time lost to commuting to an office to sit amongst a 50/50 cast of people you like/dislike. - The damage many jobs do to your health, both physical (back, eyes) and mentally from lack of stimulation or burnout. When you take a step back to analyse it all, to accept this is like a form of mental illness. If I took my favourite hobby and treated it the same way that a job is treated, after a couple of years it wouldn't even be a hobby anymore.
rubyfan 4y ago
The argument I hear mostly from the ‘remote work is bad’ crowd is that there is highly valuable intangible benefit to collaboration in real life than collaboration remotely. I can get behind the idea that remote work is not as effective especially when forming a new team or assimilating new team members. However the thing that the ‘remote work is bad’ crowd get wrong is the distribution of collaborative work and deep individual work. My experience is that in person collaborative synchronization is needed far less than even once a week. In person touch points with a white board and plenty of getting to know each other as humans time is super valuable… and in my opinion 2-4 times a year in needed, not 3-5 days per week.
- edude03 4y ago
  It heavily depends on what kind of work you do and your relation to others though - if most of your work is deep work done by yourself of course less time interesting with others makes sense but if you're a team lead for example...
  - rubyfan 4y ago
    I’d agree that someone in a lead role must have more collaborative time but I think IRL collaborative time needed is still significantly less than imagined by the ‘remote work is bad’ crowd. In my opinion IRL is more needed for negotiation, handling uncertainty, new team formation, business development, etc.
stuaxo 4y ago
GDP is such a damaging measure to use for anything, we need to stop.
snikeris 4y ago
This is the same fallacy that people make when they think that war is good for the economy. They somehow imagine that people are better off when we spend money bombing eachother.
benlivengood 4y ago
Not every expense or purchase has the same multiplicative effect on GDP. The more value that is added at each stage of production, the more GDP is created by consumer spending (cooking vs. eating out). GDP also captures none of the value created and consumed within the household (cooking, herb gardens, childcare by parents, etc.).

jrumbut 4y ago

This is probably true to an extent, but I do think this analysis fails to capture the very real upheaval that happened in the life of a hypothetical blacksmith or wainwright that ended up at a car factory. A job isn't just a financial transaction. It's part of a person's identity and a social outlet. There is a career progression that they had planned on, they made choices about where to live and all kinds of other things based on this career they thought they were going to have. So even if they are making the same money, they might be very unhappy and this unhappiness may end up being expressed in antisocial ways that end up costing society money. In the transition from wagons to cars, the increased productivity of cars papered over all these losses. Eventually everyone had to admit it was for the best. I'm not sure remote work will do the same thing. We'll see, but in any planning it's important that we look at externalities and factors that are difficult to quantify because otherwise we risk running roughshod over what really matters to people.

ok_dad 4y ago
What really matters to me is spending time with my family. Fuck executives and management that would force me to go to an office to do the exact same things I do at home now. Upheaval be damned.
- acdha 4y ago
  I get where you’re coming from but just because some of the criticism of working from home is in bad faith doesn’t mean it all is. Many American cities were hollowed out by white flight in the 1950s and 60s as people moved to suburbs, taking a great deal of economic activity with them. The balance which kept that from being an immediate disaster was business-related spending but that came at a steep cost as infrastructure was built for car commuting at the expense of neighborhoods, quality of life, and hefty maintenance costs. This was arguably a major long-term mistake but I understand why mayors all over are panicking at the thought of that system crumbling, leaving them with all of the costs and half the downtown economy. I don’t think the entire country is turning into Detroit but it’s going to be bad anywhere that they can’t take a different path. Setting up some kind of larger tax zone to pay for at least the broader infrastructure costs could help but many suburbs were specifically designed to prevent that and few have enough slack in their budgets to help in any case.

psychoslave 4y ago

>Eventually that group will be like the dinosaurs. Dinosaurs prospered for million years, you know? And only global scale mass extinction ended their reign. So, though it appears we do are well on the road for such a huge collapse, I’m not sure your analogy was the best one here. :D

Laaas 4y ago

What if the government helped people switch jobs after they're made redundant?

shagie 4y ago
They do, and try to... just most people don't take advantage of that. Look up the equivalent of the Department of Workforce Development for your state and find the employment and training section. For example: https://dwd.wisconsin.gov/det/ https://dwd.wisconsin.gov/det/ and https://dwd.wisconsin.gov/dislocatedworker/ https://dwd.wisconsin.gov/dislocatedworker/
- Laaas 4y ago
  Thanks, I wasn't aware of this, but in hindsight it neems obvious. I think it's very unfortunate though that we have an economy where redundant pieces attempt not to disappear even if society is worse off. If people replaced by X technology could be assured that their QoL would not drop noticeably after being made redundant, we could likely forgo much unnecessary conflict between the worker class and upper class. Maybe it's impossible to do it while making sure the dislocated workers can be productive elsewhere, as I imagine many might not want nor be able to go through education again.

blub 4y ago

The pro remote work viewpoints on HN seem like experienced developers, probably with families, often with terrible commutes externalizing the costs of what’s apparently good for them personally to their colleagues and peers: * removing an outlet for socializing for people that are new to the area / country and don’t have friends. * lack of face to face team bonding for new employees. * lack of personal social contact for an activity we typically spend 1/3 of our day on. * reduced ability to learn by absorbing what happens around oneself. * higher competition for junior and mid-career positions from other countries. New employees, particularly at the beginning of their careers are disproportionately negatively affected by remote work. And while many of the disadvantages I’ve mentioned above can be mitigated, remote work nudges all these aspects towards the negative. These nudges when applied at large scale add up. Like anything, remote work has downsides which are often downplayed by those with an interest to gain an advantage for themselves.

Viliam1234 4y ago
I can imagine a different solution that would allow work from home and still solve many of the problems you mentioned. The idea is to decouple "the company you work for" from "the place you work at" for everyone, including those who want to work in an office. Basically, coworking places everywhere. You sign a contract with the company. You either work from home, or find a coworking place where you rent a desk, or coordinate with some of your colleagues to rent a desk at the same place. You could make a different choice on different days. > removing an outlet for socializing for people that are new to the area / country and don’t have friends The coworking places would have quiet desks, and also rooms to chat, with sound isolation. Whenever you want to get social, you walk to the room, and socialize. You can meet people who work at the same company, or people who work at different companies. When you feel like working again, walk back to your desk. > lack of face to face team bonding for new employees People working at the same company could agree to spend one day in a week at the same coworking place. This could be flexible, like if the company has 1000 employees, but your team has 10, only those 10 people need to coordinate together. > reduced ability to learn by absorbing what happens around oneself Either coordinate with your colleagues, or share the screen remotely. I learned a few things by watching my colleagues do things on their computers in a different country. > higher competition for junior and mid-career positions from other countries Well, yes. More opportunities for someone means more competition for someone else. That said, many companies found out that hiring people from other countries has its own challenges, so you will always have an advantage of being local.

svsaraf 4y ago

(I wrote the article) Thanks for this comment - I think the economic point is spot on. I think the fear of losing control is a fair summary - unfortunately there is some evidence of a selection effect that might mean employers do have something to fear. https://www.fractional.work/p/showing-face-is-more-important-than https://www.fractional.work/p/showing-face-is-more-important...