An employee asked me if he can WORK from HOME permanently. Here is what I told him...
...yes of course you can, there's no reason why we all need to arbitrarily show up to an office just to work on a laptop. Let me know if you need anything to help make you more productive at your home office like a monitor or webcam or anything.
Unbeknown to the company Bob had found a Diamond mine below his backyard. So he weathered another few months saving money to rent his own excavator and pay a lawyer to deal with the excavation rights. Within four weeks of his own excavations he made enough money to buy his old company and make changes to management. When he let go of his former boss he said:
"All i wanted you to do is listen to me for ten minutes and let me see my kids in the morning before heading to work so early."
Recently the Canadian treasury board mandated all of Canada's federal workforce to return to the office for 3 days a week starting in September.
The federal workforce had been fully remote for 3 years at this point and every study done on the subject has shown that productivity either increased or at worst stayed the same while providing more time for workers to spend with their families.
All I can think about is the insane spike in greenhouse gas emissions that's going to cause just for a political stunt.
I have a meeting later today for an employee who requested a reasonable accommodation to work from home for medical reasons, and it was declined (by the people who review the RA requests, not by me). The employee, like the rest of us, have been doing the job for over four years from home; how can anyone possibly make the case at this point that they need to come into the office?
The meeting description has a sentence in it that clearly states the medical documentation was sufficient to support working from home. So why are we having this meeting?
I, of course, completely support her request and will argue for it, if necessary. I wish I could come up with a similar justification for myself, honestly, but I cannot, and I'm not going to game the system and possibly affect people who really do need it.
(Our employer's whole return-to-office thing is driven by outside forces that have little to do with our work. I suspect our leadership would continue work from home if they could. Unfortunately their supervisors do not agree.)
Sounds like you're a good manager in a frustrating situation. Good luck with your meeting and hopefully you can talk some sense into whoever needs it.
I'm very lucky that my employer basically went totally remote first as soon as covid hit and made it clear it was a permanent change from the get go. I know many folks in this frustrating position of fully or partially in office mandates that really don't seem to be required for the work.
Thanks. Part of me wants to find an employer similar to yours, the other part of me is like, hey, I'm planning to retire in like 7 years.
There's a LOT of concern over what this return-to-office plan will do to staff - we think quite a few people will find other jobs. A few have said so out loud; who knows how many more are planning the same quietly (of course, some people also talk a big game, but when push comes to shove...will they really?). We're also running into more issues hiring; another manager I know had a candidate decline because the position wasn't remote and they didn't want to move here. When I talk to candidates, it's now the first thing I check, even before I schedule the interview - no point in wasting time for either of us if it's a non-starter.
It's kind of weird - we only have to go in once a week, which actually isn't that bad at all - for those of us who already live in the area. But it's harder to convince people to move across the country to a high cost of living location so they can sit in their apartment 4 of 5 days each week. But we have to support the local Popeye's fast food joint, I guess.
Update: They kicked me out of the meeting. The employee's first-line supervisor was still in it, and it was really short - they basically asked if the employee could do the job remotely or not. It sounded like they were going to approve the request. This whole meeting setup is very strange; it's never happened before on any accommodation request I've been involved with (maybe half a dozen over the years). Maybe they review a few at random or something.
If you work for a large company, then they are also in the real estate business. It's better for the real estate business if people work in their real estate and support the restaurants and other companies that rent from their real estate.
The truth is that [the] whole project is (most of the time) quite inaccurate and error-prone, and often involves way too little data to really make a judgment, despite my best efforts. It also involves my amateur method of “age-adjusting” the results to be comparable. So this whole project is quite inaccurate and shouldn’t be used for serious conclusions. But if you understand the inaccuracies involved, you still may find it interesting.
Wow it's almost like capitalisms profit motive encourages businesses to exploit the less fortunate because not doing so puts your business at a disadvantage.
Explain how $5/hr. is exploiting a Pilipino. I’ll wait.
EDIT: I note there are no explanations. My wife says it’s damned good pay back home. And for you economic geniuses, $5 there buys 2-4 times what it buys in America. $10-$20/hr. is exploitative? Beats American minimum wage by a long shot.
Anyway, we’re retiring there. I’ll live like a king on the little I’ve saved. Y’all keep paying 2-4x for the same loaf of bread and bottle of milk.
$5 an hour is an exploitative wage, it fundamentally does not matter the country we’re talking about. And there are no explanations because you gave 0 effort except for inviting an argument and no one was in the mood.
$5 in the Philippines probably has vastly more purchasing power than it does in the United States. If you’re supposed to pay them the same salary as to someone working in the US then why not just hire an American and have the dude in Philippines go back to picking coconuts for $2 and hour or something. I wouldn’t be surprised if the Philipino worker is more than happy with their salary and you might even be able to employ several people for the same amount of money.
This same effect applies to charities aswell. Donating money to some poor african country helps many more people than it does when given to a local charity.
Sure yes short term it is probably a good option for the average Filipino or any other person taking an American job in a foreign country for less money than that company would pay an American because yeah it does pay relatively well in their situation. However, it takes advantage of their material situation to pay them monetarily less than they would be paid in the US. Essentially it uses the fact that they need the money more (their demand) to pay them less. Is this not similar to paying any American poor person less because they need it more?
Regardless of how you feel about the morality of all that it’s fucking terrible for the Philippines. That Filipino labor is not benefitting the Filipino economy it’s benefitting the US economy. This might not be so bad if they were being paid more or even up to the amount that they make for that American company (though this would never happen under capitalism bc a company needs profit) because at the very least that loss of labor power would be supplemented with equivalent monetary gain.
So in short, outsourced jobs takes advantage of poor people to pay them less and strips foreign economies of their labor power
Is this not similar to paying any American poor person less because they need it more?
No because the poor american still has to pay high US prices for everything they buy. You can’t live a decent life in the US with $5 an hour but you can in the Philippines where the minimum wage is around $10 a DAY. Another commentor in this thread told how their relative bought a restaurant dinner for 12 people for 50 bucks in the Philippines and that includes the tip.
That Filipino labor is not benefitting the Filipino economy it’s benefitting the US economy.
This is not entirely true either. That Philipino working for the US company spends their earnings in the Philippines and that benefits their economy.
The company is still using a person’s material situation to pay them less. More purchasing power in their subjective economy is part of their material situation. They are still receiving monetarily less as is their country.
I directly covered your second point, while they do spend the money they earn from their American job within their economy they are not being paid the exact value of their labor because profit is being extracted so the amount of money they stimulate their economy with is not as valuable as their labor would be. I don’t want to explain the entire labor theory of value here because it would take up too much time and space but you can look into it if you’d like. Put simply, the profit that company makes is extracted from that employees labor meaning that some of their labor is being used not to benefit their country or people but another’s. Outsourcing is an extraction of mans most valuable resource from the less fortunate to the more
Yeah I’m not claiming these practices are without their issues but consider the alternative: if the company was forced to pay the Philipino worker the same salary they would pay an US worker then why would they hire a person in the Philippines? They wouldn’t. They’d hire an american instead and now the Philipino worker would need to find a local employer and it’s unlikely they would pay as much as the US based company does now.
Yes and that would be better not just for foreign countries but for the people of the US as well. However it would suck for business so it will never happen unless workers force it to happen
But it would mean more employment and higher wages. How can you demand a significantly higher wage if your employer can pay some Latino kid $5/hr to do the same job? Sure, prices might go up but so would wages.
Regardless, this particular form of imperialism cannot be rolled back and I do not expect it to be. It’s much to entangled with every other aspect of our economic system. I’m not seriously arguing for changing only this particular facet of capitalism, I’m only arguing that it’s wrong and causes genuine harm.
The company is still using a person’s material situation to pay them less. More purchasing power in their subjective economy is part of their material situation. They are still receiving monetarily less as is their country.
Less than what? Your personal belief that they should be paid a us salary because you say so? And if so, should that be a new York city salary, a Louisiana salary, or?
I directly covered your second point, while they do spend the money they earn from their American job within their economy they are not being paid the exact value of their labor because profit is being extracted so the amount of money they stimulate their economy with is not as valuable as their labor would be. I don’t want to explain the entire labor theory of value here because it would take up too much time and space but you can look into it if you’d like. Put simply, the profit that company makes is extracted from that employees labor meaning that some of their labor is being used not to benefit their country or people but another’s. Outsourcing is an extraction of mans most valuable resource from the less fortunate to the more
Again you have this imaginary number in your mind that you feel everyone should be paid regardless of circumstances. I keep thinking this is not ethical, but from an economic standpoint the Filipino employee is better off than working for less money for a local employer or not working at all because of unemployment. And so are his family and their government.
Stop comparing with the American salary, it doesn’t make any sense. If the American company was paying an American salary, they would hire someone in the states.
And I question even those numbers! From what my wife and her friend’s American husbands have told me, and from the videos I’ve watched, it seems even cheaper than that.
Then there are the idiots saying we should flood the country with American dollars, blow up inflation and the wealth gap. Sound economic planning right there.
You’re straw-manning. No one is advocating for flooding the country with foreign money. I’ve been reading your comments and I think you might be misunderstanding the argument. It’s a more nuanced criticism about capitalism, not an argument for how much workers for foreign companies in the Philippines should be paid.
I understand your argument, but a living wage in the Phillipines is lower than a living wage in the US. As long as the employer is properly compensating their employees, I think it’s unfair to blame said employer for the Philippines’ economy. Even if this transaction is more beneficial to the US than the Phillipines, it would still benefit the Philippines, no? More outsourcing should mean a more trained labor force and greater purchasing power from exchanging USD for pesos.
Think of labor as a resource like food, coal, iron, etc. A country only has so much labor power just as it only has so much of it’s natural resources. When it comes to building a country as efficiently as possible in which the most people are benefitted would you rather have foreigners take your limited natural resources for a payment that while helpful makes you eventually dependent on them or would you rather use that resource to build an economy with solid foundation based on local industry?
The thing about proper compensation under capitalism is that it doesn’t exist. A person is paid enough to cover their cost of living and the rest of the value their labor produces is owned by their employer. So even within capitalism that labor value is is more secure if it is kept within ones own borders.
This isn’t a perfect explanation I don’t think but I hope you get what I mean
Using your analogy, you can argue that training and work experience provided by a foreign company is like building ports, roads, or other infrastructure that is necessary for trade. Infrastructure, as long as it’s used well, is undeniably good for a country.
Also, if wages were based on net revenue generated from a worker, that would 1. be impossible to measure, and 2. remove any incentive for a company to hire Filipino workers.
Another issue is that you really can’t build a country efficiently like the way you describe it. Trade is necessary to get good technology, and investment is needed to get said technology within your country’s borders. Effectively banning trade is just like shooting yourself in the foot and getting your other 3 limbs chopped off.
That is why it is not a perfect analogy. Training, skills, and information are not specifically a foreign resource. It is not something that is generously provided to 3rd would countries by places like the US. There’s why these can’t be cultivated domestically. Not to mention most exported labor isn’t exactly “skilled labor” (hate that term but it gets the point across).
Wages being based on net revenue generated from a specific worker would be difficult to calculate but it wouldn’t be so hard to distribute profits among types of labor based on their value to the company. Though I don’t think thats a solution at all, I don’t think companies should exist and I don’t think the profit motive should exist to be clear; I’m just trying to argue within the bounds of capitalism here.
I never said anything about not trading, trade is incredibly important because not every nation can manufacture everything domestically. Not every nation has every resource etc etc. letting foreign “investors” control your labor force and direct your economy is however, a terrible idea. Its a short term solution to long term problems. Unfortunately not every country has much of a choice though.
Showed my Pilipino wife your post (she doesn’t understand social media like lemmy):
“Who is this person? Why do they say these things? I do not understand. This is not true.”
LOL, she just shook her head and walked off.
Her son is working tech for Amazon and another for a different American firm. They’re WELL off in the Philippines. You should let them know they are not, in fact, doing well.
This might not be so bad if they were being paid more or even up to the amount that they make for that American company
Well hell yeah! Let’s flood the country with American dollars, spike inflation through the roof and exacerbate the wealth gap. You should be running the Federal Reserve.
I am not arguing that working for foreign companies does not benefit the individual, if it didn’t no one would work for them. I’m saying that foreign companies are essentially reducing the labor force of third world countries. It’s good for the individual but bad for the country to be dependent on foreigners for employment.
Also, saying that foreign laborers should be paid the amount that their labor is worth (both the cost of providing the basic needs of them and their family as well as the profit they make for the company) was not serious because obviously that cannot happen in a capitalist society. I am not arguing for capitalism or capitalistic reforms. I don’t think companies should exist, I think they do more harm than good in the long term. Etc etc
We all agree this is not good ethically, but you are confused on how the economics work. Foreign money flowing in, and at a higher salary than local average? That’s money that gets taxed by the Filipino government, that buys groceries at the corner shop, pays for a local nanny and overall improves the local economy.
Also what are you on about with the reduction of labour force in third world countries? They have unemployment up the roof and no employers by definition, it’s a third world country the one thing there’s no shortage of is people looking for work
Why not replace the CEO with an LLM? Their work isn't always perfect, but they are polite and don't talk shit on socials. They're cheaper than a human CEO too,, aside from being thirsty lil devils.
Fwiw a LLM uses as much power as 10 regular Google searches... So it's almost nothing in the grand scope of things. It might even save some for the people who don't know how to utilize search engines properly.
We also need more data centers, not fewer. And they use almost no water compared to other utilities.
I'm not sure that's even a valid comparison? I'd love to know where you got that data point.
LLMs run until they decide to output an end-of-text token. So the amount of power used will vary massively depending on the prompt.
Search results on the other hand run nearly instantaneously, and can cache huge amounts of data between requests, unlike LLMs where they need to run every request individually.
I'd estimate responding to a typical ChatGPT query uses at least 100x the power of a single Google search, based on my knowledge of databases and running LLMs at home.
E: I've cleaned up the comment for saucing ease in case you looked at it right away but I'll quote it here for ease.
Yep, I'm familiar with it. More from previous comments since these disingenuous memes get pedaled here regularly. People love to spout stats about AI in data centers that aren't just used for AI without having any sense of how much CO2 is produced from really really common stuff lol. Let alone it being contingent on being run in non-renewable powered areas yet 40% of the USA's grid is clean.
How about watching TikTok? 30 minutes of video daily = 28kg of carbon a year. Calculators here: 1, 2, 3.
How about the recent 'Oh no 1/5 a city's water!' The city use 770,000 gallons a day... So it uses 154,000 gallons of water for an entire piece of critical infrastructure that keeps the internet running. For the entire data center lol. And that's for the city Carrol, Iowa with a whopping population of 10,000 people in 5 square miles lol.
A real common citation is how much carbon it takes to initially train these too. 500 tons of carbon dioxide... That's only 33/334,000,000 Americans worth of CO2 for the year lol.
0.3Wh / request for Google
2.9Wh / request for ChatGPT
That does however reference the same paper as your linked articles, which I can't find without a paywall: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2542435123003653?dgcid=author
I'd love to know how they came up with that number for ChatGPT, but it looks like I was a bit off with my estimates regardless. There's probably some scaling efficiencies they're taking advantage of at that size.
The big bonus is that everyone will be able to have a healthy chat with the CEO.
- Hey CEO, what will be my raise this year?
- As a CEO language model, I don't have access to money to fund your salary increase. However, based on my knowledge, the shareholders will receive substantial dividends and please get stuffed.
My uncle visited the Philippines. When he came back he went on and on, “They’re poor, some don’t have running water and they got dirt for floors. They work so hard though, and they’re so loyal. I wish I could find people like that here in the states. Not people constantly asking for more. People who are happy with what they have and are loyal. You can’t find anyone loyal to anything but themselves here.”
I nearly vomited hearing that shit.
“Why won’t people just make me rich here without worrying about their piece of the pie. I don’t have enough luxury vehicles. My house isn’t a castle like it should be.” Was all I heard.
Absofuckinglutley. My God… “Only loyal to themselves.”
Yeah dude… We got rid of slavery and no one exactly feels like volunteering to be a slave loyal worker especially when owners aren’t loyal to their employees!
I should serve you and your best interests with vigor, but the next cheap labor opportunity you find you drop me like a bad habit… <No, Thanks.>
It's a terrible graph anyway. The outliers haven't been removed and I completely don't understand the line of best fit that's been drawn because it appears to be squiggly. How can it be squiggly, it's a line of best fit, it's an approximation. Oh and making some of the points green does not increase their validity.
As someone who's had to do cold calls as part of a sales pipeline,
it's spam,
I wouldn't say it's spam on LinkedIn, that's where I tell lies to get better jobs,
if it's B2B, I do not feel any shame, every business is a fuck
Edit: I'll also add that B2B cold calls do work. If you have a good product or service and approach it the right way, you can generate plenty of business this way. That said, it's wholly a numbers game. When I was training sales agents, they'd ask me "how do I get sales like you do?" and I'd tell em simply "Make more calls." As I said elsewhere, I'm good at this. I had a roughly 2-3% conversation rate. Understand that means if I made a hundred calls, I made two to three sales. And that's pretty damn good. Before we were more established and could drop that model, we found that cold calling generally had around a 1.4% conversion rate. It relies on you being chipper and persistent to the point of annoyance. Some people literally do break at one point and say stuff like "Well, I need to get something, and if I sign with you, will you stop calling me?"
It was always far more enjoyable to call established leads, people who already expressed and interest and just needed help making up their mind. Better on the customer, better on the agent, a better process overall.
Regarding your number three, a lot of the time you're cold calling some wage slave who has neither the interest nor authority to buy anything from you.
"Every business is a fuck" gets my vote, but the people you're cold calling are not necessarily a fuck.
Oh, one hundred percent. The way I treat people who have zero decision making ability differed greatly from purchasing agents or decision makers. They were largely in the same spot as me. It's important to understand that the sales agents are also wage slaves, the tasks are just different.
Dealing with people like me was one of the stupid things they gotta do at work to make their pay and go home, just like me making 80+ calls an hour at some points was one of my stupid things. I wanted to get them off the phone as soon as possible, be that either by ending the call or getting passed onto someone who could buy. You can use that to build rapport and speed up the process. You can even make it jovial. The goal is to make the sales process as painless as possible while recognizing that being a pest is effective.
Sales agents who put the big pitch on the second they get someone to talk to em are not thinking straight and hindering themselves. Though, sometimes there's parts of a service that simplifies their lives, which I'd mention while waiting for a decision maker or during another break.
I'll also add that B2B cold calls do work. If you have a good product or service and approach it the right way, you can generate plenty of business this way. That said, it’s wholly a numbers game.
You don't even need a good product or service when you play the numbers game, you just need higher numbers!
Number 2 is a great point. That's what I hate about LinkedIn and why I only use it to look/apply for jobs and occasionally scroll through if I'm super bored.
My experience in my current job are endless cold emails from salespeople who don't even understand that I have no use for their product. I work in a field where I have to research a lot of different equipment/parts for my client, but that I don't use myself. I had to request a catalog from one of these places which involved giving my work email address. Now I get endless emails about how they'll 'be in my area' (LOL no you won't because I work remotely across the country from both my company and my client) and they want to demonstrate their new product...which I don't use because I don't work in that field. Makes me laugh every time and yes it is very spammy.
I made that kind of mistake often early on in my sales career. The product I sold had a specific use in a specific field by specific disciplines, and was required by law in certain regions.
I always felt like such a dick when I'd get to the purchasing agent, make my hurried nervous pitch because I'm so excited to get through to someone and they'd (often kindly) explain that they literally never have any use case for my product.
After a few of those, I became more aware of how to prune my "leads" (read: list of phone numbers) to make sure I was only reaching out to people who could even use the dang thing and inserted a few exploratory questions into the opening salvo to double check.
I'm glad I don't have to do this via email, though. At least with the phone, I can hear tone and get quick, definite answers instead of just waiting on a reply.
It’s hard to get there on the phone now, though, if you don’t already have a name and phone number. You can probably get a name off LinkedIn, but a main phone number for a company probably won’t get you anywhere now since a lot of companies don’t have receptionists anymore. You’re lucky if the phone tree has a dial by name option. I’m glad I’m not in that kind of business anymore.
I don't think that B2B cold calls are "spam", per se, and I wouldn't even say that most of them are truly "cold" calls. Worst case scenario, they should be warm calls. Or room temperature calls. Like, if you sell printing presses, you probably shouldn't be calling a hair salon. But calling a local newspaper--somewhere that you know uses the product category that you sell--is reasonable.
I do take cold calls from salespeople in my current position, and my response is usually that, if they can provide a product that meets the needs of the company I work for, I'm more than happy to try it.
Yup, in the sales world it's accepted truth that you have to cold call. That said, in my sales position I've just switched to personalized email outreach for first contact and if anyone asks, oh of course I'm making calls. That probably only works in certain applications, but I'm making the numbers I need to.
B2B contact is generally fine, unless you're going to be a stalker about it. Had one the other day who messaged me on linkedin with her pitch and included the standard 'If you have time and this is interesting feel free to reach out' I saw the e-mail pop up just as I was stepping away to have lunch, as it was the standard lunch time. Before I even got downstairs (work from home) my company's calling me out of the blue to tell me they have a call for me from this person. I declined the call, as we both agreed it was just business spam and after lunch responded and let them know we'd never be interested in their services. 'Feel free to get in touch if you're interested' and 'I'm going to track down your company's phone number and call you 30 seconds after I send this' just don't vibe for me.
It’s wild that people celebrate folks sending jobs overseas as “smart business people”, but then demonize workers asking for wages to keep to with inflation as “greedy”.
The people doing the demonizing of workers are the ones praising the business owners. Although sometime they’re also business owners themselves, I was more talking about financial reporters, TV personalities, and bootlickers.
If only everyone else would agree with him and do exactly what he says at all times immediately, we wouldn’t have problems like this. He specifically told them how unreasonable it is that they’re out of soy milk. Several times.
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