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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

#51

Post by imbnwa »

hogFeast wrote: post #18
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…

If your business model includes: "we put people in an office in the hopes that their random interactions will create value"...then that sounds like the problem is something else. Random encounters that create value sound good. It sounds less good when you flip this logic, and ask whether the reliance on randomness is a function of weak information-sharing within formal structures. It is easier to break down silos if…

> Random encounters that create value sound good. It sounds less good when you flip this logic, and ask whether the reliance on randomness is a function of weak information-sharing within formal structures. It is easier to break down silos if you put this online, then there is genuine sharing. That is what the internet is for.

Probably why I've never seen a Confluence that wasn't a disaster, magnified by turnover. This kind of stuff isn't interesting to business because it forces them to be accountable rather than deflecting accountability on the people in the trenches. Those people are expected to do all the heavy lifting for the org while business focuses on 'the bigger picture'

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

#52

Post by dang »

kongin wrote: post #46

[flagged]

We've already asked you once to stop posting in the flamewar style to HN. If you do it again, we will ban you.

It's not what this site is for, and—what's worse—it destroys what it is for, so this is somewhat of an existential issue for this forum.

If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it.

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

#53

Post by rybosworld »

missedthecue wrote: post #19
The_Colonel wrote: post #11

This fits my experience pretty well. The available communication tools suck so much, people are for the most part not used to communicate effectively / frequently enough in remote setting. I think it's solvable with better technology (something like Facebook's Horizon Workrooms), but at the same it seems very far.

At the end of the day, it's just hard to build and maintain relationships from afar. Any kind, be it business, platonic, or romantic. Humans are social creatures, meant for in-person interaction.

This is more or less the same train of thought that people first had about online dating. "It won't work", "it's not the same", "it's weird to meet someone online" etc.

I couldn't disagree more that remote relationships are more difficult. On the contrary, technology continues to make it easier to stay in touch with 500 friends, coworkers from your last 3 jobs etc.

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

#54

Post by earthscienceman »

kahmeal wrote: post #43
goodells wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would agree with this. Ancedotally, at least for the first 6 months until the fall of 2020, my team and its management were completely accepting of sub-par WFH setups and attitudes. We couldn't really blame the guy whose two young daughters screamed all day and tromped up and down the stairs next to his desk. Now it's different - remote hires are expected to have a decent working environment (either at home or else…

Elsewhere at their own expense? Yea that's gonna be a no from me.

"We used to pay for entire buildings to house our employees, but covid made us realize we can pass that cost on to them!"

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

#56

Post by wombatmobile »

spanktheuser wrote: post #35

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 meeti…

You've identified a major weakness of the study, which the authors acknowledge themselves (and then ignore when reaching conclusions).

> For each month, we classified ties as strong when they were in the top 50% of an employee’s ties in terms of hours spent communicating, and as weak otherwise. Although we have not seen strong and weak ties defined in this exact way elsewhere in the research literature on social networks, the research community has not, to our knowledge, converged on a standard way to measure tie strength.

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

#57

Post by rybosworld »

imbnwa wrote: post #51
hogFeast wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your business model includes: "we put people in an office in the hopes that their random interactions will create value"...then that sounds like the problem is something else. Random encounters that create value sound good. It sounds less good when you flip this logic, and ask whether the reliance on randomness is a function of weak information-sharing within formal structures. It is easier to break down silos if…

> Random encounters that create value sound good. It sounds less good when you flip this logic, and ask whether the reliance on randomness is a function of weak information-sharing within formal structures. It is easier to break down silos if you put this online, then there is genuine sharing. That is what the internet is for. Probably why I've never seen a Confluence that wasn't a disaster, magnified by turnover. Th…

Confluence does the bare minimum to support organization, imo. It is too easy for documents to become orphaned.

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

#58

Post by kongin »

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…

They should do a follow up study on how many people will die from Covid by working in the office. I rather wonder how preventable deaths impact innovation in teams.

From Israel we can see that that death rate per million with 90%+ of adults double vaccinated is ~4 per day. In the US that works out to ~1300 deaths a day. This is the new normal until everyone susceptible dies.

The office doesn't sound so good when it's sold as the place which ensures you can't live past 70 for your line managers convenience.

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

#59

Post by civilized »

imbnwa wrote: post #51
hogFeast wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your business model includes: "we put people in an office in the hopes that their random interactions will create value"...then that sounds like the problem is something else. Random encounters that create value sound good. It sounds less good when you flip this logic, and ask whether the reliance on randomness is a function of weak information-sharing within formal structures. It is easier to break down silos if…

> Random encounters that create value sound good. It sounds less good when you flip this logic, and ask whether the reliance on randomness is a function of weak information-sharing within formal structures. It is easier to break down silos if you put this online, then there is genuine sharing. That is what the internet is for. Probably why I've never seen a Confluence that wasn't a disaster, magnified by turnover. Th…

Confluence is the dictionary definition of "tragedy of the commons"

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

#60

Post by tobr »

killjoywashere wrote: post #10
AndreiCalazans wrote: post #9

Unintentional by accident remote work shouldn’t be considered the baseline for such comparison. This research does at best find results at Microsoft, thus it could be titled “effects of remote work at Microsoft” to not induce the sense of generalist research. For the negative results: remote work creates silos and reduces cross-network collaboration. These might easily be mitigated with strategies and tooling. Nevert…

Can you tool-in a water cooler? A walk to the cafeteria? A weird smell several people notice? [ninja edit]: someone downvoted you, it wasn't me.

Not literally, but you can dedicate time for everyone to occasionally talk to a mix of people they don’t talk to every day.
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