I trust actual companies over Fed data any ways.
Remote work doesn't seem to affect productivity, Fed study finds
421–430 of 597 posts
Re: Remote work doesn't seem to affect productivity, Fed study finds
#422Earlier quoted context omitted.
I guess your boss doesn't really care if you managed to do laundry during work hours. You personally might care since you saved yourself some time, but that is a very personal thing. OTOH, if family is at home, it is also very easy for them to grab you for something seemingly important. With the "right" demanding wife, your boss always looses.
With the wrong demanding coworker or (especially) midwit middle manager who wants to talk about sportsball or politics, your entire company loses, not sure what your (rather sexist) point is tbh. Distractions happen. They come from lots of sources.
Demanding wife or demanding husband. His point was about family being home.
Re: Remote work doesn't seem to affect productivity, Fed study finds
#423Does it matter? If the company wants you in the office just don't work there, the people who want to work in the office can work at those companies and the people who want remote can work remote companies. Then we're all happy.
Only causes issues when remote people demand to be able to do it at companies that value in person working. Studies are irrelevant because at the end of the day you'll never change peoples minds.
Re: Remote work doesn't seem to affect productivity, Fed study finds
#424Does it matter? If the company wants you in the office just don't work there, the people who want to work in the office can work at those companies and the people who want remote can work remote companies. Then we're all happy. Only causes issues when remote people demand to be able to do it at companies that value in person working. Studies are irrelevant because at the end of the day you'll never change peoples min…
The problem is here because companies saying "we now support remote workers" changed their mind and threw remote workers away
Re: Remote work doesn't seem to affect productivity, Fed study finds
#425Earlier quoted context omitted.
Or, give them real equity.
What would this involve? And can't they buy equity with their salaries if they wanted to?
Usually my employers haven’t let me buy as much equity as I’ve wanted to, they severely constrain the employee equity pool allocation and dole it out as occasional rewards and reserve most for non-worker investors and owners or executive roles.
For how it could work you can look at worker-owned cooperative structures, sociocracy, etc
Re: Remote work doesn't seem to affect productivity, Fed study finds
#426Earlier quoted context omitted.
During my last job change I gave concrete numbers to recruiters on what getting me into an office would cost. In the end I ended up working remote, which is what I preferred, which wasn't surprising given how much the commuting time was worth to me.
Once you add those numbers, the total is usually insane. While I do miss being in the office sometimes (mostly for the social life), it's just too expensive for me as a worker right now. It's not just the time spent on commute, it's also the money that you have to spend to stay within a commutable distance from the office. Also, my profession is being a Software Engineer, not a train passenger. I made a calculator fo…
> You spend around 8 hours on travel weekly which amounts to around 45 days of full-time work per year and will sum up to 450 days of full-time work (3600 hours) over 10 years.
It's 4 years of full-time work days (9000 hours!) over 25 years.
Kind of wish I hadn't looked... :(
Re: Remote work doesn't seem to affect productivity, Fed study finds
#427The 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 hope it's OK to dissent here since all the other comments agree with you anyway. Regarding this: > The 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. If statistics is invalid, then how do you propose companies decide, based on a reasonable and empirical estimate of reality, on what work…
> If statistics is invalid, then how do you propose companies decide, based on a reasonable and empirical estimate of reality, on what work arrangement to implement?
As Einstein said, you should make every problem as simple as possible, but no more simple.
The problem we're describing cannot be reduced to few simple statistics, it's exactly making the problem simpler than it is.
Not only just the task of measuring productivity of knowledge workers is extremely difficult if not impossible, but getting any statistic across a wide variety of different factors makes it even more pointless.
In fact, the problem shouldn't be approached from a macro, but microscopic level. Start from the basics.
There's knowledge workers that don't do anything from home. There's knowledge workers that won't achieve anything at the office. There's gargantuan projects like operating systems or databases developed fully remotely and asynchronously. There's projects that barely move without lots of synchronous, meaningful in-person interactions and there's environments like early stage startups that desperately need this kind of situation (albeit I'm sure there's many exceptions).
In professional sports it is very well understood that slightly different formulas work differently for different teams and players. Some needs to be fast and lean to be effective. Some need to put up muscle and weight. Many need both. Some need lots of cardio, some need more skills training. And all of that has to interact and mesh together and face different challenges.
Yet you want to complex systems like business projects/teams built around few statistics? Ignoring the wide variety of factors and humans that will end up there?
I'm not saying that building teams like that is an easy task, sometimes you just need to make work whatever team you're given, and you will have to decide a setup and give the right structure incentives to everyone to make it work.
But even if tomorrow a stat told us that there's proof that statistically remote is better for 60% of the teams (or the opposite) that really won't help much.
Re: Remote work doesn't seem to affect productivity, Fed study finds
#428Earlier quoted context omitted.
1) I'm not a robot. Humans exist in physical space and it is necessary for our mental health to see other people in person. We cannot get our social battery filled by virtual interaction alone. 2) Otther people don't participate in these things very often when I try to suggest them. People naturally talk to each other in physical spaces. Therefore, the solution is the office.
1) heavily depends on the person (you seem the extraverted type who seem to suffer the most; for instance I can go weeks without much f2f interaction and not be disturbed by it). And 2), well, that sucks. Needs a suitable culture and the right setup...
Don't worry I moved to a company where people have to come in 2-3 times a week and the culture is great and I'm not depressed any more. It works much better than any other setup I've tried.
My problem with the extraversion/introversion dichotomy is that I'm not either extreme. I am far too introverted to competently fulfil my basic social needs without some form of passive socialising like having an office full of people around me. I don't thrive with going out on the town and making friends like extraverts I know. But I'm definitely not the type of person that can not speak to people for weeks. I think that sort of person is sort of rare and should not be the basis of the entire system. I honestly think that level of introversion is not what most people even mean when they talk about introversion. That is highly unusual and is not how human nature usually works.
Re: Remote work doesn't seem to affect productivity, Fed study finds
#429Earlier quoted context omitted.
Lol what? 100% yes. It's super common to have a separate holding company for the real estate that the business leases from.
Sure, can you give examples of companies whose executives own the holding company their business leases real estate from?
It's common practice afaik, there's no secret there. I used to work for one and they are small peanuts.
Edit: Acme inc owns Acme Real Estate Co and Acme Operations Co. Operations Co leases from Real Estate Co. There's no funny business, it's just how a business might split its assets and liabilities.
Re: Remote work doesn't seem to affect productivity, Fed study finds
#430Earlier quoted context omitted.
15 * 2 minutes a day 5 times a week is 100h+ by the end of the year
It's 1.4% of the year (assuming that 130 hours a year is correct I didn't check it). That's less than two ounces out of a gallon of liquid or less than half a centimeter out of a foot. In what other things is 1.4% considered "significant?"
Taxes jump to mind. COL adjustments vs inflation for the past few years also comes to mind. Beating some measurable world record by 1.4% is probably a big deal. I'm sure there are more examples if you look for them.