We just need to make the office an optional place that people can gather when they feel the need to. I have no problem at all working a 5 day 40 hours work week from home. But this nonsense of everyone waking up at the same time, sitting in traffic, and cramming into "open plan" work spaces has to go.
I'm concerned that if we go this route on a permanent basis without a more powerful labor movement, it'll mean that work and home will seamlessly merge. Employer surveillance will enter the home and corporate domination will seep into every pore of our existence... and that's for white collar workers.
Many workplaces have been moving in this direction over the past decade. Not only do employees love it; there are also serious cost savings for employers.
Pretty much everyone wants to go this direction. The problem is that there are still serious hurdles in place -- mainly due to the nature of the work, or cultural/interpersonal challenges.
Sorry it won't happen. An office packed with humans is all about stroking the CEOs ego. Its just not the same seeing your servants on a screen vs packed together doing the boss's bidding.
For those living (and planning to stay) in areas with high wage standards (like most of the Western world!), keep in mind that remote work also opens your job to competition from much cheaper places.
Great for the people in those places, but your happiness to be able to skip the commute may quickly turn into a lot of unhappiness because you can't make a living wage anymore.
That's why we need something like a universal basic income to alleviate peoples' dependence on a job or wage. Outsourcing has already eliminated many peoples' jobs, that's a big reason why Trump and his anti-immigrant rhetoric got elected.
How many of us don't want to commute to the office 5 days a week, but also don't necessarily like the idea of working from home when not at the office?
My personal ideal is a dedicated office space in a location very close to my home, like in the nearest downtown, where I would pay a certain amount per month in return for a set of days on which I could reserve personal office space.
The issue with working from home for me is that I feel my personal life and work life become messy and entangled if I do too much work at home. Similar to how good sleep hygiene involves doing as few activities other than sleeping on your bed as possible, I feel for my mental wellbeing it's better to physically separate my work life and home life as much as possible.
If your work location is farther away than the nearest downtown you should look for either a new job or a new place to live imho. Commuting more than an hour a day is awful.
Definitely, I love to work out of coffee shops. Co-working spaces are another option (as a stingy person, I wish they were cheaper though).
It's great to change one's work environment every now and then. When I used to work in offices, many days I'd be sick of my office and want to work somewhere else, if only to change things up.
that's what coworking spaces are for. and it's absolutely a good option, if you can find one near your home. of course it may add to your cost, depending on how much space you have at home
Offices are hardly the problem areas to reopen - most of them can go remote.
It's the places that can't go remote that is the problem, and those are exactly the places where they need to be open many hours, in order for customers to be able to come.
Anybody else feeling like if we're young and healthy we should actively try to contract this thing, self-isolate for a few weeks, and be done with it?
It feels almost like this would be the most socially responsible thing to do: reduce the effective R0 and allow things to start getting back to normality.
I'm the farthest thing from a "reopen" protester. But I can't help thinking that as a young and healthy individual, this is a valid option that nobody is talking about.
- COVID puts even some of the young and healthy into the ICU
- there are reports of serious long term damage even in mild/asymptomatic cases, so you might be immune until the next big pandemic but your lungs may be busted forever
Maybe it's possible that there could be a net positive from a coordinated and well-executed plan that follows this idea in an area with sufficient hospital resources to handle the small percentage of cases that end up severe. That said there are two reasons why this should not and will not happen:
1. Execution - it's not enough to tell the young and healthy "go get coughed on". Intentionally infecting a significant percentage of the population would almost certainly lead to an outbreak in the remaining population unless extreme care was taken. Keep in mind that a bunch of these young people won't have any symptoms at all- and we probably don't have the resources to test all these young people. The outcome would be too predictable- some young people would want to leave home after a week thinking they never got sick, and then would spread the disease to their community.
2. Politics and fairness - who are the ones most incentivized to be intentionally infected? Who are the ones most capable of declining this program and continuing to isolate at home for the next N months as needed?
Any politician who suggests this plan will be accused of sacrificing the poor and the blue collar, as they are the ones who can't just work remotely for the next year.
Personally, as a WFH-capable employee I would sit this out. Why should I go through this when I'm capable of effectively disappearing from society until the pandemic is over? I'm sure many other office workers agree.
Putting these two points together, this is neither something that we should encourage individuals to do of their own right (lest they fuck it up and hurt their community), nor something any politician would (probably) ever try to coordinate and execute at scale.
It's unclear to me whether you'll catch it again next year (like the seasonal flu), or how long your immunity will last. But if you want to go about this, I'd suggest doing so with medical supervision.
The science is still out. We're not sure that specific individuals will develop an antibody response, though WHO will now go as far as to say "most" and "some level of protection"[0]. We're not sure being young and healthy is enough to guarantee that you won't die from it. We're not sure of the long-term effects of having caught it. Maybe it kills everyone 6 months later. Doubtful, but no one's been alive for 6 months after having caught it.
We still don't know enough about this thing, though we are learning more by the day.
This has been my thinking for a few weeks now. Aside from bringing us significantly closer to herd immunity, it would increase the pool of eligible plasma donors for plasma antibody therapy.
And those are just the public health benefits. Saving millions of jobs and livelihoods is no small benefit either.
If only it were that simple. Coronavirus only induce a short lived immunity (40 weeks is the average). With the common cold varieties you basically catch the same virus over and over again as you don’t build up any long term immunity to them.
The end result of all this is you would get sick and then be at risk of getting sick again next year and the year after that all the while putting at risk anyone who is vulnerable.
There is really only one way out of this mess - a vaccine.
Ok, good point, there is just one small detail: the "without cutting salaries" part.
Employees will love it, that's for sure, but I don't think employers will get even. You are basically giving your employees a 25% raise on their hourly wage.
There are success stories of companies that pay their employees above market value, either by paying them the same amount for less work, paying them more, or giving them particularly good perks. It is the idea of quality over quantity: by giving out preferential treatment, you get the best employees, and keep them motivated, and their increased productivity will make up for the higher cost. But there are success stories going the other way too: cheap, borderline slave labor and a high turnover. Sometime a high volume of low quality work is effective.
But in most cases, the usual market value is what works best, that's why it is the market value.
I am not saying that working less is bad, but it is a bit unfair to have the employer shoulder all the costs. Maybe make it half/half: 10% less pay for 20% less work.
Will there be objections from companies that have been part of the biggest stock rally in generations, large companies that took piles of the small business bail out money and, companies like Domino's that have thrived yet had to be forced to allow employees to wear even legally required masks?
If everyone started working fewer hours for the same pay you would be effectively devaluing the dollar. You wouldn't actually be adding more value to the economy.
Value in the economy is created by work and there is simply no substitute for that. Shortening the work week would simply make less value in the economy, making us all poorer and more idle.
Too much idleness I can tell you leads to stress, even more stress than too much work. 40 hours is not too much work.
To solve the problem in the article one could still cut the workforce by half that was present in the office simply by adding more work-from-home time for the workers which I find to be healthy my own experience anyway. our office is made similar overtures, saying when we go back to work lots of us. Be working from home as a way to tackle a space issue.
I'm pretty sure we're far away from too much idleness. 40 hours is too much work. 20 or so would be more than sufficient imho. That would give people time for hobbies and social interaction outside the office.
The Makeup of a Dollar [1] would be little affected by a change in working hours, because only the effects of labor are measured, not the actual duration of labor itself.
Many people outside of Silicon Valley have temporarily (in theory) had their salaries cut. 20% less work for 25-30% less pay sounds like it devalues employee time far more than it devalues the dollar.
aphextron|5 years ago
tehjoker|5 years ago
kube-system|5 years ago
Pretty much everyone wants to go this direction. The problem is that there are still serious hurdles in place -- mainly due to the nature of the work, or cultural/interpersonal challenges.
eweise|5 years ago
tgsovlerkhgsel|5 years ago
Great for the people in those places, but your happiness to be able to skip the commute may quickly turn into a lot of unhappiness because you can't make a living wage anymore.
JSavageOne|5 years ago
forgot_my_pwd|5 years ago
My personal ideal is a dedicated office space in a location very close to my home, like in the nearest downtown, where I would pay a certain amount per month in return for a set of days on which I could reserve personal office space.
The issue with working from home for me is that I feel my personal life and work life become messy and entangled if I do too much work at home. Similar to how good sleep hygiene involves doing as few activities other than sleeping on your bed as possible, I feel for my mental wellbeing it's better to physically separate my work life and home life as much as possible.
adrianN|5 years ago
JSavageOne|5 years ago
It's great to change one's work environment every now and then. When I used to work in offices, many days I'd be sick of my office and want to work somewhere else, if only to change things up.
em-bee|5 years ago
ars|5 years ago
It's the places that can't go remote that is the problem, and those are exactly the places where they need to be open many hours, in order for customers to be able to come.
throwaway122378|5 years ago
jasunflower|5 years ago
pythonbase|5 years ago
https://twitter.com/kashaziz/status/1257012120090292226
daxfohl|5 years ago
It feels almost like this would be the most socially responsible thing to do: reduce the effective R0 and allow things to start getting back to normality.
I'm the farthest thing from a "reopen" protester. But I can't help thinking that as a young and healthy individual, this is a valid option that nobody is talking about.
SeeTheTruth|5 years ago
And we still don't know if catching one strain once confers immunity, or for how long. So you won't be "done with it".
If you do get sick you become a burden on an overloaded healthcare system.
The people talking about this option are rightly being shut down.
tgsovlerkhgsel|5 years ago
- COVID puts even some of the young and healthy into the ICU
- there are reports of serious long term damage even in mild/asymptomatic cases, so you might be immune until the next big pandemic but your lungs may be busted forever
helen___keller|5 years ago
1. Execution - it's not enough to tell the young and healthy "go get coughed on". Intentionally infecting a significant percentage of the population would almost certainly lead to an outbreak in the remaining population unless extreme care was taken. Keep in mind that a bunch of these young people won't have any symptoms at all- and we probably don't have the resources to test all these young people. The outcome would be too predictable- some young people would want to leave home after a week thinking they never got sick, and then would spread the disease to their community.
2. Politics and fairness - who are the ones most incentivized to be intentionally infected? Who are the ones most capable of declining this program and continuing to isolate at home for the next N months as needed?
Any politician who suggests this plan will be accused of sacrificing the poor and the blue collar, as they are the ones who can't just work remotely for the next year.
Personally, as a WFH-capable employee I would sit this out. Why should I go through this when I'm capable of effectively disappearing from society until the pandemic is over? I'm sure many other office workers agree.
Putting these two points together, this is neither something that we should encourage individuals to do of their own right (lest they fuck it up and hurt their community), nor something any politician would (probably) ever try to coordinate and execute at scale.
cbhl|5 years ago
Consider volunteering for a "challenge vaccine trial": https://1daysooner.org/
gumby|5 years ago
fragmede|5 years ago
We still don't know enough about this thing, though we are learning more by the day.
As the magic 8 ball says: ask again tomorrow.
[0] https://twitter.com/WHO/status/1254160937805926405
forgot_my_pwd|5 years ago
And those are just the public health benefits. Saving millions of jobs and livelihoods is no small benefit either.
danieltillett|5 years ago
The end result of all this is you would get sick and then be at risk of getting sick again next year and the year after that all the while putting at risk anyone who is vulnerable.
There is really only one way out of this mess - a vaccine.
asdhaslkskdh|5 years ago
(I'm no fan of oversimplification, but this is what's at stake.)
droopyEyelids|5 years ago
Sars-2 is you get it, and then you get some amount of permanent damage to your lungs and cardiovascular system.
acd|5 years ago
Loop: 1) Work monday-friday 6 hours practise strict social distancing. Work remote if you can. 2) Weekend rest from social distancing see friends.
Its like a binary four square wave with on / off.
Reason: If we practice good social distancing the spread time of the Covid is five days.
jobigoud|5 years ago
nsomaru|5 years ago
Proven|5 years ago
[deleted]
GuB-42|5 years ago
Employees will love it, that's for sure, but I don't think employers will get even. You are basically giving your employees a 25% raise on their hourly wage.
There are success stories of companies that pay their employees above market value, either by paying them the same amount for less work, paying them more, or giving them particularly good perks. It is the idea of quality over quantity: by giving out preferential treatment, you get the best employees, and keep them motivated, and their increased productivity will make up for the higher cost. But there are success stories going the other way too: cheap, borderline slave labor and a high turnover. Sometime a high volume of low quality work is effective.
But in most cases, the usual market value is what works best, that's why it is the market value.
I am not saying that working less is bad, but it is a bit unfair to have the employer shoulder all the costs. Maybe make it half/half: 10% less pay for 20% less work.
jasunflower|5 years ago
TomMckenny|5 years ago
djhaskin987|5 years ago
Value in the economy is created by work and there is simply no substitute for that. Shortening the work week would simply make less value in the economy, making us all poorer and more idle.
Too much idleness I can tell you leads to stress, even more stress than too much work. 40 hours is not too much work.
To solve the problem in the article one could still cut the workforce by half that was present in the office simply by adding more work-from-home time for the workers which I find to be healthy my own experience anyway. our office is made similar overtures, saying when we go back to work lots of us. Be working from home as a way to tackle a space issue.
adrianN|5 years ago
sova|5 years ago
[1] https://satisologie.substack.com/p/the-makeup-of-a-dollar
nullc|5 years ago
In some kinds of jobs this may be true, but in others-- especially ones with substantial intellectual or creative components-- it isn't.
In some cases studies have showed increased output from reduced working hours.
elliekelly|5 years ago