Off topic galore

[bkp_duke]

Yeah the people that work in my local McDonalds, Starbucks and other low wage retail business have commutes measured in minutes.

Thanks for pointing out jobs which have ZERO chance of remote work. Pretty much killed your own argument there.

 

[jerry33]

Since you are going on this tangent, and don't appear to get off it, I'll reply.

Workers in remote work scenarios are LESS productive than those that come to the office. This has been borne out repeatedly in various studies. The below articles reference the most recent study from Stanford, a well-performed study.

Remote Work Might Not Be As Productive As Once Thought, New Studies Show

New science-backed studies show that remote work may not be as productive as previously thought, but another work mode tops out as an overall better option for employees and employers.

www.forbes.com

The remote work revolution is crashing into a cold reality: Research is finding workers are less productive at home

We spoke with two people who left fully remote work behind and began working from the office more often to be more productive.

www.businessinsider.com

As someone that runs a company with lots of tech jobs, I've seen this for a very long time, long before the pandemic.

Simply put - people by default (not judgement) are lazy, they generally will do the least amount of work they think they can get away with. Even when you set CLEAR expectations for work and productivity markers required for promotion, they will complain that they didn't get a promotion/raise and blame it on their boss (and some bosses do suck) but they don't want to take personal responsibility that their actions might, just MIGHT be the reason they didn't move up the ladder. This is a CULTURE problem in the USA. I don't have this problem in my company with my employees outside of the USA. Work ethic (and NOT "slaving" people - compensating fairly for their work) is just eroding rapidly in the USA. Case in point - Berlin and Shanghai Model Y fit and finish is PERFECT. Put those cars next to one from Fremont, and they make it look poor by comparison. The product is the same. The employee and their pride in their work, not the same.

TL;DR - people need someone to watch over their shoulder to make sure work gets done, very few people actually can thrive with increased productivity in the WFH scenario. That's simply a fact.

Usually the reason people are less productive is that they don't have the same tools or access that they do at work. At the end of my last job, we were given laptops that could barely boot--let alone do productive work. And the requirements to get in took probably half an hour per session averaged out (due to the poor connectivity software). When I started (20 years prior) I was about 80% as effective at home. At the end I could drive an hour to the office, work an hour, and drive an hour home and get more work done than spending eight hours working at home. My opinion is that there are two kinds of people, those who work and those who coast. The coasters coast whether or not they are warming a chair in the office or at home. The workers do the best they can with the tools they are given.

 

[bkp_duke]

Usually the reason people are less productive is that they don't have the same tools or access that they do at work. At the end of my last job, we were given laptops that could barely boot--let alone do productive work. And the requirements to get in took probably half an hour per session averaged out (due to the poor connectivity software). When I started (20 years prior) I was about 80% as effective at home. At the end I could drive an hour to the office, work an hour, and drive an hour home and get more work done than spending eight hours working at home. My opinion is that there are two kinds of people, those who work and those who coast. The coasters coast whether or not they are warming a chair in the office or at home. The workers do the best they can with the tools they are given.

Unless you are doing AI work, very VERY few workloads today cannot be done on something with the CPU equivalent of a chromebook. It doesn't take much to run a spreadsheet, word processor, quickbooks, etc.

The only exception, which "smart" companies have discovered - BIG computer screens. Give someone a 32 inch monitor vs. a 27 inch and their productivity goes up markedly with that extra real estate.

 

[thx1139]

Thanks for pointing out jobs which have ZERO chance of remote work. Pretty much killed your own argument there.

Who said every job should be remote work. I am talking about jobs that can be remote work or hybrid. I mentioned those because they skew commute times down. Forcing people to go into work well because because is putting more burden on the people that cant do remote work. Elon whines about his going into work and I am fairly certain he has never had to feed kids before going to work, never had to get them off to school, never had to get them to daycare. He acts like he is the typical commuter.

 

[betstarship]

Wow

Oil Rises as Hospital Blast Ratchets Up Middle East Tensions

(Bloomberg) -- Oil rose after Iran called for an embargo against Israel by Muslim countries, following a deadly explosion at a Gaza hospital that raised the risk of wider hostilities in the Middle East.Most Read from BloombergRinggit Falls to 25-Year Low, the Worst Performer in Asia After Yen...

finance.yahoo.com

 

[bkp_duke]

Who said every job should be remote work. I am talking about jobs that can be remote work or hybrid. I mentioned those because they skew commute times down. Forcing people to go into work well because because is putting more burden on the people that cant do remote work. Elon whines about his going into work and I am fairly certain he has never had to feed kids before going to work, never had to get them off to school, never had to get them to daycare. He acts like he is the typical commuter.

I would agree if most people could be trusted, but they can't. It's the sad truth, and it's why productivity tanks for remote workers compared to on-site workers. Plus, there is a clear improvement in collaborative effect when your staff are all together vs. remote.

This isn't conjecture or a political opinion, these FACTS have been borne out repeatedly in various well-conducted studies.

 

[thx1139]

I would agree if most people could be trusted, but they can't. It's the sad truth, and it's why productivity tanks for remote workers compared to on-site workers. Plus, there is a clear improvement in collaborative effect when your staff are all together vs. remote.

This isn't conjecture or a political opinion, these FACTS have been borne out repeatedly in various well-conducted studies.

I knew that was always your reason. You dont trust people.

 

[bkp_duke]

I knew that was always your reason. You dont trust people.

DATA is my reason. The DATA bears out the remote workers just aren't as productive as on-site. PERIOD.

 

[bkp_duke]

The Surprising Truth About Remote Work Productivity

Research shows that remote work saves time and boosts productivity.

www.psychologytoday.com

My studies, linked previously, say the opposite, and there are more of them.

As is typical with scientific data, you must look at it in the aggregate, not just cherry pick one or two points that fit your pre-conceived ideas.

 

[Knightshade]

DATA is my reason. The DATA bears out the remote workers just aren't as productive as on-site. PERIOD.

Does it though?

Are Remote Employees More Productive? | Monitask

A lot has changed in how we work over the past few years. With advances in technology, more and more employees are working remotely. Some people believe that remote employees are less productive than those who work in an office setting. But is this really the case? Let’s examine some of the pros...

www.monitask.com

Some studies like the Fortune paper suggest that remote employees are more productive than non-remote workers.

A recent study by the Harvard Business Review found that remote employees are more productive than their on-site workers/ office workers.

Further to it, employees working remotely reported much higher job satisfaction than office workers. This job satisfaction leads to employee productivity of remote workers. Research shows that on average, workers who are satisfied with their jobs are 31% more productive.

In addition, the Washington Post stated that labor productivity increased by 1.8 percent from 2020 to 2021, which is higher than the average annual increase of 1.4 percent from 2005 to 2019.

A 2019 study conducted by Airtasker found that remote and in-office employees perform equally well. You may be surprised to hear that remote workers are actually more productive when they’re not in the office

Now- I'm sure you can post some data suggesting the opposite- as you claimed- but your THE SCIENCE IS SETTLED bit just ain't so.



Edit to reflect that you seem to think it IS settled because "My studies, linked previously, say the opposite, and there are more of them."

I mean, in the 1960s I bet I could find you "more of them" saying smoking is good for you and oil isn't causing climate change too.

I'm not sure 'quantity" is the best decider of scientific study accuracy.

 

[EQC_]

DATA is my reason. The DATA bears out the remote workers just aren't as productive as on-site. PERIOD.

But did that data come before or after the mass use of Teams and Zoom?

You see, whether I am at home on a zoom meeting, or in my office but still on a zoom meeting, or in-person in a conference room for a 1-hour scheduled meeting that runs over to 1.5 hours but only included 2 minutes of useful information that could have been covered in an email, I assure you that both my time and company time is being equally wasted and productivity is the same .

(Ummm...that was supposed to be sarcastic...sortof.)

 

[thx1139]

My studies, linked previously, say the opposite, and there are more of them.

As is typical with scientific data, you must look at it in the aggregate, not just cherry pick one or two points that fit your pre-conceived ideas.

What I posted referenced multiple studies.

 

[2daMoon]

DATA is my reason. The DATA bears out the remote workers just aren't as productive as on-site. PERIOD.

Evolution is a huge factor. Every living thing on the planet has running in low level code to always trend toward the path of least resistance.

Overcoming this takes mental effort by those who have some inkling that doing so will make their life better. Only those who have bucked the programming enough to reason through, experiment, and prove to themselves how being productive is beneficial to them will be able to understand that working smarter and harder IS better.

Everyone else, the majority, are too caught up in their lives to give this sort of thing much thought and will prioritize using that hard-coded preference in the lizard-brain to always trend toward the path of least resistance.

Left to their own devices, watching videos, participating in forums during working hours, etc. will seem to them as if it doesn't affect their work. Being left unsupervised simply opens the door to further allow a higher adoption of this behavior. This will always be true for most of the people. And for the animals, and the plants, and the microbial creatures, and most of physics as well.

 

[bkp_duke]

But did that data come before or after the mass use of Teams and Zoom?

You see, whether I am at home on a zoom meeting, or in my office but still on a zoom meeting, or in-person in a conference room for a 1-hour scheduled meeting that runs over to 1.5 hours but only included 2 minutes of useful information that could have been covered in an email, I assure you that both my time and company time is being equally wasted and productivity is the same .

(Ummm...that was supposed to be sarcastic...sortof.)

After, they were studies conducted during and after the pandemic, unlike the studies quoted by someone else.


And this is a US phenomenon, as I previously pointed out - a culture issue. I run a company with teams in half a dozen countries. We monitor productivity with various tools (login trackers, keylogers, time aggregators, etc.). By far, the US-based employees are the ones that try to abuse the system.

 

[Krugerrand]

Who said every job should be remote work. I am talking about jobs that can be remote work or hybrid. I mentioned those because they skew commute times down. Forcing people to go into work well because because is putting more burden on the people that cant do remote work. Elon whines about his going into work and I am fairly certain he has never had to feed kids before going to work, never had to get them off to school, never had to get them to daycare. He acts like he is the typical commuter.

How big must your ego be to think Elon was ever talking about you or your wife, and thus take what he said personally.

News flash! He wasn’t talking about you, so put your hurt feelings away. And a reminder, Elon has lived a lot of life. He’s been poor and lived on a single dollar/day, shoveled coal, and a whole host of other things you conveniently forgot.

He’s not forcing anyone to go into work, so relax.

 

[EQC_]

After, they were studies conducted during and after the pandemic, unlike the studies quoted by someone else.


And this is a US phenomenon, as I previously pointed out - a culture issue. I run a company with teams in half a dozen countries. We monitor productivity with various tools (login trackers, keylogers, time aggregators, etc.). By far, the US-based employees are the ones that try to abuse the system.

Awe...you missed my (some truth) joke in the second part of my post .

That being said...I have no ties to international business, but I wonder if part of the US culture issue you see is a reflection of management and other older/established employees and their culture in some cases. Like, with my mention of pointless over-long meetings. I can see that creating a feeling of "management just wasted 1.5 hours of my workday...and then that older/richer employee just wandered to my office and spent 30 minutes telling me about his vacation, and now he's at the coffee machine starting that conversation over with 2 more people. I gotta blow off some steam and clear my head with some random internetting before I can get back to work...but why should I feel guilty when all my superiors have no problem wasting my time?"

 

[Electroman]

My studies, linked previously, say the opposite, and there are more of them.

Yes !!. My experience working with my coworkers and my team suggests working from home has been highly productive with much higher employee morale and satisfaction. Everyone hates the productivity loss from long commutes.

A design discussion or stand up at 8 am gets close to 100% attendance when all employees are working from home. When everyone is asked to come in, I get a few that don't show up and a few with long commutes are not in a great mood.

And the biggest benefit from everyone working from home is, in a meeting I get more vocal active participation from participants around the globe irrespective of their location. On the contrary, when 10 people assemble in one physical room in the US and 5 in another room across the pond and across the globe, there is so much of cross chat within a room which is hard to hear from another location, and in the end many simply tune out and are waiting to get out of the room.

All in a virtual Zoom room democratizes the participation very nicely.

And when troubleshooting software issues, sharing the screen is far better way to collaborate than peering over ones shoulder.

 

[Darkfox021]

Can you guys knock it off with the work from home discussion.

 

[ggies07]

Can you guys knock it off with the work from home discussion.

Yeah, I'm trying to get my work done in the office, but I'd rather be posting this from my couch...

 

[betstarship]

So talk.

The world is in a continuous heap of upheaval and excrement, and Wallstreet is making bank on the back of it. SSDD

Well, I looked at a world map a few days ago in order to see the Middle East and the corresponding countries around it. I've never been to any of the countries in that area of the world, so its foreign to me.

Anyways - I just did google searches for the most relevant articles from 1/1/2020 to present for the following key term searches and took one of the top 3 links in each search:

- Syria: UNHCR responds to deadly earthquakes in Türkiye and Syria | UNHCR
- Afghanistan: Remarks by President Biden on the Way Forward in Afghanistan | The White House
- Iran: https://www.cnn.com/2022/09/24/tech/iran-internet-blackout/index.html
- Yemen: Explainer: Why Yemen is at war
- Oman: Haitham bin Tariq sworn in as Oman’s new sultan
- Saudi Arabia: FACT SHEET: Results of Bilateral Meeting Between the United States and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia | The White House
- Iraq: https://www.npr.org/2021/10/18/1047...cy-defined-by-two-very-different-wars-in-iraq
- Jordan: https://www.ft.com/content/03eef745-6821-4a3d-a428-231f1f90c252
- Israel: https://apnews.com/article/israel-p...kes-hostages-4377e096f62bf535bebcdff38cf16049
- Lebanon: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-lebanon-security-blast-documents-excl-idUSKCN2562L7
- Kuwait: https://www.npr.org/2020/09/29/918248313/kuwaits-emir-sheikh-sabah-al-ahmad-al-sabah-dies-at-91
- Turkey: https://www.npr.org/2023/02/07/1154913148/turkey-earthquake-fault-lines-syria

Outer countries:
- Egypt: https://theintercept.com/2023/09/22/menendez-indictment-egypt/
- Pakistan: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-62712301
- Turkmenistan: https://www.npr.org/2022/01/08/1071565479/turkmenistan-gates-of-hell-fire
- Uzbekistan: https://www.npr.org/2022/09/15/1123...it-in-uzbekistan-as-the-ukraine-war-dominates
- Tajikistan: https://www.hrw.org/news/2022/09/21/kyrgyzstan-tajikistan-border-clashes-prove-deadly-civilians
- Georgia: https://www.voanews.com/a/parliamen...l-approval-to-foreign-agents-law/6994450.html
- Ukraine: https://www.state.gov/joint-declaration-of-support-for-ukraine
- Ethiopia: https://www.unhcr.org/news/briefing...efugee-arrivals-sudan-unseen-last-two-decades

Trends:
- Multiple giant wars
- Huge earthquakes and wildfires
- Massive amounts of refugees

The world gets its oil from these places. So many reverberations and it's almost like a petri dish of change going on. It reminds me of this really old quote by Elon Musk:

A quote by Elon Musk

In terms of the Internet, it's like humanity acquiring a collective nervous system. Whereas previously we were more like a [?], like a collection of cell...

www.goodreads.com

“In terms of the Internet, it's like humanity acquiring a collective nervous system. Whereas previously we were more like a [?], like a collection of cells that communicated by diffusion. With the advent of the Internet, it was suddenly like we got a nervous system. It's a hugely impactful thing."​

I liken the change of our entire energy consumption and utilization stack to the same line of thought, no? We're uprooting and replacing all of this, new technology always has a correlative (if not a causal) relationship with social change/progress too.