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U.S. workers have gotten less productive – no one is sure why

washingtonpost.com

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Re: U.S. workers have gotten less productive – no one is sure why

#181

Post by naikrovek »

if I had to guess, I might guess that it's because large (and even a lot of small) employers put profit above all else, including employee compensation. for a while, employees observed themselves working hard for zero benefit, so they simply slowed down. not everyone can just pick up and move to another job that treats them better.

if I had another guess, and I pulled from my experience as a software developer, I would say that the desire to have continuous productivity from all employees has created environments which throttle talented employees and asphyxiate those who are learning because they can't contribute immediately.

I see this all the time in my own life. I can contribute a great deal if I am left alone to do work that I see needs done, and I have demonstrated this multiple times. but if you don't understand this about me and you want daily stand-ups where I explain what I am doing, all I get is challenge from everyone on the call. "why are you doing that? we want you providing value. you should pair more." I promise, and I have delivered previously, that if you just leave me alone I can do great things, but when every last person on a call gets a say in what I work on, you render me completely ineffective, and that's where I am now. this is a direct consequence of technical leaders having MBAs and no understanding of people or the work they are doing.

Re: U.S. workers have gotten less productive – no one is sure why

#182

Post by throwaway743 »

animal_spirits wrote: post #104
highwaylights wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Expected to make another huge shift back to in office working” Well, you kids have fun. sound of me closing the door in my pyjamas with a nice hot coffee in my other hand

Quoted post unavailable.

Nobody asked you to make a dickhead remark

Re: U.S. workers have gotten less productive – no one is sure why

#183

Post by kbelder »

dukeofdoom wrote: post #82

The lowering of standards, shortages, expensive fuel, food inflation are all reminiscent of Communism. People don't feel like working for a system when it seems to be failing them. A million dollars for a new home, when the lower bracket still makes under 50k, and get raises in cents. Just kind of kills incentive to work hard, when even if you do starve and penny pinch your way into some savings, inflation will eat i…

Thanks, that is interesting, and you've given me something to chew on for a while. The similarities are there, and the causes are plausible.

Re: U.S. workers have gotten less productive – no one is sure why

#187

Post by bluedino »

D13Fd wrote: post #59
sylens wrote: post #6

Perhaps people have had to expend more energy just keeping their personal life together in the last few years. People with children have had to deal with the constant school closings, childcare facility closings, etc. and that has taken its toll. They may have family members who got Covid or had treatment for other ailments delayed by the pandemic's rush to treat Covid patients. They could've experienced a huge shift…

You're right about daycare/school closings. Even now, essentially post-covid, if our two-year-old gets COVID, that's a 10-day quarantine from daycare. That's 10 days where one of the parents has to work from home and be horribly unproductive because they are watching a child at the same time. And you can get COVID repeatedly. It often from the daycare itself, but also from a sibling who is in school. Even with full,…

Between pinkeye, RSV, influenza, hand foot and mouth, it's just one more thing your kids can get at daycare.

Re: U.S. workers have gotten less productive – no one is sure why

#188

Post by Scoundreller »

yamtaddle wrote: post #133
conductr wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think productivity was ever the goal of this software. It was to have a record that is standard, digital, transferable, etc. Doctors fought it as long as they could because they knew what it meant for them. I remember pretty early demos in early/mid 2000s when I was doing some clinical grunt work in college. I had written some software to make my department’s life easier so I was offered up as the hospital’s…

They also fought it because they didn't go to medical school and survive residency to fill out forms all damn day—and they didn't used to have to, they had staff for that. Then the computerized systems "replaced" that staff but all that really means is they cut the human time needed low enough that full-time workers weren't needed, but didn't eliminate it, so now that's another thing doctors have to do themselves. AF…

Seems an artefact of doctors not being employees.

If their employment status was the same as everyone else’s, there wouldn’t be any effort to replace admin staff with someone getting paid 10x as much unless there was actually a 90% reduction in work (doubtful).

Re: U.S. workers have gotten less productive – no one is sure why

#189

Post by hinkley »

yamtaddle wrote: post #133
conductr wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think productivity was ever the goal of this software. It was to have a record that is standard, digital, transferable, etc. Doctors fought it as long as they could because they knew what it meant for them. I remember pretty early demos in early/mid 2000s when I was doing some clinical grunt work in college. I had written some software to make my department’s life easier so I was offered up as the hospital’s…

They also fought it because they didn't go to medical school and survive residency to fill out forms all damn day—and they didn't used to have to, they had staff for that. Then the computerized systems "replaced" that staff but all that really means is they cut the human time needed low enough that full-time workers weren't needed, but didn't eliminate it, so now that's another thing doctors have to do themselves. AF…

> they cut the human time needed low enough that full-time workers weren't needed

No, that's not it at all. What GP is saying is that they cut the human expertise low enough that full-time workers weren't needed. The manpower savings never materialized because an app built for experts is faster than one built for casual users, and also because those experts, even with the high training cost, were ultimately cheaper per hour than the highly compensated people who now have to do the job because we 'made it easy'. First you devalue those experts by making their job harder, then you get rid of the job and make it someone else's, split between entry level staff and your most expensive employees.

> AFAI can tell, the effect of tech overall is to cut some jobs while making the remaining ones harder and more stressful, while increasing so-called context switching.

You still got there in the end.

Re: U.S. workers have gotten less productive – no one is sure why

#190

Post by supertrope »

derbOac wrote: post #139
Retric wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That documentation time is largely driven by the insurance industry which was really painful before these systems. It’s almost shocking how much more productive doctors are inside the VA.

Insurance is part of it, but not all of it. Government regulation is also a big part. EHR mandates under the Obama administration (? who I was generally supportive of, so not a criticism of his presidency in general) created a kind of "false pressure" to move to EHR immediately, rather than "naturally" adopt it at an organic pace, adopting whatever is most beneficial due to demand. I'm not anti EHR, but the way those…

To play devil's advocate without the stick of Medicare funding being at stake, doctor's offices and hospitals will defer EHR upgrades until the heat death of the universe. HIPAA was passed in the 90s with a safe harbor for faxing and that's still the standard method to transfer a medical record.
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