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At JPMorgan, productivity falls for younger employees at home

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Re: At JPMorgan, productivity falls for younger employees at home

#161

Post by mepiethree »

randycupertino wrote: post #145
gotaran wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh yeah, definitely. I held on to my place in SF because it was a rent controlled spot that I clinged on to, but with rents crashing and the quality of life in SF worsening, I've considered terminating my lease and putting my stuff in storage. Where did you move? A few months in a seaside town Airbnb would be nice. I could use the change of scenery.

You might really like Portsmouth, NH. It's a cool seaside town with a lot of character, and easy trips to Maine, VT, NH White Mountains and Boston.

The places you mentioned are indeed so beautiful, but I for one would hold off on moving from California to NH right before winter. I felt the first breath of fall today in NY...

I'm not sure there is a perfect place in the world Asheville, but Asheville and Durham NC are nice and affordable. Sacramento is nice too, especially if you soon want to commute in to SF 1-2 times a week.

Re: At JPMorgan, productivity falls for younger employees at home

#162

Post by gotaran »

pmontra wrote: post #113
gotaran wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> - If possible (this is hard or impossible for some), set up a dedicated work space This is the real killer IMO. It's impossible to focus in a studio apartment. It's where I cook, eat, drink, sleep, Netflix, and now work.

Try to micro partition your space. Have a desk to work and a table to have food, possibly facing different walls. Sit on a couch to play videogames and on a (office) chair to work. Don't play games or watch Netflix on the computer you use to work. Uninstall them.

Yeah, counterintuitively buying a TV helped. It's better for my sanity than going full cold turkey on Netflix.

Re: At JPMorgan, productivity falls for younger employees at home

#163

Post by atmartins »

jimmytucson wrote: post #156
MikeTheGreat wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can, for example, absolutely measure to the dollar the productivity of a plumber and you can easily compare two different plumbers I'm curious about this idea. What if plumber A shows up, quickly fixes something using existing, on-site materials, and ends up charging much less (no parts + 'quick' labor), and then the plumbing breaks again in X months. What if plumber B shows up, takes more time and replaces a p…

Doesn’t happen to the same degree as in software. With plumbing or painting, yes there are good jobs and bad jobs, but if the water gets to where it’s going and there’s no moisture, you’re pretty much done. If the paint is on the wall and not on the ceiling or the trim, and you can’t see roller marks, it’s a good job. With software, there seem to be endless layers of nuance between good or bad, finished or unfinished…

Doesn’t happen to the same degree as in plumbing. With front end or back end, yes there are good jobs and bad jobs, but if the data gets to where it’s going and there’s no bit rot, you’re pretty much done. If the data is in the db and not on the paper forms, and you can’t see it decrypted at rest, it’s a good job. With plumbing, there seem to be endless layers of nuance between good or bad, finished or unfinished.

Also, it should take X hours to code a feature of Y size with this many fields or inputs. There are unclearly established timelines for a job and any big deviation from that will get you fired (or not hired again by the same builder). There’s no “due to this plumber’s lack of sobriety with the world, a project that should have taken 2 weeks took 4 and a half months, and the connections on the joints are poor”.

Re: At JPMorgan, productivity falls for younger employees at home

#164

Post by mepiethree »

gotaran wrote: post #135
golergka wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> living in a cramped space with 3 roommates in SF with no privacy > About $450k all in What.

Haha, well it's the same spot I was living in when I was making $120k + non-liquid RSUs. And since it was rent controlled, I never bothered to move. I'd be paying $3000 more if were to move into a 1BR, and I would rather spend that on travel, dates, and post-tax investments. And anyway, an apartment that's fairly spacious can turn into a congested mess when everyone's WFH. Previously, all of us had tech jobs where we…

Not to tell you how to live your life, but if I were you, I would move ASAP. I lived alone in SF on 88k a year supporting my unemployed fiancee and a dog and still saved a good bit of money. I know people who get by on 50k. You can afford your own apartment! 4k for a one bedroom is def the high end but you can ball out!

Re: At JPMorgan, productivity falls for younger employees at home

#165

Post by jimmytucson »

holidayacct wrote: post #76

Never believe stories like this, measuring productivity is an impossible problem. Microsoft spend something in excess of 3 billion dollars trying to quantify productivity in the 90s and they couldn't do it. One of my college professors worked on this exact problem for the Army in the 80s, they created a formal domain specific language for quantifying employee productivity it took them 20 years and several hundred mil…

This is what makes me so uncomfortable with hiring software developers. I don’t know how good of a job they’re doing, or what’s taking them so long, or whether another group of developers would do a better job faster.

If I hire painters, I can tell if they’re doing a good job by looking at it. I know what’s taking them so long. They’re using slower drying drywall compound, or they’re having to mask off because they’re not good with a brush.

There are fields of work where it’s easy to gauge productivity, but software development is not one of them.

Re: At JPMorgan, productivity falls for younger employees at home

#166

Post by mepiethree »

oh-4-fucks-sake wrote: post #114
lindenksv85 wrote: post #77

I think it’s unfortunate that people are taking statistics (or anecdotes) from this period to support or not support WFH. At this point in time, it would be rather audacious for anyone to claim that productivity is more tied to the location of your desk than to the fact that people are working through the apocalypse, and some people are working through more than one “once in a lifetime” disaster. If productivity is d…

Chiming in here. I moved across the country to SoCal and returned to the company I left, (re)-starting in Sept. 2019 as full-time WFH. I worked 4-5 days in the office before the move. I'm a good control here because I've worked for the same company: 1. In the office 2. WFH pre-Covid 3. WFH during-Covid What's more, all of my favorite activities: golf, hiking, cooking--are largely unaffected by the pandemic. My income…

if we're doing anecdotes, the apocalypse makes me more productive since good work allows me to hide from everything else in the world being terrible

Re: At JPMorgan, productivity falls for younger employees at home

#167

Post by icelancer »

jimmytucson wrote: post #165
holidayacct wrote: post #76

Never believe stories like this, measuring productivity is an impossible problem. Microsoft spend something in excess of 3 billion dollars trying to quantify productivity in the 90s and they couldn't do it. One of my college professors worked on this exact problem for the Army in the 80s, they created a formal domain specific language for quantifying employee productivity it took them 20 years and several hundred mil…

This is what makes me so uncomfortable with hiring software developers. I don’t know how good of a job they’re doing, or what’s taking them so long, or whether another group of developers would do a better job faster. If I hire painters, I can tell if they’re doing a good job by looking at it. I know what’s taking them so long. They’re using slower drying drywall compound, or they’re having to mask off because they’r…

>> There are fields of work where it’s easy to gauge productivity, but software development is not one of them.

I manage a team of developers / analysts and it's straightforward (though not always easy) to measure this over several six-week blocks of time for the team. It is not, however, easy to measure it for any single developer or analyst, and there's a lot of variance when you try to look any more granular than the team.

I suspect it's doable for small groups that work together. Or even larger groups. (I have no experience here.)

But for individuals? I agree. No shot.

Re: At JPMorgan, productivity falls for younger employees at home

#168

Post by WalterBright »

holidayacct wrote: post #76

Never believe stories like this, measuring productivity is an impossible problem. Microsoft spend something in excess of 3 billion dollars trying to quantify productivity in the 90s and they couldn't do it. One of my college professors worked on this exact problem for the Army in the 80s, they created a formal domain specific language for quantifying employee productivity it took them 20 years and several hundred mil…

On the other hand, everyone in the office knows who the productive and unproductive people are.

It's also true that many people have a very different assessment of their productivity than their colleagues do of them. I've seen some pretty massive disconnects there, which usually lead to trouble.

Re: At JPMorgan, productivity falls for younger employees at home

#169

Post by [deleted] »

atmartins wrote: post #163
jimmytucson wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn’t happen to the same degree as in software. With plumbing or painting, yes there are good jobs and bad jobs, but if the water gets to where it’s going and there’s no moisture, you’re pretty much done. If the paint is on the wall and not on the ceiling or the trim, and you can’t see roller marks, it’s a good job. With software, there seem to be endless layers of nuance between good or bad, finished or unfinished…

Doesn’t happen to the same degree as in plumbing. With front end or back end, yes there are good jobs and bad jobs, but if the data gets to where it’s going and there’s no bit rot, you’re pretty much done. If the data is in the db and not on the paper forms, and you can’t see it decrypted at rest, it’s a good job. With plumbing, there seem to be endless layers of nuance between good or bad, finished or unfinished. Al…

[deleted]

Re: At JPMorgan, productivity falls for younger employees at home

#170

Post by WalterBright »

andreilys wrote: post #155
bsder wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Never believe stories like this, measuring productivity is an impossible problem. I totally disagree. That's the whole point of your manager and reviews. In addition, JPMorgan isn't just programmers. It's a lot of people who talk to people and process paper--a LOT of paper. And they can quite clearly measure how much paper is being processed per person. > Employees always figure out how to abuse productivity metric…

The review process is a complete sham. If you honestly believe it’s a measure of your productivity and not a post-hoc rationalization based on a restricted promo and bonus pool I have a bridge to sell you. Most managers will think an employee who spends 10 hours working and 30 hours schmoozing/promoting their work is more productive than someone who spends 60 hours grinding the tasks given to them.

It's smart for an employee to let the manager know what he's been doing. It's just like a business has to do some promotion or the business will fail - even great products don't sell themselves.
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