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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

#191

Post by zimbatm »

throwawaymath wrote: post #163
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…

This comment seems like a great microcosm of remote work discussions on Hacker News. You didn't dismiss remote working in a thread about it, but you tried (maybe imperfectly) to suggest times when it would be a good idea to not work remotely. It is not being received well! In response most commenters are criticizing your point by focusing on whether or not it is technically possible to achieve any of those things whi…

It's because us remote-workers can keep the Hacker News tabs open with nobody watching :)

OP is suggesting that the research is invalid because it didn't look at the company level productivity, which is then an excuse to validate his own preference. It's fine to have preferences, everybody does. Making broad claims is generally what gets you in hot water when communicating online.

It would have been more informative to have a specific example. Maybe his point is that it takes a lot of energy for him to figure out how to work together remotely, and that energy is better invested in other things like company culture.

Re: Study Shows a Productivity Boost of Working From Home

#192

Post by OpenDrapery »

detaro wrote: post #183
vfc1 wrote: post #181

The arguments against remote work often remind me of the arguments that we used to hear against Amazon vs brick and mortar retailers: "Amazon is never going to replace them because people like too much the social aspect of going to the store and maybe bump into their neighboors". Yes, of course, working from home is much more productive. This is true for creative professions especially (like software development or c…

Problem is, you could have said your last paragraph 10 years ago too. So while I hope you're right, it's far from clear that your arguments will win now. Still lots of companies building massive campuses instead of distributing.

Things that have gotten better in the last 10 years: ubiquity of high speed internet, tools such as voip, screen share, chat, cloud hosting across regions, lower cost of home office hardware like monitors

Things that have gotten worse: traffic and congestion, real estate prices

The needle is moving in the direction of wfh, I definitely believe that those that embrace it will be ahead of the game.

Re: Study Shows a Productivity Boost of Working From Home

#193

Post by jahaja »

ak39 wrote: post #13

First para hits the nail on the head. The issue is: trust between managers and employees. Also, "work from home" paradigm will only succeed when management paradigm changes from managing time to managing outcome. And changing that management style is not easy. Managing outcomes requires managers to understand not only the strategic agendas set by the bosses higher up but also the technical paths to achieve them confr…

I'm continuously surprised how little attention social status gets here. People seem to always assume that all decisions in IT/Tech/SV are entirely or mostly due to economically rational factors.

I think remote work is yet another example where social status play at least some part, if not a significant. Employees, probably especially managers, will of course see their social status diminish if everyone were to be remote. In an extreme case we're going from an in-person small kingdom to a somewhat depersonalized title online.

Even beyond remote work, I think there's quite a few examples in tech, and white-collar work in general, where social status seems to trump economical rationality. But maybe it's hard to admit and thus best left out.

Re: Study Shows a Productivity Boost of Working From Home

#194

Post by blindwatchmaker »

throwawaymath wrote: post #163
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…

This comment seems like a great microcosm of remote work discussions on Hacker News. You didn't dismiss remote working in a thread about it, but you tried (maybe imperfectly) to suggest times when it would be a good idea to not work remotely. It is not being received well! In response most commenters are criticizing your point by focusing on whether or not it is technically possible to achieve any of those things whi…

> Universal telecommuting does not need to be the next step in our evolution as a society, and that's okay.

To be honest, given the rising costs of living in most cities, I'm kind of hoping it will be.

Re: Study Shows a Productivity Boost of Working From Home

#195

Post by wolco »

frockington wrote: post #145
wolco wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You can't greet the client shake their hand and establish a connection over a video conference nearly as easily as you can in person. As a client I find myself paying attention to the little things. Did they offer coffee or water? Did they open the door? How was the handshake? Did they look trustworthy? If you are remoting in a global team it will be more difficult to provide the experience.

If those items are what you judge the business by how would you rate IBM? Firm handshakes, trustworthy rep (sort of) but they never show you the workers.

Re: Study Shows a Productivity Boost of Working From Home

#197

Post by jimmy1 »

swat535 wrote: post #182
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…

Ah yes.. we should sacrifice productivity for the sake of "vibrant company culture", whatever that means. I have been working remotely in a large company and allow me to refute your points. > - To more effectively add to the culture of the company. If your culture is already remote, or shifting towards it, then it's a non issue. > - To take part in ad hoc training opportunities, either to teach someone who needs help…

Having worked for both remote and "butts in seats" companies, allow me to refute your rebuttal

> If your culture is already remote, or shifting towards it, then it's a non issue.

What does this even mean? How is it a non issue? You are vastly underestimating the nuance required to get from A to B, mainly, from in-person to remote capable.

> This works just as well remotely. In fact I would argue it's even more efficient, one can take advantage of super quiet places in a private video chat.

This is opinion. It works for some people, but for others, part of communication is body language and being near someone. It's actually science. These "non-verbal" communication indicators are not as well communicated through a telepresence.

> In person meetings, stand ups, team sync meetings are 90% waste of time.

Sounds like some more opinion, as well as something that can greatly vary from company to company.

> Short meetings can be performed quickly in a video call.

HA! Have you seen the sorry state of affairs that is telepresence software?

> Again, the point is passing along information, whether it's done in person or online makes little difference. In fact if it's done online, I would argue it's more efficient because is a digital trail that one can trace back

Again, sounds like you are projecting your own personal opinions as some sort of fact. The digital trail point is a separate issue, and a valid one, the rest of the point is opinion.

> If your team members fail to collaborate remotely, they will fail to do so in person. Remote has nothing to do with it.

Opinion.

> Partners and clients don't care how "vibrant" your team is.They care about how good your product is. This point makes no sense

Oh, oh yes they do. You obviously have not been in a meeting where you have one of the big 4 Telco's in your building (I have), and you are giving them a tour, and they are impressed by your "amazing work culture" (your buildings and office are just as much as "marketing" as your sales pitch -- some people seem to miss this point), then you land that multi-million dollar contract, making it all worth it.

> This is hands on SV startup mentally.

Having never worked in SV myself, this seems like again, more opinion, and varies from place to place.

> The point I'm trying to get across is this: It all depends [ on the organization structure.]

You are very right -- it most certainly, almost always, depends.

Re: Study Shows a Productivity Boost of Working From Home

#199

Post by joelcornett »

konschubert wrote: post #77
eksemplar wrote: post #20

I’m not sure realism/positivism is the best approach to empirical data on this. Only one of my workers is more productive from home, in the IT department almost all the workers are more productive from home. We haven’t done any research on the causality, but the personality’s profiles for or digitization and IT departments are vastly different, so too is the work we donald the way we go about it. If you looked at us…

>Sometimes they come in late and leave early, sometimes they work from home and I can tell by what they produce they spent half the day doing something else. Honest question. You say you manage 20 people. How are your able to judge for 20 people at least weekly if the work they did was in line with your expectations? I feel like I basically have to read and understand every line written by each developer on my team i…

So, at my company, we have yearly reviews. Instead of looking at how productive people are from week to week, people are allowed to vary in their productivity throughout the year. Theoretically (although this never happens in practice because humans) an employee could deliver enough tangible value in the first half of the year and take the rest of the year off. It is the employees’ responsibility to show how productive they have been. That productivity is preferably measured in relatively tangible terms (backed by data), such as number of customers impacted, cost/revenue changes, or time savings. This requires a lot of trust, and places a lot of importance on the hiring bar, but it pays off.

Re: Study Shows a Productivity Boost of Working From Home

#200

Post by radoslawc »

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…

This might look like it's emotionally loaded response, but I'm just giving you tough love here:

> - To more effectively add to the culture of the company.

This is genuine question, what does this even mean?

> - To take part in ad hoc training opportunities, either to teach someone who needs help, or to learn something from someone when an obstacle is encountered.

This all can be done online and it's even better, if you have to focus on task and there are people constantly bothering you , or vice versa you interrupt someone, this does nothing but lowers productivity

> - To be able to attend in-person meetings or stand-ups when urgent things come up - without the awkwardness and delays of conferencing in multiple people.

In 15 years of work I've never had this issue, it's more managers' problem I guess, proving that they do something by visually showing that they do something - like organising meetings about nothing. And how it's less awkward to chase people around building than just set up meeting adding it to calendar?

> - To provide mentorship to junior staff.

There's this thing called documentation ;)

> - To collaborate more effectively.

We're not raising barn walls, there's a ton of tools to support collaboration

> - To show clients/prospective clients, partners and recruits, a vibrant and energetic team and working environment that is worth investing in/joining.

At assembly line in car factory, yes. Although this seems to be frequent theme in this industry: dress up and act busy because some big old guys are comming, we have to make good impression. Then there's this crowd of people pacing around asking random questions (imagine what kind, as for most of them 'the internet' is a blue E letter on desktop). Again, that's not productive working.

> - To build morale and a sense of teamwork and camaraderie.

Making great product that you can be proud of does all of this , or if you really cannot live without 'making great team' just set up some after hours go out or idk paintball or something

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