[HN Gopher] Most employees of NYT won't be required back in phys...
___________________________________________________________________
Most employees of NYT won't be required back in physical offices
until 2021
Author : danso
Score : 381 points
Date : 2020-06-22 15:18 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (twitter.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (twitter.com)
| irrational wrote:
| Same with my company. People who must be on campus can go back to
| the offices by the Fall, but everyone else - probably not until
| next year.
| momokoko wrote:
| Get ready for a wave of outsourcing of everything from tech to
| bpo like the US labor market has never seen in the coming 6
| months.
|
| Once employers go through the initial pain of setting up remote
| work, the more than 50%(and sometimes as much as 80%) cost
| savings will be irresistible. If you are not in government,
| healthcare, or other industry that does not have legal
| requirements to maintain a US presence and you work in an office,
| I would be saving every penny and working on a career change
| ASAP.
| jedberg wrote:
| Time zones are still a thing. No matter how remote someone is,
| if they're more than a few times zones away it becomes
| problematic. More than nine timezones across the company is
| nearly impossible to do well.
|
| So if we're talking about a US company, if you want anyone on
| the west coast, hiring continental Europeans will be tough,
| unless one of those groups is willing to work outside normal
| hours.
|
| Also, taxes can be hard. I'm sure as remote working gets more
| popular, services will pop up to help with this and maybe laws
| will change, but right now, it's really hard to hire someone
| outside the US, and it's fairly complex to hire someone
| _inside_ the US in state that you aren 't already in.
|
| The most likely outcome of remote work is a lowering of
| salaries in the big cities and a raising of salaries in more
| rural areas, as salaries tend towards the national median.
| scarface74 wrote:
| _Also, taxes can be hard. I 'm sure as remote working gets
| more popular, services will pop up to help with this and
| maybe laws will change, but right now, it's really hard to
| hire someone outside the US, and it's fairly complex to hire
| someone inside the US in state that you aren't already in._
|
| Inside the US is a solved problem. I haven't worked for a
| company in 20 years that did its own payroll. ADP, Insperity
| among others solve this for you. You can even set this up
| with a small business account through Bank Of America.
| jedberg wrote:
| It's absolutely not solved. I run a company with employees
| in multiple states.
|
| The payroll company takes care of some of the problems, but
| for example, every state has different rules about worker's
| comp. Most states require you to get your own, but you
| still have to let them know. Some states require you to buy
| into their state system, which requires signing up.
|
| Then there is corporate registration. Many states require
| you to register as a foreign entity. Payroll doesn't take
| care of that.
|
| Then you have to pay state taxes, or if you just have
| employees, you have to file a form that says "I don't owe
| your state any income taxes".
|
| There are other things different states do differently that
| the payroll provider doesn't take care of.
| marvin wrote:
| Also: Culture barriers, language barriers. Even if the
| cheaper market speaks decent English, there will be a greater
| communications overhead.
|
| Also, skill compatibility. Maybe your labor pool is bigger,
| but so is the employer pool of everyone with world-class
| skills in whatever domain you're operating in.
| supergeek133 wrote:
| I wish things like this mattered. I've worked for more than
| one company where the bulk of development happens in India.
|
| Even though we would have a 2-3 hour window in the morning
| US time where meetings happen, there is lack of business
| context, and language/skillset barriers, the cost savings
| is just too much to overcome.
| ghaff wrote:
| Eh, companies have had this option and many have engineering
| offices in lower cost of living countries long before the
| current situation. There are a lot of reasons for companies to
| hire in the US.
|
| What wouldn't surprise me though if/when remote becomes a
| bigger chunk of certain types of jobs, is if salaries across US
| regions equalize more given that local labor market rates
| become less of a factor for setting salaries. In the extreme
| case (which won't be the norm), your decision to live in a high
| CoL city is no different from your decision to live on
| expensive oceanfront property.
| TulliusCicero wrote:
| > your decision to live in a high CoL city is no different
| from your decision to live on expensive oceanfront property.
|
| That's certainly possible.
|
| Of course, that would incentivize people to move out to
| cheaper areas, which would reduce the demand on expensive big
| cities, with the end result being that the price delta would
| become somewhat reduced.
| ghaff wrote:
| Yeah, there are a lot of complex dynamics going on and
| things will play out over quite a while in a way that
| doesn't lend itself to absolute statements. That said, I
| tend to think that, even if a handful of large West Coast
| employers (and NYC fintech firms) tend to continue paying
| top-of-market rates, you're probably going to see some
| equalizing of salaries across the US overall (and perhaps
| some but less equalizing of CoL).
| bobthepanda wrote:
| IMO FAANG is doing its best to try and hoover up all the tech
| talent that wants to work for them. Which is to say that
| while they won't necessarily have to pay people an arm and a
| leg to attract them to overcrowded high-COL areas, they do
| still want to hoover up people who happen to already live in
| high-COL areas.
|
| COVID has shown us that remote work is feasible, but it still
| introduces frictions that employers/employees may not want to
| put up with, and the main thing attracting people to high-COL
| areas in the first place is the relative ease of networking
| and switching jobs. The death of the high-COL tech hub is
| greatly overexaggerated.
| ghaff wrote:
| I don't really disagree. I'd also say that FAANGs
| specifically distort the overall salary picture a bit. My
| observation is that a fair number of non-FAANG companies,
| especially those who don't have a significant presence in
| the Bay Area, already don't try particularly hard to out-
| compete (on the basis of compensation) local Bay Area
| employers.
| protonimitate wrote:
| Ah yes, the outsourcing FUD train is ramping up.
|
| Remote work has been a possibility for employers for a few
| decades now. Nothing has drastically changed since the new wave
| of WFH to change that, other than its more widely discussed.
|
| > 50%(and sometimes as much as 80%)
|
| is there a source for this?
|
| I'm not convinced that the only reason "everything gets
| outsourced" hasn't happened yet is because employers are lazy.
| Consultant32452 wrote:
| I have an anecdata. I work for a fortune 500 financial
| company. I am personally acquainted with someone who
| transitioned from our offshore (India) team to the US. His
| salary went up 3x doing the same job with the same title, and
| all he changed was geography.
| mjburgess wrote:
| He also changed his cost of living.
| ajmurmann wrote:
| Salaries aren't based on cost of living, but on cost of
| labor. Those are related, but not tightly.
| robbyking wrote:
| I worked as what would now be considered a full stack
| developer during the dotcom bubble (and bust), and during
| that time thousands of engineering jobs were outsourced
| overseas. There were a couple main issues that I'd be curious
| to see if modern development teams would be able to overcome:
|
| * The communication lag. When developers are working opposite
| hours from the rest of the team, small issues can take a day
| or longer to resolve. Even simple stuff like "can I cut the
| branch or is your feature not QA ready?"
|
| * Rigidity. Specs are almost always incomplete (or
| inaccurate) in one way or another, and remote developers who
| aren't familiar with a company's product and goals have a
| difficult time distinguishing between what a product owners
| wants and what they ask for.
|
| These aren't insurmountable issues, but they were the two
| things that really slowed things down for the teams I worked
| with.
| jrlocke wrote:
| But many preexisting remote-focused US tech companies are not
| heavily outsourced. They've gone "through the initial pain of
| setting up remote work" and are subject to the same economic
| forces. If these companies haven't been tempted into heavy
| outsourcing, why should we imagine that new companies entering
| into their situation will?
| yingw787 wrote:
| For a contrary opinion, see this famous Hacker News post:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18451311
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18442941 (parent)
|
| (or at least it's famous to me)
| jkaptur wrote:
| Ask HN: do you make any distinction between "working from home"
| and "working from home during a pandemic"? I see a lot of people
| arguing that WFH is the new normal, citing long reopening
| timelines, their own preferences, increased productivity,
| Twitter's policy change, etc.
|
| But just a few years ago, IBM and Yahoo radically curtailed their
| WFH policies, and they made (what seemed to me to be) pretty
| credible arguments that the policies were being abused (WFH
| employees not getting on VPN for days at a time, for example).
|
| I wonder if what we've seen since March isn't really "working
| from home", it's "working from home during a pandemic", and there
| just _isn 't anything else to do_ (with the critical exceptions
| of housework and child, elder, and sick-person care).
|
| The current situation has actually been good/neutral for my
| personal productivity, since I'm more able to easily chat with my
| colleagues across the country... but why _exactly_ is that easier
| now? Are they more available because they 're working from home,
| or because they're __stuck __at home?
| nsilvestri wrote:
| Although regular WFH and pandemic WFH are functionally the
| same, being forced to work remote has a different effect on me
| than elective remote work. As someone who prefers working in
| the office, mandatory indefinite WFH is much more...mentally
| taxing(?) than when I choose to do it.
| edw519 wrote:
| _pretty credible arguments that the policies were being abused_
|
| Either you're getting your work done or you're not.
|
| Any other way of measuring abuse is management malpractice.
| RankingMember wrote:
| Couldn't agree more. The point at which you start trying to
| tell people how to do their work and "oh well you logged on 5
| minutes late here" and "oh well it shows here you always log
| off for an extra 10 minutes here" is the point you begin
| holding your workforce back rather than allowing them to
| perform at their best.
| treespace89 wrote:
| I feel the change that has happened is that managers _had to_
| figure out managing remote workers.
|
| Before when remote work was not 'working' you could fall back
| to in person. That is not currently an option. So management
| has been forced to figure it out.
| triceratops wrote:
| > policies were being abused (WFH employees not getting on VPN
| for days at a time, for example).
|
| And they were still putting in enough work to not get fired?
| Maybe those jobs were really easy then, and could have been
| combined into fewer roles. Or management wasn't keeping track
| of how much work there was to go around, and hadn't maxed out
| their workers' capacity. Either way, it seems like bad
| management.
| kanox wrote:
| Personally I can't wait for this to come back to normal: being
| inside an office for 9 hours every day helps me be productive
| and focus.
| aianus wrote:
| Me too, man.
|
| We can't be the only ones -- the library at my school was
| full of people studying independently despite absolutely zero
| external pressure to do so. I found myself much more
| productive in that environment than in my home and the
| (admittedly short) commute created a nice, clear separation
| of work vs. rest.
| nafix wrote:
| Same here. I live in a 950 square foot apartment. I can't
| stand being in the same space all day long. I need a change
| of space, and I actually enjoy working in the company
| building. It's a very modern work space.
| Foivos wrote:
| I guess it depends on your WFH situation. If you live in a
| big enough house to have a dedicated office room, probably it
| is better to WFH. If you live in a studio, where you do
| everything in a single room, then it is better to go to the
| office to change the scene a bit.
| shadowfox wrote:
| > IBM and Yahoo radically curtailed their WFH policies, and
| they made (what seemed to me to be) pretty credible arguments
| that the policies were being abused
|
| While it is possible that they were correct, both companies,
| but especially Yahoo was already suffering from deep
| organizational and employee issues at the point these
| announcements were made. So I am somewhat skeptical about the
| cause and effect here. I would be more sold if this were coming
| out of a less disfunctional organization.
|
| > there just isn't anything else to do (with the critical
| exceptions of housework and child, elder, and sick-person care)
|
| There is also TV, Netflix and a variety of different ways to
| distract oneself at home. Though I do agree that working- from-
| home-during-a-pandemic may be different from just working-from-
| home permanently.
| riffraff wrote:
| I am unsure this is the answer you were looking for but I do
| make a distinction. I've been working remotely for 10+ years,
| and the 3 months of lockdown were the worst I've had, for the
| simple reason that _my family was locked in with me_.
|
| I am sure remote working is not for everyone, but I like it.
|
| Yet, I live in an apartment, my kids can't go out to play and
| can't be expected to behave all the time, me and my spouse have
| to sync up call times so one of us can be on top of the
| occasional emergency etc.
|
| We're lucky compared to people who lost their job or had
| reduced income, but I'm not looking forward to more work-
| during-lockdown.
| bragh wrote:
| > (WFH employees not getting on VPN for days at a time, for
| example).
|
| This is a metric that should be taken with a huge grain of salt
| in the world of cloud services and bad VPN software.
| rezeroed wrote:
| I absolutely consider working from home different from this,
| which is almost house arrest. WFH I am able to spend time
| working in coffee shops, am able to use the outside world to
| sync my clock with everyone else. Being stuck on my own in a
| London flat is driving me nuts, and I'm introverted. I've been
| going to bed at 5:30am for no reason other than my clock has
| drifted.
| chipgap98 wrote:
| > But just a few years ago, IBM and Yahoo radically curtailed
| their WFH policies
|
| I don't really think those are the companies I would be trying
| to model my business on in 2020.
|
| > why exactly is that easier now?
|
| I do think there is something to be said for going from WFH
| being the exception to the rule. As someone who worked remotely
| for a year, I felt like more more of an after thought then. Now
| everyone is doing it and understands/are learning how to engage
| remote teammates.
|
| I agree the pandemic is tainting the results in a variety of
| ways, but I do think that companies were holding on to outdated
| practices out of stubbornness.
| niklasd wrote:
| I've heard now from a couple of people that they've enjoyed
| remote work and some have already sucessfully negotiated that in
| future they will work part time from home. So it really seems
| that some of the change will be permanent.
| j0hnml wrote:
| Same here. I don't think the majority of folks will start
| working remotely permanently, but I could very well see more
| and more people splitting time between WFH and working from the
| office. If some people on a team start to do it, others on that
| same team will start to ask if there's still a reason for them
| to still be coming into the office every day. And I think this
| is especially true for densely-populated areas as people
| realize how much time and stress are saved not having to
| commute into the office _every single day_.
| ghaff wrote:
| As someone who works at a company that is normally pretty
| split between offices and remote/WFH, I've seen this first
| hand. I don't actually mind going into the office now and
| then (and it's only about a 30 minute commute). But
| (increasingly pre-Covid), I'd go in and not run into anyone I
| worked with or even knew. Eventually I just gave up my desk
| when I had to move anyway. And pretty much stopped going in
| at all unless I had a specific meeting.
| danielbln wrote:
| Before covid, being able to work from home once in a while
| was something of a perk. After a few months of fully remote
| it is now a hard requirement for me, a significant chunk of
| my work time has to be able to be home office, or I'm walking
| away.
| conanbatt wrote:
| I've worked remotely most my life but as a new parent...I
| really want an office.
| untog wrote:
| As a (not quite so new) parent I really want a coworking
| space that's a five minute walk from my apartment. That way I
| can do school dropoffs and pickups so much more easily. In my
| dreams expanded remote work means lots more coworking spaces
| popping up. I know, I'm a dreamer...
| ghaff wrote:
| I assume there will be plenty of co-working spaces at least
| in cities. But, at least so long as the company has an
| office you could go into, I wouldn't expect they'd
| reimburse you for it. Some companies will do this but, in
| my experience, it's only if there is no company office in a
| city.
| [deleted]
| rainyMammoth wrote:
| so you want an office to "escape" your family and daily life?
|
| It's sad but I would bet that's the case for a significant
| amount of parents and husbands.
| alarge wrote:
| You've already been voted down, so not sure how much I'd
| add to this, but...
|
| Wanting to have an office outside the home doesn't mean you
| are trying to escape - it means you are trying to establish
| the conditions for maximizing your productivity. Where you
| can work uninterrupted for long stretches of time - and
| even when you are interrupted, it is likely less of a
| context switch than the various daily interactions,
| temptations, and chores that happen while at home.
|
| On a tangential note - my major complaint about the
| currently popular "open office plan" setup is that it has
| flipped the productivity curve for me. I go into the office
| for all the team interactions. When I need to get work
| done, I work from home (and hope for a day of minimal
| interruptions).
| redisman wrote:
| You mean a dedicated office at home or you want to get out of
| the house? For me it's given me a much greater appreciation
| for working from home as I can be with the kid all day rather
| than outsource that for the majority of her waking hours.
| conanbatt wrote:
| If you are with the kid you are not working
| TigeriusKirk wrote:
| Worked fine for centuries. We have been living in a
| historically abnormal time.
| rightbyte wrote:
| Millenia is the proper magnitude I believe.
| SupriseAnxiety wrote:
| "The End Of Times is Neigh"
|
| Times New Roman Times Magazine Times Square Hmm.
| elicash wrote:
| Here's a photo of the newsroom so you can get a sense of the
| degree to which they work in proximity:
|
| https://static01.nyt.com/images/2016/12/18/opinion/sunday/18...
| jmalicki wrote:
| So unlike a modern tech company, they sit farther apart and at
| least have barriers between their desks?
| gruez wrote:
| agree on the bigger desks bit, but what difference does a 12"
| tall barrier make?
| Rebelgecko wrote:
| In addition to the privacy aspect, it probably helps reduce
| the travel distance of any particles that one exhales
| ardy42 wrote:
| > In addition to the privacy aspect, it probably helps
| reduce the travel distance of any particles that one
| exhales
|
| Maybe a little bit, but I'd think you'd want barriers
| that are _at least_ head-height if you wanted to to that.
| dannyw wrote:
| COVID? Not a lot. But normal office work? Just a little bit
| of privacy. Enough so that casually glancing at what
| someone else is doing is discouraged. But also, not enough
| so that communication is too discouraged.
| ardy42 wrote:
| > agree on the bigger desks bit, but what difference does a
| 12" tall barrier make?
|
| It keeps your neighbor's shit from spilling over onto your
| desk, necessitating an awkward conversation (at the
| minimum). It also gives you a surface to attach taller,
| jury-rigged barriers, if you're so inclined.
| ThePadawan wrote:
| At the last open office I worked at, you could hear people
| have conversations 8 desks down. I would have quite liked 7
| barriers between me and them.
| mFixman wrote:
| Most modern tech companies have a single height-adjustable
| desk per person, so most of the time your desk will be
| slightly higher or lower than your neighbour's.
| closeparen wrote:
| All the tech offices I have worked in or visited for Meetup
| groups are long shared benches. How much linear space you
| get depends on how fast the team is hiring, whether there
| are interns right now, etc.
| [deleted]
| donohoe wrote:
| No, thats just the core newsroom which is floors 2 and 3.
| Rest of the floors are a little different.
| spyspy wrote:
| That's actually pretty outdated. The newsroom (and all other
| floors at 620 8th Ave) have gotten standing desks that are
| slightly wider apart.
|
| Source: used to work in that newsroom
| Krasnol wrote:
| What a nightmare.
|
| Now imagine half of them being on the phone....terrible.
| ghaff wrote:
| People are on the phone much of the day in lots of jobs. And
| the newsroom in that picture isn't some modern open office
| fad. Go look at any film that's concerned with the newspaper
| business. It's more or less how newsrooms have looked for
| many decades.
| spyspy wrote:
| It's surprisingly quiet actually. It's not a trading floor
| with people screaming at each other.
|
| Source: am a former NYT and worked in that exact room.
| jkaptur wrote:
| FYI, most trading floors are very quiet as well, for mostly
| the same reasons.
| Shoreleave wrote:
| Seconding. Other than 10 minutes surrounding 9:30 and 4,
| the trading floors I've worked on have been quieter than
| any tech company I've worked for.
| spyspy wrote:
| You're probably right, my imagination of trading floors
| is born from financial movies set in the 80s.
| jrockway wrote:
| I don't think they do the same kind of work that we do.
| catacombs wrote:
| They certainly do not.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| I wonder if that's a great representation? They're all posing
| for the photo, there may normally be less people there.
| elicash wrote:
| I just meant desk setup. Context of the photo was a
| celebration of Alissa Rubin winning a Pulitzer in April 2016.
| swyx wrote:
| normally notable but doesnt nyt win boatloads of those
| every year? what made this one stand out for you?
| elicash wrote:
| It was on the first page of a Google Image search.
| kevindong wrote:
| That honestly looks more cramped than any office I've ever been
| in.
| TACIXAT wrote:
| I really hate how this is being dragged out in month sized
| increments. My partner and I went to Austin for a month and a
| half and now are back in the Bay Area to hear the next decision
| on her office reopening. 2021 is 6 months away. That's not enough
| to move somewhere else that would make the pain of moving worth
| it.
| ryanSrich wrote:
| I say this with all seriousness, and I understand some people
| don't have this luxury, but if you do, please quit.
|
| These companies will continue to punish their employees if they
| are allowed to do so. The only way to create change is through
| leverage.
|
| This goes for anyone facing this decision. If you have the
| ability to quit, you should absolutely do it. Take a year off,
| find another company that doesn't support archaic business
| practices, start your own business.
|
| You owe it to the people that don't have that option. The
| people that are forced into commuting. The people that are
| forced into depression because they have to continue to pay
| their massive rents in absurdly expensive cities. The people
| that have incredibly poor mental health because they're pulled
| into gross office politics that pit employees against each
| other.
|
| We must force these companies to change their bad behavior.
| product50 wrote:
| what bad behavior? providing a 6mo heads up that you don't
| need to come back is pretty reasonable. while you are at
| criticizing these companies, do know that a lot of smaller
| companies are requiring their employees to come to work in
| lots of places.
| ryanSrich wrote:
| If a job can be done remotely, then it should be done
| remotely. Forcing your employees into an office so you can
| play up office politics and look good in front of your
| board is bad behavior. It's archaic, gross, and in the case
| of a pandemic, negligent.
| adjkant wrote:
| The assumption that being non-remote is for office
| politics is writing off many other benefits. Even if you
| can go remote, building a remote culture takes time.
| Also, not everyone works well remote. Shifting a company
| to full-time remote isn't fair to those people either.
|
| How is _not_ bringing people into the office negligent?
| That 's again the comment you are responding to - a
| company that sounds like they are trying to get back ASAP
| but only when it can be done safely, hence the month to
| month updates.
| redisman wrote:
| This seems like very dangerous advice to give on the
| precipice of an economic depression.
| adjkant wrote:
| The things you describe are far from the charged language
| you're using, and also much of your description may not apply
| at all to the post you responded to.
|
| How does someone quitting their job because their work is
| playing a global pandemic step by step help any of the things
| you listed? This approach is a very logical decision and
| honestly complaining this loudly about that step is
| incredibly privileged in a time where many are facing layoffs
| and pay cuts. Oh no! Your company has kept paying you, you're
| working remote for a job you were hired for in person, but
| you can't get a guarantee of when you'll be back in the
| office because of a pandemic? The horror!
|
| That's not to take a "be happy with what you get and lick the
| boot" approach at all, but many companies have quite nice
| policies in regards to how COVID-19 is being handled.
|
| Your issue appears to be with non-remote work in general, but
| you also make it seem like high COL cities are the only
| option. If someone is not able to be mentally stable working
| in the bay or Seattle or NYC etc, there are plenty of small
| cities with tech jobs that will pay good money with low COL
| and a short commute they can go work at. They absolutely
| should quit, for themselves. That was true before any
| pandemic.
|
| > The people that have incredibly poor mental health because
| they're pulled into gross office politics that pit employees
| against each other.
|
| Again, where was any of this mentioned? It sounds like you
| are projecting the issues of some companies. These companies
| should absolutely change their behavior, but again, this was
| true before the pandemic. I'm not sure how someone quitting
| will tech them a lesson either as those places probably
| already have high turnover and they won't have much issue
| hiring n the current market.
|
| You say you create it through leverage, but I see no such
| leverage being developed in quitting even if all of this was
| true.
| ryanSrich wrote:
| > This approach is a very logical decision and honestly
| complaining this loudly about that step is incredibly
| privileged in a time where many are facing layoffs and pay
| cuts.
|
| I addressed the privilege in my post. It's in bad faith to
| bring it up as if I didn't, also gaslighting.
|
| > How does someone quitting their job because their work is
| playing a global pandemic step by step help any of the
| things you listed?
|
| Playing a global pandemic step by step is not the issue.
| The pandemic exists. As a business, you were forced to do
| away with your archaic work-location policies. To then go
| back on those is repugnant. Simply keep the change the
| pandemic forced.
|
| > That's not to take a "be happy with what you get and lick
| the boot" approach at all, but many companies have quite
| nice policies in regards to how COVID-19 is being handled.
|
| For jobs that can be done remote, anything less than the
| option to work 100% remote forever is corrupt.
|
| > These companies should absolutely change their behavior,
| but again, this was true before the pandemic.
|
| Every company that forces employees into an office has
| gross office politics. The power dynamic of the commute is
| a self-fulfilling prophecy for this very issue. Asses in
| seats are office politics.
| adjkant wrote:
| > I addressed the privilege in my post. It's in bad faith
| to bring it up as if I didn't, also gaslighting.
|
| You addressed it in respect to the ability to quit. I'm
| talking in terms of the standard you are setting and
| projecting onto all companies. I don't see how that's in
| bad faith or gaslighting. I don't think you know what
| that term means based on your use.
|
| > For jobs that can be done remote
|
| This might be the key issue - it sounds like you are
| massively undervaluing aspects of non-remote work that
| are beneficial to both workers and companies.
|
| > Every company that forces employees into an office has
| gross office politics.
|
| We're gonna have to agree to disagree. I'm all for more
| remote companies existing, but offices are not inherently
| corrupt.
| ryanSrich wrote:
| > I don't think you know what that term means based on
| your use.
|
| You made me second guess if I did in fact address the
| issue. I did.
|
| > it sounds like you are massively undervaluing aspects
| of non-remote work that are beneficial to both workers
| and companies.
|
| You're right. I am undervaluing it. Being in person has
| no inherent benefits over being remote. Maybe 20 years
| ago, but the internet has fixed those issues. Low-
| fidelity remote work is a cultural issue. Not a
| technology issue. Companies refuse to do remote work
| correctly so they can continue archaic co-located work.
| adjkant wrote:
| > Being in person has no inherent benefits over being
| remote.
|
| Socializing. Clearer communication with better nonverbal
| interpretations. The ability to more easily drop by
| someone's desk, to whiteboard in a room, etc. For some,
| productivity. Separation of home and work life. Even an
| excuse to get out and about.
|
| Yes, there are ways to get some remote analogs for some
| of these, but they don't magically work the same for
| everyone.
|
| > Low-fidelity remote work is a cultural issue.
|
| That doesn't make it any less of an issue to implement.
| If anything, that's harder than a technology issue. Why
| would you trust these bad companies to implement any sort
| of sane work culture in a remote setting than they do in
| an office? If anything, remote only offers more abuse
| vectors.
|
| > Companies refuse to do remote work correctly so they
| can continue archaic co-located work.
|
| I think you're far too pessimistic here. Laziness and
| resistance to change is far more likely than malice in
| regards to not going remote.
| ineedasername wrote:
| My workplace is pushing aggressively to eliminate remote work,
| with 50% off remote work in the next couple of weeks. I'm in one
| of the biggest hotspots, and as the last few months have shown, a
| significant amount of work has been perfectly viable from home.
| But before this shutdown, my workplace had a hard ban on WFH.
| It's the "the workers will be lazy if they're not in the office"
| mentality. As though you couldn't be lazy at work as well.
| holidayacct wrote:
| That's good for their sysadmins and softwar engineers. They love
| to raise anxiety levels and create ambiguity interpeters (people
| who start believing there is meaning in people and objects around
| them) in NYC. Yes, this is a real thing... Don't ask for details,
| the short story is someone discovered they could exploit people
| with genes for paranoid schizophrenia to make them anxious and
| afraid to the point they look for meaning in things around them.
| jb775 wrote:
| Not a good time to own commercial office real estate. Office
| rental rates will likely race to the bottom as more and more
| businesses decide to stay remote.
| k__ wrote:
| Next step in work evolution, I'd say.
|
| Now we just have to increase entrepreneurship by some orders of
| magnitude and things will scale like never before.
| staysaasy wrote:
| Remote work is such a fascinating leadership challenge given how
| dogmatic both sides have become. The tone of the debate is
| verging on a religious argument (on both sides), but it's all
| centered on work-related topics which typically don't engender
| such extreme responses.
| ghaff wrote:
| A lot of individuals have very strong preferences. And those
| who want to go back to how things were also realize that, if
| many companies shift to a more patchwork employees can continue
| to WFH if they're able to and want to, many offices won't ever
| go back to the way they were.
|
| In addition, many feel (probably with some justification) that
| there's a real opportunity at the moment to influence policies
| that favor their personal preferences. And you won't influence
| if you don't take a strong stand.
| staysaasy wrote:
| "In addition, many feel (probably with some justification)
| that there's a real opportunity at the moment to influence
| policies that favor their personal preferences. And you won't
| influence if you don't take a strong stand."
|
| This is a great point, and that's exactly what makes this an
| interesting leadership challenge IMO.
| k__ wrote:
| _" religious argument (on both sides)"_
|
| Care to elaborate?
| staysaasy wrote:
| Yup for sure. I (generally) see two camps on the remote work
| debate:
|
| - WFH / unlimited remote work is the future, forcing people
| to come into the office is oppressive.
|
| - Remote work harms culture and collaboration, we all need to
| get back into the office ASAP as we can't be effective
| remotely.
|
| Overall I've just been surprised at the intensity of the
| remote work discussion, and surprised that we don't see
| deeper analyses on cost of rent, employee retention rates,
| productivity across jobs, environmental effects of less
| commuters, etc. My point was simply that as this topic
| elicits strong feelings, it presents an interesting
| leadership challenge.
| AdrianB1 wrote:
| Is it really forcing? If the work contract says "we pay you
| $X/month (or hour) to come to the office and do this work"
| is this oppressive?
|
| I work from home since mid 2007, I know the benefits and I
| know the price. I do go to the office from time to time
| without anyone forcing me to do it. Without physical
| presence there is a significant negative impact for
| employees, I think the best of the 2 worlds is 1-2 days per
| week (organized in any way, even 3 days every 2 weeks) when
| each team is in the office, while teams will be in and out
| on rotations, so you do save on office space and rent, have
| a significant portion of WFH but still have the teams
| meeting regularly. Even with video conference, it's not the
| same as passing by on the hallway, at the water cooler and
| having a 30 seconds chat with random people in your
| department.
| ghaff wrote:
| "Oppressive" is too strong in most cases. The more candid
| description of that side of the fence is probably more
| along the lines of "I prefer to work from home and not
| commute."
|
| Assuming your team isn't geographically distributed
| anyway--which it often is at larger companies--the day a
| week thing makes some sense. I've done variants of that
| in the past.
|
| On the other hand, you're now telling everyone that they
| still have to live in commuting distance, even if it can
| be a bit longer because it's infrequent just so they can
| come into the office now and then.
|
| On still the other tentacle, I absolutely agree that some
| F2F is useful. But maybe that's better done with getting
| together every month or two for a few days and just fly
| people and put people up in hotel rooms if they're not
| local. Where I work, most of us (not engineering, but the
| same applies to engineering to greater or lesser degrees)
| are scattered around multiple offices and fully remote
| people.
| purple_ferret wrote:
| I wonder how good their remote security is. I imagine every
| single government regularly tries to hack them.
| ryanSrich wrote:
| Can you elaborate on what you mean by remote security?
|
| - Cloud security?
|
| - Controlling physical safeguards remotely?
|
| - Something different?
| purple_ferret wrote:
| physical security of remote devices
| xhkkffbf wrote:
| Yeah, but now the governments have to manage multiple
| platforms. Some are writing on Android tablets, others are
| using Windoze. There's probably some joker still running a
| TRS-80 Model 100, the former favorite of the sportswriters
| everywhere.
| maa5444 wrote:
| productivity was high only because there was nothing else to do
| during the lockdown... use your brain
| ubermonkey wrote:
| A cycling pal of mine is an in-house lawyer at a big oil company
| here in Houston. They were told a couple weeks ago that there
| were no plans to go back to the office until at LEAST 2021. All
| the work is being done just fine.
| perl4ever wrote:
| Working for a unionized public sector employer, they are
| nevertheless doing the charade of "well, we'll go back next
| month, oops, maybe not" over and over. So I guess it's not just
| the heartless capitalists.
|
| Most recently, a mid-July date was mooted for returning to the
| office, but a few days later it was announced that the union-
| negotiated work-from-home arrangements have been extended to
| October. It's ambiguous whether there will be a transition
| period, or if really nobody wants to go in.
|
| But nobody seems to want to push things out as far as next year
| all at once. Some employees feel threatened and say they're not
| going back until there's a vaccine. I'm just kind of bemused
| for the moment, because I'm almost 100% sure that as things get
| worse, there is no chance of following through on the plans,
| yet the authorities keep making them, and then pushing the date
| out a little more.
|
| I'm fine with going back to the office as soon as other people
| are and management can explain why we should. But I'm not sure
| that's happening in the forseeable future. Every day we get an
| email from our dear leader talking about going back as though
| we need to keep our hopes up, yet we are also told how well we
| are doing working remote. So...why return?
| fierarul wrote:
| Everybody talks about online mobs and trolls but what happens
| when the entire workforce is online?
|
| How vicious can one (mob) be against another co-worker when you
| can't phisically see him to calibrate what's really going on and
| the reaction to what you do?
| dannyw wrote:
| Well hopefully you don't have vicious mobs at your workplace.
| tsm wrote:
| My generally-pretty-friendly workplace has recently had quite
| a bit of viciousness about:
|
| a) bbatsov's response to calls for Rubocop to be renamed
|
| b) The use of "master" as the canonical branch's name in our
| main git repo
|
| c) Linking to xkcd #75 (which uses the c-word) (the link was
| provided in response to a thread about mixed levels of
| profanity)
| Consultant32452 wrote:
| It sounds like your workplace has jumped the shark. I hope
| you're able to find another soon.
| onetimeonly____ wrote:
| When bikeshedding meets virtue signaling you know you're in
| for a good ride
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| I don't right now, but I certainly have people who dislike
| each other for some reason or another, and I'm worried about
| what that looks like when they all start going 3, 6, 9 months
| without seeing each other.
| redisman wrote:
| That sounds like... an improvement?
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| Hopefully, but I think there's a very plausible world
| where a lack of familiarity shifts people from "I kinda
| think he's wrong on these issues" to "I can't possibly
| work for a company that'd employ this jerk".
| umwbk9gagy wrote:
| I've always assumed most writers for these papers don't actually
| come into the office anyway. What's different? They're extending
| that to full time staff as well?
| cbron wrote:
| Yes. I worked for a major newspaper and would guess that all
| the people in editorial make up less than 50% of the staff. You
| have business, accounting, tech, delivery, support, sales,
| security etc...
| superfamicom wrote:
| Companies who were the butt-in-seat type most likely didn't have
| a sudden realization that WFH and telecommuting was productive,
| most likely they want you back in the office but they just don't
| want to do the required work to transform the office into a safe
| environment.
| OldFatCactus wrote:
| A friend that works there told me that they have been polling
| their employees for strong feelings around going permanently
| remote
| purple_ferret wrote:
| The New York Times Building is nice but it's a terrible
| (although generally convenient) location
| xhkkffbf wrote:
| If you take a bus to Port Authority, it couldn't be more
| convenient. And I would guess that the Times Square subway
| stop may be the one spot where the most lines converge.
| shougg wrote:
| Right, it's convenient, but Port Authority competes closely
| with Penn Station and Times Square for "most loathed place
| in New York".
|
| Compare with Google office in Chelsea or FB office in the
| East Village (ish). Those are pretty nice places to walk
| around.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| New Yorkers love to hate Time Square but it's really not so
| terrible, just crowded. It's in close proximity to
| everything, and it looks pretty at night. And as you said,
| it's _really_ easy to get to.
| caymanjim wrote:
| It's literally across the street from Port Authority, which
| is an open-air shooting gallery and homeless camp. It's not
| a nice area.
| ghaff wrote:
| Yes, the Port Authority: aka the world's worst bus
| station. But you go a few blocks and you're in Hell's
| Kitchen which I find a pretty interesting neighborhood
| with nice ethnic restaurants. Or walk south 10 blocks or
| so into Chelsea.
|
| When I'm in NYC I often stay at about 42nd and 10th out
| of choice even if I'm not at a Javits event. It's near
| things but is out of the craziness of Times Square
| itself.
| spyspy wrote:
| The Times has actually been very progressive about WFH
| policies. Partially because they've been consolidating the
| number of floors they occupy at 620 8th Ave, so there's
| legitimately less room for everyone. But every team was
| designed to be remote friendly and there was very little
| expectation to be in the office. Some people lived in NYC and
| still refused to bother to come in for months at a time.
|
| Source: worked at NYT through 2019.
| levesque wrote:
| I have strong feelings against permanently remote. I feel like
| this hasn't been fully thought out. Face to face interaction is
| much more high bandwidth than remote video calls (in other
| words, it conveys more information). Not to mention that this
| transfers the costs of office space to the employee, maybe this
| is why all employers are quick to jump on this bandwagon.
| Curious to see where this new trend will fall in 2021.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| For some of people, probably more than you'd expect, work is
| pretty much the only social contact.
| TigeriusKirk wrote:
| I see this comment in every one of these discussions, but
| finding new venues for social contact is a fairly simple
| adjustment to make once you accept that it's necessary.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| Depends on your social skills.
|
| Don't assume everyone is as gifted as you are.
|
| And even so, if half your waking time goes away as an
| opportunity to socialize, that's a big opportunity cost.
| bespontovy wrote:
| "A fairly simple adjustment"? I've been in therapy for
| exactly this for a year. For me, this shit has been
| _tough_.
|
| Not saying your experience isn't valid, but would you
| please stop generalising?
| flak48 wrote:
| Many companies have been reimbursing home internet and
| electricity bills since March. Mine even paid for an chair,
| desk, monitor and lamp of my choosing for my home office.
|
| I hope this becomes the norm if remote becomes mainstream
| AdrianB1 wrote:
| I work for one of the big US companies and I asked last
| week about this; the HR lady virtually showed me the
| finger, very polite, of course. Not a local policy in the
| local branch...
| jrockway wrote:
| This is probably not the norm. I have a friend that works
| in a call center, and they've been working remotely during
| the pandemic. Her company won't pay for anything; she uses
| her personal laptop, personal consumer-grade Internet
| connection, etc. The consumer ISP doesn't provide their
| stated upload and download ever, and the ISP charged her
| $100 to come out and investigate the issue without fixing
| it. (You run a speedtest to their speedtest node, and it
| doesn't live up to what is advertised. How can the ISP turn
| around and charge the customer for telling them that!?) The
| company won't pay for the debugging. When the Internet
| dies, she's told "welp, you're done for today" and doesn't
| get paid. (She also works 4 days x 10 hours, so one bad day
| costs more than the average 5 x 8 employee.)
|
| It is kind of a nightmare making every employee responsible
| for being the IT director for free. I imagine that most
| companies are not going to see good results here. (It's
| good when it's good, but what do you do when it gets bad?
| Nobody has a plan.)
|
| All in all, consumer ISPs seem to be doing pretty good with
| the pandemic, but I worry that it's mostly a string of good
| luck rather than solid infrastructure investments.
| heelix wrote:
| Commercial internet does not cost a lot of money. I do a
| cable modem and while my speeds are a bit slower than the
| residential option (for the same money) I don't have
| bandwidth caps or 'talk to the hand' when an issue
| happens. Night and day between the two experiences. Worth
| looking into.
| jrockway wrote:
| I agree. The problem is cost (higher, not being paid for
| by the company), and rewarding the ISP for their poor
| service by paying them more.
|
| My philosophy is that you just have to accept that we
| messed up by letting one company monopolize the space,
| and pay them more for their better service... but not
| many people agree with me.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| > You run a speedtest to their speedtest node, and it
| doesn't live up to what is advertised. How can the ISP
| turn around and charge the customer for telling them
| that!?
|
| Easy, the CPE equipment is garbage or placed in a shitty
| location. I'm a nerd, but my ancient wifi setup started
| to struggle with the entire family working and schooling
| all day. I upgraded to a Ubiquiti solution with multiple
| antennas and life is good.
| jrockway wrote:
| We are talking about wired performance here.
|
| I worked on the CPE team for Google Fiber, and indeed,
| WiFi performance is something that we spent a lot of time
| on and never got perfect. The average ISP using off-the-
| shelf CPE doesn't stand a chance. I fear that the CPE is
| not the problem in my friend's case, and the ISP is just
| aggressively oversubscribing, and so nothing can be done.
| Switching to the business plan won't make a difference
| unless they drop all consumer traffic whenever the
| business subscriber needs to send and receive, and they
| are not charging enough money to lead me to believe
| they're doing that. I don't know anything about DOCSIS,
| though... I have worked at two ISPs and they both used
| GPON. The limitations of GPON, however, I understand well
| ;)
| Spooky23 wrote:
| That's unfortunate.
|
| With COVID wfh, I've definitely heard alot of horror
| stories about local ISPs, especially with time of day
| based issues. (10 & 2) seem to be high-disruption
| periods. Where our folks have gotten engaged, 30/35 times
| it's wireless issues.
|
| One thing that I would offer is for your friend to try to
| get input from neighbors in a rough proximity. I did have
| an issue a few years ago with Time Warner Cable where a
| contractor screwed up and hung the wrong grade coax on a
| pole.
| jrockway wrote:
| I like the idea of surveying the neighbors. We will try
| that next :)
| wahlrus wrote:
| I don't think you're wrong. There will certainly be some sort
| of correction of the bullish remote-work spirit.
|
| But the 2020 lockdowns will fundamentally increase the amount
| of remote work permanently to at least some degree.
|
| Like how before Bernie Sanders ran for president, no one in
| mainstream US politics was even talking about socialized
| healthcare. Or how before Andrew Yang, no one outside of
| silicon valley had ever heard of UBI.
|
| This is hyperbole, but you see what I mean.
| shougg wrote:
| I'm happy to have the cost transferred (some parts are
| debateable, I need internet, a desk, and a monitor for home
| anyways) if it means no more commuting and no more open
| offices. My focus has significantly increased in the past few
| months.
| machinehermit wrote:
| I think it depends on how much you like being social too.
|
| Not interacting with people, not having a place to go, just
| being in the house all day is absolutely terrible for my long
| term well being.
|
| If my place goes full remote I would have to consider renting
| an office.
| kyawzazaw wrote:
| > Not interacting with people, not having a place to go,
| just being in the house all day is absolutely terrible for
| my long term well being.
|
| Could this just be due to a pandemic? I think in normal
| WFH, what you described wouldn't be much of a problem.
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| I'm like the parent commenter in feeling office work
| helps me:
|
| For me, I don't do social very well, but I still need to
| interact with people, I get on well with people (AFAICT)
| but seldom does anyone ever really want to spend leisure
| time with me. Work forces me to have social interactions
| that help my "sanity" (by which I mean: a vague hand-
| wavey notion of mental health).
|
| I'm "happy" day-to-day with hiding away at home; but I
| tend to spiral downwards as I don't get much social
| interaction outside of work. Banter is good medicine.
|
| For me this is a midlife thing.
|
| YMMV, and the parent is probably quite different, but
| that's my recent experience.
| munificent wrote:
| There's a thing I see all the time online where people
| _massively_ underestimate human variance. While people
| have many things in common, they are all over the place
| when it comes to many important emotional and mental
| characteristics. There is no one-size-fits all for
| anything behavioral, not even close.
|
| If they say it's bad for their long term well-being, they
| very likely know exactly what they're talking about even
| if your own experience is very different from that.
| ghaff wrote:
| A fair number of people probably feel like you do. But I
| strongly suspect that, at least with many companies, a
| certain percentage of people never come back into the office
| except sporadically. So even for those who do return full-
| time, the atmosphere and work style will be changed for an
| indefinite period of time.
|
| I know a number of people in the process of permanently
| moving out of cities--in several cases to rural locations
| many hours away.
|
| For people with houses, the office space cost is likely less
| than the commuting cost. But it is indeed an issue for many
| in tiny city apartments.
| the_gipsy wrote:
| > Face to face interaction is much more high bandwidth
|
| I'll take quality over bandwidth any day.
| code4tee wrote:
| This seems to be the norm for many companies. Everyone is
| throwing in the towel on 2020 so far as the office goes with the
| goal to take a fresh look for 2021 at the end of this year. Many
| will likely never go back to the setup they had before.
|
| If you're in the market for commercial office space you can
| probably get some killer deals moving forward.
| praiseDang wrote:
| I remember getting downvotes for mentioning the lockdowns are
| going to either last 2 years or it will be a waste of effort.
|
| The benefit of science is that I was correct, the negative of
| the internet is that popularity rules.
| [deleted]
| deegles wrote:
| I'm in the worst of both worlds right now. Unable to commit to
| fully remote but still having to pay to live close enough to
| commute. I think a lot of people are stuck like this until their
| companies decide on a long-term solution.
| Loughla wrote:
| Meanwhile, my employer has said zero remote work once the state
| transitions into the next phase. They want to be "fair" to
| everyone, including those who have positions that cannot be
| performed remotely.
|
| So, you have a co-morbidity? Nope. You have no childcare
| suddenly? Nope.
|
| It's startling how stuck in the 1980's some people are. Just
| absolutely astonishing.
| maurys wrote:
| Depressingly, the easiest tactic is to keep piling on work,
| especially on remote workers.
|
| The manager won't be able to tell if you're genuinely stuck or
| slacking off, and the benefit of doubt is likely to go against
| you if offices have reopened.
|
| So unless you truly can't make it to work, you'll likely go
| back once the majority have, regardless of your apprehensions.
| timewasted wrote:
| I'm in a similar situation, except with a worse reason for
| requiring everyone to come back to the office. We were told
| that the optics of us not coming back to the office as the city
| is reopening could destroy the company. I can assure you that
| NO ONE is going to say "well I was going to spend money with
| these people but they're not in the office, so I'll go
| elsewhere".
|
| Further, we are being given less than 24 hours notice to come
| back into the office. It's just absurd, and it has eroded any
| trust that I once had in the company.
| Florin_Andrei wrote:
| > _We were told that the optics of us not coming back to the
| office as the city is reopening could destroy the company._
|
| Wherein "optics" means the millions that the top shareholders
| and decision makers may or may not make in the future. That's
| what's at stake, and that's why your families need to be put
| at risk.
| danbolt wrote:
| their profits oh no
| ci5er wrote:
| It's how the world works.
|
| Now, it probably isn't as correlated to butts-in-seats as
| mid-management would like to pretend it is, and maybe
| those people don't deserve bonuses for being bad mid-
| managers, but after the US just blew $2T+ on speculative
| bailouts, I do think that the goose is required to lay a
| few golden eggs.
| corobo wrote:
| Name it, shame it. Not necessarily here but make sure places
| like Glassdoor know.
|
| Nothing like a good public shaming to change a company's
| direction
| divbzero wrote:
| What if enough employees simply refused?
| timewasted wrote:
| I would really love to find out the answer to this
| question, but I don't think I'll be able to.
| corobo wrote:
| This is honestly why I love working at smaller companies
| in addition to feeling like you actually make a
| difference as an individual, but that's another comment..
|
| I just said no, not comfortable with that. That was the
| end of it. The in-office was replaced with a call (that
| was later replaced with a chat on Slack as it turned out)
| mattwad wrote:
| The thing is, having worked remotely for a year... the people
| working remote are the ones that become at a disadvantage.
| Because people in office may forget to include them in calls or
| conversations.
| TuringNYC wrote:
| or...they may "forget" to include them in calls or
| conversations
|
| As much as I think WFH will be a huge win for workers, and
| the whole country (to some extent, ex SF/SV), I am skeptical
| it would work unless orgs are _completely_ remote. In hybrid
| setups, I could see WFH workers end up getting edged out --
| it has never worked any other way from what i 've seen in the
| past.
| bluGill wrote:
| Some problems happen when you have more than one office. It
| is almost always us VS them. Management needs to deal with
| this problem. Now I'll grant that it is a little better if
| it is a remote office as one person being remembered can
| remind you of the rest of the office. However it requires
| effort from management.
|
| Which is why I have approval to travel to other countries
| several times a year if I want to. If teleportation existed
| I'd probably work in a different office every day of the
| week, as a tech lead it would help the team.
| TuringNYC wrote:
| I've seen, so many times in my career, a system being
| built with blood, sweat, and tears over the course of 6
| to 12 painstaking months -- and then the system being
| "given away" to someone over the course of a couple of
| beers at a happy hour. (that is, management re-org / re-
| assignment)
|
| When I was co-founder/CTO I never acted this way, because
| frankly it didnt make sense. But it happens so often in
| real life, I wonder if this is more about human nature.
| bluGill wrote:
| That is a different problem that deserves its own thread
| of discussion, not buried under my reply.
| chasd00 wrote:
| this has happened to me. In leadership positions it should
| be either everyone is remote or no-one is remote. In a
| hybrid setup too many conversations and decisions get made
| face-to-face and leave out the remote people until way too
| late in the process. I would get on calls that went like
| "yesterday, after work we were at dinner and all decided to
| do X and so made some calls, just fyi".
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| It's amazing how so many people/entities want to pretend that
| somehow the pandemic is less dangerous now than it was in March
| when we started all of the isolating/WFH. When in fact we have
| a lot more cases now, high levels of new cases and more than
| half the states have R0 > 1.0. https://rt.live/
| chrisco255 wrote:
| Yes, but if you actually look at the death count, it has
| dropped in the past month and a half, despite re-openings:
| https://ga-covid19.ondemand.sas.com/ Georgia being one of the
| earliest states to re-open, continue to see their deaths
| plummet even as their case count increases. What's the reason
| for this? I don't know. Better testing, maybe. Maybe a less
| deadly version of the virus is propagating now. Not sure.
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| Deaths lag new cases by 2 to 3 weeks.
| devalgo wrote:
| As klenwell said, deaths are very lagging. It could take
| weeks for a person admitted to a hospital to die so it
| shouldn't at all be reassuring that those numbers are going
| down. They are bound to rebound.
|
| How is this downvoted? If you have evidence showing all of
| the new cases are from younger people or totally
| asymptomatic carriers go ahead and show it otherwise its
| literally a tautology, more cases = more deaths.
| aedocw wrote:
| It takes a while for people to die after infection. Give
| states like Georgia time to catch up. Their hospitals will
| be overwhelmed and the numbers of deaths will get there.
|
| There is no "less deadly version of the virus". Treatment
| protocols have improved but that has not dramatically
| changed the odds of at-risk folks dying.
| chrisco255 wrote:
| People have been saying that now for almost two months.
| Georgia started to reopen April 24th. It's not
| registering in the data.
| eanzenberg wrote:
| They'll keep saying it all the way to November.
| jmchuster wrote:
| The China strain that people get on the west coast has
| been shown to be less deadly than the Italy strain that
| people get on the east coast.
| nostrademons wrote:
| It's been shown to be less infectious. Mortality rates
| are the same for both strains.
| CommieBobDole wrote:
| The Georgia death rate graph that you link to is sort of an
| odd case; there's apparently a variable lag between the
| occurrence and reporting of a death, sometimes up to a
| month - When a death is reported, they place it on its
| occurrence date on the graph, not on the reported date.
|
| As a result, it will appear from this graph that deaths are
| always declining whether they are or not - the more recent
| deaths have not yet been reported, so they're not anywhere
| on the graph. They do the same thing with their daily cases
| map, but they're a little more transparent there about
| noting that numbers for the past few weeks are basically
| meaningless.
|
| Reported deaths in GA have been fairly flat, but
| hospitalizations are rising slowly:
|
| https://www.ajc.com/news/coronavirus-georgia-covid-
| dashboard...
| eachro wrote:
| Another thing to keep in mind about hospitalizations is
| that many people have avoided going to hospitals during
| the pandemic for non-covid related visits for fear of
| contracting covid at the hospital and/or adding to
| hospitals caseload. It could also be the case that people
| are re-evaluating their risk profiles and no longer
| taking the same precautions with respect to hospital
| visits. I'm not sure what is really happening but wanted
| to emphasize how tricky it can be to interpret covid
| related metrics.
| treis wrote:
| >As a result, it will appear from this graph that deaths
| are always declining whether they are or not
|
| Most deaths are reported relatively quickly. If there
| were, as an example, a 2x increase in deaths it would
| show on the graph within a few days. It would show as
| something like a 1.8x increase before trickling up to the
| full 2x over the following weeks.
| trustfundbaby wrote:
| Been saying this for a while now ... since the Georgia
| Reopening, I've been monitoring a lot of state data daily,
| lots of places that started seeing spikes 3-4 weeks ago
| haven't even had as much as a slight trend upwards in
| deaths (Here's South Carolina for example
| https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/south-
| carolina-c...)
|
| Wisconsin has seen a spike come and go and death rates have
| remained about the same
| https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/wisconsin-
| corona...
|
| It just feels odd that this isn't spoken about enough, and
| I think its because the media narrative is a bit too
| invested in the "danger" part of this virus ... to feel
| they can't point out that simple observation for fear of
| undoing their reporting about the virus, which is a shame.
| I mean deaths are down nationally ... by a lot, even as the
| cases have ticked back up.
|
| My hunch is that the folks who are most at risk are taking
| drastic precautions, which is what is keeping the death
| rates down. I guess we'll just have to see for sure in 2-3
| more weeks.
| klenwell wrote:
| I would posit a couple reasons:
|
| 1. Death is a lagging indicator. Based on new cases here,
| I'd predict an upswing shortly:
|
| https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vQSSp19amBF
| U...
|
| 2. Some reports indicate younger people are starting to get
| it more frequently. Data and common sense suggests they
| will have a higher survival rate. But this does not mean
| they will not suffer serious ongoing health and economic
| consequences as result. They also risk infecting others
| close to them.
| chasd00 wrote:
| median age of infection is plummeting. Covid19 doesn't kill
| younger people at the same rate as the elderly.
|
| "The severity of what we are getting has declined," said
| Gino Santorio, chief executive officer of Broward Health,
| the four-hospital system that serves most of Broward
| County. "The average length of stay is six days versus 10.
| Initially, Broward Health had the really sick COVID
| patients, those from nursing homes and cruise ships. Now,
| that has changed, as the demographics have shifted."
|
| https://www.sun-sentinel.com/coronavirus/fl-ne-
| coronavirus-f...
| klenwell wrote:
| This is the part that gets me, too. Here's a summary I put
| together of where the US stands on the latest "reopen"
| benchmarks:
|
| https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vQSSp19amBFU.
| ..
|
| It varies region to region. I'm in Orange County, CA. (You
| may remember us from such recent news events as...)
|
| This was Huntington Beach weekend before last (probably much
| the same this weekend, too):
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/CoronavirusOC/comments/h9max3/ny_ti.
| ..
|
| This was a photo posted to Reddit this past weekend:
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/orangecounty/comments/hczes1/pirozz.
| ..
| larntz wrote:
| I am in south-ish (north palm beach) Florida and went to
| the beach the past few weekends. Fortunately it was nowhere
| near has busy as that picture. We haven't had much issue
| finding a spot with enough space to feel socially
| distanced.
|
| We also went to Longhorn for dinner yesterday and they had
| everyone pretty spaced out (every other booth, no seating
| at center tables). All the restaurant employees were
| wearing masks. I'm not sure we were at more risk than
| getting takeout.
|
| It has been really great mentally to go to the beach and
| have dinner outside the house.
|
| I am trying to keep our distance and not expose ourselves
| or others to anything unnecessary... we would have
| definitely left the beach and/or the restaurant if it was
| anything like the pictures you posted.
|
| I guess my point is I feel like it's possible to go out and
| not be too risky. I don't think every area reopening is
| getting crazy.
| devalgo wrote:
| It's definitely concerning how people are acting but that
| being said I think the initial research is showing that
| outdoor spread during the day is very unlikely. UV light
| seems to be devastating to Covid and Vitamin D seems to be
| protective. So a crowded beach is probably not all that
| bad. Packed bars and restaurants? That's a near worst case
| scenario
| standardUser wrote:
| I have been pro-lockdowns and have not indulged in any
| conspiratorial nonsense. But at a certain point, if
| states and localities don't accept the mounting evidence
| that outdoor transmission is not a significant threat, it
| will start to feel a little tyrannical.
| devalgo wrote:
| It's probably a question of awareness. How many of these
| people are reading e.g arxiv preprints to see this kind
| of research in the first place? There's also a
| rebound/face saving effect: if the CDC, State Health
| Officials, etc. got it wrong at first why should we
| believe them about anything? I just really doubt there
| are secret totalitarian Mayors and Governors out there
| intentionally locking people in their homes despite all
| evidence. Given politicians obsession with reelection and
| the unpopularity of these lockdowns it doesn't make sense
| they would do it for no reason and basically guarantee
| they lose their next election.
| coldpie wrote:
| > They want to be "fair" to everyone, including those who have
| positions that cannot be performed remotely.
|
| But, this only increases the risk for those who actually do
| have to go in. Everyone should be vocally opposed to this
| policy, including (especially?) those to whom this policy is
| supposed to be "fair."
| divbzero wrote:
| Public transit can benefit everyone, including people who
| don't take public transit. This is an analogous scenario
| except with severe health implications.
| moksly wrote:
| It seems insane. I work in digitalisation in Denmark, as a
| developer, so I can do everything from home. We're running at
| 50% as our country is slowly coming back from a lockdown, but
| those 50% go to the people who actually need to be at the
| office, so I'm in no way a priority.
|
| I wonder what management will do with the COVID data though.
| Our productivity is through the roof, but they've just spent
| several hundred millions building a new open office city hall
| because open offices were all the rage. Must be a tough pill
| to swallow that all those money were wasted because people
| work better from home where there are far less distractions.
| claudeganon wrote:
| My partner's company just had their most profitable quarter
| in company history, when everyone but some bare bones staff
| was working at home, and they're still debating whether or
| not to bring everyone back into the office.
|
| At a certain point you have to recognize that it's not
| about being safe or rational. It's about bosses making sure
| they can hold power over employees.
| moksly wrote:
| They probably realise a home based workforce needs fewer
| bosses.
| ghaff wrote:
| Why do you think that? If anything, managers can help
| better connect a more distributed workforce. (And those
| connections _are_ one of the definite downsides of
| everyone being remote.)
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| Because if you have competent people, managers don't need
| to do much, we just coordinate ourselves to achieve our
| goals and our boss asks us from time to time if
| everything is going OK.
|
| The catch is, it takes a good manager to hire and keep
| good employees that can self coordinate effortlessly.
| rebuilder wrote:
| Does working remotely or from the office factor into that
| somehow?
| admax88q wrote:
| I think its less that "remote workers need fewer bosses"
| and more that "remote work is illustrating that the
| number of bosses we have is not necessary"
|
| Many of them just don't have things to do when everyone
| is remote, and yet the work is still getting done.
| keeganpoppen wrote:
| yes, it's washing away the illusion that the meetings
| that middle managers spend 90% of their days in provide
| any sort of value to anyone
| newsclues wrote:
| Because code can replace remote management in a far more
| efficient system
| markkanof wrote:
| What does your partner's company do? Is working from home
| directly and immediately attributable to the profits last
| quarter?
| claudeganon wrote:
| It is attributable. I don't like to share too many
| personal details, but they work in a business that
| benefits from new demand driven by the pandemic.
| meej wrote:
| The best way to protect the health of the employees who cannot
| work remotely is for those who can to stay home. It's appalling
| that your employer doesn't seem to understand this.
| scarface74 wrote:
| I quit my job and found a new one because my company was
| forcing us to come into the office to "collaborate" -- even
| though for the most part only the team leads are in the US and
| the rest of the dev team is India. My team was in another
| state.
|
| I was already halfway thinking about another job because of the
| open office that was a mix of developers, QA, customer service
| managers, and implementation folks that were always on the
| phone and it was loud. Now with Covid and me working from home
| for three months, I dreaded going back into the office.
| papito wrote:
| Collaborate. All you would do is sit at your desk in a mask
| and freak out every time someone walks by you.
| scarface74 wrote:
| 2nd part. My wife works for the school system as a bus
| driver. My new job was always designed to be remote and it
| pays enough more for me to "retire my wife". We decided
| that it wasn't worth the risk or the headache for her to go
| back to work. She's already started a new business/hobby as
| a virtual fitness instructor when school let out early and
| the gyms closed.
| coliveira wrote:
| The reality of post-coved is that such employers will start
| losing people as never before. Most businesses are now
| transitioning to remote work as default.
| jb775 wrote:
| If that's their mindset with remote work, they probably have
| the "anti-adapt" mindset in other aspects of their business as
| well...which means they'll probably become dinosaurs and be out
| of business within the next 10 years.
| g-garron wrote:
| Some people just do not understand that employees are more
| productive if they are comfortable. They think employees need
| an eye behind its back in order to produce. And if it is that
| way, it is their fault, they have chosen bad when hiring.
| ThisIsTheWay wrote:
| > Some people just do not understand that employees are more
| productive if they are comfortable.
|
| I'd wager most people understand it. Like you pointed out,
| it's an issue with the perception of lost control, and people
| are willing to trade productivity for power.
| asdfman123 wrote:
| That's a really good point. People do do a lot of non-
| rational things when they feel like they've lost control.
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| Here they are asking for volunteers first, but there is a clear
| push from management to get people back in the office ( and
| that is despite the fact that by all official metrics of our
| unit, we are basically killing it ). Doesn't matter. They want
| control.
|
| Current rumblings suggest we are going back in July.
| waltherg wrote:
| I've heard two C-level guys with two separate German SMEs say
| that the only part of their workforce that hadn't handled
| remote work well was middle management.
|
| The people doing the actual work were happy WFH and simply
| getting stuff done. Senior management / C-level types were
| content seeing sales figures and general output from afar.
|
| Middle management struggled because they had a hard time
| judging work estimates for tasks and whether people had their
| butts in seats etc.
|
| Just an anecdote but thought that was intriguing.
| donretag wrote:
| "they had a hard time judging work estimates"
|
| They had a hard time justifying their existence.
| nautilus12 wrote:
| Maybe more of a statement about the necessity of middle
| management..
| delusional wrote:
| One of the execs of the bank I work at made a public
| statement that they actually saw the productive output of the
| IT organization shoot up during the WFH weeks here in
| Denmark.
|
| But of course middle management didn't agree so now we are
| back in the office.
| noir_lord wrote:
| My employer is the same over here in the UK.
|
| So I'm voting with my feet and actively looking for a fully
| remote job, it's fucking insane to pretend an extra 2ft and
| alcohol gel will work when no one is following the rules
| properly.
|
| I'd have been moving on at some point anyway since I don't
| particularly like my job but it pays well so I have time to
| look for something that is a better fit.
|
| So they'll drain the good staff, I'm not the only one planning
| to bugger off.
| dvfjsdhgfv wrote:
| > They want to be "fair" to everyone
|
| This is the explanation I hear most often, but when you examine
| it, it makes no sense. Otherwise you would need everyone to
| make the same money, which makes no sense either. People are
| different, their duties are different, some jobs are better
| suited for remote work than others - putting everyone in the
| same basket is plain stupid.
| walshemj wrote:
| The trouble is from an IR (industrial relations) perspective
| that actually can be problem if one group perceives that some
| other group has something they don't have. (Brigit's Jones
| Smaug Marrieds )
|
| Also how would you audit this "oh her she's friends with
| manger x so she gets o work from home etc"
| dvfjsdhgfv wrote:
| It depends. For example I have my set of duties written in
| a table (a fairy long one). I added a column with the "Can
| be done remotely?" heading and marked the respective
| entries (most of them - the exceptions were things like
| meetings and business trips). The same can be done with all
| employees: the ones who have tasks that don't absolutely
| require their presence should be able to work remotely
| during a pandemic.
|
| Besides, by now it should be clear who is efficiently
| working remotely and who isn't. If there are problems, this
| should be a signal to reexamine the situation of a given
| employee. Everything should be based on clear metrics known
| to everybody. Riskng other people's (or, more likely, their
| relatives') lives for a wrong purpose is plain silly.
| elliekelly wrote:
| If someone's job can be performed from home and they're at
| higher risk due to a co-morbidity it would very likely be a
| reasonable accommodation under the ADA to have them work from
| home.
| downerending wrote:
| What they _want_ is everyone 's butts back in their chairs, in
| the office. The rest sounds like pretext.
|
| It remains to be seen how that will play out at my job, but I
| am very seriously considering a "100% remote" policy myself (as
| in, no office, no travel at all), even if I have to switch
| jobs.
| edw519 wrote:
| _They want to be "fair" to everyone_
|
| Where I work, discussing salaries is strictly forbidden and
| grounds for dismissal.
|
| I demanded an increase and was told, "No. It wouldn't be fair
| to the others."
|
| I asked, "How would they know?"
|
| (weWantToBeFair) = enterprise(iWontCumInYourMouth)
| spiznnx wrote:
| >discussing salaries is strictly forbidden and grounds for
| dismissal.
|
| FYI, a strict ban on discussing salaries is illegal in the
| United States and in many parts of the world.
| xxpor wrote:
| That's an illegal policy (if you're in the US), FYI.
| kayodelycaon wrote:
| It's also illegal to fire someone for a disability or not
| hire someone because they are a minority but plenty of
| companies do it anyway.
| xxpor wrote:
| They're usually not dumb enough to say that directly
| though.
| r00fus wrote:
| Does it make sense to name & shame these bad actors?
| catacombs wrote:
| Yes. It's all about PR, and if a company looks bad because
| it's forcing its employees to return to the office, amid a
| global pandemic and health concerns, that won't bode well,
| and they are likely to buckle under the pressure.
| Loughla wrote:
| The issue is, I know I would be fired, and cannot afford to
| lose this job. There is no one hiring in the area, and we're
| geographically locked due to factors around my child that I
| don't care to get into here.
|
| So, the answer is yes, but there is no way to do that without
| losing my health insurance, and probably home. So that's
| neat.
| catacombs wrote:
| > The issue is, I know I would be fired, and cannot afford
| to lose this job. There is no one hiring in the area, and
| we're geographically locked due to factors around my child
| that I don't care to get into here.
|
| Unionize.
| zaphod12 wrote:
| No idea what you do, but a lot of companies are newly open
| to full-time remote employees, fwiw. Sounds like you work
| for jerks.
| praiseDang wrote:
| If you don't mind, what is your comorbidity?
|
| Are you old or obese? Or some other health condition?
| amcoastal wrote:
| You're not geographically locked from working remotely.
| Lots of places are hiring remote workers. I'd start
| applying immediately.
| agensaequivocum wrote:
| In the current climate, we need less not more of this.
| scruple wrote:
| There's a world of difference between what some 13 year old
| said on Twitter in 2011 and how a business actively treats
| it's employees today.
| agensaequivocum wrote:
| Fair. But it should be a last resort not the go to
| response.
| celim307 wrote:
| Eh any company who engages in marketing imo has entered
| the thunder dome of public opinion. They can't have their
| brand be a one way communication channel
| [deleted]
| WrtCdEvrydy wrote:
| > Wow, I guess I'll just tell my team you want them to die and
| they should find another job
|
| This is what I told my boss when these orders came down... they
| are still deciding what to do.
|
| Edit: Be aware, I have enough emergency savings for around 3
| years worth of fuck it. I'm not you and you should not be me.
| Loughla wrote:
| >As an institution of higher education, I believe that we
| should be evaluating all of our options and enacting what is
| equitable for our employees. Please note that 'equitable'
| does not mean everyone is treated the same. Some individuals
| have life circumstances out of their control during COVID. We
| are already working remotely, we know that it does work.
| Further, it gives those of us that need it the most the
| flexibility to protect our families, our students, and our
| programs without having to choose one over the other. It
| helps us do our jobs more efficiently and effectively simply
| because we do not have to choose between work or family. This
| should not have to be a choice at a place like [institution
| name]. In our leadership covenants, we sign onto a work-life
| balance, not work over life. Have we decided to simply
| eliminate this agreement in our covenants go to increase our
| (enrollment) profits for the college by having everyone back
| to work arbitrarily? I would desperately hope not. Was that
| necessarily the intention? Probably not, but it feels that
| way to me and probably to others.
|
| This is what I sent the HR office. To follow to the
| President.
| cheez wrote:
| You work for higher ed. COVID is about to decimate them.
| I'm not surprised they are taking this tack. It's survival
| mode now.
| Loughla wrote:
| I agree with you, 100%. But we're a commuter campus that
| doesn't rely on room/board to cover our bills. I assumed
| we would see more flexibility.
|
| I guess that's what I get for assuming.
| klenwell wrote:
| My company also rushed to reopen our home office today. I
| and most my team are not located there so we continue to
| work remotely. But many of my co-workers were puzzled by
| the rush to get people back in the office after 3 months of
| working remotely quite effectively. There was also some
| confusion over who was required to return to the office
| when.
|
| After I found out masks were optional in the office late
| last week, I sent a message to the executive I report to
| this weekend outlining my concerns about this and a couple
| other things. Some policy adjustments were announced this
| morning! So sometimes the system does work.
|
| I also made it very clear to my team that I was
| recommending they continue to work from home. I
| communicated to them that they were not going to impress me
| with their courage or dedication to the company if they
| went back into the office. They will impress me by
| continuing to do good work and remaining safe.
|
| My last job was at a university so I know how things tend
| to operate in higher education. Best of luck. If I were
| working at your institution, I would be grateful to know
| people like you were speaking up.
| [deleted]
| dvfjsdhgfv wrote:
| Everybody should be you, if possible. Having enough savings
| to be able not to worry about the nearest future is not just
| a perfect option, it's a necessity.
| nicoburns wrote:
| Unfortunately it's not a realistic option for most people.
| If we're talking about "shoulds", then we _should_ have a
| welfare state that covers these scenarios rather than
| putting the burden on individuals, many of whom will not
| have the means to implement it even if they wanted to.
| dvfjsdhgfv wrote:
| It's not "should" in the sense of some moral obligation,
| but rather your main aim in life: once it's realized, you
| can move on to realizing other aims.
|
| Of sourse many people really can't do it. But there are
| many who can but choose short-term gratification instead.
| I'm telling them: you're making a big mistake.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| I'm inclined to agree, but I do wonder how we avoid
| people just adjusting their risk threshold to account for
| the welfare state. I know it seems to work in other
| places, but I'm not convinced that what works in
| Scandinavia (or wherever) will work in the US. It seems
| like the US has a lot of other problems that it needs to
| sort out in order to be in the same ballpark as these
| model countries with respect to successful government
| programs. Notably, our bureaucracy seems distinctly
| ineffective and incompetent, our body politic is highly
| divided, and our media apparatus optimizes for
| divisiveness and misinformation (maybe some or all of
| these are common problems among countries that have
| strong safety nets, I really don't know). This isn't to
| say we must sort out our government competence, etc
| before implementing a stronger social safety net, but I
| do wish we at least tried to solve for these problems in
| tandem with other policy issues.
| majormajor wrote:
| > I'm inclined to agree, but I do wonder how we avoid
| people just adjusting their risk threshold to account for
| the welfare state.
|
| Which direction are you picturing this going?
|
| I would be a lot more flexible in what jobs I would take,
| what things I would consider doing with my life (starting
| my own company, taking time off and pursuing some sort of
| artistic side project...) if I had a good health care
| safety net.
|
| So that adjustment to my risk tolerance would be good if
| you're pro-entrepreneurship or pro-arts, but bad if
| you're pro-giant-faceless-companies-that-can-treat-
| employees-like-crap.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| I was specifically concerned that people would take
| unproductive risks. Worse business investments, having
| children outside of an unstable family situation more
| often, etc. But your point is a good one; my concern
| could be unfounded and maybe people would be more
| productive? I genuinely don't know. One question I would
| have about your model is how it stacks up against
| countries with strong social safety nets? Do they tend to
| be more entrepreneurial as your model predicts? If not,
| why not?
|
| Note that while by certain measures, those countries tend
| to be less productive than the US, I don't necessarily
| think that comes down to welfare, and in either case I
| don't think it's an awful thing to be somewhat less
| productive. I would personally like to work less.
| claudeganon wrote:
| Maybe if we had a functioning welfare state, the
| government would be encouraged to respond to a pandemic
| appropriately so as not to overwhelm its resources.
| Scandinavia seems to be doing better than the US at the
| moment.
|
| As it stands, it looks like the US is using its lack of a
| social floor to force people back to work under unsafe
| conditions, regardless of whether that's rational or
| necessary, which will result in masses of unnecessary
| injuries and deaths.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| This is true in the same way that if a homeless person
| had a million dollars he might not be homeless. The trick
| is how to get a functioning welfare state when your
| government is fundamentally broken.
|
| Note that the even the CDC failed spectacularly at its
| primary job; its literal raison d'etre. You can criticize
| that the CDC lacked funding, but that is wrong[^1] and it
| misses the point: not being able to properly fund our
| agencies is itself evidence (if not proof) of government
| incompetence.
|
| [^1]: Procuring masks and other PPE or even planning for
| a supply chain shortage is the cheapest, most impactful
| thing they could have done even without the benefit of
| hindsight (we knew from previous epidemics like SARS and
| MURS that the most likely epidemic would be respiratory
| in nature). Similarly, it's cheap enough to plan for
| standardized outbreak data collection and reporting (we
| should have known right away how many confirmed cases,
| deaths, recoveries, and tests we had in every locale).
| Similarly, we should have also had plans for scaling out
| testing capability. We also shouldn't have rolled our own
| (fallible, time consuming) tests if we were cash strapped
| --we should have used the WHO tests. Planning is
| relatively cheap and by all appearances the CDC didn't do
| it at all.
| ikiris wrote:
| The party in power runs on a slogon of "government is
| never the solution, I'll prove it" and people act
| surprised that this is the result.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| I liked Obama and everything, but I don't think the
| federal government was meaningfully more capable of
| administering a significant welfare program then than it
| is now. As much as we like to pretend that Obamacare was
| a great success, I don't get the feeling that it
| dramatically improved circumstances on balance (premiums
| went up across the board but coverage for preexisting
| conditions is guaranteed so that's something I guess).
|
| I'm sure we'll all talk about how this is all the
| Republicans' fault, and that may well be true; however,
| it doesn't excuse us from perpetuating the cycle of
| divisiveness at every opportunity; however, cathartic
| that may be. We need to work to understand and build
| bridges if we're to be more than Pyrrhic victors. Of
| course partisanship and tribalism will always be more
| popular until we've reached whatever low we're willing to
| accept.
| Klinky wrote:
| Obamacare was huge for pre-existing conditions and the
| marketplace, you actually had options now, instead of
| zero. Also Obamacare was watered down to appease
| Republican interests at the time. There was no interest
| in building bridges during it's building, Republicans
| were laying out the dynamite, and spent a hell of a lot
| of wasted effort after Trump took office trying to
| trigger that dynamite.
|
| It is hard to meet in they middle when both sides are
| extremely far apart, and each side has factions that are
| even further apart than ever before.
|
| Really we need more than two parties dictating the
| agenda. It is getting harder for the far left to even
| want deal with Democrats, much less Republicans. The same
| is happening with the far/alt right.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| > There was no interest in building bridges during it's
| building, Republicans were laying out the dynamite, and
| spent a hell of a lot of wasted effort after Trump took
| office trying to trigger that dynamite.
|
| So what's the point? One could argue that Republicans
| were responding in kind. You would disagree (as would I,
| but that doesn't matter). This kind of endless litigation
| only polarizes us--we each permit our own extremists
| because we believe they are slightly less bad than the
| other side's extremists. I think a multi-party system
| would be helpful, but I think the problems run deeper
| (especially since we're seeing the same trends toward
| polarization in countries with multi-party systems).
|
| I think at its core the problem is that our
| epistemological institutions are corrupted by extremists.
| We aren't having an actual debate because the "hosts" or
| "moderators" of the debate are only presenting one
| perspective and only the facts that support it. The other
| side isn't going to have their opinions changed because
| their questions aren't being addressed, only shouted down
| and maligned. I think this lack of real national
| discussion drives each side to be more entrenched and
| more extreme, and I think this is somewhat by design--the
| media in particular seems to be optimizing for it
| deliberately.
|
| I think we need to build a collective awareness of the
| manipulation we're subject to. We need to understand that
| the folks on the other side of the party line aren't
| evil, but that we're being presented with a distorted
| perspective (although certainly many on each side really
| are bad). We need to start moderating ourselves as
| individuals and developing empathy for people on the
| other side of the party line while demanding better of
| our institutions. We won't start agreeing with each other
| on everything or indeed many things (and certainly not
| overnight), but we should be able to have productive
| debate and work gradually through issues. We need to
| start humanizing each other and finding common ground.
| Klinky wrote:
| Obamacare didn't actually need Republican support, but
| Obama did try to reach out an olive branch to the right,
| and it was stomped on repeatedly.
|
| It is very hard to empathize with conservative
| capitalists, libertarians or the alt right, when much of
| their policies seem to be based on a lack of empathy.
|
| It's also kind of sad that rioting, protests and raw
| anger over recent social issues has been more effective
| at moving the needle than decades of political
| handwringing. I don't think this is going to help with
| any "see it from both sides and meet in the middle"
| arguments.
| fzeroracer wrote:
| > You can criticize that the CDC lacked funding, but that
| is wrong[^1] and it misses the point: not being able to
| properly fund our agencies is itself evidence (if not
| proof) of government incompetence.
|
| I'm not sure how this works out, considering we have one
| party whose entire stated goal is to defund the
| government and reduce government size. They are also the
| ones pulling the levers right now and have admitted over
| and over again to slash-and-burn styles of governing. Our
| government is fundamentally broken because we elect
| people who break the government and then say it's broken,
| so we need less of it.
|
| > Similarly, we should have also had plans for scaling
| out testing capability. We also shouldn't have rolled our
| own (fallible, time consuming) tests if we were cash
| strapped--we should have used the WHO tests. Planning is
| relatively cheap and by all appearances the CDC didn't do
| it at all.
|
| We had a pandemic response team and the previous admin
| did make plans in case of a future pandemic. Our current
| one decided to toss most of that out and downsize said
| response team. Additionally the US Government was
| literally seizing masks and undermining the CDC every
| step of the way.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| > I'm not sure how this works out, considering we have
| one party whose entire stated goal is to defund the
| government and reduce government size. They are also the
| ones pulling the levers right now and have admitted over
| and over again to slash-and-burn styles of governing. Our
| government is fundamentally broken because we elect
| people who break the government and then say it's broken,
| so we need less of it.
|
| I agree with this assessment to the extent that we keep
| electing poor officials, but I don't think it's a "one
| party is amazing and the other is terrible". In
| particular, the CDC's issues were around a long time
| before the prior administration (again, SARS was in 2003
| and we scarcely made preparations in the intervening
| years). To the extent that the problem is the officials
| we elect, I think that's partially true--I think the
| government is an emergent property of the health of our
| body politic, but our body politic is highly partisan (as
| evidenced by your comment). This is partly due to a
| divisive media but also probably to our two party system.
| We will keep electing worse officials because those
| officials can make a plausible argument that they are at
| least marginally better than the officials in the other
| party. The bar keeps getting lower; it's a race to the
| bottom.
|
| > We had a pandemic response team and the previous admin
| did make plans in case of a future pandemic. Our current
| one decided to toss most of that out and downsize said
| response team. Additionally the US Government was
| literally seizing masks and undermining the CDC every
| step of the way.
|
| The pandemic response team wasn't part of the CDC, but
| yes, disposing of that team was a bad idea in hindsight.
| It doesn't absolve the CDC; however, and it misses the
| point in the same way that the "but the government didn't
| properly fund the CDC!" argument misses the point.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| > not being able to properly fund our agencies is itself
| evidence (if not proof) of government incompetence.
|
| It's proof that powerful interests are successful in
| starving the beast so they can get away without
| oversight.
| rebuilder wrote:
| As I see it, the welfare state model has the benefit of
| moving towards maximizing the potential of each
| individual. If you have free education and a strong
| safety net, you can take a lot of risks in terms of
| career choice without even realizing it, and never be
| worse off for it.
|
| The 'individual responsibility' model of states like the
| USA seems to be more based on blunt acceptance of the
| idea that someone needs to take out the trash and tend
| the lawns, and that gets too expensive if people have a
| choice in whether or not they want to do manual labour.
| Ericson2314 wrote:
| Um, I'm not sure it's easy at all for people to live as
| precariously as they do in the US now with a decent
| safety net. Imagine a UBI that pays a smidgen every 10
| seconds: how does one emulate living "paycheck to
| paycheck" that way? You'd have to be pretty clever to
| emulate that.
| nybble41 wrote:
| > Imagine a UBI that pays a smidgen every 10 seconds: how
| does one emulate living "paycheck to paycheck" that way?
|
| It's not that difficult. You just take out a big
| interest-only loan with payments exactly equal to your
| UBI. The process doesn't change significantly just
| because you're getting paid every 10 seconds rather than
| once per week: the money is already promised to someone
| else before you even receive it.
| deevolution wrote:
| A welfare state isn't necessary if people save
| aggressively like in Singapore. People are actually
| required to save something like 35% of their income and
| their employers have to contribute an additional 15%.
| Some welfare exists but only for special circumstances
| like for the needy or disabled. Simply telling people to
| save more wouldn't cut it in America. If we end welfare
| like the Republicans want, I think we would need a
| government mandated savings rate or employment matching
| program similar to Singapore. We also need to go back to
| a gold standard and end inflationary fiat money - this is
| exactly why people dont have a rainy day fund / have no
| incentives to save in the first place. Its left the
| individual and the family vulnerable, fragile, and it has
| lowered our time horizons and corrupted our institutions
| and increased our dependence on the government.
| jschwartzi wrote:
| You're basically replacing an insurance program that
| everyone pays into with safety guarantees with a savings
| account that each individual pays into with zero
| guarantees and each individual now has to know how to
| save enough for themselves, oh and the government will
| take some of your money if you don't save enough of it. I
| can't imagine anything more regressive.
|
| The entire purpose of the Federal Reserve is to ensure
| our economy devalues our savings at about 5% a year. So
| every year those of us required to save are losing money
| to the people who have easy access to credit. And like
| every "plan" in this country it will be 100% based on W-2
| income meaning the extremely rich won't ever be affected
| by it, just like they're not affected by insurance costs
| or social security insurance.
| peruvian wrote:
| We can't even suggest people wear masks without them
| saying we're taking their freedom away. Not way we're
| forcing people to save money.
| devtul wrote:
| There is no avoiding personal responsibility, we give
| power to bureaucrats to run some stuff for us but you
| can't solely rely on their judgment. Unless we are
| talking about the helpless and inept in our society, then
| I agree with you.
| ufmace wrote:
| It might be nice to have a strong welfare state that
| covered all possible scenarios. The problem is that it is
| fundamentally incompatible with the open-borders
| immigration that seems to be all the rage with some these
| days. Promise free money for nothing, and billions of
| third-worlders will be beating down your door. We might
| be able to afford something like that for all current
| citizens. We'll never be able to afford it for every
| single person who figures out a way to come to our
| shores.
|
| This means that you have to choose one or the other. Both
| ways have people who lose, and it won't be pretty for
| them.
| thrwyoilarticle wrote:
| What happens if everyone uses it at the same time?
| jonathanpeterwu wrote:
| Building on this. If you have the risk tolerance. Just
| stating that you have to work remotely (if its legitimate)
| at-risk health, child care, family care I'm sure there can't
| be a ton of pushback on an individual level. Otherwise it
| might be a GREAT signal to leave a company who in the midst
| of a pandemic is irrational.
| claudeganon wrote:
| Companies being willing to throw their employees into meat
| grinders has generally been rewarded by the market (which
| also tends towards the irrational).
| sushshshsh wrote:
| This is absolutely true, and normally those companies
| will receive reduced profit/revenue if the move is truly
| detrimental, and the company will slowly die and
| accumulate debt and drop in share price.
|
| Unless of course the Federal Reserve continues to pull a
| BOJ and prop up zombie firms with free money, thus
| completely destroying the "disruption" of an otherwise
| bad company's business model.
| neilparikh wrote:
| Costco did a similar thing at the start of the pandemic, where
| they forbid people working in offices from working remotely, to
| be "fair" to those who work in their stores.
|
| An employee who worked in their offices actually died from
| COVID-19:
| https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/briannasacks/costco-cor...
|
| Now, it's not a given they got it from the office, but they
| probably did spread it more, so it was a very irresponsible
| policy IMO.
| sergiotapia wrote:
| She was Joesie Krebs - Double-neumonia patient, 63 years old.
|
| https://www.kens5.com/article/news/health/coronavirus/woman-.
| ..
| duxup wrote:
| The implication being going into the office sucks and everyone
| has to do it to be fair.
|
| I wonder if they're aware of that subtext....
| caymanjim wrote:
| That's not the subtext, that's exactly the point. I don't
| agree with it, but it's not a hidden message.
| duxup wrote:
| Perhaps, but I suspect management might be more occupied
| with the positive of "being fair" and not aware how much
| negative it is.
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| Commuting would be easier with less people doing it too, so
| whilst going to the office is sucks, for many, due to
| transportation issues it would stick a little less with fewer
| people doing it. Even a single company can make parking
| easier if only half the company car-commutes continue.
|
| Of course many businesses require employees to be present.
| Consultant32452 wrote:
| I wonder how long it will take for some fortune 500 company
| to get sued by their white collar office workers who catch
| COVID.
| duxup wrote:
| I think it will take extra factors like some manager who
| orders someone he knows has COVID into the office before we
| see a lawsuit that makes it very far.
| Consultant32452 wrote:
| I think it could be as simple as interpretation of state
| guidelines. My state is recommending workers work remote
| if possible. If your company allowed you to work remotely
| before, your employer has demonstrated that it's
| possible. So if you are forced to endanger yourself
| against state health and safety guidance, that should be
| enough.
| rebuilder wrote:
| Or, that management thinks the work they're having employees
| do sucks, and their employees are going to slack off as much
| as they can if left unsupervised. Also, that management
| doesn't have much in the way of supervisory powers apart from
| tracking hours at the office.
| pkaye wrote:
| Maybe look at work output instead of hours.
| mlthoughts2018 wrote:
| What a disturbing notion of "fairness" - apparently forcing
| people to be subjected to daily exposure to a deadly virus (via
| commute & office spaces) is "more fair"?
|
| Absolutely jawdropping stupidity that is.
| mlthoughts2018 wrote:
| By this logic, civil servants in a police precinct should be
| exposed to violent criminals because it's more fair.
|
| Apparently whatever is the maximum hazard experienced by an
| employee has to be shared by everyone to be fair?
| jes5199 wrote:
| companies who ask their employees to take risks with their
| health, without a compelling reason, are destroying any sense
| of goodwill or morale. In the short term, that change might be
| invisible, but over the long-term it destroys businesses
| yomly wrote:
| It sends the message "I don't care about you" very loud and
| clear. Don't be surprised when your employees suddenly stop
| caring about your company
| pbourke wrote:
| Yeah, a switch gets flipped that cannot be unflipped. It
| becomes a mercenary situation until you can exit.
| asdfman123 wrote:
| I feel like American society is obsessed with safety and the
| value of individual lives, which has never made sense to me
| but I go along with it out of respect.
|
| However, when your actions have a x% chance of killing
| someone, and you can mitigate it with reasonable
| precautions... ad what value of X do you go along with?
|
| There's a disconnect there. Either people are really bad at
| math and science, or they do not care about other people's
| lives nearly as much as they think.
| Leherenn wrote:
| Why doesn't it make sense that people do not want to die
| (generally)?
| Y-Bopinator wrote:
| If I would die for my startup, surely my employees would
| too
| asdfman123 wrote:
| I'm talking about a general societal lack of acceptance
| about death. You don't really see it as much in many
| other cultures.
| _jal wrote:
| I know one startup learning this. They're ~80 people, and I
| thought they had a decent chance of making it until this.
|
| They lost their 'backbone' over the return-to-work plan. She
| was the one who kept everything nontechnical running. She
| felt the risk of bringing it home was too great, and $CEO
| pressured when he should have compromised. Now they're losing
| other key staff and it looks likely to become a stampede.
|
| I'm sure there are many possible takeaways from this, and one
| would be to beware of soft-power/moral-authority rivals. I
| think a far smarter one might be about empathy.
| notyourday wrote:
| Here's what I do not understand -- if the company had an open
| office floor plan , which is probably the case a very large if
| not the majority number of offices, bringing the workforce back
| into the office would require a massive expense as the state
| governments are requiring the social distancing / partitions.
| How are the companies going to accommodate that set of
| regulations with the current layouts? From a simply logistical
| standpoint there's simply no way there enough time between now
| and say end of August to have offices redone to accommodate the
| new regulations.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| > How are the companies going to accommodate that set of
| regulations with the current layouts?
|
| Most likely, they won't. If they gave shit about this, they
| wouldn't push people into the office at all.
| modzu wrote:
| without childcare cant work at home either..
| op03 wrote:
| Some folk make more money renting office space to their own
| companies than they do from the companies.
| cheez wrote:
| Good observation.
| zoolander2 wrote:
| how much of these permanent WFH will impact Uber's revenue? I
| swear work commuting is a big chunk of their revenue
| perl4ever wrote:
| I don't understand how people could possibly do that; apart
| from the cost, my experience with Uber and Lyft was awfully
| stressful. Something new and unsettling would happen in 5/6
| rides - I didn't particularly feel like it was worse on average
| than a regular cab, but I didn't feel secure either. Drivers
| taking their hands off the steering wheel, fumbling and
| accidentally hitting the SOS button, tailgating...I only used
| them when I absolutely had no alternative.
| aphextron wrote:
| I've been trying recently to wrap my head around what life is
| going to be like from here on out. Where do we go? Things will
| never be the same again. Remote work will now be completely
| normal, that's for sure. But how do we get back to living our
| lives? Fundamental assumptions I've had about the things I've
| wanted to do in life are now basically no longer an option. Will
| Silicon Valley no longer really be a "thing" anymore with
| physical meetups, hackathons, conferences etc. being a thing of
| the past? Surely at some point we have to reckon with this,
| rather than just hunkering down in our caves.
| radomysisky wrote:
| There is no going back. The "normalcy" won't return to big
| western cities. Take a few, e.g. NY, London, Seattle, SF,
| Paris. Each of these cities were already crippled with
| homelessness. They're all so expensive that even a six figure
| income is barely enough to scrape by. They were all decimated
| by COVID. And now they've all been thrown into weeks of civil
| unrest, further exacerbated by local leadership stoking, rather
| than extinguishing the fire.
| raz32dust wrote:
| This is not forever. We will likely have a vaccine at some
| point, may be within a year or two. We will also keep getting
| better at treating it over time - in identifying susceptible
| populations, developing cures, and hospitals being better
| equipped.
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