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The effects of remote work on collaboration among information workers

nature.com

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Re: The effects of remote work on collaboration among information workers

#31

Post by sharken »

sam0x17 wrote: post #8
maxclark wrote: post #2

“Together, these effects may make it harder for employees to acquire and share new information across the network.” Remote is hard and not every company is going to adapt to this long term. I’m happy that remote is now an accepted structure but I worry that full time remote employees will miss out simply because they aren’t present.

This is why I like fully-remote workplaces. That said, I've only seen remote work well in fully remote workplaces. Once there are some remote some not, things break down a bit.

Fully-remote workplaces are very rare, so it's a lot more likely that remote workers will lose out.

E.g. there is a task that requires the help of person A or B, where person B is working remote.

I'd argue that person A will be chosen 9 times out of 10 simply due to convenience.

To counter that, workers are required to spend 2 or 3 days in the office.

Slowly but surely some will go to the office one additional day, causing the remote workers to be left out of some tasks, while on-site workers form stronger bonds.

So i don't see a very bright for WFH, but it's all very new so time will tell.

Re: The effects of remote work on collaboration among information workers

#33

Post by akomtu »

nojito wrote: post #15

The unfortunate aspect of data and studies like this is that the HN/tech community prefers working in silos.

Silos are ideal for knowledge workers: their often autistic personalities and the nature of the work fit really well a quiet corner office.

Managers don't really exist without the chitchat: if managers are fish, then chatty open office is their fish pond.

The guys above them, VP+, who I'd call "gamblers", don't really need the open offices. They build networks anywhere they want. The in-office connections are too fake and weak anyway.

Re: The effects of remote work on collaboration among information workers

#34

Post by sixdimensional »

civilized wrote: post #13

Next paper from these guys will say: "the shift from an open office plan to private offices caused work to become more siloed. Previous research shows this may impede the flow of information through the network" People need to stop fetishizing "breaking down silos" and "serendipitous hallway encounters" and all that nonsense and think about the big picture. You're more likely to have something worth saying, and a wor…

I'd go one step further. I have done research on "silos" and actually believe they form naturally, even virtually, and we should be looking how to take advantage of the natural tendencies and make them more effective rather than eradicate them because it sounds like a good thing to do.

I'm not saying a return to pure tribalism here, but I am saying maybe realistic acknowledgement of tendencies and how to make those more effective/efficient and less problematic might be a good idea.

In other words, turn a negative into a positive. Work with the tendencies with incremental improvement.

There's another way of thinking about silos - call them organizational boundaries - and observe a complete shift in thought on the topic.

Some might call this heretical thinking.

Re: The effects of remote work on collaboration among information workers

#35

Post by spanktheuser »

Interesting study. The data collection & classification methods seem strong as does the underlying data set. However I’m unconvinced their analysis necessarily follows from the established facts.

- Knowledge workers are treated as a homogeneous population. But it seems unlikely a software engineer, a VP of software engineering, and a business development associate obtain the same benefit from frequent in person meetings.

- Remote teams aren’t merely in-person teams + Video/VOIP stack. Optimal process and culture is drastically different for each case. It seems possible that some/most of detrimental effects would disappear over time as new remote teams adopt better processes and discard legacy methods optimized for proximity.

- There is a lack of nuance. While I may be persuaded that on average in-person collaboration adds value I strongly suspect there is tremendous variability between individual meetings. I once worked for a very senior Ballmer-era product executive who jumped ship to an alluring startup. In the year before they were fired I easily spent over 200 hours meeting and collaborating with them. To say that each hour was merely empty and valueless would do a disservice to this individual’s talent for value deletion. The abrupt conversion to WFH was accompanied by a substantial increase in communication friction. In such cases I would expect lower value, less focused, and more vacuous meetings and network connections to be the first that are jettisoned. It seems dangerous to assume the collaboration dynamics associated with success pre- WFH will remain so post-WFH. This is a novel, potentially pattern breaking change.

Re: The effects of remote work on collaboration among information workers

#38

Post by rickspencer3 »

phillipcarter wrote: post #14

The key thing is here: > over the first six months of 2020 Those first six months were pretty rough. The large majority of people had little to no experience working remotely, so many folks didn't have a good home office environment, and there was a general sense of being unsure if this would just be temporary or if employees should settle in for the long haul. Many orgs didn't have good practices set up for remote w…

First half of 20/20 was really hard on a lot of people: the pandemic, civil unrest, political instability. It was a difficult time for sure. Then there is the whole shock of kids at home from school, spouses at home, potentially lost jobs, etc.. That said, I suppose it is intuitive to think that a bunch of people leaving campus life and suddenly working from home would have an adjustment period anyway.

I'm also a little skeptical of the their leap from their dependent variables to "other research suggests less innovation." It's probably a fallacy on my part, but I am also skeptical that a company with what must be billions of dollars invested in high tech campuses is going to find that remote work is just as good as a campus environment.

I have been working fully remote, in remote friendly or fully remote companies for 12 years or so now. It is definitely a different environment and different way of collaborating than working on a campus. I would be interested to see similar research on such companies. I suspect that the results would be replicated, but would be interesting to know for sure.

Related anecdote: I was visiting Microsoft campus in Redmond pretty regularly around 2018/2019. Most of the meetings I attended included many people calling in to their video conferencing system from around campus and sometimes from home. I thought at the time that it seemed like they were on their way to a remote work situation anyway.

Re: The effects of remote work on collaboration among information workers

#40

Post by siliconc0w »

My experience is I can more easily join earlier or later meetings with remote teams in other timezones when I wouldn't been able before due to the commute. I can also meet with people spontaneously when before you'd struggle to find a room (or you'd annoy your neighbors). This far outweighs the number of work related 'coffee machine' or 'hallway conversations' I ever had.
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