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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

#71

Post by nox101 »

Sparkyte wrote: post #14
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.

Water cooler chat used to be the big thing when I worked in an office.

I've chatted with a co-worker about all kinds of interesting topics related to our with the last few days. We both work on GPU related stuff, he's been optimizing compute shaders and finding out new and interesting things. The conversations are not conversations I've never seen in chat. He could make a formal presentation but that's not really the point. The point is, as I sat down into the seat next to him, it was obvious to say "Good morning, what's up" and have him tell me.

This has happen the last 3 days, each day I learned something I would unlikely have learned any other way. I had stuff to share with him too.

This is what I don't personally get from "work from home". I'm in no way suggest you should therefore work from office. I'm only relating my experience. This type of experience has been common in my career but maybe I'm an outlier.

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

#72

Post by lemme_tell_ya »

npsomaratna wrote: post #69
__loam wrote: post #48

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.

1. Labor law is local. This adds (on a per-country basis) legal risk and compliance costs, as well as operational costs (e.g., you might need to have specific policies that apply to employees in specific countries). 2. Taxation regimes. These too vary by country, and add compliance and operational costs. 3. Other laws (both U.S. and foreign) that make hiring foreign nationals complex in certain situations, e.g., ITAR…

I work for a small tech company in the US (~25 employees) and a few of them are in Europe. My boss didn't seem to have any issue hiring them and he wears a lot of hats, and we didn't hire them due to cost but to their very specific expertise.

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

#73

Post by redcobra762 »

I’ve said this before, but if productivity isn’t lost, it’s at the expense of a very overworked manager, in companies that weren’t built remote-first, and don’t operate primarily remotely.

This is a more complex issue than simply measuring work output of one person and comparing it to their work output in different locations.

For my wife, it is objectively false to claim that remote work is better for her teams, in her specific situation.

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

#74

Post by fulafel »

Source: https://www.frbsf.org/economic-research/publications/economi...

Note that when economists are talking about productivity, it's specific. It's units of output per hour worked (quantitative, not qualitative). https://www.bls.gov/k12/productivity-101/content/what-is-pro...

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

#75

Post by redcobra762 »

khalid_canada wrote: post #30

As a Tech PM, I can say,remote work definitely increases productivity. I noticed, employees tend to work more when diligently when they were allowed to work remotely. In case of complex Troubleshooting, this is definitely an added advantage , as people can focus more and solve these issues comfortably.

This is the problem; for “focus” work, perhaps. But as a TPM, you know that not all work is “focus work”, and the “collaborative work” suffers when done remotely. You also know that even “focus” work doesn’t make up even one whole job that someone can do without any “collaboration”.

The myth of the “guy in a room” is just that — a myth, at best, and a classic antipattern at worst.

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

#76

Post by ozim »

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…

Reducing costs by hiring in other countries is not as easy as it seems.

In reality there is an opportunity to hire wider pool of full time applicants in US because now you can offer even 1 day a week in the office instead of 5 or doing 1 day a month.

If I have to consider company that is 2h driving away - one way - and be there 5 days a week, that is a deal breaker.

Doing that once a week is still much more manageable and opens up opportunities for employees and employers as well. Especially if someone can't just move to next big city on a whim but can drive there once a week.

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

#77

Post by nox101 »

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.

I think it's going to be both different for different people and different for different types of jobs. maybe making web apps is not affected at all by work from home where as some other jobs, say game dev, where you'd like to tweak something and hand the controller to your partner to test immediately "does it feel better than the last tweak from 15 seconds ago?" is more affected by work from home? In an extreme example, I suspect people practicing to put on a live play together can't each do their role at home over video chat. Or back to games, I suspect adjust local-multiplayer gameplay is not something you can do without actually having multiple people in the same physical location.

As for different people, I'm way more productive around others than by myself. On a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being most productive, I'd give being around my teammates to be 9-10, being at a cafe with people I don't know around a 7. Being at home by myself varies from 3 to 10. Their are certainly spurts of productivity at home for me but there's also zero feeling of camaraderie which is something that gives me energy.

Maybe it's related to the similar feeling of watching a movie at a full theater on opening night vs watching at home on my large TV. There's an energy at the theater that's missing from the home viewing. Similarly, for me, there's an energy at work with teammates that missing from working at home. By that's just my experience with my jobs.

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

#78

Post by redcobra762 »

npsomaratna wrote: post #69
__loam wrote: post #48

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.

1. Labor law is local. This adds (on a per-country basis) legal risk and compliance costs, as well as operational costs (e.g., you might need to have specific policies that apply to employees in specific countries). 2. Taxation regimes. These too vary by country, and add compliance and operational costs. 3. Other laws (both U.S. and foreign) that make hiring foreign nationals complex in certain situations, e.g., ITAR…

No, sorry. These are all defeated by hiring contractors.

The real issues are, ironically, the collaborative barriers. Different cultures have different standards of work, a different working culture, and honestly different time zones.

The “24 hour dev shop” is a risk, but work moving overseas is only a problem at the commodified software level, like a SaaS b2b where a shit tool with one little innovation saves five minutes can scale to millions in savings.

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

#79

Post by [deleted] »

californical wrote: post #62
g96alqdm0x wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

that’s just fine and good for you, but please don’t impose your preferences on the rest of us.

Why not? Companies will eventually sort into ones where likeminded people are together. Some will be more friendly to remote than others. If I want to work in person with people, I’ll join a company that agrees. If someone wants to be remote, they might have to join a different company.

[deleted]
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