Quote:
Originally Posted by Irace86.2.0
@ Capt Spaulding @ alex87f
I don't disagree that the pandemic changed the status quo, and I am a pro-union/worker who believes the movement to scale back the hustle (quiet quitting) and work remotely for a better quality life and better work/life balance is great. The corporate world continues to try to squeeze the middle class dry, so I am all for these changes, and if it is a win-win for corporations too because remote work improves productivity then that is great. I think the ability to work remotely, even part time is extremely job specific and maybe company specific, so I'm sure AirBnB's management, HR or call centers will do fine working remotely.
Musk has said:
This is almost identical to Steve Jobs, and the quote I said earlier. There are a group of people who are highly motivated, really dedicated, willing to take a beating if it means making an impact and getting paid well, and he is gambling that he will get those A-types if he creates a culture that is what A-types want. It seems antiquated, and it may not survive the new status quo, and he may find the talent pool gets thin over time if he can't keep the company moving in the direction of his vision. We will have to see. At minimum, like how it is good having an Ivy League school on a resume, the value is in the name and the filtering process. Musk is filtering the workforce, and limiting supply by having high standards just increases the demand to have that Tesla name on their resume.
https://www.geekwire.com/2023/amazon...3-days-a-week/
If remote working is so much more productive then it is just interesting that all these tech companies are pushing people to return to work, even three days a week. If it objectionably better, it would seem illogical that corporate leaders would ignore improving their bottom line in order to fulfill a need to micromanage the company or teams. |
In order of appearance.
I don't doubt your sincerity. You'll get no argument from me about the rapaciousness of most of the (American at the very least) corporate world.
The pandemic certainly changed the workplace landscape, but it also provided an impetus for changes in policy that technological advances had been long in developing. The pandemic provided a sort of natural experiment to examine "work from home" as a model for some sorts of jobs. The data suggest that for some - generally knowledge based - types of jobs it has shown that workers generally don't use the opportunity to shirk and that the potential distractions associated with working from home are not productivity killers.
For the last 10 years of my teaching career, i had a number of friends and colleagues, both from the academic and administrative sides of campus promote the benefits of remote teaching. They had a number of arguments to support their plans. My request of them was simple. "Show me the results of well designed studies that demonstrate the efficacy of on-line instruction in a university environment. If you can demonstrate that on-line is as "good" a format as face to face, I'll switch."
No one answered the challenge. I was, and remain, convinced that as a tool for teaching university undergrads, face to face has features that remote instruction cannot match. The bond a teacher can create with their class face to face is very difficult, if not impossible, to foster in an online environment. In my opinion, successful teaching requires a substantial degree of empathy with one's students. A willingness to hold their hand, offer a tissue at times, and get to know them as the complex creatures they are. I don't think that is fully possible in a remote model.
The other side of my job involved research. For many in the academy, particularly in some of the social sciences, on-site collaboration is not really doable. For most of your colleagues, your research program is mysterious. The substantive questions you want to answer and the methodological tools you use are unfamiliar to many of them. I was fortunate for most of my career to have colleagues in my departments with whom I shared interests that led to a number of in-house collaborations. However, at least half of my work was done with colleagues who worked in distant time zones. But for both, most of my "work" was done in my office with the door closed to limit interruptions or at home. I don't have a measure, but I suspect I was more "productive," whatever that means, at home.
I understand, you cannot work on an assembly line from home. But for those who work in an office the dynamic changes. A good friend from the administrative side at my last university used to regale me with claims about how much more efficient the private sector was than the public sector. But, he had never worked in the private sector. Half of my working life was in the private sector, working on the design and construction of large petro-chemical plants and off-shore platforms. The amount of time wasted in and around a drafting room or an office suite or on a jobsite is huge.
The same is true here. Moreover, for knowledge based jobs, there may be FEWER distractions at home than in the office. The fishing or hunting or motorcycling buddy in the control engineering group; the knockout woman in purchasing - the things that you spent/wasted time on in the office - are not there.
Some employers, Amazon come first to mind, have gone to great lengths to 'systematize' manual work to maximize productivity - similar to the old time and motion studies of the 1950s. They have by many accounts created pretty unpleasant workplaces. Can you get lots of output from an oppressive work environment? Perhaps. For a while.
To the Musk / Jobs comparison. Musk isn't Steve Jobs. A lot of what's come out since his death suggests that Steve Jobs might not have been Steve Jobs. Both seem, at present or in retrospect to be hemorrhaging assholes. One question this presents is, do you have to be an asshole to get people to work hard for you? Jobs was, I think a visionary. Musk may be as well.
I guess the bigger question for me is, "was Apple the success that it was, or Tesla/SpaceX the successes they have been so far BECAUSE the top guy was an asshole, or in spite of it?"
In the end, the studies from Harvard, Stanford and elsewhere suggest that, where appropriate, the "work from home" effect is positive and real. As to why more companies have not adopted it and others want to go back to the 8 to ? office environment, I suspect the Forbes conclusion is close to the mark. Most companies are run by old school, small "c" conservatives who, like many of my 60-80 year old contemporaries, KNOW the way things SHOULD be done. And, like one of my friends/instructors in grad school use to say, "I don't have to believe nuthin I don't want to." I suspect that Musk holds similar attitudes.