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What remote work does to engineering productivity

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Re: What remote work does to engineering productivity

#21

Post by bengale »

vz8 wrote: post #11

Maybe I'm the outlier here, but with the pandemic came a significant cultural shift, reducing office politics, and it's been something of a productivity renaissance for my organization. Communication has downshifted to a few mandatory team and all-staff gatherings, one on ones with direct reports, and that's about it. We handle things through email and Teams for urgent matters. Overall, management has been light touc…

A lot of the differences seem to have come down to how flexible an organisation is to change in general.

Re: What remote work does to engineering productivity

#22

Post by philmcp »

I think offering positions on a 4 day week (e.g. 32hrs) is one possible solution.

Developers are more burnt out than ever whilst needing less money to live. Remote work generally reduces living costs: no travel expenses, no expensive lunches, no expensive coffees etc.

A 4 day week reduces burnout at a time when many developers are spending less. Of course, the best outcome would be 4 day roles @ 100% salary, but often this isn't possible.

I honestly believe in years to come we will look down on the 5 day working week in the same way we currently do with 15hr factory shifts during the industrial revolution. It blows my mind that 99% of office roles are still 5 days / week, Monday to Friday - why is there basically no variation on this model?

It annoys me so much that I've just launched https://www.fourdayweek.io/ (shameless plug)

Re: What remote work does to engineering productivity

#23

Post by endisneigh »

sokoloff wrote: post #9
Shank wrote: post #5

I think there's always some skepticism that should be expressed around wild articles like this. At a core level, remote work during the COVID-19 pandemic is unlikely to mirror remote work outside of the pandemic. It's one thing if you choose to work remotely and if your company willingly embraces remote work. It's an entirely different beast if your company is forced to transition to remote work while stay-at-home or…

It added some and also removed some of the possible distractions from remote work. Kids at home for schooling is an addition. Many of the fun activities being closed is a removal. There’s no bar or restaurant to get together with friends, no club/rec level sports to play, etc. I agree that there are a lot of confounding variables, but think many were pro-efficiency rather than all being detrimental.

What a strange take. I disagree, I believe people in general will be more unproductive if there’s nothing fun to do.

Re: What remote work does to engineering productivity

#24

Post by waheoo »

leoedin wrote: post #8
lemoncucumber wrote: post #2

I started a new job during the pandemic, and the experience has been much worse than I expected. There’s no opportunity to ask simple questions without always worrying that I’m interrupting. Whereas in an office it’s easy to see who’s on the phone or focusing on something and simply ask someone else (or wait). There’s also no opportunity for the kind of work-related conversations that might happen over lunch where I’…

I'm in the same boat, and it is definitely worse than starting a job in normal times. I think it's an invisible problem because the decision makers and influential people in the organisation were mostly around before lockdown, so they already know everyone - they know who to ask when they have a problem, they have a feeling for who is friendly, who can be helpful etc. So to most of the staff that aspect just doesn't…

You have to create a culture of safety to enable people to ask questions. And if you get annoyed by the repeating questions you need to back that up with extremely accessible documentation around culture and expectations.

Re: What remote work does to engineering productivity

#25

Post by tracerbulletx »

sokoloff wrote: post #9
Shank wrote: post #5

I think there's always some skepticism that should be expressed around wild articles like this. At a core level, remote work during the COVID-19 pandemic is unlikely to mirror remote work outside of the pandemic. It's one thing if you choose to work remotely and if your company willingly embraces remote work. It's an entirely different beast if your company is forced to transition to remote work while stay-at-home or…

It added some and also removed some of the possible distractions from remote work. Kids at home for schooling is an addition. Many of the fun activities being closed is a removal. There’s no bar or restaurant to get together with friends, no club/rec level sports to play, etc. I agree that there are a lot of confounding variables, but think many were pro-efficiency rather than all being detrimental.

Having no outlet for socializing or getting a change of scenery is a massively bad thing when you also suddenly find yourself working in your house all day for a lot of people. There might be some personality types that don't mind, but it's driving me bonkers personally.

Re: What remote work does to engineering productivity

#26

Post by musingsole »

sdesol wrote: post #14

> False Assumption #1: Geographic Location Doesn't Matter I can't find it, but maybe somebody from Microsoft can, but they (Microsoft) actually found building distance made a difference in productivity. This was in a research paper that I read, but for the life of me, I can't find it. I should also add a disclaimer that, this research paper was done before remote work became more of a norm and we had less technical o…

I submit pull requests based around a few hours throughout the day my team seems most likely to be between tasks (and so likely to check out a PR). Such as around 11 or 2 for pre/post lunch ramp down/up. Point being, the time my PRs are submitted has no bearing on when I did the work for that PR.

Using repo metadata to arrive at productivity metrics always strikes me as willfully bullheaded. If you timestamp my keystrokes, you can't know when I designed the algorithm I'm coding with those keystrokes. Spoiler alert: it was probably while I was falling asleep the night before.

Re: What remote work does to engineering productivity

#27

Post by spideymans »

jcun4128 wrote: post #12
lemoncucumber wrote: post #2

I started a new job during the pandemic, and the experience has been much worse than I expected. There’s no opportunity to ask simple questions without always worrying that I’m interrupting. Whereas in an office it’s easy to see who’s on the phone or focusing on something and simply ask someone else (or wait). There’s also no opportunity for the kind of work-related conversations that might happen over lunch where I’…

Does your chat service not have a status? It usually can indicate like "in a meeting, busy, etc..." I usually make sure at least that they're not presenting or have busy on. There is one aspect that kind of sucks, how everything you post is public/persists, I'm the dunce boy oh well. The positive though is future people that have the same problem can search in the app and see the solution.

>Does your chat service not have a status? It usually can indicate like "in a meeting, busy, etc..." I usually make sure at least that they're not presenting or have busy on.

That depends on everyone being disciplined enough to keep their status up to date.

Re: What remote work does to engineering productivity

#28

Post by geoduck14 »

philmcp wrote: post #22

I think offering positions on a 4 day week (e.g. 32hrs) is one possible solution. Developers are more burnt out than ever whilst needing less money to live. Remote work generally reduces living costs: no travel expenses, no expensive lunches, no expensive coffees etc. A 4 day week reduces burnout at a time when many developers are spending less. Of course, the best outcome would be 4 day roles @ 100% salary, but ofte…

I think there are some very real cultural limitations around a 4 day (10 hr) work day. For one, my kids need to be picked up from school and they need to eat dinner.

Perhaps in 18 years, when I'm an empty nester, I can revisit this opinion.

Re: What remote work does to engineering productivity

#29

Post by philmcp »

geoduck14 wrote: post #28
philmcp wrote: post #22

I think offering positions on a 4 day week (e.g. 32hrs) is one possible solution. Developers are more burnt out than ever whilst needing less money to live. Remote work generally reduces living costs: no travel expenses, no expensive lunches, no expensive coffees etc. A 4 day week reduces burnout at a time when many developers are spending less. Of course, the best outcome would be 4 day roles @ 100% salary, but ofte…

I think there are some very real cultural limitations around a 4 day (10 hr) work day. For one, my kids need to be picked up from school and they need to eat dinner. Perhaps in 18 years, when I'm an empty nester, I can revisit this opinion.

Sorry, I wasn't talking about a compressed 5 day week. I was talking about 4 x 8hr days @ 80% of salary. There are many companies starting to offer this, some at full salary.

Re: What remote work does to engineering productivity

#30

Post by sul_tasto »

philmcp wrote: post #22

I think offering positions on a 4 day week (e.g. 32hrs) is one possible solution. Developers are more burnt out than ever whilst needing less money to live. Remote work generally reduces living costs: no travel expenses, no expensive lunches, no expensive coffees etc. A 4 day week reduces burnout at a time when many developers are spending less. Of course, the best outcome would be 4 day roles @ 100% salary, but ofte…

For some reason, our management is still under the impression that we’re being paid for the amount of time we are available, rather than the value we produce. Our company sent us all to agile training 18 months ago, but our managers seem to be the only ones who didn’t pass the cert test.
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