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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

#221

Post by bonniemuffin »

aphextron wrote: post #203
throwawaymath wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Personally I think a hybrid approach is the best. I go into the office every morning, get daily meetings done, show face for the boss, have lunch with colleagues, then head home at 1:00 and work remote until 5:00. This allows me to enjoy pretty much every benefit of remote work while still actively contributing to company culture and meeting collaboration which I prefer to completely isolated remote work.

But you still have to commute every day. Wouldn't it be better to work from home 2-3 days a week, instead of commuting in every day?

Re: Study Shows a Productivity Boost of Working From Home

#222

Post by ghaff »

tex0 wrote: post #10

It depends a lot on the type of work you do and the company setup. As a developer in regular software companies I like working from home one or two days a week. That gives some nice focus time while still giving enough days for meetings and communication. Working from home 100% probably only works in remote only companies (like GitLab), otherwise there a huge information gap. In general I'd love to see a right to hom…

It doesn’t need to be at an entire company level. Where I work, some teams are mostly co-located, others are more distributed, some are pretty much fully remote. And things can shift over time.

Re: Study Shows a Productivity Boost of Working From Home

#223

Post by tluyben2 »

fsloth wrote: post #172
sheeshkebab wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In thech companies, the only valid reason to be in the office is that often times upper management (those who pay bills/salaries) are restless crowd that can’t sit in one place staring at screen and have grand desire to run around the floor watching people “work”. The rest of your points are absolute bull shit that can all be done remotely.

"The rest of your points are absolute bull shit that can all be done remotely" I disagree mentoring can be as effective when done remotely. The channel width of face-to-face communication is higher than that of any other method. Furthermore, there are a lot of things that are communicated from senior to junior accidentally, for example, some simple efficient pattern of using the IDE, that would not get communicated i…

> The channel width of face-to-face communication is higher than that of any other method.

Research to that effect? I know some people have that, I know I do not. So this absolute statement is already 1 datapoint (me) off. And I know others (who I mentor) who absorb mentoring far better via remote methods. When someone mentors me, I like to chew the information over, research it etc. This goes for most communication for work related matters; I absorb far less if it is told to me face to face than when I read it and have time to thoroughly understand it all.

I agree somewhat with the rest but that again can be done remotely: we develop almost everything while in chat; this acidental transfer is even far better than face to face imho. In chat someone says something like ‘I refactor this to that by hitting ctrl-something’ ; all people see it, not only the accidental junior next to you but all of them. And later this can be searched by others while the verbal incidental comms is gone forever.

I definitely see the need for face to face meetings, but far less than some people here do. And it would be good to have more research done into this matter: I simply do not see many programmers (and I managed 100s over my professional life) being productive in the setting you suggest. Looking and feeling busy yes (so for the bums on seats type of manager), but productive as in just getting stuff done, in my experience no. But that is anecdotal, like your view, so real research and numbers would be good.

Re: Study Shows a Productivity Boost of Working From Home

#224

Post by smileysteve »

lagadu wrote: post #121
HenryBemis wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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

> This assumes the manager is also some sort of software engineer plus I don't understand why would there be any negotiation:

We have whole methodologies based on the premise that we (software engineers or managers) are incredibly horrible at estimating software.

Re: Study Shows a Productivity Boost of Working From Home

#225

Post by Nowyouknow »

mr_tristan wrote: post #211

I've worked remotely for my last two jobs, and in general, love it. I live in a city I love, and the companies I've worked for are in places I really don't want to be in, physically. What I don't see, however, is a "third option" that I'd really, really want: the option, say, one day a week, to work in a shared space, with people related to my domain. My company actually has an office that's in a suburb of where I li…

Have you tried a coworking space? Look into it! I'm actually trying to come up with a way to regularly do this and expense it, just got to pitch it the right way :)

Re: Study Shows a Productivity Boost of Working From Home

#226

Post by Tannic »

de_Selby wrote: post #209
blindwatchmaker wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

And the environmental impact and all round craziness of everyone sitting in traffic twice a day.

Not to mention the enormous environmental and social costs of having to move for a new job.

Re: Study Shows a Productivity Boost of Working From Home

#227

Post by dpark »

a_imho wrote: post #146
tysonzni wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah you're right. Randomization at least ensures internal validity of the study as applied to people who are interested in WFH . Whether it generalizes to others is an open question.

If control group is selected from people interested in WFH they have incentives to validate the study too. Or if the opportunity is presented as a privilege they might be less engaged to begin with?

I don't know what it means to "have incentives to validate the study". The study is useful but the participants are biased and that will necessarily influence the results.

> Or if the opportunity is presented as a privilege they might be less engaged to begin with?

Very likely, but even ignoring that, the sampling bias means that the study is confirming that people who want to work from home do better with that arrangement, rather than demonstrating that work from home is in general a better arrangement. If you want to study X vs Not-X and draw your sample population entire from the group that prefers X, you will like find that X is better in whatever ways you choose to measure: happiness, productivity, retention, etc.

Imagine you want to study open office floor plans vs private offices. If you include only open office advocates in your study, you'll probably find very different results than an study that includes only private office advocates.

Re: Study Shows a Productivity Boost of Working From Home

#228

Post by mtw »

Take this study with a grain of salt. Shanghai is an extremely competitive and expensive city. There is a lot of social pressure to work hard, or at least pay for overpriced rent. If the employees were authorized to work from home, they can't afford to watch TV or hang around in coffee shops or coworking spaces.

Re: Study Shows a Productivity Boost of Working From Home

#229

Post by Nowyouknow »

elbear wrote: post #217

I can confirm the part about feeling isolated after working remotely for 7 years. I try to compensate by going to co-working spaces or cafes and working from there. Another thing that doesn't help my situation is that I'm mostly working alone on the project that I'm working on. I tried to compensate for that by volunteering my programming skills for an NGO.

Solo projects are no fun. When I get bogged down with it, I will usually set up a call for info with coworkers and just talk through it with them. That brainstorm time is re-energizing and helps me get over the humps.

Re: Study Shows a Productivity Boost of Working From Home

#230

Post by Tannic »

adriand wrote: post #216
zimbatm wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I'm not suggesting that the research is invalid. I have no reason to think it is and in fact I believe - as I stated - that maximizing individual productivity by working from home is effective. However, I don't believe that every company needs to optimize for individual productivity. It is entirely valid to choose to optimize for other things, such as group productivity, or collaboration, or culture, or really whatev…

For every touchy feely anecdote like this there are ten for the subtle stresses imposed by daily commutes.
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