9 ms·

Remote work appears to be here to stay, especially for women

77 points by lsllc 3y ago

nerdchum 3y ago
Why women? Like men dont also have caregiving activites.
- matthewmacleod 3y ago
  More women have caregiving responsibilities, meaning that they are more affected. You might say they are especially effected. But you knew that.
  - nerdchum 3y ago
    We encourage women into the workplace with a million diversity initiatives, we also need to encourage and support men in caregiving roles and not give women preferential treatment in caregiver roles.
- re-thc 3y ago
  > Like men dont also have caregiving activites. Data has shown they do less of it and society has been setup this way. Women have been giving up their career - not because they want to but because that's what society and their family pressured them into. Data has also shown men's view of what counts as domestic work is vastly different from that of women. Sadly a lot of men only do 1/2 the job.
  - pizzafeelsright 3y ago
    It takes a lot of strength to stand against the pressure of society and family or social pressure. We interact with about 30% patriarchs and 70% matriarchs. The tension builds when there's a heavy imbalance when one type of structure outnumbers the other type because it becomes stark that one household leads differently than the other.
- meepmorp 3y ago
  I was a stay at home dad for both of my kids, and still do the lion's share of caregiving in my family. If nothing else, the experience showed me exactly how unbalanced the distribution of caregiving work is between men and women, both in concrete terms and in people expectations of who's job it's "supposed to be." There's plenty of petty sexism around it, I had plenty of people say things like "oh you're giving mom a break," or, "you're babysitting the kids today," and there's very much an expectation that men are worse at it than women. You could view that as misandrist, but (imo) there was often the unspoken assumption that my wife wasn't living up to her responsibilities because I was doing "her" job. It's not that we don't have those responsibilities, it's that we (as a group) are overwhelmingly less likely to be primary caregivers and to have to adjust our for-money work lives around the those responsibilities.
- asylteltine 3y ago
  [dead]
- mathgeek 3y ago
  Best to remember that these kinds of statements are statistical rather than definitive.
- literalis 3y ago
  23% of US households with children have just one parent and 86% of those households are single mothers. I am not even sure what this article is claiming to compare but it strikes me as ridiculous to not take the above information into account. Of course it is harder to provide child care if the kid doesn't even live with you and I would think most the men are providing some form of child support.
CyberDildonics 3y ago
Women here seems to be clickbait, since working from home is more about types of jobs, with women and education level being a looser correlation to those factors.
- mozman 3y ago
  I think the title here is polarizing gender politics, but it is backed up with data. More women work from home vs men due to child care.
  - CyberDildonics 3y ago
    Their own data shows that education level is much more significant than being a woman in predicting if someone works from home.
    - blitzar 3y ago
      Its hard to stack a shelf, wait a table, build a house, put out a fire or man the oil rig pipes from home
      - jleyank 3y ago
        Yeah, but it's real easy to write code, be a radiologist, manage money, ... I really doubt that most of the HN readers would be able to deal with that fire or oil rig.
    - 082349872349872 3y ago
      Are they talking about predictive value in 2022, or about the change between 2018 and 2022? I see the following change in WFH gaps: delta(women/men) delta(degree/no degree) 2018 0% 19% 2022 13% 30% (Note: the level of education lines given are not quartiles. Less than high school is 9%, high school 28%, some college or associate's 25%, and bachelor's or higher 37%. We have to split that "some college or associate's" bucket into both higher and lower halves, so assuming [poorly!] we can do so linearly and that educational attainment is roughly constant over 2018-2022, we get: 52% no degree 47% any degree and WFH women men degree no degree 2018 23 23 34 15 2022 41 28 49 19 (educational attainment from https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2023/educational-attainment-data.html#:~:text=highest%20level%20of%20education,bachelor's%20degree https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2023/educatio... )
DelaneyM 3y ago
This affects women more because caregiving is a responsibility which falls disproportionately on women. Though I'm no longer working, being able to shift to remote a few years ago let me move home and care for my parents + kids at the same time. It wasn't about working less, it's about being available in case of emergency and not having to do a commute. My hours worked didn't change at all - if anything, they increased, because I didn't have to rush home from the office as a precaution. I like to think that remote work is particularly valuable for men because it makes it possible for them to rise above systemic factors and be present and engaged in caregiving in a way which was previously artificially denied them. I like to think the biggest benefit for women isn't that they're able to work remotely to more effectively be caregivers, but that their spouses are able to work remotely so they aren't obliged to be caregivers. I wish that were how it was presented.
- 082349872349872 3y ago
  Elizabeth Barber's Women's Work points out that for centuries (millennia even), textile work was both economically valuable and fit the criteria for caregiving: interruptible and capable of being done at home. Then the industrial revolution happened, and textiles became cheap...
- lsllc 3y ago
  Totally agree, both my wife and I were able to WFH when the kids were young and as a Dad I got to spend so much time with them that I wouldn't have otherwise if I had been in a 5 day WFO role. Gymnastics/dance classes, school pickups and drop offs, play dates etc etc. It's the small stuff, but so many memories. WFH meant my wife didn't have to quit her job and was able to continue to advance her career. Now it meant catching up on work in the evenings after the kids were asleep, but it was totally worth it. With both of us being able to WFH, we could schedule things so that each of us was where we needed to be work-wise for meetings/calls etc.
- tomatocracy 3y ago
  I agree in some ways but for me, probably the biggest potential benefit is that it dramatically improves the ability to return to work after a career break for maternity or family caring responsibilities. We know that this difficulty is one of the biggest reasons we don't see more senior women in many careers; larger corporates have started putting in places returners programmes specifically because of this. The "old" way to deal with this was part time working. But in many careers the truth is that returning part time simply means being paid 80% or 60% of a full time wage but with close to full time hours and responsibilities. WfH 3 days a week opens up the possibility to manage a full time role together with some care responsibilities when returning. In that way it's potentially a huge change for the better.
kitsunesoba 3y ago
As a guy, now that I've been working remotely for a few years I don't plan on taking a role that involves going into an office on the regular unless there's a massive comp jump involved. The time, money, and sanity that gets spent on commuting 5 days a week is undervalued to a stunning degree and regardless of line of work, should be compensated.
- coffeefirst 3y ago
  Yes. Not to mention the range factor. If I were to look at onsite roles, I'd be limited to offices in a certain distance of my house, and then once I'm there I'd only be able to hire people in the same driving or public transit distance who either prefer in person who can't get a remote offer. Moving for a computer-bound job, especially if you have a house/family/etc., seems laughable in 2023. No matter how hard the commercial real estate interests lobby for butts in seats, those are hard facts to overcome.
  - kitsunesoba 3y ago
    Remote hiring can be a real ace in the hole for startups through midsize companies if leveraged correctly. They have access to high quality talent that FAANGs which insist on WFO likely never will, at least until pigs start flying and the CoL of areas surrounding FAANGs become more reasonable.
    - ghaff 3y ago
      Well, certainly full remote as a perk gives them access to some pool of talent at a lot lower price tag than large in-person tech companies have to pay.
      - kitsunesoba 3y ago
        It depends. It's not that uncommon for remote-only companies to offer location-agnostic compensation with tech hub city comp being used as the baseline.
habosa 3y ago
The really interesting statistic in this article is the dramatic drop in “hours per day spent caring for children” for women while the number for men stayed relatively flat. Interesting for a number of reasons: 1) The numbers for men and women are much closer together now which narrows (but does not close) a gap that has existed for hundreds or even thousands of years. Would be amazing to see it close completely. 2) If I’m reading this correctly women are doing less childcare but men aren’t doing more … so are children being cared for less? That seems impossible as a consequence of remote work, which provides much more time for at-home tasks like childcare.
- tomatocracy 3y ago
  One reason for this long-term trend is that people are having fewer children and having those children later in life. Post-pandemic there's been quite a significant drop in birth rates on top of that as well. I suspect there will also be a trend of children spending more time being looked after by schools/nurseries/childminders/nannies but that's probably smaller.
- MattGaiser 3y ago
  > so are children being cared for less? Probably fewer children overall and increased daycare usage.
- trallnag 3y ago
  If reproduction rate hits zero the gap will definitely close. Would be amazing!
iaseiadit 3y ago
FAANG is starting to take a strong position against remote work and distributed teams. This doesn’t seem to be a popular decision with workers, but employers hold all the cards right now given the slow pace of hiring across the industry. [1] https://www.cnbc.com/2023/06/08/google-to-crack-down-on-hybrid-work-asks-remote-workers-to-reconsider.html https://www.cnbc.com/2023/06/08/google-to-crack-down-on-hybr... [2] https://fortune.com/2023/06/08/google-remote-work-office-attendance-performance-review/ https://fortune.com/2023/06/08/google-remote-work-office-att...
- rs999gti 3y ago
  To end remote work, just grandfather the existing people and roles with remote work and no longer offer remote work in future roles. Then as the Bob's say it just works itself out. The employers hold the cards because they pay the money and workers who need money and are willing to work in an office are basically the scabs of the remote work union. Remote workers have no power until they can get everyone to agree not to work in an office
  - givemeethekeys 3y ago
    Fortunately, there are other employers who do want remote workers and will be happy to take them from employers who don't want them. When bad decisions are made, the best people leave first.
    - rs999gti 3y ago
      > When bad decisions are made, the best people leave first. We don't know if it is a bad decision yet. It has not played out long enough to affect other parts of the economy or other businesses. So far all we know is some people benefit from remote work and commerical real estate and local business within are being affected
      - givemeethekeys 3y ago
        > We don't know if it is a bad decision yet I agree that in the bigger picture things are still playing out, but if the best performing engineers are working remotely, then mandating that they come back onsite is a bad decision from their point of view. It might be good for the company, but the conflict of interest will result in them leaving.
linusg789 3y ago
https://ghostarchive.org/archive/ng8e2 https://ghostarchive.org/archive/ng8e2
Dudester230602 3y ago
> Women more often have higher degrees... There will now be a public outcry and a whole set of measures to support men left behind, right? > ...women were more likely than men to take on child care as a primary activity, spending more than double the average hours per day taking care of children than men did. I guess not.
tsss 3y ago
[flagged]
- eggsmediumrare 3y ago
  How about women getting puked on by patients and yelled at by doctors as nurses? I get your point and it's kinda true, but it's not as clear cut as you're making it sound.
  - regedit728 3y ago
    We can go back and forth about this. I'll counter with garbage collectors (chiefly men) having to deal with liquid trash, you'll talk about female secretaries having to deal with harassment, I'll talk about emergency frontliners having to deal with the worst of society, and so on. And we see the similarity here: they're all relatively low-wage jobs. The comparison here shouldn't be between high-paid jobs (doctor) and low-paid ones (nurse), rather between low-paid jobs and other low-paid jobs. The bottom line is that those with lower-wage jobs will be the ones having to deal with the worse things, but generally-speaking women tend to take up the less dangerous, more comfortable low-wage jobs. Think teachers, nurses, secretaries against soldiers, police officers, construction workers.
    - shkkmo 3y ago
      > but generally-speaking women tend to take up the less dangerous, more comfortable low-wage jobs "Comfortable" is hard to define and I see it easy to argue that jobs such as nursing, with the stress, insane schedules and such, is far less comfortable than equivalent jobs. It's such a subjective term and the different types of comfort vs stress means that arguing about it seems mostly pointless. However, it's pretty clear that more dangerous jobs are far more likely to be traditionally male roles.
    - tsss 3y ago
      A skilled welder can make more money than a secretary (not to mention a logger or oil worker), but the secretary can probably work from home and the welder can not. At the end of the day, the __vast__ majority of those dirty physical jobs are done by men, whereas women mostly do more comfortable office work, regardless of pay.
kaycebasques 3y ago
This is the second big pillar [1] of the debate about remote work that we need to reckon with. When you have kids, someone usually has to dial back their career, and it's often the woman. Remote is a way for these people to have both the career and the child. There are probably other big pillars. We need to find compromises that work for all the pillars. [1] The first is the idea that remote work is not great for people just starting their career.
- alkibiades 3y ago
  the way a corporate leader would read that is they wanna use company time to do child rearing tasks they love the office because you can’t do stuff like that there
  - kaycebasques 3y ago
    Yes, I can see that. I think the pandemic has changed the equation a bit, though. You've now got a bunch of women in more senior positions because remote work enabled them to keep the job and raise the child. And they have a track record of a couple of years proving that they can still get the job done under this setup. And owing to their more senior nature, these women have more access to the ears of the corporate leaders, or at least people not far removed from the leaders. So now the leaders are possibly much more aware that they might be inviting an exodus of senior workers. Unless all the companies collude to squash remote work and there is nowhere "to exodus" to.
jleyank 3y ago
I didn't see the word "pregnant" when I searched this page so sorry if this is a dup. I would think WFH is great for women of child-bearing age as their ability to go to an office is a function of their "pregnancy safety" not the desire of their management. Having the ability to keep working when possible, rather than blowing holes in their career due to parenthood, is a good thing. Parental leave as offered outside the US is an option, but it's still a career gap.
noisy_boy 3y ago
I know a senior manager that likes to express his favorite concern that we don't have enough women in tech. The same manager (and his peers) also espouse the importance of face-to-face communication and the famed spur-of-the-moment discussions that spark collaboration. Considering it is undeniable that due to the additional family responsibilities that women take on, remote work is especially beneficial to them - I want to ask these managers that if they care so much about women in tech, what are their plans to reconcile that with their eagerness for return to office? Should women be back doing double duty like they were before the pandemic and get stretched between work and family commitments? Or is all that hand wringing and concerned furrowing about shortage of women in tech, as I suspect, just posturing and lip service?
- pizzafeelsright 3y ago
  If I was uncharitable I suspect it's signaling and if charitable, a conflict of hierarchy of values. Remove all reference to gender. From the employer perspective the choice between an employee who must be unavailable every forty five minutes or one was available for a solid four hours at a time, the employer who requires more focus will position for the latter. From the employee perspective, I work with someone who doesn't manage their sleep, is depressed, and avoids all conflicting perspectives. When management asked why my task is incomplete, due to the above person taking naps 2x every work day and avoids all conversations. I tell management clearly their work life balance and mental health is a higher priority than the task. Deadlines get missed. Words of affirmation are spoken. Stakeholders get updated delivery dates. What's the hierarchy of value? I don't mind as long as it's made known.
- YetAnotherNick 3y ago
  All the jobs dominated by woman are highly in person work(nurses, dentists, assistants, hairdressers etc.). Tech is by far the biggest sector with most remote friendly job and has the one of the lowest ratio of female.
saos 3y ago
Doubt for top tech companies. Hybrid is the way for many and here to stay.
- temende 3y ago
  Hybrid is the worst of both worlds. You need to still live close to an office and commute 3x a week, but then you also need to have a proper office/desk at your own home for the remaining 2 days. I'd rather just go in to the office everyday and optimize my living situation for commuting, or (much much preferred) just work remotely every day with occassional company-wide meetups. Personally, I wouldn't even interview with a company that was hybrid, even if that's unfortunately becoming more and more common.
  - saos 3y ago
    > Personally, I wouldn't even interview with a company that was hybrid, even if that's unfortunately becoming more and more common. That’s fine. They’ll find another candidate
  - ghaff 3y ago
    In general, hybrid working arrangements allow you to come in every day although it's possible, depending on the company, that you won't have a dedicated desk. (Probably something you can negotiate.)
  - Gigachad 3y ago
    Hybrid is my preferred option. I’m happy to do individual work at home, but absolutely hate long running calls. I’d prefer to come in a few days a week for collaboration.
api 3y ago
… and the same people on Twitter freaking out about low birth rates are the ones condemning remote work. Telework is the most pro-family development in work culture in at least three generations.
ldehaan 3y ago
[dead]

77 points by lsllc 3y ago

nerdchum 3y ago

Why women? Like men dont also have caregiving activites.

matthewmacleod 3y ago
More women have caregiving responsibilities, meaning that they are more affected. You might say they are especially effected. But you knew that.
- nerdchum 3y ago
  We encourage women into the workplace with a million diversity initiatives, we also need to encourage and support men in caregiving roles and not give women preferential treatment in caregiver roles.
re-thc 3y ago
> Like men dont also have caregiving activites. Data has shown they do less of it and society has been setup this way. Women have been giving up their career - not because they want to but because that's what society and their family pressured them into. Data has also shown men's view of what counts as domestic work is vastly different from that of women. Sadly a lot of men only do 1/2 the job.
- pizzafeelsright 3y ago
  It takes a lot of strength to stand against the pressure of society and family or social pressure. We interact with about 30% patriarchs and 70% matriarchs. The tension builds when there's a heavy imbalance when one type of structure outnumbers the other type because it becomes stark that one household leads differently than the other.
meepmorp 3y ago
I was a stay at home dad for both of my kids, and still do the lion's share of caregiving in my family. If nothing else, the experience showed me exactly how unbalanced the distribution of caregiving work is between men and women, both in concrete terms and in people expectations of who's job it's "supposed to be." There's plenty of petty sexism around it, I had plenty of people say things like "oh you're giving mom a break," or, "you're babysitting the kids today," and there's very much an expectation that men are worse at it than women. You could view that as misandrist, but (imo) there was often the unspoken assumption that my wife wasn't living up to her responsibilities because I was doing "her" job. It's not that we don't have those responsibilities, it's that we (as a group) are overwhelmingly less likely to be primary caregivers and to have to adjust our for-money work lives around the those responsibilities.
asylteltine 3y ago
[dead]
mathgeek 3y ago
Best to remember that these kinds of statements are statistical rather than definitive.
literalis 3y ago
23% of US households with children have just one parent and 86% of those households are single mothers. I am not even sure what this article is claiming to compare but it strikes me as ridiculous to not take the above information into account. Of course it is harder to provide child care if the kid doesn't even live with you and I would think most the men are providing some form of child support.

CyberDildonics 3y ago

Women here seems to be clickbait, since working from home is more about types of jobs, with women and education level being a looser correlation to those factors.

mozman 3y ago
I think the title here is polarizing gender politics, but it is backed up with data. More women work from home vs men due to child care.
- CyberDildonics 3y ago
  Their own data shows that education level is much more significant than being a woman in predicting if someone works from home.
  - blitzar 3y ago
    Its hard to stack a shelf, wait a table, build a house, put out a fire or man the oil rig pipes from home
    - jleyank 3y ago
      Yeah, but it's real easy to write code, be a radiologist, manage money, ... I really doubt that most of the HN readers would be able to deal with that fire or oil rig.
  - 082349872349872 3y ago
    Are they talking about predictive value in 2022, or about the change between 2018 and 2022? I see the following change in WFH gaps: delta(women/men) delta(degree/no degree) 2018 0% 19% 2022 13% 30% (Note: the level of education lines given are not quartiles. Less than high school is 9%, high school 28%, some college or associate's 25%, and bachelor's or higher 37%. We have to split that "some college or associate's" bucket into both higher and lower halves, so assuming [poorly!] we can do so linearly and that educational attainment is roughly constant over 2018-2022, we get: 52% no degree 47% any degree and WFH women men degree no degree 2018 23 23 34 15 2022 41 28 49 19 (educational attainment from https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2023/educational-attainment-data.html#:~:text=highest%20level%20of%20education,bachelor's%20degree https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2023/educatio... )

DelaneyM 3y ago

This affects women more because caregiving is a responsibility which falls disproportionately on women. Though I'm no longer working, being able to shift to remote a few years ago let me move home and care for my parents + kids at the same time. It wasn't about working less, it's about being available in case of emergency and not having to do a commute. My hours worked didn't change at all - if anything, they increased, because I didn't have to rush home from the office as a precaution. I like to think that remote work is particularly valuable for men because it makes it possible for them to rise above systemic factors and be present and engaged in caregiving in a way which was previously artificially denied them. I like to think the biggest benefit for women isn't that they're able to work remotely to more effectively be caregivers, but that their spouses are able to work remotely so they aren't obliged to be caregivers. I wish that were how it was presented.

082349872349872 3y ago
Elizabeth Barber's Women's Work points out that for centuries (millennia even), textile work was both economically valuable and fit the criteria for caregiving: interruptible and capable of being done at home. Then the industrial revolution happened, and textiles became cheap...
lsllc 3y ago
Totally agree, both my wife and I were able to WFH when the kids were young and as a Dad I got to spend so much time with them that I wouldn't have otherwise if I had been in a 5 day WFO role. Gymnastics/dance classes, school pickups and drop offs, play dates etc etc. It's the small stuff, but so many memories. WFH meant my wife didn't have to quit her job and was able to continue to advance her career. Now it meant catching up on work in the evenings after the kids were asleep, but it was totally worth it. With both of us being able to WFH, we could schedule things so that each of us was where we needed to be work-wise for meetings/calls etc.
tomatocracy 3y ago
I agree in some ways but for me, probably the biggest potential benefit is that it dramatically improves the ability to return to work after a career break for maternity or family caring responsibilities. We know that this difficulty is one of the biggest reasons we don't see more senior women in many careers; larger corporates have started putting in places returners programmes specifically because of this. The "old" way to deal with this was part time working. But in many careers the truth is that returning part time simply means being paid 80% or 60% of a full time wage but with close to full time hours and responsibilities. WfH 3 days a week opens up the possibility to manage a full time role together with some care responsibilities when returning. In that way it's potentially a huge change for the better.

kitsunesoba 3y ago

As a guy, now that I've been working remotely for a few years I don't plan on taking a role that involves going into an office on the regular unless there's a massive comp jump involved. The time, money, and sanity that gets spent on commuting 5 days a week is undervalued to a stunning degree and regardless of line of work, should be compensated.

coffeefirst 3y ago
Yes. Not to mention the range factor. If I were to look at onsite roles, I'd be limited to offices in a certain distance of my house, and then once I'm there I'd only be able to hire people in the same driving or public transit distance who either prefer in person who can't get a remote offer. Moving for a computer-bound job, especially if you have a house/family/etc., seems laughable in 2023. No matter how hard the commercial real estate interests lobby for butts in seats, those are hard facts to overcome.
- kitsunesoba 3y ago
  Remote hiring can be a real ace in the hole for startups through midsize companies if leveraged correctly. They have access to high quality talent that FAANGs which insist on WFO likely never will, at least until pigs start flying and the CoL of areas surrounding FAANGs become more reasonable.
  - ghaff 3y ago
    Well, certainly full remote as a perk gives them access to some pool of talent at a lot lower price tag than large in-person tech companies have to pay.
    - kitsunesoba 3y ago
      It depends. It's not that uncommon for remote-only companies to offer location-agnostic compensation with tech hub city comp being used as the baseline.

habosa 3y ago

The really interesting statistic in this article is the dramatic drop in “hours per day spent caring for children” for women while the number for men stayed relatively flat. Interesting for a number of reasons: 1) The numbers for men and women are much closer together now which narrows (but does not close) a gap that has existed for hundreds or even thousands of years. Would be amazing to see it close completely. 2) If I’m reading this correctly women are doing less childcare but men aren’t doing more … so are children being cared for less? That seems impossible as a consequence of remote work, which provides much more time for at-home tasks like childcare.

tomatocracy 3y ago
One reason for this long-term trend is that people are having fewer children and having those children later in life. Post-pandemic there's been quite a significant drop in birth rates on top of that as well. I suspect there will also be a trend of children spending more time being looked after by schools/nurseries/childminders/nannies but that's probably smaller.
MattGaiser 3y ago
> so are children being cared for less? Probably fewer children overall and increased daycare usage.
trallnag 3y ago
If reproduction rate hits zero the gap will definitely close. Would be amazing!

iaseiadit 3y ago

FAANG is starting to take a strong position against remote work and distributed teams. This doesn’t seem to be a popular decision with workers, but employers hold all the cards right now given the slow pace of hiring across the industry. [1] https://www.cnbc.com/2023/06/08/google-to-crack-down-on-hybrid-work-asks-remote-workers-to-reconsider.html https://www.cnbc.com/2023/06/08/google-to-crack-down-on-hybr... [2] https://fortune.com/2023/06/08/google-remote-work-office-attendance-performance-review/ https://fortune.com/2023/06/08/google-remote-work-office-att...

rs999gti 3y ago
To end remote work, just grandfather the existing people and roles with remote work and no longer offer remote work in future roles. Then as the Bob's say it just works itself out. The employers hold the cards because they pay the money and workers who need money and are willing to work in an office are basically the scabs of the remote work union. Remote workers have no power until they can get everyone to agree not to work in an office
- givemeethekeys 3y ago
  Fortunately, there are other employers who do want remote workers and will be happy to take them from employers who don't want them. When bad decisions are made, the best people leave first.
  - rs999gti 3y ago
    > When bad decisions are made, the best people leave first. We don't know if it is a bad decision yet. It has not played out long enough to affect other parts of the economy or other businesses. So far all we know is some people benefit from remote work and commerical real estate and local business within are being affected
    - givemeethekeys 3y ago
      > We don't know if it is a bad decision yet I agree that in the bigger picture things are still playing out, but if the best performing engineers are working remotely, then mandating that they come back onsite is a bad decision from their point of view. It might be good for the company, but the conflict of interest will result in them leaving.

linusg789 3y ago

https://ghostarchive.org/archive/ng8e2 https://ghostarchive.org/archive/ng8e2

Dudester230602 3y ago

> Women more often have higher degrees... There will now be a public outcry and a whole set of measures to support men left behind, right? > ...women were more likely than men to take on child care as a primary activity, spending more than double the average hours per day taking care of children than men did. I guess not.

tsss 3y ago

[flagged]

eggsmediumrare 3y ago
How about women getting puked on by patients and yelled at by doctors as nurses? I get your point and it's kinda true, but it's not as clear cut as you're making it sound.
- regedit728 3y ago
  We can go back and forth about this. I'll counter with garbage collectors (chiefly men) having to deal with liquid trash, you'll talk about female secretaries having to deal with harassment, I'll talk about emergency frontliners having to deal with the worst of society, and so on. And we see the similarity here: they're all relatively low-wage jobs. The comparison here shouldn't be between high-paid jobs (doctor) and low-paid ones (nurse), rather between low-paid jobs and other low-paid jobs. The bottom line is that those with lower-wage jobs will be the ones having to deal with the worse things, but generally-speaking women tend to take up the less dangerous, more comfortable low-wage jobs. Think teachers, nurses, secretaries against soldiers, police officers, construction workers.
  - shkkmo 3y ago
    > but generally-speaking women tend to take up the less dangerous, more comfortable low-wage jobs "Comfortable" is hard to define and I see it easy to argue that jobs such as nursing, with the stress, insane schedules and such, is far less comfortable than equivalent jobs. It's such a subjective term and the different types of comfort vs stress means that arguing about it seems mostly pointless. However, it's pretty clear that more dangerous jobs are far more likely to be traditionally male roles.
  - tsss 3y ago
    A skilled welder can make more money than a secretary (not to mention a logger or oil worker), but the secretary can probably work from home and the welder can not. At the end of the day, the __vast__ majority of those dirty physical jobs are done by men, whereas women mostly do more comfortable office work, regardless of pay.

kaycebasques 3y ago

This is the second big pillar [1] of the debate about remote work that we need to reckon with. When you have kids, someone usually has to dial back their career, and it's often the woman. Remote is a way for these people to have both the career and the child. There are probably other big pillars. We need to find compromises that work for all the pillars. [1] The first is the idea that remote work is not great for people just starting their career.

alkibiades 3y ago
the way a corporate leader would read that is they wanna use company time to do child rearing tasks they love the office because you can’t do stuff like that there
- kaycebasques 3y ago
  Yes, I can see that. I think the pandemic has changed the equation a bit, though. You've now got a bunch of women in more senior positions because remote work enabled them to keep the job and raise the child. And they have a track record of a couple of years proving that they can still get the job done under this setup. And owing to their more senior nature, these women have more access to the ears of the corporate leaders, or at least people not far removed from the leaders. So now the leaders are possibly much more aware that they might be inviting an exodus of senior workers. Unless all the companies collude to squash remote work and there is nowhere "to exodus" to.

jleyank 3y ago

I didn't see the word "pregnant" when I searched this page so sorry if this is a dup. I would think WFH is great for women of child-bearing age as their ability to go to an office is a function of their "pregnancy safety" not the desire of their management. Having the ability to keep working when possible, rather than blowing holes in their career due to parenthood, is a good thing. Parental leave as offered outside the US is an option, but it's still a career gap.

noisy_boy 3y ago

I know a senior manager that likes to express his favorite concern that we don't have enough women in tech. The same manager (and his peers) also espouse the importance of face-to-face communication and the famed spur-of-the-moment discussions that spark collaboration. Considering it is undeniable that due to the additional family responsibilities that women take on, remote work is especially beneficial to them - I want to ask these managers that if they care so much about women in tech, what are their plans to reconcile that with their eagerness for return to office? Should women be back doing double duty like they were before the pandemic and get stretched between work and family commitments? Or is all that hand wringing and concerned furrowing about shortage of women in tech, as I suspect, just posturing and lip service?

pizzafeelsright 3y ago
If I was uncharitable I suspect it's signaling and if charitable, a conflict of hierarchy of values. Remove all reference to gender. From the employer perspective the choice between an employee who must be unavailable every forty five minutes or one was available for a solid four hours at a time, the employer who requires more focus will position for the latter. From the employee perspective, I work with someone who doesn't manage their sleep, is depressed, and avoids all conflicting perspectives. When management asked why my task is incomplete, due to the above person taking naps 2x every work day and avoids all conversations. I tell management clearly their work life balance and mental health is a higher priority than the task. Deadlines get missed. Words of affirmation are spoken. Stakeholders get updated delivery dates. What's the hierarchy of value? I don't mind as long as it's made known.
YetAnotherNick 3y ago
All the jobs dominated by woman are highly in person work(nurses, dentists, assistants, hairdressers etc.). Tech is by far the biggest sector with most remote friendly job and has the one of the lowest ratio of female.

saos 3y ago

Doubt for top tech companies. Hybrid is the way for many and here to stay.

temende 3y ago
Hybrid is the worst of both worlds. You need to still live close to an office and commute 3x a week, but then you also need to have a proper office/desk at your own home for the remaining 2 days. I'd rather just go in to the office everyday and optimize my living situation for commuting, or (much much preferred) just work remotely every day with occassional company-wide meetups. Personally, I wouldn't even interview with a company that was hybrid, even if that's unfortunately becoming more and more common.
- saos 3y ago
  > Personally, I wouldn't even interview with a company that was hybrid, even if that's unfortunately becoming more and more common. That’s fine. They’ll find another candidate
- ghaff 3y ago
  In general, hybrid working arrangements allow you to come in every day although it's possible, depending on the company, that you won't have a dedicated desk. (Probably something you can negotiate.)
- Gigachad 3y ago
  Hybrid is my preferred option. I’m happy to do individual work at home, but absolutely hate long running calls. I’d prefer to come in a few days a week for collaboration.

api 3y ago

… and the same people on Twitter freaking out about low birth rates are the ones condemning remote work. Telework is the most pro-family development in work culture in at least three generations.

ldehaan 3y ago

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