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Remote Work

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Clarissa

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Working from home makes sense for highly organized individuals with extraordinary inner control. This is the tiniest of minorities. For everybody else, it’s a non-concept.

For years, I worked with this wonderful advisor, brilliant, competent, lightning-fast. It was a pleasure to direct students to her. Then she went remote and stopped answering messages. I was puzzled to discover that she still works for us. I literally haven’t heard from her in years. Her job is specifically to curate my department, so if I’m not hearing from her, nobody else is.

In the meantime, the second adviser assigned to us is doing the work of both.

So I’m with Elon here. If you want to stay home, quit the job and let those who do want to work show up.

8 responses to “Remote Work”

  1. Stringer Bell Avatar
    Stringer Bell

    This is a workforce that is already filtered for zero ambition, laziness, preferring stability over achievement etc. and you add WFH on top of it. Fucking insane.

    https://twitter.com/charliekirk11/status/1858524650336367000

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    1. Clarissa Avatar
      Clarissa

      I was just talking to a friend about it and I guessed 40%.

      85% is insane. Crowds of people doing absolutely nothing. And we never knew. Why is it only coming out now? It’s an absolute scandal.

      Liked by 1 person

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    2. methylethyl Avatar
      methylethyl

      How long has this been going on?

      Assuming it goes way back, because I know of someone who worked for the NIH for many years, and apparently ran a personal business out of the office the entire time. Which is pretty much what you can expect when you go out of your way to hire smart people for really dull jobs with 100% job security.

      But, you know, did the numbers go up with covid and the encouraging of “remote work”? Or is this a longterm, incurable culture of giving-no-show-jobs-to-friends-and-relatives thing?

      I’m encouraged by that prospect, actually– it means we could fire 85% of the federal workforce without any change in services. Imagine the savings!

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      1. methylethyl Avatar
        methylethyl

        This is, IIRC, exactly the kind of nepo job my husband was groomed for. His parents are still disappointed that he opted out of that, and they blame me.

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      2. Stringer Bell Avatar
        Stringer Bell

        Dismantling the administrative state will be Trump’s greatest challenge. These people will not go down without a fight. Some random Federal judge in Hawaii will declare it illegal. And if Trump really wants to get this done he’ll need to do an Andrew Jackson.

        “John Marshall has made his decision, now let him enforce it.”

        Please let that happen, God. You know I don’t ask for much.

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        1. methylethyl Avatar
          methylethyl

          Here’s hoping.

          Liked by 2 people

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  2. v07 Avatar
    v07

    I have a different opinion about these things. Based on my own observations, the percentage of those who can work from home productively is significantly higher than you think. (Please try to find another job, your current university is crushing your soul.) And those who do not want to work generally find the way to not work even when physically present in the office. And then the question becomes – whom should the managers please more? I’d say those who do the work…

    Some bosses just do not trust the workers to have motivation and structure… This offends the hard-working people and the others are offended by the need to work anyway.

    Some bosses just want to have an opportunity to walk into the employees office and discuss something whenever they please… In some lines of work it is justified, but not in all.

    Some bosses do not want to manage individual workers and make everybody work in-person in some kind of lowest common denominator approach, calling it fairness. Again, this offends those who actually do the work.

    And people who do the work tend to know that they do the work and will be able to find another job if necessary.

    And if we assume that Trump will be somehow beneficial for the economy, the unemployment rate will go down… Make your conclusions.

    And at this point something being promoted by Musk is an anti-advertisement for me. Cult of Musk is a symptom of the problems of the system…

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  3. Clarissa Avatar
    Clarissa

    “Please try to find another job, your current university is crushing your soul”

    -What do you mean? I love it here. I work 20 hours a week, it’s a bleeping paradise.

    “Based on my own observations, the percentage of those who can work from home productively is significantly higher than you think. “

    -I’m very productive. I think nobody can deny that I’m ultra, mega productive. My CV is at academia.edu and I invite everybody to judge for themselves if I’m productive. But it takes an enormous amount of energy, planning, self-monitoring, etc to keep working when I don’t have to and absolutely no penalty will accrue to me for doing ef-all. If it’s so hard for me, somebody without 5 college degrees, 20 yearly books on work optimization, a mega supportive family and a highly neoliberal sense of self doesn’t stand a chance. I simply don’t believe that many people are managing it. I only know one person on the planet who does it well, and it’s my husband. And even he does it through a corset of self-regulation activities that he is intellectually sophisticated enough to know he needs.

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A conservative literary critic and college professor

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