Standard English house, boringly normal - Klaus Hausman
From our Swindon Correspondent:
You could describe me as a Work from Home obsessive. I’ve poured over data and watched it happening pre-Covid and thought about this a great deal. And yes, jobs are going to be destroyed. The nice Romanian woman who serves me coffee at Cafe Nero, the friendly chap who sells me pasties, too. While I very much agree with our dear leader’s oft repeated statement that Jobs are a Cost, there’s also people with those jobs.
But importantly, we’ve done this before. Hundreds, thousands of times. My ancestors includes some whitesmiths. A bit like blacksmiths, but finer metalwork. Products like shiny belt buckles and the stirrups on horses. Not a whole lot of demand for horse stirrups now, but we get by. My wife’s family included a cooper and a few stage actors, back when there was a lot of demand for them. Weavers, screw makers, typists, silkworm farmers, furriers, farriers, knocker uppers, town cryers, telegraph boys, and the people who make vacuum cleaner bags are all pretty much gone.
If we all work from home, maybe even move out of cities, there’s going to be opportunities. There’s going to be new jobs around work from home. Maybe more people get Graze boxes delivered as a treat. Maybe people spend more money on their gardens. Maybe people will buy better VR PCs to play with their mates. Maybe they go out and use the excess to buy a nice sports car. But I’m pretty certain most of that money not going on season tickets will go somewhere. Even if people can’t get to the pub or holiday so easily, they want cheering up.
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And more jobs in companies producing/supplying home office equipment.
Won’t be long perhaps before the BoJo bunch introduce a tax on home-workers.
And producing the software which makes it possible. In a couple of years, current versions of Zoom and Skype will probably appear ridiculous. "What exactly do you want to do online from home, and how can we help you do it?"
I think that Skype has pretty much buckled and collapsed: if it isn't Teams, it's Zoom, or WhatsApp and maybe even the Portal TV.
I have worked from a shed for many years, and even when I had a job that required a commute, I always worked from home when I could, especially for that 'second job'. The separate shed is a good idea, because walking to the far end of the garden switches me from domestic to work modes - and the garden isn't that big.
I have discovered that I can run lectures and courses from my shed. 'Sharing the screen' is better than linking up to a projector in a too-light room. There is almost no minimum number now, and I can run a course without a god-awful commute.
Teams is Microsoft Skype for Business with some extra bells and whistles.
They did a lot of work on the compression side and general internals to make Teams. They knew that Skype was quite weak.
You are probably right, but Teams works a lot better for me than the original Skype ever did.
Why on earth do people work in sheds where it's all damp and cold, and it will get broken into and everything stolen or destroyed. I'm staying in my nice warm/cool office *INSIDE* my house, close to the kettle and the toilet.
...pored over the data...
Since choosing redundancy from a global FI just before the Covid-19 nonsense kicked off, I've been contracting to a local firm specialising in data and security. We've been very busy indeed sorting out people's internet and WiFi as they (and their kids) are all WFH. I've also had a nice sideline in restoring oldish laptops to make them usable for home schooling etc. There is an emerging market in helping folks adjust to the 'new normal'...
I remember my father complaining that computers were putting people out of work (late '70s) and pointing all the new jobs that were being created. Of course his generation would never be able to make the transition so for them it was the end of civilisation as they knew it. Its the been the same story since the industrial revolution, if not before.
Tim you poured what over them? The mind boggles.