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Twitter’s new owner and CEO Elon Musk told employees that the company’s work-from-home policy is over forever. In a letter to employees he said:

The road ahead is arduous and will require intense work to succeed. We are also changing Twitter policy such that remote work is no longer allowed unless you have a specific exception. Managers will send the exception lists to me for review and approval.

Starting (Thursday), everyone is required to be in the office for a minimum of 40 hours per week. Obviously, if you are physically unable to travel to an office or have a critical personal obligation, then your absence is understandable.

It is similar to a message that Musk sent to Tesla workers earlier this year when he wrote to employees:

Everyone at Tesla is required to spend a minimum of 40 hours in the office per week. Moreover, the office must be where your actual colleagues are located, not some remote pseudo-office. If you don’t show up, we will assume you have resigned. The more senior you are, the more visible must be your presence. That is why I lived in the factory so much — so that those on the line could see me working alongside them. If I had not done that, Tesla would long ago have gone bankrupt.

There are of course companies that don’t require this, but when was the last time they shipped a great new product? It’s been a while.

Musk also told employees there would be no more “days of rest” which Twitter introduced during the pandemic period. 

Is Musk right? Do workers need to be in the physical workplace to be productive, creative and enterprising? 

For more than a year business leaders have tried to find ways to get people back into offices but workers, consistently resist saying working from home does not cut productivity but does make their life easier to manage without fighting traffic, parking and lunch crowds. Stanford surveys found that eight out of 10 employees want to work at home at least one day a week. But managers are not as happy with the work-from-home movement and are not thrilled with the amount and the quality of work that homebound workers produce. 

Even while the pandemic waned, employees surveyed in 21 countries worked from home more often than they did are the height of the COVID-19 outbreak. The number of days US employees spend working from home increased from 1.58 per week in January 2021 to 2.37 in June 2022.

Stanford economist Nick Bloom, who extensively studies work-from-home trends tweeted:

(Twitter)

In a new presentation, Bloom points to how the work-from-home movement is six times greater now than prepandemic.

(WFHResearch.com)

And U.S. workers lag behind other countries in the work-from-home trend.

(WFHResearch.com)

And Stanford Work From Home Research says workers rate the ability to work from home about as valuable as an 8% pay hike. For some workers, work-from-home rules reduced the “quit rate” by a third of some employer workforces.  

(WFHResearch.com)

The U.S. labor shortage gave employees more courage to demand to be allowed to work from home or they would quit and find an employer with more relaxed policies.

If a recession is in our collective future, will employees have less leverage and be forced back to the office? 

The desire to work from home varies by race/ethnicity:

(FutureForum.com : 2021 survey)

And, this surprised me, older employees were more likely to want to work from home than younger workers.

(WFHResearch.com)

And one more benefit of working from home that the Stanford researchers measured is how much time we save “getting ready to go to the office” when we work from home.

(WFHResearch.com)

For $8, journalist able to impersonates U.S. senator on Twitter

Washington Post journalist Geoffrey Fowler made the point of how easy it would be for anybody to impersonate a U.S. senator on Twitter with a “verified account.” Senator Edward Markey fired off a letter to Elon Musk asking for an explanation for what Twitter will do to fix this debacle. Twitter suspended the “for pay” verification and killed the fake account. How long will it take to sweep up the harvest of fakes that were created in the last week? 

Is it time to reconsider air shows?

Ever since the Wright Brothers used air shows to show the public that man could fly, these aerial displays have awed crowds with skill and daring. But this weekend, near Dallas, another air show crash raises inevitable questions about why we host such dangerous events over crowds of people.

There are more of these events around the country than you probably realize. According to the International Council of Air Show Safety, approximately 300 military and civilian air shows take place annually in the United States. 

The Federal Aviation Administration regulates airspace and issues a Certificate of Waiver or Authorization for air shows. The waivers stipulate where the show will be held and what maneuvers will be performed. The waiver also stipulates the speed and altitudes that will be used. The FAA has a long list of safety requirements for such events. 

The requirements range from having enough fire and rescue equipment nearby to making sure that nearby wildlife isn’t harmed by airplane intrusions.

An FAA study looked at records from 1992-2013 and, in that period, found 174 crashes: 91 of them were fatal and 83 nonfatal.  The study found:

These crashes resulted in 104 deaths and 44 nonfatally injured pilots and passengers. From 1993 to 2013, an estimated average of 270 civil air events per year occurred. The estimated industrywide commercial air show crash rate during this period was 31 crashes per 1,000 air events. The fatality rate was 18 deaths per 1,000 air events. Fatalities occurred in 46% of pilots and 34% of passengers. 

The FAA and National Transportation Safety Board investigate every crash and occasionally the investigation leads to a brief public debate about whether air shows should continue. Air show organizers say the danger is to the pilots not to people on the ground. 

Sometimes the government expands the safety requirements. Spectator injuries and deaths are rare, but they have happened. The most often mentioned is the Sknyliv air show disaster, where a Ukrainian Air Force jet crashed and exploded, killing 77 in the crowd at an airfield near Lviv.

A decade and a half earlier, three Italian Air Force jets collided while performing in Germany and 67 spectators died.  

The study also looked at the kinds of aircraft involved in crashes and the causes of the crashes. The Dallas crash involved vintage airplanes, and a number of airshow crashes do involve vintage aircraft, but the FAA study found there is no common factor among planes that crash in airshows:

No significant differences were found between the proportions of propeller planes, jets, helicopters, gliders, gyroplanes, and balloons in each outcome group. In addition, no significant difference existed between the proportion of home-built aircraft and formation flights in each outcome group. 

Fatal and nonfatal crashes occurred at roughly the same time during the day, and crash pilots were similar in age and total flight hours. 

No significant difference was found in the proportion of crashes that were precipitated by loss of power, loss of flight control, and improper maintenance in a comparison between the fatal and nonfatal outcome groups. However, fatal crashes were more likely than nonfatal crashes to involve fire. 

(FAA)

The median pilot age was 54. Pilots 60 and older were involved in nearly a third of crashes. The characteristics of their crashes compared with those of pilots younger than 60 were unremarkable, except for one 61-year-old, who suffered a myocardial infarction during flight. Thirty-five pilots (20%) held commercial pilot certificates, and 80 (46%) held airline transport certificates. 

NTSB reports noted improper maintenance as a contributing factor in 14 crashes (8%). Examples of such cases included improper installation of components or parts that resulted in control separation and fire and, apparently, careless inspections. Owner-modified mechanical systems and manufacturer-created weak points combined with fatigue and stress were also cited as contributing factors to crashes.

InsideHook points to one particular safety regulation that is aimed at keeping performing aircraft close enough to thrill crowds but minimizing the potential for injury:

In terms of spectator safety, today aircraft operate only in something called the “sterile environment,” a box of airspace that must be at least 50 meters away from spectators, further if aerobatics are being performed, much further still if the aircraft — the likes of a modern jet — is flying faster. But depending on the country, planes are kept at a minimum distance of between 200 and 366 meters from the crowd. Aircraft maneuvers — the “energy of the aircraft,” as it’s sometimes phrased — must be directed away from the crowd, or run in parallel to it, so should the aircraft crash the debris is directed away from onlookers, too.

The rise of “dad sneakers”

Young people are recognizing the wisdom of what they call “dad shoes” and are doing something that dads definitely would not do, they are paying three times the sticker price for the kicks. The Wall Street Journal explains the trend.  

And LinkInfluence explains what is behind the attraction:

Some fashion commentators say that this is a part of the “normcore” movement. Instead of bright colors and flashy patterns, designers are choosing to go for simple cuts and muted palettes. And when social media users see influencers in $400 grey sweatshirts, they want one too.

As part of this movement, certain shoes became accepted, seemingly out of nowhere. This includes the New Balance 624, perhaps the most “classic” dad shoe around.  

Just ask any guy over age 50 what shoes they mow their lawn with. They will break out a chlorophyll-stained pair of 624s. Don’t be put off by the duct tape that holds them together. 

Dad shoes are now “classics,” according to GQ. If you want to pay 3x the sticker price, drop me a note. I probably have just what you are looking for.