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Working from home is powering productivity

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Re: Working from home is powering productivity

#461

Post by artwr »

akoboldfrying wrote: post #394
chasd00 wrote: post #388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bosses want rto because they’re paying rent for empty office space. I’ve been wfh for a decade in the consulting business, only time I’m not wfh is meeting a client. My teams are distributed across the world and our stock price says wfh is fine. Bosses want rto because they can’t stand paying rent for empty space.

You may be right that a big part of it is the psychological weight of that sunk cost. But if that were the only reason, there would be an easy win-win: Rent less office space and let people WFH.

You're right but commercial leases for offices are usually multi year and larger companies usually sign longer leases (20, 30 years or more). They can be costly, though not impossible to wind down.

So for those large companies, the sunken cost is larger.

Re: Working from home is powering productivity

#462

Post by [deleted] »

jandrewrogers wrote: post #260

I think a lot of people are talking past each other. I’ve mostly WFH since long before the pandemic, in many different capacities at many companies. A lot of people have tunnel vision and the reality is more nuanced than most allow. For IC work that requires minimal collaboration, WFH is often more productive. Fewer interruptions, more focus. However, when the role requires detailed collaboration and regular interact…

[deleted]

Re: Working from home is powering productivity

#463

Post by erik_seaberg »

The_Colonel wrote: post #450
erik_seaberg wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's all guesswork until we start measuring the impact of interruptions in open plan offices vs. homes (which is going to vary with families).

"Interruption" is only one side of the coin, there's usually a reason why somebody is interrupting you and not being able to interrupt you (=not get an important information) will often cost a lot for their productivity. I think it heavily depends on the person and type of work. I'm SWE and for most daily work I don't mind getting interrupted - I'm able to get back to work without a problem. It's only if I work on an…

I think having deep work to do is the biggest sign that a team has found a good use for me. It's how tech companies build competitive products. Commodity work should be automated; Moore's Law already paid for doing that.

Re: Working from home is powering productivity

#465

Post by capn_duck »

codexjourneys wrote: post #371
capn_duck wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The 16 pings a minute. The 6 hours of meetings a day because people aren't getting the information they need organically each day. The "hey, can I call?"'s during what I thought would be my free half hour in the afternoon. This is definitely not what it was like in the office. Unfortunately, I recognize this doesn't change unless an org goes 100% back onsite.

Why wouldn't it work with 2 or 3 unified days onsite and 2 or 3 days wfh, with a no-meetings, minimal-interruptions directive on wfh days? I think this structure, if well managed, would work even better than the old 5-days-in-office.

I agree that this would work, and be ideal. I think it only scales to a certain size organization though. At my company, I'd guess we have over a thousand developers across hundreds of teams, and more supporting staff. There's no possibility of getting everyone in at once.

Re: Working from home is powering productivity

#466

Post by RoyalHenOil »

noch wrote: post #432
benterix wrote: post #431

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As a business owner however, the question is: what is best for the business? It is very simple: you need best people. In tech industry, people are smart, they know how to optimize things, and they rarely believe in "company values" bullshit. You can choose from a limited talent pool. If you give yourself and them a choice, including the WFH option, you statistically increase your chances of finding the best people.…

> It is very simple: you need best people Would that it were so simple! But are you saying this from your experience hiring for teams that execute well? > you statistically increase your chances of finding the best people Do you have statistics proving this? Please share data. > they rarely believe in "company values" bullshit Are you honestly saying that in all the interviews you've attended, you never ask and you'v…

If you wish to maximize A, you will need to lower your standards for B, C, and D. This is the nature of any selection process: choosing a home to buy, breeding crops, writing legislation, etc. It us no less true for hiring employees.

There are a very limited quantity of perfect employees, and you are unlikely to ever have the opportunity to hire one. The vast majority of employees have a mixture of good qualities (e.g., being hardworking) and bad qualities (e.g., expecting a higher salary). Your best strategy is to prioritize those characteristics that are most important to the role you are hiring for and be flexible on characteristics that are less important.

If you get your priorities out of order, even if inadvertently (e.g., by asking unverifiable interview questions that select for better liars), you will make suboptimal decisions.

Re: Working from home is powering productivity

#467

Post by RoyalHenOil »

noch wrote: post #422
_gabe_ wrote: post #386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Essentially these are people who don't actually want to work and would be just as happy or happier on UBI. As one of “these people”, I enjoy my job, but I can recognize the fact that it’s just a job . I’m amazed that you would classify people that don’t center their whole life around their job as people that would be just as happy without a job. I have a lot of other hobbies. I definitely would not be happier if yo…

> I enjoy my job, but I can recognize the fact that it’s just a job. There's an old saying that "you become what you do". It's fine if your employment is "just a job" for you and you have hobbies you prefer. But don't be amazed that there are people who define themselves by their careers as much as others define themselves by their hobbies. That's who you're competing with.

Competing very effectively in many cases.

I personally have not seen that workaholic employees get consistent preference in workplaces. Often they get shafted the hardest, particularly in highly competitive workplaces (where, for example, supervisors may undermine their best employees who might threaten their own ambitions).

And the hardest workers are also prone to burnout, which often leads to catastrophic career failures: quitting suddenly with no backup plan, changing careers, having a breakdown and ending up nonfunctional for months at a time.

I have worked in a variety of workplaces, some that were circling the toilet, some that were leading their industries and nonetheless still shooting higher, and some that thought/hoped they were the latter but just didn't have what it takes.

The most consistently successful companies I've worked for have their employees work like tortoises, not hares. They want us to work hard, but sustainably. They discourage all that hypercompetitive nonsense that rewards backstabbers over hard workers, and they encourage us to have a life outside of work to keep us sane. They do this not out of the kindness of their hearts, but because they are insatiably greedy and focused: they want our next 20+ years of productivity and experience.

Re: Working from home is powering productivity

#468

Post by RoyalHenOil »

nox101 wrote: post #357
DrBazza wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WFH is best for focused work. Office is best for collaboration. I'm not sure I've found a tool that works for collaboration like a whiteboard. Digital solutions just never really worked in our company and we tried a few. On the flip side, open source projects function just fine with 100% remote work in different time zones. One thing I found with WFH pre-and-post Covid is the the 'Feynman moment'- "If you cannot expl…

Documentation is not a complete fix. So you have 1000 pages of documentation. Which page has the answer to your question? At work you ask your coworker with more experience "Can you tell me how X works?" and get an answer immediately. On remote you type in to chat "Can you tell me how X works?" you get an answer in 5 seconds, or 30 or 5 minutes, or 10 or 3hrs later, or never. Where as in the WFO example you were back…

My workplace offers both WFH and in-office work (our choice). Before COVID, most people worked in the office, but COVID forced everyone to get set up for and used to working at home.

One of the funniest changes that came with this is that, even when everyone is working in the office now, we still communicate primarily through our WFH chat program because it is less intrusive.

It's also very handy for referring back to later — to the extent that when we do have an in-person discussion, we usually summarize it in the chat afterwards so that we can search for it in the future.

Mind you, we don't have the issues you describe (questions going unanswered for hours or not at all). With very few exceptions, such as when someone was out sick and I didn't realize, all of my questions have been answered within minutes. I imagine that is is because we are a relatively small team (albeit stretched across several timezones these days) and the chat is mostly pretty quiet.

My only complaint is that it has made the separation between work time and leisure time a lot more fuzzy. We all basically act as if we are on call all the time to answer questions, and it is common for my coworkers to even attend video call meetings from doctor's offices and overseas vacations just to say hi.

Re: Working from home is powering productivity

#469

Post by noch »

RoyalHenOil wrote: post #467
noch wrote: post #422

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I enjoy my job, but I can recognize the fact that it’s just a job. There's an old saying that "you become what you do". It's fine if your employment is "just a job" for you and you have hobbies you prefer. But don't be amazed that there are people who define themselves by their careers as much as others define themselves by their hobbies. That's who you're competing with.

Competing very effectively in many cases. I personally have not seen that workaholic employees get consistent preference in workplaces. Often they get shafted the hardest, particularly in highly competitive workplaces (where, for example, supervisors may undermine their best employees who might threaten their own ambitions). And the hardest workers are also prone to burnout, which often leads to catastrophic career f…

> I personally have not seen

At this point we're all just speculating wildly from subjective biased anecdotes.

Data is required.

Re: Working from home is powering productivity

#470

Post by jnordwick »

berniedurfee wrote: post #221
EasyMark wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are tons of articles out there about mayors/council members/ etc pressuring execs to get butts in office seats for the past few years. I don’t know if that counts as data to you or not, but they are relatively easy to find in a google search.

It’s the other way round many times. Companies get fat tax breaks to move into a particular town or city. Those tax breaks are explicitly contingent on butts being physically in seats to add to the economy and tax revenue of that municipality. Too few butts in seats triggers penalties or revoking of the tax breaks altogether.

>Too few butts

/Dr Mephisto enters the chat/

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