Remote work may be possible for coding type folks. But for real business, especially around sales, relationship building, decision-making, problem-solving...I just don't see how this will be feasible.
Why Working from Home Will Stick [pdf]
291–300 of 570 posts
Re: Why Working from Home Will Stick [pdf]
#292This is ironic coming from Stanford, who is currently fucking up every single aspect of their handling of covid, as many Stanford students will attest to. Colleges are basically scammers at this point. The whole benefit of going to college is being able to meet like-minded smart, young people like yourself. Remote college isn't a thing and never will be. College is about people, as much as it is about learning. The unfortunate K-12 and college students are learning this the hard way.
Personally, I don't think that remote is here to stay. I think working will be augmented by remote tools, but it cannot be replaced by remote. Humans just aren't robots and they need community, and work is the biggest source of community after college. To me, online college is a complete joke and is not what students after high school need. It's just not healthy. Humans need interaction in person, and they do their best work when they are working with people who they see on a weekly basis, especially young 20-somethings.
This whole thing is becoming evident as people are starting to really just not care for the lockdowns at this point. Parks in SF are a complete shitshow because people want to be out and about. You will never be able to force them to be purely remote, and after covid, if your company is purely remote, you will not attract the best young talent, period. You might attract older folks, but you know you want young talent.
This whole thing makes no sense.
Re: Why Working from Home Will Stick [pdf]
#293Earlier quoted context omitted.
Another big negative is the sunk cost fallacy of acquiring and/or owning office space. If you have all this space, you need to fill it with people. Ritualistic behavior isn't only exhibited by rank and file employees.
I wonder whether WFH will make work more ‘marginal value-add’ - it’s probably far easier to hire/fire someone remote than an office setting, for instance. Maybe some work will start to resemble Uber more than traditional work?
Yup. You mean UpWork, or companies like it.
Re: Why Working from Home Will Stick [pdf]
#294I haven’t read all 63 pages, but I’m surprised that the abstract doesn’t mention: All the $$$ that businesses get to save by eliminating or reducing office real estate, including $$$ saved by pushing some of those costs onto employees.
Exactly. Suddenly you’re paying for a place to work. You’re likely giving up space in your own home (for at least part of the day) without any compensation.
Re: Why Working from Home Will Stick [pdf]
#295Earlier quoted context omitted.
My productivity probably doubled when I moved to remote working last year. In the morning, I don't need to commute an hour to the office, giving me an extra hour of sleep. My workspace is also superior to what I'd ever get in the office. But the biggest boost in my productivity has come from the lack of distractions when working from home. If I'm trying to focus on something, I can set my status as busy and mute noti…
> My productivity probably doubled when I moved to remote working last year. Everyone who claims this is lying to themselves.
> Everyone who claims this is lying to themselves.
Certainly not everyone.
At my employer a VP produced a report for 2020 showing how his division had increased both productivity and response times across the board by a non-trivial margin due to WFH.
Doesn't mean this generalizes across all teams but certainly at least some are seeing such data.
Re: Why Working from Home Will Stick [pdf]
#296This is ironic coming from Stanford, who is currently fucking up every single aspect of their handling of covid, as many Stanford students will attest to. Colleges are basically scammers at this point. The whole benefit of going to college is being able to meet like-minded smart, young people like yourself. Remote college isn't a thing and never will be. College is about people, as much as it is about learning. The u…
Maybe good idea would be to have a community decoupled from business?
In any case, you could still have offices as a place for people meeting face2face and do the most "thinking" or "creative" work at home, it's not mutually exclusive.
Re: Why Working from Home Will Stick [pdf]
#297This is ironic coming from Stanford, who is currently fucking up every single aspect of their handling of covid, as many Stanford students will attest to. Colleges are basically scammers at this point. The whole benefit of going to college is being able to meet like-minded smart, young people like yourself. Remote college isn't a thing and never will be. College is about people, as much as it is about learning. The u…
It's not coming from Stanford. It's coming from three economists -- Barrero, Bloom, and Davis -- only one of whom is at Stanford, Bloom. Barrero is at ITAM in Mexico, and Davis is at Chicago (he does have an affiliation with Hoover).
It should go without saying that a single professor does not speak for Stanford, or vice versa. For all we know everyone else at Stanford thinks Bloom is an idiot.
Re: Why Working from Home Will Stick [pdf]
#298Earlier quoted context omitted.
Working together in person has to be 10 times more effective. Major doubt that anyone thinks remote working is actually more effective from the companies perspective. The only argument I ever here is that antisocial people prefer not seeing other people and getting their work done alone.
My productivity probably doubled when I moved to remote working last year. In the morning, I don't need to commute an hour to the office, giving me an extra hour of sleep. My workspace is also superior to what I'd ever get in the office. But the biggest boost in my productivity has come from the lack of distractions when working from home. If I'm trying to focus on something, I can set my status as busy and mute noti…
> My workspace is also superior to what I'd ever get in the office.
An interesting factor is how this is dependent on how confident we can be to continue WFH.
Like many people, I'm nowhere near prepared to have a good home office, the house is way too tiny. Which was fine when I didn't WFH more than a few days a month.
But I could easily solve that by moving to a cheaper area where I could get a house with enough space for a dedicated home office. But to do that I need to be confident WFH will continue. Hard to predict what to do.
(So what I've done in the interim is lease a small office walking distance from my house, lots of vacancies right now.)
Re: Why Working from Home Will Stick [pdf]
#299This is ironic coming from Stanford, who is currently fucking up every single aspect of their handling of covid, as many Stanford students will attest to. Colleges are basically scammers at this point. The whole benefit of going to college is being able to meet like-minded smart, young people like yourself. Remote college isn't a thing and never will be. College is about people, as much as it is about learning. The u…
You want young talent and you also want older talent.
Mixing remote and non-remote cultures is hard but if done right it will outperform any of the two extremes you pick.
Re: Why Working from Home Will Stick [pdf]
#300This is ironic coming from Stanford, who is currently fucking up every single aspect of their handling of covid, as many Stanford students will attest to. Colleges are basically scammers at this point. The whole benefit of going to college is being able to meet like-minded smart, young people like yourself. Remote college isn't a thing and never will be. College is about people, as much as it is about learning. The u…
> You might attract older folks, but you know you want young talent.
A lot of the things you say make sense, but this sounds ridiculous to me. Why would you only want young talent? How about older talent?
Skill isn’t age specific.