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I had a former coworker who worked in our Korean office. Such a cutie with a great personality. But she worked very long days and explained it takes over an hour to get from the office to her home. Poor woman had no free time. Still single in her mid thirties.
Not to be a eugenicist, but something valuable was squandered. I think somehow her great contributions to project management could be realized along with having enough time to live a life outside of work. More housing closer to work. Faster public transportation, at least if housing must be far away and many workers don't drive a personal car to work. Some combination of these things are desperately needed in Korea.
The common complaint by new urbanists types is that Americans live in single family homes and drive cars to work. But I go to other countries and my coworkers do neither of those things and are so much worse off than me.
Project management? I.e. work that involves handling (reading, writing, etc.) a lot of documents and talking to a bunch of people? Can totally be done 100% remotely. I mean I get the "social isolation" aspect of the remote work, but it doesn't look like 2hrs commute to the office and sitting all day in a cubicle there (no idea how they do it in Korea but that's what would happen in the US) is improving on that. I imagine there are positions where personal contact and being physically in one room is important. But I don't see how project management - unless it's managing something like construction project where you need to actually observe what is being built on the ground - is one of them.
For this one person, their job is to work on a laptop. Could be done remotely. Everyone had to show up in person.
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