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I hope this is generational thing. The traffic and travel is really unnecessary for most knowledge work. I don't care about the productivity conversation, it's

I hope this is generational thing. The traffic and travel is really unnecessary for most knowledge work. I don't care about the productivity conversation, it's just logistically dumb and if there's a cost in making fewer widgets for getting rid of traffic than so be it. Dangerous, expensive, time and space consuming... It's a huge collective toll on society that robs us of quality of life and many thousands of hours. We just shouldn't be doing it in the same way we don't toss the contents of chamber pots into the street anymore. Let's embrace the modern era. Mandating daily travel unless it's genuinely needed to do the job is really unjustifiable.

coldtea 2y ago
>I don't care about the productivity conversation, it's just logistically dumb and if there's a cost in making fewer widgets for getting rid of traffic than so be it. Exactly. The companies should stop ignoring the cost of commuting to society, the environment, and personal (from work-life balance, to family) just because they don't get to pay for it.
- neofrommatrix 2y ago
  You see, optimizing the three factors you mentioned does not increase shareholder value. They don’t care about society, the environment or work-life balance.
  - coldtea 2y ago
    I'd say the whole modern system of "shareholder value" should be the first to go...
    - munksbeer 2y ago
      I hope not. I owned a lot of shares in companies and it will fund my retirement (same as it will fund almost everyone's retirement).
  - kristopolous 2y ago
    The employee's welfare shouldn't exist at the employer's discretion. That's the conceit of feudalism and we've supposedly left that behind us.
- dragonwriter 2y ago
  > The companies should stop ignoring the cost of commuting to society, the environment, and personal (from work-life balance, to family) just because they don’t get to pay for it. Why would a profit-maximizing firm not ignore externalities it creates? The solution is that they should pay for them; the personal ones they do as long as there is competition for employees, but the social/environmental ones need to be internalized via Pigovian taxation.
- exe34 2y ago
  it might be the way to transition towards a remote first economy - make them pay for the time and cost of travel within a certain distance, and if they prefer, they can instead fund the difference in housing cost to help you live closer to the office. employers pay stuff like national insurance or health insurance, depending on where you are - this would just be a "commuting allowance" for jobs that really require it.
intended 2y ago
The evidence is that work from home is more economical for firms. I see a study from Stanford (by Nicholas Bloom) that gets trotted to show lowered productivity due to WFH. However, on the narrower issue of Hybrid, Bloom’s work doesn’t find any productivity loss, https://news.stanford.edu/stories/2024/06/hybrid-work-is-a-win-win-win-for-companies-workers https://news.stanford.edu/stories/2024/06/hybrid-work-is-a-w... Other studies show productivity losses from remote work, ranging from 4% to 18%. Yet another study shows that commute time saved finds it way back to employers, resulting in increased productivity, or stable productivity. However, firms which can manage WFH, based on current data, should have an economic advantage. I could be wrong, and I will change my views if so. Edit: Sources NY FED: finds a 4% reduction. Adverse selection accounted for 2/3rd of the observed effect. https://www.newyorkfed.org/medialibrary/media/research/staff_reports/sr1061.pdf?sc_lang=en https://www.newyorkfed.org/medialibrary/media/research/staff... Time savings: https://bfi.uchicago.edu/insight/research-summary/time-savings-when-working-from-home/ https://bfi.uchicago.edu/insight/research-summary/time-savin... —— 2c - I sincerely doubt most people who are in the workforce have ever handled a 40 person raid. People are going to be better at remote work, the more you work in such an environment. So I suspect efficiency gains are lower than what they will be.
- technofiend 2y ago
  >I sincerely doubt most people who are in the workforce have ever handled a 40 person raid. Managing 25+ people across multiple time zones ends up overlapping quite a bit with raids! Particularly the need to stay calm when things inevitably wobble a bit, dispute resolution, clear, concise and often repeated communication as well as a mental model of what everyone else understands about the situation and being able to quickly deduce what they don't understand and correct it. I'm not refuting what you said; I'm agreeing with your implication they'd benefit from the experience.
arcmechanica 2y ago
It's about shifting the tax burden onto employees

coldtea 2y ago

>I don't care about the productivity conversation, it's just logistically dumb and if there's a cost in making fewer widgets for getting rid of traffic than so be it. Exactly. The companies should stop ignoring the cost of commuting to society, the environment, and personal (from work-life balance, to family) just because they don't get to pay for it.

neofrommatrix 2y ago
You see, optimizing the three factors you mentioned does not increase shareholder value. They don’t care about society, the environment or work-life balance.
- coldtea 2y ago
  I'd say the whole modern system of "shareholder value" should be the first to go...
  - munksbeer 2y ago
    I hope not. I owned a lot of shares in companies and it will fund my retirement (same as it will fund almost everyone's retirement).
- kristopolous 2y ago
  The employee's welfare shouldn't exist at the employer's discretion. That's the conceit of feudalism and we've supposedly left that behind us.
dragonwriter 2y ago
> The companies should stop ignoring the cost of commuting to society, the environment, and personal (from work-life balance, to family) just because they don’t get to pay for it. Why would a profit-maximizing firm not ignore externalities it creates? The solution is that they should pay for them; the personal ones they do as long as there is competition for employees, but the social/environmental ones need to be internalized via Pigovian taxation.
exe34 2y ago
it might be the way to transition towards a remote first economy - make them pay for the time and cost of travel within a certain distance, and if they prefer, they can instead fund the difference in housing cost to help you live closer to the office. employers pay stuff like national insurance or health insurance, depending on where you are - this would just be a "commuting allowance" for jobs that really require it.

intended 2y ago

The evidence is that work from home is more economical for firms. I see a study from Stanford (by Nicholas Bloom) that gets trotted to show lowered productivity due to WFH. However, on the narrower issue of Hybrid, Bloom’s work doesn’t find any productivity loss, https://news.stanford.edu/stories/2024/06/hybrid-work-is-a-win-win-win-for-companies-workers https://news.stanford.edu/stories/2024/06/hybrid-work-is-a-w... Other studies show productivity losses from remote work, ranging from 4% to 18%. Yet another study shows that commute time saved finds it way back to employers, resulting in increased productivity, or stable productivity. However, firms which can manage WFH, based on current data, should have an economic advantage. I could be wrong, and I will change my views if so. Edit: Sources NY FED: finds a 4% reduction. Adverse selection accounted for 2/3rd of the observed effect. https://www.newyorkfed.org/medialibrary/media/research/staff_reports/sr1061.pdf?sc_lang=en https://www.newyorkfed.org/medialibrary/media/research/staff... Time savings: https://bfi.uchicago.edu/insight/research-summary/time-savings-when-working-from-home/ https://bfi.uchicago.edu/insight/research-summary/time-savin... —— 2c - I sincerely doubt most people who are in the workforce have ever handled a 40 person raid. People are going to be better at remote work, the more you work in such an environment. So I suspect efficiency gains are lower than what they will be.

technofiend 2y ago
>I sincerely doubt most people who are in the workforce have ever handled a 40 person raid. Managing 25+ people across multiple time zones ends up overlapping quite a bit with raids! Particularly the need to stay calm when things inevitably wobble a bit, dispute resolution, clear, concise and often repeated communication as well as a mental model of what everyone else understands about the situation and being able to quickly deduce what they don't understand and correct it. I'm not refuting what you said; I'm agreeing with your implication they'd benefit from the experience.

arcmechanica 2y ago

It's about shifting the tax burden onto employees