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Work from Home and Productivity

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Re: Work from Home and Productivity

#81

Post by munk-a »

majormajor wrote: post #29
ineptech wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed! The elephants in the room for me are the self-reported hours (Did "hours worked" really increase, or was that time spent changing laundry and running errands that got classified as work time) and the obvious confounder of children being at home rather than in school.

> (Did "hours worked" really increase, or was that time spent changing laundry and running errands that got classified as work time) Let's keep in mind here too that "hours between commute to/from office" != "hours working." Coffee shop runs, lunches, snack breaks, chatting, walking around...

It's really unfortunate that modern productivity metrics try and maximize things like butt-in-chair hours and time spent actively typing. I work in a rather creative part of CS and those coffee runs and walks are pretty productively spent time for me.

One of my issues early on into the pandemic is that I was fearful of taking walks and my productivity actually dropped as my physical exercise decreased. When I realized this and started emphasizing active movement while working (dancing to techno) and taking walks to get in bursts of fresh air I found that things more than reversed.

I would note that I have to deal with ADD and physical activity has a long history of positive impacts on folks with such - so that advice might not go for everyone.

Re: Work from Home and Productivity

#82

Post by munk-a »

cortesoft wrote: post #55
ineptech wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed! The elephants in the room for me are the self-reported hours (Did "hours worked" really increase, or was that time spent changing laundry and running errands that got classified as work time) and the obvious confounder of children being at home rather than in school.

I think that doing household chores and errands for supplies SHOULD count a work time if you are working from home. If you are WFH, then you are not only doing your main job, but you are also working in the facilities department. If you go to the office, there are people who clean the office, take out the garbage, maintain equipment, clean the bathroom, etc. At home you have to do all of that.

You make a decent argument but... society doesn't judge that commute times or medical appointments should necessarily be reimbursed, so I think that there isn't really a "sane baseline" to compare against in non-covid times.

There's also the very real question of division of usage - most of us are likely working in spaces that intersect heavily with our private spaces (since we didn't move to our current residences with having a dedicated home office in mind) and that creates a pretty complex process to actually assign responsibility - it shouldn't be 100% in either direction, but it's hard to figure out how much of that time was legitimately caused by you working from home.

Re: Work from Home and Productivity

#83

Post by 1vuio0pswjnm7 »

6gvONxR4sf7o wrote: post #14

COVID does not constitute a natural experiment! A useful natural experiment is when something changes in a way that can only (or at least almost entirely) affect your outcome by way of the cause you're interested in. In the cause and effect chain of A -> B -> C, if A affects B, but not C, then you can exploit wild things in A to learn about how B affects C. But if A affects C outside of B, you can't tell the effects…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confounding_variable

Re: Work from Home and Productivity

#84

Post by sabellito »

discardable_dan wrote: post #74
dml2135 wrote: post #20

I'd question how conclusions are being drawn here. I think the key takeaway is that output did not change. The authors then go on to say that since hours worked increased, productivity decreased. But how do we define what an "hour worked" really means? I know that I definitely spend more time "working" during WFH in the sense that I am either being responsive to colleagues or actively working on my own work. However…

Honestly, I think the study sort of damns itself with this line: > Time spent on coordination activities and meetings increased, but uninterrupted work hours shrank considerably. You can easily translate this as: > Without workers in the office, middle management was left to spend additional time on pointless meetings, inhibiting their workers from spending their time on work tasks. If that is true, let's consider th…

Big if there, Dan. You sound a bit bitter about meetings, that's not the case everywhere.

Re: Work from Home and Productivity

#87

Post by mekkkkkk »

It seems like the overwhelming majority of people here are positive to WFH. I can't stand it. To me, a "remote first" workplace sounds abysmal. I like to have a physical workplace where our company can gather and focus on our goals together, in person. Picking up business related discussions, small talking, sharing music, joking around. Attempting this through video meetings or voice chats feels like a bad simulacrum. I just hope there's a place for people like me in your visions of the future distributed workplace.

Re: Work from Home and Productivity

#88

Post by christophilus »

sabellito wrote: post #84
discardable_dan wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly, I think the study sort of damns itself with this line: > Time spent on coordination activities and meetings increased, but uninterrupted work hours shrank considerably. You can easily translate this as: > Without workers in the office, middle management was left to spend additional time on pointless meetings, inhibiting their workers from spending their time on work tasks. If that is true, let's consider th…

Big if there, Dan. You sound a bit bitter about meetings, that's not the case everywhere.

I’d put money on it being the case everywhere.

Re: Work from Home and Productivity

#89

Post by ok_coo »

pojzon wrote: post #80

Ofcourse my productivity dived.. I have to spend 3h per day on meetings to align with ppl on various thing because ppl force me to have f2f meetings over zoom. Things that could have been an email. On top of that are kids and wife who drive me crazy and constantly interrupt when you have to focus. This is not a correct way to measure WFH, during normal WFH situation my kids would be in school and my wife at work.. An…

I've had a similar experience. Many more meetings now than when I was in the office. Middle managers not knowing what to do with themselves, so calling useless Zoom meetings.

However, I've been super productive when I've been able to get some quiet time outside of meetings.

Re: Work from Home and Productivity

#90

Post by calvinmorrison »

christophilus wrote: post #88
sabellito wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Big if there, Dan. You sound a bit bitter about meetings, that's not the case everywhere.

I’d put money on it being the case everywhere.

I mean not really. I have 2 one hour meetings per week. One is a 1on1 with my boss and one is with my team. That is about perfect
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