Friday, September 30, 2022

Home or Office? – II

On to this month, and reaching out in scope a bit:

“Working from home around the world,” by Cevat Giray Aksoy et al. in Brookings on September 7th, offered that “no other episode in modern history involves such a pronounced and widespread shift in working arrangements in such a compressed time frame.”  That could stand up even with differing definitions of “modern history.”  The authors looked at 27 countries, and found that in all 27, men with children wanted remote work more than that in offices, with women in 25 agreeing.  They also opined that working from home would become and stay more common than in the past 18 months.  Will the 30-year pendulum track really shorten that much?

Speaking of going back and forth, a day later we also got David Brooks in The New York Times, telling us about “The Immortal Awfulness of Open Plan Workplaces.”  After calling such arrangements “exhibit 4,000” of “folly on a grand scale,” he explained that they reduce “face-to-face collaboration” as “people can take only so much social interaction,” with one study showing that not only did not increase but dropped 70%.  As well, in such setups “people will create norms that discourage communication,” they often “held back their sincere thoughts on phone calls because they didn’t want their co-workers to overhear them,” they lost “morale and productivity,” and their “health” was worsened outright.  As Brooks said, “a lot of the evidence I’m citing here is not new” – I can attest to that, as such office arrangements came and went in my AT&T workplaces almost thirty years ago.  In all, this is another case of disregarding lessons of the past being more expensive than extra office space.

Something possibly new, however – at least its misnomer of a name – has appeared lately, for example in Deanna Cuadra’s September 8th Benefit News “’A silent protest’: CPO at Headspace Health explains why workers are ’quiet quitting’.”  One definition of this phenomenon, provided by Gallup, is “workers fulfilling their job description, but refusing to go above and beyond or invest themselves emotionally in their work.”  It’s a combination of setting personal boundaries and just plain reducing engagement, one positive and one neutral for workers but both negative to their management.  Quiet quitting has been a response to blurred lines both in time, with so many people responding to emails and the like around the clock, and in space with remote work, along with the general trend of workers feeling they have more personal and professional choices – it will get other names, some reflecting biases and interests, and will mushroom.

One way, described on the same day and in the same publication, to encourage people to report in person is Natalie Wong’s “Free NFL tickets?  It’s the latest attempt to get workers back to the office.”  These are actually drawings, provided by a New York City landlord with a rich supply of VIP-suite passes to Giants and Jets games, and follows a similar offering for concerts in the same stadium, along with more pedestrian “ice cream socials, free coffee and donuts.”  Sexy ideas for some, but the 238 pairs of football tickets may not be enough to get people thinking of that as a perk instead of just another lottery. 

A look at the damage of in-person interruptions was the core of “So You Wanted to Get Work Done at the Office?” (Emma Goldberg, The New York Times, September 11th).  The author cited studies showing more done by remotely-located coders and call center workers, not whether non-production workers would improve.  One idea she uncovered was practiced in a Washington law firm, in which employees have lights on their desks indicating availability to be approached, a green meaning yes.  Reasonable but abusable, and only one facet of this situation.

It may be true that “There’s a Better Way to Reclaim Your Time Than ‘Quiet Quitting’,” (Laura Vanderkam, The New York Times, September 13th), and Vanderkam’s suggestions of getting more fulfilling activities and managing time better out of work is not much of an antidote.  Indeed, the times when my work attitude was closest to this new concept was when I had the most happening outside of it, and I needed to severely compartmentalize my job.  What energizes people varies as much as the life-structure choices they make, and pushing them indirectly, as the author here might be advocating, has little chance of long-term success.  Line workers will decide – and that will guide the theory and execution of both remote and office work.

Friday, September 23, 2022

Home or Office? – I

What I get for not writing posts on this timely topic for eight weeks is enough material for two – and some intriguing and worthy ideas have come up.  So here are ones from August.

The first I saw was “What Remote Work Debate?  They’ve Been Back at the Office for a While.” (Emma Goldberg, The New York Times, August 1).  It shows how different the rules can be between companies, with high in-person-turnout tendencies for those based in areas with less than 300,000 people and “where Covid lockdowns were shortest,” and the lowest in the most “competitive markets where employees are more likely to call the shots.”  Although New York and San Francisco “office occupancy” had reached 41% and 39% of its pre-coronavirus levels soon before article time, in many other places it was somewhere around 75% - a huge geographical difference. 

Some people quoted in that story were glad to get out of their houses, which may be good for them, as opined by Edith Cooper in the August 6th New York Times in “Don’t Return to the Office For Your Boss.  Go Back for Yourself.”  This business co-founder and former Goldman Sachs executive cited “the value of actually being in a room with co-workers,” because of “the shared experience, the serendipity of talking to people not directly related” to their work, “the exposure to a diversity of ideas and perspectives,” and “the chance to look up and say, “I never thought about that.”  She said if she had worked remotely earlier in her career, she “would have missed out on finding the friends and mentors who played critical roles,” and that being there in person helped her learn “how my industry works, the nature of power hierarchies and how to get along with all kinds of people.”  Only a partial view, but one with merit, and that’s all we have now anyway.

On the same side, the next day Bradford Betz told us in Fox Business that “Malcolm Gladwell says people must return to the office to regain ‘sense of belonging.’”  Gladwell claimed “he was frustrated with the inability of people in positions of leadership to effectively communicate to their employees the importance of returning to the office.”  I have read about managements insisting that their workers do that, but little about selling them on its value, which though may not be much to those less ambitious or willing to trade possible involvement and advancement for the advantages of their jobs having smaller footprints.

Turning the tables on an issue facing mind workers was Laura Vanderkam’s August 13th New York Times “Don’t Feel Guilty about Working on Vacation – or About Vacationing at Work.”  Since we saw that “a 2022 survey of over 20,000 professionals found that 54 percent of people said they weren’t sure they could fully “unplug from work” while taking paid time off,” why not the opposite as well?  Maybe “it is also OK, however, to take little vacations during working hours,” such as “an hour outside reading a novel, an afternoon bike ride, lunch with a friend, leaving the office (or desk at home) a little early to shop for and cook a special dinner:  If you’re thoughtful and intentional about it, dispensing with strict boundaries between, work and the rest of life can make a fuller, less burned-out life possible.”  This philosophy, for some, could be just the ticket.

Most businesses would prefer employees come into the office, so is it surprising that “You may soon be asked to take a pay cut to keep working from home” (Don Lee, Los Angeles Times, August 23rd)?  This extension of paying less for people in lower-priced markets has popped up in Great Britain, and could become common here if the “tight labor market” eases.  The differentials should not be large, as companies benefit from not needing to furnish as much office space, but workers may respond by putting in fewer hours when at home – it would be tempting for many to arrange for their employers to gain nothing on the deal.  I will watch this one to see if it becomes a trend.

Finally for August, we go back to Emma Goldberg in the New York Times, where the August 28th Sunday Business section led with “The Office’s Last Stand,” subtitled “It’s either the end of the era of hybrid improvisation around where work takes place – or the beginning of outright rebellion.”  Goldberg started with management’s attempts “to get employees to return” to offices, moved to the “more than one-third of U.S. workers” able to work remotely who want to do that all the time, corporate concern that “if they don’t persuade their employees to come back now, the new norms of flexible work will be hard to unstick,” and confrontations where “bosses say the office deadlines are real; workers are testing just how much they mean that.”  A battle, but nothing like a last stand.  That’s a long time off.  For now, there are other perspectives – for more, see next week’s post.

Friday, September 16, 2022

Uber, Lyft, and Other Gigs: What’s Happened, and Where Are They Now?

I haven’t checked in on this section of work for a while, where news has been slow, but there has been some.  The last time we looked, ridesharers Uber and Lyft, along with lodging-provider Airbnb, were losing money, and owed their ability to do business at all to the failure of governments to regulate them as the hoteliers and taxi companies they are.  The other gigs, such as TaskRabbit work assignments running from minutes to months, were flourishing, especially since the pandemic messed up many jobs in particular and the ability to work physically with others in general.

A gaping hole was sealed in one place, as “California’s Gig Worker Law Is Unconstitutional, Judge Rules” (Kate Conger, The New York Times, August 20th, 2021).  This, approved by voters in late 2020, “backed by Uber, Lyft, DoorDash and other gig economy platforms, carved out a third classification for workers, granting gig workers limited benefits while preventing them from being considered employees of the tech giants,” was overturned, as it “restricted the Legislature from making gig workers eligible for workers’ compensation.”  Unfortunately, the law’s “unusual provisions” may have prevented this decision from becoming a solid national precedent.

That, though, would have been unnecessary if all agreed that, per Greg Bensinger in the October 17th New York Times, “For Uber and Lyft, the Rideshare Bubble Bursts.”  This piece focuses on representations these companies have made, that they would remove the need for vehicles to be privately owned, that they would cut traffic congestion, that they would reduce pollution, and that they would even increase city transit use.  None have materialized, and Lyft and Uber have neither been profitable nor consistently able to offer low fares. 

Another problem with ridesharers insisting that their workers are independent contractors was exposed in “Drivers’ Lawsuit Claims Uber and Lyft Violate Antitrust Laws” (Kellen Browning and Noam Scheiber, June 21st, also in the Times).  This suit, which explored what conditions for rideshare drivers would be like if they were actually autonomous, would go away if the companies would admit their drivers were employees, which, as they are correspondingly controlled and restricted, is clearly true.  And such a case got one of these firms a clear loss, as “Uber Agrees to Pay N.J. $100 Million in Dispute Over Drivers’ Employment Status” (Cade Metz, The New York Times, September 12th), in which Uber “owed four years of back taxes because they had classified drivers in the state as contractors rather than employees.”

As the differing above show, there has been no unified front against these abuses, so it is not surprising to read that “Gig Workers Tire of Waiting for Action From Biden’s White House” (Kellen Browning and Michael D. Shear, September 2nd, once more in the Times).  The president, when campaigning, spoke out against “the refusal by ride-hailing companies to treat their drivers as employees,” but “a year and a half into Mr. Biden’s presidency, little has been done at the federal level to address independent contractors” and “enforcement of existing labor laws has not been notably beefed up,” concerns shared even by his “longtime allies.”  Perhaps, if cases such as the above keep popping up, we can get the national effort we need. 

Have you been wondering “If the Job Market Is So Good, Why Is Gig Work Thriving?”  Author Lydia DePillis told us on August 15th in The New York Times that such propositions, with numbers of participants “rebounding steadily after a sharp decline,” are still popular for “the ability to work when and as much as you want” and that they can “supplement primary jobs that don’t provide enough to live on or are otherwise unsatisfying.”  These things mean that gig propositions in general will be here to stay.  But with stronger conventional employment, it should be expected that “Job Hunters Are Increasingly Searching for Gigs That Pay $20 (or More) an Hour” (Sarah Hansen, Money.com, August 30th).  That is a rising cut-point, as, on Indeed’s Hiring Lab, “searches for jobs with $20-per-hour wages have spiked more than 35%, while searches for $15 wages have fallen more than 57%.”  So, if your gig proposition is going unfilled, the solution may be the same as for nonproductive conventional job ads – raise the pay.  And that is where they are now.

Friday, September 9, 2022

Work-Related Technology: What’s Been Happening, and a Good Question About It

For something progressing since Willy Loman’s 1940s admonition to his son that he shouldn’t do anything menial when in one, since “they have office boys,” improvement this century so far, except for things involving telephones, has been lethargic.  Will it stay that way?

For the first potential exception we have a labor-replacer, “Biometric Payments Are Replacing Cash and Card at Grocery Stores” (Neil Campbell, Vision Times, June 10-16).  The month before, “Mastercard announced its Biometric Checkout Program,” which allows people, possibly laden with purchases, to authorize payments with “a quick smile or wave.”  As of press time, the service was only used in a Sao Paulo grocery chain, but something related has been in place in China for five years or more.  I see no reason why it couldn’t work throughout this country as well.

A sort of old laggard, long promising to employ more specialized technicians and far fewer line workers, may be getting new life, as shown in “3-D Printing Grows Beyond Its Novelty Roots” (Steve Lohr, The New York Times, July 3rd).  I see no leaps and bounds here, and we knew that “we have proven the technology works” – that is its strongest point, though one leavened by it being “too slow, too expensive, and too ridden with defects” – but other steady, revenue generating applications beyond the “specialized parts” that have barely justified it are reasonable enough for one company, VulcanForms, to have “six giant 3-D printers” with expectations for 20 more in 2023.  The technology still lacks its big purpose – until it gets one that works and fulfills high demand in practice, 3-D printing must be considered only a niche service.

The title of Kate Dwyer’s August 19th New York Times piece may have been “Don’t Worry, We’re Not Actually Monitoring Your Productivity,” but its subject is nothing new – I experienced that as a late-1980s data entry clerk in a shop that didn’t even have personal computers.  This article was about a simulation of an unnamed program that harassed workers with laughably short-term progress assessments.  As I have written before, that sort of thing is fertile soil for growing unions.

Now we know that at least one chief executive officer has read science fiction!  “Entirely robot-run, Mezli launches its first ‘fully autonomous’ restaurant in California” (Kristen Altus, Fox Business, September 2nd) seems overdue if anything, but is actually in business in San Francisco’s Mission Bay area – you can go there and order “Mediterranean-style bowls,” with detail requests quantified into “more than 60,000 menu combinations,” and no human will touch them until “customers retrieve their food from a smart locker.”  This store, less expensive to build as well as to operate, does, for now, have people on locations to handle complaints, but even those will be replaced by “email and phone contact.”  There are nontechnical issues here, such as potentially reliving the failure of mid-century automats to last, but this company and the rest of us will learn a lot from this experience.  I say such restaurants, helped by their smaller footprints, will get at least a significant long-term niche. 

Another reminder from my corporate past arrived in a previous New York Times piece from Steve Lohr, “Why Isn’t New Technology Making Us More Productive?” (May 24th).  In the mid-1990s, managements were high on Internet connections, but they were then mainly for games and pornography – the user interfaces, reliability, and speed had not yet arrived.  Among Lohr’s general principles, a “vital ingredient” in building economies is “a nation’s skill in creating and commercializing innovation, which makes investment and workers more productive.”  After a remarkably standstill 20 years, we may be improving by, for example, using artificial intelligence to assist instead of replace help-desk personnel.  We also needed the reminder that simply creating advancements hardly means that they will be implemented and durable, especially valuable since our problems are almost always after that – see, for example, our experience with driverless cars.  It may turn out that many improvements will have to sneak in through the back door of incremental changes – but if they get there, we will, eventually, benefit.  And that’s what matters. 

Friday, September 2, 2022

August Data: Employment Increases Cooled Slightly, With Mixed Report – AJSN Reports Latent Demand Down 350,000 to 16.7 Million

This morning’s Bureau of Labor Statistics Employment Situation Summary looked fine at the top, with its 315,000 net new nonfarm positions vindicating the published 300,000 estimate, and covering several times our population-increase requirements – but what was in it otherwise?

Seasonally adjusted unemployment rose 0.2% to 3.7%, with 300,000 more or 6.0 million jobless.  On the unadjusted side, there were 350,000 fewer people working but an almost unchanged number unemployed, 1.1 million more saying they did not want a job, and unemployment at a third-straight 3.8%.  The counts of long-term jobless or out for 27 weeks or longer and those temporarily laid off were unchanged or virtually so.  The two measures of how common it is for Americans to be either working or one step away, the employment-population ratio and the labor force participation rate, both improved, reaching 60.1%, up 0.1%, and 62.4%, up a surprising 0.3%, respectively.  Clear downsides were in the number working part-time for economic reasons or holding such work while seeking a full-time opportunity, up another 200,000, and average private nonfarm payroll wages, dropping away from inflation with a weak 9-cent gain to $32.36. 

The American Job Shortage Number or AJSN, the indicator showing how many new positions could easily be filled if all knew they were readily available, lost substantially, as follows:


This morning’s Bureau of Labor Statistics Employment Situation Summary looked fine at the top, with its 315,000 net new nonfarm positions vindicating the published 300,000 estimate, and covering several times our population-increase requirements – but what was in it otherwise?

Seasonally adjusted unemployment rose 0.2% to 3.7%, with 300,000 more or 6.0 million jobless.  On the unadjusted side, there were 350,000 fewer people working but an almost unchanged number unemployed, 1.1 million more saying they did not want a job, and unemployment at a third-straight 3.8%.  The counts of long-term jobless or out for 27 weeks or longer and those temporarily laid off were unchanged or virtually so.  The two measures of how common it is for Americans to be either working or one step away, the employment-population ratio and the labor force participation rate, both improved, reaching 60.1%, up 0.1%, and 62.4%, up a surprising 0.3%, respectively.  Clear downsides were in the number working part-time for economic reasons or holding such work while seeking a full-time opportunity, up another 200,000, and average private nonfarm payroll wages, dropping away from inflation with a weak 9-cent gain to $32.36. 

The American Job Shortage Number or AJSN, the indicator showing how many new positions could easily be filled if all knew they were readily available, lost substantially, as follows:




The improvement came from fewer people wanting work but not looking for it for a year or more, taking 229,000 away, and a 122,000 reduction from not as many discouraged.  The other components above, as a group, almost precisely broke even.  The share of the AJSN from those officially unemployed is still about one-third, with a 0.7% gain to 33.7%, and compared with a year before the AJSN is down over 2.1 million, almost all of that from lower unemployment. 

On the pandemic side, there were mild changes between July 16th’s and August 16th’s New York Times data.  The seven-day rolling average of new daily cases fell 23% to 100,854 – the same for deaths rose 10% to 467, hospitalizations increased 3% to 41,830, and vaccinations were up 18% to 275,267.  As our situation becomes a de facto endemic, we see no indication that people are overly endangering themselves by working.

So what happened this morning?  It was a strange report, with contradictory numbers, and a settling one, with, quite possibly, narrow ranges becoming established.  A goodly number of people seem to have left their jobs, either moving to the fringes of work or claiming no interest.  There are ever more positions out there, but, between slower wage gains, plenty of people not upgrading their part-time employment as they want to do, and more job advertisements, their quality may be dropping.  That is not good, and many potential employees, with higher standards than two years ago, are being disappointed.  In September, when more people go back to work, we may see better numbers including an even lower AJSN.  This time, however, we still improved, so the turtle eked out a modest step forward.