[HN Gopher] WFH significantly increased workforce participation ...
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WFH significantly increased workforce participation from those with
disabilities
Author : TheIronYuppie
Score : 174 points
Date : 2023-10-01 15:55 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (thehill.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (thehill.com)
| havershank wrote:
| [dead]
| syngrog66 wrote:
| its shocking that so many online job apps ask you for your race,
| gender, sexuality (?!?) and health/disability status. and with a
| straight face ALSO say they Promise-Pinky-Swear to not use the
| answers to discriminate against you
|
| uh huh
|
| 1. you cant know whether they will or not. you're pointing a gun
| at your head, pulling a trigger and hoping a bullet doesnt come
| out
|
| 2. even if they dont, you've just shared that data with
| strangers. and data lives forever and can leak out to anywhere
| else, replicating endlessly. ultimately ending up in Enemy Hands
| (defined here as folks who dont mean you well & plan to act on
| it), and thus, used to hurt you
|
| 3. if you give a false answer on a job app they can later cite it
| as cause for firing you. ie. it givea the biz HR/legal dept yet
| another gun they can point at your head, financially and legally
|
| its a de facto Scam right out in the open. relying on enough
| people to fall for it, and believe their Spin. _nobody_ should
| play along with it
|
| ps. and yes I know its "required" by "law" in some cases. it
| doesnt change the point and the tangible impacts of it. it doesnt
| make it NOT creepy, dangerous and immoral. evil is evil
| faeriechangling wrote:
| >if you give a false answer on a job app they can later cite it
| as cause for firing you.
|
| Lying about being disabled on a job applications is not
| considered legal cause for firing somebody in many
| jurisdictions. It's still rather career-limiting to start an
| employment relationship with somebody by LYING to them though,
| and employers can simply not follow the law and fire you
| anyways and it will hardly be worth suing them for damages, so
| this is cold comfort.
|
| I have counselled many extremely naive disabled teenager and 20
| somethings about disability discrimination and how to get past
| it and get a job, generally talking to those who have some
| ability to hide it but would be much more productive and live a
| higher quality of life with accomidiation:
|
| - If you're going to reveal being disabled do it through a
| recruiter who will match you with employers who are looking to
| fill a quota or whatever. Or do it if you know the people
| hiring you and know they will respond well.
|
| - If you can hide being disabled, don't ask for any
| accommodation, and hide being disabled for at least long enough
| to get through a probationary period at which point people will
| be hesitant to retaliate against you because of the sunk costs
| and everybody involved in hiring you wanting to save face. This
| is usually what I usually end up recommending.
|
| - Where you are disabled, can live without accommodations
| indefinitely, and want to climb the ladder - never say that
| you're disabled or ask for accomidations. You will be
| discriminated against for being disabled and then discriminated
| against again over the perception that you must be a diversity
| hire.
| smokel wrote:
| It would be great if we could simply flag an article with the tag
| "useless statistics".
|
| What does it even mean to measure a 4% increase in output _per
| minute_? Does that include the time spent fiddling with the
| microphone at the start of a Zoom call?
|
| Also, the title on HN does not match the title of the article.
| xkekjrktllss wrote:
| the boss has entered the chat
| DiggyJohnson wrote:
| Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-
| examine. Edit out swipes.
|
| Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not
| less, as a topic gets more divisive.
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| smokel wrote:
| I don't really understand your remark. Perhaps you (wrongly)
| assume that I do not like WFH?
|
| Rest assured that it is only the article, the statistics
| presented, and the title under which it was submitted, that I
| do not like.
| CharlesW wrote:
| > _What does it even mean to measure a 4% increase in output_
| per minute _?_
|
| Based on the context, I read this to mean that the overall 13%
| increase in productivity isn't just explained by remote workers
| working 9% more minutes.
| 5555624 wrote:
| I've became disabled two years ago. My supervisor and I filled
| out the Reasonable Accommodation paperwork for our EEO and HR
| offices. At the time, I thought we were filling it out
| prematurely, since I was not sure what accommodations I'd need.
| (And two weeks after losing my leg to Necrotizing Fasciitis and
| Sepsis, work was not the first thing on my mind.) We did not ask
| about working from home; but, that was the accommodation they
| came back with.
|
| I had to catch up a lot once I got home from the hospital and
| rehab; but, since then, I haven't missed a beat. It became a
| major part of my recovery. If I couldn't work from home, I'd be
| basket case.
| voiper1 wrote:
| NOTE: title doesn't match the article title.
|
| Article title: Does working from home damage productivity? Just
| look at the data.
|
| HN title: WFH significantly increased workforce participation
| from those with disabilities
| squigz wrote:
| There is a single mention, in passing, of disabled workers.
| This is absurdly misleading.
| satvikpendem wrote:
| De-clickbaiting the title is IMO a good thing, it's similar to
| what the YouTube extension DeArrow does, crowdsourcing more
| accurate and non-clickbait titles and thumbnails. It's made by
| the people who made SponsorBlock and it's great.
| joveian wrote:
| The problem here is that the HN title is incorrect for this
| article. I'd say a clickbait title matching the submisison is
| much better than an incorrect title.
| some_random wrote:
| Oh wow, I've never seen a paid browser plugin before. It's
| interesting how the idea of paying what to me is a negligible
| amount of money still changes the way I think about it.
| pierat wrote:
| You mean the desk IT job (programming, qa, systems, etc) that
| also has a "must be able to lift 50 lbs" was there solely to keep
| out handicapped people with an arbitrary requirement?
|
| Color me shocked /sarcasm
| Snild wrote:
| > "must be able to lift 50 lbs"
|
| Is that a real thing?
| monetus wrote:
| I'm in a right to work state, but I see it listed on many,
| many job advertisements here.
| I_Am_Nous wrote:
| In a lot of places in America, yes. My ISP technician job has
| me doing anything from CLI management over SSH to hauling
| servers to a colo and racking them myself. Especially in
| smaller companies where one person tends to do a little bit
| of everything.
| great_psy wrote:
| Serious question: Why do they have that requirement?
|
| Wouldn't that increase in workforce lower wages which is what
| companies want anyway ?
|
| How does the company benefit from this ?
| jnovek wrote:
| Accommodating disabilities is cost center and and failing to
| do so is a liability. Businesses use loopholes to "opt out"
| so they don't have to deal with those things.
| shortcake27 wrote:
| I thought the parent was making a joke. Is this actually a
| thing in America? In Australia I have never seen this in
| any of my contracts.
| monetus wrote:
| I'm in Appalachia; It is common.
| waveBidder wrote:
| it's a thing. companies are responsible for employees
| health insurance as well, so they'd rather not have
| someone who actually uses that a lot.
| 0xcde4c3db wrote:
| It's also pretty common IME for managers of retail and
| similar public-facing brick-and-mortar positions to have
| a bugbear about employees "looking lazy", which includes
| things like sitting, leaning, walking slowly or
| aimlessly, etc..
| pierat wrote:
| The only joke is the laughable enforcement of the ADA,
| including shallow-as-hell obvious ploys to exclude
| disabled people without saying "we don't want to work
| with cripples". And pregnant people. Again, to business
| fucks, these people are liabilities - we can't use their
| body up since it's already used up.
|
| Take a look over here to see a bunch of anecdotes about
| this very US based 'policy' https://old.reddit.com/r/anti
| work/comments/15dvtwa/why_do_so...
|
| This also goes directly along side that retail workers
| are NOT permitted to have chairs at a register, because
| of the similar reason (standing constantly excludes
| disabled and pregnant folk). And somehow sitting=lazy
| unless it's white collar work. We're allowed to be
| 'lazy'.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| And taxpayers vote to dump the costs on individual
| businesses as opposed to spreading the cost over the whole
| population.
| jnovek wrote:
| How would this work? I'm pragmatic about the division of
| public/private responsibilities, so I'm not opposed to
| the idea, but accommodations are highly specific to the
| impairment and how it affects the person.
|
| I'm not sure how the government would manage that in a
| fair manner; if SSDI is any indication, not very well.
| The SSA has a lot of outdated bias in its guidelines for
| providing aid.
| satvikpendem wrote:
| IT workers may need to physically move things like servers
| around so it seems to be a reasonable requirement.
| voiper1 wrote:
| Whoever editorialized the title didn't have much in the article
| that actually said that...
|
| I'd assume that people why are handicapped in some way may be
| better able to manage without a commute while working from the
| comfort of their home environment that the have control over.
|
| Yes, a programming job may only require sitting at a
| computer... but also commuting to the office. WFH means you
| don't need to deal with the commute.
| jnovek wrote:
| I'm disabled. 2023 has been all about re-entering the workforce
| for me and I couldn't have done it (yet, anyway) without WFH.
|
| I know that the return to office is vogue now, but I really hope
| we don't forget that many of us are only able to work because we
| have WFH.
| hdjjhhvvhga wrote:
| > I know that the return to office is vogue now
|
| For a very strange definition of "vogue". The CEOs push for it,
| the employers push back, people are looking for new jobs etc.
| In my particular niche, 70% of jobs are fully remote, and I'm
| very happy it is this way.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| Ignoring the unnecessarily editorialized title, this article is
| an example of "lie with statistics". The are basically arguing
| "look at the data", but every single example I've seen about
| arguing a data-driven approach to WFH is cherry picking things to
| fit their desired outcome, and that's on _both_ sides of the
| argument.
|
| Yes, it's fairly straightforward to look at productivity for
| rote, repeatable tasks. "How many calls did a CSR handle?" or
| "How many insurance claims did this person process?" are easily
| measurable. But that ignores the fears that business leaders have
| that, over time, the kind of innovation, motivation and culture
| that in-person interactions help foster will fade, leading to a
| sort of slow, long term decline. And the past 25 years have shown
| that companies that can foster and harness innovation well do
| _much_ better than companies that simply focus on "repeatable
| process improvement".
|
| I'm certainly not arguing either side is "right", but I would say
| anyone arguing "look at the data" on this topic is just using
| data to match their desired outcome, as there is simply _not
| enough time_ to assess the long term "innovation" impact of WFH.
| teeray wrote:
| The problem is that WFH decreases the workforce's participation
| in commercial real estate.
| bko wrote:
| What does this mean? This is such a low quality meme. Most
| businesses don't own their buildings. So what's the rationale?
|
| 1. Company leases expensive office
|
| 2. Realizes that no one has to work from the office anymore so
| they're wasting money on this office
|
| 3. Inconveniences everyone by making everyone return to the
| office
|
| 4. Profit?
|
| The lease is a sunk cost. They can try to sublease it out or
| pay some penalty to get out of it. Even if they owned it, why
| would they force people to come into the office and not just
| sell it? If it's worthless to them, then again what they paid
| for it is a sunk cost and they may as well just sell it. And
| why wouldn't they try to greatly expand their application pool
| to non-local workers if WFH is just as good. It's insane.
|
| I've never heard a reasonable explanation as to why managers
| are so invested in commercial real estate prices that they'll
| collectively organize and forsake their interests to keep up
| the mirage.
|
| The more reasonable explanation is that a lot of people work
| bullshit jobs or can skate by doing very little. These people
| are harder to control and less visibility by WFH makes it very
| obvious and managers don't feel good about it.
| convolvatron wrote:
| isn't this what the free market is supposed to be about? people
| don't want that product as much anymore.
| yoyohello13 wrote:
| The free market argument only works when it's just poor
| people being impacted. If the rich are losing money then the
| free market people are suspiciously silent.
| DiggyJohnson wrote:
| I genuinely don't understand why this perspective is so
| compelling. CRE is a big deal, but I don't think companies are
| so incentivized to optimize CRE value. They're trying to
| succeed in their business.
| jedberg wrote:
| They don't directly care about CRE. But their wealthy friends
| (and most likely most F500 CEOs) own or are invested in CRE.
| By convincing all their CEO friends to force RTO, they can
| boost the CRE. Also some of biggest companies are effectively
| invested in CRE because they built huge campuses and while
| those are technically owned by others, they are in super long
| term leases which require them to have a certain number of
| people there every day, as well as local tax breaks that they
| get for having a certain attendance.
| buffington wrote:
| Can you link to an example of a lease that requires a
| certain number of people be there every day? I used to have
| a business that needed office space, and of the several
| buildings we used over the course of about 10 years, not a
| single lease ever cared about how many people would show up
| every day. The closest thing to that would be related to
| max occupancy and parking spaces. The leases would always
| have to specify how many people could be in the building at
| most for fire code compliance, and that number determined
| the number of accessible and normal parking spaces.
|
| Regarding tax breaks, I never saw any, but that was pre-
| pandemic. That makes more sense to me, but leases requiring
| minimum attendance counts seems like it could be an oft-
| repeated myth.
| eli_gottlieb wrote:
| Your average productive firm is not incentivized to optimize
| CRE value. However, they are often renting commercial real-
| estate on a fixed-term lease and need to get what value from
| the remainder of their lease that they can.
| jedberg wrote:
| That's the sunk cost fallacy. They're gonna pay it
| regardless, it doesn't matter if people show up or not.
| It's still cheaper to not have folks show up because then
| you don't have to pay for all the ongoing incidental
| charges.
| thrtythreeforty wrote:
| I've been hearing this a lot, and I actually think you
| have the company's logic backward. (For what it's worth,
| I'm pro-WFH, and I think a lot of circles don't square
| with the rhetoric from my company regarding RTO, but hear
| me out.)
|
| The lease is locked in. From the company's perspective,
| the building is now free, except for marginal costs per
| employee that shows up. So the only remaining math for
| the company to consider is, are the benefits that the
| company gains from an onsite employee greater than the
| $2/day it costs to provide coffee and toilet paper?
| Remember, the company is happy to outsource the cost of
| commuting to employees, and only cares about the value of
| the building if they own it. And they have great
| institutional difficulty in weighing intangible employee
| satisfaction against other perceived gains for the
| company.
|
| Under this logic, I think it's easy to see why
| management, acting in the company's best interest, is
| pushing RTO so hard. If it costs employees $10/day but
| makes the company $3, that's free money.
| whateveracct wrote:
| Nobody said management is inherently rational.
| lusus_naturae wrote:
| Repurpose that real estate to housing.
| wenebego wrote:
| Lack of housing is a feature not a bug to the land owning
| class
| lusus_naturae wrote:
| Besides the point, though. Land owning class (or any class,
| really) wants to enrich itself, and renting repurposed
| housing is a viable option.
| therealdrag0 wrote:
| There are different classes of land owners. Plenty of land
| owners want to build more housing and are faced with an
| uphill battle.
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