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Work from Home and Productivity

bfi.uchicago.edu

121–130 of 139 posts

Re: Work from Home and Productivity

#121
post #18

"Employees with children living at home ... suffered a bigger decline in productivity than those without children" Surprising No One.

That’s part of the point. Sometimes you’ll be surprised. If you test lots of hypotheses getting results that surprise you along with lots that don’t increases your confidence that the surprising results are probably real. If you don’t test obvious things you’ll never be surprised by disconfirmation.

Re: Work from Home and Productivity

#122
Given the stories I've heard about the rigor of UChicago's econometrics program, I'm somewhat surprised they would put out a working paper extrapolating what is effectively a single data point to make broader inferences about the efficacy of WFH practices. To be fair they qualify their findings in terms of the firm's employees, but given the tone of the title and conclusion focusing on WFH as a general trend it still seems to me that they are drawing from a sample size of n=1 instead of n=10000. The paper doesn't specify which Asian country is being studied but anecdotally I have several relatives/friends working in East Asian corporations who can attest to the pervasiveness of "managerial piety" culture even when working remotely, so I would also think they'd want to replicate the study across similar companies in other parts of the world to account for potentially confounding cultural factors in assessing WFH productivity

Re: Work from Home and Productivity

#124
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…

The study also damns itself because they chose the absolute worst possible timing for their “research” and measuring wfh productivity. It’s like they don’t understand how much the pandemic changes everything.

Re: Work from Home and Productivity

#125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me personally, the reason is that I fully expect the pandemic to negatively impact productivity in ways completely unrelated to WFH (children in home instead of school, stress, lack of preparedness to proper WFH, etc.). In contrast, I find it difficult to think of pandemic-related but not WFH-related aspects that I expect to improve productivity. I'd be happy to be convinced otherwise.

I think the biggest one is that most people's social lives also dried up during the pandemic. You weren't finishing up WFH and then rushing out to get dinner and see a movie with friends. You weren't traveling or taking vacation. I've had a lot of conversations with people on my team over the last year that were some version of: Them: "I finished this over the weekend." Me: "That's great, but you're to be clear you'r…

That's a good point, thanks!

Re: Work from Home and Productivity

#126
post #112

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 like to have a physical workplace where our company can gather and focus on our goals together, in person I dont want to sound rude, but most people here seem to focus more on actual work output. > discussions, small talking, sharing music, joking around. This doesnt sound like work at all, only busywork; what negatively affects those around. Most people prefer to do get shit done and go home (when you work from…

I understand your point of view, and I respect it. I can't find the motivation to ruthlessly min/max my efficiency like that though. Most people are bound to X hours of work in a day, regardless of raw output. I just think it's worth sacrificing some amount of efficiency to be able to enjoy those hours. I also think that sacrifice is less than it first appears, since you gain a lot of intangible benefits like mindshare, motivation and team cohesion. I don't want to "power through" my work, I want to look forward to it.

Re: Work from Home and Productivity

#127

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…

Then don’t join a remote first company? It’s not like that’s going away anytime soon.

Of course not. I doubt it ever will. I'm referring to the seemingly common sentiment that working in an office is objectively worse and should be abolished. I just wanted to add some nuance to that.

Re: Work from Home and Productivity

#128

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.

What are you even getting at? Are you saying that people misreported "uninterrupted work time" while in the office? Because I know if a coworker asks me a question in the middle of the day, it definitely isn't uninterrupted work time.

Re: Work from Home and Productivity

#129
post #124

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…

The study also damns itself because they chose the absolute worst possible timing for their “research” and measuring wfh productivity. It’s like they don’t understand how much the pandemic changes everything.

Sort of? The largest outlier is child care time. Under non-pandemic conditions, where the children are not in the house, WFH is a decidedly different beast. As a WFH employee, even pre-pandemic, I firmly believe it is not the same style of social interaction; it has a much stronger "contractor" feel. If you are comfortable and familiar with a standard work environment, the transition can be difficult. That said, the numbers here are very bad: it looks like most things just devolved into meetings.

Re: Work from Home and Productivity

#130

"Sapience time measurement is sophisticated and designed to be resilient to simple manipulatio nattempts. Merely keeping the computer on for longer or watching videos instead of working does not increase Input. Rather, it would require having the relevant work software as the active window,and giving continuous user input (via mouse, keyboard)." doesn't sound that sophisticated to me lol. in any case their claim that…

lol, this would result in engineering teams generating progressively smaller scoped tickets to maximize tasks and reviews completed. Update Text For Button -- started 5/10, completed 5/11 Update Color Of Button -- started 5/11, completed 5/12 Update Margins Of Button -- started 5/12, completed 5/13 Update Border Radius Of Button -- started 5/13

the curse of Taylorism
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