Work from Home- the lasting result of the Chinese Kung Flu crisis

[Polishprince]

This Covid bullshit will be over, but regardless of how the post-mortem of this Liberal Panic comes down, one of the effects will be a massive increase in working and learning from home, instead of going to school and work.

This will be huge as Americans will seek residences far from their employer's physical location or school, as they won't have to make frequent trips there. This will definitely help taxpayers as far as School taxes too. School Districts bills for utilities, transportation and other expenses would plummet. Teachers unions would no longer have the taxpayers "over the barrel" as if they do go out on strike, school districts would be able to bring in teachers from Bangalore or elsewhere to continue teaching the kids online until the teachers can settle. Easy to do, as the educators would never have to come to the United States.

American society is changing rapidly.

Science | AAAS

www.sciencemag.org

 

[JackOfNoTrades]

This Covid bullshit will be over, but regardless of how the post-mortem of this Liberal Panic comes down, one of the effects will be a massive increase in working and learning from home, instead of going to school and work.

This will be huge as Americans will seek residences far from their employer's physical location or school, as they won't have to make frequent trips there. This will definitely help taxpayers as far as School taxes too. School Districts bills for utilities, transportation and other expenses would plummet. Teachers unions would no longer have the taxpayers "over the barrel" as if they do go out on strike, school districts would be able to bring in teachers from Bangalore or elsewhere to continue teaching the kids online until the teachers can settle. Easy to do, as the educators would never have to come to the United States.

American society is changing rapidly.

Science | AAAS

www.sciencemag.org

Work from home will continue to grow (as it has been for the last 5 years or so). Video conferencing and messaging software make communication and project management easy. People who are used to being in an office all the time just need to get used to the fact that they manage their work schedules. Bosses and managers need to be able to measure productivity without the need to micro-manage. It would cut down on physical plant and overhead for those companies. Not all jobs can be managed from home though.

School? I don't see that changing anytime soon. Mostly because of the socialization factor and the fact that a lot of parents don't have the option to have one parent stay at home and supervise the kids learning online. That and the fact that schools provide services like meals, after school care, and special learning services. Those don't really lend themselves to an online scenario.

 

[Polishprince]

This Covid bullshit will be over, but regardless of how the post-mortem of this Liberal Panic comes down, one of the effects will be a massive increase in working and learning from home, instead of going to school and work.

This will be huge as Americans will seek residences far from their employer's physical location or school, as they won't have to make frequent trips there. This will definitely help taxpayers as far as School taxes too. School Districts bills for utilities, transportation and other expenses would plummet. Teachers unions would no longer have the taxpayers "over the barrel" as if they do go out on strike, school districts would be able to bring in teachers from Bangalore or elsewhere to continue teaching the kids online until the teachers can settle. Easy to do, as the educators would never have to come to the United States.

American society is changing rapidly.

Science | AAAS

www.sciencemag.org

Work from home will continue to grow (as it has been for the last 5 years or so). Video conferencing and messaging software make communication and project management easy. People who are used to being in an office all the time just need to get used to the fact that they manage their work schedules. Bosses and managers need to be able to measure productivity without the need to micro-manage. It would cut down on physical plant and overhead for those companies. Not all jobs can be managed from home though.

School? I don't see that changing anytime soon. Mostly because of the socialization factor and the fact that a lot of parents don't have the option to have one parent stay at home and supervise the kids learning online. That and the fact that schools provide services like meals, after school care, and special learning services. Those don't really lend themselves to an online scenario.

Here's what you are failing to consider, Jack. If the parents are home working at their jobs, they will be home and be able to supervise their children while doing their own jobs. That's what my youngest sister is doing with her children during this event. The children do their schooling online, and she does her work online. Every one avoids commuting and all that bullshit.


You're right that this was already occurring, but this pandemic bullshit is accelerating the movement and promoting the idea of decentralization.

 

[shockedcanadian]

I've learned more in less than a year of online courses and personal reading than I did in all my years in university. The total cost? $0 (though a WHOLE lot of hours, often 12+ a day).

I've listened to advanced A.I conferences (in fact, I've sought them out), and I feel comfortable with the discussion, at least 50% of the subject matter, sometimes more depending on the subject. Any concepts I don't know, don't remember, or want to know more at a granular level, or, in it's context used, I simply search online. It's amazing.

The issue of learning from home is primarily self discipline, since you are on your own (I still sometimes fail in this regard, though, much less than in the past). Also, the feedback loop is missing, I can't just ask a teacher a question and receive an immediate response.

Thus, I am relegated to searching for answers online via forums, youtube videos, online posting etc. Python coding and libraries like tensorflow, keras, pytorch etc. related to machine learning are very deep and it's impossible to know everything (I felt much better when 25 year developers posted online they always use google, this is shared by many), it's to be reminded of syntax, structure and how a problem is being solved. You model general ideas and run with your own.

Could I have done this in my youth? Probably not as I'd be more interested in going out and playing sports and being with friends. I think for adults or those really focused on the subject matter, learning should be a lifelong endeavour and home online courses are invaluable. Definitely the future, even if just as supplemental.

 

[Auld Phart]

School?

I seem to remember, from my younger days, that kids in the Australian Outback did their schooling over ham radio. Lived too far apart to make going to school feasible. With advances in electronics, should be even easier these days.

 

[theHawk]

You know universities have to be panicking. How they keep duping people into paying tens of thousands of dollars for an education that be had on-line for a fraction of the cost? They won’t be able to indoctrinate as easily either.

 

[luchitociencia]

Home computers are not protected against hackers same as companies computers are.

Security will be a big issue.

 

[Polishprince]

You know universities have to be panicking. How they keep duping people into paying tens of thousands of dollars for an education that be had on-line for a fraction of the cost? They won’t be able to indoctrinate as easily either.

I think it really depends on what the university is teaching. A course in contract law or accounting can be done online. A course in urological surgery or periodontics, probably not so much.

 

[shockedcanadian]

Home computers are not protected against hackers same as companies computers are.

Security will be a big issue.

Yes, but even this can be mitigated. I worked at a company years ago in financial sales in which they provided us our laptops and it was the only way to connect to their network. Even that setup wouldn't fly today.

However, I imagine in todays world, if company could provide a laptop and you do your work entirely in the cloud, nothing saved on your local hard disk. I think also there is something called SMS login or, a local number generator which requires physical access to the key creator, its is random and changes, which allows you to login on top of your password (this is used by big accounts who play online poker on some sites for instance), it's quite difficult to access. I would also insist on a physical network connection to the local modem, no wifi.

Yes, you are using your local network to login, but, nothing is stored. Furthermore, this would generally be for projects with many components, so there might be 10 people working on it, and even if someone were able to somehow pick up your transmissions, it would only be one part of a bigger project.

It's certainly not perfect, but either is it in-house with spies, and local theft. Without question though, home from work is the future. It's cost effective. Let's just hope it isn't all outsourced.

 

[Gdjjr]

My DIL just celebrated working from home for 8 years-
My son, her husband, has become the Home School teacher. Probably 80% of his work is done from home anyway. His 2 kids and one of his buddy's kids are loving it!
Their school (private Baptist Academy) is using internet for lessons.

My youngest son is a contract outside sales rep- he's loving it! He gets to spend more time with his 15 month old daughter- when he wants to go out he enjoys the break-

I'm retired. IDGAF one way or the other- I go when "I" make the decision to go.

 

[Muhammed]

I think a lot of employers are going to find that they save money by having employees work from home, and a lot of employees will find that they prefer the autonomy of working from home.

Many are not going to want to go back to the old ways.

Some employees with smaller workloads may even find that they can work 2 hourly jobs at the same time without either employer knowing about the other.