this post was submitted on 27 Oct 2025
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Work Reform
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A place to discuss positive changes that can make work more equitable, and to vent about current practices. We are NOT against work; we just want the fruits of our labor to be recognized better.
Our Philosophies:
- All workers must be paid a living wage for their labor.
- Income inequality is the main cause of lower living standards.
- Workers must join together and fight back for what is rightfully theirs.
- We must not be divided and conquered. Workers gain the most when they focus on unifying issues.
Our Goals
- Higher wages for underpaid workers.
- Better worker representation, including but not limited to unions.
- Better and fewer working hours.
- Stimulating a massive wave of worker organizing in the United States and beyond.
- Organizing and supporting political causes and campaigns that put workers first.
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Every time this comes up i tell my personal and data driven experience as a middle manager in a company, and every time people trash me, but i keep saying it.
IT FUCKING DEPENDS!
From purely data point of view (note: this is from my place of work) workers whose work is purely executing more or less the same duties every day had their productivity have a nose dive when working long stretches from home. Also their works quality got worse. Its easy to reinforce bad habits whitout even noticing it, if the feedback comes from email and and not straight from the supervisor.
BUT with jobs like coders or artists where the job is more open ended instead of monotous labor there was no ill effects.
Then on the other side communication has gotten much slower with the people working from outside office. Where i used to just walk to the other room and ask something from my collegue i now need to message them in our internal and hope they notice it. Getting answers for questions have turned from 5 minute thing to 10-40 minute things.
Also from the point of more inventive things on my work we have lost a lot of changes to brainstorm ideas. No more throwing ideas around during lunch or coffee breaks
I have WfH for about twenty five years now and I will say the same thing I always say when this type of comment pops up, if people do not want to talk to you for some reason they will not respond as its a lot easier to hide on email/IM than an office situation. If you finding that people are hiding from you, then that's as much a you problem as anything else for not directly addressing it.
I actually find it considerably easier to get hold of someone via IM than any other method short of direct dialing them as I can reach them in meetings or away from their desk or even in another country entirely, its only if they are intentionally ignoring you it does not work. If the person is presenting in a meeting or otherwise legitimately incommunicado then they aren't going to respond F2F or IM anyway.
Not measuring output volume or quality consistently is a widespread problem for businesses, regardless of location of the employee. Consistent and accurate measurement is the only way to be sure you are getting the results you are expecting, for coding that means code reviews not commit counts, 360 feedback, and so on. If you are feeding back, and someones ignoring that, guess what, its also a you problem for not building in consequences and follow ups. It also applies just as much in an office situation as it does remote.