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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

#91

Post by denvrede »

Roark66 wrote: post #68

People are different. For some it really increases productivity and wellbeing. For others the opposite. I'm not surprised it is about the same on average as measured by work output. I've been working 100% remote since 2017 and I'll never willingly change it.

Working remote showed me how much I value direct interaction with people. For me, and I spoke to a lot of people for whom it's the same, the sweet spot is a hybrid model. Three days remote, two days on-site. Sometimes the other way round, depends on the tasks for the week.

If I need to do 100% remote, because I may have a light cold and don't want to spread it, I feel miserable after two weeks. That being said, I also will never work 100% on-site again, only if I can walk to work, which given my location, will not happen in the near future.

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

#92

Post by ozim »

randomdata wrote: post #56
makeitdouble wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In most companies option B has been on the table for a very long time and they most probably partially took it while asking their workers to keep coming to the office up until recently. CS is the running joke, but server management, manual data processing, moderation etc. have been prime candidates for outsourcing for a long time. The reason one's job is/was not outsourced has I think little to do about whether gener…

> In most companies option B has been on the table for a very long time Mom and Pop may have always been well positioned to fully embrace outsourcing, but they tend to just copy what they see big companies do without any thought. Additionally, where they do put in thought, they tend to lean “shop local” and see offshoring as a threat to their entire business. As for those big companies, truly embracing option B has b…

That was a bit of a revelation last year - I though most of the time CEO gets shares as compensation then he is tied to the company and in theory should work to make company profit because it is his profit.

Seems like for a lot of companies it is not the case but I can see that CEO type of guys can haggle really well and they call the shots as mostly it is companies that need them more than they need the company so they can disagree on having shackles.

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

#94

Post by falsandtru »

denvrede wrote: post #88
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.

That's a right incentive for workers, but what is needed here for workers is an incentive for companies to expand remote work.

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

#95

Post by reducesuffering »

dymk wrote: post #90
reducesuffering wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

But FAANG doesn’t care about the commercial real estate market, so why would they make any decisions based on it?

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

#96

Post by jansan »

biscuit1v9 wrote: post #34

> And while many US companies have been pushing employees to return to the office I still don't see the reason why you should go to office if you do your work just right. There are more expenses if you go to office rather than being remote.

Work is not only getting a task done. It also involves helping struggling or new colleagues. How does "learning on the job" even look like with remote work? When I started as an engineer after university, I learned so much during lunch breaks or at the water cooler. This does not happen with remote work and there is nothing to compensate for this.

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

#97

Post by jimt1234 »

How could remote work not be more productive? Most of my friends/colleagues get back at least an hour of their lives each day they don't commute, and they all use the "extra" time to do more work. People wanna work. They just don't wanna sit in traffic, walk through parking lots and ride elevators for an hour every day.

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

#98

Post by haizhung »

caseyohara wrote: post #42
wodenokoto wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't that why people are paid to work? Because it isn't interesting or meaningful?

This is a pretty dim view, especially here on HN. People are paid to work because their labor is valuable. That is in no way mutually exclusive with how interesting and meaningful the job is. Jobs at the intersection of employer value and employee interest are obviously the most desirable. I'd imagine every laborer attempts to maximize these two qualities of their day job.

It’s not completely wrong though. To be clear, I think basically any role can be meaningful to someone, depending on their views and upbringing.

However, some roles lend themselves more easily to find meaning in them, think e.g. roles with patient contact in health care. Or the gaming/entertainment industry.

As a consequence, the competition on the labor side is much fiercer, and as a consequence of that, pay is lower and the chance for exploitation is higher.

So the GP basically has stated the contraposition of this effect: you get paid more if you do (what most perceive as) less meaningful work.

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

#99

Post by esafak »

__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.

One consideration that helps local workers is the time zone; a remote company may yet choose to hire locally to reduce the time zone span.

Another is communication; companies want to hire people that can communicate fluently in a shared language.

But the best solution is to just become better at your job. The best programmers are all in the US, so it is easier to learn from them and join their ranks. If you are no better than the competition, then a company is justified in hiring in the cheaper labor.

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

#100

Post by sangnoir »

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.

90-minute lunches, extended ping-pong table visits, "attending" meetings one doesn't contribute to are various ways to waste time at the office, but no one is eager to banish those. It appears it's only a problem when people slack at home; on the flip-side, no one is offering bonuses for those when they work until 7 or 8 pm because WFH can blur division between work and not-work life.
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