The effects of remote work on collaboration among information workers
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Re: The effects of remote work on collaboration among information workers
#2“Together, these effects may make it harder for employees to acquire and share new information across the network.”
Remote is hard and not every company is going to adapt to this long term.
I’m happy that remote is now an accepted structure but I worry that full time remote employees will miss out simply because they aren’t present.
Re: The effects of remote work on collaboration among information workers
#3“Together, these effects may make it harder for employees to acquire and share new information across the network.” Remote is hard and not every company is going to adapt to this long term. I’m happy that remote is now an accepted structure but I worry that full time remote employees will miss out simply because they aren’t present.
maybe that's the price they're willing to pay for whatever benefits they get from remote work, and maybe they're missing out on what they consider bad things more than good, everyone is different.
Re: The effects of remote work on collaboration among information workers
#4“Together, these effects may make it harder for employees to acquire and share new information across the network.” Remote is hard and not every company is going to adapt to this long term. I’m happy that remote is now an accepted structure but I worry that full time remote employees will miss out simply because they aren’t present.
I've been remote a loooong time and that's always been the case. I miss out on so many 'oh, because Timmy in the SOC told me so' type things, spontaneous whiteboards, and much information. It certainly makes things a bit more complicated. Further, I found it harder to get promotions in general.
All in all, I still prefer it despite its drawbacks. But it's certainly not for everyone, especially people who get or had little social interaction outside of work, and those who are chasing ladder climbing.
Re: The effects of remote work on collaboration among information workers
#5“Together, these effects may make it harder for employees to acquire and share new information across the network.” Remote is hard and not every company is going to adapt to this long term. I’m happy that remote is now an accepted structure but I worry that full time remote employees will miss out simply because they aren’t present.
It works best, when the entire company is remote.
Re: The effects of remote work on collaboration among information workers
#6“Together, these effects may make it harder for employees to acquire and share new information across the network.” Remote is hard and not every company is going to adapt to this long term. I’m happy that remote is now an accepted structure but I worry that full time remote employees will miss out simply because they aren’t present.
maybe that's the price they're willing to pay for whatever benefits they get from remote work, and maybe they're missing out on what they consider bad things more than good, everyone is different.
An issue is remote people may be at a disadvantage because they are remote and therefore may suffer consequences of not being in the office (visibility, chit chat, camaraderie, etc.) but they (we, or some portion) may feel they are unfairly suffering from unequal opportunity. On the other hand, they/we specifically have made the choice to be remote despite the inherent disadvantages (and also advantages though in another dimension).
Re: The effects of remote work on collaboration among information workers
#7They don't link this data with something tangible like "profits" nor do they really try to quantify productivity in any way, so it is left up to the reader to decide whether the effects they observe actually hurt or help productivity.
Case in point, what they consider useful spontaneous interactions between disparate corners of the social graph could in reality be annoying distractions that decrease productivity.
Re: The effects of remote work on collaboration among information workers
#8“Together, these effects may make it harder for employees to acquire and share new information across the network.” Remote is hard and not every company is going to adapt to this long term. I’m happy that remote is now an accepted structure but I worry that full time remote employees will miss out simply because they aren’t present.
This is why I like fully-remote workplaces. That said, I've only seen remote work well in fully remote workplaces. Once there are some remote some not, things break down a bit.
Re: The effects of remote work on collaboration among information workers
#9Unintentional by accident remote work shouldn’t be considered the baseline for such comparison. This research does at best find results at Microsoft, thus it could be titled “effects of remote work at Microsoft” to not induce the sense of generalist research.
For the negative results: remote work creates silos and reduces cross-network collaboration. These might easily be mitigated with strategies and tooling.
Nevertheless, I admire Microsoft for conducting such research - congratulations to whoever had the initiative.
Re: The effects of remote work on collaboration among information workers
#10Unintentional by accident remote work shouldn’t be considered the baseline for such comparison. This research does at best find results at Microsoft, thus it could be titled “effects of remote work at Microsoft” to not induce the sense of generalist research. For the negative results: remote work creates silos and reduces cross-network collaboration. These might easily be mitigated with strategies and tooling. Nevert…
Can you tool-in a water cooler? A walk to the cafeteria? A weird smell several people notice?
[ninja edit]: someone downvoted you, it wasn't me.