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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

#571

Post by helboi4 »

stemlord wrote: post #561
helboi4 wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No I don't want to work if i never see human beings, i have no connection to my team and I'm deeply depressed because I am a young single person who doesn't have a family waiting for me at home

Your coworkers are not your friends and your company is not your family, and if your job is keeping you from having friends and family outside of work then you need to find a new job or place to live.

Your coworkers can 100% be your friends what the hell man. You must be very unpleasant to be around if you refuse to make friends with any of the people you spend most of your waking hours dealing with. The key is making friends with coworkers who are a similar level of seniority to you who you get along with. My job isn't preventing me from having friends or family outside work at all, but I choose not to be miserable and antisocial for the majority of my waking day. Most people make friends at work, school or at sports teams. It's not weird to like making friends at work. I dunno how my job could be preventing me from making friends elsewhere but yeah its hard to spontaneously make friends in other settings when you don't naturally see the same people regularly.

But my main point in the above comment was that I don't have the morale to do shitty work to make a corporation rich unless I have human connection with my team. I don't value any fucking corporation enough to lift a single finger for them. It's only having other humans around me that makes work feel at all bearable to do.

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

#572

Post by helboi4 »

lloeki wrote: post #567
helboi4 wrote: post #409

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nah mate, you pulled that one out of nowhere. It's pretty widely understood our mental health issues are due to lonliness and social isolation and social media (fake virtual socialising) mate.

That is true. There is a distinction to be made between loneliness and solitude though. One can feel hopelessly lonely in a crowd, one can also find great solace in solitude. In fact, another great cause of mental health issues is the apparently growing inability for people to stay still, instead constantly vying for interaction (and often resorting to that quick virtual dopamine hit loop, sometimes even when face to…

I'm very aware you can be lonely in a crowd and find solace in solitude. I've done both. I'm talking about my real-life experience here not a hypothetical. Working 100% remotely as a young person trying to find your place in the world is crushingly lonely. Choosing sometimes to spend my weekend just doing my solo hobbies while other people are going out, without giving into fomo, is solace in solitude.

I agree, not everyone has the same needs. But I think on average the majority of people would benefit from or would be able to handle a mandatory hybrid situation. If a few fully remote jobs remained that may satisfy the few unusual people who are actually that disturbed by social interaction, or live in such odd locations that it's not possible for them, that would be great. And I am absolutely sure those opportunities will remain. But I think it is bad for humans to aim for a mainly remote working world, both for our mental health and for the dynamism of our collaborative work. I really believe that people who genuinely thrive significantly better in 100% remote vs a couple days in the office are less than 10% of the population. We are social animals and we increase our risk of dementia the less we socialise, it's just our biology.

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

#573

Post by helboi4 »

lloeki wrote: post #565
helboi4 wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bro what sort of dystopiian offices have you been working in. I've never had that experience. People are always somewhat intersting and like to actually talk. There are some off days but it's never like that. And never ever have I had a colleague spontaneously try to have casual zoom conversation with me while remotely working. I've had people never turn their cameras on. And meanwhile, I'm here, a childless 20-sth,…

> Bro what sort of dystopiian offices have you been working in. There are loads of places like this. The irony is that in such context people enjoy the watercooler talk as an escape from the hellscape that is their 9-5 shitty job, doing everything they can instead of their job to make their experience less miserable. > I've never had that experience. Lucky you. > And never ever have I had a colleague spontaneously tr…

I enjoy water cooler conversation because it is refreshing and revitalising for me to have social interaction breaks throughout my workday, not because I want to do anything but my job all the time. People are not productive all day and that's fine. Also all jobs are work and are not really that fun. I don't enjoy working that much even if it's a good job. So I'd rather have other people and things to focus on sometimes. When I'm at home I feel like all I have to think about is work, and my breaks involve doomscrolling on my phone, or trying to force myself to take a short lonely walk for my mental health.

I have had shitty office experiences don't get me wrong, but since becoming a software engineering professional, I find that I am in enough demand to actually choose a decent place to work. Since entering this field, I had one horrifying remote job where I never learnt what my colleagues looked like and felt miserable and demotivated all the time, and I've worked two other places where I've been more in the office. When working in the office, I've never had horrible experiences like I did when I worked shitty non-professional jobs. Being a software engineer is cushy as hell and I find it weird how some people complain about their tech workplaces as if they're not some of the chillest places to work in person that you could possibly be lucky enough to work in.

Thank you for your empathy for my past situation. However, the problem when pro-wfh people say "we want you to have a choice" is that my shitty remote job was technically hybrid. I could go into the office. People even tried to organise a single office day a week. And because it wasn't mandatory, half the time I tried going in the place was a ghost town. I don't want that, ever. So yeah I LOVE that my job has (semi)MANDATORY days otherwise there would be so many colleagues of mine I would never have met and I am great friends with them (By semi mandatory I mean we have a 3 day target average. So you're not penalised for missing a week or sth its just the mode of your weeks should be 3 days. Which is a great system)

Basically, for me to have a choice to live the way I want there HAS to be companies with MANDATORY office days. And the pro-wfh people demonise that SO MUCH.

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

#574

Post by brailsafe »

maccard wrote: post #243
brailsafe wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Some people require micro management and constant oversight Aside from having an actual assistant, is this just hypothetical or do you know someone that prefers being micromanaged?

I have worked with people who needed explicit instructions for every step to perform, and if they complete what is assigned to them they will quietly sit and pass the time until they are explicitly told to do something. This isn't an "oh it's 4:30 and I'm not going to start something new", it's "It's 11am, and everyone else is busy, I will play solitaire until my manager explicitly tells me which of the 45 tasks they…

That's a good nuanced take, where actual productivity increases and hostility isn't created, for particular kinds of people.

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

#575

Post by brailsafe »

Grayskull wrote: post #208
brailsafe wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Some people require micro management and constant oversight Aside from having an actual assistant, is this just hypothetical or do you know someone that prefers being micromanaged?

I dont think this is about workers preference. People without oversight can get unsure about how to execute task and need validation, but when directly asked nobody will tell you they like micromanaged (seen this). Other thing I've seen is people without supervision producing less/lower quality results.

> People without oversight can get unsure about how to execute task and need validation

This sounds more like it could occur at least temporarily when most people get some categorically new task that's potentially costly to screw up, and I could imagine it being voluntarily requested rather than overbearingly applied.

> Other thing I've seen is people without supervision producing less/lower quality results.

I feel like managers identify a risk and apply their toolkit to it, which often ends up being increased oversight regardless of whether or not it's a good idea. It may or may not be I suppose, but it seems like only a niche person would respond with greater effectiveness in response to more frequent and perhaps intrusive scrutiny.

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

#576

Post by brailsafe »

anthomtb wrote: post #438
wsc981 wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems if you have staff that needs constant oversight and micromanagement, it's a waste of your own time. Do you really want to check someone 8 hours a day, 5 days per week to make sure they do what they are supposed to do? I think in such cases it might be better to get rid of such staff, for your own sake and theirs.

> Do you really want to check someone 8 hours a day, 5 days per week to make sure they do what they are supposed to do? I had to do something like this. Not every hour, but several times a day was needed to keep this person on track and productive. And no, I did not want to check on an otherwise-functional adult that frequently. Nor did anyone else, but circumstances led to them working on my team. > I think in such…

What led you to believe checking on them so frequently was useful, and what were the results?

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

#577

Post by j33zusjuice »

intended wrote: post #185
epolanski wrote: post #173

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. 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 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…

I get calls for jobs that would increase my TC by 100k, jobs I’m confident I could land, and I won’t interview for any of them. That’s how much WFH means to me.

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

#578

Post by brailsafe »

halfcat wrote: post #231
brailsafe wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Some people require micro management and constant oversight Aside from having an actual assistant, is this just hypothetical or do you know someone that prefers being micromanaged?

It’s not a preference to be micromanaged. It’s a preference to not execute two different skill sets when you lack one of them. That’s stressful. You might be a good developer, but not great at talking to users and figuring out the priority and the solution and executing on that independently. Or you might not be good at delivering eloquent speeches. Or whatever. Everyone lacks some skillset which they’d prefer someon…

Well, I just can't imagine how constant scrutiny and involvement would help what is ultimately a management and expectations failure. "We hired x to concentrate for long periods of time and improve our test coverage, but they're not so good at checking their email and responding to customers within 15 minutes, guess I'll need to start calling them frequently so they get better at that".

Seems like poorly considered delegation, or a system problem. Good managers should be able to identify or discover through conversation if someone will benefit from more specific and frequent interaction, and bad ones decide it'll be a good choice and work backwards from that.

In other cases, or if established up-front, one should expect a certain range of regular capabilities be within some agreed upon parameters; you probably wouldn't ask your system administrator to get on the sales floor, but you might ask your sales people to be able to work the cash register and lock the doors.

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

#579

Post by vunderba »

helboi4 wrote: post #549
malermeister wrote: post #547

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am sorry for what you had to go through and I have empathy for the fact that it's not easy for everyone to make friends. That being said, there's lots of meetups, clubs, organized sports etc etc for people looking for a structured way to continuously hang out with a group of people sharing their interests. The key thing there is that it's voluntary association though. Being forced to hang out with coworkers who you…

I dunno man, work is most of my life so it should be an enjoyable social experience for me otherwise it's just a mind-numbing time sink. For me its really important that I find a workplace with a good culture where I can have social interaction several days a week, because it's quite draining for me to constantly go to meetups and try really hard to make friends. There are some social spaces I try to go to regularly…

Sorry to hear about your personal issues, but this statement "100% wfh just punishes anyone who doesn't have kids." is you projecting.

I work at a 100% remote company, and most of us are married (no kids) or single. We, or at least my specific r&d team have social lives outside of work and live in urban areas. Some of us even do a weekend dnd session online.

Hybrid mostly doesn't work from an economic pov. If the company employees can do their work 2-3 days from home, it's likely they could do their entire job from home, and a company just can't afford to spend money on expensive commercial real estate if it can avoid it.

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