Post
Topic
Board Economics
Re: The Burnout Cult & Remote Revolution
by
slapper
on 21/07/2025, 22:06:03 UTC
Are we creating a healthy future of work or new methods of burnout? Are these so-called flexible jobs fair to all or are we creating a new form of workplace inequality? How can we make work better not just to the company but to real people?
The truth is that every company would care first for its business before its workers, their idea is to do what's best for business before "what's best for employees". 9-5 still remains the most popular jobs around, though most of them try to add a little flexibility to things by adding hybrid roles, but it has not done too much to ease the stress.

In my country, people work long hours everyday and earn so little, the situation is pitiful, though it has forced people to "mind their own business", and by that i mean working 9-5, but also creating something for themselves, it could be an impressive asset column or buying properties, etc, so you ensure you don't work until everything is sapped out of you.
Most companies, even the "modern" ones, still put the business first. Flexibility, hybrid, or not, if it does not improve the bottom line, most bosses will not bother. The 9-5 grind is still king, and yeah, a little "flexibility" often just means you answer emails at home at night and work all day. It is no wonder people are tired. In places where pay is low and hours are long, I completely agree. People have no choice but to look out for themselves. Side hustles, assets, investing, whatever you can do to build something of your own so you are not just another cog




Are we creating a healthy future of work or new methods of burnout? Are these so-called flexible jobs fair to all or are we creating a new form of workplace inequality? How can we make work better not just to the company but to real people?


Flexible working is a real impact of the pandemic a few years ago.
If we can work flexibly and still receive a full salary, that's great.
However, my friends who work flexibly have experienced greater obstacles, and worse, they receive lower salaries than those who work in the office, the reason being that there's no need to spend money on commuting.

Flexible working will create a healthy future if companies are fair in their salaries.
Unfortunately, in my country, the opposite is true. Working from home has actually become a reason for companies to reduce employee salaries, leading to financial instability  Sad
Flexible work is not always a "perk" when companies use it as an excuse to cut your pay. In the big reports, they actually call this "location-based compensation". But for most real people, it feels like getting short-changed just for not showing up in person

A lot of companies save money when people work from home (no commute, no office rent, no snacks, etc.), but instead of sharing those savings, they pass the cost to the employees. That is not progress at all, that is just shifting the burden. And honestly, it creates a new kind of inequality. Someone working in a small town might do exactly the same job as a city worker, but ends up with a much smaller salary, just because of their postcode

It is also a quiet way for companies to push pay lower and lower in places where workers have less power or where jobs are hard to find. That is a big problem, and it is making people more anxious and less loyal to companies



It's all about choice.

If you want to "feel" happy, work less, but you should able to accept less payment too.

If you want to "be" happy, work as hard as possible, it will pay off.

I never heard rich people don't have tight schedule, their schedule are tight as hell, they work harder than most people who feel their work are hard. You see them go to gym for 2 hours, it's not they're happy to train their body, but it's to make them in shape and increase opportunity to get higher income.

You see them playing soccer, golf etc, it's not they're enjoy it, they do it to increase their connections.

Personally I think working remotely is bad, you decrease your chance to meet new people which could increase your opportunity to get better jobs.
Choice is at the center. Some want to climb as high as possible and are willing to pay with every hour and ounce of energy. Total respect for that grind. Most of the time, the world rewards it

However, not all people love to live like a billionaire CEO, or even have the ability to do so, even when they desire to.  Most rich people work crazy hours, sure, but they also have more backup. Nannies, assistants, trainers, you name it. For a regular person, sometimes "more hours" just means more stress. And a lot of people have responsibilities at home that rich folks can just pay someone to handle

On networking, totally true, being face-to-face can open doors, and I get that.  However, it does not happen automatically. Much of the so-called office networking is simply meetings, politics, or time wasting. Some of the best remote workers I know have found global gigs, built networks online, even started their own thing because they had flexibility



If you come out of the internet bubble you will find there are jobs that need manual labor and skills that cannot be provided by remote work and office like stops.

But then again these jobs are less accepted by most of the people in the world and hence they never come into the discussion.

Still a sort of balance between your work habits and how the office wants it needs to be there. Eventually things will change in such a way that AI might work parallel with current workers to make their lives easier.
There are millions of jobs where you simply cannot "remote in". No app can milk a cow, fix a car, or do surgery (yet). And it is true, these jobs often get ignored in the big talk about remote work or tech company culture. It feels like society puts less value on hands-on skills, but the whole economy would collapse without them. Maybe that is something we should be debating more: Why do we treat "office work" as the main story, when real life is much bigger? On your AI point, agree, things will shift. Some jobs might get easier, some might disappear, some new ones will pop up. The big risk is that the people doing hands-on work do not get left behind or forced out by tech that does not fit their reality. The best outcome is where tech actually supports people, not just replaces them