Comment by alpos | Hacker News Reader

Comment by alpos | Hacker News Reader

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So fix those issues? Working in offices always had issues as well, some of those issues have been addressed over time though effort on the part of employees and managers. Nothing is without trade-offs and side effects.

The real question there is: Are the minor issues associated with working remotely so bad that it is better to

  force everyone to risk their lives on the roads every day (including in snow and other bad weather which exacerbates road death rates 100% purely because of employer demands to come in anyway)

  destroy the environment with all of that unnecessary exhaust,

  give asthma to their neighbor's kids,

  harm parent/child relationships due to work schedules being out of sync with school schedules and work/commute demands leaving little time for parents to properly interact with their kids,

  pass flu and cvoid around to everyone,

  cause unnecessary deaths among their parents and grandparents,

  drive up housing costs in specific areas causing homelessness as well,

  and otherwise add layers of stress and unhappiness to every person's daily existence?

Put the other way around: Are all of the personal, professional, societal, and environmental negatives that directly result from people being forced to commute to and work in an office every day actually worth the supposed productivity and/or collaboration gains due to office related friction points having already been solved over time? (btw they really haven't been solved for many people either, see: the ongoing harassment and diversity issues at most companies)

Or might it be better to just solve the few issues with collaborating in a remote work setup like we already did for the office?

The only thing I’m focused on is: are companies with an in office working environment at a competitive advantage to those that are not.

I don’t care about the other stuff, imo it’s not relevant (putting aside I don’t really agree with your characterization). That said, I also think some of the issues are not so minor (remote is a lot harder for junior people starting out in their career).

Well, at least you are honest about not really caring about anything other than profit.

I'd love to see what makes you think think almost everything that matters to most people for most of their lives is irrelevant to the question of how people live and work on a daily basis. Please elaborate if you will.

Since you disagree with my characterization, I'd also be happy to consider what you think I have misattributed there.

Overall the point is simply that you are not working with a steady state system here.

Whether one mode of working confers a competitive advantage probably has more to do with how much effort has been put behind streamlining that process. If that is indeed the case, then you might find yourself saying this about any change to any process that doesn't just wipe the market and create a whole new competition environment.

There's no good reason to throw our hands up and say there's nothing we can do to make one or the other situation work better, especially when the benefits are great, numerous, and include increased productivity overall.

The reason I disagree with the framing is I can do the same thing and I just find that rhetorical way of discussing an issue unproductive.

For example:

“Are the minor issues of working in the office so bad that you’d force everyone to isolate devoid of human contact during a period of increasing loneliness and depression?”

“When you’d hurt a fresh graduates career prospects further cementing people already established in their careers in positions of power”

“By having people spread out instead of together we increase the carbon costs of supporting all these areas inefficiently instead of all in one place and that’s bad for the environment!”

Etc. Etc.

I find the useful way to discuss is to narrow in on the core issue (is working from the office an advantage or not) vs. ancillary effects that we can debate unproductively forever depending on who can rhetorically make shit up that sounds better.

Ultimately it’s this: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/PeSzc9JTBxhaYRp9b/policy-deb...

And ultimately if it is a decisive advantage to be in the office (not obvious to me, but I suspect it is in most cases) then the market will force it anyway.

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