[HN Gopher] How many jobs can be done at home? [pdf]
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How many jobs can be done at home? [pdf]
Author : erentz
Score : 131 points
Date : 2020-04-01 17:04 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (bfi.uchicago.edu)
(TXT) w3m dump (bfi.uchicago.edu)
| brenden2 wrote:
| Keep in mind that those "work from home" jobs depend on people in
| China labouring away to produce your cheap computer hardware.
| Noumenon72 wrote:
| Wow, that's scary. I expect these disruptions to continue for
| eighteen months. If a developer can't get a replacement
| computer, what good is our home office then?
| brenden2 wrote:
| Let's hope it never comes to that.
| kempbellt wrote:
| I'd argue that a large majority of people who have "work from
| home" computer jobs either already have a computer that they
| can use for work, or their employer does. Or it can be
| purchased from already existing inventory (used or new).
|
| Also, a computer purchase for an employee isn't usually a
| frequent occurrence. Maybe once during hire, and once a year to
| stay up to date (if that).
|
| Computer manufacturers can probably take a break for a couple
| of months and the tech industry will survive.
| brenden2 wrote:
| It's naive to think the whole world can just "work from home"
| indefinitely. Everything's interconnected, and the vast
| majority of jobs are still jobs that can't be done without
| humans labouring in meatspace. If you want to pretend the US
| is some magic island that doesn't depend on China, go for it.
| ars wrote:
| If you look at these images:
| https://www.google.com/search?q=piecework%20from%20home&tbm=...
|
| You will see there is a lot more than can be done from home than
| people realize. Obviously it doesn't all translate over, there's
| a lot more machinery now.
|
| But if people _had_ to work from home, people would get creative
| and there 's more that could be done.
| motohagiography wrote:
| Head mounted displays that were immersive as a motorcycle helmet
| with headphones could suddenly move from being a luxury product
| to a substitute for a private space for an office in apartments
| with families.
|
| If I were in the business, I'd be re-marketing HMDs as a work
| from home privacy solution. What makes something mass market is
| it serves people and solves a problem for them, not something
| that's just entertaining.
|
| Edit: and someone's already there:
| https://www.techradar.com/news/the-cheapest-active-vr-headse...
| Ancalagon wrote:
| I'm a little confused by their definition of "jobs" here. Is this
| the absolute number of jobs? Or the types of jobs available?
| Looking at the article, they use wages to get a more firm grasp
| on this (saying something like 44% of wages could be made from
| home). If that's the case, what does that statistic say for the
| unemployment rate in the US, should social-distancing remain long
| term? Are we going to see >50% unemployment??
| bdcravens wrote:
| A large number of the remaining 56% are classified as
| "essential": grocery and certain retail, public servants and
| first responders, healthcare, education, automotive services,
| etc. In Houston, for example, many of the energy sector jobs
| are classified as essential. Stay at home orders don't impact
| those jobs (though many of them may be operating at partial
| capacity)
| jbullock35 wrote:
| > A large number of the remaining 56% are classified as
| "essential": grocery and certain retail, public servants and
| first responders, healthcare, education [...]
|
| The authors already code 82% of teachers as able to work from
| home, albeit with difficulty. See the second footnote in the
| paper.
| Noos wrote:
| That's not just working from home if so, that's reassigning
| an industry from face to face to virtual, and if history is
| any guide a lot of teachers may lose their jobs as well as
| secondary jobs becoming lost too. Sort of a pyrrhic
| victory.
| blendo wrote:
| I was also unclear about whether they mean "How many workers in
| the US could work from home", or whether "How many job
| categories can work from home".
|
| But they state "To answer these questions, we classify the
| feasibility of working at home for all occupations and merge
| this classi cation with occupational employment counts for the
| United States."
|
| So it looks like they're counting number of workers.
| somethoughts wrote:
| All remote work is not created equal. I think an aspect of remote
| work being a more seamless/smoother transition is for the
| distributed team to be in the same time zone or have less than 1
| hour time difference. At my current company, we have conference
| calls between SF-Portland without much change in work/life. We
| evan have virtual lunches together.
|
| I recall having to do SF-Asia and even SF-Dallas and SF-Europe
| calls in my previous job and I was burnt out real quick. Just
| trying to plan a meeting that wasn't already a recurring
| scheduled meeting took about 2 days.
|
| [EDIT] Based on the initial responses I changed it from the same
| time zone being a _key_ aspect to an aspect which makes the
| transition seamless /smoother.
| rhodysurf wrote:
| I work with colleagues in Hawaii all the time, and my office is
| on the east coast. There are days when it really clicks and
| Hawaii folks can pickup right where I left off when I go home
| and the company gets like a 14 hour work day. But for sure
| there are other days when I need something from someone that
| hasn't waken up yet, let alone gotten into the office. Every
| situation can work with patience and communication.
| blakesterz wrote:
| I don't think we've had too much trouble here. The people I
| work closest with are in Pacific, Central and Atlantic*
| timezones. I'm in Eastern.
|
| Dealing with Asia and Europe on a regular basis could be
| challenging. I'm glad I don't need to do that much.
|
| * Atlantic is the one waaaay out on the East Coast of Canada.
| dictum wrote:
| > I think a key aspect of remote work being successful is for
| the distributed team to be in the same time zone or have less
| than 1 hour time difference
|
| I think the exact time difference doesn't matter so much as
| everyone can be _at work_ simultaneously at least 70 /80% of
| the time.
| codingdave wrote:
| How would being in an office change that? The time zone
| differences are a real factor in any global company, regardless
| of whether you are sitting in an office or in your home.
| pedrosorio wrote:
| SF-NY works fine
| closeparen wrote:
| SF-GRU also works really well as a cost of living arbitrage
| where the time difference doesn't hurt too much.
| somethoughts wrote:
| Agreed - SF-NY can work and many companies are doing it. Its
| more if a CEO/founder is finding sites for a second remote
| office from scratch all things being equal, SF-
| Seattle/Portland/LA or even SF-Reno/Sacramento/Santa Cruz/San
| Diego/Phoenix (if more cost of living arbitrage is desired)
| will be easier than SF/NY.
|
| - Impromptu virtual meetings do not need an additional 1-3
| hour buffer at the beginning/end of the day to avoid
| disrupting the majority of people's daily work patterns.
|
| - In person visits can likely be done by driving versus
| flying. An if flying - a day trip can suffice.
|
| - No timezone/jetlag from a coast-coast red eye.
| teunispeters wrote:
| I work across 12+ hour time differentials quite often. The real
| keys are independence, trust and working on projects where
| touching bases weekly or so makes sense - and otherwise
| operating over email.
|
| (that last is the biggest key really). I'm a software developer
| and the teams mostly coordinate over code feedback and ticket
| requests anyway.
| somethoughts wrote:
| Yes I can definitely see it working super seamlessly for
| something like GitHub/Gitlabs and other tools that are for SW
| developers built by SW developers.
|
| I feel like for stuff with UX or stuff that requires
| significant collaboration that can't be done via git
| comments, someone needs to take the hit to be up at odd hours
| for real-time discussion meetings via Zoom/Skype or make
| other such work-style adaptations.
| sgift wrote:
| I'm not sure it really is a key aspect, maybe it is a risk.
| With such a small time difference you can continue - for the
| most part - as you did before. But there's always the question
| if what you did before was really a good idea or just "we
| always did it that way", e.g. many conference calls probably
| could (and should?) be replaced by written text, which isn't as
| ephemeral and can be worked on asynchronously.
|
| That is a change at first, but not more of a change than going
| from a very small company, where everyone talks to everyone and
| maybe even sits in the same office, to a bigger one where you
| have to establish processes to ensure information still reaches
| everyone in the company (if it needs to).
| [deleted]
| somethoughts wrote:
| Agreed! Its not a key aspect, its just an aspect which makes
| the transition more seamless/smoother. Made a brief update to
| my initial comment. For people can for sure adapt to remote
| work across various timezones.
| sabujp wrote:
| I'll gladly WFH if the kids weren't here!
| k__ wrote:
| I had the idea of an remote apprenticeship startup to educate
| people at home in regulated jobs here in Germany.
|
| Well, that was a few years ago, and I guess the market will be
| flooded now.
| xt00 wrote:
| Many people have brought this up, but there are definitely things
| to consider for a job to be done while working from home:
|
| 1) worker productivity (does it go up or down for all of these
| professions)
|
| 2) do companies want to pay you as much if you work from home?
|
| 3) is it sustainable for large swathes of people vs. small groups
| of people who self-select to like this work-style
|
| 4) will people abuse the system such that it ruins it for
| everybody else
|
| I can see a far more likely implementation of this would be a
| mixed case -- "work from home wednesdays" or something like
| that.. not friday or monday because then basically people would
| assume there is a certain amount of abuse of people working for 1
| hour on Friday then starting their weekend early..
| heymijo wrote:
| > _2) do companies want to pay you as much if you work from
| home?_
|
| Is there anyone out there with a good argument for why remote
| workers should be paid less?
|
| Especially interested in hearing from anyone not incentivized
| by this practice (eg not the CEO or Chief People Officer of an
| org that practices this)
|
| > _will people abuse the system such that it ruins it for
| everybody else_
|
| An inevitable question and likely consequence.
|
| A counter question: are the myriad ways in-office employees
| game/abuse the system working materially worse than how remote
| workers might?
| gallamine wrote:
| > Is there anyone out there with a good argument for why
| remote workers should be paid less?
|
| There is more demand for remote jobs, therefore they pay
| less.
| afterwalk wrote:
| Assuming equal value created, companies should pay remote
| workers more: normal pay + savings from not using office
| related overhead (rent + equipment + amenities)
| Kalium wrote:
| Compensation isn't just about value created, though. Costs,
| remote versus local efficiencies (cannot be assumed to be
| identical), and a given person's other options also enter
| into the negotiations.
| warkdarrior wrote:
| The argument also goes the other way. The company pays you
| now for the work in the office and for the inconvenience
| you incur from commuting. No more commuting, so you should
| get paid less.
| knathan wrote:
| The company isn't paying for your time in the car but it
| is paying for the space your desk in the office occupies.
| Would you argue that someone who drives 30 minutes more
| to the office than an otherwise equivalent coworker
| should be paid more?
| Kalium wrote:
| It's possible, isn't it? The person with the longer
| commute may be able to use it to negotiate for a higher
| salary. Particularly if they have another option with a
| shorter commute.
|
| Perhaps I misunderstand you or have overlooked something.
| knathan wrote:
| On one hand, if you are worth $N to the company sitting in an
| office and produce the same output working from home, that
| output is still worth >$N to the company.
|
| On the other hand, if the company isn't limited by geographic
| restrictions, it can find people who may produce an
| equivalent output and are willing to work for less.
|
| So it is a balance between how in demand your skills are and
| how competitive the market is for those skills. In my
| opinion, if a company is in need of an employee and is
| willing to pay $N for the employee, simply being remote
| should not reduce that amount. It has advantages for all
| parties involved (improved employee satisfaction, lower
| office overhead, etc).
|
| Ultimately it is a negotiation, the the company can try to
| justify paying you less because of cost of living adjustments
| unless you can negotiate otherwise. It's in their interest to
| get your labor for the best price possible.
| ozim wrote:
| If everyone switches to pay for outcome instead of paying for
| hours then they will pay the same or even better. Where
| better comes from I could do it in 1 hour and other 3 hours I
| was able to do whatever else.
|
| Though not everyone likes that because there is a lot of
| people who benefit from hourly based pay. They don't do much
| but they put their hours in.
|
| The second part is also quantifying outcome is hard... Should
| we pay that guy that fixed the machine in 5 minutes the same
| as if we would spend a week to fix it ourselves? Maybe we
| would fix it in one week instead? Should we spend one week
| trying to fix it and then call that guy ... or we would break
| the machine so the guy would charge us 5x more? Then you get
| all companies charging a lot more if someone tries to fix
| something on their own because they usually mess up.
| Kalium wrote:
| > Is there anyone out there with a good argument for why
| remote workers should be paid less?
|
| If I don't care where my team members are, why would I want
| two when I could have four of the same quality? Sounds
| attractive, I should think.
| the8472 wrote:
| > Is there anyone out there with a good argument for why
| remote workers should be paid less?
|
| Lower expenses from commuting. Perhaps initially somewhat
| offset by the need for home office equipment/space.
| kingbirdy wrote:
| Lower expenses for the employer as well by not having to
| maintain a physical office, which I have to imagine is a
| greater per-employee saving for the company than commuting
| is for the individual.
| DangerousPie wrote:
| > Is there anyone out there with a good argument for why
| remote workers should be paid less?
|
| Right now people working in cities with a high cost of living
| have a large salary to make up for their living costs. When
| you make a job remote you suddenly increase the pool of
| possible employees to anyone in the world, including people
| living in places that may have a lower cost of living. Those
| people will be happy to work for less.
|
| If you have a remote employee, why pay them 200k to live in
| SF if you can pay someone in India 50k?
| gowld wrote:
| > Is there anyone out there with a good argument for why
| remote workers should be paid less?
|
| supply and demand competition. Anything that makes labor
| easier increases supply, applying downward pressure on
| prices.
| whateveracct wrote:
| > 4) will people abuse the system such that it ruins it for
| everybody else
|
| > I can see a far more likely implementation of this would be a
| mixed case -- "work from home wednesdays" or something like
| that.. not friday or monday because then basically people would
| assume there is a certain amount of abuse of people working for
| 1 hour on Friday then starting their weekend early..
|
| This is a pretty fake concern in my experience driven by butts-
| in-seats culture. I'm gonna take hours off and work when I feel
| like it when working remotely. If that means working 8 hours,
| sure. If it means I don't do any work on a Tuesday, who cares?
| All that matters is if I'm delivering what is expected of me
| (e.g. my spring tickets) and available for communication. If I
| spend 4 hours a day working & 4 hours studying & playing
| mahjong online, what's it to you, you know?
| dkarl wrote:
| I have found it easier to work a full day on Friday when I'm
| at home, because people aren't gathering in the kitchen
| pouring beer and making cocktails at 4pm.
|
| (I'd love that if I started working at 7am like some of my
| coworkers, but when I start at 9:30am, the day feels a little
| truncated.)
| kempbellt wrote:
| >If it means I don't do any work on a Tuesday, who cares? All
| that matters is if I'm delivering what is expected of me
| (e.g. my spring tickets) and available for communication. If
| I spend 4 hours a day working & 4 hours studying & playing
| mahjong online, what's it to you, you know?
|
| Enlightened employers realize this. It's not super common in
| the industry yet, but if you can find an employer who doesn't
| track your productivity by seeing how many meetings you
| attend and how often you're sitting at your desk alt-tabbing
| between VS Code and Github to look productive, you've hit the
| jackpot.
|
| Success should (ideally) be measured by value-add to the
| company, and dependability of the employee. Not many
| employers/managers know how to track value-add though. For a
| non-tech-savvy manager to measure the success of an engineer
| is difficult. They might look at your code commit and see
| that you removed 400 lines of code and added 20 and think of
| this as a "negative" impact because the numbers don't look
| nice. It's a frustrating aspect of the industry, but possible
| to work around if you work with decent people.
| talentedcoin wrote:
| I feel you, and you are likely right for software, but for
| any business that e.g. needs to do things when markets (or
| other businesses) are open, this will never be the case in
| practice.
| closeparen wrote:
| The relationship you're describing is contracting. Salaried
| employees don't have a pre-negotiated scope of work; "what's
| expected of you" isn't fixed in advance. This cuts both ways.
| If something runs late, you don't take a financial loss. But
| if something runs early, you don't get the time back either.
| The company has purchased everything you can get done in a
| workday. If that's more than average, it's more than average.
| whateveracct wrote:
| > The relationship you're describing is contracting.
|
| The relationship I'm describing is actually at-will
| employment. I have quite a bit of freedom to do whatever I
| want with my time so long as my employer is still willing
| to pay me. I have no obligation to operate at my personal
| 100% unless my employer demands it (in times of need, it
| can be the case. But that's rare!)
| ravenstine wrote:
| > Our classification implies that 34 percent of U.S. jobs can
| plausibly be performed at home.
|
| If even 25% of jobs could be made remote, that would be huge. The
| reduction in automobile traffic, the improved happiness of
| workers(who want to work remote), as well as parents being around
| more for their kids, would benefit society overall.
| throw1234651234 wrote:
| I have a feeling that a low double-digit percent of jobs will
| permanently convert to remote or partial remote after this
| experience.
|
| I have been in two companies that went remote, and the bosses
| don't want to, until they try and realize the convenience.
| ravenstine wrote:
| The company I work for already is fully remote, but I heard
| from a colleague that their company, which was previously
| hesitant towards remote work, has seen a productivity
| increase after having been forced to do remote, and now plans
| to allow 100% remote work after lockdowns are lifted.
| take_a_breath wrote:
| ==I heard from a colleague that their company, which was
| previously hesitant towards remote work, has seen a
| productivity increase after having been forced to do
| remote==
|
| Could also be that employees, as a whole, are more worried
| about losing jobs in this environment and are producing
| more to protect themselves.
| mrfusion wrote:
| Good prediction but now go check out The Who's hiring thread.
| bachmeier wrote:
| Convenience is now only a minor part of it. Being a remote
| company provides crucial insurance. Even part of the company
| being remote will allow some operations to continue
| uninterrupted at a time like this.
| slg wrote:
| >I have a feeling that a low double-digit percent of jobs
| will permanently convert to remote or partial remote after
| this experience.
|
| I am hesitant to draw too many conclusions from this work at
| home experience because the pandemic is providing so many
| complicating factors that end up distorting both the benefits
| and downsides of working from home. Some examples to mind:
|
| * It often is a benefit to get out of a distracting office,
| but now people are at home being distracted by kids who would
| otherwise be in school under normal circumstances.
|
| * Work from home allows people the freedom to work form
| wherever they want. Now we are all stuck at home.
|
| * Every company is being forced to be a remote-first
| organization so there is no face to face communication
| happening in the office that someone working from home might
| miss.
|
| * The pandemic takes a mental toll on everyone. Many of us
| are probably not as productive right now as we would be
| otherwise and that has nothing to do with working form home,
| but will that decreased productivity be blamed on working
| from home?
| jlarocco wrote:
| I was thinking about this the other day, and came to a
| similar conclusion.
|
| I've been working fully remote for 18 months now, and the
| last few weeks have been unusual and more isolating than
| normal due to everything being closed. No coffee shops, no
| library, no working lunches, etc.
|
| I suppose it's a smaller jump for me than most people, so
| I'm not complaining, but it's definitely a
| misrepresentation of WFH.
| Tade0 wrote:
| Here's another angle: office space is also a (significant
| at times) cost and some companies may be low on cash soon.
| cosmodisk wrote:
| Won't change a thing- they are all tied into long term
| contracts..
| georgeecollins wrote:
| Anecdote is not data, but I am realizing that I can be more
| productive at home than I guessed. Also I think my bosses are
| going to be more comfortable with me working from home after
| this.
|
| However, there is still so much knowledge / creative work
| that is best done face to face. What I can see happening in
| my work place is more people might take work at home days.
| There is no way we will want to keep taking important
| meetings on Zoom.
| alistairSH wrote:
| _What I can see happening in my work place is more people
| might take work at home days._
|
| My employer has been going this direction for almost 20
| years. It started with allowing remote employees before I
| started 18 years ago. Then a merger with another company 7
| years ago forced everybody to adopt good "remote" meeting
| practices. And since then, people have been a lot more
| comfortable working remotely, part-time or full-time. If
| 100% of meetings have at least 1 remote, it's a lot less
| stressful to be remote yourself.
| Loughla wrote:
| I'm with your second part. The technical aspects of my job
| are incredibly easy working from home. The time is
| incredibly productive (except when I'm on HN dicking
| around).
|
| But what does suffer are all of the creative processes.
| Zoom meetings are not the same as real-person meetings. The
| cadence and flow is off, and it interrupts the creative
| processes. Maybe that will get better over time, now that
| we have a whole month to get used to it, but I doubt it.
|
| I'm with you, I look for all of my salaried folks to have
| the opportunity to take work from home days occasionally.
| Honestly, I've been pushing that for years, so I'll count
| it as a win.
| Denzel wrote:
| Yes, I imagine the ad-hoc creative process does get
| thrown off when transitioning from in-office to remote.
| As a remote worker for the past 3 years, that's been
| involved in creative engineering discussions, it's on the
| individuals and the company as a whole to be intentional
| about the creative process.
|
| My company was ~50% remote across the US and adjoining
| countries before, and now we're 100% remote and the
| transition has been relatively seamless.
|
| Some things that help:
|
| 1) Over-communicate. Don't be afraid to sound stupid or
| think that your ideas have to be fully baked. Share early
| and often. Whether that's a message, a doc, an idea,
| anything. Blast it out and organic conversations will
| usually flow from there.
|
| 2) Foster a culture of popping open a video chat when
| there seems to be a misunderstanding after two back-and-
| forths. This comes from Gitlab's principles, I forget the
| actual wording, but the spirit of the principle has
| helped me numerous times from having long, dragged out
| conversations through text when a simple 3min video chat
| will resolve the issue. Integrating your video conference
| solution with your chat client works wonders here. We
| have Slack+Zoom so a video chat is a simple text command
| away.
|
| 3) Establish some loose SLAs for communication like "will
| respond to comments within X period of time." (Be as
| detailed as you like.) But let people know when they can
| expect a response from you generally based upon the
| medium.
|
| 4) With the above, embrace a RFC (request-for-comments)
| culture where people can give feedback and have organic
| conversations on anything WIP. And then follow-up with a
| scheduled 30min meeting to resolve any outstanding
| ambiguities.
|
| There are probably a few other things I'm forgetting, but
| the above has served myself and our company so well that
| I honestly feel more productive working remotely than in
| an office. The meetings are shorter and more focused,
| there's more documentation, and there's less shoot-the-
| breeze interruptions.
|
| All the above isn't to say there isn't merit to working
| in an office. There absolutely is! Just that I think it's
| normal to have some growing pains when transitioning to
| remote work, and I hope that people won't write it off
| entirely before giving some amount of intentional thought
| to learning, adapting, and building an equally productive
| remote workflow.
| wolco wrote:
| The popup video is similiar to the popup person standing
| in front of my desk. Put it in an email/slack message and
| schedule meetings ahead of time to give other a scheduled
| period of time that other work isn't being performed
| while you want to discuss something else.
| ccktlmazeltov wrote:
| I agree on the creative process, but I think improvements
| in technology can get us there.
|
| First, I think all companies that do a lot of technical
| calls right now should provide their employees with iPad
| pro. The drawing feature is just so good that it replaces
| any whiteboarding.
| eppp wrote:
| The process of homeschooling now may prove you wrong about the
| being around the kids part.
| Matticus_Rex wrote:
| The process of homeschooling now with kids who are used to
| public school and parents who had no time to prepare for it
| is not really good data about the process of homeschooling
| kids who have had time to get used to it as a parent who has
| had time to prepare.
| ravenstine wrote:
| I'm not talking about homeschooling. If parents are around
| their kids for 2 more hours out of a day, that's a positive
| thing. It's not inconsequential.
| ccktlmazeltov wrote:
| Count indirect effects also!
|
| Reduction in pollution, accidents, death, etc.
|
| Increase in restaurants, bars, etc. in your area where you live
| (as opposed to where you work).
| krferriter wrote:
| I have to imagine the total and per-capita amount of human
| time spent around dogs would also increase, which can only be
| seen as a categorical good.
| droithomme wrote:
| > most jobs in finance, corporate management, and professional
| and scientific services could plausibly be performed at home
|
| Or some of this could simply not be done at all.
|
| > very few jobs in agriculture, hotels and restaurants, or retail
|
| Au contraire, all agriculture work can be done at home when we
| raise our own food. All teaching can also be done at home and
| currently is being done so. The basic need of a hotel, a place to
| sleep, and restauranting, of preparing and serving food, can be
| done at home. And retail is already done at home, store clerks
| are largely obsolete. What can't be done at home yet is delivery
| services and most manufacturing in its current state, but
| manufacturing probably could be done at home through expanding
| micromanufacturing. Networks of craftsmen shops running mini
| production lines can make a lot of things.
| monadic2 wrote:
| Tl;dr petite bourgeois
|
| If you think this is detracting from conversation, try reading a
| book.
| 0xFACEFEED wrote:
| As someone who's worked from a lot and also worked from an
| office, I feel like there's an important component missing when
| discussing WFH for professions outside of tech.
|
| One important issue IMO is just having a workspace. Software
| engineers are kinda spoiled in this regard because we make the
| big bucks. We can afford to retrofit areas of our homes to create
| good working conditions. We can take our laptops to coffee shops
| in a pinch.
|
| I recently upgraded my living situation by moving into a much
| nicer place, but it's smaller so I ditched the "home office"
| setup I had before. Now with COVID I'm working in my dining room
| and on my couch. It's so much worse. It might sound silly but I'm
| putting a lot more wear/tear on my furniture by being around all
| day.
|
| My take on this is that homes aren't and never were designed for
| WFH conditions. There are so many details about offices that we
| take for granted. I found myself having to clean way more often
| and do way more dishes now that the entire family is stuck in the
| house together.
|
| Then there's a socialization aspect. Tech has a culture of "as
| long as you can do the job, it doesn't matter how you
| behave/dress/interact" -- this thinking is applied along a
| spectrum, some companies are more extreme than others about it.
| But a lot of professions like sales/legal/etc rely very heavily
| on close social interaction. Tech is also unique in this regard
| IMO.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| We are looking to buy a new house soon and have made room for a
| home office a priority due to the current virus. Both my wife
| and I are working in our small apartment now while our 3 year
| old yells outside our second bedroom with grandma chasing after
| him. Ya...no, this isn't working.
| icebraining wrote:
| > Software engineers are kinda spoiled in this regard because
| we make the big bucks.
|
| But that's true of offices as well. Do you think the average
| administrative assistant is working on Aeron chairs? No,
| they're working on cheap chairs and cheap desks. In fact, so
| did I, despite being a developer - I just didn't work at a
| fancy company. At least at home we have the option of spending
| a bit more, even if it comes out of our paycheck.
| nostrademons wrote:
| I've always preferred working from home (couch, bed, or floor -
| I don't do tables and chairs) simply because programming was my
| hobby before it was my job, and I always associated peak
| productivity with being able to be relaxed and enjoy my
| surroundings rather than feel like I need to put on a physical
| performance of working.
|
| My take on it is that people will adjust, and that the most
| productive environment is the one you're most familiar with.
| Many professions like sales, legal, and investment banking rely
| on putting on a professional "front" to make a good first
| impression. This is much harder to do when you're sitting on a
| couch at home and have a couple kids screaming in the
| background. IMHO this is a _good_ thing, because the constant
| impression-management needed in these professions is a huge
| distraction from the actual substance of these jobs, and
| anything that punctures the impression-management bubble and
| forces people to deal with real human realities is an
| improvement. Already I 'm seeing a big normalization of things
| like childcare, screaming toddlers, two-parent schedules,
| breastfeeding, and so on - this can't be shunted off as
| "woman's work" and relegated to the home anymore, when the home
| becomes the workplace and both parents generally need to trade
| off to make it work.
|
| Basically I think our society before coronavirus was broken and
| coronavirus lockdowns are simply forcing us to deal with the
| ways in which it was broken. The old society isn't going to
| last much longer, and it's better to deal with that and build a
| more resilient, more honest one than to try to preserve the
| rituals that many industries had developed in 75 years of
| peace.
| dtech wrote:
| I'm very happy for you that you can work like that, but if I
| work in a bad posture like on a couch for an hour I will have
| back pain the rest of the day. Do it for a full working days
| and I will have pain for a week. I have always been prone to
| it but many more of my colleagues are developing similar
| problems after working from home for a few weeks without good
| setups.
| SuoDuanDao wrote:
| Funny thing, working from home finally let me get a
| standing desk where it felt too conspicuous at the office.
| I don't have as much space in my living room any more, but
| I feel much better when that afternoon slump usually hits.
| s0rce wrote:
| Agreed, my wife and I rent a nice but small 1bdrm apartment in
| the East Bay, we are both scientists/engineers (not software)
| and were not primarily working from home so having office space
| for both of us wasn't a prioirty when apartment hunting. Now
| that we are both full time WFH its pretty busy. I've got a desk
| in the living room and my wife is on a folding table in the
| bedroom or the dining room table. Its been nice out so I'll
| have meetings from the back patio as well. Making due but I
| miss my desk in the office and my bike commute.
| HenryBemis wrote:
| You got space limitations because you moved to a smaller flat.
| Office furniture is never a problem. You can make a table from
| IKEA (4 legs and the tabletop) can cost as low as PS50 and if
| you pick them special legs you can make it a standing desk with
| the same cost. The only thing you can't cut corners on is the
| chair, a bad chair will ruin your health.
| Tade0 wrote:
| Seconding that table-as-desk.
|
| My SO used an IKEA table for the past four years as a desk
| for drawing.
| icebraining wrote:
| Thirding! It cost me like EUR30 (used, but as-new) and it
| has so much more space than my office desks ever had, it's
| great.
| ccktlmazeltov wrote:
| Sure you're having a not so great time, and your using your
| furniture more, but you can still do your job. So this is an
| orthogonal issue.
|
| I live in a small place and we're going to buy a folding desk
| and a chair, it takes almost no space and you can fold it when
| you're done. It's less than 100 bucks. It's up to you to creat
| these conditions.
|
| Also not all offices have nice desks, chairs, environment, etc.
| I use to work in a place without windows.
| odysseus wrote:
| Homes can be designed for working from home: Don't forget that
| you can have a comfortable climate controlled detached garage.
| CiPHPerCoder wrote:
| > How many jobs can be done at home?
|
| Infinite.
|
| That's because the set of possible vocations is only bounded by
| human imagination. This results in an uncountable set, which
| would resolve to a value that approaches infinity.
|
| A more insightful question is, "How many of the jobs _that people
| hold today_ can be done at home? " 34% seems like a reasonable
| metric.
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