It would be hard to find a trio that better exemplifies SV 2008-2020 than Musk, Thiel, and Andreessen. You could toss in Brin I guess, I'm not sure if he's "pronatalist" or just loves to fuck his employees. How about Neumann or the Soylent dude? If they're not pronatalist I bet they're even weirder.
SV has always been an odd place full of strange people and unhealthy work/life balances though. If anything it is more "professional" (corporate) now than it has ever been.
A lot of people seem to have trouble understanding how very different people think and assume the worst. In actuality, people can often care about all sorts of things you might find bizarre, there are model train enthusiasts and balloon fetishism and people who worry climate change will make humanity extinct. There are also people who genuinely think there's the possibility of a slow decline in human population.
It's not a policy, it's a pipe dream. You can mandate men to work from the office, but there is no way you're going to force women to stay home and bear children. Conversely, enabling men to spend more time with the family has been shown to increase birthrates.
Wow now that this guy has pointed out their inconsistency, I'm sure all these billionaires will shift their viewpoints away from whatever their self-interest is focused on at the moment.
Those people who rule by power have been defeated with logic! Now smoke comes out of them and they shut down, like evil computers on Star Trek.
Also, if we're talking about logic, to "stoppopulationdecline" when population almost never declines anywhere doesn't make sense. preventpopulationdecline?
It infers that anyone who agrees with RTO to some degree as hypocrites.
I agree this part of Thiel's quote here, it makes sense to me: "misalignment can creep in whenever colleagues aren't together full-time, in the same place, every day"
Sure. Remote work isn’t without downsides. But neither is RTO. If the standard is that any policy must have zero negative impacts on performance, I’m not sure what to do other than just closing the company.
That quote is incredibly dystopian and just seemingly obviously wrong on its face. Misalignment can creep in anywhere, at any time, and I would probably rather have, you know, a life, than spend all my time, every single day, in the same physical location as my coworkers. (Sorry, spouse! Sorry, kids! Gotta keep the org aligned!)
This quote is a parody of itself because you could also argue that they have to be together all the time and no one should ever think about work when they're not at work with the team.
That email that a manager sent at 10pm regarding some stuff todo for the tomorrow 8am meeting with the client ?
"Sorry boss, can only work with the whole team."
"Colleague on vacation?"
"the whole team on vacation!"
Misalignment will always occur. Always, and it's the manager job to ensure that there aren't any.
Bringing everyone in the same room is the simplest way for a manager to manage, without understanding the need of the member of the team.
Yes, I sometimes need face to face discussion with colleagues to nicely understand the specifications, and it's way better than any video call.
But when I'm trying to debug that script in the CI/CD that doesn't work as intended, I don't need to be sitting next to the project manager who's always on the phone.
> misalignment can creep in whenever colleagues aren't together full-time, in the same place, every day
Been working remote mostly for 15 years. I haven't experienced, caused or observed any misalignment. I have experienced a high degree of productivity. I feel this is what some who run companies were afraid of, that many people can work remotely and be happier and be as or more productive all at the same time.
I disagree with some of the attacks of the SV leader's personal lives in comments on this page but I also disagree with anyone who tries to assert people must be in the office to be productive.
That’s because pronatalism is just an excuse that people like Musk hide behind in order to justify their misogynistic lifestyles. Seriously, how many children with how many partners does he have now?
Right, but this article points out very clearly how Musk’s actions are actually making it harder for people to have children. The control that his class demands on capital and labor is actively harming reproduction.
Fundamentally, billionaires don’t want to recognize that they are the problem, they’re happy just talking about the problem and making their own dozen “personal” contributions to progeny to help out those that are bound to the full time job. What heroes they are.
There is no actual problem! They invent the "problem" so they can propose plans to "solve" it which drive society towards outcomes more favorable to them.
I think they've learnt by to ignore feedback that they're pushing people too hard. Then over a period of years they learn by experience that they can get what they want out of people if they continue to push. So they have first hand evidence that bullying the people you're leading works.
It's an interesting point that despite claiming to be a pronatalist Elon Musk demands hardcore work hours from his employees, which one would expect leaves very little time for developing relationships and eventually having children.
I wish there were more candid interviews with people where these topics and other difficult questions were discussed openly. I'd love to hear how Elon would respond.
Musk has a belief that its a big problem, but is unwilling to do things against his self interest like admitting that wfh is important for having kids.
This is regular human hypocrisy where you honestly think X (e.g. CO2 emissions) is bad, but aren't willing to admit that Y (e.g. drive smaller cars) is required to help X because it would reqire a personal sacrifice (or be seen as inconsistent).
It's not necessarily hypocrisy. People often have several different things they support, and it is quite common that something that advances one of those things impedes another of those things.
They could limit themselves to actions that do not impede any of their goals, but those actions also often only minimally advance any of their goals. Often the fastest and most efficient way to achieve all of the goals is to do things that cause big advances on some of them even if they also cause backsliding in others.
Example: let us say you have two goals. These are your available actions:
1. An action that makes a 1% advance toward both goals (% measured relative to the total work needed to accomplish that goal from start to finish).
2. An action that makes a 20% advance on goal #1 but sets you back 5% on goal #2.
3. An action that makes a 20% advance on goal #2 but sets you back 5% on goal #1.
You can do one action per month.
If you just use the action that doesn't set back any of your goals, it takes a little over 8 years to achieve both goals
If you alternate actions #2 and #3, then every 2 months you end up gaining 15% net on both goals. It takes about 14 months now to achieve both goals.
> The control that his class demands on capital and labor is actively harming reproduction.
Birthrates are plunging in welfare states with generous support for those who want to raise a child. Can this really be blamed on mere capitalist exploitation?
A lot of people have concerns but few seem to do anything about it but talk. My parents and friends parents complain for grandkids but offer no help either in time or money to make it more realistic to have and raise children.
And others have 6 kids or campaign for wfh or increased paternity leave. Maybe in the sampling of people you know few do anything, but of the ones I know most try.
I experienced the same thing. The economy that shaped their worldview is gone and probably isn’t ever coming back. The ideal “middle class” lifestyle is eroding away underneath rising real estate prices and fewer good jobs.
I think the population decline we should worry about is in terms of quality not quantity. Humans are not an endangered species in terms of population size.
We need less people who are empty on the inside and try to fill their void through compulsive overconsumption and traveling and stuff like that.
If you are not good enough without the traveling and overconsumption in whatever frame of reference you establish, you are not enough with those things either.
BTW, did I just repurpose a quote from Cool Runnings? Yes, I did.
Musk, Thiel and Andreessen are not liberal or libertarian, they are all conservative. They are not proponents of freedom, they all value authority above everything. Look at how they run their companies - on top-down authority. Somebody who is truly (classical) liberal would have no employees and contracted everything, because that way you also maximize other people's freedom.
They're not supposed to be. But it's certainly true that the "libertarians" one hears most from are very concerned about their own liberty and actively oppose that of others.
It's almost a perfect representation of the aphorism about those the law protects but does not bind, versus those the law binds but does not protect.
I searched that page for "oppos" and could not find anywhere it suggested or stated that libertarians "actively oppose [liberty] of others". Your assertion seems to be very antithetical to the very views that libertarians hold dearly.
Ok I understand that someone has proven that remote work doesn't affect productivity. Not in my case, but maybe I'm the outlier. But remote work combined with having small children - I'm pretty sure it not only affects productivity, but the productivity goes out of the window. And if productivity doesn't suffer when taking care of children then it means there was never any productivity to begin with, or the company was seriously overstaffed.
And in my case remote work allowed me to take better care of kids because of extra flexibility, but at the same time made my work days more chaotic and fragmented. Very hard to find undistracted chunks of time necessary for any advanced tasks. Plus the family gets used to me being available all the time and more needs creep in... All in all, an occasion to spend a full day in the office, alone, feels like a productivity boost :)
Working from home doesn't mean you don't have to send the kids off to daycare each day. Yes, it is expensive. But taking care of young kids is a full-time job.
I just mean don't take the remote work idea too far. Raising children is affecting the ability to do any professional work and because of that people deciding to have children should receive various forms of support and protection by social institutions and employment laws. Pretending that you can take care of children while working from home is very harmful idea imho.
How are you "taking care of children" and remote working? Sounds like you're trying to do two jobs at the same time and [correctly] pointing out that isn't sustainable.
How would this have worked without WFH? If the answer is "it wouldn't" then maybe that's the problem.
I don't think anybody resonanbly claims you can do remote work and care for children at the same time.
But not having to commute gives more time to be with your children. Being at home let's you see them briefly on breaks (if you have a partner or in home care caring for them at home). Makes it easier to bring them to/from daycare or your
Yep the extra flexibility is very helpful and convenient, but with years passing it becomes the norm. And kids needs increase with age, not decrease. So at some point you may realize that there's no more flexibility, you have been stretched to the limit or even further and everything is suffering - you, your work and your family. That's why I think it's dangerous - instead of having a clean cut between work and family we take it just a little bit further every time , all seems fine and productivity is unaffected, and so on until something snaps. So I'd rather say don't make such arrangements the norm because there's no easy way back to full work/family separation
Yeah, I noticed this too. I just had another child and WFH has been awesome for my wife and I leading up to and during this time.
Like many, Elon Musk's recruiters have come for me in the past. I looked it up and 12+ hours a day is apparently normal (overtime is mandatory it appears?) and it is on site as well? Count me out. There are better jobs out there that lead to better work-life balance.
When I was fresh out of school I worked in a VFX firm for a few years, it was intense, I gave up a ton, I learned a lot and then my name was left out of the credits of most films I worked on. So I noped out of there and then made more while also building a family. That doesn't seem that different than Elon Musk's companies.
I think it's really telling that every "pronatalist" in this piece is a man. It is quite easy to go around saying we need more babies when your contribution to the process is having sex, not actually growing the child and birthing it. Or, in Musk's case, leaving a string of them throughout the world whom you don't raise.
It is way worse that than for Musk. One of his kids came out as transgender and then Musk went full on anti-transgender and has made being anti-trans much more socially acceptable as a result. That can give your kid trauma for real. That your dad, in response to you coming out, goes around actively hurting the transgender community in real ways.
One could argue that , for Musk case at least, he does a great job fostering babies.
What matters is not one's own babies. But "more babies".
The more wealth created, the more babies can be supported with the wealth. Musk in particular has created many high paying jibs that are undoubtedly anchoring solid families with strong economic foundation.
For Musk, its a prohibitive opportunity cost for him to have babies of his own vs enabling hundres of others doing the same.
Musk will not be the face of a fertility campaign. Musk is not the paragon of virtue. But he's helping support tons of families have their babies
> For Musk, its a prohibitive opportunity cost for him to have babies of his own vs enabling hundres of others doing the same.
The guy can almost field a basketball team with his kids from a string of different women. He obviously has no qualms having kids. Raising them on the other hand, seems to be too much of an opportunity cost to the self-proclaimed titan of industry.
the billionaire angle aside, where does this population panic comic from? Today there's eight billion people in the world. One hundred years ago there were 2 billion people in the world. Was anyone in 1920 panicked that the world is too empty? The global fertility rate is 2.3 right now I believe, but even if it was say, 1.5 it would take until 2200 to be back where we were a century ago.
How is this a pressing issue? I get there's of course economic/political consequences to changing demographics but this isn't going to be an existential problem for literal centuries
Because the capitalistic machine needs man power (for now) to run, how can we colonize planets and star systems without enough people? Again, they will change their tune when there are other ways to produce that don't involve having lots of people.
Notice that these are all white men in the US. Where "replacement theory" used to be reserved for kooks writing mimeographed newsletters, and everyone else got to pretend it didn't exist. They got tired of being dog whistled to, and are now saying the quiet part out loud.
None of them really think the earth is running out of humans. Just humans who look like them.
Because it won't take until 2200 for us to feel the very real effects of an aging population. An aging population means many more people past retirement age, no longer economically productive, and requiring more medical care, skilled nursing, pension or social security income, etc.
It means fewer young workers entering the workforce at the same time, and therefore reduced tax revenue, fewer people paying into insurance plans, fewer people donating to charities, etc.
So there's this distinct one-two punch of having more folks to support, and fewer who are able to support them, regardless of any family structure; this will be a global problem.
Unless your retirement plan is dying you at the very least need nurses to keep you clean, doctors to keep you alive and farmers to keep you fed into your 90s.
If 2/3rds of the population are over 60 none of those jobs can be filled with the number of people to keep even the top 10% alive. At that point soylent green becomes reasonable policy.
So? I support women’s education and freedom, which often tends to reduce fertility, but I’m pro-natalist. This isn’t contradictory, it’s just the idea of having multiple goals.
Anyone who has had several kids and worked at home knows you can’t do both unless you leave the house or have a nanny / partner / grandparent watch the children while you work. Young children are on a cycle of eat, poop, sleep, activity every few hours or even over a matter of minutes sometimes. It may be easier to have children while at home, but working and raising kids under the same roof would be challenging.
This article pulls together a lot of evidence, but it does not consider evidence for the contrary. Productivity went up with remote work. Fertility rates went up. How was productivity for people with little kids at home who never sleep? Is there any evidence that sleep deprived people aren’t as productive? Also what is productive? Pumping out the most units of work? Sitting at home with no in office social obligations will give more time for work output. But does that create the most value for the economy? What about innovation, serendipity, brainstorming, building relationships, sharing ideas etc. They will provide long term productivity, vs short term output based productivity metrics.
>Anyone who has had several kids and worked at home knows you can’t do both unless you leave the house or have a nanny / partner / grandparent watch the children while you work.
Anyone who has had several kids and worked at home knows that it's much easier than when commuting to work. Even if you can't have one partner (or parters alternating) to cater to them constantly, and need a nanny, it's still much better, you can help much more, doing little errands, tending to them, be there for whatever small emergency and so on, than when stuck in some office 10-50 miles away. You also have the extra hours you'd be commuting to be with them.
And that's when they're babies and need constant care.
When they grow enough for school? It's not just much easier than commuting, but unbelievably better too.
Except if one goes for the "out of sight, out of mind" angle. Then sure, tending to your career in some office while the nanny or your partner takes care of the kids is better.
Agree. It is easier to be present for children and their needs when you are physically present. One could say the same applies in reverse. Being physically present at a business allows for someone to more easily reach them, discuss issues, get to know coworkers etc. I believe remote work works well enough with all the digital tools. But it’s not as engaging as being physically there surrounded by teammates.
Perhaps. But perhaps we should consciously sacrifice that for better quality of life. We don't need more or fancier stuff. We need better opportunities for more people, better distribution of the wealth, wages to match productivity which they haven't in decades, and better quality of life.
If X causes Y, and you like Y, then it might boost your support for X. But if not, that doesn't make you a hypocrite. I mean, what if X is a bad thing for other reasons?
Why not just say "remote work increases fertility" and let people judge for themselves?
The U.S. fertility rate is 1.64, well below the replacement rate of 2.1, and in Asia and much of the Western world, it is even lower. It is not crazy to be concerned about that and be "pronatalist".
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[ 6.2 ms ] story [ 124 ms ] threadThis sort of behavior, by both the PayPal mafia and the media, maligns the sector unfairly.
If you want to find weird SV behavior that's more reflective fo the field, then dive into the weirdness of the Singularity religion.
Either not a religion or not common depending on exactly what you mean.
Unless you think that intelligence that is copypasteable and can be restored from backups wouldn't be a worldchanging event?
Also, if we're talking about logic, to "stoppopulationdecline" when population almost never declines anywhere doesn't make sense. preventpopulationdecline?
Pretty silly, short, overly hyperbolically-opinionated article.
It infers that anyone who agrees with RTO to some degree as hypocrites.
I agree this part of Thiel's quote here, it makes sense to me: "misalignment can creep in whenever colleagues aren't together full-time, in the same place, every day"
That email that a manager sent at 10pm regarding some stuff todo for the tomorrow 8am meeting with the client ? "Sorry boss, can only work with the whole team."
"Colleague on vacation?" "the whole team on vacation!"
Misalignment will always occur. Always, and it's the manager job to ensure that there aren't any.
Bringing everyone in the same room is the simplest way for a manager to manage, without understanding the need of the member of the team.
Yes, I sometimes need face to face discussion with colleagues to nicely understand the specifications, and it's way better than any video call. But when I'm trying to debug that script in the CI/CD that doesn't work as intended, I don't need to be sitting next to the project manager who's always on the phone.
Been working remote mostly for 15 years. I haven't experienced, caused or observed any misalignment. I have experienced a high degree of productivity. I feel this is what some who run companies were afraid of, that many people can work remotely and be happier and be as or more productive all at the same time.
I disagree with some of the attacks of the SV leader's personal lives in comments on this page but I also disagree with anyone who tries to assert people must be in the office to be productive.
Fundamentally, billionaires don’t want to recognize that they are the problem, they’re happy just talking about the problem and making their own dozen “personal” contributions to progeny to help out those that are bound to the full time job. What heroes they are.
I wish there were more candid interviews with people where these topics and other difficult questions were discussed openly. I'd love to hear how Elon would respond.
This is regular human hypocrisy where you honestly think X (e.g. CO2 emissions) is bad, but aren't willing to admit that Y (e.g. drive smaller cars) is required to help X because it would reqire a personal sacrifice (or be seen as inconsistent).
They could limit themselves to actions that do not impede any of their goals, but those actions also often only minimally advance any of their goals. Often the fastest and most efficient way to achieve all of the goals is to do things that cause big advances on some of them even if they also cause backsliding in others.
Example: let us say you have two goals. These are your available actions:
1. An action that makes a 1% advance toward both goals (% measured relative to the total work needed to accomplish that goal from start to finish).
2. An action that makes a 20% advance on goal #1 but sets you back 5% on goal #2.
3. An action that makes a 20% advance on goal #2 but sets you back 5% on goal #1.
You can do one action per month.
If you just use the action that doesn't set back any of your goals, it takes a little over 8 years to achieve both goals
If you alternate actions #2 and #3, then every 2 months you end up gaining 15% net on both goals. It takes about 14 months now to achieve both goals.
Birthrates are plunging in welfare states with generous support for those who want to raise a child. Can this really be blamed on mere capitalist exploitation?
We need less people who are empty on the inside and try to fill their void through compulsive overconsumption and traveling and stuff like that.
If you are not good enough without the traveling and overconsumption in whatever frame of reference you establish, you are not enough with those things either.
BTW, did I just repurpose a quote from Cool Runnings? Yes, I did.
It's almost a perfect representation of the aphorism about those the law protects but does not bind, versus those the law binds but does not protect.
I searched that page for "oppos" and could not find anywhere it suggested or stated that libertarians "actively oppose [liberty] of others". Your assertion seems to be very antithetical to the very views that libertarians hold dearly.
Libertarians want to gate-keep and rent-take everything for profit. That's their entire thesis.
And in my case remote work allowed me to take better care of kids because of extra flexibility, but at the same time made my work days more chaotic and fragmented. Very hard to find undistracted chunks of time necessary for any advanced tasks. Plus the family gets used to me being available all the time and more needs creep in... All in all, an occasion to spend a full day in the office, alone, feels like a productivity boost :)
Nobody ever did that actually works.
How would this have worked without WFH? If the answer is "it wouldn't" then maybe that's the problem.
But not having to commute gives more time to be with your children. Being at home let's you see them briefly on breaks (if you have a partner or in home care caring for them at home). Makes it easier to bring them to/from daycare or your
Like many, Elon Musk's recruiters have come for me in the past. I looked it up and 12+ hours a day is apparently normal (overtime is mandatory it appears?) and it is on site as well? Count me out. There are better jobs out there that lead to better work-life balance.
When I was fresh out of school I worked in a VFX firm for a few years, it was intense, I gave up a ton, I learned a lot and then my name was left out of the credits of most films I worked on. So I noped out of there and then made more while also building a family. That doesn't seem that different than Elon Musk's companies.
What matters is not one's own babies. But "more babies".
The more wealth created, the more babies can be supported with the wealth. Musk in particular has created many high paying jibs that are undoubtedly anchoring solid families with strong economic foundation.
For Musk, its a prohibitive opportunity cost for him to have babies of his own vs enabling hundres of others doing the same.
Musk will not be the face of a fertility campaign. Musk is not the paragon of virtue. But he's helping support tons of families have their babies
The guy can almost field a basketball team with his kids from a string of different women. He obviously has no qualms having kids. Raising them on the other hand, seems to be too much of an opportunity cost to the self-proclaimed titan of industry.
How is this a pressing issue? I get there's of course economic/political consequences to changing demographics but this isn't going to be an existential problem for literal centuries
None of them really think the earth is running out of humans. Just humans who look like them.
It means fewer young workers entering the workforce at the same time, and therefore reduced tax revenue, fewer people paying into insurance plans, fewer people donating to charities, etc.
So there's this distinct one-two punch of having more folks to support, and fewer who are able to support them, regardless of any family structure; this will be a global problem.
If 2/3rds of the population are over 60 none of those jobs can be filled with the number of people to keep even the top 10% alive. At that point soylent green becomes reasonable policy.
This article pulls together a lot of evidence, but it does not consider evidence for the contrary. Productivity went up with remote work. Fertility rates went up. How was productivity for people with little kids at home who never sleep? Is there any evidence that sleep deprived people aren’t as productive? Also what is productive? Pumping out the most units of work? Sitting at home with no in office social obligations will give more time for work output. But does that create the most value for the economy? What about innovation, serendipity, brainstorming, building relationships, sharing ideas etc. They will provide long term productivity, vs short term output based productivity metrics.
Anyone who has had several kids and worked at home knows that it's much easier than when commuting to work. Even if you can't have one partner (or parters alternating) to cater to them constantly, and need a nanny, it's still much better, you can help much more, doing little errands, tending to them, be there for whatever small emergency and so on, than when stuck in some office 10-50 miles away. You also have the extra hours you'd be commuting to be with them.
And that's when they're babies and need constant care.
When they grow enough for school? It's not just much easier than commuting, but unbelievably better too.
Except if one goes for the "out of sight, out of mind" angle. Then sure, tending to your career in some office while the nanny or your partner takes care of the kids is better.
Perhaps. But perhaps we should consciously sacrifice that for better quality of life. We don't need more or fancier stuff. We need better opportunities for more people, better distribution of the wealth, wages to match productivity which they haven't in decades, and better quality of life.
If X causes Y, and you like Y, then it might boost your support for X. But if not, that doesn't make you a hypocrite. I mean, what if X is a bad thing for other reasons?
Why not just say "remote work increases fertility" and let people judge for themselves?