Gig
Its been more than one and half years people are working mostly from home. In the United States, now with about total 52% full vaccination rate, coporations are trying to get people back to work. But its been difficult in general. Here I am talking mostly about the white collar workers (blue collars are a completely different ball game). Why its been difficult? The particular city and the group of white collar workers that I interact on a daily basis is about 95% vaccinated, yet they are reluctant to come to work and prefer to work from home. Why? The answer is obvious. Flexibility, less commute, more family time. Also they can prove to their respective managers that they have been productive from home. While in jobs that the more individualistic that can be true, but in others it difficult to judge. This group of people are not afraid of the infection, they just want to work from home. Then the obvious question is why are they not concerned about losing their job (in the United States it is rather easy to lose a job, just requires a 2 weeks notice). The answer lies within Gig Economy.
The “gig economy involves the exchange of labour for money between individuals or companies via digital platforms that actively facilitate matching between providers and customers, on a short-term and payment-by-task basis,”
We can look at numerous info-graphic on the subject and tables of data interviewing various employees, typically flexibility will come at the top. That is nothing new. What is new in the last year and half is people did have that flexible time. They now know what works and what doesn't. They also have a trial, seen how the finances will work, they have evaluated the pros and cons. So, this time, they are ready and they are actually doing it!
I like Trevor a lot. He is smart, funny, and does an incredibly good job on quite complicated and deep subjects like this one. I travel a lot, both for business and pleasure. I have travelled all over during the pandemic and during the time (now) as we are recovering. Whereever I go, I see 'we are hiring' sign (yeah, most of them a blue collar jobs, but there is an uptick in white collar jobs as well).
In the video you will see a lady saying, "yeah, why can't I do it now?" Yeah it is a very valid question where majority of your work is computer based, it should be possible to you to do it from home. But that said, when there is a oil well blowout, you probably won't be able to deal with it from home, you probably will need John Wayne, eh? :)
Oh, you say you don't need oil to drive your car. Okay no problem, that Coltan mine in DRC that mines all the Columbite and Tantalite for the chips in your Tesla can't be mined from home. Nah, that Lithium from that open cast mine in Bolivia, can't be done either. Also all that Cobalt that you need in your Tesla batteries comes also from DRC (yeah, that IS Democratic Republic of Congo, and I assure you it is not very democratic over there!). Oh by the way, I haven't calculated the carbon footprint of any of these things. If you like to try, be my guest! :)
No, this is not an environmental rant. This is just some scientific facts that you can look up if you are interested. I was mostly making the point following Trevor that we can all work from home, but we do need to visit the dentist sometimes. Also Phil over there in Canada do need to visit a proctologist when in need :)
I have an older co-worker, who got divorced about 4 years back, and just before the start of the pandemic got re-married to a french lady. Since the summer of 2020, he is 'working from home' from South of France! He has 26 years with the company and care less. His boss now is trying to get him to come back to office in Houston, but being rather unsuccessful. In confidence my co-worker says, his goal is to lie low as long as he possibly can. He won't quit, they will have to fire him :) Excellent strategy I say!
Incentive
That little story about South of France brings me to incentives. Our older dude has every incentive to stay in South of France. Come on! Its nice there. All he does these days is email, he can get it done from there and sport a 7 figures salary with bonuses. He won't quit, company need to fire him. Companies are touchy-feely these days to fire older (read 'experienced') people. However, recently another company I know in Dallas, had a strong guidance to their employees that they now must get vaccinated and return to work physically. Most people did, but a few smart and qualified engineers decided to quit and look for other opportunities. They did find them. Therefore, that company lost two good engineers and hired two new greeenhorns (they may be competent in due time, but they are not competent now). I am not making a judgement here, as there is no right or wrong answer. I am only saying, that I am seeing a trend that we are losing a lot of smart people from the workforce as they have better incentives to work for themselves, as they are smart and now figured out what to do with their lives. What is getting left at the workforce is more incompetent people or people who just want to 'lie-low' with minimum amount of work!
Hive
For a while, there has been a talk about taking rewards away from the layer one. It has been a difficult subject, and it is very difficult to reach a consensus. I was primarily against that. Meaning I supported the model as we have it now. But with recent success of Splinterlands, it is giving me second thoughts. Splinterlands is a play-to-earn gaming model that is highly incentive driven, and it just works. Curation driven economy that we have currently on layer 1 is subjective and leads to the age old debate on what is quality and what is not. Who should get the rewards and why.... these are subjective topics with no real consensus answer. The only answer we can provide at this point is staked based. We are doing it as effectively as we can at the moment but the debate rages on. Hopefully we can have some topical sessions during the hive fest to discuss that.
