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Work from home and productivity: evidence from personnel and analytics data [pdf]

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Re: Work from home and productivity: evidence from personnel and analytics data [pdf]

#11

Post by _jal »

taneq wrote: post #8

> Employees with children living at home increased hours workedmore than those without children at home, and suffered a bigger decline in productivity than thosewithout children. This tells you all you need to know about the study. You can't analyse the relative effectiveness of working from home and working in the office when you're conflating "remote work" with "trying to get something done on your laptop on the ki…

> This tells you all you need to know about the study.

Your comment only tells me you wanted a different study than the one they did.

Asking what happened in the real world, including in a range of work situations, is a very interesting question to ask.

Looking for/at the delta between optimal work-at-home and the office would also be interesting, for different reasons.

Re: Work from home and productivity: evidence from personnel and analytics data [pdf]

#12

Post by tetranomiga »

st8675309 wrote: post #2

Surprised this post isn’t getting more comments. The result is pretty clear with over 10,000 participants in the study. >>Total hours worked increased by roughly 30%, including a rise of 18% in working after normal business hours. Average output did not significantly change. Therefore, productivity fell by about 20%. Time spent on coordination activities and meetings increased, but uninterrupted work hours shrank con…

>The result is pretty clear with over 10,000 participants in the study.

They're all from the same Asian company, it's far from clear.

Re: Work from home and productivity: evidence from personnel and analytics data [pdf]

#13

Post by geodel »

st8675309 wrote: post #2

Surprised this post isn’t getting more comments. The result is pretty clear with over 10,000 participants in the study. >>Total hours worked increased by roughly 30%, including a rise of 18% in working after normal business hours. Average output did not significantly change. Therefore, productivity fell by about 20%. Time spent on coordination activities and meetings increased, but uninterrupted work hours shrank con…

> Surprised this post isn’t getting more comments.

From article:

"The company that provided data is one of the world’s largest IT services companies. They have over 150,000 employees who work with clients across the globe. Most work in the home country, a rapidly- developing Asian nation."

This is about a half-assed Indian "IT Services" company. (From where I am. Need to specify lest I also be branded as racist white dude or whatever). So there is hardly anything to learn in general. Of course similar type IT companies can learn that their lazy micro-managers need to do even more micro managing to get anything done.

The only thing I learned is that one can get even prestigious institution like University of Chicago to do shady shit if there is enough money to motivate.

Re: Work from home and productivity: evidence from personnel and analytics data [pdf]

#14

Post by Spooky23 »

carabiner wrote: post #7
st8675309 wrote: post #2

Surprised this post isn’t getting more comments. The result is pretty clear with over 10,000 participants in the study. >>Total hours worked increased by roughly 30%, including a rise of 18% in working after normal business hours. Average output did not significantly change. Therefore, productivity fell by about 20%. Time spent on coordination activities and meetings increased, but uninterrupted work hours shrank con…

Interesting. This contradicts the prevailing HN sentiment that WFH increases productivity because there's less time spent socializing or dealing with distractions.

It varies dramatically by circumstance. I had coworkers who struggled with 3-4 kids and working spouse at home.

For me, my son is 9 and my wife was partially at home. No big deal for my productivity. For my sister, she sold her car and hired a nanny for a year.

Re: Work from home and productivity: evidence from personnel and analytics data [pdf]

#16

Post by throwasquirrel »

adflux wrote: post #6

I have been unfortunate enough to be "diagnosed" with ADHD at a young age. Oh how strange it is that a child can't concentrate with 25 of his peers hopping and chatting around him, let's medicate him as soon as possible! /rant off Well, a few years ago I rented an office space with a friend of mine, just the two of us in a very spacious (100m2), light and well-ventilated office. We received no phone calls, there were…

I have been unfortunate enough to not be diagnosed with ADHD until middle age, and I'm sorry to hear about your apparent misdiagnosis but for people who actually do have the condition, it's very real and it very much sucks. It's not just "someone walked into the room and I lost my train of thought", it's "I have one simple task to do and I know exactly how to do it and it's been hours but I still can't make myself do the thing no matter how much I want to."

It's "I haven't done my taxes for 18 months even though it would only take a day, and I cannot force myself to do it no matter how hard I try."

It's "I've been unable to fold my laundry for six weeks even though I've alphabetized my cutlery drawer, twice."

It's "I have to document this project but no matter how much I want to just do it, I nevertheless continually find myself on imgur or Facebook or Hacker News or some random other website reading up about how switched-reluctance motors or Monte Carlo tree search or whatever works."

It's lack of executive function when you need it and it's the inability to think about anything else when something's grabbed your focus and it's a built-in character flaw that you can't "just choose to not have" and it's growing up thinking you're "just lazy" but "have so much potential" and it just. f*king. sucks.

If all you need in order to focus on the thing you want to focus on is for no-one to interrupt you, you don't have ADHD.

/rant

Re: Work from home and productivity: evidence from personnel and analytics data [pdf]

#17

Post by rodcoelho »

This doesn't really take into consideration that a lot of businesses/teams within orgs had to quickly pivot strategies due to market conditions. Scrapping plans and shifting priorities last minute, a.k.a. thrash, comes at a cost. So yes it's not totally surprising that people had to work more hours to accomplish a similar output

Re: Work from home and productivity: evidence from personnel and analytics data [pdf]

#18

Post by taneq »

_jal wrote: post #11
taneq wrote: post #8

> Employees with children living at home increased hours workedmore than those without children at home, and suffered a bigger decline in productivity than thosewithout children. This tells you all you need to know about the study. You can't analyse the relative effectiveness of working from home and working in the office when you're conflating "remote work" with "trying to get something done on your laptop on the ki…

> This tells you all you need to know about the study. Your comment only tells me you wanted a different study than the one they did. Asking what happened in the real world, including in a range of work situations, is a very interesting question to ask. Looking for/at the delta between optimal work-at-home and the office would also be interesting, for different reasons.

Then call it what it is, "Working from home while homeschooling during a pandemic, compared with normal office work: Evidence from the trenches."

Re: Work from home and productivity: evidence from personnel and analytics data [pdf]

#19

Post by geodel »

I hope people do not much from this study done in a single IT Service company based in India. One critically important thing to remember is they are "Outlay based" instead of "Outcome based". So things measured are hours billed, time-sheets filled and reports generated. What work got done and was it even half useful to client is of secondary importance at these companies.

I interviewed few years back so thing they ask it if person is married or have kids because they are likely to take more vacations.

I wish they actually detailed the company name. Because if they did and my guess is correct this company is getting hammered as J2EE/.net support model is collapsing. There were some very large layoffs in last few year even before Covid.

Re: Work from home and productivity: evidence from personnel and analytics data [pdf]

#20

Post by postalrat »

carabiner wrote: post #7
st8675309 wrote: post #2

Surprised this post isn’t getting more comments. The result is pretty clear with over 10,000 participants in the study. >>Total hours worked increased by roughly 30%, including a rise of 18% in working after normal business hours. Average output did not significantly change. Therefore, productivity fell by about 20%. Time spent on coordination activities and meetings increased, but uninterrupted work hours shrank con…

Interesting. This contradicts the prevailing HN sentiment that WFH increases productivity because there's less time spent socializing or dealing with distractions.

I'm confident that HN sentiment is a fantasy created by people who are barely working.
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