I'd caution against memo culture, actually. I only have a sample size of 2, but in two organizations I've been in that tried to adopt something similar, this is what happened:

In the first org, there was a lot of pressure that any such memos had to be highly researched and data driven (also borrowed from Amazon, I imagine). In reality what this meant is that drafting a memo even for the smallest decisions or ideas became a large laborious effort, which nobody wanted to do and/or didn't have time to do it. The result was that everyone procrastinated on decision making, if they even participated in it in the first place, and I knew a fair share of colleagues who didn't even bother to pitch their ideas because of hating the memo system.

In the second org, it was the opposite problem: in an attempt to make memos "painless", there was much less pressure on making the memos "high quality". The result: every "memo" was a hastily scrawled together draft of random notes that didn't make much sense, and we had to spend most time in meetings going over the "memo" to decipher it and have the author explain it anyway.

It's amusing reading all of the HN comments that insist that any attempts to not work remote must be some ploy by "the suits" and act like remote work is some panacea for all the problems in the world.

My very large tech company did a survey this summer about remote working conditions. Out of tens of thousands of respondents, less than one third said they wanted to continue working 100% remote. Nearly half said that their work/life balance was worse when working remotely. Over one third said they are less productive.

HN lives in a bubble of pro-remote talking points. In reality, most of the tech workforce (to say nothing of the non-tech workforce, which I assure you is much more anti-remote) does not enjoy it.

Please don't frame comments like this as sneers at the community. Perceptions of the community are extremely subject to bias (see https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...) and it detracts from the substance of your argument. The community here is simply divided on divisive topics—reality is that tautological.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

It's disingenuous to frame my comment as a "sneer", and censoring (via pushing this comment down, when it was previously the top comment of this thread) mentions of community self-introspection is doing this community a disservice. If it truly is not a bubble, then my post would not have been upvoted to the top comment of the thread. Clearly it was something that people wanted to discuss prior to your intervention. Living within an echo chamber is a bad thing, both for the community and for society in general, and HN should be able to discuss that without your intervention.

Your comment was previously near the top because newer comments always start near the top. It's gone down because it has failed to attract enough upvotes and newer comments have taken its place. It doesn't take a moderator shadowban for a negative comment to lose ground on HN.

I know how HN works, but thanks for explaining it. New comments are only given the top spot for a small time period. My comment was at the top long after said time period, because it previously had more than enough upvotes to stay at the top (in fact, it actually had been knocked down to middle-ish of the thread, and then garnered enough upvotes to again be the top). As soon as dang commented, it suddenly was at the bottom.

>HN lives in a bubble of pro-remote talking points. In reality, most of the tech workforce (to say nothing of the non-tech workforce, which I assure you is much more anti-remote) does not enjoy it.

Absoultely. I think there's a place for remote work, and a lot of people do manage to make it work really well for themselves and their organizations. I don't think it's broadly generalizable though. People's priorities are diverse. I'm a pretty well-established person in my field, and I would hate to do WFH 100% because I enjoy mentoring junior folks, and I just can't form connections with people unless I'm in the same space as them.

I really value the option of discretionary WFH, but in reality I'd exercise it fewer than two or three days a month. I find a ton of value in being present and attentive in meatspace.

Every article that I have seen on HN about remote work (including this one) has had people strongly expressing opinions that cover the full spectrum, from "remote is awful" to "it really depends" to "remote is a lifesaver". Far from being a bubble, I've learned a lot about what the pros and cons are for different types of people.

In other words, up to a third of staff want to work remote full-time.

Ignoring the wishes of these people is not how one builds an inclusive workplace.

Listen to them and, if granting their wish, make sure tools and processes take remote workers in consideration.

It’s a far worse situation to pretend remote working is supported without proper consideration.

Were schools closed? I found wfh was not ideal with kids around, but this wasnt the wfh fault.

I would posit that a lot of those negative reactions to remote work is because the company culture has been sufficiently altered to support it.

Most negative experiences I've observed have come from split companies, where two classes of employee occur, or from companies who say they're "remote first" but have a culture that hasn't evolved past the office. With the right process changes and the right culture, remote work can be enjoyable, rewarding, and more productive. Not to mention the big advantage: no commute.

Nice hypothesis, but incorrect. This is at a company that has always had a large remote workforce, and if you do want to work remote, it's always been an option, and there is an actual culture to support it (and in fact, all of our internal tooling is built with remote work in mind. All meetings happen via Zoom even if you are in an office (partly because of lack of meeting rooms, but also because we don't want to disadvantage remote workers)). We've been trying to grow our remote work force because of lack of office space, but filling these remote roles has actually been hard. It turns out that there's a reason that most of our people choose to not be in those remote roles. They genuinely do not enjoy it.

Where are you located and what do you pay for local and remote workers?

Actually i think a lot of the arguing is because of people's conflicting interests. For example you will find that european workers are more warm to remote work, while a lot of SF workers are not. There is a large percentage of people who are invested in SF properties for example, and they are unconsciously biased against changes that will cause those values to drop.

What bubble? A large part of the world is working remote, and it seems like every company didn’t fall apart from the paradigm shift. Would this discussion even be entertained otherwise? Proof is in the pudding.

Bubble ad reductio, someone add that to the list of logical fallacies.

30% of the population are obese, and another 30% are overweight. In total, more than 60% are overweight/obese.

People downplay it because even when presented with these stats, they picture "overweight/obese" as a stereotypical "fat person" wearing size 55 pants and using a scooter to get around the grocery store. And they think "well I'm not fat, so I don't have anything to worry about."

In reality, a significant portion of the people reading this comment probably are "overweight" without even realizing it. "Overweight" is classified by your BMI, and the threshold for "overweight" is much lower than most expect.

If you are 5'6" and weigh 155 lbs, you are medically overweight. That's someone who wears size 31 pants and size small t-shirts. Not even close to your stereotypical "fat" person, but according to the statistics: overweight.

edit to clarify: I intentionally put "overweight" in quotes to indicate that I am using the medical definition of "overweight", and I am not saying that someone who is 5'6" and 155 lbs is unhealthy, fat, or needs to lose weight. Someone who is 5'6" and 155 lbs is, IMO, on the fitter side of the spectrum, but according to the statistics, still "overweight".

>But you’re talking as though such a person with a 31 inch waist should actually lose weight.

No, I'm not. I never said such a thing and I have no idea why you're building such a strawman.

Waist measure has nothing to do with this story. This story is about COVID-19 comorbidities, of which being overweight (which is medically measured using BMI, not waist measures) is one. BMI is all that matters in this context.

If you are 5'6" and 155 lbs, you are classified as overweight and thus are considered a high-risk person for COVID-19. That has nothing to do with "you should/should not lose weight".

And the broader point is this: if you see any stats saying "most COVID-19 deaths were overweight people", you shouldn't feel any sense of "safety" because you think "well I'm not overweight, I wear size small!", because there's a good chance that a lot of those COVID deaths wore smalls, too.

Has there been data showing that people with 25-30 BMI are at an elevated risk? I have’t seen that anywhere, everything I’ve seen has been about obesity. I would be very surprised considering that level of BMI has even been shown to be beneficial in elderly surviving some diseases.

> If you are 5'6" and 155 lbs, you are classified as overweight and thus are a high-risk person for COVID-19. That has nothing to do with "you should/should not lose weight".

This is absolutely false. It is the adiposity that raises risk. High muscle mass is not a risk factor. You’re got an erratic view of what we mean by overweight: we mean excessively adipose.

I took it as implied that you thought overweight people should lose weight for health reasons, but that isn’t the central point.

BMI approximates population averages and is useful as such, but for an individual the correct question to ask is whether they are excessively adipose. Someone at 5’6” with a 31 inch waist and a weight of 155 is almost certainly not excessively adipose.

You're completely missing the point. These studies don't give a damn about your adipose, or how much weight you need to lose. These studies are about whether or not you are classified as overwight, which is based solely on BMI, and nothing else.

Someone 5'6" and 155 lbs is overweight and thus is considered a high risk COVID individual, regardless of their waist size. If that person were to die of COVID, they would be reported as "had high-risk underlying health conditions".

That's what we're talking about in this context. Everything else you are talking about is completely irrelevant.

Responding to your above edit (which you now have removed):

>I agree many people underestimate their own adiposity, but the given example of 31 inch waist at 5’6” and 155 pounds indicates a trim, fit person.

This statement just highlights the entire point. You think it means "trim, fit person", as do most others. But the medical definitions do not agree with you. According to the medical definition, that person is overweight. That's the bottom line.

Ah I misread OP as saying people downplay obesity and don’t consider themselves fat. I took you to be giving an example of someone who thought they were not fat but were in fact fat.

Rereading OP’s comment I see they’re instead talking about people downplaying covid because they think it only affects people who are morbidly obese. My mistake.

Though, I suspect probably at least 80% of the people in the overweight/obese category legitimately have too much fat. Especially in america. Compared to the rest of the oecd, america has a much larger portion of “morbidly obese” within the obese category.

BMI does also underestimate obesity in some. On average it’s a reasonable definition of overweight/obese. The example you gave is an edge case, but the studies concern themselves with averages.

I understand what you're saying and I see the confusion. To be more clear, I agree with you and BMI is a terrible measure of "overweight"/"obesity".

As someone who is 5'7" and 160 pounds, I'm considered "overweight", but if you saw me in person I'm almost certain you wouldn't think of me that way because I look quite fit. In reality, I have a decent amount of muscle mass from being physically active, but the BMI measure doesn't take into consideration muscle vs fat, and thus I am technically "overweight".

My point was not that everyone who is technically "overweight" is "fat" or "unhealthy", but rather that the COVID-19 reporting statistics that use those words are also using that "terrible measure" of BMI, and according to BMI, even typically-seen-as-healthy people fall under that "high risk" category, and people should be aware of that rather than assuming they are safe from COVID just because they are "fit".

I think you may be going a little far with this still though. Overweight is a risk factor, and someone who is overadipose absolutely is at higher risk.

For yourself, you would make the sensible adjustment of “well I’m not overadipose and therefore do not have higher risk from that factor”. That doesn’t mean you’d have no effects, it merely means you lack one risk factor.

But overadiposity absolutely is a risk factor and those in that group should be even more careful: the more overadipose, the more so.

BMI is used that way for studies because it’s a useful measure over groups. The exceptions run both ways and balance out. It just shouldn’t be applied blindly to individuals.

https://aws.amazon.com/federal/us-intelligence-community/ not so secret