6 ms·

Working from home allowed him to be a more engaged dad. Now it's over

78 points by rntn 2y ago

engineer_22 2y ago
It was basically impossible to get environmental reviews done during the work-from-home years. Agency review timelines are still extended by months...
- linotype 2y ago
  I can almost guarantee this is about commercial real estate taxes more than productivity. If agency review is months behind, they need to hire more people, not force their existing employees to lose hours a day to commuting.
  - vinyl7 2y ago
    A city I know of mandated that the largest employer institute return-to-office or lose their tax breaks due to the impact it would have on the local economy of the city.
  - cracrecry 2y ago
    >I can almost guarantee this is about commercial real estate taxes more than productivity. As simple as that. I was looking at the numbers of one of our partners that has gone bankrupt in Europe. He made the brilliant decision to invest everything in Office space just before Covid. They expected to recover money after Covid, but it is not happening. A lot of big guys invested there, specially politicians, and of course expensive taxes. They will do everything they can to delay the sinking.
  - Terr_ 2y ago
    A fun little thought-experiment to inject into these debates is to analyze commute-hours and fuel costs as if they were-wages/expenses that the employer had to pay for. When corporate RTO-advocates are faced with paying the costs themselves instead of pushing it all onto employees, suddenly it becomes "impractically expensive" and "wasteful". Hey guys, commutes were always costly and (sometimes) wasteful, if you've finally realized that you can at least stop demanding employees undertake it for dumb reasons.
    - Terr_ 2y ago
      P.S.: To give a napkin-math example to show that it lands in the right order of magnitude... Suppose Joe Exampleson has a 30 mile round-trip, taking 1 hour because company "core hours" match when congestion occurs. His car manages 30 miles per gallon and gas is $5/gallon, and we assume other car-costs are things he'd bear anyway even without the job. He normally earns ~$30/hr while working but here he has to act as a driver. That's ~14.6% of his pre-tax income, or $8,750/year. _______ Now, I know somebody will think: "That's too high because his real job is harder or more important and driving is easy, plus he can enjoy listening to the radio or whatever." Those observations aren't wrong, but it risks a certain kind of... economic hypocrisy. Why would those aspects matter now but not for Joe's regular pay? It is safe to assume Joe's employer does not pay him based on how difficult or painful his job is, or even how important it is for the work to occur! No, they're paying based on the marginal cost of replacing him with somebody else.
      - Fire-Dragon-DoL 2y ago
        It's also possible Joe didn't want a car... I know in the US is unlikely, but there are countries where you don't need a car
        linotype 2y ago
        There are plenty of cities in the US that don’t require owning a car either.
  - space_crab 2y ago
    I think the RTO policy is in part influenced by economic recovery research funded by the city [0]. My own conjecture is that it’s also influenced by SEPTA (regional transit) ridership recovery being a sticking point for funding from the state. [0] https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/issue-briefs/2022/02/4-possible-scenarios-for-philadelphias-economy https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/issue-bri...
office_drone 2y ago
With all the talk of the impending fertility crisis, I very much believe that WFH helps significantly. 1) It makes parenting easier by letting the parent be more present. 2) It allows parents to buy houses with more bedrooms and more greenspace further from expensive cities. 3) It allows workers to stay in one location for a long time, helping form community. And it's low-carbon to boot.
- skhunted 2y ago
  Buying larger houses further spread out decreases population density. This is not low-carbon to boot.
  - travisb 2y ago
    There isn't a clear cut answer to this. Lower population density does not necessarily equate to higher carbon footprint, especially when commuting downtown for work has been eliminated. Above a certain point density has diseconomies of scale of its own. For example, if you are comparing, say, a three bedroom house in a large metropolitan area versus a four bedroom house in a small town, the reduced total driving time because driving distances are less in the small town (everything is in town, but town is tiny) can make up for a lot of efficiencies of scale. The common argument is that we should put people into apartments instead, but that isn't always a clear total system win. For example if somebody is really into fishing letting them live near a lake with space to store their own boat will be more carbon efficient than stuffing them into an apartment where every weekend they drive to the storage place on the outskirts of town to pick their boat up, then drive three hours or so to the lake.
    - skhunted 2y ago
      Having houses spread out and lowering population density is bad for environment. More roads need to be built, more infrastructure needs to be built, etc. We consume too much. America is not in danger of having too much population density. We are too spread out as it is.
ToucanLoucan 2y ago
> Mayor Parker has cited the many thousands of city employees — sanitation workers, social workers, the water department — who never had the ability to work from home. Of all of the flimsy, illogical and back-ass-wards excuses I've heard for returning to offices, this might be the flimsiest, most illogical, and most profound 180 from asswards I have heard. Of course some classifications of workers can't work from home. One cannot remotely pick up garbage, or service sewers from the comfort of their own sofa. What on earth does that have to do with all the kinds of workers who can? This will impact public institutions the same way it has been private ones. Those with options, the best workers, will leave, likely in droves, because they have seen what is possible and are no longer prepared to settle for what is expedient. The brain-drain is going to get quite real quite soon. Work from home is a boon to everyone in our society except commercial real estate investors and pushy middle-managers, it just is, whether you as a leader choose to recognize the benefits you reap from it or not, you are reaping them. Productivity goes up, carbon emissions go down, morale goes up, people have an easier time just... living in our modern world with a flexible schedule, saving money on eating out less, saving money on buying less gas and running cars into the ground much slower, on, and on, and on. This is a rare instance where basically everyone wins and paradoxically, that seems to be driving the leadership of some places even more insane. They just can not fucking deal with seeing their workers lives improve. It's hard to not reach for my tinfoil hat to explain this. I cannot fathom what the issue is, beyond the fact that workers are less stressed, less busy, and therefore consuming less... everything. Wasting less food, using less gas, buying fewer cars, etc. and like, I don't really think there's a shadowy room somewhere where the owner of the local gas stations is slamming his fist on the table about his sales being down, and the mayor promising to get people back to their commutes soon, but like... it's hard to see it as anything else than a deliberate middle finger to every WFH worker. "Yeah we know this works better for you and a ton of other people, but the downtown businesses are making less money and we can't have that. Go drive 90 minutes every day."
- toomuchtodo 2y ago
  If you can't beat 'em, interview elsewhere and flee low quality, malevolent employers. Mayor Parker controls her employees without caring about their wellbeing, and frankly, they have options. Unemployment is low, interest rate cuts are coming (which is going to fire the economy back up), and the federal government is always hiring remote [1]. Mayor Adams in NYC had to learn this the hard way as well [2] [3] [4]. These people always need to learn the hard way, because they're used to being in control, and no one gives up control willingly. "I'm the boss" mental model. "What Can NYC Do The City should take steps to modernize its hiring and retention practices, by implementing recommendations in the Comptroller’s office’s Title Vacant and the 5BORO Institute’s Solving the Staffing Crisis. Both of those reports recommend expediting hiring, allowing hybrid work for appropriate positions, reconsidering compensation levels for key hard-to-recruit slots, and designating Chief Talent/Recruitment/Retention Officer(s) to drive this work. In the recently-announced tentative agreement between the NYC Office of Labor Relations and DC 37 (the City’s largest municipal labor union), the parties agreed to establish a “Flexible Work Committee” to discuss options to provider greater flexibility and enhance employee morale, including remote work, compressed and flexible work schedules, and improve transit benefits. The parties’ goal is to begin a pilot program that includes remote work no later than June 1, 2023." [2] Note the union support in NYC; Philly's union is trying to fight Parker on the return to office mandate, but that will take time. Faster to bounce from the city for individual optimization. [1] https://www.usajobs.gov/search/results/?rmi=true https://www.usajobs.gov/search/results/?rmi=true [2] https://comptroller.nyc.gov/reports/understaffed-underserved/ https://comptroller.nyc.gov/reports/understaffed-underserved... [3] https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/06/nyregion/nyc-workers-hiring-vacancies.html https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/06/nyregion/nyc-workers-hiri... [4] https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/13/nyregion/labor-shortage-nyc-jobs.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/13/nyregion/labor-shortage-n...
mrgoldenbrown 2y ago
>Mayor Parker has cited the many thousands of city employees — sanitation workers, social workers, the water department — who never had the ability to work from home. Parkers goal is to make happy workers miserable instead of making miserable workers happy. That's cruel. Why not use the $$$ spent on RTO and use it provide daycare or other services to improve the life of the folks who do work in the field?
- HideousKojima 2y ago
  This is what "equity" looks like in practice. Actually lifting up the miserable is a lot harder than simply cutting down the happy, so that's what's done.
- micromacrofoot 2y ago
  seriously, this is yet another case of "the beatings will continue until morale improves"
- hosh 2y ago
  I was talking to a shuttle driver the other day. She can't stand working for the post office because she doesn't like being alone. I prefer it. We both agree that different people have different ways they prefer to work. Seems to me, having a variety is sensible, and ultimately, makes for a more resilient economy. This "leadership philosophy" framed around equality (that not everyone can be in remote jobs) seems bunk to me. Also, there's is an increasing exposure for commercial real estate. Cities that have given corporations a tax break for having offices, are either leaving, or trying to mandate return-to-office for employees because they can't get out of those leases. People who don't come into the office are also not spending money on the various service businesses catering to office workers. A collapse of the commercial real estate in a city may well affect the residential markets as well. I think the mayor of Philadelphia is trying to head off a collapse for Philly. She can't say to the public, "we are in deep trouble because no one is coming into the office anymore, so that is why you have to come back". It remains to be seen whether that will have the intended effect on protecting the city from a commercial real estate market collapse, and whether that is worth sacrificing the longer-term quality-of-life benefits that remote work brings for the people who prefers it.
otter-in-a-suit 2y ago
> Parker has also made clear she wants the city’s return-to-office plan to be a model for private-sector employers, part of her effort to make a more economically vibrant Philadelphia. At least they're being honest (as honest as a politician can be, I suppose) about what this is really about - a stimulus package for downtown businesses and landlords. For an additional layer of irony, apparently she said during her campaign, quote "I'm uniquely prepared to make the city the safest, cleanest, greenest big city in the nation with access to economic opportunity for all". I fail to see how forcing people to commute (public transport or not) achieves anything but the opposite, but perhaps I just don't see the genius in that.
- RestlessMind 2y ago
  "Greenest" should be fairly obvious, no? Dense cities have the lowest carbon footprint per capita. See the chart in this article: https://www.brookings.edu/articles/its-not-just-cities-suburbs-and-exurbs-need-to-adopt-and-implement-climate-plans-too/ https://www.brookings.edu/articles/its-not-just-cities-subur... And while commuting might account for some fraction of the added footprint, larger houses mean more heating/cooling and larger sprawl means someone is driving to deliver daily essentials (grocery, gas, medicines, teaching, cleaners etc).
  - tivert 2y ago
    > "Greenest" should be fairly obvious, no? Dense cities have the lowest carbon footprint per capita. Who cares? In the real world, the sprawl already exists. Forcing RTO re-introduces commuting that had been eliminated; it's not green at all.
- chucksta 2y ago
  They also need to keep the cities wage tax up its a huge source of income for Philly https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/10-cities-with-the-highest-tax-rates https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/10-cities-with-the-highest-t... (Its #2)
JSDevOps 2y ago
Said it time and time again. Why is there a culture war over this? Why is there even a debate? The servers we use daily are managed by people miles away, and the world keeps turning 24/7. If you want to fish for a living, work on a boat where the fish are. If you work in HR and Marketing and use the internet, take advantage of collaborative tools and work wherever you want.
- ToucanLoucan 2y ago
  > Why is there a culture war over this? There's significantly less culture war over this, at least, I haven't noticed much of it and I enjoy keeping up on what the culture warriors are mad about at the current moment. This is strictly a war between the wealthy/aspirationally wealthy, and literally everyone else. One group is seeing the value of their held real estate in offices cratering in the near future as it's been thoroughly demonstrated that having physical offices is a massive cost center with very little to show for itself in terms of business benefits. And the other is all the business-parasite types who no longer have a small group of folks they can lord over in the office and flex their authority upon, and who's "skill" (if you want to be generous and call it one) is best described as "politics" which largely translates to inserting themselves in the projects of others and taking credit for them. And that's harder outside of an office. Literally everyone else loves work from home and would prefer to work from home.
- rs999gti 2y ago
  > Why is there a culture war over this? Not a culture war. WFH for some orgs was never official, it was always temporary until COVID was over. So unless there is a WFH policy in writing at your org, always assume RTO was inevitable.
- WarOnPrivacy 2y ago
  > Why is there a culture war over this? Generated wars are playbooks in action. Two I witnessed being being born were Net Neutrality and Muni Broadband. Both were technical debates (in response to ISP practices) for well over a decade. Eventually, those issues started to get some traction. All over the US, parroted talking points and lobbyist-written legislation suddenly appeared from the recipients of ISP campaign funds.
heraldgeezer 2y ago
[flagged]
- dakiol 2y ago
  I have to agree. If I have to decide between no covid + RTO vs covid + WFH, well, the second is it.
- WarOnPrivacy 2y ago
  Covid mostly rearranged our lives was for the better. We were just exiting a decade of hunger-level poverty and the pandemic helped further along our escape. It was really nice to not be devastated for once. Then the housing crisis hit and our long-time rental was sold. We landed okay but only because we beat extremely long odds. Presently, this is the stability my kids have ever known; it's the most stable I've been since the early 1980s.
- gtvwill 2y ago
  Not sure why your down voted. Your just telling it for how it is. Covid rocked for wfh. Those of us that wanted it but never had it could.
koliber 2y ago
The argument for coming back to the office is flimsy. It’s framed as fairness but in reality it is not about that. Different jobs have different downsides and different perks. She claims that because sanitation workers can’t work from home neither should anyone else. Why not take away chairs for some more added fairness?
- jvickers 2y ago
  Or even those who work in sewers spend much of their time covered in sewage, so it's fair that everyone else does too.
  - frumper 2y ago
    Daily sewage showers for equality. There is a good platform to run on. /s
throwaway984393 2y ago
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kelnos 2y ago
God this is disgusting. The mayor is making thousands of city employees' lives worse because... > Parker has also made clear she wants the city’s return-to-office plan to be a model for private-sector employers, part of her effort to make a more economically vibrant Philadelphia. Ah, yes, got it. The commercial real estate sector has been losing money, and those constituents are more important to her than the people who actually work for the city. I get the pressure to "revitalize downtowns", but this is not the way to do it. > Mayor Parker has cited the many thousands of city employees — sanitation workers, social workers, the water department — who never had the ability to work from home. Ah, yes, got that too. Some people's jobs unfortunately can't be done from home, so instead we should make everyone suffer, instead of trying to find ways to make work hours/arrangements better and more flexible for the workers who have to do their jobs on-site. Hell, at the very least you can take some of the money you're saving on office space and pay on-site-required workers more for their trouble.
xg15 2y ago
> In Philadelphia, city officials acknowledged the return-to-office decision wasn't driven by concerns about productivity. Rather, it was in pursuit of what they called a leadership philosophy. If there is a silver lining then how the prevailing reasons for mandatory office work are increasingly revealed to be bullshit, forcing higher-ups to admit that this hasn't anything to do with productivity.
hosh 2y ago
In other news: "NPR: A lot of offices are still empty — and it's becoming a major risk for the economy" (2023) https://www.npr.org/2023/05/16/1174938708/commercial-real-estate-property-offices-work-from-home-remote-work https://www.npr.org/2023/05/16/1174938708/commercial-real-es...
aronhegedus 2y ago
TLDR: I think there should be a compromise between strict 9-5 schedule, and “WFH 100%, do whatever” I don’t have any experience of being a parent but here’s my 2 cents on WFH in cases where you’re basically in front of a laptop for work: I think it sucks that big offices are in these huge cities centrally where the only reason people live there is for the work, it becomes a bit of a loop at times, you could have the company a bit more on the edge of a large city. I DO prefer when people are all in office. It’s much easier to have small work conversations without the hassle of calling them up. I think there’s a happy medium where you have 1-2 hours flexibility in start/end times of when you work to allow parents to pick up kids etc. especially where there’s adequate work that you can do by yourself If a team has say 2 days WFH policy, I think it’s best if it’s always the same days, otherwise you just have the same problems as before I think software engineers are WAY WAY WAYYYY too picky and delicate about their work environment and how meetings are scheduled. For example, “if we have standup at 11am I won’t be able to have a block of uninterrupted work time”, as if software engineering required you to constantly be in an elevated state of consciousness and clarity that a 15 minute block of talking about work would destroy… so I think teams should just change regular meetings around when best suits people with the weird schedules. Covid to me proved that people WFH does work, I would see a company that required 5 days in office for a software engineering job in a different light. I agree with the article that you can’t put toothpaste back in the bottle. We know that hybrid doesn’t tank productivity If I have coworkers that are parents/have to look after relatives then I don’t mind if they work until 3, log off until 6, come back on for a few hours etc. I look at allowing that as a very positive thing in a company. I’m going to be starting a job soon that’s remote, but I still plan on travelling (across EU) to the main office at some point because it definitely makes a difference if you’ve hung out with your co-workers in real life vs on slack and meetings where everyone’s camera is off. This is my opinion. My preferences are my own and they’re not everyone’s cup of tea. Just my opinion in a comments section :)
- Fire-Dragon-DoL 2y ago
  One note, the 15 minutes blocks are work killers. I'm assuming it depends on the person, but I'm currently working to reorganize my calendar so that I have big 2 hours chunks of work. one hour + interruption doesn't work, been discussing this with my manager and pm for a while (i'm a team lead, so i have plenty meetings, but i also code)
kkfx 2y ago
It's simply about time telling those who ask for sacrifice, FOR THEM, that they can sacrifice themselves if they like, but others do not want sacrifice for nothing in return. It's about time to ORGANIZE heading to MANDATE for human, social and economical reasons, WFH for all eligible jobs, because it's a needed evolutionary step for the humanity to DE-URBANIZE, because that's what we need to implement the Green New Deal and keep evolving, or ultimately stay alive. Many humans need to be slaves, they can't self-regulate, and rulers like them and like to impose the same scheme for all, it's about time to take an evolutionary step, been able to be a spread population to be resilient, in comfort, able to face change and evolve. Cities have only a future: being ghetto's for poor, and such arrangement can't keep up for long.
Fire-Dragon-DoL 2y ago
As a dad, wfh has been a blessing. Contrary to common sense, I'd rather have a 3 bedroom condo in a city than a big house out of the city, as long as the city is well equipped for the children (schools, playgrounds, indoor playgrounds, sports/activities). Even if I'm working, having them around all the time fills me with joy, which makes me more productive. And I can hug them during meetings or I can save them from scary stuff, or prepare them a snack while I make my own snack
GoodJokes 2y ago
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Ronaldjason 2y ago
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78 points by rntn 2y ago

It was basically impossible to get environmental reviews done during the work-from-home years. Agency review timelines are still extended by months...

linotype 2y ago
I can almost guarantee this is about commercial real estate taxes more than productivity. If agency review is months behind, they need to hire more people, not force their existing employees to lose hours a day to commuting.
- vinyl7 2y ago
  A city I know of mandated that the largest employer institute return-to-office or lose their tax breaks due to the impact it would have on the local economy of the city.
- cracrecry 2y ago
  >I can almost guarantee this is about commercial real estate taxes more than productivity. As simple as that. I was looking at the numbers of one of our partners that has gone bankrupt in Europe. He made the brilliant decision to invest everything in Office space just before Covid. They expected to recover money after Covid, but it is not happening. A lot of big guys invested there, specially politicians, and of course expensive taxes. They will do everything they can to delay the sinking.
- Terr_ 2y ago
  A fun little thought-experiment to inject into these debates is to analyze commute-hours and fuel costs as if they were-wages/expenses that the employer had to pay for. When corporate RTO-advocates are faced with paying the costs themselves instead of pushing it all onto employees, suddenly it becomes "impractically expensive" and "wasteful". Hey guys, commutes were always costly and (sometimes) wasteful, if you've finally realized that you can at least stop demanding employees undertake it for dumb reasons.
  - Terr_ 2y ago
    P.S.: To give a napkin-math example to show that it lands in the right order of magnitude... Suppose Joe Exampleson has a 30 mile round-trip, taking 1 hour because company "core hours" match when congestion occurs. His car manages 30 miles per gallon and gas is $5/gallon, and we assume other car-costs are things he'd bear anyway even without the job. He normally earns ~$30/hr while working but here he has to act as a driver. That's ~14.6% of his pre-tax income, or $8,750/year. _______ Now, I know somebody will think: "That's too high because his real job is harder or more important and driving is easy, plus he can enjoy listening to the radio or whatever." Those observations aren't wrong, but it risks a certain kind of... economic hypocrisy. Why would those aspects matter now but not for Joe's regular pay? It is safe to assume Joe's employer does not pay him based on how difficult or painful his job is, or even how important it is for the work to occur! No, they're paying based on the marginal cost of replacing him with somebody else.
    - Fire-Dragon-DoL 2y ago
      It's also possible Joe didn't want a car... I know in the US is unlikely, but there are countries where you don't need a car
      - linotype 2y ago
        There are plenty of cities in the US that don’t require owning a car either.
- space_crab 2y ago
  I think the RTO policy is in part influenced by economic recovery research funded by the city [0]. My own conjecture is that it’s also influenced by SEPTA (regional transit) ridership recovery being a sticking point for funding from the state. [0] https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/issue-briefs/2022/02/4-possible-scenarios-for-philadelphias-economy https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/issue-bri...

office_drone 2y ago

With all the talk of the impending fertility crisis, I very much believe that WFH helps significantly. 1) It makes parenting easier by letting the parent be more present. 2) It allows parents to buy houses with more bedrooms and more greenspace further from expensive cities. 3) It allows workers to stay in one location for a long time, helping form community. And it's low-carbon to boot.

skhunted 2y ago
Buying larger houses further spread out decreases population density. This is not low-carbon to boot.
- travisb 2y ago
  There isn't a clear cut answer to this. Lower population density does not necessarily equate to higher carbon footprint, especially when commuting downtown for work has been eliminated. Above a certain point density has diseconomies of scale of its own. For example, if you are comparing, say, a three bedroom house in a large metropolitan area versus a four bedroom house in a small town, the reduced total driving time because driving distances are less in the small town (everything is in town, but town is tiny) can make up for a lot of efficiencies of scale. The common argument is that we should put people into apartments instead, but that isn't always a clear total system win. For example if somebody is really into fishing letting them live near a lake with space to store their own boat will be more carbon efficient than stuffing them into an apartment where every weekend they drive to the storage place on the outskirts of town to pick their boat up, then drive three hours or so to the lake.
  - skhunted 2y ago
    Having houses spread out and lowering population density is bad for environment. More roads need to be built, more infrastructure needs to be built, etc. We consume too much. America is not in danger of having too much population density. We are too spread out as it is.

ToucanLoucan 2y ago

> Mayor Parker has cited the many thousands of city employees — sanitation workers, social workers, the water department — who never had the ability to work from home. Of all of the flimsy, illogical and back-ass-wards excuses I've heard for returning to offices, this might be the flimsiest, most illogical, and most profound 180 from asswards I have heard. Of course some classifications of workers can't work from home. One cannot remotely pick up garbage, or service sewers from the comfort of their own sofa. What on earth does that have to do with all the kinds of workers who can? This will impact public institutions the same way it has been private ones. Those with options, the best workers, will leave, likely in droves, because they have seen what is possible and are no longer prepared to settle for what is expedient. The brain-drain is going to get quite real quite soon. Work from home is a boon to everyone in our society except commercial real estate investors and pushy middle-managers, it just is, whether you as a leader choose to recognize the benefits you reap from it or not, you are reaping them. Productivity goes up, carbon emissions go down, morale goes up, people have an easier time just... living in our modern world with a flexible schedule, saving money on eating out less, saving money on buying less gas and running cars into the ground much slower, on, and on, and on. This is a rare instance where basically everyone wins and paradoxically, that seems to be driving the leadership of some places even more insane. They just can not fucking deal with seeing their workers lives improve. It's hard to not reach for my tinfoil hat to explain this. I cannot fathom what the issue is, beyond the fact that workers are less stressed, less busy, and therefore consuming less... everything. Wasting less food, using less gas, buying fewer cars, etc. and like, I don't really think there's a shadowy room somewhere where the owner of the local gas stations is slamming his fist on the table about his sales being down, and the mayor promising to get people back to their commutes soon, but like... it's hard to see it as anything else than a deliberate middle finger to every WFH worker. "Yeah we know this works better for you and a ton of other people, but the downtown businesses are making less money and we can't have that. Go drive 90 minutes every day."

toomuchtodo 2y ago
If you can't beat 'em, interview elsewhere and flee low quality, malevolent employers. Mayor Parker controls her employees without caring about their wellbeing, and frankly, they have options. Unemployment is low, interest rate cuts are coming (which is going to fire the economy back up), and the federal government is always hiring remote [1]. Mayor Adams in NYC had to learn this the hard way as well [2] [3] [4]. These people always need to learn the hard way, because they're used to being in control, and no one gives up control willingly. "I'm the boss" mental model. "What Can NYC Do The City should take steps to modernize its hiring and retention practices, by implementing recommendations in the Comptroller’s office’s Title Vacant and the 5BORO Institute’s Solving the Staffing Crisis. Both of those reports recommend expediting hiring, allowing hybrid work for appropriate positions, reconsidering compensation levels for key hard-to-recruit slots, and designating Chief Talent/Recruitment/Retention Officer(s) to drive this work. In the recently-announced tentative agreement between the NYC Office of Labor Relations and DC 37 (the City’s largest municipal labor union), the parties agreed to establish a “Flexible Work Committee” to discuss options to provider greater flexibility and enhance employee morale, including remote work, compressed and flexible work schedules, and improve transit benefits. The parties’ goal is to begin a pilot program that includes remote work no later than June 1, 2023." [2] Note the union support in NYC; Philly's union is trying to fight Parker on the return to office mandate, but that will take time. Faster to bounce from the city for individual optimization. [1] https://www.usajobs.gov/search/results/?rmi=true https://www.usajobs.gov/search/results/?rmi=true [2] https://comptroller.nyc.gov/reports/understaffed-underserved/ https://comptroller.nyc.gov/reports/understaffed-underserved... [3] https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/06/nyregion/nyc-workers-hiring-vacancies.html https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/06/nyregion/nyc-workers-hiri... [4] https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/13/nyregion/labor-shortage-nyc-jobs.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/13/nyregion/labor-shortage-n...

mrgoldenbrown 2y ago

>Mayor Parker has cited the many thousands of city employees — sanitation workers, social workers, the water department — who never had the ability to work from home. Parkers goal is to make happy workers miserable instead of making miserable workers happy. That's cruel. Why not use the $$$ spent on RTO and use it provide daycare or other services to improve the life of the folks who do work in the field?

HideousKojima 2y ago
This is what "equity" looks like in practice. Actually lifting up the miserable is a lot harder than simply cutting down the happy, so that's what's done.
micromacrofoot 2y ago
seriously, this is yet another case of "the beatings will continue until morale improves"
hosh 2y ago
I was talking to a shuttle driver the other day. She can't stand working for the post office because she doesn't like being alone. I prefer it. We both agree that different people have different ways they prefer to work. Seems to me, having a variety is sensible, and ultimately, makes for a more resilient economy. This "leadership philosophy" framed around equality (that not everyone can be in remote jobs) seems bunk to me. Also, there's is an increasing exposure for commercial real estate. Cities that have given corporations a tax break for having offices, are either leaving, or trying to mandate return-to-office for employees because they can't get out of those leases. People who don't come into the office are also not spending money on the various service businesses catering to office workers. A collapse of the commercial real estate in a city may well affect the residential markets as well. I think the mayor of Philadelphia is trying to head off a collapse for Philly. She can't say to the public, "we are in deep trouble because no one is coming into the office anymore, so that is why you have to come back". It remains to be seen whether that will have the intended effect on protecting the city from a commercial real estate market collapse, and whether that is worth sacrificing the longer-term quality-of-life benefits that remote work brings for the people who prefers it.

otter-in-a-suit 2y ago

> Parker has also made clear she wants the city’s return-to-office plan to be a model for private-sector employers, part of her effort to make a more economically vibrant Philadelphia. At least they're being honest (as honest as a politician can be, I suppose) about what this is really about - a stimulus package for downtown businesses and landlords. For an additional layer of irony, apparently she said during her campaign, quote "I'm uniquely prepared to make the city the safest, cleanest, greenest big city in the nation with access to economic opportunity for all". I fail to see how forcing people to commute (public transport or not) achieves anything but the opposite, but perhaps I just don't see the genius in that.

RestlessMind 2y ago
"Greenest" should be fairly obvious, no? Dense cities have the lowest carbon footprint per capita. See the chart in this article: https://www.brookings.edu/articles/its-not-just-cities-suburbs-and-exurbs-need-to-adopt-and-implement-climate-plans-too/ https://www.brookings.edu/articles/its-not-just-cities-subur... And while commuting might account for some fraction of the added footprint, larger houses mean more heating/cooling and larger sprawl means someone is driving to deliver daily essentials (grocery, gas, medicines, teaching, cleaners etc).
- tivert 2y ago
  > "Greenest" should be fairly obvious, no? Dense cities have the lowest carbon footprint per capita. Who cares? In the real world, the sprawl already exists. Forcing RTO re-introduces commuting that had been eliminated; it's not green at all.
chucksta 2y ago
They also need to keep the cities wage tax up its a huge source of income for Philly https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/10-cities-with-the-highest-tax-rates https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/10-cities-with-the-highest-t... (Its #2)

JSDevOps 2y ago

Said it time and time again. Why is there a culture war over this? Why is there even a debate? The servers we use daily are managed by people miles away, and the world keeps turning 24/7. If you want to fish for a living, work on a boat where the fish are. If you work in HR and Marketing and use the internet, take advantage of collaborative tools and work wherever you want.

ToucanLoucan 2y ago
> Why is there a culture war over this? There's significantly less culture war over this, at least, I haven't noticed much of it and I enjoy keeping up on what the culture warriors are mad about at the current moment. This is strictly a war between the wealthy/aspirationally wealthy, and literally everyone else. One group is seeing the value of their held real estate in offices cratering in the near future as it's been thoroughly demonstrated that having physical offices is a massive cost center with very little to show for itself in terms of business benefits. And the other is all the business-parasite types who no longer have a small group of folks they can lord over in the office and flex their authority upon, and who's "skill" (if you want to be generous and call it one) is best described as "politics" which largely translates to inserting themselves in the projects of others and taking credit for them. And that's harder outside of an office. Literally everyone else loves work from home and would prefer to work from home.
rs999gti 2y ago
> Why is there a culture war over this? Not a culture war. WFH for some orgs was never official, it was always temporary until COVID was over. So unless there is a WFH policy in writing at your org, always assume RTO was inevitable.
WarOnPrivacy 2y ago
> Why is there a culture war over this? Generated wars are playbooks in action. Two I witnessed being being born were Net Neutrality and Muni Broadband. Both were technical debates (in response to ISP practices) for well over a decade. Eventually, those issues started to get some traction. All over the US, parroted talking points and lobbyist-written legislation suddenly appeared from the recipients of ISP campaign funds.

heraldgeezer 2y ago

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dakiol 2y ago
I have to agree. If I have to decide between no covid + RTO vs covid + WFH, well, the second is it.
WarOnPrivacy 2y ago
Covid mostly rearranged our lives was for the better. We were just exiting a decade of hunger-level poverty and the pandemic helped further along our escape. It was really nice to not be devastated for once. Then the housing crisis hit and our long-time rental was sold. We landed okay but only because we beat extremely long odds. Presently, this is the stability my kids have ever known; it's the most stable I've been since the early 1980s.
gtvwill 2y ago
Not sure why your down voted. Your just telling it for how it is. Covid rocked for wfh. Those of us that wanted it but never had it could.

koliber 2y ago

The argument for coming back to the office is flimsy. It’s framed as fairness but in reality it is not about that. Different jobs have different downsides and different perks. She claims that because sanitation workers can’t work from home neither should anyone else. Why not take away chairs for some more added fairness?

jvickers 2y ago
Or even those who work in sewers spend much of their time covered in sewage, so it's fair that everyone else does too.
- frumper 2y ago
  Daily sewage showers for equality. There is a good platform to run on. /s

throwaway984393 2y ago

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kelnos 2y ago

God this is disgusting. The mayor is making thousands of city employees' lives worse because... > Parker has also made clear she wants the city’s return-to-office plan to be a model for private-sector employers, part of her effort to make a more economically vibrant Philadelphia. Ah, yes, got it. The commercial real estate sector has been losing money, and those constituents are more important to her than the people who actually work for the city. I get the pressure to "revitalize downtowns", but this is not the way to do it. > Mayor Parker has cited the many thousands of city employees — sanitation workers, social workers, the water department — who never had the ability to work from home. Ah, yes, got that too. Some people's jobs unfortunately can't be done from home, so instead we should make everyone suffer, instead of trying to find ways to make work hours/arrangements better and more flexible for the workers who have to do their jobs on-site. Hell, at the very least you can take some of the money you're saving on office space and pay on-site-required workers more for their trouble.

xg15 2y ago

> In Philadelphia, city officials acknowledged the return-to-office decision wasn't driven by concerns about productivity. Rather, it was in pursuit of what they called a leadership philosophy. If there is a silver lining then how the prevailing reasons for mandatory office work are increasingly revealed to be bullshit, forcing higher-ups to admit that this hasn't anything to do with productivity.

hosh 2y ago

In other news: "NPR: A lot of offices are still empty — and it's becoming a major risk for the economy" (2023) https://www.npr.org/2023/05/16/1174938708/commercial-real-estate-property-offices-work-from-home-remote-work https://www.npr.org/2023/05/16/1174938708/commercial-real-es...

aronhegedus 2y ago

TLDR: I think there should be a compromise between strict 9-5 schedule, and “WFH 100%, do whatever” I don’t have any experience of being a parent but here’s my 2 cents on WFH in cases where you’re basically in front of a laptop for work: I think it sucks that big offices are in these huge cities centrally where the only reason people live there is for the work, it becomes a bit of a loop at times, you could have the company a bit more on the edge of a large city. I DO prefer when people are all in office. It’s much easier to have small work conversations without the hassle of calling them up. I think there’s a happy medium where you have 1-2 hours flexibility in start/end times of when you work to allow parents to pick up kids etc. especially where there’s adequate work that you can do by yourself If a team has say 2 days WFH policy, I think it’s best if it’s always the same days, otherwise you just have the same problems as before I think software engineers are WAY WAY WAYYYY too picky and delicate about their work environment and how meetings are scheduled. For example, “if we have standup at 11am I won’t be able to have a block of uninterrupted work time”, as if software engineering required you to constantly be in an elevated state of consciousness and clarity that a 15 minute block of talking about work would destroy… so I think teams should just change regular meetings around when best suits people with the weird schedules. Covid to me proved that people WFH does work, I would see a company that required 5 days in office for a software engineering job in a different light. I agree with the article that you can’t put toothpaste back in the bottle. We know that hybrid doesn’t tank productivity If I have coworkers that are parents/have to look after relatives then I don’t mind if they work until 3, log off until 6, come back on for a few hours etc. I look at allowing that as a very positive thing in a company. I’m going to be starting a job soon that’s remote, but I still plan on travelling (across EU) to the main office at some point because it definitely makes a difference if you’ve hung out with your co-workers in real life vs on slack and meetings where everyone’s camera is off. This is my opinion. My preferences are my own and they’re not everyone’s cup of tea. Just my opinion in a comments section :)

Fire-Dragon-DoL 2y ago
One note, the 15 minutes blocks are work killers. I'm assuming it depends on the person, but I'm currently working to reorganize my calendar so that I have big 2 hours chunks of work. one hour + interruption doesn't work, been discussing this with my manager and pm for a while (i'm a team lead, so i have plenty meetings, but i also code)

kkfx 2y ago

It's simply about time telling those who ask for sacrifice, FOR THEM, that they can sacrifice themselves if they like, but others do not want sacrifice for nothing in return. It's about time to ORGANIZE heading to MANDATE for human, social and economical reasons, WFH for all eligible jobs, because it's a needed evolutionary step for the humanity to DE-URBANIZE, because that's what we need to implement the Green New Deal and keep evolving, or ultimately stay alive. Many humans need to be slaves, they can't self-regulate, and rulers like them and like to impose the same scheme for all, it's about time to take an evolutionary step, been able to be a spread population to be resilient, in comfort, able to face change and evolve. Cities have only a future: being ghetto's for poor, and such arrangement can't keep up for long.

Fire-Dragon-DoL 2y ago

As a dad, wfh has been a blessing. Contrary to common sense, I'd rather have a 3 bedroom condo in a city than a big house out of the city, as long as the city is well equipped for the children (schools, playgrounds, indoor playgrounds, sports/activities). Even if I'm working, having them around all the time fills me with joy, which makes me more productive. And I can hug them during meetings or I can save them from scary stuff, or prepare them a snack while I make my own snack

GoodJokes 2y ago

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Ronaldjason 2y ago

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