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At JPMorgan, productivity falls for younger employees at home

bloomberg.com

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Re: At JPMorgan, productivity falls for younger employees at home

#251

Post by SilasX »

holidayacct wrote: post #76

Never believe stories like this, measuring productivity is an impossible problem. Microsoft spend something in excess of 3 billion dollars trying to quantify productivity in the 90s and they couldn't do it. One of my college professors worked on this exact problem for the Army in the 80s, they created a formal domain specific language for quantifying employee productivity it took them 20 years and several hundred mil…

That seems like way too strong a claim to make, since it would also mean that you can’t claim anyone is just as productive after going remote.

Re: At JPMorgan, productivity falls for younger employees at home

#252

Post by notfromhere »

topkai22 wrote: post #121

We took an entire society from in-person offices with norms structured around a clear delineation between home/work to full WFH basically overnight. There was little to no training, often limited or confused technology rollout, and no planned culture transition. On top of that, many people had their kids kept home as well and had other essential services disrupted. The fact that it is difficult to measure whether or…

I don’t know about you, but work/life delineation pre-Covid wasn’t much better. The reason that employees are feeling it worse now is because even that pretense is gone, even if it barely existed before.

Re: At JPMorgan, productivity falls for younger employees at home

#253

Post by chiefalchemist »

jrochkind1 wrote: post #132
chiefalchemist wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lying? He's saying what he needs to say to print more money. He didn't say it was _only_ the younger employees, did he? He's not a goal. He's got a narrative. Is anyone going to question him? And wreck their career?

Yes, I think we call that "lying".

I was simply noting that one person's lie is another person's "motivating speech."

I was also noting that not being 100% transparent typically gets called deception or propaganda.

Mr D singled out the younger employees but he was also careful not to say it was them and only them. Calling out everyone would be a bad move for moral. So he sliced his "facts" a bit in order to meet his ends. That's deception, and not fraud per se.

Re: At JPMorgan, productivity falls for younger employees at home

#254

Post by Aunche »

imtringued wrote: post #242
Aunche wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For an individual, lines of code is a bad measure. Some problems are harder than other and some people do more design or leadership work. However, for the collective this all should average out.

The top comment started off with the argument that you can't know the relative importance of the work. 6 lines of code can do a lot. 600 lines of code can do little. To measure productivity you have to measure how difficult the job is compare how valuable the job is. Most of the time both value and difficulty are unknown.

Across JP Morgan as a whole, the "relative importance of the work" isn't going to change significantly over time. It definitely has nothing to do with WFH. It's far more likely that a drop in LOC is caused by an increased difficulty of mentorship, slower time to resolve blockers, etc.

Re: At JPMorgan, productivity falls for younger employees at home

#255

Post by ghaff »

haswell wrote: post #52
echelon wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've officially reached zero productivity today. I'm sick of being stuck in my tiny condo with the noise from neighbors and zero work/life balance. The constant streams of asks on Slack that wake me up in the morning and keep me up at night. I'm making more in the stock market than my job.

Might seem a little off topic, but you are well positioned to read "Deep Work" by Cal Newport. It's been discussed on HN many times, and when I recently read it, it felt like someone finally "got it". Like "yes, this is what I've believed, but now someone else is saying it!". Back on topic - I've been on both sides of this. I started working from home ~7 years ago when I took a job on the west coast, but opted to sta…

I'm with you on the lack of work travel. Pre-COVID, I was mostly full-time WFH but I traveled for over a third of the time so I had plenty of people contact. But that's of course all shut down. I haven't been more than an hour away from my house since early March.

Re: At JPMorgan, productivity falls for younger employees at home

#257

Post by _glass »

holidayacct wrote: post #76

Never believe stories like this, measuring productivity is an impossible problem. Microsoft spend something in excess of 3 billion dollars trying to quantify productivity in the 90s and they couldn't do it. One of my college professors worked on this exact problem for the Army in the 80s, they created a formal domain specific language for quantifying employee productivity it took them 20 years and several hundred mil…

Management is part of the social sciences, and there there was a big shift away from the quantitative methods (e.g. measuring productivity) towards qualitative methods, where one can better understand why managers are now saying that the productivity fell. And what is behind those reasons.

Re: At JPMorgan, productivity falls for younger employees at home

#258

Post by zepto »

nsriv wrote: post #10
zepto wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you think he’s just lying about it? When I was a younger worker I certainly did slack off on Friday and Monday when I could get away with it. I’ve worked in more than one office where people started drinking on Friday afternoon in the office when the CEO was out of town.

You're right in that most office workers take Monday to get going and wind down on Friday, but Jamie Dimon is the guy that lied in Congressional testimony multiple times, so that's equally likely.

It’s not equally likely unless you think 50% of statements Dimon makes are lies.

If you do think that, it would be an interesting and unusual claim worthy of analysis, but it’s certainly not a reasonable assumption without such analysis.

Re: At JPMorgan, productivity falls for younger employees at home

#259

Post by zepto »

chiefalchemist wrote: post #253
jrochkind1 wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I think we call that "lying".

I was simply noting that one person's lie is another person's "motivating speech." I was also noting that not being 100% transparent typically gets called deception or propaganda. Mr D singled out the younger employees but he was also careful not to say it was them and only them. Calling out everyone would be a bad move for moral. So he sliced his "facts" a bit in order to meet his ends. That's deception, and not fra…

Except it’s not really deception - it’s just a true statement.

It’s only ‘throwing younger people under the bus’ if you use it to support a pre-existing narrative that he isn’t actually making.

Re: At JPMorgan, productivity falls for younger employees at home

#260

Post by [deleted] »

djmips wrote: post #213
mjfl wrote: post #17

As a young guy who was a full time remote worker for about 6 months, and also very honest with myself: I was more distracted as a remote employee. I wasn't as focused as I needed to be and when I was on site working next to the guy I reported to I was much more productive.

That's true but you were fooling yourself. Wait until you get fired and then you'll realize it's about getting your work done and not where you are sitting. Discipline should come from within.

[deleted]
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