Telecommuting and the traditional office:
Good article, but author misses some well-known obvious reasons (probably because no one wants to talk about them)
Management of the traditional workplace operates with a number of well-defined, but rarely admitted, rules
1) Management power, position and prestige rely in part on the number of report-tos you control. Visibility of that group is a huge part of the equation.
If you want to climb the corporate ladder, you need to seen controlling vast numbers of warm bodies.
2) Micro-management is the key to career success. From this premise you have the following conditions:
a) No employee can be trusted to work without supervision.
b) No employee can be trusted to see and respond correctly to a problem without supervision.
c) No employee can be trusted to properly manage their time without supervision, especially breaks, meals, start and finish time and potty breaks
d) All employees are inherently lazy, incompetent, and untrustworthy.
e) Disciplining employees is part of your job as a manager. If employees are not being disciplined, you are not doing your job.
f) Effective employee control requires vast numbers of managers. The ideal traditional office has more managers than persons managed
We are a one-vehicle family, driving the most fuel efficient car that meets our requirements. We live in an area of extreme temperature
fluctuations: winters get down to -40F for weeks at a time, and summer temps climb to +100F for most of the season.
In theory, an EV appears to meet our daily driving requirements - short commutes to work, grocery shopping, etc.
The problem lies in the fact we also use our car for several longer road trips every year. For us to remain a single vehicle family,
an EV is practicable only if it total cost of ownership is the same or less than a conventional car, is capable of going 400 to 500 miles
between charges, with recharge time under 1 hour. Finally, it needs to be able to pump out huge amounts of heat in the winter,
and continuous full out air conditioning in the summer, without a huge hit in driving range.
Why is this a surprise? No government has ever resisted the chance to tax something new.
However, the Internet is gutting traditional brick and mortar businesses, resulting in significant loss in tax revenue for
state and local governments. If we want all the requirements of modern communal life which government has been tasked to provide,
we need to find a way to pay for it. Taxing users has some serious flaws, but, Netflix is a luxury, not a necessity of life.
Taxing luxury should always be the first revenue option for government, IMHO.
Rockout: show me guilty on both counts - I'm aging and mildly anti-social. Last time I checked, neither condition negates the validity (for or against) of any rational position, on any subject. Recreational activities (like going to the movies), by definition, should be personally satisfying and enjoyable, otherwise they are not recreational. The key word is personally. That means personal opinion is also a valid contribution on this topic.
Add the audience members engaged in mindless conversation, running "critical" commentary about what is on the screen,
rampant cell phone use - talking, texting, and playing games.
Sorry James Cameron, the reality of modern "theater experience" is part of the problem. not the solution.
I spent some time fighting wildfires, and would like to note the following:
1) fire suppression is an incredibly risky job, on the ground or in the air. The added distraction, and risks, of having unexpected and uncontrolled (by the fire suppression management team) of operating equipment of any kind within the fire zone should not be trivialized or ignored. You don't want outside drones for the same reasons you don't want unauthorized outsiders wandering the site.
2) the risk from drones at fire sites is much greater than from birds. All woodland creatures flee fire sites, exhibiting wiser behavior than many people.
3) As noted elsewhere, fire suppression aircraft operate in very unique, highly dangerous conditions. Only military air combat is consistently more dangerous. Adding random drones to a wildfire airspace is criminal stupidity.
I personally hope geofence avoidance gets built into every drone, and becomes mandatory for all existing drone and RC equipment. Hopefully, geofence technology becomes available to the public. Adding a geofence to private, and some types of public property like airports, would go a long way to addressing both safety and privacy concerns arising from the idiotic way some drone operators operate. Just because you have the toy, and the ability, to hover over any home, yard or property, shooting video, does not mean you should be doing so.
I don't use ad-blocker software (but seriously consider it at least 3 times a week!)
I'm not opposed to ads - content has to be paid for. However, most of the current model is badly broken.
What works for me: static ads (like we saw back in the days of print), with links. I click links on static ads several times a day and occasionally purchase.
However, the rest of the current on-line advertising model is bad, and often dangerous.
Pop-ups are annoying, intrusive and a waste of time and bandwidth. I personally hate animated, noisy and almost impossible to close ads for stuff (even stuff I'm looking to buy), blocking the content I was looking for. When it comes time to buy something, I avoid (if possible) any company I saw a pop-up for.
Dealing with infected ads, click and bait, false-flag, spam, and an endless stream of 'you looked at this so you should be interested in" along with 'you bought this, buy it again' (thanks a lot Google, Amazon and others) should not be part of the cost of being connected.
I will pay for content, if quality and reasonably priced. Too many content providers fail that test. For example: newspapers and magazines usually charge
as much, or even more, than their print subscription prices for electronic. The best price for an electronic subscription for print is to wait for a good deal on the dead tree version, as the electronic is usually included. Unfortunately, paying for content does not guarantee no third-party pops-ups!
Had discussions with a few publishers about the insanity of such a pricing structure. They claimed to be sympathetic, but, no change to policy.
Again, we need to pay for content, but, we don't deserve or need the garbage we are getting today.
As far as I know, Keynes never predicted two contributing factors which are probably keeping hours worked inflated.
One: while the amount of "work" to do has been reduced, the number of people doing the work is also reduced.
Technological, organizational or operational changes usually mean job reductions in most organizations, but, the projected reductions
are almost always wildly optimistic.
No organization will admit the new technology/software/process/outsourcing/whatever failed to deliver the promised reduction in required bodies,
as this is seen as a failure in leadership. Reality is denied so the delusion can appear to remain validated and the stock price kept inflated.
Meanwhile, the survivors are doing more, including more overtime.
Two: the sharp rise of part-time work as the employment norm, along with reduction in service, number of employee hours, and rates of pay.
Started with retail and the service industries and is creeping into other areas of work.
As late as the early 1970's, working full-time retail could pay enough to support a family. Today, many people are working 50 or 60 (or more) hours a week,
spread across two or three part-time jobs.
Slashdot Mirror
Telecommuting and the traditional office: Good article, but author misses some well-known obvious reasons (probably because no one wants to talk about them) Management of the traditional workplace operates with a number of well-defined, but rarely admitted, rules 1) Management power, position and prestige rely in part on the number of report-tos you control. Visibility of that group is a huge part of the equation. If you want to climb the corporate ladder, you need to seen controlling vast numbers of warm bodies. 2) Micro-management is the key to career success. From this premise you have the following conditions: a) No employee can be trusted to work without supervision. b) No employee can be trusted to see and respond correctly to a problem without supervision. c) No employee can be trusted to properly manage their time without supervision, especially breaks, meals, start and finish time and potty breaks d) All employees are inherently lazy, incompetent, and untrustworthy. e) Disciplining employees is part of your job as a manager. If employees are not being disciplined, you are not doing your job. f) Effective employee control requires vast numbers of managers. The ideal traditional office has more managers than persons managed
We are a one-vehicle family, driving the most fuel efficient car that meets our requirements. We live in an area of extreme temperature fluctuations: winters get down to -40F for weeks at a time, and summer temps climb to +100F for most of the season. In theory, an EV appears to meet our daily driving requirements - short commutes to work, grocery shopping, etc. The problem lies in the fact we also use our car for several longer road trips every year. For us to remain a single vehicle family, an EV is practicable only if it total cost of ownership is the same or less than a conventional car, is capable of going 400 to 500 miles between charges, with recharge time under 1 hour. Finally, it needs to be able to pump out huge amounts of heat in the winter, and continuous full out air conditioning in the summer, without a huge hit in driving range.
Why is this a surprise? No government has ever resisted the chance to tax something new. However, the Internet is gutting traditional brick and mortar businesses, resulting in significant loss in tax revenue for state and local governments. If we want all the requirements of modern communal life which government has been tasked to provide, we need to find a way to pay for it. Taxing users has some serious flaws, but, Netflix is a luxury, not a necessity of life. Taxing luxury should always be the first revenue option for government, IMHO.
Rockout: show me guilty on both counts - I'm aging and mildly anti-social. Last time I checked, neither condition negates the validity (for or against) of any rational position, on any subject. Recreational activities (like going to the movies), by definition, should be personally satisfying and enjoyable, otherwise they are not recreational. The key word is personally. That means personal opinion is also a valid contribution on this topic.
Add the audience members engaged in mindless conversation, running "critical" commentary about what is on the screen, rampant cell phone use - talking, texting, and playing games. Sorry James Cameron, the reality of modern "theater experience" is part of the problem. not the solution.
I spent some time fighting wildfires, and would like to note the following: 1) fire suppression is an incredibly risky job, on the ground or in the air. The added distraction, and risks, of having unexpected and uncontrolled (by the fire suppression management team) of operating equipment of any kind within the fire zone should not be trivialized or ignored. You don't want outside drones for the same reasons you don't want unauthorized outsiders wandering the site. 2) the risk from drones at fire sites is much greater than from birds. All woodland creatures flee fire sites, exhibiting wiser behavior than many people. 3) As noted elsewhere, fire suppression aircraft operate in very unique, highly dangerous conditions. Only military air combat is consistently more dangerous. Adding random drones to a wildfire airspace is criminal stupidity. I personally hope geofence avoidance gets built into every drone, and becomes mandatory for all existing drone and RC equipment. Hopefully, geofence technology becomes available to the public. Adding a geofence to private, and some types of public property like airports, would go a long way to addressing both safety and privacy concerns arising from the idiotic way some drone operators operate. Just because you have the toy, and the ability, to hover over any home, yard or property, shooting video, does not mean you should be doing so.
I don't use ad-blocker software (but seriously consider it at least 3 times a week!) I'm not opposed to ads - content has to be paid for. However, most of the current model is badly broken. What works for me: static ads (like we saw back in the days of print), with links. I click links on static ads several times a day and occasionally purchase. However, the rest of the current on-line advertising model is bad, and often dangerous. Pop-ups are annoying, intrusive and a waste of time and bandwidth. I personally hate animated, noisy and almost impossible to close ads for stuff (even stuff I'm looking to buy), blocking the content I was looking for. When it comes time to buy something, I avoid (if possible) any company I saw a pop-up for. Dealing with infected ads, click and bait, false-flag, spam, and an endless stream of 'you looked at this so you should be interested in" along with 'you bought this, buy it again' (thanks a lot Google, Amazon and others) should not be part of the cost of being connected. I will pay for content, if quality and reasonably priced. Too many content providers fail that test. For example: newspapers and magazines usually charge as much, or even more, than their print subscription prices for electronic. The best price for an electronic subscription for print is to wait for a good deal on the dead tree version, as the electronic is usually included. Unfortunately, paying for content does not guarantee no third-party pops-ups! Had discussions with a few publishers about the insanity of such a pricing structure. They claimed to be sympathetic, but, no change to policy. Again, we need to pay for content, but, we don't deserve or need the garbage we are getting today.
As far as I know, Keynes never predicted two contributing factors which are probably keeping hours worked inflated. One: while the amount of "work" to do has been reduced, the number of people doing the work is also reduced. Technological, organizational or operational changes usually mean job reductions in most organizations, but, the projected reductions are almost always wildly optimistic. No organization will admit the new technology/software/process/outsourcing/whatever failed to deliver the promised reduction in required bodies, as this is seen as a failure in leadership. Reality is denied so the delusion can appear to remain validated and the stock price kept inflated. Meanwhile, the survivors are doing more, including more overtime. Two: the sharp rise of part-time work as the employment norm, along with reduction in service, number of employee hours, and rates of pay. Started with retail and the service industries and is creeping into other areas of work. As late as the early 1970's, working full-time retail could pay enough to support a family. Today, many people are working 50 or 60 (or more) hours a week, spread across two or three part-time jobs.