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

bloomberg.com

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

#81

Post by shermantanktop »

williamcotton wrote: post #23
mportela wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not only creative work, but manual work too. It's been over 100 years that Frederick Taylor showed regular breaks reduces fatigue and increases productivity. [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_management

Taylor would, correctly, have knowledge workers filling out very detailed timesheets of their daily activities in order to optimize overall efficiency. Sure, let's factor in breaks, but let's also factor time spent in meetings, emails, interviewing candidates, maintenance work, capitalization work, training new hires, R&D, etc, etc. Only then can we understand the true costs of this kind of labor. Taylor had factorie…

Sweet is the lore which Nature brings;

Our meddling intellect

Mis-shapes the beauteous forms of things:—

We murder to dissect.

Ok, with high school poetry class over…this “scientific management” approach seems to hold a particular appeal to technical types, who also say it could never apply to them. So bravo for volunteering your own working life to the altar of manageable metrics, but for me, I’d rather not.

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

#83

Post by [deleted] »

__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.

[deleted]

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

#84

Post by oceanplexian »

randomdata wrote: post #15
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.

Work avoidance typically stems from fear of failure, not boredom. If workers are screwing around when there is work that needs to be done, that is indicative of an environment that doesn't provide the proper failsafes. That said, a lot of jobs simply don't have a constant stream of work that needs to be done, with the work available being dependent on when the customer chooses to engage. It is likely that for a lot o…

> Work avoidance typically stems from fear of failure, not boredom.

For me work avoidance is a symptom of not having enough interruption free time. And in-person is actually substantially worse than remote.

Most of the problems I’m working on you can’t bang out in 10 minutes. Reality is that for some problems you need a highly skilled engineer to spend 4-8 continuous, highly focused hours producing iterations or trying to troubleshoot a broken build in a 20,000 line log file across 100 interconnected dependencies. So if you’re going to be productive it requires a time commitment and a certain working style.

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

#85

Post by npsomaratna »

redcobra762 wrote: post #78
npsomaratna wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 m…

Not necessarily.

Consider this situation: you hire a contractor. They work for you for several years, and then you fire them. The contractor goes to the labor court in their country and files a claim stating that, yes, their contract says that they are an independent contractor, but no, since you've employed them "full-time" for several years continuously, they are a defacto/de jure employee. (Which is a valid argument under the labor laws of certain countries)

What will you do:

- Spend the time and money refuting their claim? (You need to find a good lawyer in that foreign country; lawyers are expensive; and someone on your side needs to spend their time coordinating with them)

- Ignore the claim? (Not a good idea if you ever want to visit that country in the future)

The claim itself might be nonsense; that's immaterial. You're faced with a Hobson's choice if said contractor drags you to court.

(Addendum: this is why I made the point that labor law is local. When you hire a national of a foreign country, in general, you subject yourself to the jurisdiction of the courts of that country for labor related disputes.

I am not sure if a clause in an employment contract stating that the agreement is governed by U.S. law would be accepted by a local court; and even if it did, in litigation, you'd most likely have to represent yourself before the local court to make that objection.)

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

#86

Post by Kiro »

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.

The only thing that can stop me from slacking off is my screen being visible to others.

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

#87

Post by reducesuffering »

2d8a875f-39a2-4 wrote: post #59

It was never about productivity. It was about power and control. And commercial real estate investments.

Please tell us how you’re so certain companies that have productivity affecting their $1T net worth are more concerned with their $5b real estate.

Please don’t let it be that a VP is manipulating productivity numbers so that their drop in the bucket action will move the price of their SFH they own.

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

#88

Post by denvrede »

falsandtru wrote: post #80

The fact that productivity did not increase would also mean that few people used the freed up commuting time to improve their skills. Anybody here?

I now have more time that I can spend with daughter, so I guess I may improved my parenting skill?

IMO it's also totally fine to use that freed up time to just get a break from... anything. No need to be after self-improvement all the time.

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

#89

Post by bilekas »

Garlef wrote: post #67
jfoutz wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Although it is pretty strong evidence office space is a boondoggle. That’s a lot of pointless overhead costs that hurt the bottom line. I like seeing my peers in person. I like hashing things out in person. Apparently that’s a waste of time and money.

> That’s a lot of pointless overhead costs that hurt the bottom line. Or put the other way: Remote work let's the employee pay for the office space.

Not quite, you're going to be paying rent for example regardless, you may have to invest in some office furniture which is usually subsidized but if not then consider the savings you would make through the year overall, perhaps transportation costs, lunches etc. Things add up fiscally. Ignoring the lifestyle benefits.

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

#90

Post by dymk »

reducesuffering wrote: post #87
2d8a875f-39a2-4 wrote: post #59

It was never about productivity. It was about power and control. And commercial real estate investments.

Please tell us how you’re so certain companies that have productivity affecting their $1T net worth are more concerned with their $5b real estate. Please don’t let it be that a VP is manipulating productivity numbers so that their drop in the bucket action will move the price of their SFH they own.

The commercial real estate market is a lot bigger than $5B.
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