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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]

#41

Post by travisjungroth »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #32
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…

I managed mixed in-office and WFH teams before the pandemic. There was a stark productivity drop every summer when kids were out on summer break. This includes parents with dedicated home offices who had been WFH for many years. The effect was so predictable that we planned for lower velocity during summer months. It was also common practice for WFH employees to spend more time in the office for more focus during sum…

Traveling and even just being new to a town is a huge time suck. Every errand takes twice as long because you don't just have to do it. You have to choose a place, find it, etc. I won't try to visit somewhere and work for less than three months.

There are two ways to make it work I just thought of. One is to have your errands taken care of. Maybe this is because you're visiting family and the groceries are already there. Or, you're rich enough (in that place at least) to pay for someone to do everything. The other big option is to be on tour. Travel in a big group where the work and the travel blend together and there's an efficiency in numbers.

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

#42

Post by taneq »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #32
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…

I managed mixed in-office and WFH teams before the pandemic. There was a stark productivity drop every summer when kids were out on summer break. This includes parents with dedicated home offices who had been WFH for many years. The effect was so predictable that we planned for lower velocity during summer months. It was also common practice for WFH employees to spend more time in the office for more focus during sum…

> It turns out it’s plainly obvious that they don’t get much work done when they’re away from home. But that’s another story.

That's really interesting - I primarily work from a home office, but if I'm struggling to buckle down and get some documentation done, sometimes I'll head out to a random coffee shop and set up there for a while. It's easier to stay focused when the internet's just that bit slower...

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

#43

Post by throwasquirrel »

cecilpl2 wrote: post #35
throwasquirrel wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> "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." This is why I learned more about grain bins and low-head dams this week than I did the tool I was supposed to be building.

Ooh did you know grain bins are super dangerous and there's a startup building a grain-bin-leveling robot so that farmers don't have to risk death in their grain bins?

Yeah that wasn't what I was meant to be doing either.

https://www.agweb.com/news/business/technology/robot-replace...

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

#44

Post by throwasquirrel »

throwaway256978 wrote: post #34
throwasquirrel wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I haven't been diagnosed and don't know where to start. One of my teachers had suggested in early grade school that I had a "developmental disability" but my parents resisted and prevented me from being assessed and prevented me from being in the special needs program. Partially because they didn't really believe in the concept and partially because they feared that it would negatively affect my social development. I…

See a psychiatrist, if it's an option. They'll ask you to do one or more diagnostic questionnaires, I was given the Weiss functional impairment scale and the CADDRA questionnaire to fill out. Your partner or a close acquaintance will also be required to answer some questions to give an outside view. Answer as honestly as possible (there's no effort at blinding so it's embarrassingly easy to guess the 'right' answers... they really need to work on this).

I don't know about other countries but in Australia if you meet the criteria on the above questionnaires and your psychiatrist's assessment agrees with that then you'll likely be prescribed stimulant medication (Ritalin or dexamfetamine, or the long acting variants Concerta or Vyvanse). I started on dexies and while not everyone's so lucky, for me they were life changing. I can sit down and choose to do a thing... and just do the thing! It's the first time in my life I've been able to do that. I was surviving before but... life just doesn't have to be that hard.

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

#45

Post by astrange »

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.

Maybe if you do nothing but greenfield coding, but when does that ever happen? You'd need to be in a startup or a company with severe NIH that also likes to rewrite everything every few years.

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

#46

Post by analog31 »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #32
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…

I managed mixed in-office and WFH teams before the pandemic. There was a stark productivity drop every summer when kids were out on summer break. This includes parents with dedicated home offices who had been WFH for many years. The effect was so predictable that we planned for lower velocity during summer months. It was also common practice for WFH employees to spend more time in the office for more focus during sum…

Oddly enough in my locale, we plan for lower velocity during deer hunting season, and pretty much for the rest of the year after that, because people put off their vacations in case they get sick, and have to use up their vacation time at the end of the year.

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

#47

Post by phnofive »

throwasquirrel wrote: post #16
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…

> "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."

Ouch, got me with this one.

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

#48

Post by slavapestov »

I'm happy to report that my productivity has steadily decreased over the last four years. I credit this to becoming a parent, picking up more hobbies, and working from home. And yet, my compensation has doubled during that time. I really have very little to complain about these days. It's great!

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

#49

Post by onlyrealcuzzo »

stinkbomb wrote: post #27

My company started doing a serious WFH 'experiment' about 18 months before COVID hit. The team I oversee consists of a dozen or so teams of about 40-50 developers each, with a manager that reports directly to me. I don't manage the devs directly, but deal with dev productivity and budgets for (amongst other things) staffing. So our N is not small, but not huge either. 50% of our devs - randomly selected - were offere…

> and it seemed like WFH devs were spending 15-30% more time in non-development tasks

Why did it seem like this and how was it measured?

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

#50

Post by alexpetralia »

taneq wrote: post #42
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I managed mixed in-office and WFH teams before the pandemic. There was a stark productivity drop every summer when kids were out on summer break. This includes parents with dedicated home offices who had been WFH for many years. The effect was so predictable that we planned for lower velocity during summer months. It was also common practice for WFH employees to spend more time in the office for more focus during sum…

> It turns out it’s plainly obvious that they don’t get much work done when they’re away from home. But that’s another story. That's really interesting - I primarily work from a home office, but if I'm struggling to buckle down and get some documentation done, sometimes I'll head out to a random coffee shop and set up there for a while. It's easier to stay focused when the internet's just that bit slower...

I think the comment was more about globetrotting than visiting the local cafe.
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