Earlier quoted context omitted.
> How much meaningful and interesting work do you think exists in this world? If you're willing to take a salary cut, lots.
Unpaid 'work' is usually referred to as a 'hobby'.
Who said unpaid?
Remote work doesn't seem to affect productivity, Fed study finds
181–190 of 597 posts
Re: Remote work doesn't seem to affect productivity, Fed study finds
#182The fundamental issue I see in this debate is a lack of sensibility and nuance in human nature. The whole matter is debated (understandably in a way) on big numbers and averages. I could write a long post but I'll cut it short to this paragraph stating that humans differ. For some commuting is stressful, the offices are noisy and full of distractions and those individuals may thrive in a remote setup. There's people…
This is my experience. My productivity on coding is a lot hire remote. On many leadership / management-style tasks, it's a lot lower. Come to think of it, I'm wondering if that's where the split comes in. Upper management sees their productivity go down -- on what's fundamentally an interpersonal endeavour -- while individual contributors see theirs go up -- on what's primarily solitary ones. As a result, there is fr…
This is it. Add to the fact that poor managers don't really understand or know what their staff are doing, it gives them anxiety. If the same poor manager is in an office with them and can see them at their desk then it alleviates that somewhat.
Managing people is really really hard, but we seem to have a managerial class who seem to be getting away with doing it very poorly.
Re: Remote work doesn't seem to affect productivity, Fed study finds
#183The fundamental issue I see in this debate is a lack of sensibility and nuance in human nature. The whole matter is debated (understandably in a way) on big numbers and averages. I could write a long post but I'll cut it short to this paragraph stating that humans differ. For some commuting is stressful, the offices are noisy and full of distractions and those individuals may thrive in a remote setup. There's people…
This is my experience. My productivity on coding is a lot hire remote. On many leadership / management-style tasks, it's a lot lower. Come to think of it, I'm wondering if that's where the split comes in. Upper management sees their productivity go down -- on what's fundamentally an interpersonal endeavour -- while individual contributors see theirs go up -- on what's primarily solitary ones. As a result, there is fr…
I think this is largely it - the whole maker vs. manager thing... when your job relies on focus, being in a situation where you can control distractions is a benefit. But when your job relies on getting others' attention it can clearly be a negative, esp. if the culture is not thoroughly supportive.
It also adds an extra hurdle for those who aren't particularly skilled at management.
Re: Remote work doesn't seem to affect productivity, Fed study finds
#184Earlier quoted context omitted.
Although it is pretty strong evidence office space is a boondoggle. That’s a lot of pointless overhead costs that hurt the bottom line. I like seeing my peers in person. I like hashing things out in person. Apparently that’s a waste of time and money.
> That’s a lot of pointless overhead costs that hurt the bottom line. Or put the other way: Remote work let's the employee pay for the office space.
It's generally more expensive to buy/rent a smaller place in a metro area near the office and commute there than it is to buy/rent a place with a home office in a more reasonably priced area.
When all expenses are considered, working in-office can (and often does) cost the employee way more money than remote.
Re: Remote work doesn't seem to affect productivity, Fed study finds
#185The fundamental issue I see in this debate is a lack of sensibility and nuance in human nature. The whole matter is debated (understandably in a way) on big numbers and averages. I could write a long post but I'll cut it short to this paragraph stating that humans differ. For some commuting is stressful, the offices are noisy and full of distractions and those individuals may thrive in a remote setup. There's people…
I would add one major change that the work from home experiment has achieved - its made the opportunity cost of the work commute clear. This is a time cost paid for by the worker.
As you stated, this is variable.
If you have a short commute, or you like it, or you get some exercise - office is great.
If you hate your commute, if its 3 hours in pollution and traffic - not so much.
Earlier the position was that WFH was not possible. Now we know it is, and I hazard that this change isn't factored in job postings.
Considering what an hour of time means in this era, its not a trivial cost. This means an hour which could be spent just unwinding, studying, on hobbies, procrastinating, whatever.
If you have any drive, or strong interests, thats time you would want to spend on something other than a commute.
Re: Remote work doesn't seem to affect productivity, Fed study finds
#186Productivity is one factor. You also have to consider getting away from people at home, joining people because you live alone, sexual pursuits, and other topics that people are dishonest about yet are largely motivated by to work in office. People think RTO is about real estate, but it's really about executives looking for extramarital affairs.
Re: Remote work doesn't seem to affect productivity, Fed study finds
#187Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is my experience. My productivity on coding is a lot hire remote. On many leadership / management-style tasks, it's a lot lower. Come to think of it, I'm wondering if that's where the split comes in. Upper management sees their productivity go down -- on what's fundamentally an interpersonal endeavour -- while individual contributors see theirs go up -- on what's primarily solitary ones. As a result, there is fr…
This is it. Add to the fact that poor managers don't really understand or know what their staff are doing, it gives them anxiety. If the same poor manager is in an office with them and can see them at their desk then it alleviates that somewhat. Managing people is really really hard, but we seem to have a managerial class who seem to be getting away with doing it very poorly.
“Managing people is really really hard”
I like your reply, but for different reasons. I am a middle school teacher, and my day to day is managing people. It is tiring, decidedly so, and yet at the end of the day, management is rewarding for me for because it is relationship building through gaining individual understanding and building classroom consensus.
I love my job and am good at my job. But if I’m to step outside of my classroom your latter quote becomes far too truthful for me:
“we seem to have a managerial class who seem to be getting away with doing it very poorly”
Your quote applies directly to my supposed superiors; assistant principals, principals, and higher ups in the school board. Most of the managerial class outside of a classroom is trash at their jobs. Their management style seems mostly morale busting and ego inflation at day’s end.
I agree with you, just from a different occupational domain.
Re: Remote work doesn't seem to affect productivity, Fed study finds
#188Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I think a lot of people with an employee mindset just don't want to acknowledge the existence of B Because the outsourcing threat was a thing before remote working, remote working changes nothing to that. Employers love to bring this up on the subject of remote working but if they could outsource your work to an Indian paid 10x less, they would have done it already. Those employers are deluded if they think remote…
Outsourcing jobs and salaries exploded with COVID. 100k USD annual compensation is insane for many countries. You can get best people overseas for a fraction of US costs, and with no obligation attached to you by labor laws. I'm glad this happens so I can use geographic arbitrage: work for US client but live in nice place in Europe with reasonable costs of living.
I didn't see any change at all personally, I do live in Europe though.
The best talents globally are going to be paid at a rough similar level outside of the big tech giants.
As we go forward, the monetary gain of outsourcing is trending down, it's already less worth it than 10 years ago.
Remote working plays against outsourcing in my opinion, nobody wants to be underpaid, including talents in lower cost of living areas, what was a local market became a global one.
And then those countries are also developing as well, reducing the gap every year.
Both effects together are very powerful against outsourcing.
Re: Remote work doesn't seem to affect productivity, Fed study finds
#189Based on my experience working in IT on complex projects, it is better to work together in the same room/office, if you have a team that is not all seniors and if you work on a greenfield project where you have a lot of structure to put in place.
Often with people that are doing something new to them, they might have a "mental barrier" of doing something new, because there are a lot of things to take into account, and discussing with somebody experienced in person helps more that having a video call.
Also making some architectural decisions might take a lot of time if there are multiple potential solutions, each with pros and cons (ex. which message broker / http client / log & metric aggregator / sql database to pick). Being in the same room, a few senior developers and possibly the infrastructure guy makes it easier.
When working on already launched projects, the architecture is already in place and doing maintenance or adding new features does not need a lot of communication/synchronization between team members, so doing that remotely is not an issue. However it might be if you are not familiar with the project, or don't have experience, or you have associates in the team and you need good performance from them.
I don't know if it's the same when working on simpler projects.
Re: Remote work doesn't seem to affect productivity, Fed study finds
#190I’ve said this before, but if productivity isn’t lost, it’s at the expense of a very overworked manager, in companies that weren’t built remote-first, and don’t operate primarily remotely. This is a more complex issue than simply measuring work output of one person and comparing it to their work output in different locations. For my wife, it is objectively false to claim that remote work is better for her teams, in h…
I really do not understand what could possibly be hard about it for the manager here. People have tickets in some issue tracker, they move them into whatever status they're in, and the manager just sends out some messages to check in on the status if there haven't been new updates in a few days. Yeah, you also have 1-1s, status meetings, performance reviews, etc but these are all things you'd have anyway. My managers have done basically nothing different for me while I was remote and everything seemed to be fine.