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Study Shows a Productivity Boost of Working From Home

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Re: Study Shows a Productivity Boost of Working From Home

#121

Post by lagadu »

HenryBemis wrote: post #105
lagadu wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but suppose I assign you a task that I think will take two days in my limited understanding Why would the manager be the one making estimates? That's a task either for the team, if applicable, or for the implementer. edit: I work from home, every sprint we have a planning meeting where we do the estimates together, my manager isn't even involed in it. Only if we're expecting to exceed an estimate by 20% do we conta…

Assuming that "the "manager" knows his 'stuffs', should know that TaskA requires 5 hours, and TaskB requires 1 hour. Now to that add a 20% for interruptions, emails, etc. With my team(s) I (almost) always knew (more or less) the time for various tasks. I was also expecting any feedback/'negotiation' to happen at the time of task assignment OR as soon as someone can see that deadline is at risk. I know that Tasks from…

> should know that TaskA requires 5 hours, and TaskB requires 1 hour.

I contest this. This assumes the manager is also some sort of software engineer plus I don't understand why would there be any negotiation: a project asks for an estimate and we give it based on how much we feel it's going to take, there is no negotiation; either the project manager accepts it or reduces scope and we make a new estimate, my manager is uninvolved.

I suspect this might be a work culture thing: in my country managers aren't timekeepers, their responsibility is making sure we have all the conditions we need to be productive and be "invisible" otherwise.

Re: Study Shows a Productivity Boost of Working From Home

#122

Post by wolco »

adriand wrote: post #114

I think it depends on what you want to optimize for. If you want to optimize for individual productivity (and there are no trust issues) then sure, working from home is effective. However, you may decide that the individual productivity loss of having people work in an office is outweighed by the group productivity and morale gain from having people working together. Here are some reasons from a holistic company pers…

All of these items can be done remotely. Training/mentoring/team work/stand ups/taking accountibility. Showing clients you have employees working might seem like it will help land some clients if you bring them for a visit but more impressive is having a global remote team you can conference in.

Re: Study Shows a Productivity Boost of Working From Home

#123

Post by occamrazor »

roansh wrote: post #115
gowld wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> hackers don't work in noisy, open spaces; they work in rooms with doors. > They work in cosy, neighborhoody places with people around Which is it? That article did not age well.

I guess it's about the freedom to have either one at the time your prefer. Quite environment doesn't exist at open offices. :)

Counterpoint: I work in a very quiet open space office and I like it. If people want to chat they go to the kitchen. Have to say however that other departments are intolerably noisy.

Re: Study Shows a Productivity Boost of Working From Home

#124

Post by wolco »

HenryBemis wrote: post #105
lagadu wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but suppose I assign you a task that I think will take two days in my limited understanding Why would the manager be the one making estimates? That's a task either for the team, if applicable, or for the implementer. edit: I work from home, every sprint we have a planning meeting where we do the estimates together, my manager isn't even involed in it. Only if we're expecting to exceed an estimate by 20% do we conta…

Assuming that "the "manager" knows his 'stuffs', should know that TaskA requires 5 hours, and TaskB requires 1 hour. Now to that add a 20% for interruptions, emails, etc. With my team(s) I (almost) always knew (more or less) the time for various tasks. I was also expecting any feedback/'negotiation' to happen at the time of task assignment OR as soon as someone can see that deadline is at risk. I know that Tasks from…

the project manager will know the timeline breakdown while your manager may not.

Re: Study Shows a Productivity Boost of Working From Home

#125

Post by marianov »

adriand wrote: post #114

I think it depends on what you want to optimize for. If you want to optimize for individual productivity (and there are no trust issues) then sure, working from home is effective. However, you may decide that the individual productivity loss of having people work in an office is outweighed by the group productivity and morale gain from having people working together. Here are some reasons from a holistic company pers…

Culture is bullshit. Professionals working together in a project vs a factory or plantation.

Re: Study Shows a Productivity Boost of Working From Home

#126

Post by V-2 »

inglor wrote: post #27
a_imho wrote: post #21

Participants were not even selected random Enter Bloom, who helped design a test whereby 500 employees were divided into two groups--a control group (who continued working at HQ) and volunteer work-from-homers (who had to have a private room at home, at least six-month tenure with Ctrip, and decent broadband access as conditions).

Came here to find this. Precisely what I thought - I think that some people work better remotely and some work better in an office setting (like myself). If you ask people to volunteer for remote work then people who are better remote workers are likely to volunteer and more likely to work harder to prove it can work.

> If you ask people to volunteer for remote work then people who are better remote workers are likely to volunteer

And people who are better in-office workers volunteer not to go home :) I guess this does mimic real life, no?

Re: Study Shows a Productivity Boost of Working From Home

#127

Post by wolco »

occamrazor wrote: post #120
dvfjsdhgfv wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In practice, being a slacker when working from home is not really an option. I know very well that if I don't perform well enough, I'll be fired. Why should I take the risk? Also, when I realize a job is going to take longer than expected, I notify my boss immediately and clearly explain the reasons. It's not that I wake up after two weeks that I'm 12 days late - I probably realize something is wrong immediately or a…

It works for you, it may not work for others. Unfortunately slackers do exist (I know some people who boast their ability to be unproductive and deceive their boss) and working from home may make cheating easier.

It is easier to cheat in person because you can put a show where it appears you are working but remotely your work is the only thing to judge you on.

Re: Study Shows a Productivity Boost of Working From Home

#128

Post by wolco »

Rainymood wrote: post #55

PhD student here so take my opinion with a grain of salt. I personally love the fact that I can choose to work at home or at the office. I can really concentrate at home (private room where I feel comfy) but on the other hand it is also significantly easier to distract yourself from work. Netflix is just one tab away and there's no one to look over your shoulder and whisper in your ear "Don't watch Netflix when you'r…

If watching netflix helps you work go ahead.

Re: Study Shows a Productivity Boost of Working From Home

#129

Post by Clubber »

lawnchair_larry wrote: post #63
ende wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a contractor, you are under no obligation to be an ass in any seat, and if client says otherwise you can point them towards IRS reclassification.

Not really true, it’s easy to make the case that work must be done on site. Company policy prevents source code from leaving, or network resources are not available outside the office or something.

In the US, it's illegal to require an independent contractor to be on site or to even set hours. It's a purely output driven venture. The government sees it as a form of tax evasion, so companies need to be mindful of it.

https://legal.uncc.edu/legal-topics/contracts/contract-check...

https://www.consumeraffairs.com/news/employers-must-follow-s...

https://www.reuters.com/article/businesspropicks-us-findlaw-...

Re: Study Shows a Productivity Boost of Working From Home

#130

Post by cbetti »

gregshap wrote: post #97
deepGem wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Almost all estimates are based on past experience. So good luck with such estimates when you are entering new domain or even new tech. I honestly believe that there is no need for estimates. Your delivery date is set by the customer or the market or competition. So it's a lot healthier to work backwards from that date and figure out which of the features can be delivered, than to breakdown the work into quite meaning…

how do you figure out which features can be completed by the delivery date, if not by estimating?

Think of a video chat feature for a code pair website. Maybe you can deliver it faster if you build a central server based video chat model using a standard VP8 than if you go WebRTC and a heavily customized codec.
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