I suppose the classic way of viewing it would be "so long as the employee maintains their workload" then there are little grounds for criticism?
Except the classic model isn't near as prevalent as it once was. It's far more prevalent to heap up more work on fewer employees, with the road to profit being to keep one boot up the hind end to assure that matters of family, smart phones, etc. do not become an excessive distraction
Working from home alters the paradigm of power in such relationships.
Euclid I am not convinced that any of the lockdown or distancing measures have saved one life or prevented any transmission.
I am not convinced that any of the lockdown or distancing measures have saved one life or prevented any transmission.
There's a pretty good case that lockdowns and distancing has helped, though it would be equally correct to say that not all areas needed lockdowns. Best example of the latter is comparing Montana and Wyoming. The former had a lockdown in effect for several weeks, and the latter didn't. As of now, Wyoming has had a slightly lower per capita death rate than Montana, but a higher per capita confirmed infection rate. This would argue that lockdowns were not that much of a help in rural areas as rural people don't come in close proximity to a large number of people over the course of a normal day.
Another funny thing, the main hotspots for infection in Idaho, Montana, Utah and Wyoming were in areas with large ski resorts.
OTOH, the experience with the larger cities shows that lockdowns can make a substantial difference. Perhaps more importantly would a requirement that anyone traveling out of a high infection rate area be quarantined until thay can be shown to be free of infection. Note Texas has the best record of the high population states and they were requiring travelers from NYC and NOLA to quarantine prior to the Texas lockdown. Montana is now requiring anyone returning from out of state to quarantine.
The upshot is that the lockdowns could have been handled in a much more intelligent manner - focusing on restrictions that have a proven benefit. I also would not be surprised that the timing and manner of some of the lockdowns were done in part for reasons that were not essential for the protection of the public health.
zugmann But even at our work - it's rare for a manager to be around anymore. They manage by Iphone.
I like it that way. Way harder for them to harass you if they aren't physically there.
Greetings from Alberta
-an Articulate Malcontent
MiningmanStudents are worse. It won't be like a regular Semester.. it will be spread out all over the place. There is very poor discipline with students far too much of the same work showing up multiple times, copying, or someone else ( the girlfriend/boyfriend) doing the work.
That will weed itself out in time. Eventually you will get a better class of students that will take it seriously, or they won't pass. And that'll be key since a lot of jobs will be work at home in the future.
It's not going to change overnight. But even at our work - it's rare for a manager to be around anymore. They manage by Iphone.
It's been fun. But it isn't much fun anymore. Signing off for now.
The opinions expressed here represent my own and not those of my employer, any other railroad, company, or person.t fun any
Euclid I think working at home can be very effective for business. It should save money for the company. But there needs to be discipline and accountability for the performance of work. That is why I think the solution to take advantage of this efficiency is to pay people working at home as independent contractors getting paid by the task accomplished. That should not be hard to keep track of in this age of information. Then you will have accountablity and discipline.
I think working at home can be very effective for business. It should save money for the company. But there needs to be discipline and accountability for the performance of work. That is why I think the solution to take advantage of this efficiency is to pay people working at home as independent contractors getting paid by the task accomplished. That should not be hard to keep track of in this age of information. Then you will have accountablity and discipline.
This scenario would also make it a lot easier for employers to fire workers and cut benefits etc.
You want to get rid of a contractor for any reason? Simply stop giving them work.
charlie hebdo I think you are mostly wrong. I think the need for a physical structure for offices will be much less, as in many fields the work is on computers and/or online anyway. Business travel will also be less needed. You subscribe to out-of-date notions of management.
I think you are mostly wrong. I think the need for a physical structure for offices will be much less, as in many fields the work is on computers and/or online anyway. Business travel will also be less needed. You subscribe to out-of-date notions of management.
There may not be a need for physical structure of a formal office, but what is needed is the sense that somebody is watching to make sure the company gets a day's worth of work out of employees. You don't have to believe me. I am just predicting that companies will find this out on their own and they will act accordingly. This will be because the massive amount of working at home during this pandemic will provide the eye-popping data showing the lack of efficiency.
You may think management notions are out of date, but I can assure you that management does not see a day's work for a day's pay as an outdated notion. But they don't want to take the time to micromanage this in the workplace. So they just figure if they can see your face at your work station, they are getting some productivity. I have read articles saying that companies have found that letting people work from home gives the company about one hour per day of work for 8 hours pay.
People rationalize that they are allowed to be home, they are on the clock from starting time to quitting time, and because they are allowed to be at home, they are allowed to do all the home things on the clock. These are things like cleaning the house and running errands.
I agree with Euclid. Working from home is not productive at all... I believe people will be paid piecemeal for work done .
Students are worse. It won't be like a regular Semester.. it will be spread out all over the place. There is very poor discipline with students far too much of the same work showing up multiple times, copying, or someone else ( the girlfriend/boyfriend) doing the work.
We have to do 4 Field Schools and 6 Labs all in one year now instead of 2. That will require their presence and there will be a traffic jam of time with all the other instructors facing the same. With weather considerations this is a real problem up here.
Every Sunday at midnight I get a huge in rush of emails and questions almost always things that I posted answers to the previous week.
"Must have gone to my junk folder" is the most common story.
The usual come to class model has to be thrown out.. the years will have to be spread out with individuals proceeeding at their own pace and scheduled times for Field Schools that you can jump in on whenever you want.
SD70DudeMaybe he actually works for a railroad.
I think he's just an automated bot Kalmbach installed.
zugmann SD70Dude You MUST be in mid-level to upper management. I hope he is, but I have my doubts.
SD70Dude You MUST be in mid-level to upper management.
I hope he is, but I have my doubts.
Maybe he actually works for a railroad.
Suddenly everything is starting to make sense.
SD70DudeYou MUST be in mid-level to upper management.
Euclid But regular employees are just too pampered with empowerment to turn loose to work at home.
But regular employees are just too pampered with empowerment to turn loose to work at home.
You MUST be in mid-level to upper management.
Nice to know that's what you think of us.
EuclidThis will be intersting to follow. I expect it will put the last nail in the coffin of "working from home." The news will pour in about how the work from home productivity is about 10% of what it would be if working at the workplace.
I think it will be the complete opposite. Stuff is getting done without 6 hours of meetings about meetings.
zugmannHonestly, I think it's more of a social experiment to see how far we can take telecommuting, and whether businesses will need as large of a physical footprint as prior.
This will be intersting to follow. I expect it will put the last nail in the coffin of "working from home." The news will pour in about how the work from home productivity is about 10% of what it would be if working at the workplace.
However, it may usher in a new idea of everybody working from home as independent contractors paid per task.
Hey, who put up all these odd looking boxes with the antennas on them while we were in quarantine?
Here is something that is not simple. Cuomo says it's shocking:
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/05/06/ny-gov-cuomo-says-its-shocking-most-new-coronavirus-hospitalizations-are-people-staying-home.html
Honestly, I think it's more of a social experiment to see how far we can take telecommuting, and whether businesses will need as large of a physical footprint as prior.
The $1200 checks will pail to the trillions we will be giving to the large business, but I'm sure you know that. But it's a handy diversion, as you said.
zugmann Euclid The agenda behind shutting down the economy is aimed at defeating the President in the coming election. If you really think it's that simple, I would feel sorry for you. But since I think you are incapable of that level of incompetence, I will just write it off as you trying to start another long back and forth you are ,oh, so famous for.
Euclid The agenda behind shutting down the economy is aimed at defeating the President in the coming election.
If you really think it's that simple, I would feel sorry for you.
But since I think you are incapable of that level of incompetence, I will just write it off as you trying to start another long back and forth you are ,oh, so famous for.
zugmannBut let me ask you this: to what political agenda is shutting down the economy?
The $2 trillion in stimulus payments are a significant transfer of wealth, by any measure. I'm not saying that the virus was an intentional pretext. But it might have made a dandy diversion.
The $1,200 checks sent to joe lunchpail more or less as hushmoney, while more significant "assistance" is doled out with as little supervision as possible.
Just a theory.
EuclidThe agenda behind shutting down the economy is aimed at defeating the President in the coming election.
zugmannBut let me ask you this: to what political agenda is shutting down the economy? If anything I think the big political agenda is to get the economy under some pretense of "pretend normal" in time for the elections coming up.
The agenda behind shutting down the economy is aimed at defeating the President in the coming election. And it is opposed to the counter agenda to getting the economy back to normal, as you say. This would be that so-called "roaring ecnonmy-- best economy the country has ever had."
I was never been convinced of that slogan. In my opinion, our economy has not roared in a long time. Actually, it has been limp since the housing bubble recession began. An economy with only 1-2% GDP growth is not roaring.
Then we put tariffs on China with the delusion that this pours money into the U.S. Treasury, when actually, it is pulling our economy down. Now comes the intentional shutdown of the economy. I suspet few people are aware of what it sure to come as the chickens come home to roost. A severe recession is inevitable. That means shortages like we have never imagined possible, a total lack of jobs, and very low pay for active jobs. With the incredible intertia of this trend, the low point may not arrive until next year.
The suffocation of the lockdowns will be replaced by oppression of the depression. People will need hobbies.
I hear that the President will soon release a report on how the virus escaped the P4 lab in Wuhan. There is a lot of confusion in the news about this lab origin theory. It is often framed as a dispute over whether the virus came from animal-to-human transmission at the wet market; versus whether it was created in the lab. This is being applied to the President by implying that he believes it was created in the lab. Actually, he has never claimed that. The issue is only whether the virus was accidentally released from the lab.
What the news seems to be misundstanding is that the virus did not need to be created in the lab to be in the lab. There has been plenty of news about the lab people goint out into caves to capture bats and bringing them back to the lab for coronavirus research. So an inadvertent spread from the lab may have been by the same animal-to-human transmission as would have occurred with a wet market origin.
The only evidence I have heard implicating the lab origin is from reports from people touring the lab in 2018, and reporting lax safety measures that were insufficient for the P4 rating.
EuclidOh I don't doubt that second waves and mutations are possible. I am just referring how they may be used to extend the economic shutdown for a political agenda.
You're just proposing self-fulfilling procphecies?
If the measures taken were not neccesary, then you'll say so. If the measures taken have "flattened the curve", then you'll say they were unneccesary.
But let me ask you this: to what political agenda is shutting down the economy? If anything I think the big political agenda is to get the economy under some pretense of "pretend normal" in time for the elections coming up.
Oh I don't doubt that second waves and mutations are possible. I am just referring how they may be used to extend the economic shutdown for a political agenda.
EuclidAny news about the virus mutating into something worse or coming back in a second wave is likely to be propaganda for the agenda.
You need to separate those two very carefully.
At least some of the recent "reports" of virus mutation are definitely in the sinister-agenda 'spider eggs' sort of spin category. A credible report will involve (1) a proper and traceable sequence of the viral genome(s) involved; (2) a precise subsequence, or protein-folding discussion, that indicates where the supposed mutation has occurred and what effect it has on protein(s) produced, and (3) some molecular-docking analysis that shows where its supposed 'virulent' effect may be induced.
We no longer live in an age of mystery and 'get the serum to Nome' medicine. This work was done within the equivalent of two weeks' time by the Chinese and the CDC in the initial design of testing, and it could be done again in similar or shorter timeframe now.
I also think it is highly unlikely that mutation in SARS-CoV-2 necessarily makes it more virulent. This is not a situation as in bacteria where acquired resistance is a factor of selection in a rapidly-breeding population where features of life, like conjugation, are active. The present virulence is the consequence of likely no more than one or two of the eight point mutations observed in SARS-CoV-2; the 'difficulty' is more in that the virus collapses fully to a bad cold once the characteristics that spur progression to ARDS are absent ... and this is very likely in the mutation that selects for preferential binding and conformance to ACE2. The likelihood of this being 'affected' through subsequent point mutation is almost vanishingly slight, and further reduced by the necessity of said point mutation making the binding more 'effective' (in terms of whatever is triggering futile immune-system priming or chronic futile activation).
The second-wave issues are related to immune response, not viral characteristics. Again, this is not influenza, let alone something like AIDS, so while 'more data is required' on how infected-and-recovered populations express characteristics of historically-observed humoral immunity, we can expect the normal kinds of resistance to a coronaviral 'common cold' to apply here -- the difference being basically this: if the human immune response is to the spike protein that binds to ACE2, there will be no second wave; if it is to a different viral protein that subsequently shifts, you can expect a second wave of some sort in some populations. This is not rocket science to understand or learn.
If you knew a shred of epidemiology you would have seen a demonstration right before your eyes, over the last couple of months. In fact, I expect there to be more object lessons for you, here and there, in the next few months as some of the more effective expedients come to be relaxed or ignored.
With the almost incredibly slipshod response most of the world put up to this infection, COVID-19 should have gone through the world population dramatically by now. (And the results would likely have followed the early predictions of the 'boomer remover'; there would be hundreds of thousands if not millions of elderly dead, terrible scenes of horror and pain in the death camps that are 'field hospitals', the anticipated debacle regarding ventilator shortages and home-brewed disaster replacements for them... after which the world would do more or less as it did in 1920, mourn the dead appropriately or not, pick up in a couple of years, and move on. Few segments of the economy would really miss large numbers of the retired for long; the effect on Social Security going upside-down might actually be pushed out some years past 2028. The worst of the nursing homes where the lion's share of the scourges would be observed would have to close ... after which, presumably, a new crop of cheap-profit exploitive operators would buy up the assets and start the same old business at the same old stands up again.
There are plenty of places to look for, and probably find, expedient combinations of conspiracy without dismissing SIP/SD entirely. It is even easier to find where aspects of 'feel-good' or political expediency factored into 'wrong' parts of the response -- of course, in my opinion 'tis better to fix them objectively than throw the various babies out with all the dirty water. The 'catch' is in distinguishing a child from a floating mass of turds, so to speak, which can be difficult for policymakers who have difficulty in seeing during retrocranial inversion.
I think your tinfoil hat is a little loose.
In my opinion, this whole pandemic saga is about 10% news and 90% spin for a very sinister ulterior motive, which includes making the lockdown last until it destroys the economy under the pretext of saving lives. Any news about the virus mutating into something worse or coming back in a second wave is likely to be propaganda for the agenda. I am not convinced that any of the lockdown or distancing measures have saved one life or prevented any transmission.
GERALD L MCFARLANE JR May not matter now that the virus has mutated into a more virilent form that makes it easier to transmit the infection between people.
May not matter now that the virus has mutated into a more virilent form that makes it easier to transmit the infection between people.
I've seen more articles downplaying this story than supporting it. It's more common for viruses to mutate into milder forms as there are more chances for the virus to spread if it has a mild effect on the host.
Overemod, more details are available on a continiuing basis on the WWw.jpost.com and Israel Times website.
GERALD L MCFARLANE JR May not matter now that the virus has mutated into a more virilent form that makes it easier to transmit the infection between people. I wonder if that's the same monoclonal antibody tested by the Dutch.
May not matter now that the virus has mutated into a more virilent form that makes it easier to transmit the infection between people. I wonder if that's the same monoclonal antibody tested by the Dutch.
It is coming down to an often realized saying. "The more we learn the less we realize we know." Here we are going into a stronger distancing until the health semi experts get a handle on covid-19. Certain that our politicians know less than nothing.
If this mutation actually is true then the spread of it will be disastorous to the location that it has originated.
What we as citizens need to do is work to get the USA back to operating as a coherent nation and not split over petty differences.
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