Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

bloomberg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 597 posts

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

#41

Post by 13of40 »

randomdata wrote: post #20
yedava wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Offshoring has been a thing for a few decades now. So has the technology that facilitates remote work. So I don't think this is some new push for offshoring.

In fairness, there does seem to be a lot of concern amongst the management class around keeping their jobs if they don't get back into the office. Historically, offshoring's biggest struggle has been finding a cultural alignment with those still working in the onshore office. But when everyone is remote there is no such barrier. That is, in the grand scheme of things, something new.

My two cents on that last bit: I have a team of people working in the US, more than half of them from India, and another team actually in India. Culturally there's a fair amount of overlap, but the real ball buster is the timezone difference. There's no way to both get regular face time and have everyone work normal hours.

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

#42

Post by caseyohara »

wodenokoto wrote: post #35
SoftTalker wrote: post #2

Most employees can screw around websurfing or shopping just as well at work as at home. They mostly do it because they are bored. Give them interesting, meaningful work and they will be productive.

Isn't that why people are paid to work? Because it isn't interesting or meaningful?

This is a pretty dim view, especially here on HN.

People are paid to work because their labor is valuable. That is in no way mutually exclusive with how interesting and meaningful the job is. Jobs at the intersection of employer value and employee interest are obviously the most desirable. I'd imagine every laborer attempts to maximize these two qualities of their day job.

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

#43

Post by safety1st »

randomdata wrote: post #7

> If remote work boosts productivity in a substantial way, then it should improve productivity performance Not necessarily given the methodology. For example, if remote work allows a worker to do their laundry in parallel where they would be otherwise unable to in an office, their productivity has increased, but the gains would not show up in the study. It observes industry productivity, not work productivity.

Sure, but then we're discussing remote work as an employee benefit, which is a different discussion driven by a different part of the company etc. Not as a thing which improves the company's bottom line which is where C suite and shareholders spend the vast majority of their attention.

If it doesn't improve job productivity then at the level where decisions get made I can think of two really significant points regarding remote work.

A. There might be an opportunity to reduce cost because we don't need to pay for as much office space and whatever other expenses are incurred by the employee's physical presence

B. There might be an opportunity to reduce cost because we could recruit contractors in other countries instead of full-time US employees. (Which in turn is going to undermine labor's bargaining power in the US...)

I personally love remote work and believe in the benefits but I think a lot of people with an employee mindset just don't want to acknowledge the existence of B, they may even downvote me for bringing it up, but I guarantee that is one of the main conversations that will come up in the board room as remote work is normalized. Not "oh hey great, now labor can do laundry on company time!"

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

#44

Post by jfoutz »

randomdata wrote: post #7

> If remote work boosts productivity in a substantial way, then it should improve productivity performance Not necessarily given the methodology. For example, if remote work allows a worker to do their laundry in parallel where they would be otherwise unable to in an office, their productivity has increased, but the gains would not show up in the study. It observes industry productivity, not work productivity.

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.

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

#46

Post by heads »

> The researchers examined productivity trends in 43 industries — including chemical manufacturing, retail trade, and accommodation and food services…

Given the breadth of this study, two different conclusions spring to mind:

• productivity is up across the board, regardless of wfh; or

• sending the pen pushers and bean counters home and letting the shop floor people get on with their jobs made both more productive!

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

#47

Post by makeitdouble »

safety1st wrote: post #43
randomdata wrote: post #7

> If remote work boosts productivity in a substantial way, then it should improve productivity performance Not necessarily given the methodology. For example, if remote work allows a worker to do their laundry in parallel where they would be otherwise unable to in an office, their productivity has increased, but the gains would not show up in the study. It observes industry productivity, not work productivity.

Sure, but then we're discussing remote work as an employee benefit, which is a different discussion driven by a different part of the company etc. Not as a thing which improves the company's bottom line which is where C suite and shareholders spend the vast majority of their attention. If it doesn't improve job productivity then at the level where decisions get made I can think of two really significant points regard…

In most companies option B has been on the table for a very long time and they most probably partially took it while asking their workers to keep coming to the office up until recently.

CS is the running joke, but server management, manual data processing, moderation etc. have been prime candidates for outsourcing for a long time.

The reason one's job is/was not outsourced has I think little to do about whether general remote work was an option or not.

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

#48

Post by __loam »

This is not what I want to happen, but I have to think the American tech worker gets screwed in the world where remote work is the norm. If you make the labor market global, there's a lot of really smart Europeans who will work for half or a third of what American devs will. Can anyone refute this line of thinking? I'd love to be wrong.

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

#49

Post by rendaw »

randomdata wrote: post #7

> If remote work boosts productivity in a substantial way, then it should improve productivity performance Not necessarily given the methodology. For example, if remote work allows a worker to do their laundry in parallel where they would be otherwise unable to in an office, their productivity has increased, but the gains would not show up in the study. It observes industry productivity, not work productivity.

Also poor management could impose an upper limit on productivity, which would allow measuring performance loss but not gain.

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

#50

Post by TheCapeGreek »

5350-uiop-1130 wrote: post #6

layoffs are mostly done. so the media is starting to lay the foundation for offshoring of jobs to remote, cheaper locations.

Maybe?

I'm in one of these offshoring countries (South Africa). All I've seen lately is a ton of remote jobs are now limiting themselves to remote within the country or region, not even timezone-aligned. Hard to find EU/UK remote work that doesn't lock me out. I see the same with US-only remote work.

The result is also that local salaries have started going down again, in spite of the high inflation. There's no pressure anymore to pay better, when the foreign companies with real money aren't buying your employees anymore.

Not saying it's all completely dead and no companies are hiring abroad to here, but right this second, the remote dream seems to be shrinking. If anything the offshoring will be more traditional with setting up office in the locale and paying local salaries.

Post reply on HN