I am extremely sad at the extreme loss of life and horrible conditions caused by the pandemic. So I feel exceedingly guilty for feeling glad that an upside of it is that we can finally do away with this horrible practice of crushing everyone together so the managers can marvel at their panopticon.
That’s the “cog in the machine” part of the story, the other side is what you can do as that cog. If you posses a skill set that is in demand, you can actually get away with a lot of things in this world. Why people don’t do this is beyond me, especially for IT staff. Of course it’s not easy to find the remote job you want, but in my anecdotal experience I have met so many people who were so much smarter than me who got much fewer benefits. I’ve even heard people defend their low pay, using their bosses talking points. Like, what?
I’m not an asshole, I’m not hard to work with but I do have ADHD which is crippling for me when it comes to working on things I dislike for long periods. Maybe that’s part of why I’ve always asked to get things my way, but it’s not beyond me how lucky I am to be in a profession where we always have a couple or job openings available.
But I'd also appreciate that workplace giving me my own office with a door that closes.
I've had that only once in my career and it was bliss.
On a less grumpy note: I'd love to have an actual home office, worthy of the name, but real estate is very expensive, I can barely afford a home, but I definitely can't afford a big enough home for a home office.
Co-working desks are as much as 50% of rent in a normal area of the city.
For example an apartment of 82sqm (269sqf) in Malmo might be 9000 SEK ($900~) per month, a co-working desk might be 4,200 SEK ($420~)[0]. But an apartment for 13,200 SEK ($1.3k) would likely be 100-120sqm (328-392sqf) in size.
Meaning a dedicated room in your home of 18-38sqm (59-124sqf) can be the same price as a single desk in a co-working space.
Paying 1.5x the rent for an apartment would give a lot more space than just a desk.
[0]: https://www.gamehabitat.se/devhub/
*EDIT*: just realised a fixed desk is actually more than 4,200SEK
It's much cheaper for $employer to invest in more office space. 100eur in office space gets you 100eur of office space, whereas every 100eur in net wages costs an employer roughly 250eur (wages+taxes+etc).
Heh, I didn't realize this, but during covid my company mandated every other desk to stay empty, and suddenly it felt like I had as much space again as I used to have 20 years ago.
I recall reading this blog post a couple of decades ago and being jealous, because finally someone really understood developers and what they needed to be productive. I’m remote now, and thankfully not returning to office, but this would be one I would return to willingly. An open office? Not a chance, I’d fight it every step of the way.
It’s also been great for remote work. No need for additional hand-wringing.
So my hope is that science will come up with better vaccines quickly and natural selection will trim off the Enlightened to a more tolerable level.
History will not look fondly at what was done. I hope to god we never repeat this massive mistake.
That would be a start. Hiding facts and data that goes against your narrative and then labeling people who point said stuff out as conspiracy theorists is not cool.
> frightening the daylights out of people
Yeah, infantilize the populations, shield them from reality, tell them "don't worry, Karen!" Virus will surely take notice and stop being so murderous.