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Remote work doesn't seem to affect productivity, Fed study finds

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Re: Remote work doesn't seem to affect productivity, Fed study finds

#381

Post by steveBK123 »

mrweiner wrote: post #377
steveBK123 wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've generally had a 30-40min commute most of my career, but also generally had a flexible enough start time that exact to the minute arrival at my desk was not performance impacting. Unfortunately a lot of things conflate over time as you become more senior to generally make your commute worse. For me - my last 2 roles have earlier required start time, with a hard start (morning meeting / standup / L3 support presen…

Why are you working at all during what was your commuting time? You weren’t getting paid for those 7.5-10 hours before, so you’re in a worse position now unless your pay increased commensurate with the extra hours. That should have translated into more personal hours, not more working hours.

I took on a role with earlier/longer expected hours, but with the agreement I would do it remotely. And yes it's for a lot more money, not just an extra 10-20% for the extra 10-20% hours.

Re: Remote work doesn't seem to affect productivity, Fed study finds

#382

Post by hwillis »

RestlessMind wrote: post #365
rcbdev wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thankfully the US is a major outlier in this aspect globally.

You need to get out of your bubble. After having traveled to more than 60 countries on all the continents (except Antarctica), I can assure you that a majority of humans do not have good reliable public transport. It is a luxury that only some parts of the world have. Just as an example, right now I am in an Indian city where there is some minimal public transport but a majority of people need their own vehicle to co…

You're being silly. The majority of the world also doesn't have access to airplanes, but that doesn't mean they don't work. OP is certainly not in the ridiculous bubble you're describing.

Re: Remote work doesn't seem to affect productivity, Fed study finds

#383

Post by mrweiner »

steveBK123 wrote: post #381
mrweiner wrote: post #377

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are you working at all during what was your commuting time? You weren’t getting paid for those 7.5-10 hours before, so you’re in a worse position now unless your pay increased commensurate with the extra hours. That should have translated into more personal hours, not more working hours.

I took on a role with earlier/longer expected hours, but with the agreement I would do it remotely. And yes it's for a lot more money, not just an extra 10-20% for the extra 10-20% hours.

Ah, good on ya!

Re: Remote work doesn't seem to affect productivity, Fed study finds

#384

Post by redcobra762 »

mtlguitarist wrote: post #190
redcobra762 wrote: post #73

I’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…

And how do you get those tickets into the issue tracker in the first place? How will an issue tracker help a team coordinate on a complex problem that needs to be worked through as a group? How does moving a ticket to a different status help you connect with the people you work with to build social capital you then spend on conflict? Who is coordinating and lubricating these interactions constantly because natural human interaction isn’t there to do it? And god forbid somewhere have a job that isn’t software engineering…

Your comment feels like the comment a person might make if they thought building a cohesive team was a paint-by-the-numbers exercise.

Re: Remote work doesn't seem to affect productivity, Fed study finds

#385

Post by throwup238 »

andyish wrote: post #379

I'm genuinely surprised that your typical exec isn't looking at things like this thinking: "We're spending this much a month on office space for our 500 staff at this location. Let's knock that down to 100 and push everyone to work from home". Give ourselves a big pat on the back and a nice bonus for saving a few million a year. If after a few years, it doesn't work, you go back to the market for more office space. I…

The typical exec's tenure is shorter than the six year office leases so they'd never see any praise or bonus for making that change. As far as they're concerned, the option doesn't exist.

Re: Remote work doesn't seem to affect productivity, Fed study finds

#386

Post by LightBug1 »

sokoloff wrote: post #311
LightBug1 wrote: post #306

Jebus ... this is still being debated? Can we just acknowledge the complete an utter failure of managegment around this debate (I am management, btw) such that we can't settle this one fair and square. We all have expectations and results from individuals. It doesn't take a Fed study to answer the question around an employees productivity. Either it's better, the same, or worse. I'm all for remote and hybrid work. Ma…

My hypothesis is that the debate is difficult because of some mix of difficulty in precisely measuring productivity (which everyone can see) and in the mix of most tasks which work 100% fine remotely and some tasks that work better in-person ("the human thing"). (I'm also management and very much pro-remote.)

Agreed. It's just so clear to me that role(s) flex between those set of tasks as need be ... and that should be clear to both manager and managed ...

The manager shouldn't be a control freak about being in the office 5 days a week ... and the managed shouldn't be a whiny baby when asked to come do some human stuff ... somewhere in the middle is the promised land and it should't be that hard to find.

Having said that ... I had an experience with a colleague recently that reminded that not much of this is based on reason.

Re: Remote work doesn't seem to affect productivity, Fed study finds

#387

Post by rcbdev »

RestlessMind wrote: post #365
rcbdev wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thankfully the US is a major outlier in this aspect globally.

You need to get out of your bubble. After having traveled to more than 60 countries on all the continents (except Antarctica), I can assure you that a majority of humans do not have good reliable public transport. It is a luxury that only some parts of the world have. Just as an example, right now I am in an Indian city where there is some minimal public transport but a majority of people need their own vehicle to co…

Why would you think comparing the developing world with the USA makes in any way sense - do you actually think the US is at the developmental level of India?

When comparing similarly wealthy countries the US is absolutely an outlier in this.

Re: Remote work doesn't seem to affect productivity, Fed study finds

#388

Post by s1artibartfast »

bargle0 wrote: post #251
intended wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

IMO, an hour spent commuting is an hour stolen from one’s children.

Wait until you hear about construction and physical labor jobs. All run by child abusers.

Re: Remote work doesn't seem to affect productivity, Fed study finds

#389

Post by admax88qqq »

andyish wrote: post #379

I'm genuinely surprised that your typical exec isn't looking at things like this thinking: "We're spending this much a month on office space for our 500 staff at this location. Let's knock that down to 100 and push everyone to work from home". Give ourselves a big pat on the back and a nice bonus for saving a few million a year. If after a few years, it doesn't work, you go back to the market for more office space. I…

> If after a few years, it doesn't work, you go back to the market for more office space.

Isn't this what they did?

It's been a few years since the big shift to WFH and some execs think it's not working and are pushing for return to office.

Don't get me wrong, I think the reality of WFH is a lot more nuanced than the public debate is making it seem, it works for some and not for others.

But if the typical exec was to do what you are proposing, I feel like the visible affects to us would be exactly what we're already seeing.

Re: Remote work doesn't seem to affect productivity, Fed study finds

#390

Post by sam0x17 »

andyish wrote: post #379

I'm genuinely surprised that your typical exec isn't looking at things like this thinking: "We're spending this much a month on office space for our 500 staff at this location. Let's knock that down to 100 and push everyone to work from home". Give ourselves a big pat on the back and a nice bonus for saving a few million a year. If after a few years, it doesn't work, you go back to the market for more office space. I…

Startups DEFINITELY have been looking at it this way for the last decade, to the point where I only know of a few startups that still have physical offices out of the hundreds I interact with in various capacities.

Give it a few more years and FANG / fortune 500 will follow suit, likely crashing the CRE industry which would actually serve a number of societal goods...

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