It's interesting to me how everyone seems to agree that remote school and college are huge failures and students are falling behind, but when it comes to their remote jobs, they'll go to great lengths to deny any reduction in efficiency, collaboration, or productivity.
The thing about schools and universities is that took the same thing they do in person and tried to do that online. Remote work requires rethinking what work means, and remote education requires you to do the same thing. I can say that Duolingo is a fantastic way to learn a language because they spent the time and money to make excellent software. Throw in some one-on-one Zoom time with a native speaker and you would far outdo all the language classes I have taken. Imagine an art history class that actually has excellent VR.
Let's separate kids (say younger than 14) from older teens and young adults here. I would agree that remote learning just feels like a disaster for the younger ones because kids just don't sit quietly for extended periods of time to learn. Older teens and young adults probably have developed the skills to sit down for long stretches. I can honestly say classroom instruction is the worst way to learn for me. By myself, I can read, re-read, take notes, watch a video and rewind, do additional searches for more background info, etc.
This does come to another point: some work and some study is physical and some people do not do well by themselves at home. I am not arguing that everyone has to work remotely, but think of the quality of life improvements if most folks get 2 hours back every day, if they have access to their kitchens to make lunch, if they're not burning gas or clogging metros, if they're sick, there's no way to catch their cold, and if housing gets expensive, they have the flexibility to move to a cheaper area.
perhaps if you are driven and understand what you are supposed to be working on remote work is not a tall order. School, on the other hand, is not intrinsically as interesting as whatever career you chose. You don't get paid. You are younger (and thus may be less able to concentrate on boring tasks).
They are different. In some contexts more than others but still different. I love going into the office but pretending its magically more efficient is a bit silly. I like getting distracted at work but don't think it makes me more valuable to the company. I certainly don't write better code at work - if anything my home office allows me to shut out distractions more easily (a luxury not everyone has). This entire argument is silly - not allowing remote work is denying a large portion of a workforce. That workforce may or may not be better or worse but its certainly cheaper for the employer. Why deny yourself a large talent pool?
> School, on the other hand, is not intrinsically as interesting as whatever career you chose
Also, modern mass-schooling was built largely on the model of, and to prepare to, industrial production processes.
People get taught at early age that they have to go somewhere to listen to some authority, who will assign them tasks they may or may not care about, and they will be rewarded if such tasks are successfully executed. Tasks will become increasingly complex with time, but such progression is largely not managed by pupils. They are controlled very strictly at every step, and there is little or no flexibility or power for them to control their day: they must congregate in specific buildings at specific times, and then act as requested.
Is it surprising, then, that most of them might need such structure reproduced later in life...? Maybe if we taught them more self-direction earlier on, there would be a smaller risk of "loss of productivity when unchecked".
Online meetings are worse than in-person meetings.
Meetings are not the core work activity, they're a tool to achieve the real job of building a product.
I can build a product even better if I don't have idiots setting up 200 meetings and I don't need more than a few short meetings with my reports to get things done.
And there is an argument to be made that the better the tech is for online meeting, the worse everyone's productivity is.
I wasn't bogged down by all these meetings 15 years ago and I was building products remote just fine.
Also the more non-agile agile coaches poison companies with their crap which goes against the agile manifesto (like scrum) and impose more and more meetings (standups, retrospectives, backlog grooming), the lower everyone's productivity is.
In education, the current model is that the educator is filling the "empty vases" that students are with knowledge. I find it completely stupid and I think it doesn't work for most people (especially boys, no wonder they fall behind in education compared to girls).
That model doesn't work in the online world because online meetings are sub-par.
Besides, the only valuable thing I send my kids to school is so they can socialise with kids their age. The crap teachers are teaching is mostly useless and they can learn it by themselves even better and without having to wake up at 7am.
remote learning and colleges remove the element of physical social interaction between students (and to a degree, teachers). This element is important for learning imho.
remote working removes this very same element, but because nobody cares that an employee doesn't learn, it is irrelevant.
But certainly remote working affects on-boarding new people, and not just knowledge wise, but also team cohesion and ability to align together. However, i am willing to give all that up, because i do prefer remote working myself - purely selfishly, because those problems it causes aren't mine.
The employee cares, but most employers do not. That's why changing jobs every couple years gets people 20% pay increases these days but they're lucky to get an inflationary raise at their yearly review.
Employers might not care in the short term, but in the long term they have to, because the general skill level of the labour market will be significantly diminished.
As long as individual employees are willing to invest in themselves and change employers, this isn't a problem. Employers have effectively off-loaded the cost of career development fully onto employees. This is even more true at the low end of the career/pay/skill spectrum.
Anecdote: I have a friend who manages a large food production plant in middle America. He constantly gripes about being unable to find skilled welders to maintain the giant metal vats used to mix/cook/etc ingredients. But, he's reluctant to start any sort of apprenticeship program because it costs money. He'd rather keep the employee churn and bitch on the internet instead of up-skilling existing employees or creating a training program for new employees.
