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Why Working from Home Will Stick [pdf]

nbloom.people.stanford.edu

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Re: Why Working from Home Will Stick [pdf]

#81

Post by varjag »

throwaway45349 wrote: post #42
chrisseaton wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What costs? Even people who work from an office still usually have a home study or office for doing their bills or whatever. Do you mean electricity costs to run your laptop? What does that add up to?

I live in the UK - very few places in London will have the space for a separate home office + space for family. It will get incredibly expensive if we all need to buy more space (and I'm not having my office setup in my living room forever).

Maybe the employees will be able to buy/lease space in (now emptied out) office buildings!

Re: Why Working from Home Will Stick [pdf]

#82

Post by throwaway45349 »

DC1350 wrote: post #43

WFH makes the new grad experience miserable if you go to college somewhere far from where you grew up. I’m graduating soon and the only place I have geographic ties to is my home town where I tried very hard to get away from forever. Everyone I know from college is scattering all over the continent. Does anyone have tips for choosing where to live as a remote worker, or how to make friends as a young person in a new…

I was lucky to be in your position only months before the pandemic (though I never went to college), so I built up a reasonable set of friends before WFH (both at work and outside of work).

The biggest factor in your decision should be ease of meeting new people, imo. Cities were already bad for this in the first place, but I view them as the "least worst" option. Try leverage your existing network if you know anybody where you're moving to, because they're going to be in the same position. Hacker meetups, game jams, industry conferences or other hobbies work really well too -- though you might want to avoid being in the tech bubble because I'm totally stuck inside it.

Once you've got a few friends, you can leverage their social network to meet new people and explore new hobbies and stuff.

WFH does mean you can more easily keep in touch with college friends. Me and a few buddies have a Discord server where we co-work and we also have something similar within my company (where it's easier to not worry about leaking secret stuff). This has been one of the few things that's kept me sane over the last year.

Edit: Happy to share more if you've got something specific in mind.

Re: Why Working from Home Will Stick [pdf]

#83

Post by crocodiletears »

varjag wrote: post #74
ameister14 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

worker B will make 80 widgets in 8 hours and be unhappy because he knows the employer expects 80 and he's not going to work harder for no reward. Worker A will make 40 widgets in 4 hours.

Let's say worker B draws 2x salary of worker A, because he is known to be twice more experienced/skilled/productive.

Worker A and B not being interchangeable in this context, and understanding the reason for their distinction, worker B will attain the quota they've been given within the alotted time period, up to 80 units as is their capacity.

Re: Why Working from Home Will Stick [pdf]

#84

Post by ameister14 »

varjag wrote: post #74
ameister14 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

worker B will make 80 widgets in 8 hours and be unhappy because he knows the employer expects 80 and he's not going to work harder for no reward. Worker A will make 40 widgets in 4 hours.

Let's say worker B draws 2x salary of worker A, because he is known to be twice more experienced/skilled/productive.

Ah, but didn't you say it was impossible to measure quality of work? You could only measure the time spent in the seat, right?

Now you're saying people should be judged on their outputs. Interesting change of pace.

In reality he's unlikely to draw 2x the salary for 2x the output, though, because he's operating from a deficit of information and again, the manager/hr person's main goal isn't actually efficiency.

If they're smart, though, they'll give him a performance bonus based on productivity over a minimum marker, maybe staged as productivity goes up without a quality drop to squeeze out as much as possible. At a certain point, though, money becomes less of a driver for most people so that's not the only thing they'll do. They will also tie his performance to the team as a whole, create opportunities for building 'team unity' and maybe put together artificial competition so he actually cares about team performance. Then his colleagues will push him to perform better.

Re: Why Working from Home Will Stick [pdf]

#85

Post by throwaway45349 »

konjin wrote: post #72
throwaway45349 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If covid is dangerous enough to lock down society yet is only x5 as deadly as bad flu seasons open offices are literal murder. Flu is only deadly for a very small segment of society, though.

As is Covid.

Ah, well, I'm not exactly a proponent of lockdown in the first place, but the big difference is Covid spreads faster. it's already a social norm to stay away from grandparents when the flu rolls around.

Re: Why Working from Home Will Stick [pdf]

#86

Post by croutonwagon »

lrossi wrote: post #66
Jestar342 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Has your team productivity actually dropped? You mention things that are supplemental to productivity but nothing about the actual productivity itself. If not, then I suspect there is no more "time theft"* than usual and you shouldn't get wound up by it. * that is a hideously obnoxious and entitled phrase to use - instead of "distracted" or even simply just "not working".

Right, somehow I missed the time “theft” part. He thinks of his people as if they’re criminals. This is like a textbook example of manager red flags that you should check for and avoid when joining a company.

I wasn’t necessarily talking about my team. In fact mine has remained productive. But it has taken more effort on my part to keep them organized and on task. I’m the opposite of a micromanager, I hate that stuff. But the fact is I’m having to probe more and more as time goes on to keep things moving. Heck it not cuts into my productivity which also cuts into my teams.

Heck Just last week I had an admin that it took 45 minutes to get a hold of during an outage mid day because he was trying to renovate a bathroom and had setup a workstation in his garage.

Time theft is just a common term and I used it for that reason.

And I’ve seen it elsewhere in my workplace and across my communities. We have seen an increase in AV/app whitelisitng reporting attempts to install mouse shakers, auto responses, running video all day to avoid idle timeouts on teams Statius etc.

People calling into meeting while out fishing, hunting, shopping doing home improvement etc and usbeing asked to locate them at xyz time.

On a personal level idgaf about personal time. I heavily encourage my employees to take it. I heavily encourage mental health awareness and having hobbies and interests outside of work. Heck I regularly take off for such things myself. And I work to give my employees projects that fit their interests and strengths.

But what would your prefer I call it when people are trying to do these things and not claiming vacation time?

Re: Why Working from Home Will Stick [pdf]

#87

Post by mech422 »

throwaway45349 wrote: post #77
mech422 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>Very few companies have on-site gyms, snacks and child care. I'm not seeing your point here? it IS still a sellers market, and companies do pay for those things. So its still a savings for them. As for a 'drop in the bucket', I've seen companies try to save money by buying cheaper pens. So I'm sure cheaper rents, utilities, perks, etc. will be considered... edit: grammar

What I mean is that WFH employees will still demand perks, just of a different nature (maybe higher salaries). As long as the market dynamics we have today stick, employers will still be spending money on perks. Just as employers can now access remote employees anywhere in the world, employees can access any company hiring remote.

oh yeah - WFH is not gonna do anything about say signing bonuses or stock options. I just think it has enough cost savings potential that companies will be open to it going forward.

I especially like the "employees can access any company.." part, as it gives me a lot more options. Up till this now, it was basically only SV companies and small startups that were open to it.. So I'm looking forward to being able to cast a wider net next time I need to look for work.

Re: Why Working from Home Will Stick [pdf]

#88

Post by TameAntelope »

croutonwagon wrote: post #86
lrossi wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, somehow I missed the time “theft” part. He thinks of his people as if they’re criminals. This is like a textbook example of manager red flags that you should check for and avoid when joining a company.

I wasn’t necessarily talking about my team. In fact mine has remained productive. But it has taken more effort on my part to keep them organized and on task. I’m the opposite of a micromanager, I hate that stuff. But the fact is I’m having to probe more and more as time goes on to keep things moving. Heck it not cuts into my productivity which also cuts into my teams. Heck Just last week I had an admin that it took 4…

Emotionally, I see "time theft" and I have to work extra hard to continue to be objective, because I associate it with the "higher productivity with static wages" problem that I don't see getting solved the way I'd hope.

FWIW I understand where you're coming from generally, I don't want to make these concerns about you or your team specifically.

Re: Why Working from Home Will Stick [pdf]

#89

Post by ghaff »

stupidcar wrote: post #59

If my employer tries to remain 100% remote I will leave and go somewhere with an office. I find working from home too lonely, and I detest spending hours of every day on video calls. Of course, I'm just a single data point, and perhaps not representative, but I'm also generally less social than other people, so I find it hard to believe there won't be a lot of people feeling the same. I'm sure that there will be a mu…

I suspect that even if you go back to an office, you'll generally still spend hours of your days on video calls in most places because others won't be in the office. And, TBH, I already was because I work with people all over the world.

Re: Why Working from Home Will Stick [pdf]

#90

Post by croutonwagon »

charlesu wrote: post #15
croutonwagon wrote: post #4

The problem is multi-faceted. While this is entirely anecdotal I have observed a LOT of time theft by employees. And been asked more than ever to investigate employee behavior (even when I normally try and advise against the approach) Some more egregious than others. While most probably aren’t going to awol for a day at a time I know a LOT of people that now spend working hours doing leisure things. Maybe that’s a su…

> While this is entirely anecdotal I have observed a LOT of time theft by employees. Are these employees paid hourly? If not, it’s not really time theft if the work gets done on time.

In many cases yes. I do have hourly employees that are paid for specific support time slots. Part of their job is to be available and responsive during certain hours.

And that’s my point. It’s not getting done on time.

Projects that are well planned and have long histories of identical executions are taking longer and simply being dropped if I’m not probing.

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