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Perhaps a reason for this is that not everybody agrees that drugs are all that bad. Half of silicon valley allegedly is micro-dosing all sorts of things and app

Perhaps a reason for this is that not everybody agrees that drugs are all that bad. Half of silicon valley allegedly is micro-dosing all sorts of things and apparently benefiting from that. Steve Jobs famously advocated using LSD. The Vietnam war famously had a lot of drug abuse. WW II soldiers and leadership were consuming epic amounts of amphetamines. And that wasn't just the Nazis. Companies aren't testing for this because they couldn't care less. Drugs isn't killing their business and they like having access to smart people who might fail a test. The main reason testing is more common in the public sector is not that drugs are bad but that the optics of people using drugs has negative political consequences when political leaders are waging this war on drugs. Also with drugs being illegal, using them necessarily means breaking the law and interacting with criminals. Which looks bad politically as well. Remote work is different. People and companies disagree about the effects but a lot of companies seem to prefer having their people not work remotely. Not because of the way it looks but because of at least the perception of its impact on productivity. Whether you agree with that or not doesn't matter. Some people are concerned about it and acting accordingly. The inequality here relates mainly to the value of the work people do. Just like companies don't like losing access to people who are smart and may use drugs, they also don't like losing access to people who have valuable skills that insist on working remotely. So they allow some people to work remotely. But of course some skills are more valuable than others so the inequality mainly relates to how easy it is to replace people with more compliant ones.

freddie_mercury 3y ago
> Perhaps a reason for this is that not everybody agrees that drugs are all that bad As an explanation, this is implausible to the point of impossible. The same employers drug test lower-level employees but (e.g. in the warehouse) but don't test other employees (e.g. in the office). Amazon drug tests warehouse workers but not AWS engineers. It is difficult to come up for a coherent theory for that that includes "as an organisation, we don't think drugs are all that bad"
- chii 3y ago
  obviously it is the belief of upper management that low level workers cannot be trusted to behave and work to their maximum if they're on drugs, while the "elites" require such drugs to reach their maximum potential.
  - calvinmorrison 3y ago
    No its because usually low level jobs require you to operate heavy machinery like driving a truck or operating a forklift or work on the floor of the factory, or being around those things. Or for example handling cash at registers etc. I feel like this conspiracy is the author, and apparently hn needs to touch grass a little bit
    - 6510 3y ago
      A friend from Yugoslavia told me about his job there. Their lunch room looked like a grand cafe with every possible kind of liquor and a variety of beer on the tap. Around 11 am some of his coworkers had a few beers, in the sun, in front of the building. Around 1 they had some whiskey or vodka etc. At the end of the work day some went home, others stuck around. They had a few more drinks, some went home, others went out to eat together, some went home after dinner, some went back to the office. He regularly got very drunk. Sometimes he would make a row of chairs and sleep there. 7 am his boss would be the first to arrive. He was always happy to see someone was already there and made coffee. They sat around and chatted some more and he would start his shift an hour early (not paid ofc) It wasn't that everyone got drunk at work every day, some more often than others, some rarely which made it kind of a special occasion if they stuck around. He had the same assignments as his coworkers but completed them in half the time. Sometimes, at 11 am, he would just continue drinking beer while sitting in the sun and go home an hour early. The funniest part was that they mostly talked about work. It was one lengthy extended meeting till 1 am, if they had some kind of deadline they would just work in their spare time while drinking (without pay) No culture is strange until compared. I drink 2 liters of coffee, smoke a lot and consume lots of sugar. This is perfectly normal here. edit: it was a desk job
autoexec 3y ago
> The main reason testing is more common in the public sector is not that drugs are bad but that the optics of people using drugs has negative political consequences when political leaders are waging this war on drugs. I always thought companies that do drug testing got some kind of discount on their own insurance rates for it.

freddie_mercury 3y ago

> Perhaps a reason for this is that not everybody agrees that drugs are all that bad As an explanation, this is implausible to the point of impossible. The same employers drug test lower-level employees but (e.g. in the warehouse) but don't test other employees (e.g. in the office). Amazon drug tests warehouse workers but not AWS engineers. It is difficult to come up for a coherent theory for that that includes "as an organisation, we don't think drugs are all that bad"

chii 3y ago
obviously it is the belief of upper management that low level workers cannot be trusted to behave and work to their maximum if they're on drugs, while the "elites" require such drugs to reach their maximum potential.
- calvinmorrison 3y ago
  No its because usually low level jobs require you to operate heavy machinery like driving a truck or operating a forklift or work on the floor of the factory, or being around those things. Or for example handling cash at registers etc. I feel like this conspiracy is the author, and apparently hn needs to touch grass a little bit
  - 6510 3y ago
    A friend from Yugoslavia told me about his job there. Their lunch room looked like a grand cafe with every possible kind of liquor and a variety of beer on the tap. Around 11 am some of his coworkers had a few beers, in the sun, in front of the building. Around 1 they had some whiskey or vodka etc. At the end of the work day some went home, others stuck around. They had a few more drinks, some went home, others went out to eat together, some went home after dinner, some went back to the office. He regularly got very drunk. Sometimes he would make a row of chairs and sleep there. 7 am his boss would be the first to arrive. He was always happy to see someone was already there and made coffee. They sat around and chatted some more and he would start his shift an hour early (not paid ofc) It wasn't that everyone got drunk at work every day, some more often than others, some rarely which made it kind of a special occasion if they stuck around. He had the same assignments as his coworkers but completed them in half the time. Sometimes, at 11 am, he would just continue drinking beer while sitting in the sun and go home an hour early. The funniest part was that they mostly talked about work. It was one lengthy extended meeting till 1 am, if they had some kind of deadline they would just work in their spare time while drinking (without pay) No culture is strange until compared. I drink 2 liters of coffee, smoke a lot and consume lots of sugar. This is perfectly normal here. edit: it was a desk job

autoexec 3y ago

> The main reason testing is more common in the public sector is not that drugs are bad but that the optics of people using drugs has negative political consequences when political leaders are waging this war on drugs. I always thought companies that do drug testing got some kind of discount on their own insurance rates for it.