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Remote workers work longer, not more efficiently

economist.com

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Re: Remote workers work longer, not more efficiently

#101

Post by acituan »

f38zf5vdt wrote: post #99
acituan wrote: post #97

This is the same study that was on HN a day ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27467764 Economist's distillation is borderline disinformative, especially since it runs with overgeneralizations without qualifying what the "work" in question was. This study was based on a single IT services company in Asia. As a rule of thumb, when someone makes generalizations about "remote work" the first thing to ask should b…

Since the Economist Group was almost completely bought out by the Agnelli family in 2015 it's moved to pushing a center-right Liberalism agenda. I've found the quality of the periodical has really tanked since then.

Any alternative recommendations? I am OK with publications having biases (in fact, I don't think there could be one without any) as long as they tend to be upfront about it and I can find opponent views to balance things out.

Re: Remote workers work longer, not more efficiently

#102

Post by tolbish »

forbiddenvoid wrote: post #78
tolbish wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They may work fewer hours, but they won't be miserable and burned out from being stuck at home all week.

This really doesn't compute. I am far more burned out by the stress of commuting and the social energy expended going into the office than from working from my home. Remote work doesn't mean 'stuck at home.' It means freedom to have control over your own work environment.

It does in this context, since half of the study was conducted during the pandemic.

Re: Remote workers work longer, not more efficiently

#103

Post by foobiekr »

acituan wrote: post #101
f38zf5vdt wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since the Economist Group was almost completely bought out by the Agnelli family in 2015 it's moved to pushing a center-right Liberalism agenda. I've found the quality of the periodical has really tanked since then.

Any alternative recommendations? I am OK with publications having biases (in fact, I don't think there could be one without any) as long as they tend to be upfront about it and I can find opponent views to balance things out.

Financial Times. But I’m sure someone will complain about it’s slant, which I view as reality-biased but which doesn’t give much credit to trendy politics.

Re: Remote workers work longer, not more efficiently

#104

Post by foobiekr »

cardosof wrote: post #55

To generalize in a simplistic way: upper management wants to go back, everyone below doesn't. So publications targeted at the former will support office work while others targeted at the latter will support WFH.

As a senior eng/architect I’d like to go back at least part time. My job, which mostly consists of keeping people from wasting effort doing things they shouldn’t and then getting upset when they’re asked to get back on track, is 100x harder remote because discovery of confusion and incorrect beliefs/approaches is delayed until the less experienced ICs have put in more effort. Engineers suck at sunk cost.

This is far, far easier to do when you can overhear discussions, bump into people and ask, etc. even with a great deal of eyes-open effort over the last year to mitigate this, it is a problem.

This only matters if you are doing complex technical coding. CRUD stuff, UI stuff, etc don’t have this problem as far as I can tell (UI people imho have the best attitude wrt change) but systems work where inter function efficiency matters is very much harder with 100% WFH.

Re: Remote workers work longer, not more efficiently

#106

Post by mensetmanusman »

gns24 wrote: post #44
mensetmanusman wrote: post #11

You have to count the time in traffic in the efficiency calculation.

From the employee's point of view, yes. From the company's side, not really. Which may explain to some degree why workers are more likely to feel that they're more efficient working from home - they consider the commute part of the workday, and the employer doesn't.

A smart company will want a worker who feels and is more efficient in their life to prevent burnout, which is costly.

But I agree that the average company employer isn’t thinking at this depth. They might be blinded by emotion.

Re: Remote workers work longer, not more efficiently

#107

Post by bushbaba »

ebiester wrote: post #38
bushbaba wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was probably the best environment for remote work. There was nothing else to do but work and eat for many. As people start going to sports games, vacation, concerts, fairs, dinning, bars, clubs, etc. the number of hours they’ll work will go down.

However, their kids will be at school or daycare, they will be able to run errands in half the time (service slowed way down during the pandemic due to safety protocols), and people at just happier with their social connections without a twinge of boding anxiety over every interaction.

During the covid pandemic. Many just shopped online for all their errands.

And their social interactions were limited to zoom happy hours.

Re: Remote workers work longer, not more efficiently

#108

Post by kragen »

f38zf5vdt wrote: post #99
acituan wrote: post #97

This is the same study that was on HN a day ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27467764 Economist's distillation is borderline disinformative, especially since it runs with overgeneralizations without qualifying what the "work" in question was. This study was based on a single IT services company in Asia. As a rule of thumb, when someone makes generalizations about "remote work" the first thing to ask should b…

Since the Economist Group was almost completely bought out by the Agnelli family in 2015 it's moved to pushing a center-right Liberalism agenda. I've found the quality of the periodical has really tanked since then.

The Economist was founded in 01843 to oppose the Corn Laws, a Liberalism agenda that would count as "center-right" today, and I recall it as being fairly consistently liberal at least since I started reading it in the 01990s.

Re: Remote workers work longer, not more efficiently

#109

Post by anotherhue »

foobiekr wrote: post #104
cardosof wrote: post #55

To generalize in a simplistic way: upper management wants to go back, everyone below doesn't. So publications targeted at the former will support office work while others targeted at the latter will support WFH.

As a senior eng/architect I’d like to go back at least part time. My job, which mostly consists of keeping people from wasting effort doing things they shouldn’t and then getting upset when they’re asked to get back on track, is 100x harder remote because discovery of confusion and incorrect beliefs/approaches is delayed until the less experienced ICs have put in more effort. Engineers suck at sunk cost. This is far,…

This resonates so much it hurts.

One element we have all DK'd ourselves into forgetting is whether we are good enough engineers to benefit from independent remote work?

Of course we enjoy it, but from a business perspective, if we go down 3x more rabbit holes then it's not so attractive.

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