i definitely know myself that i'm less productive working from home than working on the office. the commute (or the ritual of it) and the different environment makes all the difference.
Working from home is powering productivity
181–190 of 481 posts
Re: Working from home is powering productivity
#182I love work from home, but I can’t help but feel like its only real benefit is removing a lot of the overhead from jobs that are already considered overhead. Agree with this next part or not, it isn’t really debatable: to the average person (which we aren’t), basically anything that can be done on a computer from home is overhead.
Coding in the office? Takes up a lot of office space and commute time and energy.
Finance department? Takes up a lot of office space and commute time and energy.
Basically anything HR related? Takes up a lot of office space and commute time and energy.
Middle managers? Takes up a lot of office space and commute time and energy.
Graphics designers and the like? Takes up a lot of office space and commute time and energy.
Basically every job that has been moved to WFH should have been that way since computers became widespread, and it is essentially a problem that they weren’t WFH already. If it can be done entirely on a computer, it should be done from home. Leave the office space for housing and jobs that can’t be done from the comfort of one’s underwear.
Re: Working from home is powering productivity
#183Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not trying to tell you that liking the office is wrong but most of what you said here applies to WFH. When I finish working, my laptop gets put in a bag and not taken out until I start working again and colleague interaction while remote is going to vary based on how your invested your company is in remote work. As far as your home being your workplace, you could always rent a cheap office to work from. The co-wo…
Hang on, why would I rent office space, to WFH? I don't mean to be blunt but I this seems ridiculous. > I'm not trying to tell you that liking the office is wrong but most of what you said here applies to WFH. I'm not saying WFH didn't work for me so is doesn't work for everyone. For me though as soon as the novelty wore off I found it a bad experience. Certainly for me none of it applied. If it works for you I'm hap…
> Hang on, why would I rent office space, to WFH? I don't mean to be blunt but I this seems ridiculous.
>If it works for you I'm happy for you. For me I like that clear separation where it's not easy to slip into working beyond your time.
You answered your own question. The article is using work from home as a catchall term for remote work but not everyone who works from home wants to literally work from home. Some companies will even reimburse you if you want to get a membership at a co-working space.
Re: Working from home is powering productivity
#184Earlier quoted context omitted.
You are the anomaly, not the norm. WFH takes discipline, work ethic and honestly the ability to manage a work life balance. Doing this is hard, like you said. Problem is most people aren’t disciplined:)
> WFH takes discipline That is bizarre to me. I find the office takes far more discipline. Do people really get that distracted at home? What is so distracting?
I have discipline problems but when I am on site, my days are more filled with bullshit, e.g. random conversation over projects that lead nowhere, background conversations on unrelated topics, explaining stuff that aren't worth it, coffee breaks etc.
So while I believe it helps in term of team cohesion and for this purpose, on site is better, in term of productiveness it's a net negative.
Re: Working from home is powering productivity
#185> is highly dependent on how well it’s managed. That's the kicker, right there. I am kind of in despair, at the quality of tech managers; especially "first line" managers, these days.
My boss recently sent me from 5 days in office to 3, and on those two days WFH I get basically nothing done. Not because I don’t try, but my position in a small company is structured in such a way that I essentially work with my boss as her right hand, so if she isn’t there to guide me or give me tasks I essentially don’t work.
I am not sure if that is a failing of her management, the job we are doing, or the industry we are in, but the lack of being able to bug her about things is essentially cutting into my bottom line.
Re: Working from home is powering productivity
#186I am literally at least 10x when I work from home. I have ADHD and through years of discipline, cultivating my workspace to suit my needs, and hard work I can be productive most of the day in the zone without (much) sidetracking. Literally impossible for me to do in the modern software dev sweatshop. I also make more money, can spend more time with my family because I don’t commute, and plenty of other positives. I l…
You are the anomaly, not the norm. WFH takes discipline, work ethic and honestly the ability to manage a work life balance. Doing this is hard, like you said. Problem is most people aren’t disciplined:)
Every system in place for measuring output and bringing transparency to work done by office workers/software developers finally make sense in the context of working from home.
Either your tickets get done or you have a really good explanation for why they haven't but because you dug into the problem are able to display deep knowledge of the problem.
Discipline has nothing to do with this. Your work will have expectations and deadlines and they will either be met or another human being will grade you with an F. Whatever human trait causes people to do work under those circumstances might be shame, fear, social pressure manifesting itself as work output, I can say for certain it isn't discipline.
Re: Working from home is powering productivity
#187I currently work somewhere where I can't WFH. And as a counterpoint to pretty much everyone here I prefer it. My last role I was able to WFH. Reasons I prefer going into the office: - when work is done, I leave, and it's done. - not using my resources (electricity / broadband / etc) for work. - easier interaction with colleagues. I liked it at the start, and liked the flexibility, but after a while hated that my home…
> when work is done, I leave, and it's done
This might speak to the whip I have worked under, rarely has this been the case for me. Just demanding jobs with too much to do. Office is where you go in super early (or WFH super early) to focus for two hours, then office to do a bunch of meetings and unfocused work, and then home is where you get to pick back up for the real work. One gig, I'd call in wfh simply because I was working before commuting and got too carried away (ie: late) for it to actually be worth going in.
I very much agree with the potential drawbacks. Not having a twice daily 40 minute bike ride was a very major adjustment.
Re: Working from home is powering productivity
#188I despair a little at this. If I can do my job at home, then surely somebody can do it in the global south in tandem with AI for peanuts. Client-facing stuff gets centralised to a smaller team of specialists, and the ship gets much tighter. How long until megacorps and SMEs actually execute this reality? The management class and their unnecessary underlings like me have only been so resilient because companies are st…
There are latent questions in your response. The fear is justified but equally, viewed from a distance, what is the "worth" of your price point, if the same job can be done and lift somebody out of poverty in the developing world? I'm not saying you're wrong. I'm asking what an economist or social historian might say, much as if a Lancashire cotton worker asked if his job was disappearing into cotton factories in Ban…
In the modern sense, this is very much a “I don’t want to do labor” issue. If all of the WFH jobs get sent overseas, the only thing left to do here is stuff that cannot be done on a computer from home, like construction, fabrication, forestry, food service, etc to name a few. A lot of us coder/designer/techy types are somewhat privileged in the idea that we can get paid a reasonable to high wage for doing something that is physically non-demanding and essentially only commands its price tag because of schooling and brainpower.
I can imagine a lot of us are going to get very angry if we suddenly have to haul Sheetrock for a living.
Re: Working from home is powering productivity
#189Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Globally much of the pro-office camp's public position is driven by personal leanings of CEOs who genuinely seem to have made the decisions without evidence In some cases, the pressure is also coming from external to the company, from cities and VCs and similar who care about the commercial real-estate value of now-abandoned offices.
I'm going to need some data to prove this. I keep seeing this claim, but have not seen anything more than conjecture. There are just too many factors for this, and you would have to believe that a company is willing to throw away money for this to happen.
They already threw away the money by purchasing real estate and falling for the sunk cost fallacy.
Or they’re on the hook for a lease for the next five years and it will cost more to break the lease.
Companies waste money all the time. I don’t think it’s a stretch to think they did or would waste oodles of money on purchasing or leasing their offices.
Re: Working from home is powering productivity
#190Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hang on, why would I rent office space, to WFH? I don't mean to be blunt but I this seems ridiculous. > I'm not trying to tell you that liking the office is wrong but most of what you said here applies to WFH. I'm not saying WFH didn't work for me so is doesn't work for everyone. For me though as soon as the novelty wore off I found it a bad experience. Certainly for me none of it applied. If it works for you I'm hap…
> Hang on, why would I rent office space, to WFH? I don't mean to be blunt but I this seems ridiculous. >If it works for you I'm happy for you. For me I like that clear separation where it's not easy to slip into working beyond your time. You answered your own question. The article is using work from home as a catchall term for remote work but not everyone who works from home wants to literally work from home. Some c…
If I did I can't see it.
You'll have to forgive my ignorance for assuming we were talking WFH instead of remote working. I got confused when it stated work from home instead of remote working.
Either way "some companies" ain't mine, and I'm not being out of pocket for work.