[HN Gopher] The growing inequality of who gets to work from home
___________________________________________________________________
The growing inequality of who gets to work from home
Author : samaysharma
Score : 104 points
Date : 2024-01-21 06:30 UTC (16 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (hbr.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (hbr.org)
| throwup238 wrote:
| The same inequality exists with drug testing too. A lot of low
| wage roles get drug tested on a regular basis while higher paying
| careers don't.
|
| Outside the military, pilots rarely get tested despite the fact
| they're responsible for many more lives than fork lift operators
| or truck drivers (who often do get tested). Doctors pretty much
| only get tested if they botch a surgery or someone reports them.
| Lawyers? Wallstreet traders? There would be a nation wide
| solidarity strike.
|
| Bill Gates famously joked in the 90s that Microsoft would lose a
| third of their engineers instantly if they drug tested. The NSA
| even had to make an official exception on past drug use so people
| would stop failing the security screening (although they still
| get tested iirc).
| todd3834 wrote:
| Could it simply be data driven? Is there any truth that the
| jobs that drug test most often are or were more likely to have
| drug related incidents than the others? I don't know the data
| but my guess would be it is based on past performance as a
| whole more than individual impact.
|
| Whether that is wrong or right I could see how there is an
| argument to be made
| throwup238 wrote:
| If it were at all data driven everyone would test for
| alcohol. That usually doesn't happen unless there's an
| accident and even then, a doctor wouldn't be subject to a
| blood test or breathalyzer like a driver would. They'd just
| be allowed to go home and the matter would be handled in
| litigation and before the medical board.
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| Perhaps a reason for this is that not everybody agrees that
| drugs are all that bad. Half of silicon valley allegedly is
| micro-dosing all sorts of things and apparently benefiting from
| that. Steve Jobs famously advocated using LSD. The Vietnam war
| famously had a lot of drug abuse. WW II soldiers and leadership
| were consuming epic amounts of amphetamines. And that wasn't
| just the Nazis.
|
| Companies aren't testing for this because they couldn't care
| less. Drugs isn't killing their business and they like having
| access to smart people who might fail a test. The main reason
| testing is more common in the public sector is not that drugs
| are bad but that the optics of people using drugs has negative
| political consequences when political leaders are waging this
| war on drugs. Also with drugs being illegal, using them
| necessarily means breaking the law and interacting with
| criminals. Which looks bad politically as well.
|
| Remote work is different. People and companies disagree about
| the effects but a lot of companies seem to prefer having their
| people not work remotely. Not because of the way it looks but
| because of at least the perception of its impact on
| productivity. Whether you agree with that or not doesn't
| matter. Some people are concerned about it and acting
| accordingly.
|
| The inequality here relates mainly to the value of the work
| people do. Just like companies don't like losing access to
| people who are smart and may use drugs, they also don't like
| losing access to people who have valuable skills that insist on
| working remotely. So they allow some people to work remotely.
| But of course some skills are more valuable than others so the
| inequality mainly relates to how easy it is to replace people
| with more compliant ones.
| freddie_mercury wrote:
| > Perhaps a reason for this is that not everybody agrees that
| drugs are all that bad
|
| As an explanation, this is implausible to the point of
| impossible.
|
| The same employers drug test lower-level employees but (e.g.
| in the warehouse) but don't test other employees (e.g. in the
| office).
|
| Amazon drug tests warehouse workers but not AWS engineers.
|
| It is difficult to come up for a coherent theory for that
| that includes "as an organisation, we don't think drugs are
| all that bad"
| chii wrote:
| obviously it is the belief of upper management that low
| level workers cannot be trusted to behave and work to their
| maximum if they're on drugs, while the "elites" require
| such drugs to reach their maximum potential.
| calvinmorrison wrote:
| No its because usually low level jobs require you to
| operate heavy machinery like driving a truck or operating
| a forklift or work on the floor of the factory, or being
| around those things. Or for example handling cash at
| registers etc. I feel like this conspiracy is the author,
| and apparently hn needs to touch grass a little bit
| 6510 wrote:
| A friend from Yugoslavia told me about his job there.
| Their lunch room looked like a grand cafe with every
| possible kind of liquor and a variety of beer on the tap.
| Around 11 am some of his coworkers had a few beers, in
| the sun, in front of the building. Around 1 they had some
| whiskey or vodka etc. At the end of the work day some
| went home, others stuck around. They had a few more
| drinks, some went home, others went out to eat together,
| some went home after dinner, some went back to the
| office. He regularly got very drunk. Sometimes he would
| make a row of chairs and sleep there. 7 am his boss would
| be the first to arrive. He was always happy to see
| someone was already there and made coffee. They sat
| around and chatted some more and he would start his shift
| an hour early (not paid ofc)
|
| It wasn't that everyone got drunk at work every day, some
| more often than others, some rarely which made it kind of
| a special occasion if they stuck around.
|
| He had the same assignments as his coworkers but
| completed them in half the time. Sometimes, at 11 am, he
| would just continue drinking beer while sitting in the
| sun and go home an hour early.
|
| The funniest part was that they mostly talked about work.
| It was one lengthy extended meeting till 1 am, if they
| had some kind of deadline they would just work in their
| spare time while drinking (without pay)
|
| No culture is strange until compared. I drink 2 liters of
| coffee, smoke a lot and consume lots of sugar. This is
| perfectly normal here.
|
| edit: it was a desk job
| ghaff wrote:
| When I was an engineer in the offshore drilling business
| in the early 80s, when we were in the office (not on a
| rig or in a shipyard), it was very common to call up a
| vendor to take us out for lunch and a couple beers.
| Usually that was it but there were days we took the
| afternoon off.
|
| Alcohol at lunch in a business setting was much more
| widespread at the time.
| Baeocystin wrote:
| Seriously. I was drug tested when I worked at the
| shipyard. Not in my current job in tech. That doesn't
| bother me in the least, because I had _hundreds_ more
| ways to accidentally kill either myself or a coworker
| when I was welding 100 ' up on the side of a ship than if
| I hazily mis-click a dialogue box now. No one complained
| about it at the shipyard, either, _because we didn 't
| want to get killed by a high idiot._
| BossingAround wrote:
| Surely, occam's razor applies here.
|
| Low level workers have the highest chance of getting
| injured while operating heavy machinery -> highest chance
| of being drug tested by the police in such cases -> the
| management would rather spend money on drug testing than
| on the lawyers later on.
|
| High-paid workers have a pretty small risk of injury ->
| very small risk of the government testing them ->
| management is not incentivized to spend money on drug
| testing (and possible hiring costs later on).
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| It's actually the same reasoning as with remote work.
| Lower level employees are easier to replace. So they can
| be more strict on those. And drugs and certain equipment
| can create dangerous situations. Where dangerous here
| means "has the potential to create expensive liability
| related lawsuits". Which is of course something companies
| do care about. This is less of an issue with office
| workers and creatives.
| nindalf wrote:
| As an organisation we'd like to drug test everyone, except
| those with enough leverage to tell us to get lost.
| radicalbyte wrote:
| They test warehouse workers because their insurance demands
| it. Personal injury settlements are expensive and drugs
| increase the risk. If employers cannot show that they are
| taking efforts to discourage it then they could end up
| being held liable (and the insurance not covering it).
| vasilipupkin wrote:
| If you are lifting heavy boxes in the warehouse and you are
| on drugs, you can physically harm someone. There is no way
| to directly correlate using drugs and performance of an
| engineer, for all we know, small infrequent drug use
| improves performance ( not talking about abusing drugs
| heavily)
| autoexec wrote:
| > The main reason testing is more common in the public sector
| is not that drugs are bad but that the optics of people using
| drugs has negative political consequences when political
| leaders are waging this war on drugs.
|
| I always thought companies that do drug testing got some kind
| of discount on their own insurance rates for it.
| jghn wrote:
| > The NSA even had to make an official exceptio
|
| The way I had it explained to me in the 90s was while drug use
| was disqualifying for things like the FBI, for the NSA it was
| fine-ish provided you were open about it.
| Duanemclemore wrote:
| I have had personal conversations with people who went
| through involved security clearance processes in the 70's,
| 80's, 90's, and 00's. Between those times I can tell you that
| everyone but the FBI got more lax about pot (but not cocaine)
| and homosexuality (even the FBI didn't care about that by the
| mid 2000's) but not more lax about gambling - even in states
| where it was already legal. They aren't on the lookout for
| straight arrows to hire, they're on the lookout for people
| who can be blackmailed to steal information. Once things like
| simple weed possession became nothing more than a small civil
| penalty, there wasn't any way to use the threat of exposure
| as a way of blackmailing someone. Once people knew they
| couldn't generally be fired / blackballed for homosexuality,
| that lever disappeared.
| locallost wrote:
| Sounds like a circular argument. The FBI fires gay people,
| so they had to fire them to prevent them from leaking
| information because of possible blackmail. But once they
| stopped firing them for homosexuality there was no need to
| fire them because of fear they might be blackmailed because
| of the possibility to fire them. It's probably true for
| gambling, but the rest sounds like whitewashing. They fired
| gay people because society was hostile towards them and
| those agencies were part of society.
| Duanemclemore wrote:
| Yes, it was a completely circular argument. I am 100% not
| defending it. But you're completely correct that all they
| had to do to keep someone from being blackmailed because
| otherwise they'd be fired was... to not fire them.
|
| I'm sure there's a lot of moral-highgrounding about
| everyone outside the group being untrustworthy, and
| looking for confirmation of this in the most paranoid
| ways.
| BossingAround wrote:
| I think the assumption you're missing in the circular
| argument is that gay people could be blackmailed against
| other entities than the FBI. For example, "give us this
| FBI file or else we'll release a scandalous photo of you
| and this gentleman to your wife" kind of a thing.
|
| Of course, as being gay becomes more normalized and less
| of a secret, FBI wouldn't need to take it into
| consideration.
|
| How true or not that thinking is, I have no way of
| assessing, but it does make sense if you consider the
| premise of blackmail to 3rd parties true. The same could
| be probably considered for gambling (e.g. "we'll tell
| your local church group how much you gambled away in your
| drunken stupor on this weekend").
| Duanemclemore wrote:
| Gambling was verboten because of the presence of
| organized crime in the industry even where it was
| legalized.
| x3n0ph3n3 wrote:
| Gambling is seen as a liability because gamblers often
| get into huge amounts of debt, which is what the FBI _is
| really_ concerned about. Huge amounts of debt open people
| up to bribes and other corruption.
| pcthrowaway wrote:
| Wouldn't it be more relevant to determine if their
| potential hire has had an undiscovered affair in the
| past, or is currently cheating?
|
| Why aren't they doing this now if it was really about the
| potential for blackmail?
| mcny wrote:
| I don't know how the federal government works but I am
| positive that in the private sector evidence of
| extramarital affairs can cause your clearance application
| to be rejected.
| MandieD wrote:
| Anecdata: allegedly, confessing an extramarital affair
| (past or ongoing) during your Department of Defense
| Secret (relatively common level clearance) examination or
| renewal will result in an offer to speak with your spouse
| in a few days to ensure that you've told them. An
| unadmitted affair would set off far more alarm bells.
|
| I was a carefree recent college grad and sheepishly
| admitted to smoking weed a couple of times, having been
| assured by older friends that admitting to some past
| experimentation was a lot better than hiding it. "Is
| there anyone you don't want to find out about this?" was
| the agent's response.
|
| "Nah, my parents know..."
|
| Later, a friend who had assiduously avoided even being
| around weed took ages to get his clearance. We theorized
| that the holdup was DIA being suspicious that he didn't
| admit to such minor drug use, and wondered what else he
| might be hiding.
|
| Habitual gambling still gets the side-eye for the same
| reason general financial problems do: higher
| susceptibility to the temptation of a few thousand
| dollars to let something slip or to look the other way.
| jeffparsons wrote:
| They are. Political parties do something similar before
| putting you on a ticket: they require you to declare any
| dirt on yourself that could possibly be revealed at a
| later date, even if only one other person in the world
| knows about it. Then they assess the risk of each secret,
| and maybe decide it's okay. But if they manage to dig up
| anything that you didn't declare, you're out.
| sokoloff wrote:
| They _are doing that_ now. I've had to be a reference for
| several people seeking security clearances and I believe
| every one of those interviews asked me if I thought the
| subject was faithful in their relationship.
| throwaway3563 wrote:
| This isn't code executing in a computer. It is about
| prevailing societal attitudes (which are themselves self-
| referential and self-reinforcing) so it is necessarily
| kind of imprecise and circular.
| madsbuch wrote:
| this comment represent a weird sentiment: if you drugt test in
| one field, you should equally drug test I all fields.
|
| How many airplanes crashed due to The pilot being on drugs?
|
| it seems like introducing a whole machinery to just have the
| same resting is an industrial scale waste of resources.
|
| However, people regularly die because of drunk and tired
| drivers.
| sshine wrote:
| There is some implicit assumption that drug testing is a
| safety measure.
|
| I am quite convinced it is a productivity measure.
| goodpoint wrote:
| It's neither.
| Broken_Hippo wrote:
| it is neither.
|
| Otherwise, you'd see productivity being better in places
| that allow drug testing of normal employees and worse off
| in places that do not. But that's not the case: Retail
| employees in Norway aren't really less productive than
| those in the US.
|
| Plus, if it really were a productivity measure, why would
| you not drug test more professionals and salaried
| employees? Does their productivity not matter? Wouldn't
| more small businesses find drug testing worth the money?
| sshine wrote:
| Doing drugs may affect your productivity at work.
|
| Depending on the drug, and the circumstances.
|
| I'm sorry to say.
| lumost wrote:
| I don't believe that this has any bearing on why
| individuals are drug tested at work. Particularly when
| tests with longer durations are used.
|
| What business does an employer have with employee drug
| use _outside of work_?
| QuadmasterXLII wrote:
| You've got causation backwards, look at the norway vs US
| overdoses per capita
| creato wrote:
| It's solely a way for insurance companies to get out of
| paying claims.
|
| If drug testing was motivated by productivity, amphetamines
| wouldn't be tested for.
| madsbuch wrote:
| so a truck drives faster when the driver is completely
| sober? the plane flies faster when the pilot is not on
| drugs?
| sokoloff wrote:
| To any extent that a truck driver misses a pickup or
| fails to report due to alcohol or subsequent effects,
| yes, that truck that isn't moving at all is moving slower
| than one that's loaded, crewed, and rolling.
| awongh wrote:
| > How many airplanes crashed due to The pilot being on drugs?
|
| As long as testing is uncommon you could say that number will
| remain at zero or near zero simply for lack of data.
|
| You comment implies but doesn't state explicitly that you
| think truck drivers are more likely than pilots to be on
| drugs, is that true though?
| vasco wrote:
| Based on likely social setting difference due to salary
| difference plus the fact that truck drivers go through
| seedy places and do many long stretches alone, compared to
| pilots frequenting airports and hotels, and always working
| with a crew, I'm sure truck drivers use more drugs than
| airplane pilots. If you are not sure of this, I think your
| mind is "too open".
| jonathankoren wrote:
| This comment betrays the old and persistent idea that
| lower status people are inherently shifty and lazy, while
| higher status people are inherently more virtuous.
|
| Let's say for argument's sake that truck drivers
| proportionally engage in more risky behavior. This can be
| either the use of stimulants or simply driving tired. Why
| is that?
|
| Drivers' -- like many low status workers -- jobs security
| is more precarious and are monitored more. Therefore,
| they're more likely to engage in risky behavior in a
| desire to simply not be fired.
|
| Now let's get back to pilots. Is it just that airline
| pilots are a high status job like ceo? Not entirely.
| Pilots are essentially no different than truck drivers in
| the sky. Ironically, it's because planes themselves are
| tracked by a competent and vigorous government agency,
| that _employers_ can't put the same pressures on pilots
| that they can on truck drivers.
| tengbretson wrote:
| > They don't but if they do its justified.
| d0gsg0w00f wrote:
| This comment betrays the old and persistent idea that
| lower status people are inherently shifty and lazy, while
| higher status people are inherently more virtuous.
|
| I think this is because people are applying survivorship
| bias. It's really difficult to make it to those status
| levels while abusing drugs and alcohol. And even if you
| party hard at the top you must be able to "handle your
| shit".
|
| Success at the top is a careful dance of social nuance.
| If you fly to an on-site, get drunk in the hotel bar, and
| are late to the meeting or smell like booze, you're
| social status will be impacted unless you're a wizard
| with social excuses or make up for it in some other way.
|
| So--in a way--the success is the greatest drug test.
| jonathankoren wrote:
| It's not just that. It has puritan religous undertones.
| Work is virtuous, and god rewards those that have his
| favor. Therefore those that have less, are obviously
| outside of god's favor. Why are they not rewarded?
| Because they aren't virtuous, and since work is virtue,
| they must be shifty and lazy.
|
| This is _very_ deep seated idea in American culture. It
| manifests all sorts of ways. Deference to the rich,
| because clearly every rich person got and stayed rich
| through hard work and skill, instead of luck and family
| connections. Harsher penalities for poor people crimes,
| rather than rich people crimes. Constant monitoring for
| low wage workers, but no monitoring of high wage ones.
| Egregious hoops and monitoring for welfare, versus tax
| credits. Hell, even modern evangelical grifters leverage
| this idea with their prosperity gospel lies.
| d0gsg0w00f wrote:
| How rich are we talking? I'm just talking about your
| average schmuck pulling in $120k in a white collar job.
| Very unlikely that these types are leveraging family
| connections. It just takes a four year degree, washing
| your car, and being able to host some coworkers for
| lunch.
|
| Disclaimer: I believe it's society's duty to shame the
| shifless and lazy.
|
| And most of the behaviors that are taught by religions
| are rooted in anecdotal evidence over hundreds of years.
| Harder workers usually succeed more than the lazy. It's a
| lot more effective to say "hard work = heaven".
|
| And it's not even really about "success". Giving a damn
| about what you do in this life is key to a life of
| happiness and therefore a life aimed at a target and
| governed by rules about how to interact with your fellow
| man. "Giving a damn" is the most important foundation for
| financial success as well.
| qwytw wrote:
| > idea that lower status people are inherently shifty and
| lazy, while higher status people are inherently more
| virtuous
|
| It's not about that. But also statistically on average
| that idea is accurate in this case at least. The
| qualifications and self-discipline required to become a
| pilot are significantly higher than for a driver. Your
| also surrounded by many other people all the time so it's
| much harder to not get noticed. Also AFAIK random testing
| for alcohol is certainly a thing for pilots.
|
| > that employers can't put the same pressures on pilots
|
| One might argue that they would more or less end up doing
| the same on their own. The cost/risk ratio is extremely
| different compared to truck drivers. Also costs of having
| extra pilots/allowing them to work less are not that
| significant relative to road transportation.
| jonathankoren wrote:
| >It's not about that. But also statistically on average
| that idea is accurate in this case at least.
|
| lol. No. Not at all. There is nothing to support this
| widely held idea. This is the very bias I was talking
| about.
| gumby wrote:
| I think a better way to put it is that commercial
| aircraft personnel are under strict legal time limits
| while the legal time limits on truckers are not enforced
| particularly strongly and the trucking companies provide
| incentives not to follow those rules. So truck drivers
| are incented to take stimulants to a degree pilots are
| not.
|
| "To a degree" means some pilots will still stay up late
| and try to use stimulants to stay awake. But the pressure
| on the two cohorts is not equivalent.
| virtue3 wrote:
| How many bad economic decisions were based on cocaine usage
| back in the day? I think the point is that with higher paying
| and salaried jobs you are practically exempt from having
| repercussions due to drug usage while a lowerpaid wage worker
| is constantly in fear of getting fired over it.
| ysofunny wrote:
| arguably, by a similar logic, world war 2 was started by
| terrible decisions made while high on speed
| llamaLord wrote:
| Has there actually been any hard evidence to support this
| idea? I know there's a fair bit to support Hitler being
| basically a junkie by the end of the war, but pre-war I'm
| pretty sure he was just a meglomaniacal psychopath.
| thefz wrote:
| Ok, what about testing politicians? Their decisions impact
| millions and it's in the public interest that they can reason
| at their best.
| klabb3 wrote:
| > How many airplanes crashed due to The pilot being on drugs?
|
| This is an interesting question but not all drugs decrease
| performance. For instance, if a pilot responsibly takes some
| wakey meds before landing a long haul flight it may be a good
| thing. There's a reason for the "I can't function before the
| morning coffee" expression.
|
| I remember a documentary many years ago about long haul
| pilots who went partying HARD the day before flying back from
| Bangkok, Tokyo or places like that. They wouldn't have been
| allowed to drive, but flew hundreds of passengers. It was
| filmed undercover, but I don't remember if there was a
| backlash/consequences.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > There's a reason for the "I can't function before the
| morning coffee" expression.
|
| Yeah, a lot of people tend to be later-risers. The
| realities of the 9-5 job mean that they have to get up at
| 6-7 to get the kids ready for school, then get themselves
| ready for work, and then the commute to work... despite
| that going completely against their chronotype.
|
| WFH alleviates a lot of that stress.
| em-bee wrote:
| _I can't function before the morning coffee_
|
| i recently met someone who stopped drinking coffee and
| after a while realized that the only reason he could not
| function without having a coffee before was that he must
| have been addicted to it. once he got off that addiction
| the problem went away.
|
| the only reason that stops me from functioning in the
| morning is lack of sleep.
| ydant wrote:
| I was never "can't function" level, but stopping caffeine
| did open my eyes to how much of a fog I was in until the
| caffeine was dripped in. After a month or so of no
| caffeine I started realizing I could just wake up and
| feel instantly as alert as I normally would an hour or so
| into my day when taking caffeine.
|
| But ultimately it comes down to sleep. Caffeine just
| masked sleep problems. If I don't sleep well, I still
| crave it. If I sleep well, I don't think about it
| anymore.
| babyshake wrote:
| In the film Flight it is implied the plane possibly does
| not crash because the pilot is on drugs.
| tycho-newman wrote:
| The plane did crash. There was one fatality. That is
| because the pilot was skilled.
|
| Unfortunately the pilot was also drunk. And he tried to
| shift the blame of the vodka bottle to the deceased
| person. There is no amount of technical skill that should
| permit someone like that behind a stick ever again.
| ekianjo wrote:
| > How many airplanes crashed due to The pilot being on drugs?
|
| good question, but there is just no way to get an answer
| sokoloff wrote:
| Nearly every NTSB report of a major accident has a post-
| mortem analysis for alcohol and other drugs. (When it's
| missing, it's usually because no body was recovered.)
|
| Every crew involved in a commercial aviation mishap knows
| they'll be tested as well.
|
| There may be no way to get an answer with 6 significant
| figures, but you can get a pretty good answer.
| calamari4065 wrote:
| How many people regularly die because your grocery store
| cashier smokes weed after their shift?
|
| How many people _could_ be hurt by a drunk pilot, and how
| many could be hurt by working at a Walmart while high?
|
| The point is that we test where there is no reasonable danger
| at all and don't test when there is. Why? We drug test poor
| people and not wealthy people.
| firesteelrain wrote:
| My daughter worked at Publix and was only drug tested at
| time of employment. Just like I did when I got my
| engineering job. I heard Publix does random drug testing,
| not sure.
|
| Walmart is the same.
|
| " After pilots and flight attendants have been hired, they
| are subject to random drug screenings. Federal regulation
| detail the percentage of the total employees who should be
| subject to random testing in a given year, and this figure
| is usually around 50% and varies by the positive test rate
| from previous data. As drug testing is random, flight and
| ramp crew don't know when these tests will occur. Pilots
| and flight attendants who are randomly selected for drug
| screenings will often be met on the jet bridge after
| passengers have deplaned. An official holding a clipboard
| is usually the sign of an upcoming random drug screening."
| - https://simpleflying.com/pilot-drug-test-frequency-guide/
| jojobas wrote:
| I would hazard a guess that low-skilled workers are much more
| likely to come to work cooked than someone like pilots who have
| a lot on the line.
| hypercube33 wrote:
| Is there a citation of Gates comment? I wasn't able to find
| anything
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| Some companies require it for everyone. When I did consulting
| work for Home Depot, I was required to get a drug test. It
| didn't matter that I wasn't a W2 nor a 1099 for them but a W2
| of a consulting company who HD hired to do a project for them,
| all of us had to be drug tested, with the reason being that
| Home Depot didn't think it was fair to test people working in
| their stores if the white collar people weren't tested too. My
| employer didn't require the test of anyone but since this was a
| big contract, as far as I know, no one refused. If I were a
| recreational drug user, it might have been a rather unwelcome
| situation to come up after years of working for the company
| where drug use outside of the office wasn't a concern.
| TrackerFF wrote:
| ...I can guarantee you that most SpaceX workers are held to
| much higher standards, than their big boy CEO, when it comes to
| security clearance.
| steveoscaro wrote:
| Musk submits to drug tests. But yeah just skimming news
| headlines would give you a different idea.
| silisili wrote:
| I feel like this is missing the forest for the trees. Perhaps
| salt in the wound, if you will.
|
| Pay a forklift driver or warehouse worker 150k a year, and see
| how many complain about not working from home.
| starttoaster wrote:
| I don't think those are the kinds of jobs that have workers
| that expect to work from home. If you deal with physical
| assets, machinery, direct-customer communication, etc, you
| probably don't expect to be able to do your job outside of your
| company-assigned post anyway.
|
| On the other hand, anybody that works in a cubical and mostly
| deals with a phone/computer could probably easily expect that
| they would be able to work from home. Many of those jobs have
| fairly modest pay. And I think if you have that aspiration to
| work from home, you would probably still be a little annoyed
| about the inability to work from home, regardless of the pay.
| But I agree there is likely a price where one would be fine
| with letting that dream stay a dream.
|
| I feel that the far greater problem is that employers are now
| painting this neat picture where it's employees vs employees in
| this dilemma over inequality. Foreshadowing that it may be
| something they need to bother to step in the middle of in the
| near future. When in reality we are fairly united against
| employers in their seeming lack of willingness to just treat
| all of their employees well. Speaking generally of course.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| "I don't think those are the kinds of jobs that have workers
| that expect to work from home."
|
| I think especially for forklift drivers and alike - this is
| about to change. With teleoperating semi autonomous
| machinery, most of these jobs could be then remote as well.
| But it will take some time as currently humans and simple
| forklifts are way cheaper.
| silisili wrote:
| I for some reason think about these things a lot, even though
| I guess I'm not in the front line anymore and have it pretty
| nice.
|
| I can remember in 2010 or so having two friends who worked
| from home - one doing generic helpdesk in a small apartment,
| and one doing medical coding in a trailer. Neither paid well
| at all, and never did I get this sense of jealousy. Perhaps
| their lives were easier because of it, but it was far from
| the giant sun lit home offices people seem to imagine.
|
| I also think a lot about how retail has changed. As a child,
| you had actual sales people in a lot of places who seemed
| happy to help. Probably on commission. Even the non-
| commissioned jobs people didn't seem so miserable. Probably
| because the wage gap wasn't as huge as it is today. So many
| people I encounter seem bothered by my presence and genuinely
| miserable, I try to avoid even going to stores anymore. It's
| a lose lose lose situation.
|
| Of course, I have no answers for any of this, just
| observations from a middling age man.
| starttoaster wrote:
| > Neither paid well at all, and never did I get this sense
| of jealousy.
|
| You might just not be one of these people. For some people,
| the feeling of being on your way to work is an existential
| dread. Or like you're leaving your life behind to live a
| different one that you don't generally enjoy for a while.
| Some of those people would likely do anything to avoid that
| feeling. I think for those people, working from home is
| epic. You get to go to work every day on what feels more
| like your terms and your life, whatever that life may be.
| Instead of molding myself into the image of my work
| environment every day, I can mold my workplace more into
| myself. Feeding me into:
|
| > but it was far from the giant sun lit home offices people
| seem to imagine.
|
| For some people, the ideal working conditions are a dimly
| lit basement, believe it or not.
|
| > [The generally unhappy state of front line workers
| yesteryear and this one.]
|
| Just 10 years ago, I was working front lines at a Super
| Target, making 15 cents above my state's minimum wage,
| which amounted to something like $8.50/hour. I'm in general
| a fairly.. well "stoic" might be the nicer word.. person,
| so faking a smile for the sake of a stranger's comfort
| would have cost me more in energy than my employer was
| paying me, if that makes sense. That's not to say I'm a
| jerk to people on purpose, by any means. But if I'm in a
| bad mood because I left for work at 4:30AM to make barely
| more than enough for a room to rent, peanut butter
| sandwiches, and my cell phone bill, it would have been
| difficult to summon the strength. This is mostly just to
| say that I agree with your observation, but I empathize
| more with the employees than the customers who feel they
| were under-helped.
|
| Observations from someone who will be entering the middling
| ages soon.
| verve_rat wrote:
| I totally agree with all of this. It used to be that
| Retail Salesperson was a career you could do until you
| retire. But now employers really do not pay the sales
| people enough to care.
| conductr wrote:
| On the service front I think what you've witnessed is work
| culture evolution. If you think about retail and food
| service, people churn in and out fast. The culture evolves
| quicker than you'd normally expect because of the people
| changing and many adaptations to new management, policies,
| technologies, etc. It's become common place for workers to
| just not be present at all in these settings. Nobody to ask
| where to find something and certainly nobody trustworthy
| enough to ask about a products features/ or for a
| recommendation. The employees on the floor are likely
| preoccupied by something else like stocking shelves and
| it's as if you're interrupting them to ask as any question.
| So new employees come on board and they're never taught how
| to help customers. Then they get promoted and maybe they
| know the POS the best but they can't deal with customers
| well. They're responsible for hiring and training new
| hires. So since they don't value customer service, they
| don't mind when new hire wants to wear AirPods while
| stocking. Now suddenly everyone is wearing AirPods while
| working. So you literally are interrupting them as a
| customer. They have to pause their podcast to have you
| repeat the question you already asked 3 times while trying
| to get their attention. It's likely they don't know how to
| help you if you really do need help did solving your
| problem is not their default, they think shrugging and
| saying I don't know is acceptable and you're on your own.
|
| This happens over and over and now a workforce that's too
| ambivalent to be productively helpful to customers
| experiences. Not even proactively in common sense ways. An
| example I've run into a couple time from quick service food
| joints goes like this. I order a fountain drink with my
| food. Pay, walk to drink machine that's out of order. I ask
| clerk if there's anything else to drink, they say no. I
| then ask why they sold me a fountain drink if they know
| machine is broken? I tell them I want a refund. They say
| they don't know how. Takes 15 minutes and a manager to get
| the refund. As I'm waiting, cashier continues selling
| fountain drinks to customers in line.
| tuffff wrote:
| That comment may apply to the general topic often, but this
| article clearly mentions "just pay them more" as a solution.
| It's really quite a balanced read.
| silisili wrote:
| Sure, but I'm positing that pay here is the entire issue
| (hence forest for the trees) comment. People tend to
| associate WFH with a cushy job.
|
| You can find a hundred side effects of that - people who want
| to work in their underpants, not get ready for work, not
| shower, have a flexible schedule, etc., as individual
| 'inequalities.' If fixing the pay makes other complaints
| disappear, were they ever a primary factor?
|
| FWIW, I do think the pendulum will shift in our lifetime. The
| 'You Call the Handyman' South Park really hit home for us,
| and I can totally see that now and even more in 20 or so
| years. Can you imagine needing something fixed in your house
| and trying to barter your skills? I sure can't!
| em-bee wrote:
| _If fixing the pay makes other complaints disappear, were
| they ever a primary factor?_
|
| i don't think this is the right question.
|
| of course, if i get paid more, i am willing to put up with
| worse work conditions. (to a degree). so the mere fact that
| pay makes the problem go away is not an indicator that this
| was not a real problem.
|
| more pay lets me compensate the problem otherwise. for
| example it may mean that me or my partner can reduce work
| hours instead of working from home.
| figassis wrote:
| I understand the problem, but it feels like this existed for a
| while and no business manager cared about it until they started
| losing the RTO battle. This seems like a way to boost that
| argument without actually caring for the employees.
| Simon_ORourke wrote:
| Are they losing the RTO battle though? Amazon don't seem to be
| too bothered if you quit rather than go back to the office at
| the moment - there again Amazon might be just looking to reduce
| headcount on the cheap too.
|
| There's a glut of office space where I live, something like 35%
| of new offices are unoccupied, so maybe that's due to over-
| supply or failing RTO policies?
| zelphirkalt wrote:
| Maybe Amazon with loads of cheap work and a huge name that
| still holds a lot of reputation in the tech sector for
| engineers is not the best example. But a smaller business
| with their main workforce quitting losing hundreds of
| thousands of dollar/euro might reconsider.
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| One of the top stories today on LinkedIn is that CEOs are
| increasingly waiving the white flag and admitting surrender
| in the RTO battle. There's work that needs to get done and
| companies fighting wars against themselves and their
| employees is a needless distraction. Now it's a race to see
| who can put an end the self inflicted wounds the fastest and
| get a leg up on those still fighting themselves.
|
| https://www.linkedin.com/news/story/ceos-give-up-on-full-
| tim...
| guilhas wrote:
| Everyone is still experimenting what works
|
| Most companies are settling for hybrid, and workers not
| returning are slowly being left behind. Mostly because
| "classic" companies processes are not ready for remote workers
| Throw84949 wrote:
| > remote-work opportunities are rare in jobs with annual pay
| around $30,000
|
| Remote workers with lower salaries are usually contractors.
| Sometimes with multiple parallel gigs.
| bitschubser_ wrote:
| The same inequality between c level and frontline workers exists
| on so many levels with other perks is it possible that the c
| level just don't want to lose its privileges? In Europe as a
| manager you get subsidized cars where the company pays for gas,
| private corner offices, equity or special bonus programs not
| always are benefits packages available for frontline workers...
| and now they talk about inequality if more staff could have perks
| like wfh, there always was a divide between staff that needs to
| be on site and other, only other staff also starts to get some
| perks in the form of wfh... why don't give the frontline workers
| a company car, a private rest zone and better amenities or cash?
| rapidaneurism wrote:
| I think that this is partly because in Europe taxation is
| progressive and it quickly becomes quite high. (In the UK
| PS100k-PS120k is effectively taxed at 60%+ more if you have
| young kids)
|
| So there is a point where giving someone 10k take home pay rise
| costs the business much more than giving a frontline worker a
| 10k take home pay rise.
|
| But an EV car in the UK is taxed 98% less than the same amount
| in cash.
|
| Rest zones, work from home etc have 0 tax implications .
|
| Arguably lower paid staff is better off getting the cash
| instead of the benefits and using it as they see fit
|
| Edit typo
| Jochim wrote:
| Weren't there changes in the last few years that mean
| benefits in kind are now treated as taxable income?
|
| I know I recently began paying tax on employer provided
| health insurance for example.
| rapidaneurism wrote:
| Yes but an EV car is treated as a 2% benefit in kind. E.g.
| (simplifying) your employer can buy you a 40k Tesla and you
| get taxed as if they gave you 2% of that as salary. In the
| 40% braket that is PS800 benefit in kind so you pay 320
| extra tax.
|
| Edit:
|
| I think it is better explained here:
|
| https://electriccarguide.co.uk/what-are-the-benefit-in-
| kind-...
| gmac wrote:
| In case that gives the wrong impression, UK marginal tax
| rates are a ridiculous mess, and come down below 60% again
| when you earn PS125K+.
|
| https://taxpolicy.org.uk/2023/09/24/70percent/
| rapidaneurism wrote:
| True! For people with children there is also an effective
| tax due in the 50k to 60k band because the child benefit
| gets paid back, and the for the people with young children
| close to the 100k taxable income the loss of the 30 hour
| free childcare and the tax free childcare can cause (in
| expensive places like London) a drop of disposable income
| of up to about 8k when you declare the pound that moves you
| from 99,999.00 to 100k.
|
| Under those conditions tax free benefits like working from
| home (convenience and not having to pay expensive train
| tickets) can be a nice topping to a modest salary increase
| when moving jobs.
| em-bee wrote:
| interesting, as far as i remember, in germany any benefits
| towards employees are treated as income and taxed accordingly
| or even worse, to the point that it is better to pay out
| benefits in cash only. i think this comes from companies
| trying to save on taxes by taking advantage of benefits that
| previously were taxed differently (or not at all)
| bitschubser_ wrote:
| jep, it gets treated as "gedldwerter vorteil", so it
| affects your taxable income/social security tax, but
| depending on the car (E or ICE) and the way you deduct it
| (driving log, 1% rule, etc...) it can be worth it
| midasuni wrote:
| The kid tax is at 50k, if you have student loans and 2 kids
| the marginal tax at 50-60k is 69%, then back to 42% for
| 60-100, then upto 62% 100-125, then 40% upto 150, then 45%
| above that.
|
| (Numbers approximate)
| onion2k wrote:
| It's also worth noting that PS100k in the UK puts you
| firmly into the top 5% of earners (according to the IFS
| anyway).
| IshKebab wrote:
| Even so, you can't agree that the marginal tax graph
| makes any sense at all.
| dudul wrote:
| At the core of it, this is the reason we're now seeing the RTO
| push. Execs don't want peons to share their privileges. They
| were fine with it during lockdown because got to keep making
| money. But now, back to the field, serfs!
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| (2023)
|
| More previously:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38762747
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38721032
| krystianantoni wrote:
| The discussion is pulled by big income of office space owners and
| builders. Secondly there is shortage of good mid and line
| management that cannot cope without looking over shoulder due to
| various reasons. Any argument to support their profit is good.
| deepsquirrelnet wrote:
| I agree. Notably missing from the conversation is the
| struggling commercial real estate industry and investments that
| have already been committed into that market.
| sgt101 wrote:
| Also a vast amount of commercial real estate is money
| laundering.
| unsupp0rted wrote:
| The other day I phoned a service provider and the lady's kid was
| babbling in the background and a children's show was playing
| throughout the call.
|
| I couldn't get off the phone fast enough.
|
| Either invest in voice isolation or don't work from home.
|
| Functionally this lady brought her kid to my home office and
| blasted a cartoon during our meeting.
|
| Is this harsh of me and an unpopular opinion? Yes.
|
| I agree that Human beings should be able to have work-life
| balance and kids are a natural and necessary part of that
| balance.
|
| I just don't want them in my ear.
|
| If the lady had had gangster rap music or 8-bit video game music
| on in the background of the call I'd have been equally annoyed.
|
| Work calls are for doing work.
| Aeolun wrote:
| Huh, I have the opposite reaction. Whenever I'm on a work call
| and my colleagues apologize for their children shouting in the
| background I'm mostly fine with it.
|
| If anything it makes them seem more human when they're
| otherwise just some disembodied voices.
| caddemon wrote:
| I think it depends a lot on the specifics, if the background
| noise is loud and persistent enough it makes it harder to
| understand the other person. Hard to tell from OP's
| description but I'm guessing it was actively impacting the
| conversation if they're complaining about it.
| unsupp0rted wrote:
| Admittedly it wasn't loud enough to make it hard to hear
| words.
|
| You know when you call your cell phone company and you're
| routed to a Call Center in India/Philippines and you hear
| snippets of other people's support calls in the background?
|
| It sort of throws you off throughout the call. You wonder
| if the agent is getting everything you're saying, given the
| distraction.
|
| It was that, but with a children's cartoon and a toddler.
| BossingAround wrote:
| I totally understand the reaction. Then again, people with kids
| have it hard enough, let alone those that with low paying jobs.
| When that happens to me, I get annoyed, but then, I remind
| myself that I get to exit the call while the other person has
| to stay in that environment, trying to hustle for money, and I
| try to show them as much kindness and grace as is possible for
| me in that moment.
| unsupp0rted wrote:
| When this lady applied for the technical phone support job,
| did she mention that her toddler would be on the calls?
|
| If her manager were to "secret shopper" call in, how much
| kindness and grace would they show for being forced to sit
| though a children's cartoon while quoting 5-figure invoice
| numbers back and forth?
| midasuni wrote:
| To emphasise she probably didn't realise their was
| background noise. I don't phone call centra much but the
| background noise in some is very frustrating.
| oblak wrote:
| Eh, your initial argument sounded neutral enough but this
| is bad. Would you jump this hard on the support person if
| the noise was a office cacophony?
| unsupp0rted wrote:
| What is bad? Stating that her company would find this to
| be an unacceptable standard of service quality?
|
| Sharing experiences and opinions on HN that are
| unpopular?
|
| I didn't complain to the worker, the company, or give her
| any attitude about it. None of that would have helped me
| get my task done.
|
| They have other agents who are more professional, so next
| time I could get routed to somebody else.
|
| To answer your question:
|
| If the noise was an office cacophony then I'd put the
| blame on the company that tolerates it.
|
| The noise was a children's cartoon and a babbling child.
|
| The worker has a responsibility to either get noise-
| canceling tools or work from a quiet area of the home.
| It's 2024- it's really easy to do either one.
| BossingAround wrote:
| > It's 2024- it's really easy to do either one
|
| It's easy if you earn $100k+ of course. It's not easy
| with $40k in a two-bedroom house with a toddler as a
| single parent.
|
| "But then, she's not supposed to have that job if she
| can't do it," I can already hear you say. To that, I'd
| say sure, you could do that, if you're willing to pay for
| a several year long maternity leave from your taxes until
| the parents can place their kids in kindergartens.
| unsupp0rted wrote:
| She's not supposed to have that job (from home) if she
| can't figure out voice isolation software or
| alternatively buy an appropriate headset.
|
| Even minimum-wage construction workers know that they're
| gonna need to invest a bit up front into work stuff.
|
| https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT213683
| BossingAround wrote:
| > If her manager were to "secret shopper" call in, how much
| kindness and grace would they show for being forced to sit
| though a children's cartoon while quoting 5-figure invoice
| numbers back and forth?
|
| Hopefully the identical amount? I don't know why the answer
| would differ in any meaningful way.
| em-bee wrote:
| this is a cultural problem. in asia and africa people take
| their kids to work all the time. part of this is because
| parents can't afford childcare, but part of it is also: "why
| not?".
|
| i find our western attitude towards kids disturbing. after
| living 15 years in china i have come to realize that western,
| and even more so the european, and especially the german and
| austrian attitude towards work and school is much more
| conservative than i thought.
|
| and as a parent, i find that very sad.
|
| i wish every parent the opportunity to spend as much time with
| their children as they can. and if that means that they play
| where the parents are working, then i am all for it. rather
| that than sending them off to daycare. (there are exceptions of
| course where the environment is not safe for kids to play)
| unsupp0rted wrote:
| As an intentional non-parent who lived for a decade in
| several Asian countries: work calls are for doing work.
|
| Serious people don't let their kids talk over their meetings.
| lawgimenez wrote:
| Chill with the attitude, you have no idea what she's been
| through with her kid. Maybe the kid just got off from a
| tantrum or something.
| chasd00 wrote:
| I find it equally probable she just doesn't give a shit.
| People bend over backward to give people like this the
| benefit of the doubt for some reason.
|
| /wfh parent of two
| unsupp0rted wrote:
| The thinking is if they have a kid then they're the
| victims of heartless monsters (e.g. me) who expect them
| to work at the same level of professionalism as people
| who don't have kids.
| graemep wrote:
| The biggest benefit of working from home, which i have been
| doing since my older daughter (now an adult) was an year old.
| Self employed too, so have flexibility. I also home educate
| which would not have been as easy without working from home.
|
| My last employer had childcare available onsite at work, and
| that should be more common too (I did not use it because my
| now ex did not work, but still very good for a lot of my
| colleagues).
|
| I also find it sad how little time many parents have with
| their kids. We really need to make employment a lot more
| family friendly in general.
| mancerayder wrote:
| Not everyone loves children, is the unspoken unpopular thing
| to say. Even more unpopular: dogs. These are things I wish
| not to see in an office, nor a bar environment. Actually see
| isn't the issue, it's the uncontrollable, but considered
| normal, noise that I find stressful.
| unsupp0rted wrote:
| See I adore dogs and yet I can easily visualize and
| understand what your reaction would be like to having a dog
| around during your work day.
|
| I find this or that sound a dog makes endearing- you find
| it annoying or worse. I find the mess a dog makes a mild
| inconvenience- you find it disgusting.
|
| Instead of telling you you're overreacting or that you're
| being insensitive to people who are obligated for some
| reason to include their dog in your meeting with them, I
| can agree with you that you shouldn't have to have dogs in
| your working life if you never chose this.
|
| And it's not me doing you a favor by accommodating your
| unique sensitivities; the default should be your version,
| not my version.
| dang wrote:
| You posted 16 times about this in this thread. That's
| excessive. Please don't perpetuate flamewars.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| unsupp0rted wrote:
| Feedback gratefully accepted.
|
| I'm defensive on this topic because I get a lot of flack
| for it. I'll stop now.
| proc0 wrote:
| I agree about dogs. Children however are just like adults
| in how they're all different and have their own personality
| etc., so I think society is suffering from delaying this
| integration into society. We all grow up and eventually
| have to integrate with others, and it seems because of this
| separation of ages that we will have a less cohesive
| society and culture in so many ways (which I think is
| visible already, as mentioned in this thread).
| whateveracct wrote:
| Sounds like you take work too seriously.
| caddemon wrote:
| Eh, some of the people I know with the worst WLB are people
| that do not take work that seriously during working hours.
| They end up living at the office basically because it takes
| longer for them to finish their tasks and they also end up
| with their social life/break time tied up in the company.
|
| In this case, if it is disruptive enough to the call then
| that makes it take longer to get done what you need to do.
| The quicker you get done what you need to do, the quicker you
| are done with work. I'm not a fan of judging things just
| because they are "unprofessional" but there are
| unprofessional things that actually make everyone else's
| lives more difficult.
| redcobra762 wrote:
| I presume you said nothing to alert her to the issue, of
| course? Just got emotional about it and secretly resented the
| woman for having children...
| unsupp0rted wrote:
| Of course I didn't mention it. What would this have
| accomplished, other than upsetting her and establishing an
| adversarial call?
|
| I was calling in to get a task done. I got it done as quickly
| as possible and moved on.
|
| Next time if I get her again, I'll request a different agent
| by name, who was professional and capable last time.
| foogazi wrote:
| I've had it happen and my reaction has been "I get it, everyone
| is going through stuff, it's awesome that they get to be
| working during the pandemic"
|
| I do despise the call center background noise where I'm hearing
| other people making calls. but the person on the phone has no
| control over that. I'll take WHF over RTO any day
| jvaseniselv wrote:
| I think this is an overreaction. It was likely as simple as
| hanging up and calling again, if it bothered you so much. Or
| did you consider providing some polite feedback that the
| background noise was distracting you, I have had people buy
| headphones advertised as noise canceling and assume they work
| well but only realize they didn't until pointed out to them. Or
| did you even consider that she might work from an office and
| just had an off day - had a malfunctioning headset for the day
| or had a sick kid at home and so opted to work remotely for the
| day.
|
| Also, is this even about working from home? I have worked in
| multiple offices which had open layouts and other
| meetings/conversations going on in desks around me and very
| distracting too.
|
| Personally, imho, I work remotely and have a quiet room to
| myself but I also understand that other people I work with have
| lives too, and if it really bothers me I just tell them that
| politely, if you are courteous then its likely most people are
| going to be to you too, and do what they can to help. It makes
| me wonder if you have already made up your mind about the
| person you spoke to and about work from home and are finding
| reasons to justify it.
| unsupp0rted wrote:
| What was an overreaction? I ignored it and got on with the
| task.
|
| My reaction was to comment about it later under a post on
| Hacker News about WFH.
| jvaseniselv wrote:
| What you ignored was a confrontation but made assumptions
| and judgements about the person, their work, and their
| ability to work from home and concluded the issue was with
| working from home, without providing feedback or attempting
| to learn more about the situation, and then complained on
| the internet. How would you like it if your work
| performance/feedback was handled this way? IMHO, I don't
| think that's a very professional way to handle a work
| issue/relationship. I would have been more sympathetic to
| your issue if you had made an attempt to provide feedback
| or tried to resolve your problem, and if the other party
| failed to help.
| unsupp0rted wrote:
| What assumptions did I make, other than that if they can
| hear a toddler and a cartoon in the room, and if their
| job is phone calls, then they should take care that this
| isn't distracting on phone calls?
|
| I don't have a relationship with them- they're one agent
| of a handful, whom I'm obligated by my client to call a
| couple times a year.
|
| I'm not in a position to give feedback on their work
| performance. Nobody needs me to have a confrontation with
| them. I'm not their coworker, boss or direct customer.
|
| This is a HN post about WFH and I've shared an anecdote
| about somebody's toddler babbling during our work call.
|
| I admit mine is an unpopular opinion- we're supposed to
| celebrate parents who work so hard to balance their
| duties with their entirely elective decision to have
| children.
| tinktank wrote:
| You can always take your business elsewhere.
| unsupp0rted wrote:
| Because one support agent isn't doing the WFH thing to my
| standards?
|
| It's an anecdote for HN, not a nuclear event.
| j7ake wrote:
| Unsurprisingly, workers whose skills are in high demand and short
| supply (eg highly educated, highly experienced people) can demand
| better work conditions such as pay and commute flexibility.
| MagicMoonlight wrote:
| Honestly a lot of the "low skill jobs" actually have a high
| skill threshold but we just arbitrarily decide to suppress
| them.
|
| Take somewhere like Starbucks. They pay them minimum wage,
| churn em constantly so they're never trained and make them work
| arbitrary shifts like 4 hour -> 2 hour unpaid break ->
| additional 4 hours.
|
| Those staff end up "low skilled" but in reality someone who was
| treated fairly and respected would get very good at running the
| shop. They'd be able to turn out twice as many drinks and they
| would actually care about running costs and cleanliness. You
| wouldn't get the constant underlying corruption by mistreatment
| where they can't be bothered to check stock levels and throw
| away a grand of material a week on inefficiency.
| j7ake wrote:
| Those skilled baristas are welcome to open up their own shop
| to compete though (which probably many do , successfully).
|
| Problem is VCs don't fund coffee shops, otherwise Starbucks
| would be "disrupted" overnight.
| larrykubin wrote:
| Was reading about Blank Street Coffee raising money
| recently to compete:
|
| https://www.fastcompany.com/90867251/blank-street-coffee-
| rai...
| xyzelement wrote:
| This feels like a tortured argument to me. Starbucks seems to
| do fine using existing strategic so seems like they are
| "right" about the appropriate level of skill and investment.
|
| Maybe someone else could have a strategy more like yours but
| it's clearly not required.
|
| An airline on the flip side cannot "try" this with their
| pilots.
| dividefuel wrote:
| My view is that many jobs in major chains (e.g. Starbucks,
| fast food, retail, etc) become low skill because any of the
| real thinking skills are pulled into separate corporate
| offices with totally different roles. Decisions like how much
| to advertise, what to stock, sourcing inventory etc. are
| totally removed from the workers who run the store. This puts
| a ceiling on the skill level needed for the job.
|
| Sure you can operate the machines and make a good drink, but
| what good is that if you have minimal influence over the
| menu?
| Aeolun wrote:
| What nonsense. The divide is not in highly paid vs low paid jobs.
| It's between jobs that can be done from home (which happen to be
| highly paid) and jobs which need specialized equiment/location
| (which do not).
|
| If I were working a highly paid job where I had to manage a
| server farm I'd also need to be on location simply due to the
| requirement of constant physical access.
| arketyp wrote:
| I studied at university and chose a programmer path quite
| indirectly and rather much because the thought of being
| physically and temporally bound to external and impersonal
| locations and tools and interactions, for labor, made me
| nauseous. I worked "remote" also at the office, reclusively, seen
| somewhat as an alien by colleagues (not unjustly) for whom
| meeting room bookings were actually critical. I'm not
| complaining, but it's not all glamour either. You get what you
| stake out.
| cracrecry wrote:
| So everybody needs to be miserable as if you are not miserable
| the rest of miserable people will look at you and say: That's not
| fair!! I am miserable so you must be miserable too!
|
| Of all the "arguments" used by hired Public Relations companies
| hired to spin "work from home" in a bad light, this is the most
| stupid argument I have ever heard.
|
| This makes me uncomfortable as probably because of that it could
| be the most successful.
| cowsandmilk wrote:
| The article doesn't recommend forcing more people to come into
| the office, so your comment reflects experiences outside of
| this article, not what they're saying.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > So everybody needs to be miserable as if you are not
| miserable the rest of miserable people will look at you and
| say: That's not fair!! I am miserable so you must be miserable
| too!
|
| This argument gets used _a lot_ in politics, whenever a
| situation is to be improved people claim "but we suffered,
| that's not fair!!!".
|
| Personally, I know this from fellow second-generation migrants
| here in Germany that are opposed to how "easy" refugees have it
| - their claim is that they had to fight German bureaucracy for
| years until they were allowed to work and whatnot. Which is
| valid, yes, but they seem to be unaware that times have
| changed.
| autoexec wrote:
| Crab mentality is dangerous. It seems like a lot of people
| would rather pull others down to where they are than allow
| everyone to be lifted up to somewhere better.
| vladvasiliu wrote:
| Indeed. But it seems widespread.
|
| The issue seems to be that many people don't consider their
| situation in absolute terms, but tend to look at how others
| have it.
|
| An interesting book on the subject is _Envy: A Theory of
| Social Behavior_ (original German title: Der Neid: Eine
| Theorie der Gesellschaft) by Helmut Schoeck.
| alchemist1e9 wrote:
| That book is incredibly relevant to current trends. While
| envy in small societies spurred improvement, in today's
| complex societies it breeds destructive tendencies, vast
| disparity in achievement makes envy less about motivation
| and more about resentment, fueling calls for collectivism
| and redistribution. The rise of Progressive politics
| might be less about fairness and more about an
| unaddressed, deep-seated envy. We know historically there
| are only destructive outcomes for policies rooted in such
| emotions, rather than constructive societal development.
| Whoppertime wrote:
| Envy is who has a problem with Inequality. Charity is who
| has a problem with poverty. Easiest way to reduce
| inequality is kneecap those at the top and share the
| lucre with your downtrodden political allies. Easiest way
| to help poverty is teaching a man to fish after giving
| him a couple fish so he doesn't need to worry about
| starvation during class.
| solardev wrote:
| Do crabs do that?
| autoexec wrote:
| That's the idea anyway
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crab_mentality) but
| honestly I haven't observed nearly enough crabs in
| buckets to say with confidence that it's typical for the
| species. It's entirely possible that a few asshole crabs
| have given them all a bad reputation and that I'm just
| perpetuating an unfair stereotype.
|
| If I get the chance to get to know more bucket crabs I'm
| perfectly willing to change my view of them if turns out
| that they're largely cooperative and helpful.
| redcobra762 wrote:
| Going to work shouldn't make you miserable. If it does,
| consider a different career.
| oldpersonintx wrote:
| I read the title much differently than HN!
|
| My take is, you get to work from home if your job isn't that
| crucial. Jobs that are driven by cost rather than result.
|
| I don't think most remote workers understand that eventually they
| must be cost competitive with _any_ legally-applicable
| competitive workers. Are you ready to become cost-competitive
| with Mexican devs who know React well enough?
|
| In ten years I predict most "remote" work will be pay-per-ticket:
|
| 1. Log in to hiring site to complete aptitude test.
|
| 2. If pass, get a ticket and propose solution.
|
| 3. If solution isn't accepted, goto 1. If another worker solved
| same issue for less money, goto 1.
|
| 4. Close another ticket within X hours. If not, goto 1.
|
| Anyone stuck in this loop may very well fantasize about
| aspirational careers like being a UPS driver.
| badpun wrote:
| I will agree to abolish the inequality caused by WfH when CEOs
| agree to abolish the inequality caused by salary discrepancies
| (i.e. never). We leave in an inequal society, and for good
| reasons.
| afarviral wrote:
| Who wouldn't agree that difficult work should be payed more?
| Work that requires the acquisition of skills should be payed a
| bit more too, no? There should be a system in place which
| determines the appropriate compensation, not arbitrary
| compensation as determined by the market.
| badpun wrote:
| 1. I agree that difficult work should be payed more. For
| example, military service is as difficult as being a CEO
| (just in a different way), but pays a fraction of CEO's
| salary.
|
| 2. Should job requiring acquisition of skills pay more?
| Probably, but the discrepancy shouldn't be large. Most high-
| end jobs require 4 extra years of schooling (and thus
| forteited income) - whereas the job will be performed for
| 30-40 years. Thus, in a fair world, high-end jobs would pay
| around 10% than jobs requiring only high-school diploma.
|
| Right now, the high-skill jobs largely go to children of
| parents with higher social and financial capital, which are
| able to roll out a red carpet for their children to the well
| paying jobs (via being role models on how to land a place in
| corporate hierarchy, choosing good schools, paying for
| tutors, encouraging choosing a profitable major in college
| etc.). Many people in high-end jobs are largely there because
| of their parents.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| What you're describing is communism. And renumeration for
| workers will be even more arbitrary than market forces,
| because humans cannot make "a system" that is independent
| from humans.
| kkfx wrote:
| Ah, ok... So I suppose since many starve to death for lack of
| water and food we should do the same. And of course, only
| workers, executives MUST work as they want.
|
| I think the office PR have almost exhausted all ideas to try
| pushing people back in the smart city or interment champ for
| slaves who should not be aware of they status...
| dmezzetti wrote:
| My biggest question after reading the article is why did they use
| a LLM to do what is basically a binary classification task? Why
| not use a BERT-like standard text classifier?
| MichaelRo wrote:
| Doesn't even the Bible say "For to every one who has will more be
| given, and he will have abundance. But from him who has not, even
| what he has will be taken away."?
|
| On a serious note, there are obvious restrictions on who can work
| from home with intellectual jobs preferred over physical labor.
| And wasn't it always this divide? Even in communist countries it
| was sought after to get a college degree and perform intellectual
| work because it's better paid and has advantages.
| aaomidi wrote:
| This is one of the reasons I left Google. I did not like being
| one of the "exceptions" to remote work. I was anticipating some
| team dynamic problems going forward.
| testHN1ac wrote:
| WFH isn't inequality, WFH is a perk.
| paulcole wrote:
| > WFH is a perk
|
| To some people.
|
| If you don't see it as a perk, you should take that into
| account when negotiating salary.
|
| For me personally (someone who doesn't see it as a perk), I'd
| need a higher salary (compared to an in-office job) to consider
| a remote work arrangement - because I'd need to cover the cost
| of my coworking space.
| marcus_holmes wrote:
| Yet more "please return to the office" pseudo-journalism
| bollocks.
|
| Front-line staff have to clock on, get their toilet breaks timed,
| get drug tested, have weird random shift patterns, have to work
| at least one day on the weekend, have to cover for colleagues by
| doing a 16-hour shift, get paid overtime, can't nip out for a
| doctor's appointment, etc, etc, etc.
|
| Happy for bosses to consider making the workplace more equal, but
| let's start by making front-line staff's lives easier rather than
| making everyone else's lives harder.
| phatskat wrote:
| I don't know which part of that article you read, but the main
| takeaways were to have front line workers have a better quality
| of work. Have managers onsite more, increase pay for frontline
| workers to compensate for not being able to commute, and shift
| to four day weeks instead of five to reduce commute.
|
| I agree that flexibility such as doctors appointments are
| important, and also that can be difficult if you're one of two
| employees working a storefront, particularly if it's busy.
| Heading out to an unplanned appointment (what I assume you mean
| by "nip out") may be difficult, but accommodating planned and
| scheduled appointments could certainly be made easier - this is
| a time when the onsite manager should say "I will be in that
| day and I will cover for the time needed for your appointment".
| gumballindie wrote:
| Most people that want to work onsite are the people without an
| inner voice. They need someone to talk to compensate for it.
| analog31 wrote:
| >>>> Business leaders rightly worry that this divide could hurt
| morale among front-line staff, undermine perceived fairness, and
| create new rifts in the workforce.
|
| Working at a multinational, people have had varied work
| arrangements, perquisites, social hierarchies, and pay scales,
| for a long time. WFH is just a new wrinkle, where you're one of
| the "remotes" but you live in the same town for some reason.
| Also, if you think about it, the network of suppliers,
| contractors, and customers represent quasi-remotes in the sense
| that they're also involved in the business but are not locating
| themselves on site, and are jockeying for advantages just like
| everybody else.
|
| The remotes are mostly invisible. The winds of self-interest that
| fill our sails continue to blow even if no other ship is in
| sight.
| tracerbulletx wrote:
| The amount of effort to make inequality a fight between a white
| collar worker making 100,000 and a blue collar working making
| 30-40,000 and not about a CEO making 10Million or an investor
| making 100 million is clear and insidious.
| pcmaffey wrote:
| Culture warfare 101
| lebean wrote:
| In other news, someone having something nice is unequal to
| someone who doesn't.
| diogenescynic wrote:
| Life is built on inequality, but HBR wants to guilt us into all
| going back to the office out of some sense of equality? What a
| fucking joke. The only group this benefits are those at the very
| top. Either that or my commute is included in my working hours.
| I'll never go back to the office and wasting so much time
| commuting per week and not being compensated.
| lepus wrote:
| If business leaders actually cared about "inequality" they would
| slash their own compensation down closer to the people who work
| for them.
| raphar wrote:
| Hbr worried about inequality, that's not common!
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