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Remote work seems like one of many missed “Jetsons opportunities.”[a] Why wouldn’t we, given the ability, work from our own comfy homes instead of rolling into

• fennecfoxy 3y ago
  Executive & management culture. Fortunately the management of a lot of medium-large tech companies have a tech background and have allowed WFH to continue. It's extra large tech companies with career managers who are trying to get people to RTO.
• mattw2121 3y ago
  Except, didn't the intro to the Jetsons have George headed to the office every day?
  • nedrylandJP 3y ago
    Yes, and when he got there he put his feet up and closed his eyes. https://youtu.be/0JQbeCAlF6s?t=61 https://youtu.be/0JQbeCAlF6s?t=61
  • drekk 3y ago
    What does it say about our culture that futuristic media envisioned flying cars and robotic servants but not an altered labor arrangement?
    • trgn 3y ago
      Modernism. Infatuation with the transformative power of technology. It transfers responsibilities of political participation (what it means to be a citizen) to a mechanistic, consumptive process (what it means to be a consumer). Could not exist without mass manufacturing (without which technology cannot fulfill its telos) or mass media (without which humans would not submit to this ideology).
    • 0cf8612b2e1e 3y ago
      It was a kid’s show. I doubt it was meant to be a cutting commentary on social structures.
    • j4yav 3y ago
      And, while we are at it, what's up with the Flintstones and dinosaurs and humans living side by side. If that isn't commentary on the sorry state of academic culture I don't know what else is.
      • joquarky 3y ago
        Flintstones is based in the future, not the past ;-) Also, do cassowaries count as dinosaurs?
    • MattPalmer1086 3y ago
      I'm not sure it says anything about our culture specifically. It speaks to all cultures. The future is always going to be what we have now, but sexier in some way. So replace cars with flying ones, and replace work we do with robotic servants. The really interesting science fiction doesn't do a linear extrapolation, it looks at how we might really change. But that's not what we get from a kid's cartoon.
  • fknorangesite 3y ago
    Yes, that's what they're saying: that the Jetsons completely missed this prediction.
• atomicnumber3 3y ago
  >We should be counting our blessings instead of counting beans In America, we generally treat exclusively counting the beans as a literal capital-V Virtue. And there are hordes of lumpenproletariat who will vehemently defend it when any thought is paid to not exploiting workers to the maximal extent possible where there is even the slightest hint of perceived additional beans to be acquired.
• robertlagrant 3y ago
  > Why isn’t this practice that workers clearly love, and are willing to leave companies to keep, seen as a great step in the progress of labor? It's better to think of people as individuals, and not as "labor" or "not-labor". I think remote working is great for this, much better than top-down mandates on cars and congestion zones, although those swell the tax coffers nicely, but I don't think it's a great victory. Lots of people (particularly those who do actual physical labour, such as builders and shopkeepers) have to go to a workplace. It's not a victory for them, because lumping people into tribes means category errors abound.
  • lotsofpulp 3y ago
    Why is it not a victory for them? Less congestion on the roads, higher prices for their labor since WFH work is more attractive.
    • ghaff 3y ago
      For the shopkeepers and others who provided services for the office workers… fewer jobs.
      • lotsofpulp 3y ago
        If society wants to make jobs, there is tons of trash to pickup. And infrastructure to maintain/build.
        • ghaff 3y ago
          Oh I’m not saying people should go back into an office because of the retail and restaurant workers. It’s just this isn’t good for those workers as an upstream comment seemed to suggest.
        • robertlagrant 3y ago
          Are you thinking that picking up trash and building infrastructure are examples of labour that is victorious with working from home?
• Aerroon 3y ago
  I think a lot of people are less productive when they work from home. It's easier to switch into "work mode" when there's a specific physical location where you only work. A separate room as a home office probably has the same benefit though.
  • munk-a 3y ago
    That's a fair hypothesis and intuition... that has not been apparent for the majority of people. Some folks really do benefit from an office setting and I think we should support those people by having such a setting still available... but I'm going to keep dancing to thumping techno in my bathrobe as it makes me far more productive
    • thegrim33 3y ago
      The very fact that companies are doing everything they can to bring people back into the office refutes your comment. Do you really think if people were as/more productive at home that companies would throw that increase in productivity away? It's so funny that half the comments on the topic are about how evil and money hungry companies are, but at the same time they're supposedly choosing to throw away free money? It's nonsensical. Just another political echo chamber social war.
      • belter 3y ago
        Productive in the Office? You are surely joking?
      • TigeriusKirk 3y ago
        >t. Do you really think if people were as/more productive at home that companies would throw that increase in productivity away? Yes, I do. Also, I don't think the vast majority of office-based companies have any idea what their actual productivity levels are.
      • munk-a 3y ago
        Basically yes - I think that a fair number of companies would throw away that increase in productivity purely for a sense of control. Companies do dumb stuff all the time and I've personally worked under an "asses-in-chairs" style owner who assumed that if you went for a walk to get a coffee with a coworker while having a technical discussion your productivity was 0. A lot of people are dumb and there are no secret smart people at the tops of companies making smart decisions - companies are ruled by majority and the majority is usually quite easily influenced by marketing campaigns (i.e. the ones launched by commercial real estate holders who are currently losing money hand over fist). And, just for reference, companies are also evil primarily because they're dumb and petty and there is a constant struggle for fiefdoms within the budget. I think a fair number of people struggle with imposter's syndrome because they imagine that somewhere above them there's someone that is really really smart and has a plan - no such person exists, we're all just trying our best... and that "all" is all-inclusive - the person you remember who got D's in middle school is probably a middle manager somewhere.
• srackey 3y ago
  Because it just doesn’t seem to work (in aggregate, it may work for you, but not the firm, and not the firm over an indefinite time span).
  • Centigonal 3y ago
    The research on this is very mixed, and in many cases has found that remote workers are more productive than their office-bound counterparts. Anecdotally, I've found some organizations work great fully remotely, while others require in-person presence at least some of the time. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-021-01196-4 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-021-01196-4 https://bfi.uchicago.edu/insight/research-summary/time-savings-when-working-from-home/#:~:text=The%20average%20daily%20savings%20in,week%20per%20worker%20post%20pandemic https://bfi.uchicago.edu/insight/research-summary/time-savin.... https://academic.oup.com/qje/article-abstract/130/1/165/2337855?redirectedFrom=fulltext&login=false https://academic.oup.com/qje/article-abstract/130/1/165/2337... https://www.nber.org/papers/w31515 https://www.nber.org/papers/w31515
• bugglebeetle 3y ago
  Because real estate speculation is more important to Capital owners.
• _jal 3y ago
  My company went fully remote. Moved the office out of SF proper to avoid the Twitter Tax and downsized it, now it can only hold about half the locals, and most days nobody goes in. At the same time, we started hiring without geographic concern. The mandate became get the best folks you can, we don't care where they are[1]. It has worked out well for us. We've gone heavily international, and grown our customer base and expanded markets at a slightly faster faster pace than we were before going remote. (I don't think going remote did that - more capital and people did. But it didn't hurt.) And maybe we're just selecting for folks who like remote work now, but I don't know of anyone who wants to go back to the old days. [1] With some exceptions, some managers want people in the same timezone, some roles are inherently place-bound, etc.
  • foobarian 3y ago
    Maybe a part of the problem is that the two work patterns are suitable for much different personalities, but when switching from all-in-office to remote, the mix of personalities leads to lower aggregate productivity. E.g. someone who needs a periodic tap on the shoulder (nothing wrong with that, I've known plenty of people like this) might do very poorly in a much more loose environment. Of course it could be argued that this is a badly executed remote switch, which could be worked on, but still - I'd guess that when starting out hiring for full remote, you preselect a group that works well in that environment.
  • Maultasche 3y ago
    My company had a similar experience. They were a smaller Bay Area company only hiring locally, then went remote and expanded their candidate search. They were able to get a much better selection of candidates after they started hiring remotely. Any kind of return to office is now impossible. Their (now much smaller office) can only hold about 5% of the employees, and the vast majority of employees are now scattered throughout the United States. Not even the founders or any of the executives live near the office anymore; they're all scattered geographically as well. I was hired as part of the wave of remote hiring, and it seems to me based on the stories I hear from those that worked there in the pre-remote times that the switch to remote hiring really worked out well for them.
• Balladeer 3y ago
  I understand and even expect the lack of empathy from RTO executives, but the lack of empathy on the part of the 'remote work for everyone, always' camp saddens me. I've worked primarily remote since 2016; but I have the option of going to an office a few miles away when I want to. My wife, forced to work from home, finds the entire experience to be socially isolating and misery inducing. > work from our own comfy homes instead of rolling into a crowded, stuffy office everyday? This one-sidedness is a strawman. Not everyone's home is comfy or has space for working; some people made housing decisions based on one person leaving the home for most of every day (e.g. choosing a smaller apartment closer to city). Not every office is crowded and stuffy; some are quite pleasant. Not every worker gets their social needs met outside of work, and forcing them home ends up isolating them from the primary source of social interaction in their world, with all of the mental health and well-being issues that entails. Personally, think that "more remote work" is the way to go, but the issue is more nuanced than "why are people resisting this obviously beneficial change?"
  • paulryanrogers 3y ago
    Work is not voluntary, there are no alternatives. Unlike other social opportunities in ones free time. So folks who can't get their needs met from remote work can still remote work and find fulfillment elsewhere. Folks forced into an office cannot choose to opt out of all work. Changing jobs is a bigger lift than picking up some social hobby or activities after work. I agree hybrid can be nice, yet executives are too often demanding RTO compliance. That's why there is so much breathless enthusiasm for remote work, and angst against attempts to both-sides the issues.
    • Gud 3y ago
      But some people need to be around other people more or less all the time to be happy. For them finding fulfillment off hours is not going to cut it. Personally, I would probably be happiest with a remote office situation.
      • temende 3y ago
        > But some people need to be around other people more or less all the time to be happy. That's fine, but no one is obligated to spend time with them. They need to be more convincing or charismatic then to get people to spend more time with them. "If you don't endure a commute to spend time with me, I won't be happy" won't cut it.
• layer8 3y ago
  I have a nice office at work, where I have less distractions than at home. Face to face meetings allow for better discussions and whiteboarding than video conferencing. I can commute by bike on nice route, thus getting regular exercise and fresh air. I can better compartmentalize work from leisure. I don’t have to spend my whole day within the same walls. I get to see other people and have random encounters with interesting technical and non-technical discussions at work. So it depends on circumstances and preferences. Both modes should be possible.
  • randomdata 3y ago
    > Both modes should be possible. I am not sure there is more than one mode. Remote work isn't about working from home, it about working from wherever you want. That necessarily includes working from an office, if that is what you want.
    • layer8 3y ago
      That’s an interesting definition of “remote”. Remote-work companies usually don’t have offices. If remote work became the new norm, employees would be forced to arrange for a working space on their own, removing the choice.
      • randomdata 3y ago
        I agree that remote is interestingly defined. Remote normally refers to somewhere away from where the population is found or away from where one is usually located. Home is where the population is found – where one is usually located. The office is what is remote. It is bizarre that the companies without offices – with workers most likely to work from home – are the ones given the "remote" moniker. Technically, it is the companies with offices that are most likely to have remote workers.
        • JambalayaJim 3y ago
          Remote work just means you are communicating with your coworkers remotely. You’ve just gonna and made up your own definition!
• feedsmgmt 3y ago
  There are people who make a lot of money from the consumption of gas and tires and oil. Also the manufacturing and selling of automobiles. Those people make a lot of financial contributions to politicians and sometimes become politicians themselves.
• ianburrell 3y ago
  One issue is that lots of people don't have the work space at home. It takes a lot of privilege to have an extra room for office. Lots of people managed to work from other places in house during pandemic because they had to. Coworking spaces are one solution. But many disappeared during the pandemic. Also, somebody needs to pay for them. I bet we'll see a lot more of them using the empty commercial space. But they will work best near residential areas.
  • cristiancavalli 3y ago
    Why does it take privilege? I worked for many years in a studio apartment and made just slightly over the poverty line and, although the pay sucked, the wfh was awesome and doable even on a nothing budget.
• dfxm12 3y ago
  History shows the employer -> employee relationship is about exerting control over the employee, not making the employee happy.
  • uoaei 3y ago
    One might call the relationship dialectical, and the most effective analysis of its dynamics rooted in materialism.
• kibwen 3y ago
  > one of many missed “Jetsons opportunities.” This isn't a missed opportunity, it's just an opportunity. Large-scale remote work wasn't feasible prior to the advent of the web and the personal home computer in the 90s, and realistically wouldn't have happened prior to the mass penetration of the internet and the computerization of everything circa 2005/2010. It just so happened that the covid pandemic occurred at approximately the exact moment in human history where mass remote work was even an option (and obviously is still limited to people in knowledge sectors).
  • dublinben 3y ago
    For most of recorded history, people also worked from wherever they lived, largely in agriculture. The protoindustrialization that emerged in the 16th century saw rural residents performing many new industrial tasks beyond subsistence farming. During slow parts of the season they earned extra money by spinning wool or weaving and washing cloth. The urbanization driven by the Industrial Revolution of the 18th century didn’t tip the balance to a majority of the US population living in cities until 1920. Other countries were even further behind. Work From Not Home is the actual historical anomaly here. Information technology allowing people to perform their 21st Century, postindustrial knowledge work at home is just reversion to the mean.
• maximinus_thrax 3y ago
  > Why wouldn’t we, given the ability, work from our own comfy homes instead of rolling into a crowded, stuffy office everyday? Because a considerable part of our economy apparently relies on people getting out of the house, (mostly) driving somewhere, buying their lunch (and other stuff) and temporarily occupying some landlord's building.
• screye 3y ago
  It's especially annoying when your job only needs 3-5 meetings every week. If a task can be fully explained in a ticket, and the architectural design has already been done by someone higher up, then why do you need to see the foot soldiers working. Either the work gets done or it doesn't. I understand 1 day in the office, but 3-5 days/week is madness. Doubly so in places where the commute is upwards of 1 hour in each direction. M