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Comment by esotericn | Hacker News Reader

This is literally YMMV.

Introverted people who had long commutes because they wanted a big garden, garage, etc (or couldn't afford to live somewhere popular) are living the dream right now.

Extroverted people living in city centres who chose small flats based on being able to easily access the shared amenities, get to work quickly etc are worse off because none of that exists any more.

It pretty much comes down to whether you made a housing decision (whether by choice or necessity) in the 'old world' that would become better under lockdown for you.

By the numbers, I have no proof, but I guesstimate that the majority are losing out. Poor people have bad commutes and that's the group hit hardest because their jobs don't exist any more and they have no savings.

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I agree with your general idea, but reality is probably a bit more complex than that.

I consider myself an extroverted person (I love talking with people, to the point I have to restrain myself because I get the feeling they had "too much of me") and live in city centres for the reasons you describe.

Yet, I've been working from home for 13 years, now, and totally love it. I still get the advantages of getting anything deliver to my door (it's way harder further from the city) and to be able to go out do anything should I wish it (which almost never happens).

All in all, I'm glad working from home is seen as a new normal, because it's one less reason for people to call me "weird" and ignore anything I say.

EDIT: oh and also, at almost 40, I still never had a driving license nor a car. I guess this can only happen working from home (no commute) in a city (good public transportation).

> I'm glad working from home is seen as a new normal

I think this is TBD. There will no doubt be more prevalence of WFH allowed or WFH oriented companies, but I don't think we can say this will be the new normal quite yet.

Notice the difference between saying "A new normal" as GP did and "THE new normal" as you did.

I, for one, would be happy for it to become "A new normal", where I get to take advantage of it, but understand there are people who prefer going into the office. No need for it to become "THE new normal" because there are all sorts of different kinds of people.

There's way more to whether an individual is cut out to cope with an extended quarantine than their "choice" of housing and proximity to population center. I would argue that's probably one of the least influential factors. Way ahead of it would be things such as whether you have kids, a spouse, money, as well as other personality traits beyond just extroverted/introverted.

Not to mention it's highly dubious to suggest that introverted people can or do avoid the city for housing and extroverted people avoid the suburbs.

Jesus I wish my kids would go off to summer camp for a few months. They are what’s making this most unbearable for me.

Each to their own. For me one of the best things about about the lock down is being able to spend more time with my daughter and be more involved with caring for her.

And learning to live together in a different way. One of my kids is learning to play around me, with very little interruption, is learning the concept silence during phone calls. She choses low energy activities now and it's great. Sometimes she wants to talk, or a hug, or to see what I'm doing, and it's OK, she's curious. Sometimes I'm not available and she drifts away, with no hurt feelings. And she also understands far better 'I' m trying to concentrate' now.

I surprise myself taking breaks to drink tea and play with her (puzzles, reading, having her read, do some short yoga, sometimes even dancing with her a bit).

It has brought my kids and I far far closer.

I wonder if this time could be a gift to help you see things from their point of view. I suspect they are NOT dreaming of the moment they can ship you off to work again.

No, my kids seem to love being home. They're crafting, skate boarding, learning to bake and cook, playing with each other, generally being kids all day.

The other day one of them said they can't wait for summer break. I asked what would be different and they said 'no school work', haha. They have about 60 minutes per day of remote learning to do. Apparently more of this would be okay.

I thought they'd miss socializing a lot more than they do so far. Instead being trapped at home with dad is similar to vacation.

My kid has specifically begged for schools to open. He misses his friends. I work from home normally, at least the past 10 years.

Why did you have kids if you hate being with them...?

Too much of a good thing?

Probably 'cause they're high energy kids who normally can let go of said energy on playgrounds, in kindergarten or at school, while now they're stuck in a home too small with no way to let out their energy, while their parents both still have to work from home and have no time / energy to do both work and childcare. At the same time, parents can't let go of their own frustration because no sport, driving around, or any other way of having time to cool down thanks to lockdowns.

Self isolation is pretty easy if you're single or with a partner with no kids, in an adequately sized home where there is enough space not to feel cramped, and with a garden. If one or more of these things is lacking, it gets ever harder and harder the longer the lockdowns are in place.

This.

Single folks without children have no gauge on reality during a lockdown, especially if they still have jobs and are working from home.

I chose not to get married and have kids. I like being alone. I dont want anything to do with kids. As far as I'm concerned you picked your bargain, i picked mine. I do not expect any sympathy when i die alone either.

Why can't imperfection of choice or opportunity warrant sympathy? Life is difficult for a multitude of reasons. I don't expect anyone to get everything right, and I sympathize with everyone's occasional want for more or regret or loss, whatever it might be.

Someone had you. You don’t have to take it out on everyone else.

It's not like you can return a kid and ask for refund after you discover parenthood isn't like you thought it would be (it never is), or when life conditions change and what worked when everyone spent most of their days apart from each other doesn't work when everyone is stuck together in the same cramped space 24/7.

A generation or two ago, people just ignored their children. They told them to go play outside until the sun come down. Now expectations have changed. These expectations make it impossible to have a decent amount of "alone" time during this quarantine. This renders many people unhappy. We love our children, but we can't handle having them with us 100% of the time. This has never been "normal".

Not to mention, if you expected to be with your spouse and kids 24/7 under the same roof for extended periods of time, you'd probably buy a larger apartment. Or perhaps a home with a garden. Even if it would cost significantly more than your current one.

Much like global supply chains, our decisions are optimized quite tightly to our individual lifestyles; what worked well in normal times suddenly doesn't when lifestyles are forced to change.

I think this gives the real answer to my question, which is that other people don’t plan for the worst case in the way I do. I wouldn’t have children unless I was absolutely sure I could deal with them, because the worst case is so awful (you can’t really get rid of them once you have them). I did factor in things like “is this house big enough if I need to avoid my partner for long periods of time?” into my buying decision. And so on. It didn’t really occur to me that people would make very large life decisions like where to live or whether to have children based on things continuing to be ‘normal’.

If one reads this comment literally, it looks as if you are completely oblivious to the constraints and realities of other people’s lives. I’m sure your real attitude isn’t so extreme (though if it is then I guess I should congratulate on being so prescient and good at planning).

For the record:

- lots of people make decisions they later regret. Sometimes they make these based on assumptions that later turn out to be incorrect, sometimes on incomplete information, sometimes based on stress or strong emotion, sometimes in line with advice, and sometimes against advice. Sometimes the effects are small, sometimes they are large, sometimes they ought not be regretted.

- some people have children without planning to beforehand (for various reasons)

- most people can’t take extreme worst case scenarios into account when making big life decisions (eg “If I become unemployed or unable to work in 5 years I wouldn’t be able to afford any mortgage therefore I shouldn’t buy a house”)

- some people are constrained by other factors (eg “I’d like to have more space but I can’t afford a larger house which is sufficiently close to my work”)

- It’s reasonably natural for people to want to have children and sometimes they this even if they know it will be hard.

No, you didn’t.

Being in quarantine with your kids is very different from being with your kids under normal circumstances. My 5 year old is going stir crazy and we can't really go places. My wife is on maternity leave with our 3 month old, which is already hard. Meanwhile I'm trying to work and help out with the kids as much as I can, cook, do laundry, while trying to stay sane. We're hanging on by a thread.

Who said hate? Not me. Troll.

Ooof

The thing that has most surprised me during this pandemic, even more than the abysmal response of all Western governments, is how many people hate their kids (or are at least extremely annoyed by them).

I don't hate my kids, but I can either work from home or do childcare at home, not both at the same time. Trying to do both well is impossible (at least for me), and extreme annoyance is an inevitable result.

Taking care of kids for the day while parents are busy working is one of the many key functions of modern education institutions, and they're not fulfilling that function right now - this gap needs to be filled somehow, and it's not an easy gap to fill without major changes of how millions of people work. E.g. going back to a situation where one spouse is a dedicated housekeeper and is pretty much forced not to work is technically a solution but I'm not sure if we as a society really want to go there. And the usual alternative solutions e.g. using extended family/grandparents for childcare, or cooperating/sharing childcare in a community tend to be explicitly prohibited by the social distancing measures.

Warehousing kids should not be "one of the many key functions of modern education institutions."

Where did you read "warehousing?" The comment said "taking care of." Are you arguing that education institutions should not take care of kids?

I'm arguing that education institutions in the US should be tasked primarily with education, not babysitting, or "taking care" of kids. For a country that spends as much as we do on K-12 education, we get sub-optimal results, largely because some people view educators as glorified babysitters. Perhaps the value of educators will change as more parents deal with "taking care of their kids" during the various state shutdowns.

Speak for yourself. My state has excellent top-5 k-12 outcomes competitive with many top economies around the world.

Somebody has to take care of kids during working hours.

It can be the parents only if we expect the parents (at least one parent in every family) not to work, which would require an immense reversal in our social structure. Something like 25% of families are single-parent families, do we expect all these people to quit their jobs in order to raise kids?

To put it bluntly, if the alternative is to put women back in the role of 'Kinder Kuche Kirche' (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinder,_K%C3%BCche,_Kirche) then it justifies declaring that "warehousing kids" should be one of the key functions of educational institutions; simply because it's an important function that needs to be done by someone other than the working parent(s) and they can fulfil that function reasonably well. Sure, education should be a priority, but IMHO it's better for everyone involved if we explicitly acknowledge all the various valuable functions what our society needs (and gets!) from schools instead of falsely pretending that it's only the education.

Or do you have in mind some other option that removes this role from the educational institutions while still allowing the parent(s) to go on full time employment?

Small kids are a full time job 24 hours a day with no time off. Under lockdown, you can't even go out on date night or play dates (aka teamwork with other parents). They are also by nature incapable of being quiet for 8 hours.

It doesn't surprise me at all, and I'm happy that so many people have to endure their terrible children now instead of sending them out to harass others.

No. I love my children. I specifically chose work at home jobs because I want to be there for them. But it’s ok to want them to go away for a while too.

If it helps to hear you aren’t alone, let me tell you my situation. First I note that kids lost access to schools, daycare, friends, grandparents, cousins, playgrounds, and have their parents actively ignoring them through the day.

They also lost ice cream stores, toy stores, cinemas, etc if they were doing that as well.

They don’t have any control. Their natural instinct is to continue to play if they can and push the boundaries if they can. And when kids get depressed they often act out more paradoxically.

This leads to chaos if you’re also trying to work from home.

I feel for my kids. So I don’t apologize to others if they intrude on my work; they are people too and going through the crisis too. But yes it is extremely stressful some portion of every day.

I try myself to not blame them or myself for putting up with the situation, because that leads to frustration and anger and more stress; my wife and I are trying to create more and more capability in my home for the kids to self-entertain every day. We have a new daily structure. Goal charts. School time. Online learning games. Outdoor time. Messenger kids. Etc.

It’s not painless. My wife and I are taking shifts during daylight hours so I work well past midnight every night to catch up. That also is impacting my ability to stay positive.

But every day is a new day. Good luck and don’t be hard on yourself.

The shift work struggle is real. Keep at it, it'll get better. I try to remind myself how lucky I am to have work right now. Many of my friends don't, and that struggle is probably much worse.

But they'll suffer from environmental pollution and disasters, not to mention a neofascist society - so the joke's on them ...

My examples are deliberate simplifications e.g. ends of the spectrum, not intended to imply that all people with those personality traits would be in those situations.

Almost anyone else would currently better off in a bigger home with more outdoor space regardless of personality, family, etc. The same is not true outside of "wartime".

Yes, but "not going back to the way things were before" is not the same as "remaining exactly as they are now". There are plenty of shades in between.

You can want to go back to visiting museums and galleries and pubs, playing team sports etc. Without wanting to go back to working the same hours as everyone else, shopping in crowded shops and struggling to get a coveted weekend appointment at the dentist or hairdresser or whatever.

I would add people may be underestimating the costs of isolation. Going to work isn't only costing you commute, but also offers possibility to meet other people, grow your network, build friendships, get support, etc.

Since this started relatively recently, we are living off already established network. But what is not visible is the network we are not creating, new people we are not meeting, our kids who are getting more impaired socially, and so on.

Regarding short/long commutes, the real problem is why people are having long commutes - it's because most jobs are concentrated in small districts far away from human settlements.

It's a very old school way of thinking, exacerbated and encouraged by urban planning schemes, tax deductions if you open an office in X instead of Y etc.

It might not be easy to fix in many cases, but we must start decentralization if we want a better world. The pinnacle of centralization is France, where virtually everything important and interesting happens in a few areas of Paris, and putting stuff in Paris is the default, no-brainer decision.

You describe my double feeling quite adequately. I'm so happy my children have enough space to play and partially live on without lacking much except school and friends. On the other hand I miss office life and the way it quitely demands social contacts and intellectual novelty in a way my home work doesn't. We get all work done, perhaps even more efficient than in the office setting, but the novelty sure is gone. My work has shifted from change to production.

The world is made up by extoverted leaders whereas the majority of people are intoverted ants.

This is so far from my perception. I find half the leaders around me are introverts, the other half extroverts.

That there are insufficient jobs for poorer people is entirely a political decision. Any country with its own currency can guarantee everybody has a living wage job to go to if it wants to.

Which then has the advantage of competing with crap private and public sector jobs and eliminating them via simple market forces. The “what about the jobs, can I have a bailout” line no longer has any traction when everybody has an alternative job available on tap. Competition can be allowed full rein. Business has to pay the full cost of the labour it uses and innovate around that cost.

But we prefer to use an unemployed buffer stock to constrain wages rather than an employed buffer stock. Always fewer jobs than people that want them. Then we wonder why productivity gains have largely gone to capital over the last 40 years.

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