Google's Push To Bring Employees Back To Offices Frustrates Some Employees Who Say They'll Quit 222
Google was one of the first big companies to move its workforce out of the office in the early days of the pandemic, but now it's calling employees back. Some of them said they don't intend to return. From a report: While tech firms such as Microsoft and Twitter have announced plans to allow employees to work from home permanently, Google has resisted going fully remote, and employees said there's an increasing sense of frustration among a faction of the workforce. That frustration spilled onto social media last week: "Spoken to quite a few colleagues at Google that say they'll quit if forced to go back to the office in September," Chris Broadfoot, a Google Cloud programmer, tweeted on Thursday. Other employees joined the thread to cosign the message, with some saying they may look for another job if Google makes them go back to the office.
A half-dozen Google employees who spoke with Insider shared a similar sentiment or said they knew colleagues who had made permanent moves during the pandemic. They asked to remain anonymous because they were not authorized to speak to the press. "A lot of my colleagues have moved away with no real intention of coming back," one of those employees said. "Especially in that 30s-40s age bracket. I would say that's predominantly where it is." That same employee told Insider they had handed in their notice after their request to work in a location outside of the Bay Area was shot down by their manager. Further reading: Google Is Saving Over $1 Billion a Year by Working From Home.
A half-dozen Google employees who spoke with Insider shared a similar sentiment or said they knew colleagues who had made permanent moves during the pandemic. They asked to remain anonymous because they were not authorized to speak to the press. "A lot of my colleagues have moved away with no real intention of coming back," one of those employees said. "Especially in that 30s-40s age bracket. I would say that's predominantly where it is." That same employee told Insider they had handed in their notice after their request to work in a location outside of the Bay Area was shot down by their manager. Further reading: Google Is Saving Over $1 Billion a Year by Working From Home.
Follow through will be necessary (Score:5, Interesting)
Follow through from employees will be necessary for this transition to more remote work to continue. Many employers will allow employees to stay remote and many employers will force employees back into the office. If those employers with more flexible working arrangements start poaching workers in large numbers then the continued shift to remote work will be inevitable.
The next step is probably realizing more of the work can be done offshore, but let's not worry about everything all at once.
Re:Follow through will be necessary (Score:4, Informative)
I'll look for another job if I'm forced back full time.
Aside from the environmental and work/life balance benefits, if I can get paid the same but don't have to waste an hour on commuting or spend so much to run a car then the market rate for this work just went up.
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if I can get paid the same but don't have to waste an hour on commuting or spend so much to run a car then the market rate for this work just went up.
On the flip side companies may try to make the argument that the market rate just went down for workers who can work remotely. We'll see how that plays out in the marketplace as well.
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Looking for another job, that's great. The headline here is "they'll quit". I worry some will just get pissed off and quit, and then *later* start looking for a job. Then they will figure out that they had too much of an ego and that finding a new job really is hard for most people, and having "google" on the resume is not the golden ticket to be hirable everywhere. Always get a job lined up before quiting, unless the work conditions are so onerous or the mental health is declining too fast such that it
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The next step is probably realizing more of the work can be done offshore
That was already realized in the 00s... the Outsourcing craze. It does not work too well for many kinds of work to have teams with major time zone differences.
Also, there are some regulatory impediments with doing for individual workers, b/c of compliance---E.G. Companies have to comply with the local employment laws for wherever their employees are situated. In addition countries require companies verify their employees are cit
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Especially in that 30s-40s age bracket (Score:2, Informative)
So, they old folks, then? I worked at Google for a couple weeks on a contract in 2012. At 46, I felt like I was back in high school. I half-expected them to meet me at the door with a wheelchair!
If you HAVE to work at an office, Google is the place! Three free meals a day (farm-fresh! turkey sausages to DIE FOR), all the healthy snacks you can eat, green bikes for trekking from building to building... 24-core / 48-thread (in 2012!!!!) workstation to compile
Re: Especially in that 30s-40s age bracket (Score:3)
Re: Especially in that 30s-40s age bracket (Score:2)
And seeing as your job can be done so easily from home/remotely, why not just get rid of you and hire somebody who's a quarter the price or less?
Re:Especially in that 30s-40s age bracket (Score:5, Insightful)
>So, they old folks, then?
Yeah, the ones who have some perspective and aren't willing to give up their lives for the company.
When you're young and unfettered you can do that, maybe even enjoy it - I did it for a few years, and even stayed that way for the first couple of years of my marriage.
Eventually your priorities shift as you discover life outside the computer lab.
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Eventually your priorities shift as you discover life outside the computer lab.
You mean, like chat rooms and stuff?
Re:Especially in that 30s-40s age bracket (Score:5, Insightful)
Perfect Work live balance if your life is your work.
However after we get older, we start to have families who want to see us from time to time, we have responsibilities where we need to help our families during business hours. Also over time, we learn that we are more productive over all if we get a full night of sleep, and some down time.
Google is very attractive to "kids" because they are just out of school, and their lives are still revolving around a single focus. But as you get older, these benefits are nice, but the pressure to be there all the time and not take time off will get to you.
Re:Especially in that 30s-40s age bracket (Score:5, Insightful)
People in their 30's and 40's are established enough in their career that they won't worry about the ability to build a professional network when working remotely. Unlike those in their 20's who are likely hurt the most by this shift to remote work. Those in their 50's and older have not lived their entire adult life in the digital world so they may be less likely to prefer remote work over Zoom meetings.
I'm not sure how true any of that is, but those are the arguments I hear being made.
Nobody ever really liked going to the office (Score:4, Insightful)
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Seriously? Of course they didn't like it, why else would they get paid for it. If you like to do something, YOU would be paying to do it. If you don't like to do something, they have to entice you to do it with a paycheck. That's how civilization works, do you think someone is going to code you an app because they like you?
Btw, I don't work there, but have friends and also have been there quite a few times and can tell the free food and drink choices at Google are pretty damn good .. few would disagree unle
Re:Nobody ever really liked going to the office (Score:4, Insightful)
Seriously? Of course they didn't like it, why else would they get paid for it.
That's a weird, sadistic take on work. You don't get paid to do your job because you don't like it. You get paid to provide a product or service to someone else. It's commerce.
If they tried to make me wear a clown suit to work every day, I wouldn't shrug and say "oh well, they're paying me not to like it!". I would probably get a different job. Preferring work from home is no different.
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Totally. Where I work it takes 15 fucking minutes just to find a parking spot. Not to mention sitting in traffic all the way there and all the way home. Office culture is overrated bullshit. I take one look at the people that are all rah-rah about office culture and ask myself do I really want to hang out with any of these dipshits? Not likely.
Yeah but they don't pay you for any of that time (Score:2)
Re:Nobody ever really liked going to the office (Score:4)
The longer I get to work from home keeps the office safe and me out of prison.
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The longer I get to work from home keeps the office safe and me out of prison.
Here's a website for some therapists you can talk to about that [fbi.gov] ... :-)
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We won't talk about that time I got drunk and woke up next to a naked Madeleine Albright.
Re: Nobody ever really liked going to the office (Score:3)
Plus I feel a lot less guilty trolling on slashdot comments in my pjs in my comfy chair from home on my personal device than I would be doing so from work on a work device.
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Some people prefer working in an office because they enjoy face-to-face discussions much more than video chat, and they believe such discussions are more productive. Some people also have family/kids that are at home and that present constant distractions, so they "escape" to the office in order to be able to maintain focus.
And some people are just extroverts who like being surrounded by their co-workers.
Lastly, managers are employees too, and some of them believe (whether it is true or not) that they need
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I'll take all that if the alternative is to live in my apartment 20-22 hours a days (which is what I'm currently have to suffer through).
I think the real question is... why are you suffering through living in your apartment? Is it unfit to live in for, say, 10 hours straight? Is it too small, too uncomfortable, too noisy, etc., etc?
You should start wondering why that is. If you own it, it was a bad choice. If you rent, move somewhere else.
There's an amazing amount of people who realized their living place is shit when pandemic stroke. You might just be one of those many.
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I guess he does do that for 2 to 4 hours a day.
Don't forget to add "shitty neighborhood" to the aggravating factors.
People made poor choices when buying/renting a place to live in, based on a variety of factors such as "I'll just sleep there" or "I am going to be in the office 12h a day". The results are now visible.
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Surprising given the situation in India... (Score:3, Insightful)
I am surprised given the situation in India where COVID has returned with a vengeance, sadly with a travesty in the loss of human life. Rushing to re-open when the pandemic is still ongoing is foolish at best, ruthless at worst. Google rushing to re-open seems, well '"Don't be evil." except when we want all our worker units back writing code.'
Some high-tech companies are taking a wait-and-see attitude, continuing the work from home, until later in the year to see how the pandemic unfolds. For a company with geniuses, this push seems incredibly stupid....and sad as it can lead to people dying from COVID. Nothing gets in the way of profit, or commerce.
JoshK.
Robots (Score:2)
Just have robots do the commuting. Let them collect your paycheck and spend it for you too.
I can't blame them (Score:2)
Working in IT, the vast majority of our work can *easily* be done remotely.
About the only thing we can't do remotely, is look busy for the boss (or change toner in the networked printer, but that's what underlings are for)
So what? Quit if you don't like showing up.... (Score:2)
I say this as someone who supports "work from home" too. The thing is, your employer has a massive investment in the physical office building(s), so obviously they plan on employing people who are going to utilize them.
I've been fortunate to work for places that did everything from "do all of your work from home" to "come in every single day", and the best/ideal situation was with the one who was flexible enough to tell me to "work 3 days a week at home and come in 2 ... using your best judgement which 2 t
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Quitting a job without already having a fallback job is stupid unless you are already independently wealthy and were only working to keep yourself busy during the day.
Not everyone has the time to find a fallback job when they are already working full time.
Worse, in some cases, looking for jobs with certain companies while you are working at certain other companies could represent a conflict of interest and might be grounds for disciplinary action, which could include termination, if the employer is som
The primary advantage to working in an office is.. (Score:5, Insightful)
In an apartment, space is often at a premium, and not everyone lives in a place where they can designate an entire room as exclusively for them throughout the entire day, especially if they have children.
The other advantage is that it is, quite frankly, better for employee morale. Employees that see eachother daily have a stronger sense of cohesiveness as a team than those that only communicate via some instant messenger, or occasionally teleconference as required. It's also much easier for companies to organize team building events that are on company time when they simply know that everyone is going to be there. Less notice is generally required so that employees do not have to plan for a commute they would otherwise not have taken. If they are coming into the office every day already, then being available for the event will not be an issue.
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News flash not everybody lives in an apartment. Some people have houses with gardens you know.
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They're likely not the ones who would rather quit than go back to the office.
Or maybe they only own a house because they've been able to move far away from Silicon Valley and it's obscene cost of living.
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If we didn't all have to live near the office we wouldn't need tiny apartments.
This may be an opportunity to rethink housing. It's going to have to change anyway as we move to electric vehicles and people need to charge at home.
Re:The primary advantage to working in an office i (Score:5, Insightful)
Employees that see eachother daily have a stronger sense of cohesiveness as a team than those that only communicate via some instant messenger
In the tech industry?? I communicate via instant messenger to the person sitting beside me in the open plan. Literally nothing changed in our communication method.
It's also much easier for companies to organize team building events
Isn't that done via calendar software, just like any other meeting? No one goes around asking people when they're free and taking notes.
that are on company time when they simply know that everyone is going to be there
First, I'm not convinced there's any value in team building events. It always seemed to me to be one of those bs things suits latch on to, like power hand-shake moves. Second, even if I'm wrong, you do know when everyone is on the clock. If you schedule it and tell people to show up, they will show up. Then they can go back to remote working the rest of the time.
Less notice is generally required so that employees do not have to plan for a commute they would otherwise not have taken.
Agreed, but if your company is so disorganized that it's a burden if they can't do impromptu events on short notice, I don't think the problem is remote working. It's not going to THAT huge fucking burden on employees to make plans for someone else to take their kid to school that day, or whatever else they need to plan in order to make the commute. A week's notice is good enough, and if you can't do that, what the hell is wrong with that company?
If they are coming into the office every day already, then being available for the event will not be an issue.
You think it's less of an issue for employees to have to dedicate commute time every day than it is for them to find a way to free up that time once in a while?
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You misread what I said. I saiid that responding to an impromptu event could be problematic for the *employee*, and in turn, the dealing with the possibility that multiple employees may not be able to successfully negotiate a commute they otherwise would not have taken with only a few days notice creates logistical challenges for the company in orga
Google does a ton of tricks in the office (Score:3)
For most companies that don't employ these tactics to the extent Google does WFH is a net gain of about 5% in productivity, but with Google they might actually see work/life balance tilting in favor of employees. That's likely to be the motivation for this push.
Re:The primary advantage to working in an office i (Score:5, Insightful)
The other advantage is that it is, quite frankly, better for employee morale. Employees that see eachother daily have a stronger sense of cohesiveness as a team...
Ah yes, that strong sense of cohesiveness that's achieved by hot desking, or working in pods, or being forbidden to bring personal items into the office, or having no private space at all to put things like a purse. That strong sense of cohesiveness that comes from stack ranking. That strong sense of cohesiveness that comes from small annual layoffs, interspersed with larger layoffs that take out coworkers you were actually depending on. Yeah, seeing that high turnover happening before your eyes sure does improve the sense of cohesiveness.
The fuck out of here...
There is no morale. There is no cohesiveness. There is no camaraderie. There's a permanent sense of impending doom. There is no security, no loyalty from the company, and no sense at all that the company gives two shits if you live or die. Everything they do destroys morale, and they do it on purpose. Terror Management has been standard operating procedure since the 1980s, when Jack Welch invented stack ranking, and it's been going downhill ever since.
It's also much easier for companies to organize team building events that are on company time when they simply know that everyone is going to be there. Less notice is generally required so that employees do not have to plan for a commute they would otherwise not have taken. If they are coming into the office every day already, then being available for the event will not be an issue.
"Team building exercises"? Surprise team building exercises? Random team building exercises? What the actual fuck?? What fantasy world do you live in that that bullshit does ANYTHING for the team? Everyone hates fucking team building exercises!
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Just because evidently you have had bad experiences working for companies where you have not experienced anything positive other than your paycheque does not mean that is the case for everyone.
I work for a tech company that until COVID hit last year, did teambuilding exercises almost every month. And honestly, they are a *LOT* of fun... I don't know anyone where I work who generally hates them. Now we are working excluviely from home, and the difference in morale is obvious.
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In an apartment, space is often at a premium, and not everyone lives in a place where they can designate an entire room as exclusively for them throughout the entire day, especially if they have children.
That is a valid thought. But not a universal one.
The other advantage is that it is, quite frankly, better for employee morale.
That is far less valid. There are a lot of reports - from employees and managers - of people who are significantly more productive working from home than they were in the office. There are no universal truths. Every office is different, and every employee is different.
And since we're talking about Google's office in Silicon Valley, I feel like somebody should point out that morale does not improve when the cost of living is so high you can only afford to live
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I never claimed that it was universal, only common.
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an office is actually properly equipped to do the job well.
Not necessarily. The biggest problem I had at the office was drive-by work. People knew I got shit done, they would have a problem, open a ticket, then walk into my cube to get me to work it. Aside from the fact that I wasn't allowed to tell them to take a hike, the simple fact they came to my cube was a bother. Then, there is the fact that I am using my work laptop at home because even though every computer I have at home is much better than this under powered, piece of crap HP , none of them are the Compa
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Very few home offices cost $10-20k a year to run. For many home workers they will be saving thousands on commuting costs. Lets say topside it cost $20k to build a reasonable garden home office and equip it all out, but you are saving $5k a year on commuting costs. There are a lot of people that would grab at that option.
Personally I have sent money improving my home computer from a laptop by reviving my Sparcstation ITX project that got shelved over a decade ago. I now have a Ryzenstation IPX (stealth Asus
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Not to run by themselves, no... but the price difference between what you pay to live in a house that is big enough to have such a dedicated space vs what you spend on an apartment every year could very easily meet the lower end of that price range, and in some cases still distinctly creep towards the upper.
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Backward looking company (Score:2)
While Google already had the infrastructure in place needed to support remote workers effective since at least 2008, they never permitted remote work or used it for that. They had a very backwards looking management, where they seemed to believe it was necessary to have managers see workers work in cubes. I was rather shocked when they even let people finally work remote with covid, though I have to wonder if that meant they also turned their analytics inward on their own. Google is not a 21st century compa
This is becoming a trend... (Score:5, Insightful)
Where I work there are some that want to return to the office full time. But the overwhelming majority do not. Most seem to be ok with 2-3 days a week. Probably 30% want to work full time remotely. When we ask the leadership what is the burning need to return to an office building, after being told for months what a great job we are doing remotely, they have no answers. They mumble some nonsense about "culture" but you never get a straight answer.
The people that are being allowed to WFH full time are now all of a sudden subjected to a lot of new rules and conditions. Things like "distraction free workplace", i.e. no kids or dogs in the house.
I think it comes down to two things:
1) Control. Too many old school managers that don't know how to manage people working remotely.
2) They have a shit ton of buildings all over the place that are sitting empty. They are paying to heat and cool them. They can't sell them. Nobody will buy them. So they figure might as well have people in here.
I've been saying this for a while now but remote work is going to become the new perk. 401k - check, maternity leave - check, free snacks - check, remote work - check. I expect that during interviews candidates will ask this straight out. And companies that refuse to allow folks to work remotely will lose that candidate. People already working there will leave in some cases if they are told they can no longer work remote. It is becoming a lifestyle issue, the work-life balance bullshit that we are always hearing about but they rarely follow through on.
Again, WFH is not for everyone but companies that try to force employees to return to the office will regret it.
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WFH has been around at least as long as the telephone but it doesn't work for all occupations. You can't rack servers from home, for example, or groom patch bays, or replace the VP of TP's Cheeto-clogged laptop keyboard.
I know that this is /. and most people here are "knowledge workers" that spend their days shoveling steaming piles of bits into ever-widening chasms of technical debt but that is not the majority of workers. There is a reason why office buildings exist; they didn't just rise out of the groun
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Sunk-cost fallacy. Paying to maintain property that you don't need makes no sense. Sure, they'll lose money if they sell them. They'll lose more if they continue maintaining them, paying property taxes, etc. You'd hope the suits know an accountant or two that could explain that to them.
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I've seen this often, if a project falls behind the assumption is that people aren't working hard enough. In reality it's usually because the estimate was bad or some unexpected issue came up.
OSHA and WFH (Score:5, Interesting)
I wonder how many companies who are currently providing work from are actually mandating it. My employer is currently full time work from home, but it is stated that it is purely voluntary, for legal reasons. Currently, if working from home is mandated by the employer, OSHA says that the employer is still responsible for ensuring the home workspace meets appropriate ergonomic standards, lighting standards, etc. that would be required in the traditional office environment, which is why my current employer has always stated that they cannot mandate that a job be work from home. The current situation is under emergency conditions, and once the appropriate government agencies declare that everything can go back to normal, we're expected to either return to the office, or for all intents and purposes give up Workman's Comp insurance.
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I hope everyone reads this and then reads this again. I have been harping on this, but nobody wants to listen regarding how the company's liability does extend to people working from home, and this scare the living heck out of corporations since this is out of their control meaning the conditions in the home/office.
Win-win-win (Score:3)
Honestly, I'm perfectly fine with working in the office -- but I'm also quite happy to see more people insisting that they be permitted to work from home. The way I see it, I'm becoming part of a dying breed; those who are perfectly comfortable performing their role from wherever happens to make me the most money. Thus, those people who have a developed a strong preference for the work-from-home option, due to the recent necessity which gave them that option for a period of time, and who are apparently willing to quit their very lucrative job in order to find an employer who will support their newfound whims, are potentially pricing themselves out of a job... and giving me a leg up in the process.
Ultimately, the work-from-home employees see getting their way as their "win", while I see getting a bigger paycheck (for being flexible) as my "win"... and those companies who are happy to continue with work-from-home for those who prefer that will naturally see their lowered utility bills as their "win". Everybody wins!
We'll see (Score:2)
If they sold their house the might not be able ... (Score:2)
It's one thing to threaten to quit, it's another to actually follow through. For employees who have left a high cost of living area like Mountain View and moved to a place like Des Moines, they may be in for a rude awakening if they quit and then need to find another job.
For homeowners, if they sold their house and moved away, they may not be able to afford to move back.
Real estate prices in the Bay Area have continued to skyrocket during COVID - and bailing out and back in also gives up the Proposition 13
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I've worked almost my entire career for big tech companies like Google, but from places like Virginia and Texas where the cost of living is much lower... and I know how few companies are around that are willing to pay anywhere near what these companies do in places like Des Moines or even a place like Dallas or Atlanta. Not only would I make 2/3rds of my base salary, but there are few places that are handing out RSUs like the tech companies do... so my total compensation would be closer to 1/3rd of what I make now.
As a guy who works for Google and lives in rural Utah, this. But maybe less than 1/3, perhaps closer to 1/4. Especially with the way my Google RSUs have been appreciating lately.
Remember, if you can do your job from anywhere (Score:2)
someone else can do your from anywhere. Now, you're in a global bidding war for your job.
If you're fine with that, insist on continuing to work at home.
I've worked from home for years, but my job can't just be done from home; I still have to go in when hardware is involved. Makes it real hard for them to replace me.
Also makes it hard for me to relocate to a state that isn't on the verge of financial collapse, and willing to take me with it.
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...someone else can do your from anywhere.
If your biggest competitive advantage for your job is your proximity, then you have a big problem.
There has to be a rebalanceing (Score:2)
For years we have listened to the argument that its worth while having offices in the most expensive places on earth like Manhattan, San Francisco, Palo Alto etc because of the dynamic nature. Underlying all that though was the idea people got together.
If not in your own cafeteria than maybe having lunch with someone who worked at other Big-tech down the road etc; swapping ideas etc.
if half of these people are Work from Home and moving out to exurbs - that does not happen. Which means there is no reason for
ah, but ... (Score:2)
" ... say they'll quit ... "
How many really will when it comes time to put their money where their mouth is?
Unless a large and significant portion of the workforce actually tenders their resignations if it comes to it all their talk doesn't mean anything.
Re:ah, but ... (Score:5, Insightful)
The thing is, the best people, the people that can a job anywhere, those will quit -- perhaps not all, but some will. Those are exactly the people you want to keep. The ones with less options, those may not follow through, but you may wish they had...
the job they accepted (Score:2)
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There's not really that much debate about whether the approved vaccines are effective against the known new variants except in the innumerate, eyeball-hungry media. Popular press reports are a Bayesian hot mess. They make it sound like people who are vaccinated are somehow *more* susceptible to, say, B.1.1.7 than unvaccianted people, when in fact *everyone* is more susceptible to the newer strains, and vaccinated people appear to remain highly protected against all identified strains even if they are *rel
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Also, it's not safe to be in the office yet, even if you're fully vaccinated.
If you've had either the pfizer or moderna vaccinations, then yes, it is actually safe to go back to the office. It's at least as safe as it was prior to covid, probably more so in the short term thanks to the flu being a noshow this year.
There's still a *lot* of debate on how effective the vaccines are against the new variants, with some studies showing as low as 60% (others in the low 90s%).
No, there really isn't any debate, at least not for the pfizer and moderna vaccines, in the scientific community. They're effective. It's a lot more complicated than the 90% and 60% "scare quotes" numbers you hear reported in the press.
But even in the low 90% a 10% chance of getting sick is fine when you're not constantly in contact with people
Except that what you're describing
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(really wish we'd just pay people $3-$4k to get vaccinated, it'd be worth it, but I digress).
Naw, fine 'em $3-$4K if they refuse to get vaccinated. It'd be worth it, but I too digress.
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Although there is a free market for schools (in the form of private schools), public schools are not in that market, and that is where I believe he's suggesting requiring vaccinations for school.
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Also the police in Florida can charge any group of three of more peop
Re: The economy is crap (Score:2)
maxeji9815 can't think clearly (Score:2)
Tears over folks wearing masks in a disease outbreak. So laughable.
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There is nothing inherently wrong with "conservative".
What is happening is that "conservatives" have seen their demographics change for the worse.
Seeing their grip on power slip
Many conservatives have responded with gerrymandering and other voter suppression techniques.
The previous notion that the conservative party is populated with people of honor and decency has gone by the wayside.
The conservative party is increasingly concerned with the maintenance of power.
Honor and truth matter less and less.
And the
Re: The economy is crap (Score:3)
There isn't anything wrong with conservatives. It would be nice if there was a conservative party.
Alas, the best we have is a party for quasi-anarchist classical liberals (Libertarians) and a reactionary party for conservatives who were frozen in 1919 and just woke up (Constitution Party)
We used to have a party called the Republican party, but that degenerated into an apocalyptic religious cult, so that's no longer a thing.
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And yeah, a mask is not the same as shoes. It is dehumanizing, but your type loves that idea. You hate humans.
Asshat. Wearing a mask is a mark of concern for those around you. It shows that you accept the word of disease specialists over politicians. How in the freaking heck is it dehumanizing to try to protect people around you from the possibility that you have a potentially deadly infection? It is hateful to put your own inconvenience above the safety of others. It is hateful to call a disease that has killed hundreds of thousands of people in this country alone "hysteria." Get over yourself, put away your
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Further, COVID-19's risk isn't binary: you die or don't die. It's, "will you have asymptomatic, mild, moderate, or severe, symptoms, or die? And will you become a COVID long-hauler?"
There appears to be a significant chance that if you get moderate disease you'll have reduced lung function and possibly permanent loss of smell and taste. 10 year follow-up studies from SARS-CoV-1 patients noted they reported lower metrics for health and happiness when compared to the non-infected population.
Re: The economy is crap (Score:5, Insightful)
Approximately 1/3rd of those who get infected suffer long term consequences, regardless of how severe (or not) their symptoms were.
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Citation:
https://theconversation.com/ho... [theconversation.com]
Re:The economy is crap (Score:4, Informative)
"facts", Tucker Carlson style
1) I'm 37 years old, healthy, no pre-existing medical conditions. If I were to attract COVID my chances of dying are essentially zero.
Stinks of stupid right off the bat. We'll keep it simple here as not to have you tuck your head in the sand. According to the CDC, the 5-17 year old range is the least at risk in covid matters: https://www.cdc.gov/coronaviru... [cdc.gov]
At your age, you are 2x more likely to contract it, 10x more likely to be hospitalized, and 45x more likely to die. THis COMPLETELY ignore the long term damage of infected individuals, to use your own words "We simply do not know or understand the long-term side effects. We couldn't possibly."
2) For all of the available vaccines, not one of them has passed the level of regulatory approval that is common for even cold medications or heart burn pills. We simply do not know or understand the long-term side effects. We couldn't possibly.
This isn't genuine. The approval process was sped up because we don't have the luxury of a decade for all of the red tape. It tested well enough that the whole world is taking it and even with the inflammatory media, there isn't a whole lot of problems with these vaccines so far. Hence the reason for the foaming-at-the-mouth with the J&J/AZ vaccines... the propaganda machine doesn't have much else to attack. mRNA has been studied for 30 years. This isn't a hair-brained bathtub concoction.
3) Anecdotal evidence (the only evidence we have due to point 2) suggest that the vaccines might have serious issues. Blood clots, fainting spells, severe COVID symptoms. I personally know someone that was down for 3 days, violently ill, after getting their first shot.
Yep, some people feel like shit afterwards, but your hyperbole is obnoxious, almost like you take keywords from your favorite news program and just say them when ranting
4) The Moderna vaccine (and the Pfizer one) pioneers a new delivery system (MNRA) that has never been used in a vaccine before. The Astra vaccine has been removed from distribution in many countries due to blood clot concerns.
New to you and me, but not new in scientific development. Plenty of Youtube videos explaining its origins, the science behind it, and how we got here.... just incase reading is too burdensome for you.
So, while I understand the frustration you might have if you assume these vaccines are wonderful, how can you deny that, given the above, a person might calculate it's just not worth the risk?
Because it is stinky bullshit
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Stinks of stupid right off the bat.
Came here to comment everything you just commented. Was not disappointed.
My kingdom for modpoints.
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What are the death rates of healthy 37 year olds?
About one in 250 [ca.gov], or 0.4%.
Show me. Am I really likely to die from COVID?
More than any other single cause, yes.
We both know the answer to that and can take a clue from your projection: youre just spouting pro-vaccine propaganda, and irrelevant talking points.
Clearly you don't know the answer to that. If I said that I was going to go into your workplace and randomly shoot one person, you'd have me arrested rather than risk being the one. Yet those are your odds, and you're not willing to take a vaccine that reduces that risk by a factor of at least several tens of thousands. That's just not a rational assessment of the risk involved.
The COVID vaccine is the very first wide-spread vaccine to use mRNA delivery, is it not?
Define widespread. The technique is thirty years old at this po
Re:The economy is crap (Score:5, Informative)
Somewhat. There is a decent chance you won't die, but, as usual, people like you completely ignore the side effects [mayoclinic.org] of getting covid which include fatigue, brain "fog", loss of smell and/or taste, or even dizziness when standing. And all this can go on for months.
2) For all of the available vaccines, not one of them has passed the level of regulatory approval that is common for even cold medications or heart burn pills. We simply do not know or understand the long-term side effects. We couldn't possibly.
In the current case, it wasn't possible to wait the years to go through all the permutations of approval. Further, people were whining that a vaccine needed to be made and it needed to be made now. No delay because the economy wasn't good (never mind the thousands of people who were dying each day). So the vaccines were rapidly produced, have been shown to be effective, and people, such as yourself, now whine it was done so quickly. Make up your mind.
3) Anecdotal evidence (the only evidence we have due to point 2) suggest that the vaccines might have serious issues. Blood clots, fainting spells, severe COVID symptoms. I personally know someone that was down for 3 days, violently ill, after getting their first shot.
FUD. The evidence shows an insignificant fraction of a percent of people, mainly women, MIGHT experience blood clots. That is the only known issue so far from any of the vaccines.
I personally know someone that was down for 3 days, violently ill, after getting their first shot.
Good for them. That means their body was reacting to the vaccine to create anitbodies. This is a known issue and, like above, occurs in a small fraction of the people who have received vaccines. But yeah, being under the weather for three days is so much worse than needing a new lung [nytimes.com].
4) The Moderna vaccine (and the Pfizer one) pioneers a new delivery system (MNRA) that has never been used in a vaccine before. The Astra vaccine has been removed from distribution in many countries due to blood clot concerns.
False and FUD. mNRA has been used in human trials of cancer vaccines since 2011 [medicalxpress.com]. After a decade of use, if there were any serious issues we would have heard about them.
So, while I understand the frustration you might have if you assume these vaccines are wonderful, how can you deny that, given the above, a person might calculate it's just not worth the risk?
Since nothing you said was either true or regugitated nonsense, it's easy to deny stupidity. The real question is, how much do you get paid to post this crap and how are the other QAnon people doing?
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For all of the available vaccines, not one of them has passed the level of regulatory approval that is common for even cold medications or heart burn pills. We simply do not know or understand the long-term side effects. We couldn't possibly.
But you're happy to accept the possible long term effects of covid? What level of regulatory investigation has covid gone through? How do you know it's not going to destroy your liver in 10 years time? It's very unlikely but so is such an effect from a vaccine. You'r
Re: The economy is crap (Score:2)
As you're clearly very self centred, think about it from a selfish perspective: by getting vaccinated your're proactively contributing to getting your normal world back, helping maximise the economy and thus your employment prospects and reducing the chance of a variant coming along that has a higher chance of causing you grief.
And if you think you're safe from COVID-19 because of your age, think again: https://www.reuters.com/articl... [reuters.com]
The Oxford vaccine seems to have been hit by politics, but itâ(TM)s
Re:The economy is crap (Score:5, Insightful)
I can imagine the perspective you must have to generate this concern, but I would challenge you: Tell me exactly why I should take the vaccine. Here are the facts:
1) I'm 37 years old, healthy, no pre-existing medical conditions. If I were to attract COVID my chances of dying are essentially zero.
Well, I'm sure glad the men and women in our military don't take that same attitude. They put their life on the line for their fellow american, but some of those fellow Americans can't even wear a thin piece of fabric on their face or take a simple shot to repay the favor. This "whats in it for me" attitude is sickening. What's in it for you is that you can help ensure you don't accidentally contribute to the death of someone who is at high risk.
2) For all of the available vaccines, not one of them has passed the level of regulatory approval that is common for even cold medications or heart burn pills. We simply do not know or understand the long-term side effects. We couldn't possibly.
No, it actually has gone through pretty much the same level of scrutiny. The difference is, this time it was made a priority. For regulatory review, everything goes into a queue. We bumped this to the front of the line everytime we needed someone to look at something. Drug manufacturers are usually pretty conservative with testing phases. They do things step by step, in a nice sequential order, because sometimes the testing doesn't pan out and they don't want to waste the investment. Here they overlapped the processes. They assumed each phase was going to pass and invested in getting the ball rolling a few steps ahead of time.
3) Anecdotal evidence (the only evidence we have due to point 2) suggest that the vaccines might have serious issues. Blood clots, fainting spells, severe COVID symptoms. I personally know someone that was down for 3 days, violently ill, after getting their first shot.
Blood clots was nothing. The risk was no more than from other things like birth control pills, which nobody seems to bat an over. Plus for the age/sex demographic that was at risk, the risk of catching and then dying from covid was somewhere between 100-1000 times higher. It's kinda like saying seatbelts are an unacceptable risk because they could trap you in the car. Yes, I did actually know someone that had that attitude, because she had been in an accident where she got thrown from the car and survived and the car got demolished, and they told her if she had been wearing her seatbelt she'd surely be dead. So yeah, it can happen, but the odds are orders of magnitude better that they'll save you.
4) The Moderna vaccine (and the Pfizer one) pioneers a new delivery system (MNRA) that has never been used in a vaccine before. The Astra vaccine has been removed from distribution in many countries due to blood clot concerns.
Not true. It has never been used before in a commercially available vaccine, but it had been tested quite often for several diseases (flu, rabies, and zika) for many years. Those ones seemed to be both safe and effective, but were not deemed worth pursuing to release because we had other equally effective non-mrna options that didn't have the same post injection side effects.
So, while I understand the frustration you might have if you assume these vaccines are wonderful, how can you deny that, given the above, a person might calculate it's just not worth the risk?
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Sibling of mine would never wear his seat belt because he wanted to be thrown clear of the wreck instead of being trapped in it. Then a childhood friend was killed when he was thrown half way out of the truck he was riding in, and it cut him in half. I haven't seen or heard my sibling quibble about wearing a seat belt since.
Re:The economy is crap (Score:4, Insightful)
1) It is no wonder the US has the most deaths in the world, including more deaths per capita than almost all countries close to our size (I think Brazil is worse). This ridiculous "what about me?" and "fuck everyone else" attitude. You don't just take the vaccine to save yourself. You get the vaccine to save everyone in your community. Unless you have some very rare condition which would make these vaccines risky for you, your personal level of health is irrelevant. Just bringing up your health shows a level of self-centered thinking that is literally murdering hundreds of thousands of people right now.
2-4) All of this is just you looking for reasons to not take the vaccine. You have your mind made up, and are looking for any shred of a reason to justify your decision. The medical industry has overwhelmingly endorsed these vaccines. Sure they wouldn't have approved it this fast in normal conditions, but in this case the other side of the decision includes millions of people dying.
You may personally be at greater risk if you get the vaccine than if you let everyone else around you get it for you. But in that case you have the moral failings of a mass murderer, and are a remarkable piece of shit.
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Repeat that out loud: The "medical industry" has overwhelmingly endorsed these vaccines. Really? No kidding? Pepsi also endorses their products too.
The medical industry didn't create these vaccines. A handful of companies did. The medical industry does not represent those companies in the same way as Pepsi represents their own products. This just shows how incredibly insincere your argument is.
Brazil isn't close to the same size as the US. What are you talking about? The US is currently 12th in per-capita deaths.
Brazil has 211 million people, which is quite comparable to the United States (at 328 million). I do consider a nation with 64% of the US population as having similar size. When comparing nations by population, China and India are in a league all their own. Then
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1) I'm 37 years old, healthy, no pre-existing medical conditions. If I were to attract COVID my chances of dying are essentially zero.
If we assume a high rate of detection and that the mortality rate will not change over time, it's about 0.4% among people your age who catch it (using California's statistics). Bear in mind that if we do nothing, anyone who has not caught it will almost inevitably catch it eventually. And 0.4% is not a small risk. That's an amazingly high risk as risks go.
In fact, if everyone your age caught it in the course of a year (which is roughly what would have happened if left unmitigated), that would make it the
Re:The economy is crap (Score:4, Insightful)
What does is matter if someone in bumfuck Arkansas is vaccinated or not if you're thousands of miles away surrounded by people who are almost all vaccinated.
Because an unspecified region full of anti-vaxxer bumfucks (unspecified, because I have no data to warrant accusing the good people of Arkansas of being a bunch of anti-vaxxer bumfucks), will act as a virus sanctuary where the virus is free to infect and mutate until the vaccine you got offers little to no protection. You therefore have a vested interest in seeing to it that everybody gets vaccinated and if some people don't want to get vaccinated they just have to pay the price that comes with that choice. That price would take the form of severe restrictions on where the un-vaccinated can travel and where they can shop, among other things. They may have the freedom to refuse vaccination, ... fine ... but they must realise that I also have the freedom to refuse un-vaccinated people permission to enter my shop to infect my customers and I also have the freedom to not let infectious people visit my country. A simultaneous world wide vaccine roll out is the only truly effective countermeasure and it is in the interest of the US/EU/China and other large nation level entities (whatever differences they have) to just for once work together and vaccinate the whole planet as close to simultaneously as possible and vaccinate anybody who can't pay free of charge.
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Because an unspecified region full of anti-vaxxer bumfucks (unspecified, because I have no data to warrant accusing the good people of Arkansas of being a bunch of anti-vaxxer bumfucks), will act as a virus sanctuary where the virus is free to infect and mutate until the vaccine you got offers little to no protection.
Okay hold your horses. If you idea of the covid vaccine is that we will eliminate the virus like we did with polio then you are going to be very disappointed. Eliminating this virus flat out will not be possible. It happily transfers between people and animals. It is itself a variant of other very common corona viruses. It's not unique or specific enough that we ever have a hope in hell in of eradicating it.
However... what we have seen so far is that coronaviruses are incredibly common, the overwhelming maj
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Managers want to not do their job.
If they can't check to see if you look busy they have to actually evaluate your work.
It's just that simple.
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ask google to send your workstation home. problem solved. or, buy a second monitor, cheapskate.
what?
huh?
oh i see it now.
FUCK OFF middle manager boomer. Die of covid already. Fuck you.
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