Did the Pandemic Change Our Attitudes About Work? (washingtonpost.com) 188
Through 2020 America's professional lives "had taken on the overtones of a secular religion," argues a writer in the Washington Post, with jobs forming "a primary way to find meaning in the world and a crucial part of our identity.... Even precarious, low-paying gigs were valorized as 'hustle culture,' representing freedom to perform labor on our terms."
But then... Fast-forward to fall 2022. The number of people quitting, while down from the peak, remains at the highest level since the 1970s. White-collar workers don't want to give up working remotely. Low-paying sectors such as the hospitality industry can't find enough people willing to work for the wages on offer. Union organizing and strikes have been on an upswing.... [W]hat's increasingly clear is that the March 2020 decision to partially close down the American economy shattered Americans' dysfunctional, profoundly unequal relationship with work like nothing in decades. And even if there was great discomfort in a shutdown that severed almost every one of us from assumptions about how we earn a living, we also found an unexpected opportunity: to remake our relationship with the labor that fills our days....
All of it — the lockdowns, the disease, the sudden change in household functioning and how or whether we worked at all — amounted to a massive psychological shock, leading many to ask why labor looms so large in our psyches. "It really was an opportunity — an unwelcome opportunity — to take a look at the mad scramble that many of us have just assumed was normal," said Kate Shindle, who as president of the Actors' Equity Association represents a particularly hard-hit industry. Then, when the economy unexpectedly boomed back, Americans were poised to pivot. As many had recognized, it was one thing to seek meaning in work but another to see our lives subsumed by it — and for what? A less-than-adequate paycheck? A job that could literally kill you? "Maybe the poor safety net really kept people from analyzing the role of work in their lives," David Blustein, author of "The Importance of Work in an Age of Uncertainty" and a professor at Boston College's Lynch School of Education and Human Development, told me. "Maybe the American work ethic was a form of survival...."
Over and over, when people spoke to journalists, including me, about why they made changes in their professional lives since March 2020, they told us they liked receiving better wages when they switched employers. But even more, they wanted greater control over the terms of their labor.... An increased level of remote work, likely in a hybrid format, is almost certainly here to stay, says Nick Bloom, a professor of economics at Stanford University, who has studied the topic for decades. Employees want it, technological advances continue to make it easier, and companies that forbid it completely are likely to find themselves at a disadvantage....
The past two and a half years brought immense upheaval, and we'll be struggling to process the resulting changes for years. But it's undeniable that some of these shifts were long overdue. Workers are highly unlikely to forget what we learned: namely, that our jobs are much more flexible than we thought.
But then... Fast-forward to fall 2022. The number of people quitting, while down from the peak, remains at the highest level since the 1970s. White-collar workers don't want to give up working remotely. Low-paying sectors such as the hospitality industry can't find enough people willing to work for the wages on offer. Union organizing and strikes have been on an upswing.... [W]hat's increasingly clear is that the March 2020 decision to partially close down the American economy shattered Americans' dysfunctional, profoundly unequal relationship with work like nothing in decades. And even if there was great discomfort in a shutdown that severed almost every one of us from assumptions about how we earn a living, we also found an unexpected opportunity: to remake our relationship with the labor that fills our days....
All of it — the lockdowns, the disease, the sudden change in household functioning and how or whether we worked at all — amounted to a massive psychological shock, leading many to ask why labor looms so large in our psyches. "It really was an opportunity — an unwelcome opportunity — to take a look at the mad scramble that many of us have just assumed was normal," said Kate Shindle, who as president of the Actors' Equity Association represents a particularly hard-hit industry. Then, when the economy unexpectedly boomed back, Americans were poised to pivot. As many had recognized, it was one thing to seek meaning in work but another to see our lives subsumed by it — and for what? A less-than-adequate paycheck? A job that could literally kill you? "Maybe the poor safety net really kept people from analyzing the role of work in their lives," David Blustein, author of "The Importance of Work in an Age of Uncertainty" and a professor at Boston College's Lynch School of Education and Human Development, told me. "Maybe the American work ethic was a form of survival...."
Over and over, when people spoke to journalists, including me, about why they made changes in their professional lives since March 2020, they told us they liked receiving better wages when they switched employers. But even more, they wanted greater control over the terms of their labor.... An increased level of remote work, likely in a hybrid format, is almost certainly here to stay, says Nick Bloom, a professor of economics at Stanford University, who has studied the topic for decades. Employees want it, technological advances continue to make it easier, and companies that forbid it completely are likely to find themselves at a disadvantage....
The past two and a half years brought immense upheaval, and we'll be struggling to process the resulting changes for years. But it's undeniable that some of these shifts were long overdue. Workers are highly unlikely to forget what we learned: namely, that our jobs are much more flexible than we thought.
if they want an 60-80 hour week then I want to WFH (Score:3, Interesting)
if they want an 60-80 hour week then I want to WFH
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Elon thinks you're a slacker but he's starting to come around....slowly
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I'm wondering how his 80-hours per week policy is working out for him the Ontario twitter office, a jurisdiction where even salaried employees are not exempt from receiving overtime.
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As if Musk cared for petty little things like laws. They are for little people to protect the rich from them.
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He runs 5 different companies. He certainly isn't at 5 locations simultaneously. Rumor is he also didn't have any degrees and had to buy one. Plus he was an illegal alien for a bit. https://www.dailykos.com/stori... [dailykos.com]
I could overlook at lot of that if he really was a genuine big brain inventive engineer, but he's not, he's just very good at getting the credit & the worship when he's been fortunate to work with real talent like JB Straubel at Tesla & Tom Mueller at SpaceX
BZZT (Score:2)
he's just very good at getting the credit & the worship when he's been fortunate to work with real talent
I find it amusing you give zero credit whatsoever for Musk's ability to FIND "real talent" five times over.
You can argument about what it is composed of, but you cannot argue that Musk himself is part of an ingredient for success that works.
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Zip2: Got bought out.
X-Com: Got bought out. Musk becomes CEO but gets the sack because he's shit. Gets renamed Paypal. Sold for more money.
Space-X: Success!
Starlink: Does it make money? No idea.
Tesla: Success! Although he still pretends he founded the company and is weird if anyone points out that he didn't.
Neuralink: You're going to put what into people's heads?
The Boring Company: Hahahaha!
Twitter: Oh stop it. I think my sides are going to split.
He's not some kind of geni
Re:BZZT (Score:5, Insightful)
He seems more to exemplify the idea that anyone can grab the gold ring IF they can afford enough attempts at it.
Alas, most people can manage to afford at most one attempt. You have to either get extremely lucky or be born into money (as they say, born on 3rd base).
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Also fits my theory that CEOs have a particular gene, or a substance like that. If you don't have it, you aren't getting in the club. If you do have it, then you will become CEO over and over and over, because even if you fail you still have more experience at it than someone who's never been CEO. In fact failing often seems to make an ex-CEO even more desirable.
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He was hired to work in the lab, but bonded with the owner/founder. When the founder died my friend served as acting CEO for several years. In that time the company did well, launched some new products, and managed to grow. However, my buddy didn't want to be CEO. He was a true lab type. Wanted to be working on new products and the science of how they worked. Not signing agreements and attending boar
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Then you go do what he did. Seems like you think it should be easy enough. Come back and let us know when you are so successful you can screw yourself over in amounts of money counted in billions.
Go on. We'll wait.
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Lots of people are part of that ingredient & many companies but they don't spend even a fraction of the time self-promoting as Elon does.
The only close comparison that comes to mind is Steve Jobs; not even Gates or Ballmer were as obnoxious & I really didn't like either of those guys & while Gates was integral to the success of Microsoft, I don't recall him ever taking or being given the credit for the actual (software) engineering beyond the original DOS whereas Elon gets all kinds of credit as
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"I find it amusing you give zero credit whatsoever for Musk's ability to FIND "real talent" five times over."
Same could be said about, for example, Bezos & Branson & I don't see them getting the same kind of accolades & hero worship.
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I find it amusing you give zero credit whatsoever for Musk's ability to FIND "real talent" five times over.
Musk was working in the HR departments, too? He sure is a man of many parts.
You can argument about what it is composed of, but you cannot argue that Musk himself is part of an ingredient for success that works.
He has been in the past, because rich people loved a rich child of apartheid. But now people know he's a petulant child, and when he gets too personally involved in things they go to shit.
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How about what Bob Black thinks (from 1985)? (Score:3, Interesting)
https://web.archive.org/web/20... [archive.org]
"Liberals say we should end employment discrimination. I say we should end employment. Conservatives support right-to-work laws. Following Karl Marx's wayward son-in-law Paul Lafargue, I support the right to be lazy. Leftists favor full employment. Like the surrealists -- except that I'm not kidding -- I favor full unemployment. Trotskyists agitate for permanent revolution. I agitate for permanent revelry. But if all the ideologues (as they do) advocate work -- and not only
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Is there a rl;dr version of that wall of text?
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Is there a rl;dr version of that wall of text?
Sure, here you go [youtu.be].
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...five percent of the work then being done...would satisfy our minimal needs for food, clothing and shelter.
Minimal needs? I am reminded of a scene from Preston Sturges' Christmas in July:
Betty Casey : Two can live as cheaply as one.
Jimmy MacDonald : Who wants to live cheaply?
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In many states, an employer can't legally require you to work 60-80 hours, even if salaried. It's voluntary.
Re:if they want an 60-80 hour week then I want to (Score:5, Insightful)
People just found out that working hard is not in any way related to going to a certain place. I can actually work more efficient when not surrounded by loudmouthed assholes.
If anything, the cubicle and even more the open-floor-plan office showed people that they can be far more productive if they're NOT in an office. AND have a better work atmoshere, too.
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OK, but... (Score:2)
For those of us that are later in our career, open plan offices are stupid. Personally though, I find I can get through work that is 100% self-paced faster in an office setting than at home. For younger people, my (limited) experience is that the delta is more significant. It didn't matter if I was working from the couch in a 450SF apartment, work nook in double the space, random restaurant, or dedicated room in my current home.
I think the challenge for employers is that efficiency has ultimately suffered,
Re:OK, but... (Score:5, Insightful)
Sorry, but nothing is more inefficient than an open floor office. And that's not just my experience, that's been shown by numerous studies. People are more stressed, suffer more interruptions, have a hard time concentrating and have to resort to various tools and tricks to work in peace.
And wages increased? Where? Because I sure wouldn't mind going there.
Re: OK, but... (Score:5, Insightful)
I worked in a cube farm that had minimal productivity because so many people were packed into a small space you couldn't hear yourself speak. I now work in an open office layout with four fairly quiet people on my side of a space that would have fit at least twelve in the old office. I don't know think it is open office or cube farm that makes a difference as much as worker density.
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Probably it's noise. I never minded cubes so much except when they people around were noisy.
My worst technical job I had an office, while severely underpaid and undervalued. An office bigger than my current COO's office. It was nice, but it didn't make up for the rest of the job being crap. Current job I like and it's a cube; but it's got a nice view out a window. Yes sometimes people will bug me with questions so I don't get much done; but that happened when I was working from home too. At work it's
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Teams had a "don't pick up" button last time I used it, did they remove that?
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Probably it's noise. I never minded cubes so much except when they people around were noisy.
My worst technical job I had an office, while severely underpaid and undervalued. An office bigger than my current COO's office. It was nice, but it didn't make up for the rest of the job being crap. Current job I like and it's a cube; but it's got a nice view out a window. Yes sometimes people will bug me with questions so I don't get much done; but that happened when I was working from home too. At work it's "sorry, you look like you're busy, I'll stop by later"; at home it's "Bob is calling you on Teams bzzt bzzt bzzt."
That was another thing I noticed. One office was very quiet cube farm, but the offices all had windows. Another office was louder but the cubes were around the windows and the offices had no windows. The first was easier to focus, but the second was less depressing. There do seem to be a number of factors beyond just, do I have a cube or not.
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In grad school the crammed 10 of us and our desks into what was originally the offices of 2 faculty. Productivity was rate limited by the least engaged person in the room. If everyone was working on something, we could all work like we were in an office by ourselves. Just the sound of keyboards clacking away. However, when one of us was taking a break, anyone near them also ended up taking a break or putting on their headphones to try and keep working. We were ch
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Sorry, but nothing is more inefficient than an open floor office.
No you're wrong, see. The asshole over the other side who thinks fucking everyone wants to listen to his music is increasing productivity because walls are expensive.
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I have a perfect solution for this. Outsource the cost for the walls to your worker by having him work from his home!
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I'm not trying to defend open plan, but that is clearly bad management. If one worker is disturbing other workers with music, it makes zero sense not to make them wear headphones instead.
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I worked in open offices without cubicles for 29 years. While there were sometimes too many distractions, especially a chatter box of a part-time worker that sat next to me for a while, usually the distractions were about the job and necessary in some way. In general, I was able to concentr
Re:OK, but... (Score:4, Insightful)
But efficiency didn't suffer.What suffered is manager's irrational need to see people doing things they don't want to do and executives lucrative side business as silent partners to the landlords renting out commercial space.
Yes, there are some Wallys slacking off. They were always Wallys slacking off, but they were more able to hide it when everyone was in the office.
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But efficiency didn't suffer.
It did though.
What suffered is manager's irrational need to see people doing things they don't want to do
Humans are social animals and engineering is a team sport. If your job is popping tickets off the bug tracker then fixing them in isolation, then sure, you can work efficiently at home. My workplace is 100% hybrid. It can't really not be because my team are scattered across multiple timezones anyway. Yet the locals on my team have for the most part started drifting back into
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Nobody claimed humans fundamentally changed. Just that due to an enforced break in the routine they realized that they never liked the routine and that it was never actually necessary and certainly isn't in their best interest.
Didn't change my attitude, but taught me something (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm older - early 60s. For a few years pre-COVID, I found myself getting tired of the slog, the politics, the constant reinventing of the wheel - so I'd started to look into (and discuss with my wife) the feasibility of me retiring a few years early, and exactly when that could happen.
But then COVID hit, and the university I work for went full remote for a year and half. And I discovered... I mostly still like and enjoy doing my job! All this time, it's actually mostly been the commute that's been wearing me down, not the job.
Right now my schedule is currently hybrid, although I keep hearing noises from higher up about that possibly ending. I'd love to keep working to 70 or thereabouts... but I am also now only about four months from the point where I could retire securely. At my age, I know finding a new job would be very hard regardless of my skill set; so I've basically decided that the day they say "everyone is back on campus, five days a week" is the day I give two weeks' lead time regarding my retirement.
Re:Didn't change my attitude, but taught me someth (Score:5, Interesting)
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That's if you have to drive. Commuting doesn't have to be that way.
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That's if you have to drive. Commuting doesn't have to be that way.
LOL, what? That's when you have to use public transit, and spend that time holding onto your wallet and cellphone lest it be stolen, wondering whether that bunch of loud and ripped assholes in the back are going to decide to beat you up because they don't like your face/attitude/skin color or just "for teh lulz", or maybe this druggie over there will stab you with his needle carrying who knows what, again, "for teh lulz" because he's high as a kite, worrying about pickpockets/muggers/rapists/etc.
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Yoiks! I mean, that's the 'burbs for you.
My commute is somewhere between 30 minutes and 50, depending on how hard I push it. About 10 minutes is on a train or underground line, the rest is 100% human powered. Commutes don't have to be awful, but an awful lot of people decided to choose 3 hours of hell PER DAY in exchange for more space at the weekend.
Seems a bonkers choice to me, but there you go.
Re:Didn't change my attitude, but taught me someth (Score:5, Insightful)
At my age, I know finding a new job would be very hard regardless of my skill set;
If you have the skills and can do the work, I'd love to hire you. The experience an older worker brings can be invaluable.
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A few times in my career, I've encountered older coworkers who chose to keep working on rather than retiring, who shared a funny rule: "I'll continue working until you saddle me with managerial / meeting responsibilities, which I hate".
Ain't no reason you can't just make that same counter-offer, adjusted for your priorities. When they say 'everyone back on campus', counter-offer.
Meanwhile, whatever your field is, look for peer groups to become active in: trade associations, standards groups, or whatever. Th
Re:Didn't change my attitude, but taught me someth (Score:4, Interesting)
I would strongly advise discussing it with your department and being willing to take a modest pay cut rather than just retiring early. If you can live with going in to campus once a week there should be middle ground. Less than that is hard, but not impossible.
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I can live with a lot, but I usually need a reason if I am supposed to do something. Because I tend to optimize, if you can't give me a reason for something that is detrimental to an optimal outcome, it will be cut from the process.
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I had a longer commute but now it's about 8 miles, and not on a freeway, so it's not bad. I like it better than being at home in the cramped condo.
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My commute is a 10 minute walk.
I still prefer working from home. It's not the commute. It actually is the people.
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University programming work?
I figure you're American, so YMMV, this may not apply etc etc etc. But in the UK...
I believe there is a bit of a shortage of programmers. You see, you can get a software engineer on a grant if you need one, but they pay academic salaries. The influx of large, American tech companies has done wonderful things for pay scales for progammers in London, let me tell you! Academic salaries on the other hand are up about maybe 50% from 20 years ago, i.e. well under half the level of infl
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it's actually mostly been the commute that's been wearing me down
Same here. The commute is what makes me feel like a hamster on a wheel. Every day, the back and forth, always the same route, wasting away time just trying to get to the place and returning home. Such a waste of time, resources, and life force.
Working from home I save 2 hours a day. Thanks to the time saved I can take longer breaks and have lunch with family or go for a long walk in the park, or have more time for proper exercise in the morning. I save money, produce less pollution, more time for life and f
Yes (Score:2, Insightful)
A couple of days of remote work doesn't kill productivity, but face-to-face meetings are still the best way to resolve tricky issues. Mix it up.
Re:Yes (Score:5, Insightful)
Get a camera, if you really need to see my face.
I don't benefit from face-to-face communication at all. I am an autist. My ability to read other people is zero, and them trying to read me usually leads to irritation and frustration because my body language is not in sync with what I'm saying. Actually, I'm far better at communicating in a written medium. If that's not an option, a teams/zoom meeting is a close second.
The last thing I need is a face-to-face meeting. Aside of putting me under unnecessary stress because I have to act like I'm human, which also occupies some of the processing power I could otherwise lend to the topic at hand if I don't have to waste resources on that, they don't serve any purpose for me.
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I think software and firmware often get the "I work better alone" types. This can cause issues because they often create code that's the same way. I understand this because I have tendencies along that line. But any non-trivial piece of code has to interact with other code, and those developers can't just sit in a bubble and get stuff done efficiently in the long term without communicating.
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I'm sorry, I was not aware that I need to qualify my statement with an excuse for my reasoning. I was under the impression that having a reason is kinda implied with an action, do "normal" people generally act without rhyme or reason? I always thought people do have a reason for their actions.
Almost 50 years and I still don't understand humans. Anyone wondering why I prefer the presence of deterministic machines that produce defined output if fed defined input?
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Finally it comes out. Can you people please start qualifying an of your "I work more efficiently from home" type posts with something to the effect of "I'm autistic, so....".
I guess that makes sense to you since you're checking the box that says "I'm a troll" every time you post, coward.
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To you, maybe. I cannot verify that. To me, they don't. That statement, written by you, conveyed to me the same information I would have gotten if you told it to me face to face. Actually, the written statement is superior in the aspect that I don't have to memorize it to recall it later because I can reread it, freeing up resources that I would otherwise have to spend on retaining that information. Also, I can time shift the information to when I need it or when I have time to process and react to it.
I do
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Sadly, this is often true. Mostly because some people just won't talk about the problems they're having on the job outside of meetings. Some people just won't talk to the worker in the next cube who is working on exactly the same piece of code. Had 4 people once all sitting in a 4 cubes in a square so they could all talk, working on the same problem that desperately needed solving, and they did NOT talk to each other until they were forced to by putting them in a meeting room all day (it's a rare case tho
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That seems to be more a problem with people than with their location. Because all that can be achieved with telepresence means. You need a change in culture more than a change of location.
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Technical issues often can get solved well by talking face to face in front of a white board. Email chains tend to be terrible means of communicating much of the time. That face to face talking doesn't have to be called a meeting, doesn't need an agenda. But when people get the "I hate meetings" mentality they'll just sit in the room and refuse to talk if they're not the "leader" who called the meeting - those meetings suck and for good reason. And sometimes there's even the one person who's saying "why
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Virtual whiteboards do exist, where seems to be the problem?
And I don't mind the meetings, it's the people in the meetings that are the problem. Or rather, the narcissist who loves to hear himself drone on and on, hijacking the time of everyone else in the room and costing insane amounts of money by making people unproductive. One of the biggest productivity boosters during the early pandemic was that people could continue doing meaningful work during meetings while the narcissist still got his drone time.
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Or, just possibly, only one person.
How about the narcissist who requests others to "Get a camera, if you really need to see my face."
Nothing against you and I hope you can continue to work in a way that benefits you but as you are telling others how they come across I figured you might benefit from seeing how you can come across.
Proved remote working is fine for many jobs (Score:5, Insightful)
After almost 3 years of remote working, the pandemic proved that remote working is fine for many jobs, despite all the BS about "lack of collaboration/communication".
Remote working saves the employee time from pointless travel, saves the employer rent for redundant offices, save the environment from pointless CO2. It is win-win-win all around.
I, for one, do not plan on ever having to go back to office to work again.
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It is win-win-win all around.
No, it isn't, and that's why we're all going to be going back to the office.
A lot of businesses and therefore tax dollars depended on people going to the office. You have a whole lot of support businesses around the offices that cater solely to office workers. Things like dry cleaners and coffee places that served breakfast and lunch places that served lunch and restaurants that did business meetings and things like that.
And don't forget the buildings themselves. You've got support workers in the building,
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Everyone I talk to has their employer selling or canceling leases on office property. The lightly used office furniture market is an exercise in moving stuff around rather than the dumpster. IT has 3 years to guide everyone by the hand to next thing, it mostly works. If you want to team build, schedule an afternoon for some fun and get everyone home by 7. I for one give zero shits if the inner cities survive after seeing the increases in everything from tolls to parking taxes over t
True of course (Score:2)
But the people who actually run the world have these massive investments in properties that are worth a lot less now - so are going to fight hard to keep the show on the road...
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A lot of businesses and therefore tax dollars depended on people going to the office
Think of all the buggy whip companies and how many people they employ! And don't forget the horses! Where would the horses go if we all drive around horseless carriages??
Feel free to stay living in the past, it is your choice. I am not going to go back to working in an office again.
Good spot (Score:2)
The British Daily Telegraph is trotting out all sorts of allegations against those who work from home. The fact that it is owned by some very rich people makes it highly likely they hate the idea of their commercial property investments in central business districts becoming worth a lot less, so are encouraging their newspaper to follow this line...
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Sorry, not gonna happen. That cat is out of the bag. I know that the pressure to stuff people back into their cubes is high, but just as anyone who ever tried to get a cat back into a spot it doesn't want to go will tell you, you will not get what you want, but you will have the nasty cuts to prove you tried.
In the end, companies will have to face the fact that retaining their talent means accepting certain conditions. And if the condition is just that they work somewhere else, that's probably the condition
We finally are becoming sane in the US (Score:5, Insightful)
Why Gen Z will probably find religion (Score:3, Interesting)
Gen Z, and to a lesser extent Millennials, has been raised in a brutally materialistic society that doesn't offer any meaning to life outside of acquisitiveness, competition and making money. Corporate America tries to help make things feel "meaningful" by adding politics and social issues, but that's not going to do much in the long run because it still comes back to materialism.
That need for "the big picture" will only be found in religion for most people, but I think Gen Z will end up finding its answers to life more in the religions that boldly stand against "modernity" such as Orthodox Judaism, Orthodoxy/Roman Catholicism (trad variety) and even Islam rather than those like mainline Judaism/Protestantism/Novus Ordo Catholicism that go "yes yes, but a few quibbles" to modernity.
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If they don't like what the boomers have done, they have had every opportunity to do better but just said "meh."
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They just learned that they don't get a chance to do better. Any time they try to do something better, they get squelched.
What's left but "meh"? If I can't change it, the best I can do is avoid supporting it.
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That's certainly an interesting theory. Strict traditional religions certainly share lots of values with the younger generations.
It was actually pretty funny watching the looks of horror in my younger cousins' faces during the sermon last time they went to church to see their parents sing in the choir. Clearly horror at what they had been missing out on.
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Problem is, GenZ is also rather bullshit-averse. They don't tend to react well to "because I say so" reasoning, i.e. the fundamental reasoning behind any tenets of a religion (just replace "I" with "god").
Re:Why Gen Z will probably find religion (Score:4, Insightful)
That need for "the big picture" will only be found in religion for most people
Confirmation bias detected.
Generation Z is the least religious generation in known history [americansurveycenter.org]. Your ideas are dumb because they directly contradict reality.
Age has changed my attitude, I think (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm near the end of my career... been working in software development for 33 years and have really enjoyed it. But now, I have no desire to follow the latest dumb fads like Agile or learn the latest Web Framework of the Week.
The tech industry nowadays mostly sucks. A few large monopolistic companies suck up all our data and privacy. Tons of startups build bullshit products that don't solve anyone's problems but attact a ton of VC. (Do we really need an AI-enabled note-taking app, anyone?)
I'm fortunate enough to be in a very low-stress job working from home with people I like, in a company that offers an actual useful product and doesn't screw over its customers. This is likely to be my last tech job; when it comes to an end, I'm done. Life is too short to waste 8 hours a day on something you don't enjoy and that doesn't add value to humanity.
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I'm not really against new "dumb fads", what I have a problem with is the botched implementation. When "agile" hit our company, I already knew all that would be left of it was that managers thought their inability to commit to a decision and change specs at a whim was now the official work process. Because devs have to react "agile" to change.
Anyone wondering why every engineer abhors a new management buzzword entering the play field? We just know that no matter how good something may be in theory, manageme
What happens when people have time to think (Score:5, Insightful)
So much of the way our society is structured is about keeping everyone in a scramble and not giving the plebs time to think about how they're living their lives or how society is structured. The pandemic momentarily broke this distracting busywork fog machine. Life is plainly terrible for 80%+ of the population, especially Gen Y and Z who are largely priced out of home ownership and are generally just set to work themselves into the grave.
Most of the planet is a giant capitalist prison camp where we spend about half our waking hours and most of our energy working. Then we spend much of the time we're not working recovering from working and preparing to continue working. Want to do some leisure activity? Better make it quick, work hard and play hard, you've probably only got a couple weeks off per year!
The only reason we have to work this much is to make ludicrous amounts of money for the ownership class so they can stuff it in a financial attic where it does nothing but pad their egos, at best invest it prudently into perpetuating the same system, or just piss it away on dumb shit that the people who did the work that earned it would be aghast at. It's absurd. Some people are so worried about an AI with superhuman intelligence enslaving humanity, while a distributed resource allocation algorithm already did.
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Actually, an AI running the show would be an improvement. At least (contemporary) AIs don't have inflated egos that require constant feeding to hide the insecurity of the little person inside.
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Not All The Same (Score:3)
Most or all of the commentary here is from people in the tech industry. That's not most people in the country. And even within the "tech" or knowledge or whatever you want to call this sector, jobs differ wildly. Not to mention that the personality types and habits of workers are also quite different. The situations of different workers in different kinds of jobs, and how they perform in them, differs wildly.
Mostly we're talking about office workers, of course. Just because there is some flavor of "office" involved, does not make any of the situations and analysis equivalent.
I have friends who are professionals in many areas. Random government bureaucrats, lawyers, managers of outside trade workers, and so on, for example. And of course lots of software workers. All now working from home. I see a huge difference in their performance, and in their preferences.
I live in D.C. these days, and so many people work for the gumnit. Some are working from home and killing themselves to meet performance metrics. And some just fuck off every day, claiming to work 8 hours but really only usually working 2-3 hours.
In general, most people working from home try to cheat by working as little as possible and trick their employers. A small percentage work very hard. Whether these behaviors, attitudes, and outcomes are new or different since the pandemic is questionable.
Just pointing out that the testimony of people on Slashdot is unlikely to be representative of generalized world trends.
A lof of people in the USA also got hooked on the free money during the pandemic. For some, it was more than they would have made if they had a job. So naturally they would really like their Basic Universal Income to become permanent. And they really resent work now. Not clear how much that factors into whatever the global trends are.
Capitalism does not care about your humanity (Score:3)
The nature of capitalism in a nutshell. Employers want slaves. Preferably ones that don't cost them anything.
Short of that, they'll continue to try and squeeze more work, more hours out of whomever they can. If they could put them all in a closet, so much the better. If they can "run the line faster" or "shorten the agile sprints" they will, until production absolutely fails, then they'll cut back *just* enough to keep functionality. The workers opinions and welfare aren't even considered.
Not mine (Score:3)
I hated working before, during and after the pandemic.
Re:No. (Score:4, Insightful)
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and all the dumbfuck kids voted for Joe and Hoe
Since our voting system is shit, the only other choice they were offered was Cheeto Mussolini, so they made the best choice available to them. It is quite a shit choice, as Biden is also a corporate whore — he's one of the principal architects of the $1.9T student loan crisis he's flailing on even addressing ~$200B of, for example. And Harris is just another hard authoritarian, there's nothing interesting about her politically either. She's functionally indistinguishable from those moderate Republican
Re:work near where you live (Score:5, Insightful)
Moving closer to work only works if you can afford that.
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And some can't stomach it. Being in the city is part of the stress load they need to shed when the work day is over.
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Wouldn't it be more sensible to not subject yourself to that stress altogether?
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If you're married and you both commute, the best you can do is live in between those workplaces. One's gain is the other's loss. If only one commutes, living close becomes possible.
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Re:Former Twitter Employee here. (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh please, this site deserves a better kind of troll.
Seriously, even the trolling on this site went down. We used to have really creative ones. Now all we get is the swastika spam, someone with a personal vendetta against some other goofball and shit like this.
C'mon, it used tobe fun to belittle trolls ,but this ain't even worth being witty. All you deserve is ... well, this.
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People always moderate based on their feelings, c'mon, when did they ever not? Slashdot in 2005, praise Linus and call Billy the spawn of Satan? +5 Insightful!
So the current groupthink is not to your liking. Yeah, that happens. Happens to me, too. A whle ago, Elon that goofball was heralded like the second coming and any harebrained idea of him was touted as ushering in a new era of enlightenment. Guess what, it passed.
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When the wokies started moderating based on their feelings, the comments ceased having value and everyone interesting left.
OK hypocrite. I get modded down for posting facts with citations constantly, sometimes multiple times per day, because some boomer (or wannabe one) got butthurt. Anything critical of capitalism's excesses posted on this site has probably a 2 in 3 chance of catching a disingenuous downmod. The idea that woke politics are harming Slashdot is commonplace, but it's stupid. It's the conservatives that operate cancel culture, with your downmoddings... and book bannings. But you always cry (and cry, and cry, and c