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Work from Home and Productivity

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Re: Work from Home and Productivity

#51

Post by redis_mlc »

kaskakokos wrote: post #26
DeRock wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Excludes commute time from work-from-office hours, which makes the comparison moot. I'd rather be unproductive at home, than unproductive in traffic. Also, this surveyed a single "large Asian IT services company". Its an anecdote with significant cultural work biases that may make this inapplicable to eg. American firms.

Understandable, in my case I commuted by bike in 20 min, I have changed 40 min of healthy biking for 2+ hours of extra work. And these are not cold numbers from an study, it is my reality and it can explain my bad mood of the last times.

> in my case I commuted by bike in 20 min

So ... you admit that you're an outlier, yet offer your opinion anyway.

On HN, pedantry is our job.

Re: Work from Home and Productivity

#53

Post by heisenbit »

> but uninterrupted work hours shrank considerably.

How can that happen - kids aside? The best part of WFH uninterrupted time for the more complicated tasks. We used to call with our phones and felt obliged to pick up. Now we call via Teams and you can simply tune out or be in a non-interruptible state and people are less tempted to call when I'm trying to focus.

Re: Work from Home and Productivity

#54

Post by 908B64B197 »

themanmaran wrote: post #8
stakkur wrote: post #5

They used tracking software on employee's computers. That alone was enough for me to close the link without reading further. My company uses Microsoft's inane version of this, and the only real thing it measures is the amount of money going into Microsoft's account.

"the analytics software takes into account whether an employee actually engages in a relevant task (which counts as work time) or merely procrastinates at their desk (not counted), by monitoring which software tools the employee uses" That's genuinely awful. I wonder to what extent employees are aware of the analytics, and how many people just set up macros look busy.

Keep in mind the study was made using : "personnel and analytics data from over 10,000 skilled professionals at a large Asian IT services company"

In this industry we all know what this really means. Some of us have dealt with these "skilled professionals". I don't think spending more time in their IDE is going to make them any more productive than they already are...

Re: Work from Home and Productivity

#55

Post by cortesoft »

ineptech wrote: post #25
6gvONxR4sf7o wrote: post #14

COVID does not constitute a natural experiment! A useful natural experiment is when something changes in a way that can only (or at least almost entirely) affect your outcome by way of the cause you're interested in. In the cause and effect chain of A -> B -> C, if A affects B, but not C, then you can exploit wild things in A to learn about how B affects C. But if A affects C outside of B, you can't tell the effects…

Agreed! The elephants in the room for me are the self-reported hours (Did "hours worked" really increase, or was that time spent changing laundry and running errands that got classified as work time) and the obvious confounder of children being at home rather than in school.

I think that doing household chores and errands for supplies SHOULD count a work time if you are working from home.

If you are WFH, then you are not only doing your main job, but you are also working in the facilities department. If you go to the office, there are people who clean the office, take out the garbage, maintain equipment, clean the bathroom, etc.

At home you have to do all of that.

Re: Work from Home and Productivity

#56

Post by SketchySeaBeast »

tdeck wrote: post #45
ineptech wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed! The elephants in the room for me are the self-reported hours (Did "hours worked" really increase, or was that time spent changing laundry and running errands that got classified as work time) and the obvious confounder of children being at home rather than in school.

Keep in mind also that this is a consulting company, where people are always encouraged to report more hours in order to bill the client.

That's kind of bizarre - I've worked in a couple of consulting gigs now and the hours have always been tightly reigned in - the company wanted all the hours for sure, but they wanted you producing things constantly, just throwing more hours at something and going over estimates was a way to get yourself in trouble quick.

Re: Work from Home and Productivity

#57

Post by ska »

themanmaran wrote: post #8
stakkur wrote: post #5

They used tracking software on employee's computers. That alone was enough for me to close the link without reading further. My company uses Microsoft's inane version of this, and the only real thing it measures is the amount of money going into Microsoft's account.

"the analytics software takes into account whether an employee actually engages in a relevant task (which counts as work time) or merely procrastinates at their desk (not counted), by monitoring which software tools the employee uses" That's genuinely awful. I wonder to what extent employees are aware of the analytics, and how many people just set up macros look busy.

These sort of analytics are endemic in some industries; most people will have seen some generic notification, e.g. "system usage may be monitored on company equipment" but have no idea this means "your laptop is logging everything you do, all the time".

Re: Work from Home and Productivity

#58

Post by andersource »

jfengel wrote: post #28
6gvONxR4sf7o wrote: post #14

COVID does not constitute a natural experiment! A useful natural experiment is when something changes in a way that can only (or at least almost entirely) affect your outcome by way of the cause you're interested in. In the cause and effect chain of A -> B -> C, if A affects B, but not C, then you can exploit wild things in A to learn about how B affects C. But if A affects C outside of B, you can't tell the effects…

That's true, but it's a pretty common interpretation of the term "natural experiment". Few, if any, "natural experiments" are actually experiments in a rigorous sense. But they are a thing that happens: you have an uncontrolled happenstance that allows you to infer, but not prove, something you want to learn more about. When the surface meaning of a term has no referents, it will often be co-opted to refer to somethi…

You're right, but then giving the title "Work from Home & Productivity" is misleading, giving the (IMO false) impression that results are generalizable for WFH beyond COVID. And there are some pretty strong claims:

> Therefore, productivity fell by about 20%

> Employees also spent less time networking, and received less coaching and 1:1 meetings with supervisors

> Employees with children living at home increased hours worked more than those without children at home, and suffered a bigger decline in productivity than those without children

I would say these results have more to do with COVID effects and forced, sudden WFH than inherent characteristics of WFH.

Re: Work from Home and Productivity

#59

Post by ghaff »

andersource wrote: post #58
jfengel wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's true, but it's a pretty common interpretation of the term "natural experiment". Few, if any, "natural experiments" are actually experiments in a rigorous sense. But they are a thing that happens: you have an uncontrolled happenstance that allows you to infer, but not prove, something you want to learn more about. When the surface meaning of a term has no referents, it will often be co-opted to refer to somethi…

You're right, but then giving the title "Work from Home & Productivity" is misleading, giving the (IMO false) impression that results are generalizable for WFH beyond COVID. And there are some pretty strong claims: > Therefore, productivity fell by about 20% > Employees also spent less time networking, and received less coaching and 1:1 meetings with supervisors > Employees with children living at home increased hour…

> Employees also spent less time networking, and received less coaching and 1:1 meetings with supervisors

And, in normal times, remote workers often have/should have off-sites/on-sites, in-person team meetings, etc. And I haven't actually had fewer 1:1's. Probably more because I haven't canceled as many due to travel. (Which isn't necessarily a positive thing but still.)

Re: Work from Home and Productivity

#60

Post by jfengel »

andersource wrote: post #58
jfengel wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's true, but it's a pretty common interpretation of the term "natural experiment". Few, if any, "natural experiments" are actually experiments in a rigorous sense. But they are a thing that happens: you have an uncontrolled happenstance that allows you to infer, but not prove, something you want to learn more about. When the surface meaning of a term has no referents, it will often be co-opted to refer to somethi…

You're right, but then giving the title "Work from Home & Productivity" is misleading, giving the (IMO false) impression that results are generalizable for WFH beyond COVID. And there are some pretty strong claims: > Therefore, productivity fell by about 20% > Employees also spent less time networking, and received less coaching and 1:1 meetings with supervisors > Employees with children living at home increased hour…

Very true. It does help that the full title has a colon followed by "Evidence from Personnel & Analytics Data on IT Professionals". That word "evidence" does help limit the expectations for how much we can generalize.
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