8 ms·

Who Still Works from Home?

32 points by erickhill 3y ago

space_oddity 3y ago
Sometimes I am deeply struck by how much COVID has changed our lives
- bdcravens 3y ago
  There will be those events that change our lives forever, many of which we don't think about because they happened before many were even aware of how things used to be. For example, the changes introduced due to 9/11.
  - lkbm 3y ago
    I was only 19 when 9/11 happened, but I don't think there was any lasting change that directly effected my day-to-day life. Airport security got much stricter, but that's an annoyance a few times a year. Things definitely changed for anyone Arabic-looking, at least for a while, and for people in certain countries (or the military). It probably changed a lot for various aspects of immigration, which I suspect had downstream effects I don't recognize as being due to 9/11. But overall, I continued to live my life as normal. COVID is pretty much the only event where I see real, lasting changes. Are there things I'm missing about 9/11? Or other big events?
    - hobs 3y ago
      Being able to continue your life as normal is just a calculation of how insulated you are from the real world. The department of homeland security and basically everything snowden brought us. The war in Iraq. The war in Afhangistan. Millions of refugees and impacted soldiers and families at home. The bringing back of militarized equipment and approaches into the cops at home.
      - lkbm 3y ago
        This might shock you, but life and the world I live in is actually as real as the ones other people live in. You don't become real by serving in the military, or having a family member in the military. It affected people in the military a lot—I mentioned that. It massively effected people in certain other countries, as I mentioned. But for the majority of people living in the US, what changed?
        phone8675309 3y ago
        > But for the majority of people living in the US, what changed? Everyone of a certain age knows at least one of their schoolmates or college friends that died in the war. The US government used the occasion to assassinate American citizens abroad with drones with no due process. Everything you say or do on the Internet is tracked not only by advertisers but by the US government itself. Trillions of dollars spent and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi and Afghani civilians are dead thanks to the war and sanctions conducted by the US. This ended up being a complete waste in Afghanistan due to the Taliban immediately retaking the country. If you can't see these as impacts then it's because your separation from them is a privilege.
        lkbm 3y ago
        > Everyone of a certain age knows at least one of their schoolmates or college friends that died in the war. What age? As I said, I was 19 at the time. For Americans, we're looking at ~2500 for Afghanistan and another ~5000 for Iraq. That's several times fewer than the number of high schools. A lot more were wounded. There's a good chance most people knew someone wounded in one of the wars. But "someone I know was killed" is true with or without the wars. If the number of fatal car accidents increased by 5%, would you say this was a major change to our day to day life? That would take about three years to exceed the total US deaths from both the Afghanistan and Iraq wars over their entire many-year time span.
        dgfitz 3y ago
        It’s not about just the dead. Think about all the people who deployed, leaving family and friends behind. Kids didn’t see their parents for months to years at a time. People got divorced. PTSD is a very real thing. To couch your arguments in a death count is quite lazy.
    - dgfitz 3y ago
      Yeah, the war. The impact it had on countless lives, directly and indirectly.
    - phone8675309 3y ago
      9/11 brought back the US Imperial Presidency, the effects of which we are still feeling today Edit: Downvote me harder, fascists
      - lr4444lr 3y ago
        You are likely being downvoted just as much for the inaccurate implication that US Imperialism only started after 9-11 as the explicit accusation of US imperialism at all.
        dragonwriter 3y ago
        The "Imperial Presidency" is a term that is entirely orthogonal to US imperialism, though I suppose it is possible that people are ignorant enough to downvote for both of the reasons you suggest.
      - dragonwriter 3y ago
        > 9/11 brought back the US Imperial Presidency The "imperial presidency" was pretty much a linear progression for decades before 9/11; 9/11 didn't materially impact it, and definitely didn't "bring it back" as if it had gone somewhere between when it was first identified and 9/11,
      - Mountain_Skies 3y ago
        Centralization of power in the presidency had been going on for a long time before 9/11, motivated by two things: nuclear weapons and a semi-permanent Congress. Because of the need to be able to respond quickly during a nuclear attack, much of Congress's oversight in military matters were transferred to the presidency. Also, because congress critters tend to be cowards who want to avoid doing things that would upset the voters in their district, the presidency has been given lots of regulatory power it shouldn't have. Congress critters love giving presents to voters far more than they enjoy slapping them with a bunch of regulation and restrictions. Let the president and the Executive Branch's bureaucracy take that heat. 9/11 gave the government, especially the federal government, much more power than it had before, which means everyone's slice of that power grew, but I'm not convinced that it's all that responsible for the slice for the executive branch having grown to be such a large share as it was already there before the attack.
    - vikingerik 3y ago
      Try taking a photograph of any piece of transportation infrastructure since 9/11. If any law officer sees you, you'll be drummed out of there posthaste. (Even if it is in fact legal, in which case you might be able to stay after an extensive argument.) Or try entering any New York City subway - there are random bag checks and inspection points created as a direct response to 9/11.
      - lkbm 3y ago
        > Try taking a photograph of any piece of transportation infrastructure since 9/11. If any law officer sees you, you'll be drummed out of there posthaste. (Even if it is in fact legal, in which case you might be able to stay after an extensive argument.) I think this was medium-true for a couple years, and now very rarely true, though depends exactly what you mean. People take photos and videos inside airports and subways all the time—I've never been accosted when doing it. I see videos of trains stations, subway stations, and railroad tracks all the time. > Or try entering any New York City subway - there are random bag checks and inspection points created as a direct response to 9/11. There definitely is much more surveillance and random security nonsense than before. It's a valid point that it's not something you only come across with the TSA. A lot of this security nonsense should be rolled back, obviously, but the reason people don't rebel is because....it mostly doesn't affect most people. Helps to be white, of course. As I said, Arabic people, and anyone who even looks possibly-Arabic, had a really hard time for a while, and are still facing a lot of unearned abuse.
    - shaftway 3y ago
      Militarization of the police was a pretty big change. It's less noticeable in most rural areas, but some places the police have unexpected access to hardware. Think of towns of ~1000 people that have anti-riot vehicles. That kind of access came after increased security spending after 9/11. A lot of police departments saw it as money from the heavens and were worried that if they didn't spend it, they wouldn't get more of it. There has also been an increase in police officers carrying gear that used to be restricted to SWAT teams. I've worked in a couple major cities where every day I had to walk past cops that were basically just standing around with an M4A1 strapped across their chest and their hand resting on the grip. --- The mortgage crisis around 2008 completely changed the way that homes are bought and sold. If you bought a home before that time you had to do way less paperwork and way less work to prove that you can afford the McMansion you just bought. --- The dot-com crash in the 90's fundamentally changed how startups are funded and valued. Before that crash startups didn't need to have any plan to profitability. VC decks were basically: 1. Steal underpants 2. ??? 3. Go public 4. Profit VCs still invest in bubbles, but you need a much clearer picture of how you'll become profitable one day. Amazon is a notable hold-over from those days. They've never technically turned a profit, and have no real plans to.
      - shaftway 3y ago
        https://www.nationalpriorities.org/blog/2020/08/27/small-towns-dont-need-military-helicopters/ https://www.nationalpriorities.org/blog/2020/08/27/small-tow... > Winthrop Harbor, Illinois, with under 7,000 residents, received 10 helicopters, a mine-resistant armored vehicle, two Humvees, and other equipment worth over $6.5 million. Officials claim these transfers help with “counterterrorism” operations, but it seems unlikely that Winthrop Harbor has a terrorism problem that requires 10 helicopters to address.
        wglb 3y ago
        I live in Winthrop harbor and would love to know where this stuff is. I am reasonably familiar with the area and it would be a significant challenge to find anywhere safe to land a helicopter and nowhere to store them. I am highly skeptical of this claim.
    - lr4444lr 3y ago
      I was the same age. The military police with fully automatic weapons that to this day patrol Penn station still give me the creeps.
    - atq2119 3y ago
      > I don't think there was any lasting change that directly effected my day-to-day life. True, but only because you misspelled "affected" ;)
    - cykros 3y ago
      The KYC/AML stuff got stepped up a lot -- more just a time waster for a lot of people, and a drag on the financial industries, for better or worse (and hey, militant groups still get funding!). I think more of what 9/11 did is change the trajectory of the many systems that didn't yet exist at the time it happened. And it's hard to say what would have been had it not happened, and had we not seen the rise of the surveillance state. But you don't end up with the apparatus that Snowden revealed without at least some of that underlying architecture affecting the end-user experience.
- Der_Einzige 3y ago
  I feel like outside of the AI advancements, 2019 is a timeless year, and not much has changed from 2019-2024. Has it felt like anything has significantly changed since then? 2024 is just 2019 with ChatGPT and Stable Diffusion.
  - kvonhorn 3y ago
    It feels like everything is noticeably more expensive now than in 2019 and I'm seeing far more homeless people and their tents. Finding a job seems way tougher now, too, even though they're claiming a 3.7% unemployment rate.
    - eropple 3y ago
      > It feels like everything is noticeably more expensive now than in 2019 Yup. The BLS suggests about a 20-25% increase on food between 2019 and 2022, and that's backed up by independent estimates. That said, we've seen much larger spikes in the past; in the 1970s you can see spikes in that ballpark in one year. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/fredgraph.png?g=1hsGr https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/fredgraph.png?g=1hsGr > Finding a job seems way tougher now, too, even though they're claiming a 3.7% unemployment rate. Maybe in tech (chiefly on the more junior or on the more support-ish side, from what I can tell), but that doesn't mean that "they" are describing something incorrectly--just that perhaps you're on the wrong side of an average. I mostly run in circles that are of not-tech-people, and while the jobs may suck, I get the feeling that finding them is not the hard part right now.
      - kvonhorn 3y ago
        > I mostly run in circles that are of not-tech-people, and while the jobs may suck, I get the feeling that finding them is not the hard part right now. I moved out of tech a few years back. I'm responding to ads that claim to be desperate to hire people, yet I'm not getting replies.
        eropple 3y ago
- seydor 3y ago
  I'm often struck by how quickly we went back to old inefficient habits
  - recursive 3y ago
    I went back to my old efficient habit. I went back to the office as soon as I was allowed. I'm more productive there, and I prefer it.
    - Xeyz0r 3y ago
      I also prefer working in the office. I am more productive there. There are many distracting factors at home, such as pets, for example
    - slooprad 3y ago
      The office should be an option, if it’s preferred and possible. I’ve never worked in an office, and hope I never have to.
  - zer00eyz 3y ago
    Are they inefficient? They feel that way because you know where your local maximum is. But that isn't the maximum for a whole organization. If the people on the factory floor have to show up for work every day why should you get to stay home? If the business you're in has lots of gray legal risk, working from home means more things in writing. There are good interactions that can happen in bullpens and hallway and (I hate that I'm using this word) synergy from overheard conversations. I don't think the office as it was (open floor plan) helped any one. I don't think that we all need to go in all the time. There is a happy medium that would give us "the best of all worlds" and we should be looking for that!
    - hardware2win 3y ago
      >If the people on the factory floor have to show up for work every day why should you get to stay home? Different jobs, different pros and cons?
    - 3y ago
throwanem 3y ago
https://archive.ph/cUGoK https://archive.ph/cUGoK
ergonaught 3y ago
I've worked remote since 2001 and hope that never changes.
- HumblyTossed 3y ago
  I've been fully remote for about a decade. I live in a tech desert so I definitely hope it never changes. :)
Toorkit 3y ago
I work from the Drive-thru.
- imafish 3y ago
  So an open plan office?
hd4 3y ago
Yet another article most likely paid for by CRE interests crying for people to stop devaluing the investments of those same interests by taking back a small amount of control over their lives.
- atq2119 3y ago
  I wouldn't be surprised if you're right, but it would be helpful to spell out acronyms like this one.
  - recursive 3y ago
    According to my search: carbapenem-resistant Enterobacterales. Hope that helped.
  - dekhn 3y ago
    probably commercial real estate.
pelagicAustral 3y ago
I got the best of both worlds, I live 200 meters away from the office... =)
- doakes 3y ago
  I'm less than 500 meters as well and it's pretty surprising how much I enjoy going into the office. I was previously working from home for several years and never thought I'd go back to an office, but with basically no commute and headphones, it's hard to complain.
  - pelagicAustral 3y ago
    Yeah me too, I did a bit over a year of WFH during Covid times, it was OK for a bit... but then I started feeling quite odd about the idea of just staying home all day and not seeing people at all... To be honest, I don't even fit all that good with my colleagues, but I still feel like I can benefit from being near other humans.
- 11235813213455 3y ago
  Sometimes I wish I could sleep in offices but work from a park (in summer), that's one of the best place without anyone near and total silence
- imafish 3y ago
  Same here. Although I am quite introvert I find that the small social interactions at office are a necessary part of my well-being (both inside and outside of work)
bwestergard 3y ago
I'm a software developer, and I can still work from home because my union contract protects that right until expiration in November 2026. I was pretty aggressively recruited to take some jobs with "remote friendly" policies last year and they are all sliding toward five days a week in office now. https://nabet31.org/npr%2Fdmu https://nabet31.org/npr%2Fdmu
danaris 3y ago
I'm still working from home (hybrid, technically, since I go in occasionally), but that will be changing very soon, unfortunately—right after the pandemic lockdowns ended here, the building I work in started undergoing major renovations, which are just finishing up now. Fortunately, I still only live a 5-minute drive (or 25-minute walk) from work. I'll also be trying to get permission to work from home 1-3 days per week once the transition is complete, though I'm not sure how well that will fly with HR yet.
qwertyuiop_ 3y ago
The CRE - Local government - PE cabal are insufferable. Most likely paid by the cabal to push the message because they all stand to lose billions if employees don’t warm the empty seats at the offices. There is a lot of money to lose and the executives of the companies who are dragging the workers back to offices most likely have lot to lose personally on investments in commercial paper. https://www.businessinsider.com/new-york-mayor-eric-adams-ceos-bring-workers-back-office-2022-2 https://www.businessinsider.com/new-york-mayor-eric-adams-ce... https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-03-30/wall-street-needs-pact-to-get-new-yorkers-in-offices-adams-says https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-03-30/wall-stre... https://www.connectcre.com/stories/office-to-cost-boston-1b-in-taxes-revenue/ https://www.connectcre.com/stories/office-to-cost-boston-1b-... https://therealdeal.com/national/2024/02/16/cre-firm-cushman-wakefield-is-in-crisis/ https://therealdeal.com/national/2024/02/16/cre-firm-cushman... https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/commercial-real-estate-grapples-with-1-trillion-refinancing-tsunami-in-2024-over-200-billion-in-office-debt-1033114523 https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/commercial-r...
jamesponddotco 3y ago
I've been working remotely since I was 19 (32 right now), and hopefully, that won't change anytime soon. I can't imagine myself working at an office.
overvale 3y ago
Am I the only one who hates working from home? Sure, being able to work from home if you need to is nice, but so is being around other people. The most I’ve ever learned, the most fun I’ve ever had, the most rewarding and fulfilling things I’ve ever done, they’ve all been when I was around other people. I’m not trying to say that’s what’s best for everyone but it is for me.
- alas44 3y ago
  I agree
- MuffinFlavored 3y ago
  > but so is being around other people. How many people walk over to your desk and interrupt you for things just because you're around, preventing you from getting done what you need to get done? How distracted are you from random things going on in your environment (people coming and going, noise, etc.)? I view working in an office like working in a busy Starbucks... why? How? If I needed to get serious work done, I'd put headphones on and go in a corner with 0 external visual/audio distractions. Not a bustling coffee shop?
  - overvale 3y ago
    To each their own. Those things never bothered me.
    - Mountain_Skies 3y ago
      Perhaps they bother other people when you do it to them. Do their preferences not count?
      - overvale 3y ago
        Yes, I’m the only one who matters. Everyone else must conform to my preferences and style. Joking aside, I’m simply expressing my preference. Not implying it’s what’s best for everyone.
avgDev 3y ago
I work 95% remote with an occasional face to face, not even at a tech company. I can't imagine going back to the office. I have more time, I eat healthier, I can go out get some sun, I drive a lot less, I can set up my home office however I like, I can take advantage of flexible schedule and take care of tasks during the day and work in the evening. I still deliver. It works for me. I like being alone and my optimal vacation is far from civilization.
deleted 3y ago
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billy99k 3y ago
I've been working remotely since 2012. I even lived in Asia for a couple of years (while working remotely). After my first couple of office jobs after college, I told myself I never wanted to work in an office again. It's worked out pretty well.
whatamidoingyo 3y ago
I wish. I'm completely burnt out on the 80 minutes of driving every day. The expense of gas, wear and tear on my car, the close encounters with death on the highway multiple times per week. God forbid I forget to grab my lunch in the morning, forcing me to order takeout (then driving to get it during my lunch break, which eats away ~20 minutes). Exhausting. You people with WFH jobs are blessed, for sure.
- arendtio 3y ago
  I switched from listening to music to listening to audiobooks (Audible, Blinkist). It sounds simple, but for me, it is a game changer. Suddenly I look forward to the commute and the 50 minutes I follow the cars in front.
  - akmarinov 3y ago
    Dude, that’s so sad
    - arendtio 3y ago
      Why?
  - interludead 3y ago
    Have the same experience. If it's enjoyable one you may be less focused on the passage of time and more focused on the content itself, leading to a perception that time is passing quickly. With music you cannot be focusing on content that much
deleted 3y ago
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chaz6 3y ago
2 years ago I joined a startup that has no offices and I have been happy ever since. It is refreshing to be able to concentrate fully, whilst having the flexibility to take a break whenever I need.
kkfx 3y ago
I do not know the situation in USA but... For me if ALL jobs hat can be done remotely are not done remotely... There is something that doesn't work in the society. Of course I understand why a small cohort of people want most in offices to keep up untenable and utter business models against humanity BUT I do not understand why most accept things like hybrid absurdities that are offered just to force people to be near the office instead of rejecting them firmly. Evidently most prefer living less nicer lives and being slave/impoverished by services...
- RestlessMind 3y ago
  > Evidently most prefer living less nicer lives and being slave/impoverished by services... Purely remote work will be a race to the bottom in terms of wages. I would rather put up with a bit of commute a few days a week, which allows me to keep my comfortable salary. Living on salary dictated by the lowest paid workforce pool will be far less nicer.
  - kkfx 3y ago
    That's an interesting point: while formally a remote worker (my hand raised) have the entire world as potential market and nothing physically change between working today for a USA company, tomorrow for a Japanese while living in Swiss, in most cases jobs exists inside a nation border for fiscal reasons of both parties, and formally the salary pay worker works, not it's physical residence, so well formally there is no reasons to see a drop in salary WFH. Another point is if the bigger salary many anti-civil companies offer to workers living in big cities is worth living there, considering cost of living, quality of living, climate, personal freedom and so one. Hybrid works for me is absurd: - you need to be anyway near an office, and the company need anyway office space; - you need two desk instead of one, both under-utilized, or living a disgraced life moving laptops around, to use them as desktop replacers... All of this just to keep a salary that potentially got wasted in city services, having an inferior quality of life, no thanks. I prefer competing with my skills against the entire world than having such kind of genital laces... Beside that: personally I own an apartment in a big city, and I rent it, so far for a nice profit (I do not know if it will last, of course) and so far stocks perform really wall (it will NOT last, but again...) meaning: if you are from middle/high income cohort you earn more moving in the nature in a well served area and rent to poor in the city. I do think this situation is fairly common, at least in southern EU for middle/high income people, who happen to be those who made the downtown of big cities. If I'm right, without downtown white collar who spend much what's left in the city? How the city economics can keep up given the fact that after the 80s logistic revolutions most manufacturing have goes out, and now most high wages have done the same leaving just low/middle-low income people in the city mostly employed in city service economy, an economy that closely depend on inhabitants mean wages...
rayiner 3y ago
I’m part of the work from home class and it’s pretty great. I might be in the office twice a week, if that. I start each day by getting my kids ready for school. I stop at lunch and snuggle my toddler, or after he gets home from preschool. My two boys grew up in the COVID and think that parents are just supposed to be around the house. Completely different than my daughter who remembers the before times.
deterministic 3y ago
I do. 3 days a week. I prefer it that way. I don’t want to work 5 days from home.
shrimp_emoji 3y ago
My office mostly never went back, at least the developers. And that's despite RTO pressure from the higher ups. But they don't call the shots past a certain level, and our managers were like "lolno". ;D

32 points by erickhill 3y ago

space_oddity 3y ago

Sometimes I am deeply struck by how much COVID has changed our lives

bdcravens 3y ago
There will be those events that change our lives forever, many of which we don't think about because they happened before many were even aware of how things used to be. For example, the changes introduced due to 9/11.
- lkbm 3y ago
  I was only 19 when 9/11 happened, but I don't think there was any lasting change that directly effected my day-to-day life. Airport security got much stricter, but that's an annoyance a few times a year. Things definitely changed for anyone Arabic-looking, at least for a while, and for people in certain countries (or the military). It probably changed a lot for various aspects of immigration, which I suspect had downstream effects I don't recognize as being due to 9/11. But overall, I continued to live my life as normal. COVID is pretty much the only event where I see real, lasting changes. Are there things I'm missing about 9/11? Or other big events?
  - hobs 3y ago
    Being able to continue your life as normal is just a calculation of how insulated you are from the real world. The department of homeland security and basically everything snowden brought us. The war in Iraq. The war in Afhangistan. Millions of refugees and impacted soldiers and families at home. The bringing back of militarized equipment and approaches into the cops at home.
    - lkbm 3y ago
      This might shock you, but life and the world I live in is actually as real as the ones other people live in. You don't become real by serving in the military, or having a family member in the military. It affected people in the military a lot—I mentioned that. It massively effected people in certain other countries, as I mentioned. But for the majority of people living in the US, what changed?
      - phone8675309 3y ago
        > But for the majority of people living in the US, what changed? Everyone of a certain age knows at least one of their schoolmates or college friends that died in the war. The US government used the occasion to assassinate American citizens abroad with drones with no due process. Everything you say or do on the Internet is tracked not only by advertisers but by the US government itself. Trillions of dollars spent and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi and Afghani civilians are dead thanks to the war and sanctions conducted by the US. This ended up being a complete waste in Afghanistan due to the Taliban immediately retaking the country. If you can't see these as impacts then it's because your separation from them is a privilege.
        lkbm 3y ago
        > Everyone of a certain age knows at least one of their schoolmates or college friends that died in the war. What age? As I said, I was 19 at the time. For Americans, we're looking at ~2500 for Afghanistan and another ~5000 for Iraq. That's several times fewer than the number of high schools. A lot more were wounded. There's a good chance most people knew someone wounded in one of the wars. But "someone I know was killed" is true with or without the wars. If the number of fatal car accidents increased by 5%, would you say this was a major change to our day to day life? That would take about three years to exceed the total US deaths from both the Afghanistan and Iraq wars over their entire many-year time span.
        dgfitz 3y ago
        It’s not about just the dead. Think about all the people who deployed, leaving family and friends behind. Kids didn’t see their parents for months to years at a time. People got divorced. PTSD is a very real thing. To couch your arguments in a death count is quite lazy.
  - dgfitz 3y ago
    Yeah, the war. The impact it had on countless lives, directly and indirectly.
  - phone8675309 3y ago
    9/11 brought back the US Imperial Presidency, the effects of which we are still feeling today Edit: Downvote me harder, fascists
    - lr4444lr 3y ago
      You are likely being downvoted just as much for the inaccurate implication that US Imperialism only started after 9-11 as the explicit accusation of US imperialism at all.
      - dragonwriter 3y ago
        The "Imperial Presidency" is a term that is entirely orthogonal to US imperialism, though I suppose it is possible that people are ignorant enough to downvote for both of the reasons you suggest.
    - dragonwriter 3y ago
      > 9/11 brought back the US Imperial Presidency The "imperial presidency" was pretty much a linear progression for decades before 9/11; 9/11 didn't materially impact it, and definitely didn't "bring it back" as if it had gone somewhere between when it was first identified and 9/11,
    - Mountain_Skies 3y ago
      Centralization of power in the presidency had been going on for a long time before 9/11, motivated by two things: nuclear weapons and a semi-permanent Congress. Because of the need to be able to respond quickly during a nuclear attack, much of Congress's oversight in military matters were transferred to the presidency. Also, because congress critters tend to be cowards who want to avoid doing things that would upset the voters in their district, the presidency has been given lots of regulatory power it shouldn't have. Congress critters love giving presents to voters far more than they enjoy slapping them with a bunch of regulation and restrictions. Let the president and the Executive Branch's bureaucracy take that heat. 9/11 gave the government, especially the federal government, much more power than it had before, which means everyone's slice of that power grew, but I'm not convinced that it's all that responsible for the slice for the executive branch having grown to be such a large share as it was already there before the attack.
  - vikingerik 3y ago
    Try taking a photograph of any piece of transportation infrastructure since 9/11. If any law officer sees you, you'll be drummed out of there posthaste. (Even if it is in fact legal, in which case you might be able to stay after an extensive argument.) Or try entering any New York City subway - there are random bag checks and inspection points created as a direct response to 9/11.
    - lkbm 3y ago
      > Try taking a photograph of any piece of transportation infrastructure since 9/11. If any law officer sees you, you'll be drummed out of there posthaste. (Even if it is in fact legal, in which case you might be able to stay after an extensive argument.) I think this was medium-true for a couple years, and now very rarely true, though depends exactly what you mean. People take photos and videos inside airports and subways all the time—I've never been accosted when doing it. I see videos of trains stations, subway stations, and railroad tracks all the time. > Or try entering any New York City subway - there are random bag checks and inspection points created as a direct response to 9/11. There definitely is much more surveillance and random security nonsense than before. It's a valid point that it's not something you only come across with the TSA. A lot of this security nonsense should be rolled back, obviously, but the reason people don't rebel is because....it mostly doesn't affect most people. Helps to be white, of course. As I said, Arabic people, and anyone who even looks possibly-Arabic, had a really hard time for a while, and are still facing a lot of unearned abuse.
  - shaftway 3y ago
    Militarization of the police was a pretty big change. It's less noticeable in most rural areas, but some places the police have unexpected access to hardware. Think of towns of ~1000 people that have anti-riot vehicles. That kind of access came after increased security spending after 9/11. A lot of police departments saw it as money from the heavens and were worried that if they didn't spend it, they wouldn't get more of it. There has also been an increase in police officers carrying gear that used to be restricted to SWAT teams. I've worked in a couple major cities where every day I had to walk past cops that were basically just standing around with an M4A1 strapped across their chest and their hand resting on the grip. --- The mortgage crisis around 2008 completely changed the way that homes are bought and sold. If you bought a home before that time you had to do way less paperwork and way less work to prove that you can afford the McMansion you just bought. --- The dot-com crash in the 90's fundamentally changed how startups are funded and valued. Before that crash startups didn't need to have any plan to profitability. VC decks were basically: 1. Steal underpants 2. ??? 3. Go public 4. Profit VCs still invest in bubbles, but you need a much clearer picture of how you'll become profitable one day. Amazon is a notable hold-over from those days. They've never technically turned a profit, and have no real plans to.
    - shaftway 3y ago
      https://www.nationalpriorities.org/blog/2020/08/27/small-towns-dont-need-military-helicopters/ https://www.nationalpriorities.org/blog/2020/08/27/small-tow... > Winthrop Harbor, Illinois, with under 7,000 residents, received 10 helicopters, a mine-resistant armored vehicle, two Humvees, and other equipment worth over $6.5 million. Officials claim these transfers help with “counterterrorism” operations, but it seems unlikely that Winthrop Harbor has a terrorism problem that requires 10 helicopters to address.
      - wglb 3y ago
        I live in Winthrop harbor and would love to know where this stuff is. I am reasonably familiar with the area and it would be a significant challenge to find anywhere safe to land a helicopter and nowhere to store them. I am highly skeptical of this claim.
  - lr4444lr 3y ago
    I was the same age. The military police with fully automatic weapons that to this day patrol Penn station still give me the creeps.
  - atq2119 3y ago
    > I don't think there was any lasting change that directly effected my day-to-day life. True, but only because you misspelled "affected" ;)
  - cykros 3y ago
    The KYC/AML stuff got stepped up a lot -- more just a time waster for a lot of people, and a drag on the financial industries, for better or worse (and hey, militant groups still get funding!). I think more of what 9/11 did is change the trajectory of the many systems that didn't yet exist at the time it happened. And it's hard to say what would have been had it not happened, and had we not seen the rise of the surveillance state. But you don't end up with the apparatus that Snowden revealed without at least some of that underlying architecture affecting the end-user experience.
Der_Einzige 3y ago
I feel like outside of the AI advancements, 2019 is a timeless year, and not much has changed from 2019-2024. Has it felt like anything has significantly changed since then? 2024 is just 2019 with ChatGPT and Stable Diffusion.
- kvonhorn 3y ago
  It feels like everything is noticeably more expensive now than in 2019 and I'm seeing far more homeless people and their tents. Finding a job seems way tougher now, too, even though they're claiming a 3.7% unemployment rate.
  - eropple 3y ago
    > It feels like everything is noticeably more expensive now than in 2019 Yup. The BLS suggests about a 20-25% increase on food between 2019 and 2022, and that's backed up by independent estimates. That said, we've seen much larger spikes in the past; in the 1970s you can see spikes in that ballpark in one year. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/fredgraph.png?g=1hsGr https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/fredgraph.png?g=1hsGr > Finding a job seems way tougher now, too, even though they're claiming a 3.7% unemployment rate. Maybe in tech (chiefly on the more junior or on the more support-ish side, from what I can tell), but that doesn't mean that "they" are describing something incorrectly--just that perhaps you're on the wrong side of an average. I mostly run in circles that are of not-tech-people, and while the jobs may suck, I get the feeling that finding them is not the hard part right now.
    - kvonhorn 3y ago
      > I mostly run in circles that are of not-tech-people, and while the jobs may suck, I get the feeling that finding them is not the hard part right now. I moved out of tech a few years back. I'm responding to ads that claim to be desperate to hire people, yet I'm not getting replies.
      - eropple 3y ago
seydor 3y ago
I'm often struck by how quickly we went back to old inefficient habits
- recursive 3y ago
  I went back to my old efficient habit. I went back to the office as soon as I was allowed. I'm more productive there, and I prefer it.
  - Xeyz0r 3y ago
    I also prefer working in the office. I am more productive there. There are many distracting factors at home, such as pets, for example
  - slooprad 3y ago
    The office should be an option, if it’s preferred and possible. I’ve never worked in an office, and hope I never have to.
- zer00eyz 3y ago
  Are they inefficient? They feel that way because you know where your local maximum is. But that isn't the maximum for a whole organization. If the people on the factory floor have to show up for work every day why should you get to stay home? If the business you're in has lots of gray legal risk, working from home means more things in writing. There are good interactions that can happen in bullpens and hallway and (I hate that I'm using this word) synergy from overheard conversations. I don't think the office as it was (open floor plan) helped any one. I don't think that we all need to go in all the time. There is a happy medium that would give us "the best of all worlds" and we should be looking for that!
  - hardware2win 3y ago
    >If the people on the factory floor have to show up for work every day why should you get to stay home? Different jobs, different pros and cons?
  - 3y ago

throwanem 3y ago

https://archive.ph/cUGoK https://archive.ph/cUGoK

ergonaught 3y ago

I've worked remote since 2001 and hope that never changes.

HumblyTossed 3y ago
I've been fully remote for about a decade. I live in a tech desert so I definitely hope it never changes. :)

Toorkit 3y ago

I work from the Drive-thru.

imafish 3y ago
So an open plan office?

hd4 3y ago

Yet another article most likely paid for by CRE interests crying for people to stop devaluing the investments of those same interests by taking back a small amount of control over their lives.

atq2119 3y ago
I wouldn't be surprised if you're right, but it would be helpful to spell out acronyms like this one.
- recursive 3y ago
  According to my search: carbapenem-resistant Enterobacterales. Hope that helped.
- dekhn 3y ago
  probably commercial real estate.

pelagicAustral 3y ago

I got the best of both worlds, I live 200 meters away from the office... =)

doakes 3y ago
I'm less than 500 meters as well and it's pretty surprising how much I enjoy going into the office. I was previously working from home for several years and never thought I'd go back to an office, but with basically no commute and headphones, it's hard to complain.
- pelagicAustral 3y ago
  Yeah me too, I did a bit over a year of WFH during Covid times, it was OK for a bit... but then I started feeling quite odd about the idea of just staying home all day and not seeing people at all... To be honest, I don't even fit all that good with my colleagues, but I still feel like I can benefit from being near other humans.
11235813213455 3y ago
Sometimes I wish I could sleep in offices but work from a park (in summer), that's one of the best place without anyone near and total silence
imafish 3y ago
Same here. Although I am quite introvert I find that the small social interactions at office are a necessary part of my well-being (both inside and outside of work)

bwestergard 3y ago

I'm a software developer, and I can still work from home because my union contract protects that right until expiration in November 2026. I was pretty aggressively recruited to take some jobs with "remote friendly" policies last year and they are all sliding toward five days a week in office now. https://nabet31.org/npr%2Fdmu https://nabet31.org/npr%2Fdmu

danaris 3y ago

I'm still working from home (hybrid, technically, since I go in occasionally), but that will be changing very soon, unfortunately—right after the pandemic lockdowns ended here, the building I work in started undergoing major renovations, which are just finishing up now. Fortunately, I still only live a 5-minute drive (or 25-minute walk) from work. I'll also be trying to get permission to work from home 1-3 days per week once the transition is complete, though I'm not sure how well that will fly with HR yet.

qwertyuiop_ 3y ago

The CRE - Local government - PE cabal are insufferable. Most likely paid by the cabal to push the message because they all stand to lose billions if employees don’t warm the empty seats at the offices. There is a lot of money to lose and the executives of the companies who are dragging the workers back to offices most likely have lot to lose personally on investments in commercial paper. https://www.businessinsider.com/new-york-mayor-eric-adams-ceos-bring-workers-back-office-2022-2 https://www.businessinsider.com/new-york-mayor-eric-adams-ce... https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-03-30/wall-street-needs-pact-to-get-new-yorkers-in-offices-adams-says https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-03-30/wall-stre... https://www.connectcre.com/stories/office-to-cost-boston-1b-in-taxes-revenue/ https://www.connectcre.com/stories/office-to-cost-boston-1b-... https://therealdeal.com/national/2024/02/16/cre-firm-cushman-wakefield-is-in-crisis/ https://therealdeal.com/national/2024/02/16/cre-firm-cushman... https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/commercial-real-estate-grapples-with-1-trillion-refinancing-tsunami-in-2024-over-200-billion-in-office-debt-1033114523 https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/commercial-r...

jamesponddotco 3y ago

I've been working remotely since I was 19 (32 right now), and hopefully, that won't change anytime soon. I can't imagine myself working at an office.

overvale 3y ago

Am I the only one who hates working from home? Sure, being able to work from home if you need to is nice, but so is being around other people. The most I’ve ever learned, the most fun I’ve ever had, the most rewarding and fulfilling things I’ve ever done, they’ve all been when I was around other people. I’m not trying to say that’s what’s best for everyone but it is for me.

alas44 3y ago
I agree
MuffinFlavored 3y ago
> but so is being around other people. How many people walk over to your desk and interrupt you for things just because you're around, preventing you from getting done what you need to get done? How distracted are you from random things going on in your environment (people coming and going, noise, etc.)? I view working in an office like working in a busy Starbucks... why? How? If I needed to get serious work done, I'd put headphones on and go in a corner with 0 external visual/audio distractions. Not a bustling coffee shop?
- overvale 3y ago
  To each their own. Those things never bothered me.
  - Mountain_Skies 3y ago
    Perhaps they bother other people when you do it to them. Do their preferences not count?
    - overvale 3y ago
      Yes, I’m the only one who matters. Everyone else must conform to my preferences and style. Joking aside, I’m simply expressing my preference. Not implying it’s what’s best for everyone.

avgDev 3y ago

I work 95% remote with an occasional face to face, not even at a tech company. I can't imagine going back to the office. I have more time, I eat healthier, I can go out get some sun, I drive a lot less, I can set up my home office however I like, I can take advantage of flexible schedule and take care of tasks during the day and work in the evening. I still deliver. It works for me. I like being alone and my optimal vacation is far from civilization.

deleted 3y ago

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billy99k 3y ago

I've been working remotely since 2012. I even lived in Asia for a couple of years (while working remotely). After my first couple of office jobs after college, I told myself I never wanted to work in an office again. It's worked out pretty well.

whatamidoingyo 3y ago

I wish. I'm completely burnt out on the 80 minutes of driving every day. The expense of gas, wear and tear on my car, the close encounters with death on the highway multiple times per week. God forbid I forget to grab my lunch in the morning, forcing me to order takeout (then driving to get it during my lunch break, which eats away ~20 minutes). Exhausting. You people with WFH jobs are blessed, for sure.

arendtio 3y ago
I switched from listening to music to listening to audiobooks (Audible, Blinkist). It sounds simple, but for me, it is a game changer. Suddenly I look forward to the commute and the 50 minutes I follow the cars in front.
- akmarinov 3y ago
  Dude, that’s so sad
  - arendtio 3y ago
    Why?
- interludead 3y ago
  Have the same experience. If it's enjoyable one you may be less focused on the passage of time and more focused on the content itself, leading to a perception that time is passing quickly. With music you cannot be focusing on content that much

deleted 3y ago

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chaz6 3y ago

2 years ago I joined a startup that has no offices and I have been happy ever since. It is refreshing to be able to concentrate fully, whilst having the flexibility to take a break whenever I need.

kkfx 3y ago

I do not know the situation in USA but... For me if ALL jobs hat can be done remotely are not done remotely... There is something that doesn't work in the society. Of course I understand why a small cohort of people want most in offices to keep up untenable and utter business models against humanity BUT I do not understand why most accept things like hybrid absurdities that are offered just to force people to be near the office instead of rejecting them firmly. Evidently most prefer living less nicer lives and being slave/impoverished by services...

RestlessMind 3y ago
> Evidently most prefer living less nicer lives and being slave/impoverished by services... Purely remote work will be a race to the bottom in terms of wages. I would rather put up with a bit of commute a few days a week, which allows me to keep my comfortable salary. Living on salary dictated by the lowest paid workforce pool will be far less nicer.
- kkfx 3y ago
  That's an interesting point: while formally a remote worker (my hand raised) have the entire world as potential market and nothing physically change between working today for a USA company, tomorrow for a Japanese while living in Swiss, in most cases jobs exists inside a nation border for fiscal reasons of both parties, and formally the salary pay worker works, not it's physical residence, so well formally there is no reasons to see a drop in salary WFH. Another point is if the bigger salary many anti-civil companies offer to workers living in big cities is worth living there, considering cost of living, quality of living, climate, personal freedom and so one. Hybrid works for me is absurd: - you need to be anyway near an office, and the company need anyway office space; - you need two desk instead of one, both under-utilized, or living a disgraced life moving laptops around, to use them as desktop replacers... All of this just to keep a salary that potentially got wasted in city services, having an inferior quality of life, no thanks. I prefer competing with my skills against the entire world than having such kind of genital laces... Beside that: personally I own an apartment in a big city, and I rent it, so far for a nice profit (I do not know if it will last, of course) and so far stocks perform really wall (it will NOT last, but again...) meaning: if you are from middle/high income cohort you earn more moving in the nature in a well served area and rent to poor in the city. I do think this situation is fairly common, at least in southern EU for middle/high income people, who happen to be those who made the downtown of big cities. If I'm right, without downtown white collar who spend much what's left in the city? How the city economics can keep up given the fact that after the 80s logistic revolutions most manufacturing have goes out, and now most high wages have done the same leaving just low/middle-low income people in the city mostly employed in city service economy, an economy that closely depend on inhabitants mean wages...

rayiner 3y ago

I’m part of the work from home class and it’s pretty great. I might be in the office twice a week, if that. I start each day by getting my kids ready for school. I stop at lunch and snuggle my toddler, or after he gets home from preschool. My two boys grew up in the COVID and think that parents are just supposed to be around the house. Completely different than my daughter who remembers the before times.

deterministic 3y ago

I do. 3 days a week. I prefer it that way. I don’t want to work 5 days from home.

shrimp_emoji 3y ago

My office mostly never went back, at least the developers. And that's despite RTO pressure from the higher ups. But they don't call the shots past a certain level, and our managers were like "lolno". ;D