What remote work does to engineering productivity • Hacker News Board

Re: What remote work does to engineering productivity

#31

Post by deathanatos » Sun, Mar 14, 2021, 10:43 PM UTC

This is an ad, Hacker News:

> [More sophisticated tools] can understand these aspects' in-depth impact on your productivity, catching the unseen blockers and pain points that remote work has brought. Then, based on that data, you can implement changes and measure the results.

… which links to their product. The submitter/author is the co-founder.

> Not only have office interruptions increased; for many engineers, home life poses an entirely new set of challenges.

It's a different set of interruptions. In the office, I have all the din and chaos of all of my coworkers around me, since private offices and cubicles have fallen out of fashion in favor of stuffing in as many people in as few square feet as possible.

At home, well, I don't have an office there either, since when the average cost of a home is north of $1M in many metros¹, home ownership is fairly out of reach, even for a SWE. No home, and no apartment big enough, means I also don't have a home office. I also didn't have a desk or chair, either; I started this pandemic at a couch and coffee table, and found out the rest of the world was too when I started shopping for desks and chairs and they were well out of stock.

> If an engineer in an office needed a mouse or monitor, the company would buy them the relevant tools.

Most companies will buy tooling for, but the company; that is, whatever is purchased is owned by the company. I don't partake in this, as it's an incredible amount of e-waste.

¹and in most of the data I've seen, rent:wage is high in any geo. "SWEs are paid more" is true, but it doesn't change the cost of a house. Put them in terms of salary years to control for changes over time, and it's 3-10× (depending on location) more expensive for me than it was for my father, who held a similar "highly paid" service industry job.

Re: What remote work does to engineering productivity

#32

Post by kshacker » Sun, Mar 14, 2021, 10:44 PM UTC

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.

Talking of cultural limitations and extending them to other examples, what if I am able to work 6 days? Can I do 7 hours on 5 days and 5 hours on the 6th to make up the 40? Or how about I work just 35 hours a week?

Why would I do that? ... just saying. Maybe my family needs allow me to spend only 7 dedicated hours (plus commute) for work.

I think the corporations will go crazy coordinating such things. Retail where this happens is quite different and continuity of 1-person to another may not be important there, but in many corporate roles, continuity is important.

Re: What remote work does to engineering productivity

#33

Post by mprovost » Sun, Mar 14, 2021, 10:47 PM UTC

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…

The classic study of how distance affects communication was done by Thomas Allen in the 70s and results in the Allen Curve [0] which shows that people are four times as likely to communicate regularly with someone sitting six feet away as with someone 60 feet away, and that they almost never communicate with colleagues on separate floors or in separate buildings.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allen_curve

Re: What remote work does to engineering productivity

#34

Post by heavyset_go » Sun, Mar 14, 2021, 10:48 PM UTC

deathanatos wrote: post #31

This is an ad, Hacker News: > [More sophisticated tools] can understand these aspects' in-depth impact on your productivity, catching the unseen blockers and pain points that remote work has brought. Then, based on that data, you can implement changes and measure the results. … which links to their product. The submitter/author is the co-founder. > Not only have office interruptions increased; for many engineers, hom…

> and in most of the data I've seen, rent:wage is high in any geo. "SWEs are paid more" is true, but it doesn't change the cost of a house.

In other words, worker compensation has not kept up with increases in the cost of living, and even engineers are not exempt from this trend.

Re: What remote work does to engineering productivity

#35

Post by jcun4128 » Sun, Mar 14, 2021, 10:50 PM UTC

spideymans wrote: post #27

jcun4128 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yeah if it's Teams/integrated in Outlook calendar it's pretty good... sometimes people just set it to always busy ha.

Re: What remote work does to engineering productivity

#36

Post by goxygini » Sun, Mar 14, 2021, 10:50 PM UTC

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…

You could consider coming to Switzerland. Working 32hrs/week is very popular there. For example jobs.ch has 7368 offers in IT right now and 2138 of them have the "80%" option.

Re: What remote work does to engineering productivity

#37

Post by angrais » Sun, Mar 14, 2021, 10:51 PM UTC

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 get it and agree that four day work week would be nice for mental health, potentially productivity, etc.

My question to you: why 4 days? Why not 3? Why not 2? Seems as arbitrary as 5.

Re: What remote work does to engineering productivity

#38

Post by sdesol » Sun, Mar 14, 2021, 10:56 PM UTC

musingsole wrote: post #26

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 keyst…

I wouldn't go as far as calling it "willfully bullheaded" as I do believe knowing when somebody creates a pull request can provide some data points worth mulling over. Having studied hundreds of popular open source projects, there does seem to be a pattern as to when people prefer to create a merge request, which is mid week.

I do agree that GitPrime, GitHub Insights and other similar solutions are pushing developer metrics in a dangerous direction, by latching onto low hanging fruit metrics. I written a bit about what I believe is a positive direction and this is focusing on impact, which I talk about at

https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=26457072&goto=threads%...

Re: What remote work does to engineering productivity

#39

Post by anonytrary » Sun, Mar 14, 2021, 10:59 PM UTC

heavyset_go wrote: post #34

deathanatos wrote: post #31

This is an ad, Hacker News: > [More sophisticated tools] can understand these aspects' in-depth impact on your productivity, catching the unseen blockers and pain points that remote work has brought. Then, based on that data, you can implement changes and measure the results. … which links to their product. The submitter/author is the co-founder. > Not only have office interruptions increased; for many engineers, hom…

> and in most of the data I've seen, rent:wage is high in any geo. "SWEs are paid more" is true, but it doesn't change the cost of a house. In other words, worker compensation has not kept up with increases in the cost of living, and even engineers are not exempt from this trend.

Easiest way to benefit from decreased value of the dollar is to switch companies and demand a more fair salary. This at least worked for me. Companies will start hiring engineers at a higher rate are less willing to increase compensation for existing engineers if they don't have to. Most people do not ask for what they want.

Re: What remote work does to engineering productivity

#40

Post by ArkanExplorer » Sun, Mar 14, 2021, 10:59 PM UTC

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’…

This is even more difficult if starting a new job and changing your job qualification - eg. moving from SWE to product manager. Making that kind of leap without being able to rely on a physical office environment is too difficult.

This Government response to COVID, and WFH, seems to have frozen people's career and social status as it was at the end of 2019.