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CoronaView - The Future Is Now

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    CoronaView - The Future Is Now

    We're still right at the start of the rolling Coronavirus pandemic and the world is still trying to unpack what is happening, how to cope and where it's headed with all of this.

    This thread asks a simple question at this early point:

    As debate emerges over when things will return to normal, or if that is possible any longer, what do you envisage the reality of the world post-Virus will be?

    #2
    My employer won't be able to say it is impossible to work from home, all being well, and I won't have to pointlessly drive to an office every day to open a laptop onto somebody else's desk.

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      #3
      I expect office work will change dramatically, much, much more working from home.

      -Good for the environment.
      -Good for the employee.
      -If companies productivity is unaffected in the long run (bar all the inital set up bumps) its a win win for all involved.

      The big cities have to change in how they are and operate, thats for absolute certain.
      Last edited by fishbowlhead; 23-03-2020, 10:58.

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        #4
        Having worked in places with lots of people, worked in places with few people and worked from home, I can safely say that I feel working from home as standard is not a good thing. Yeah, I like it and not having to commute can completely turn around how your day feels so I totally get why almost everyone would want to work from home. But for modern society generally, I don't think it's a good thing. Hear me out here.

        This is based on two things that come from personal experience. One is me. Or more accurately, who I used to be. I am an introvert by nature. I was incredibly shy. One could say I was barely fit for the working world. But having to get through college and the workplace with a lot of other people, most of who weren't like me so I had to work to find any common ground at all, built up a huge set of invaluable social skills. I actually hate to think of the person I would have become had, back then, I been able to retreat to the internet and have all my introverted natures validated and not have essentially been forced to work with other people. I think it would have been really bad for me and I'd barely be a functioning person by this stage.

        The other thing is the new generation of people coming into the workplace and this is from my point of view as someone who has to employ people and take new people on and make them part of a team. By which I mean mostly around the 18-26 or so age group but it can be seen in people a little older too depending on their situation. Now I'm hugely generalising in here because some kids are amazing, they really are. But more and more, I see kids who (to some extent like I was but to a much greater extreme) simply aren't fit to get along with people. They have no social skills, are riddled with anxiety and that is just allowed to be a thing that can cripple them, can barely string a sentence together and can't work under any kind of pressure at all. I've seen some who even straight out say they won't do calls - just messaging. They can't do human interaction. Those kids, like me back in the day, are like puppies. If you want your dog to be able to get on with other dogs, you have to socialise them as puppies. You have to throw them into groups of other dogs and let them learn how to get along.

        Like I say, many are truly amazing so I don't want to sweep a generalisation across an entire generation. I simply mean that I'm seeing a heck of a lot more of this than I used to. And having them at home on the internet is not going to help. I think people need other people to learn social skills necessary for life.

        So yeah, I love working from home and I can see the attraction but I don't think it's going to be great for society generally if it becomes normal.

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          #5
          For mental health, working from home isn't right for everyone. It's partly to blame for my issues. I'd say that most people need that random banter you get in the work environment. The ability to distract yourself after 40 minutes of working with a quick chat about Netflix etc. before getting back to it refreshed

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            #6
            There needs to be a balance. I certainly wouldn't mind working from home permanently for 3 out of 5 days a week and having those days when you're in the office for the bits that perhaps are more social than work related.

            From a productivity point of view, I'm able to get more done at home as I have less annoying interuptions, but you need to be able to structure your day and environment, certainly helped by me having an office I can close the door on when I'm not in work time.

            For my company the transition to home working has been 90% hassle free. We been working out the niggles, but we had a disaster recovery plan and did a DR exercise long before all this kicked off allowing us to learn some lessons as to how working offsite would work and have been working around teams and office online for quite some time.

            Definitely a lot harder if you're a social butterfly.

            But long term, I don't think this will change very much at all, other than if you thought austerity sucked last time, it's going to be the mother of all austerity in a couple of year's time - it's not going to change people. Those that were greedy and selfish will continue to be greedy and selfish. If anything I think it will cement those things further, much like Brexit has done.
            Last edited by MartyG; 23-03-2020, 12:36.

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              #7
              I don't forsee working at home being that big of a permanent shift, mostly because so much of what will come of this will be dictated by big business heads who will remain unfavourable to the idea.

              Instead the key things I expect are:

              01 - Climate control, not to sound negative but that movement I feel largely died this week. Pushing governments and businesses to be carbon neutral will fall by the wayside as the public pushes for financial stability and jobs etc before then falling into the motherload of all austerity eras. Any progress on this will fall to...

              02 - Automation. The virus has now demonstrated how unreliable and destructive a dependency mankind is in the workplace. The move to automation in most areas is going to accelerate a hundred fold meaning many jobs will simply never return.

              That latter point basically wipes out the previous economic model as you can't go back to how things are in light of a sweeping change that was on the way regardless. We'll have jumped forward 40 years in workplace development in the space of 12 months.

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                #8
                Your both right. Nothing good is going to come from any of this.

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                  #9
                  The environmental impact should be positive. If not, mother nature will send another stark warning until big business can get it into their heads that the way we have been working was simply not sustainable.

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                    #10
                    There will be some interesting side effects. As has already been said, working from home. Also, some Internet service providers have removed the cap, proving that the cap was nothing more than a money grab. Hopefully it won't return.
                    On side effects, probably cancer rates will increase because people are avoiding doctors, so early detections will be missed.
                    There could actually be a small economic boom following this. Once its lifted people will go mad spending and having parties.

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                      #11
                      With what money? A lot of people will be out of work, probably for some time. If businesses aren’t taken down, many will have effectively been in stasis making very little. If you have a source of party money, I want in!

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                        #12
                        In my field especially it's certainly putting the 'true value' tags on everything. Are those Google ads really that essential? Your SEO? What good is being on Google if no one is going to care/buy anyway? Do you really need those fancy graphics that take 10x longer to do?

                        I've always felt that my career has been a bit pointless, but now everyone else can work that out for themselves very easily indeed which is a tad scary. Thinking I should learn something else like driving lorries instead.

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                          #13
                          Originally posted by dataDave View Post
                          Thinking I should learn something else like driving lorries instead.
                          Learn something that's less likely to be taken over by AI.

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                            #14
                            Carpentry, electrical, engineering. AI is never going to fit a door and put skirting in a house, or lay electrical cables and fit a factory out with new machinery, or take a part an old machine and repair it. It just can't, most likely never will.

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                              #15
                              Originally posted by Dogg Thang View Post
                              With what money? A lot of people will be out of work, probably for some time. If businesses aren’t taken down, many will have effectively been in stasis making very little. If you have a source of party money, I want in!
                              I was being a bit hopeful. After WW2 people had street parties and they had nothing.

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