Silicon Valley “Pronatalists” Oppose Remote Work Despite Boosted Fertility Rates
stoppopulationdecline.org
stoppopulationdecline.org
This sort of behavior, by both the PayPal mafia and the media, maligns the sector unfairly.
If you want to find weird SV behavior that's more reflective fo the field, then dive into the weirdness of the Singularity religion.
Either not a religion or not common depending on exactly what you mean.
Unless you think that intelligence that is copypasteable and can be restored from backups wouldn't be a worldchanging event?
And in my case remote work allowed me to take better care of kids because of extra flexibility, but at the same time made my work days more chaotic and fragmented. Very hard to find undistracted chunks of time necessary for any advanced tasks. Plus the family gets used to me being available all the time and more needs creep in... All in all, an occasion to spend a full day in the office, alone, feels like a productivity boost :)
Nobody ever did that actually works.
How would this have worked without WFH? If the answer is "it wouldn't" then maybe that's the problem.
But not having to commute gives more time to be with your children. Being at home let's you see them briefly on breaks (if you have a partner or in home care caring for them at home). Makes it easier to bring them to/from daycare or your
How is this a pressing issue? I get there's of course economic/political consequences to changing demographics but this isn't going to be an existential problem for literal centuries
None of them really think the earth is running out of humans. Just humans who look like them.
It means fewer young workers entering the workforce at the same time, and therefore reduced tax revenue, fewer people paying into insurance plans, fewer people donating to charities, etc.
So there's this distinct one-two punch of having more folks to support, and fewer who are able to support them, regardless of any family structure; this will be a global problem.
If 2/3rds of the population are over 60 none of those jobs can be filled with the number of people to keep even the top 10% alive. At that point soylent green becomes reasonable policy.
This article pulls together a lot of evidence, but it does not consider evidence for the contrary. Productivity went up with remote work. Fertility rates went up. How was productivity for people with little kids at home who never sleep? Is there any evidence that sleep deprived people aren’t as productive? Also what is productive? Pumping out the most units of work? Sitting at home with no in office social obligations will give more time for work output. But does that create the most value for the economy? What about innovation, serendipity, brainstorming, building relationships, sharing ideas etc. They will provide long term productivity, vs short term output based productivity metrics.
Anyone who has had several kids and worked at home knows that it's much easier than when commuting to work. Even if you can't have one partner (or parters alternating) to cater to them constantly, and need a nanny, it's still much better, you can help much more, doing little errands, tending to them, be there for whatever small emergency and so on, than when stuck in some office 10-50 miles away. You also have the extra hours you'd be commuting to be with them.
And that's when they're babies and need constant care.
When they grow enough for school? It's not just much easier than commuting, but unbelievably better too.
Except if one goes for the "out of sight, out of mind" angle. Then sure, tending to your career in some office while the nanny or your partner takes care of the kids is better.
Perhaps. But perhaps we should consciously sacrifice that for better quality of life. We don't need more or fancier stuff. We need better opportunities for more people, better distribution of the wealth, wages to match productivity which they haven't in decades, and better quality of life.
We need less people who are empty on the inside and try to fill their void through compulsive overconsumption and traveling and stuff like that.
If you are not good enough without the traveling and overconsumption in whatever frame of reference you establish, you are not enough with those things either.
BTW, did I just repurpose a quote from Cool Runnings? Yes, I did.
Also, if we're talking about logic, to "stoppopulationdecline" when population almost never declines anywhere doesn't make sense. preventpopulationdecline?
Like many, Elon Musk's recruiters have come for me in the past. I looked it up and 12+ hours a day is apparently normal (overtime is mandatory it appears?) and it is on site as well? Count me out. There are better jobs out there that lead to better work-life balance.
When I was fresh out of school I worked in a VFX firm for a few years, it was intense, I gave up a ton, I learned a lot and then my name was left out of the credits of most films I worked on. So I noped out of there and then made more while also building a family. That doesn't seem that different than Elon Musk's companies.
If X causes Y, and you like Y, then it might boost your support for X. But if not, that doesn't make you a hypocrite. I mean, what if X is a bad thing for other reasons?
Why not just say "remote work increases fertility" and let people judge for themselves?
It's almost a perfect representation of the aphorism about those the law protects but does not bind, versus those the law binds but does not protect.
I searched that page for "oppos" and could not find anywhere it suggested or stated that libertarians "actively oppose [liberty] of others". Your assertion seems to be very antithetical to the very views that libertarians hold dearly.
Libertarians want to gate-keep and rent-take everything for profit. That's their entire thesis.
Pretty silly, short, overly hyperbolically-opinionated article.
It infers that anyone who agrees with RTO to some degree as hypocrites.
I agree this part of Thiel's quote here, it makes sense to me: "misalignment can creep in whenever colleagues aren't together full-time, in the same place, every day"
That email that a manager sent at 10pm regarding some stuff todo for the tomorrow 8am meeting with the client ? "Sorry boss, can only work with the whole team."
"Colleague on vacation?" "the whole team on vacation!"
Misalignment will always occur. Always, and it's the manager job to ensure that there aren't any.
Bringing everyone in the same room is the simplest way for a manager to manage, without understanding the need of the member of the team.
Yes, I sometimes need face to face discussion with colleagues to nicely understand the specifications, and it's way better than any video call. But when I'm trying to debug that script in the CI/CD that doesn't work as intended, I don't need to be sitting next to the project manager who's always on the phone.
Been working remote mostly for 15 years. I haven't experienced, caused or observed any misalignment. I have experienced a high degree of productivity. I feel this is what some who run companies were afraid of, that many people can work remotely and be happier and be as or more productive all at the same time.
I disagree with some of the attacks of the SV leader's personal lives in comments on this page but I also disagree with anyone who tries to assert people must be in the office to be productive.
What matters is not one's own babies. But "more babies".
The more wealth created, the more babies can be supported with the wealth. Musk in particular has created many high paying jibs that are undoubtedly anchoring solid families with strong economic foundation.
For Musk, its a prohibitive opportunity cost for him to have babies of his own vs enabling hundres of others doing the same.
Musk will not be the face of a fertility campaign. Musk is not the paragon of virtue. But he's helping support tons of families have their babies
The guy can almost field a basketball team with his kids from a string of different women. He obviously has no qualms having kids. Raising them on the other hand, seems to be too much of an opportunity cost to the self-proclaimed titan of industry.
Fundamentally, billionaires don’t want to recognize that they are the problem, they’re happy just talking about the problem and making their own dozen “personal” contributions to progeny to help out those that are bound to the full time job. What heroes they are.
I wish there were more candid interviews with people where these topics and other difficult questions were discussed openly. I'd love to hear how Elon would respond.
This is regular human hypocrisy where you honestly think X (e.g. CO2 emissions) is bad, but aren't willing to admit that Y (e.g. drive smaller cars) is required to help X because it would reqire a personal sacrifice (or be seen as inconsistent).
They could limit themselves to actions that do not impede any of their goals, but those actions also often only minimally advance any of their goals. Often the fastest and most efficient way to achieve all of the goals is to do things that cause big advances on some of them even if they also cause backsliding in others.
Example: let us say you have two goals. These are your available actions:
1. An action that makes a 1% advance toward both goals (% measured relative to the total work needed to accomplish that goal from start to finish).
2. An action that makes a 20% advance on goal #1 but sets you back 5% on goal #2.
3. An action that makes a 20% advance on goal #2 but sets you back 5% on goal #1.
You can do one action per month.
If you just use the action that doesn't set back any of your goals, it takes a little over 8 years to achieve both goals
If you alternate actions #2 and #3, then every 2 months you end up gaining 15% net on both goals. It takes about 14 months now to achieve both goals.
Birthrates are plunging in welfare states with generous support for those who want to raise a child. Can this really be blamed on mere capitalist exploitation?