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Study Shows a Productivity Boost of Working From Home

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Re: Study Shows a Productivity Boost of Working From Home

#171

Post by vorpalhex »

adamsea wrote: post #141
sheeshkebab wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In thech companies, the only valid reason to be in the office is that often times upper management (those who pay bills/salaries) are restless crowd that can’t sit in one place staring at screen and have grand desire to run around the floor watching people “work”. The rest of your points are absolute bull shit that can all be done remotely.

From the article: "More than half the volunteer group changed their minds about working from home 100 percent of the time--they felt too much isolation." And bear in mind that is from the group of people who _volunteered_ to work from home. It's reasonable to presume that a nontrivial number of people chose _not_ to volunteer because they valued in-person interactions. So, I call BS on your calling bullshit.

I've worked fully remote before and I loved it. I got tons of work done, had time and energy for doing stuff after work, and generally flourished.

I'm in an office for a few days a week now with a new company, and I genuinely struggle to get work done on those days. I'm interrupted frequently, office mates love having very loud conversations by my desk, and I can't even fix healthy food on demand and instead drag in a lunch box like a child.

But, and here is the important bit, that's my experience. I have coworkers for whom the inverse is true, who would hate being remote at all, and see the office as the only space they can be productive in.

Just like shoes come in different sizes, so too do office working styles. My overwhelming complaint is that I have to fight tooth and nail to work from home, and I usually get the complaint "Well I don't like working from home, so you shouldn't do it either".

It's like I'm trying to justify being left handed. It's ridiculous. What works for me works for me, and I have direct stats that prove that on every basis (benefit of being a dev, work can be measured).

Re: Study Shows a Productivity Boost of Working From Home

#172

Post by fsloth »

sheeshkebab wrote: post #138
adriand wrote: post #114

I think it depends on what you want to optimize for. If you want to optimize for individual productivity (and there are no trust issues) then sure, working from home is effective. However, you may decide that the individual productivity loss of having people work in an office is outweighed by the group productivity and morale gain from having people working together. Here are some reasons from a holistic company pers…

In thech companies, the only valid reason to be in the office is that often times upper management (those who pay bills/salaries) are restless crowd that can’t sit in one place staring at screen and have grand desire to run around the floor watching people “work”. The rest of your points are absolute bull shit that can all be done remotely.

"The rest of your points are absolute bull shit that can all be done remotely"

I disagree mentoring can be as effective when done remotely. The channel width of face-to-face communication is higher than that of any other method.

Furthermore, there are a lot of things that are communicated from senior to junior accidentally, for example, some simple efficient pattern of using the IDE, that would not get communicated in a remote setting. The skill transfer can happen of course any which way, from junior to senior, whatever - but serendipitous pairing is often the initial requirement for this skill transfer to happen.

Re: Study Shows a Productivity Boost of Working From Home

#173

Post by OpenDrapery »

Rainymood wrote: post #55

PhD student here so take my opinion with a grain of salt. I personally love the fact that I can choose to work at home or at the office. I can really concentrate at home (private room where I feel comfy) but on the other hand it is also significantly easier to distract yourself from work. Netflix is just one tab away and there's no one to look over your shoulder and whisper in your ear "Don't watch Netflix when you'r…

I think the big dirty secret is that even in the office, there is a need for down time. The problem is that my options are limited, so I sit at my desk and look at the same stupid web sites in a clandestine manner. Or I get up and go for a walk, and try to get some fresh air. But my office building sits on an interstate and there are no walking paths or benches in sight.

At home, my breathers are more energizing, which is the point.

I can't believe how ridiculous it is that managers feign surprise when they are told that a task estimated at 4 hours will take a calendar day to complete. That is the nature of the work.

Re: Study Shows a Productivity Boost of Working From Home

#174

Post by dionidium »

gregshap wrote: post #97
deepGem wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Almost all estimates are based on past experience. So good luck with such estimates when you are entering new domain or even new tech. I honestly believe that there is no need for estimates. Your delivery date is set by the customer or the market or competition. So it's a lot healthier to work backwards from that date and figure out which of the features can be delivered, than to breakdown the work into quite meaning…

how do you figure out which features can be completed by the delivery date, if not by estimating?

In some cases, you'll have a specific client that wants something specific and you'll just have to make your best guess. But, at a lot of companies, there's no specific client who needs feature x by day y. Estimating in those companies is almost always a waste of time, a nonsense exercise designed to make managers feel like they're in control of the situation.

I come to work at the same time every day for the same amount of time every day and I work on our product that whole time. What's going to get done is going to get done. If a situation requires more, then we'll work late. (And it's almost always obvious when something is important enough to require this.) The process of guessing how long each task is going to take is a complete waste of our time. Of course, we do it. And management thinks it's super important, because they spend their days making spreadsheets and Jira filters based on those guesses. But, the reality is that it simply doesn't matter one way or the other.

We make a bunch of guesses, then we do the work we were going to do anyway and it takes as long as it was always going to take, and then at the end we have another pointless meeting, called the "retrospective," where we talk about how good or bad our guesses were.

It's like a Tennessee Valley Authority make-work program for under-challenged product managers.

Re: Study Shows a Productivity Boost of Working From Home

#175

Post by zimbatm »

adriand wrote: post #114

I think it depends on what you want to optimize for. If you want to optimize for individual productivity (and there are no trust issues) then sure, working from home is effective. However, you may decide that the individual productivity loss of having people work in an office is outweighed by the group productivity and morale gain from having people working together. Here are some reasons from a holistic company pers…

This logic doesn't even hold the basic scrutiny.

0. The group productivity argument is completely unsubstantiated.

1. Trust in employees is fundamental, why even go there.

2. There are remote-first companies with great culture.

3. Ad-hoc training works great over Hangouts, I do it all the time.

4. Most meetings are not urgent. For sysops consider having a team on-call. Again it works great over Hangouts.

Etc...

Re: Study Shows a Productivity Boost of Working From Home

#176

Post by imnotadoctor999 »

chrisan wrote: post #160
mamon wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not GP but I think that the point is that the whole "corporate culture" is mostly bullshit - you wouldn't expect factory or farm workers to form a "culture" and "take pride in their work" or "share company values", so why are you expecting all of this from knowledge workers? For me the whole "corporate culture" thing is just an attempt to brainwash people into accepting lower salary, because "we are changing the worl…

Ya I don’t think I’ve ever been in a “corporate culture” that wasn’t a facade.

In your view, is there a difference between micromanaging authorian culture compared to a consensus-driven culture where the employees all trust each other?

I've seen several different companies from the insidr, and each one has had vastly different cultures. Usually it is an implementation of the CEO/upper management's views of what "corporate culture" is. There's still usually a facade, but that facade is not necessarily disingenuous.

Re: Study Shows a Productivity Boost of Working From Home

#177

Post by stctgion »

frockington wrote: post #145
wolco wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All of these items can be done remotely. Training/mentoring/team work/stand ups/taking accountibility. Showing clients you have employees working might seem like it will help land some clients if you bring them for a visit but more impressive is having a global remote team you can conference in.

You can't greet the client shake their hand and establish a connection over a video conference nearly as easily as you can in person. As a client I find myself paying attention to the little things. Did they offer coffee or water? Did they open the door? How was the handshake? Did they look trustworthy? If you are remoting in a global team it will be more difficult to provide the experience.

How was the handshake? Surely you can't base your business decisions on such metrics?

Re: Study Shows a Productivity Boost of Working From Home

#178

Post by konschubert »

eksemplar wrote: post #96
konschubert wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Sometimes they come in late and leave early, sometimes they work from home and I can tell by what they produce they spent half the day doing something else. Honest question. You say you manage 20 people. How are your able to judge for 20 people at least weekly if the work they did was in line with your expectations? I feel like I basically have to read and understand every line written by each developer on my team i…

I manage a mix of developers, architects, project managers and business processors/developers. I measure their productivity on team results compared to their team predictions as well as my own experience. I do have a long history of doing development projects in the public sector with a primary focus on increasing efficiency and benefit realization, but a lot of it is honestly gut feeling and softer management strate…

> I understand why this would worry some managers, but I don’t believe you can apply factory line thinking or strategies to brain-workers because it doesn’t suit them, especially not if you want them to cooperate in actual teams and not just be a bunch of grouped individuals competing not to be measured as the bottom 15%.

I agree and I hope you're not suggesting that I'm doing that.

My problem is that "I trust my gut" doesn't work very well either as a strategy fot me because I just don't have that body of experience to draw from.

So I'm a bit lost.

Re: Study Shows a Productivity Boost of Working From Home

#179

Post by OpenDrapery »

As usual, the workers and managers are playing different games. As a developer, it's easy to assume that productivity is the game. Form a strong team and add business value through execution, right? Wrong.

Management is playing a game of consistency and control. Blanket policies are the name of the game. I don't care if you are 100x more productive at home. I can't have all these other losers asking me why they aren't allowed to work from home. God forbid I consider a stratified policy where some people get privileges that others don't.

This is why small companies move the needle on innovation, because they don't have to cater to lowest common denominator of 5000 people. Large companies are ruled by old men, and are beholden to status quo.

Re: Study Shows a Productivity Boost of Working From Home

#180

Post by checkyoursudo »

chrisan wrote: post #160
mamon wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not GP but I think that the point is that the whole "corporate culture" is mostly bullshit - you wouldn't expect factory or farm workers to form a "culture" and "take pride in their work" or "share company values", so why are you expecting all of this from knowledge workers? For me the whole "corporate culture" thing is just an attempt to brainwash people into accepting lower salary, because "we are changing the worl…

Ya I don’t think I’ve ever been in a “corporate culture” that wasn’t a facade.

The couple of times when I worked for companies that openly talked about employees and corporate culture, it was basically stated as "come build the culture we all want" but put into practice as "come build the culture that we all in management want and do not deviate."
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