- Welcome to Forum, I'm Alexis Madrigal.

Job's always been a bit of a confusing category.

On the one hand, it's a bundle of tasks completed for an employer in exchange for a paycheck, kind of being a human part in a great organizational machine.

And on the other hand, a job is also an identity social world.

Even a culture can really mean something to say you're a firefighter or an investment banker or a bartender or a tech worker.

And that meaning doesn't fully rely on the tasks in your job description.

That is to say during the great upheaval of the pandemic and stay at home mandates and rise of remote work.

It wasn't just worker productivity that was at stake, but the ways that a job could define or not define a life.

So today we'll be taking multiple paths to investigate and how work has changed and kept changing through the long five years since the pandemic began part of our series on, you know, five years since the pandemic we're joined in the studio by Aki Ito, who is chief correspondent with Business Insider, covering workplace issues including burnout, hustle, culture, and the end of workplace loyalty.

Thanks for joining us Yaki.

- Thanks so much for having me.

- We're also joined by Nicholas Bloom, who is a professor of economics at Stanford, and a senior fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research.

Welcome, - Thanks for having me on.

- We're joined by Joan Williams as well, founding director of the Center for Work-Life law and author of the forthcoming book, outclassed, how The Left Lost the Working Class.

Welcome Joan.

- Delighted to be here.

- Aki, let's start with you.

I mean, I'm interested in sort of the workplace vibe check here.

You know, there obviously it's this great change in sort of remote work and how people did their actual jobs, but there were also kinda changing feelings about how work might work.

From your position five years on, what's the biggest change that we've seen in kind of the feelings of the workplace?

- Yeah, I think so many Americans and probably people around the world really had this big reassessment of their relationship to work in the pandemic.

I think for some people it was just the constant reminders of mortality.

I think for other people it was just not being in autopilot mode anymore for other people, I think, you know, if you remember early in the pandemic, there was a tremendous amount of job loss and being laid off by your employer who you sacrificed so much for.

A lot of people really sat back and thought like, what was all that hard work?

What I doing here?

Loyalty for?

Yeah, exactly.

And so, you know, there were a lot of physical things about work that changed.

The biggest thing obviously being, you know, no longer being in an office.

But I think, like you said, people had this really big philosophical moment triggered by the pandemic, and I think five years on people are still having that reassessment now.

- Hmm.

And do you think that's still true even though the job market has sort of gotten worse and there's a lot of uncertainty in sort of the future of the economy right now?

Or like, was it the fact that the pandemic economy after the job loss was so strong that allowed people to sort of feel into their feelings and not just sort of stick with whatever job they had?

- Yeah, I mean the vibes are, you know, like you say, totally different now.

Back when I was writing about people's changing relationship to work first in 2021 and 2022, we were having the great resignation.

The job market was super hot.

And so workers had this, you know, swagger about them.

They could afford to push the envelope a little bit, do things that, you know, maybe would be dicey in a weaker job market.

Of course, today, especially in the white collar corporate world, the job market is very weak.

So as a result, workers aren't able to kind of, you know, set up the boundaries with their employers the way they used to.

But I don't think, you know, the, that economic status changes the fact that people do see their jobs differently than the way they saw their jobs back in 2019.

- Yeah.

Nicholas Bloom, I mean, you called this period in the, during the pandemic, the great transformation.

Do you think we're done with the great transformation?

Like have we come to a new place or are we still kind of in the middle of it all?

- I mean, yes, some things are permanent.

So if you like work from home, it's, you know, it's permanent for a lot of folks to typically be working from home one, two days a week.

I have to say, you know, in 2020 there was the lockdown and every, you know, many people, about half of Americans were fully remote.

That is, you know, as Aki was saying, kind of, you know, receding into a history now, but most professionals and now at least getting to work from home one or two days a week.

A couple of things I'll call out that I think are going to continue to change is working from home has been amazing for Americans with a disability.

So drawn in about one to 2 million more folks into the workplace, and I think that will continue to grow.

That is an incredible good news story.

It's also pushed down a bit on city centers.

So folks have thought, you know, I've only could go into the office three days a week.

I don't need to live in the center of the city.

I can move out to the suburbs.

And that process seems, seems to be ongoing.

- Yeah.

Joan, let's talk a little bit about your work in this realm, which had focused on kind of fighting for more flexibility in the workplace, more the, the possibility of work life balance and some more remote work.

How do you see where things actually shook out after that sort of initial burst and then receding of remote work?

- I think it's important to recognize there isn't a receding of remote work.

There has been a permanent change.

People now feel entitled to hybrid work in many contexts.

More at the top of the income range than at the bottom.

You can't, you know, serve a french fry remotely, - But - If you, if your job is remote capable, there's really been that change in expectations.

The other thing that I think is really a permanent change is actually, I was talking to a reporter a couple of months before the pandemic and saying, you know, I've been working on remote work since like the late nineties.

It ain't gonna happen.

It's a, the only reason it doesn't happen is because of a failure of imagination, but the failure is complete and it would take worldwide death to solve that problem.

And then several months later, in three months, the failure of imagination was over.

So now people understand that it is completely possible to work from home in an integrated team.

And employers that are trying on a top down way to take that away from workers are in a really different situation than they were five years ago.

- And that situation is in part because the sort of productivity of workers just didn't fall when they were at home.

Right.

And so kind of the, the proof was in the, the pudding, like the experiment had happened, it had played out and, and there we had it, right?

- Well, the productivity of workers, as Nick's great work has shown did not fall.

In some cases it rose also, you are tapping a larger labor pool if you don't have to have only people who are very close to you.

So for example, my little institute put out searches where we were open to to remote and we just got so much, so many better candidates that we have working, people working in Rochester, New York, and, and Minneapolis, Minnesota.

And also an engaged work, en engaged workforce is like 22% more productive.

So the amazing thing is that, you know, to the extent that people are trying to roll back on hybrid work or remote work, this isn't about money - At all.

You think it's something, it's about sort of big boss energy.

- It's about identity, it's about where that, if you get to that level, I mean first of all - That is to say like the C-suite or kind of managerial level.

Yeah, - Yeah.

First of all, over 90% of those guys have stay at home lives.

So they literally don't live the same life as the rest of us.

And their entire identities are framed around work and devotion to work.

Work is their happy place.

So it's an indemnity threat.

- So interesting.

We are talking about the way that work has changed five years on from the start of the pandemic.

We've got Joan Williams, who's a law professor, emerita from uc, law School in San Francisco, and the founding director of the Center for Work Life law, author of the forthcoming book Outclassed, how The Left Lost the Working Class.

I've also got Nick Bloom, professor of economics at Stanford, and Aki Ito, who is chief correspondent at Business Insider covering workplace issues.

We'd love to hear from you.

I mean, how have your ideas about work or your job or just the, the sense of what work should be in your life, how's that changed?

You can give us a call.

The number is 8 6 6 7 3 3 6 7 8 6.

That's 8 6 6 7 3 3 6 7 8 6.

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Casey over on Discord says, you know, contracting covid the first time set off a chain of events that would end in my resignation.

I got sick for a month.

I still tried to keep up with things and was punished for it.

I spoke out and was retaliated against, so I resigned.

Nowadays I value my flexible work arrangement and I refuse to pull extra hours unless it's absolutely necessary.

And I look for work environments that value me as a whole person.

Aki, I feel like this is like a person straight out of one of your stories.

Right?

- That's exactly what I was thinking.

Yeah.

- Yeah.

Talk to me more about like, you know, you know what, what that kind of reflects in your reporting.

- Sure.

I mean, I think so many people have had this realization, I don't wanna put in these 60, 70 hour weeks that I used to.

I'm actually one of those people, I worked a lot of hours before the pandemic and I, it made me realize like, oh, that's not really the way I wanna live my life anymore.

You know, I, I think back in 2021 and 2022 when I was writing a lot of these stories, that was actually motivated by my own experience.

So I I, I really, you know, the, the, that comment that just came in, I really resonate with that a lot.

- Yeah, I mean, Nick, what do we see reflected in the stats on like workplace loyalty?

I mean, do we see that people are just, have different feelings in mass or is it just kind of individual experiences?

- The was the great resignation.

So certainly you saw coming back to some of Joe NA's comments, there was an enormous churn in 21, 22.

So folks figured out, look, the economy's booming.

You know, I can change jobs.

Now's a good time.

Some people didn't want to work those long hours.

We actually see it in the overall data hours worked of Americans is, is down a little bit on average, but there are more people working.

So it's kind of, you know, more people can work, but they're all working a, a, a less, fewer hours.

But then I think it comes back to, you know, there are a bunch of folks that just find it easier to work if you've only gotta go in say two, three days a week.

You know, I can tell you I interviewed someone about a month ago that had a, you know, horrible car accident, was disabled from the neck down.

And he said, look, I used to go in every day now 'cause I'm basically, you know, heavily disabled.

It takes me three hours to go into the office.

He said, my carer has to come in, she has to get me out of bed, wash me, dress me, you know, then my dad drives me into work.

He said, now, 'cause I can work from home three days a week, I'm still with it.

But that wasn't, that wasn't an option.

I wouldn't work.

So yes, we are seeing it's, you know, it's, it's easier to work and as a result folks are more flexible.

- We're talking about how the pandemic changed work.

It has been five years since the pandemic began and we've gone through a lot of different phases.

We wanna hear how those phases have changed your relationship to work.

You can give us a call, 8 6 6 7 3 3 6 7 8 6.

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We're KQD forum.

We wanna bring in Sarah in San Rafael.

Welcome Sarah.

- Hi there.

I was listening to your comments on, and your group's comments on the pros of working from home.

And I'm a more senior.

I have 26 years at my job.

I totally agree.

I love working from home, but I do, I don't hear enough talk about the other side of it, which I work for the state of California.

We, I have my specific group has a, has work that cannot be performed from home.

We build things And so we got completely hollowed out.

'cause we had a lot of people say, well shoot, if I can, you know, work from home and my bunny slippers, then I'm gonna do something different.

And so we were hollowed out.

And secondarily, the other point I'd like to bring up is the idea of what we do with our younger, more junior or brand new people.

For us it's engineers and the ability to collaborate and mentor just wasn't there either.

Because it's really easy to walk from one desk to another and say, Hey, I, I'm kind of wondering what you think about this.

But people didn't make those phone calls and didn't have those meetings.

And so I just think that there are downsides too.

And that's why I prefer a balance, a hybrid environment so that you can get a little bit of the benefits of both and ideally make everybody happy.

- Yeah.

Thanks for that Sarah.

- I'll leave my comment there.

- Okay, thank you Joan Williams.

Let's talk about a couple of these things.

I mean, one is the sort of knock on effect as sort of people were able to change jobs to remote work in these different ways.

Some people maybe left longer term jobs where they might have felt stuck.

And the other component of that question was about sort of, you know, young people coming into an office culture who maybe aren't having the identity formation that might happen otherwise.

- Well, you notice that what she advocated at the end, the caller was hybrid work.

And I think it's really important not to focus this on full-time remote.

Full-time remote works for some people it doesn't work for a lot of people.

The other thing that the caller points out though is that you have to actively a manage, manage a hybrid workplace.

The hybrid workplace is awesome for people in the middle, especially with children who, as Nick's research has pointed out, are moving farther away and have a lot of home responsibilities.

It's fantastic for senior people.

It's full-time remote is not so great for junior people for these kinds of reasons.

You don't get the kind of shadowing, mentoring, informal.

And that's one of the reasons I think the economy has notched to hybrid because that's provides an opportunity for all of that shadowing, mentoring sort of - Stuff.

- And, but that you also allow people to work at their homes a lot of the time.

This is important for young people.

It's also important for, and it's important for parents, as we've said, it's also really important for people of color because throughout the pandemic, I'm sure you saw this in your reporting, people of color reported that they were happier working from home on average than white people because you know, the water cooler is super comfortable.

For some people it is not so comfortable for people who go around touching your hair.

So I, I think that there are a lot of dimensions, but it's very important to actively manage because exactly the people for whom who would tend to choose remote mothers and people of color also tend to have less access to opportunities in the office.

And so unless you actively control for that and make sure that you don't use what a research assistant of mine used to call, Hey you tasking.

Hey you tasking artificially benefits a very specific group.

- Hmm.

- And hybrid work will make that worse unless you have active management techniques.

- Aki, talk to me about some of your reporting with, with young people specifically.

- You know, so pretty early on, I reported on some of Nick's research that showed that young people actually have a, a higher preference for hybrid work than older workers.

Maybe kind of, you know, like Joan said, middle age who have young kids who actually many more of them prefer totally remote work.

- Mm.

- And I, a lot of people were very upset about that story because you know, - Young people or older people, - Young people because there are still quite a few gen Zers who like remote work too.

But the point I was making is that, you know, if you're straight outta college going into the office is this really formative experience where you not only, you know, get the mentorship and the guidance from your older colleagues, but you also meet a lot of friends.

You know, a lot of people meet their romantic partners at work.

And so actually a lot of young people do know this and they say like, I don't wanna work at a fully remote company.

- Yeah.

You know, Nick, one of my questions about this is whether, you know, people can get really good at Slack, you can make friends on Slack.

I mean, is this partially just that people hadn't really adjusted to the ways in which workplace culture needed to exist in an online format?

- Yeah, I mean we clearly didn't have enough remote work pre pandemic.

So Jenna totally right.

If you look now in 20, 25, young folks typically do want to go in.

So I, you know, I teach 60 undergrad, I just finished teaching 16 undergrads.

And I always poll them saying, you know, how many days would you like to work from home a week?

And they are typically saying just one or two.

So the typical undergrad says, look, I wanna go in 'cause it's social.

I get mentored and they'll say, look, my apartment I'm gonna be sharing with four other people.

Where am I gonna, you know, where am I gonna go?

Interesting when I do exec ed.

So these are folks in their thirties and forties, there's much more of a range.

So some, you know, as Joan said, some of them are, you know, have, you know, very nice comfortable backgrounds.

They probably chauffeur driven in, they maybe have a wife that work.

This is typically older men co types.

They're like, I want to go in every day.

There are others that live a long way from work and wanna be mostly remote.

- Yeah, we've got a comment on this exact question.

Listener writes and say, I work a hybrid schedule four days a week from my home in San Francisco.

One day a week I drive into the office in Sacramento.

I really like this format.

I find I get more quote, real work done at home, which involves complex thinking and writing my time in the office offers me the chance to connect in person with colleagues.

And I really value that.

The work from home orders that pop up from time to time, seeing more about control, then performance and productivity.

I will never go back to work full-time in an office hybrid forever.

Now, I mean, let's, let's bring in Michael with a sort of an adjacent point here.

Michael in Brentwood, welcome.

Oh, maybe not Michael's point I believe was gonna be, you know, returning to something you were talking about earlier, Joan, which is about sort of the motivations of managers for bringing people back into, into the office.

You know, I think everyone kind of is trying to figure that out.

Is there, just to, to play devil's advocate here a little bit, is there a evidence that management works better in some way when you have, you know, everyone in the office?

Like, you know, I think the things I hear about are either management or that like there's sort of more spontaneous creativity or something like that, but it always has seemed a little soft, especially for people who always seem so focused on metrics.

- Exactly.

Suddenly the, the numbers don't matter.

The numbers about engagement, about productivity.

I think that if you think about most jobs, first of all, there are some jobs that are not remote jobs.

I mean, again, you cannot ha fry a french fry and hand it to me remotely.

You cannot do a medical operation remotely.

So there are some jobs that are objectively not suitable for remote.

But most jobs and even part of those other jobs, jobs are a complex package.

And this caller, I've forgotten what their caller or somebody wrote in is a perfect example.

A lot of knowledge workers, we need intense time to figure stuff out, to execute on a plan after it's been decided.

And then we need collaborative time.

And that's true of many, many people.

And for many people that intense figure stuff out or execution time is far more efficient outside of the office.

Which is why I've always said to my staff, if you can do something more efficiently outside of the office, this was way before Covid.

I do not want you in here.

But then you do need some time to collaborate.

Now you can do that on Slack.

If you engage in active management technique, you can totally set that up in a full-time remote environment.

- Hmm.

- But it, the traditional way to set up that collaboration is on site, particularly if you design the hybrid schedule so that a whole team comes in on the this at the same time.

- Yeah.

You know, actually I think the, for me the number one worst thing about full-time remote work was having to sta at your own face all the time on Zoom.

Like is there, I mean it does seem like meetings are like massively worse because everyone is sitting in a thing, there's no real time feedback.

You know, you kind of want everyone to be muted because otherwise there's all this excess noise, but then there's no reaction.

You know, jokes are sort of like, don't work.

Is there, have you noticed any companies trying to sort of make meetings better?

Essentially it feels like part of that collaboration is it's this technological barrier.

- Yeah, there's an entire category of B2B companies that are trying to make this happen right now.

Hmm.

I think, you know, when we talk about how management is harder in remote environments, we're talking about that in the context of the technology that we have today.

In 2025, who knows what that technology's gonna look like in another five or 10 years.

Nick's done some great research showing that the patent applications around work from home technology spiked in the pandemic.

And so probably a lot of those tools are coming to market just around now.

Right now being on Zoom is awkward and cringey, but - Oh, it'll always be awkward and cringey as far as I'm concerned.

Yeah.

- But you know, maybe we won't be using Zoom in five years time.

Maybe we'll have some crazy virtual reality, augmented reality thing that's really gonna make it feel like - People are right - Of - Know.

I dunno if you've seen these metaverse things, you're sort of like billions of dollars.

We still don't have legs.

Like what's going on in the metaverse.

Nick talk, talk to me about some of these technological tools.

Like do you think that there will be a tool that supplant Zoom slash Microsoft teams?

- Yeah, absolutely.

Totally on board with aki.

I mean, you can go back actually I've been looking at the history of work from home.

You know, I'm one of four kids.

I grew up in London.

Both my mom and dad worked.

And so occasionally you I I, they, they would have to work from home.

And I was growing up in the eighties and I interviewed them about it and they said it, it was terrible.

It was like carrying piles of paper, phoning in on a really expensive phone line.

And my mom said, look, in the nineties we've got a personal computer, a little old green screen.

She said it was revolutionary.

Go to the two thousands, you got the email.

2010, you got Zoom Cloud.

So looking ahead, you know, I was up in SF about nine months ago.

Went to visit a company which has these thing called portals.

What they are is they're 12 foot by 12 foot effectively zoom screens.

And the amazing thing is, I did a test run.

This was a startup and one of their co-founders, she was up in New York and we had a call.

And what was cool is I could see her whole body, I could like see her trousers, I mean, I guess let's just say pants for American audience, you know, all the way down to the bottom.

I could guess our height.

It was kind of like Alexis, you know, if I'd had that.

Yeah.

If I, I was thinking if I'd walked out and passed her on the street five minutes later, I'd recognize that.

Whereas on Zoom, you've no idea.

I mean, I always joked to my students in the pandemic when you had to teach online.

I said, you know, my head is really long at the back.

And they're like, really?

But I have no idea.

'cause you only see two dementia.

It's like you're 2D and you only see this bit of your body.

And so yeah, I think, - I don't know, this sounds horrible to me.

I have to say, I, I want, I want less realism when it comes to my face on Zoom.

I don't know.

You know, it's just there, there's something about like I, you know, I saw during the pandemic this just boom in all the skincare stuff and all these things.

And I do think at least part of that was like, we're not meant to stare at our faces like this all this time.

You know, I really, I I I do feel like there's something fundamentally inhuman about it a little bit.

- Well, do you know, do you know, what did I was about to say?

Do you know, if you look at the numbers, what you're see in from retail is the expenditure there exploded?

Was alcohol, alcohol went up?

Yeah, I have to say deodorant spending collapsed during the pandemic.

So I don't quite know what that tells you about - Wow, - Wow.

Online.

But yes, - I wanted to jump in and just say, I don't think Zoom is cringey as the, by far the oldest person here.

I'm completely comfortable interacting with people on Zoom.

There was, I, I worked with one person for 25 years.

She was never in the same city.

I felt awkward when I was with her in person, not when I was that at that point that was, I was with her on the phone.

So it's a matter of what you're used to.

But also I think for me, the key thing is that I'm focused on is how these young people get integrated into an office environment if they're permanent remote or largely remote.

And you know, there are very concrete ways young people come into the workplace because they want to see often whether that's what they want do when they grow up.

So if you have a program of active shadowing, of inviting people to meetings to listen in or take notes, that's the way you can provide that kind of mentoring and training in a virtual environment.

And again, I think we should, it's a matter of what you're used to and you know, it's, we have to always watch against the failure of imagination.

- Yeah.

Yeah.

Alexis Madrigal here we are talking about how the pandemic changed work.

We're joined by Joan Williams, founding director of the Center for Work-Life Law, also author of the forthcoming book, outclassed, how The Left Lost the Working Class.

I've also got Nick Bloom, professor of economics at Stanford University.

Studied a lot about remote work over time.

Senior fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research.

And we have Aki Ito, who is chief correspondent with Business Insider covering workplace issues, burnout, hustle, culture, the end of workplace loyalty, quiet, quitting, et cetera.

All all the things I am, would love to hear more from listeners who did have to keep going in of, you know, of all kinds of different jobs.

Are you a, are you a nurse?

Are you a doctor or do you work in the trades?

Do you have all those kinds of, I'd love to hear more about if you think work culture changed a lot during the pandemic as well.

Not just folks who, you know, moved remote in some way or another.

The number is 8 6 6 7 3 3 6, 7, 8 6.

That's 8 6, 6, 7, 3, 3, 6, 7, 8, 6.

The email is forum@kqd.org, social media, blue Sky, Instagram, et cetera.

We are KQED forum.

And of course there's conversation going on on the discord.

Lemme run through a few comments before we get to the break here.

Vivian says, I finished grad school in 2022 and my job, the first one I got outta school is still fully remote.

I like a lot of things about it, but I do worry I'm not building all the social networking skills that I would in person.

Okay.

This one is so interesting because I, I had been wondering about some of these like kind of cohort effects people who went into the workforce in this time.

It does seem like they're gonna have a wildly different career experience than folks who, you know, just started in 1998 or whatever.

- Yeah, definitely.

And these people who are entering into the workforce now, they spent, you know, their high school years, maybe the beginning of college in the pandemic as well.

Yeah.

So they've, they're, they're already lacking in some of that, you know, crucial social interaction time that, you know, older people like us got a lot of, so that definitely makes a big difference.

- Yeah.

Another listener reflection.

You know, I've been working hybrid since 2007 as a new mom, that was my condition to go back to and they accepted it.

I'm in sales and I do appreciate the importance of in-person work.

There's nothing like the physical connections and what they contribute.

I really enjoy my team and almost look forward to being in the office on those office days.

Another listener.

I, you know, working from home allows people to be more productive, especially when it comes to tasks that require concentration.

On the other hand, out of sight is out of mind when people see me.

They remember what they wanted to discuss with me.

Earned rights.

I worked from home for the majority of the last 30 years.

Every time I've had to go into an office, my productivity plummets worse.

I have to interact with my boss, which is generally both dispiriting and a waste of valuable time.

Ah, management at its finest.

Er, Alexis Mad Will here with Aki Ito, Nick Bloom and Joan Williams.

We were talking about how the pandemic changed work.

Loving hearing your reflections on this.

You can email us, of course@forumatkq.org or you can give us a call, 8 6 6 7 3 3 6 7 8 6.

We'll be back with more right after the break.

Welcome back to Forum Alexis Madrigal here.

This is part of our series on how the pandemic kind of changed so many things over the last five years.

Not just the beginning, but kind of through this whole period.

We are joined by Nick Bloom, professor of economics at Stanford University.

Done a bunch of research on this, which joined by Joan Williams, founding director of the Center for Work Life Law.

Also her forthcoming book subtitle is actually how the Left Lost the Working Class and How to Win Them Back.

The book's called Outclassed.

And we've got Aki Ito, who's chief correspondent with Business Insider.

Let's go to Bonnie in Woodland.

Welcome Bonnie.

- Hello.

Happy to be on.

I'm a therapist in Davis and I am just a much, much better therapist in person.

I realized, Mm, not only did I have little, little kids during the pandemic, so if I could hear them screaming in the background or just know that they were in the house.

Yeah, half my brain was not present.

And yeah, it's just much less draining for me to be in the office with my clients.

But what I did during the, the height of the pandemic was I would see my teenage clients in my backyard because I just, I couldn't bear to expose them to more screens when they were already, you know, doing the online learning.

And that was really nice and I was really lucky to be able to do that.

- You know, it's so interesting.

Therapy seemed like it went very hard online and that like, remains like lots of therapists like feel like they're, and and it struck me as yeah, I mean, almost the hardest thing to do online.

I mean, I just feel like when I've been in therapy, either on a screen or in person, it feels like a totally different experience to me.

Do you think you're gonna, yeah.

Have you gone all the way back to in person?

- I am 99% in person.

I'd say I have like maybe one or two clients that I'll see sometimes online, but yeah, I, I agree with you.

I'm a somatic therapist as well, - So, oh geez.

- For me.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You can do it and it's better than I ever thought it would be, but in person is just such a different experience for me.

So yeah.

- Just reason we laughed is right, somatic therapy focuses on sort of the reactions in your body, right?

And, and thinking - That, yes.

So it seems - Like, yeah, Bonnie, thanks.

Thanks.

So thanks so much for that.

Appreciate that.

Are there other jobs, Nick, that seemed, even though they could have gone remote, seemed like they were u uniquely difficult to do online for one reason or another?

- The, the therapy comment is fascinating.

I've seen, you know, I had the same thoughts of you.

I've seen it shift and I know a bunch of people on both sides that shift online and kind of only semi shift back.

I'll give you two examples that were kind of interesting for me that jobs have changed a bit.

So one of my neighbors is a doctor and she said, look, pre pandemic, I'd see folks, she's a family doctor five days a week.

She announces I have one day a week online because there's a bunch of patients that want things like prescriptions, renewed tests back.

They actually don't want to come in.

And so she's happy to do that.

So she has a mix and that, there's a great example actually about fast food.

So as you know, as Joan said, pretty much all the fast food is fully in person.

So, you know, cooking, cleaning, serving food has to be in person if you go through drive through restaurants.

So there's the bit that's gone fully remote, which is when you put your window down to shout into that little cone to give them your order.

The person taking that order used to be in the hut, like 20 feet along.

And then, you know, they write it down and hand it to the cook that'll cook it.

Now they're often in national centers, so you can drive through in San Francisco, order your, you know, your big Mac and fries and someone in Mississippi is typing it in at home into a computer and then they're frying it for you.

So yeah, it's a weird world where little bits of jobs here and there have gone fully remote, but you know, mostly in these industries, they've stayed in person.

- You know, the interesting thing about the comment from the therapist was she fully recognized herself that she could do her job better if she was in person.

And that's the thing I think most workers actually know if mm, you know, they do better at home or if they're better in the office.

I think, you know, bosses have a tendency to not trust their workers when they say I'm more productive at home.

But I'd say like, listen to them, you know, I think some of it is because of the, the actual like day-to-day work that they do, you know, their job function part of it is also their personality, but I, I think it's smart to listen to the workers and ask them, you know, what would you prefer?

- There's actually some research on this.

People have been asked, do you prefer sort of nine to five rigid schedule or do you prefer to sort of fade in and out and mix work and family?

And not surprisingly, people are different.

And also not surprisingly, if you don't have the match that works for you, you are less engaged - And - Less productive.

And so I wanna echo what AKI says.

I mean, this is one of the costs of command and control workplaces that people typically forget about.

Well, - And I think, you know, sometimes I think people think, oh, well, introverts must wanna work from home.

But believe it or not, like I'm a person who basically does all of the work for the show at home, in part because I am so attuned to other people that when I'm in the office, I'm like, oh, hey, what's going on with this person?

What's going on with this person?

I'm doing nothing the whole time.

And so, well now I've revealed this on the air, so now everyone knows.

But I like working at home.

It just is it, I I'm so much more productive and so much more focused on, on, on that.

Most of my producers are telling me, yeah, we can attest to your social butterfly.

I just wanna make sure everyone's having a good time in the office.

That's all you know.

All right, let's bring in Catherine in San Rafael.

Welcome.

- Hi.

Thank you.

I'm a healthcare worker.

I'm a speech pathologist, and I worked in acute care for the first 15 years of my career, including during the height of covid and the burnout and Being forced to work, obviously in person in the healthcare setting was so real that I did make a switch about two years ago to working in home healthcare, which is the most work from home option that you can get in the, you know, the healthcare profession.

So I go to see patients at their houses and then finish my work at home.

And I've never been happier in my career.

And I, I know that, you know, there's limited positions available, but there's definitely like the work life balance of being able to do some component of your work at home is just remarkable for mental health.

So - Yeah.

Thanks so much, Catherine.

Let's go, let's get another story from Max and we'll take these together.

Max in San Ramon.

Welcome.

Hey, max.

- Hi.

- Oh, go ahead.

You're on.

- Yeah, well, I was, I was a person who after a long struggle to kind of find the right career and place after sustaining a form of chronic traumatic brain injury in the military, operating speedboats for special operations, oh man, I, I got my brain rattled and presumptive CTE problems that are prevalent.

There's been about 11 suicides of men with these conditions.

There's a struggle in daily life and a struggle against those symptoms and conditions.

But I found a place in nursing after an initial struggle on the floor where I was kind of a disaster due to memory problems.

And the type of efficiency and multitasking that were, were required were difficult for me.

But I found that the one-on-one work in home hospice as a nurse in the field, put me out with a kind of a flexibility out there that I could deal with.

And for a while I kind of excelled by making myself available.

And that kind of made up for my shortcomings.

And, you know, managers understood, people I knew understood.

And then I, I I, I did okay, but at some point, I think with the pandemic things became a lot crazier.

Mm.

Several both bouts of covid myself, it hit me very hard because I have a, a chronic leukemia from toxic exposures in the Persian Gulf War.

My immune system's not great.

I, I think that the Covid was so bad, it might have damaged my brain.

Mm.

So - Max - That and the pressures of conglomeration of healthcare put a lot of pressure on their workers for efficiency and profit being more important than patient.

- Yeah.

The - Quality of patient care and the lifestyle of people working in healthcare become very difficult.

And that's forcing a lot of people like me out of that line of work.

Yeah.

I've stopped work - Max.

Thanks so much for, for sharing.

Quite difficult story with us.

I mean, I think it's sometimes, you know, when we're talking about big numbers of people, we're talking about macro movements of the economy, there's also just individual stories of people, you know, making it with their own particular, you know, configurations of, of mind and, and body.

And Joan, I mean, for, for people who maybe are struggling in this particular, you know, economy, how, how have you thought about improving, you know, just life at kind of all, all kind of realms of the socioeconomic scale?

You know, I mean, I was just, you know, as you're, I'm assuming there are some solutions for the working class in your - Book.

There are solutions.

There are solutions in this book, - And I'm curious about them.

Yeah.

- I think that the real opportunity for people on the left is to recognize that the, the working class has really been hurting for a very long time.

So much so that they've lost faith in democracy and no longer give a flying, you know what?

Because it hasn't worked for them.

They've basically seen their futures disappear.

90% of over 90% of Americans used to do better than their parents.

And now you just got an even shot.

And then you have the young people, even young people in sort of with college degrees.

They can't afford child gear.

They can't afford a house and the economy.

You know what, what Elon Musk and Doge is doing is making people with college degrees have lives as precarious as the working class have had for over a generation.

That's our coalition.

- Hmm.

Let's bring in Leonine on the phones.

Welcome.

- Hi.

Thank you.

Yeah, I just wanted to mention the artist perspective on this.

Mm.

I'm an actor working in the Bay Area, and when Covid hits, we obviously all lost our jobs, except for some theater companies managed to pivot to online.

And so we were performing in live but alone in our living room, each of us alone in our living room.

Oh my God.

And then they, they, they put us all together on screen and, and streamed that.

The benefit of that was that more people got to see us, but certainly as an acting experience, it was not, it's not ideal.

And so certainly we were all really happy to go back to being in person, but, but a theater company was born out of that.

And we now are able to keep going as a theater company because we use Zoom for our meetings.

Even though we perform, we like to perform obviously in person.

Yeah.

So, yeah, it works.

It works and has its disadvantages for, for actors as well.

- I mean also no audience, just all by yourself in there.

So tough, - Right?

Yes, yes.

It's, it's a very, very lonely experience.

Yeah.

And going back to live, just being able to look somebody in the eye and, and getting that response from people that, you know, that psychologists was talking about, the somatic experience.

Just being able to see that how people are, are actually responding in person is so important to, to the experience.

- Yeah.

Leonine.

Yeah.

Thank you so much for that.

Here's a comment from Lauren coming to you, Nick.

One cool thing about the pandemic and realize is that realizing more can be done.

Working remotely is now our small law office can accommodate almost double the staff because they must choose to work from home some days a week.

And people can share office space depending on schedules.

Obviously we've seen this with the big tech companies too, kind of changing how much office space they have available.

How much do you think that's gonna stick?

Like do you think whatever, I don't, you know, I'm not a corporate real estate person, however many like square feet you needed per person.

Has that changed?

Like, has that just declined substantially?

- Yeah, absolutely.

It's why, in a sense, the office market is struggling a bit.

I mean, I wanted to put a pitch out there for anyone that is trying to persuade, you know, a boss or a CEO to allow them to stay.

Typically hybrid, as you know, John and AKI have mentioned it, it is, it's very profitable for companies.

So I put out a paper last year in nature and we did a big ab test with the company's trip.com.

And we randomized, basically whether you got to work from home two days a week, or you had to come in all five days.

And what you saw is there's no effect on productivity.

'cause once you're in there three days a week in the office, it's kind of enough mentoring, FaceTime creativity.

But you saw quit rates four by third.

And for firms quits are really expensive.

Every person that quits costs 'em about $50,000.

They said to look, you gotta go out, re-interview, rehire, re-recruit.

So I think the big, you know, if you have a tough boss that's trying to force you back in, is to tell them, look, it, it turns out it's profitable to be hybrid.

It's why 80% of Fortune 500 companies are now hybrid and it's profitable.

'cause it reduces turnover, as you mentioned, it saves office space and it really doesn't seem to impact productivity.

- Real quick comment before we go to Doreen in Oakland, Claire on Blue Sky Rights, nothing sucks more than going into the office only to have to zoom with your colleagues for all the meetings with flexible scheduling.

Going into work doesn't mean everyone else is there.

At the same time, coordination is key to making in-person work time meaningful.

Doreen in Oakland, welcome.

- Yes.

I just wanted to say I'm a public servant and I wanted to say that I, I really prefer working in, in the office.

And I also think that I work in government and I also think that people's needing services, I realize that people can go on the computer, but I don't think that there's nothing that replaces in-person service.

Mm.

- And - You know, and I know people, you know, sometimes there's difficulty accessing the services online or submitting documents on online, but I just think there's not, you know, to meet with somebody face to face.

I think it's more personal, but I also think it's more efficient and people are able to get their business done better.

- Yeah, - I know, I know it, it would be a lot easier for me, but work is work and home life is home life and I'm for going back into the office for the type of work that that I do.

Yeah.

- Yeah.

Doreen, really appreciate your perspective.

Thanks for being a public servant.

Yeah.

I wanna just pick up with you, AKI, something Doreen said at the end there, which is, you know, work is work and home is home.

I feel for, for me, just to sum up this entire conversation, I feel like it may be that that changed for a lot of people.

That work was no longer work and home was no longer home.

But instead everything got sort of blended.

- Yeah.

And there is some research showing that when you have those, when those lines blur, people tend to, you know, be, tend to work longer hours, they're less satisfied with their jobs.

And I think we saw that a lot early in the pandemic when a lot of white collar professionals suddenly started working from home for the first time in their lives.

They didn't know how to manage those boundaries, you know?

So they ended up working really long hours and maybe after like a year, a year and a half of that, they were like, oh, this is unsustainable.

I need to set up these rules.

I need to set up these routines.

So I'm not working all the time.

And I think we're much better working from home or working in a hybrid way now than we were back in 2021.

That's the other thing.

I think, you know, as a world, we learn to work more effectively at home too.

- There's also a class difference.

People in sort of college educated white collar jobs are much more likely to want a blended work and home environment than people in lower level jobs.

Because for people in lower level jobs, it's just like another name for exploitation.

Often, not always, but often.

Yeah.

- Well I think it's, you know, in the pandemic that a lot of white collar workers started to feel that too.

You know, they don't wanna be exploited.

They don't want their enthusiasm and their commitment to work exploited by their employer either.

- And, and comments here, Stephanie writes, working from home, while parenting is not a luxury, no other generation was expected to simultaneously work and raise kids at exactly the same time.

People believe parents get more time with kids now, but that time is not devoted to the child.

Oftentimes we feel we are failing at work and at parenting because we're expected to do both at the same time.

That is why parents are so burnt out now.

Hey Stephanie, you're doing great.

I promise.

We've been talking about how the pandemic changed work.

We've been joined by Joan Williams, founding director at the Center for Work Life Law.

She's got a new book coming out called Outclassed, how The Left Lost, the Working Class, and How to Win the Back.

Thanks for joining us.

- Delighted to be here.

- Been joined by Nick Bloom, professor of economics at Stanford.

Thank you, Nick.

- Thanks so much for having me on.

- And Aki Ito, chief correspondent with Business Insider.

Thank you so much, AKI.

- Oh, thank you so much, Alexis.