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I’m not sure realism/positivism is the best approach to empirical data on this. Only one of my workers is more productive from home, in the IT department almos

I’m not sure realism/positivism is the best approach to empirical data on this. Only one of my workers is more productive from home, in the IT department almost all the workers are more productive from home. We haven’t done any research on the causality, but the personality’s profiles for or digitization and IT departments are vastly different, so too is the work we donald the way we go about it. If you looked at us over all, there’s 20 workers in my department and around 60 in the IT department and around 55 of the 80 are more productive from home. The setup I personally use to gain the most out of my employees is letting them work their own hours the way they want. I don’t check their hours but trust them to put in the hours they need, and they do, in fact the biggest problem is getting them to only work the 37 hours they are hired to put in. Sometimes they come in late and leave early, sometimes they work from home and I can tell by what they produce they spent half the day doing something else. But then sometimes I’ll get an email at 2am on a Saturday because someone found his/her coding flow at an off hour. This would be extremely unhealthy if I required it, but my employee satisfaction went up from 4.3 out of 7 under the previous manager to 6.3/7 under me and our performance output nearly doubled. Working at home is fine, but I don’t think you can truthfully say that it works for everyone. I think it’s important to leave the option open along with other options in a framework that encourages team work and communication, and then trust your employees to do the right thing and only intervene in their schedule and where they want to work, when you begin to spot trouble.

ramblerman 8y ago
> Sometimes they come in late and leave early, sometimes they work from home and I can tell by what they produce they spent half the day doing something else. But then sometimes I’ll get an email at 2am on a Saturday because someone found his/her coding flow at an off hour. god bless you for this insight. As a contractor I've worked at multiple places, and my current gig cares more about 'asses in seats' than output. It's incredibly demotivating, having come from an environment where output was the goal.
- ende 8y ago
  As a contractor, you are under no obligation to be an ass in any seat, and if client says otherwise you can point them towards IRS reclassification.
  - lawnchair_larry 8y ago
    Not really true, it’s easy to make the case that work must be done on site. Company policy prevents source code from leaving, or network resources are not available outside the office or something.
    - Clubber 8y ago
      In the US, it's illegal to require an independent contractor to be on site or to even set hours. It's a purely output driven venture. The government sees it as a form of tax evasion, so companies need to be mindful of it. https://legal.uncc.edu/legal-topics/contracts/contract-checklist/independent-contractor-rules-thumb https://legal.uncc.edu/legal-topics/contracts/contract-check... https://www.consumeraffairs.com/news/employers-must-follow-strict-rules-for-independent-contractors-011315.html https://www.consumeraffairs.com/news/employers-must-follow-s... https://www.reuters.com/article/businesspropicks-us-findlaw-dont-treat-c/dont-treat-contractors-like-employees-idUSTRE53063S20090401 https://www.reuters.com/article/businesspropicks-us-findlaw-...
      - MoBattah 8y ago
        Betting OP meant "on contract" versus a 1099 contractor. Maybe I'm wrong. If I'm not, he/she has very little say in their environment. At least that's my experience.
  - frockington 8y ago
    As a contractor you can also be fired. Most states are at will employment. "Bob wasn't performing and we had difficulties reaching him when needed"
    - ende 8y ago
bonestamp2 8y ago
> the biggest problem is getting them to only work the 37 hours they are hired to put in When I started working from home 10 years ago, this hit me hard. I used to work about 10 hour days in the office. When I started working from home I was working 13-14 hours most days. Over time that lead to burn out and that made me even less productive. Some of it was because I felt a little guilty working from home so I put in even more effort to ensure people didn't think I was goofing around. In hindsight, that was unnecessary and a bad way to handle my insecurity... my bosses trusted me fully. Secondly, when you always work from home... you're always at work! So, it's important to have that distinct work time and personal time otherwise they bleed together too much and you just end up working all the time.
- ramblerman 8y ago
  > When I started working from home I was working 13-14 hours most days. Was this pure development because that seems so unfeasible (at least for me).
  - bonestamp2 8y ago
    Yes. That was before I had kids. It was not a good life no matter how you look at it.
- geerlingguy 8y ago
  It’s important to have a separate computer, and ideally a completely separate room, where you do ‘work’. When your office hours are over, the work computer goes off and you exit your at-home ‘office’. That’s helped me separate work and keep my sanity.
konschubert 8y ago
>Sometimes they come in late and leave early, sometimes they work from home and I can tell by what they produce they spent half the day doing something else. Honest question. You say you manage 20 people. How are your able to judge for 20 people at least weekly if the work they did was in line with your expectations? I feel like I basically have to read and understand every line written by each developer on my team in order to really get a grasp at whether they're productive or not. Sometimes people produce very little code but maybe that little code solves a very hard to find bug. It's something I'm really struggling with as a manager: My boss asks me if the people on my team are worth their money and I am really not sure how to answer this.
- eksemplar 8y ago
  I manage a mix of developers, architects, project managers and business processors/developers. I measure their productivity on team results compared to their team predictions as well as my own experience. I do have a long history of doing development projects in the public sector with a primary focus on increasing efficiency and benefit realization, but a lot of it is honestly gut feeling and softer management strategies where I encourage openness. If people aren’t feeling well, maybe they are going through a divorce, maybe they’ve run out of motivation I want them to share it, so we can help them get to where they want to be or give them time to process. I guess I could have a single inefficient worker and never spot it through measurements, but I typically notice because it changes the team dynamic and the way people interact. I understand why this would worry some managers, but I don’t believe you can apply factory line thinking or strategies to brain-workers because it doesn’t suit them, especially not if you want them to cooperate in actual teams and not just be a bunch of grouped individuals competing not to be measured as the bottom 15%. I am Scandinavian though, and our work-culture is very different from the American.
  - konschubert 8y ago
    > I understand why this would worry some managers, but I don’t believe you can apply factory line thinking or strategies to brain-workers because it doesn’t suit them, especially not if you want them to cooperate in actual teams and not just be a bunch of grouped individuals competing not to be measured as the bottom 15%. I agree and I hope you're not suggesting that I'm doing that. My problem is that "I trust my gut" doesn't work very well either as a strategy fot me because I just don't have that body of experience to draw from. So I'm a bit lost.

ramblerman 8y ago

> Sometimes they come in late and leave early, sometimes they work from home and I can tell by what they produce they spent half the day doing something else. But then sometimes I’ll get an email at 2am on a Saturday because someone found his/her coding flow at an off hour. god bless you for this insight. As a contractor I've worked at multiple places, and my current gig cares more about 'asses in seats' than output. It's incredibly demotivating, having come from an environment where output was the goal.

ende 8y ago
As a contractor, you are under no obligation to be an ass in any seat, and if client says otherwise you can point them towards IRS reclassification.
- lawnchair_larry 8y ago
  Not really true, it’s easy to make the case that work must be done on site. Company policy prevents source code from leaving, or network resources are not available outside the office or something.
  - Clubber 8y ago
    In the US, it's illegal to require an independent contractor to be on site or to even set hours. It's a purely output driven venture. The government sees it as a form of tax evasion, so companies need to be mindful of it. https://legal.uncc.edu/legal-topics/contracts/contract-checklist/independent-contractor-rules-thumb https://legal.uncc.edu/legal-topics/contracts/contract-check... https://www.consumeraffairs.com/news/employers-must-follow-strict-rules-for-independent-contractors-011315.html https://www.consumeraffairs.com/news/employers-must-follow-s... https://www.reuters.com/article/businesspropicks-us-findlaw-dont-treat-c/dont-treat-contractors-like-employees-idUSTRE53063S20090401 https://www.reuters.com/article/businesspropicks-us-findlaw-...
    - MoBattah 8y ago
      Betting OP meant "on contract" versus a 1099 contractor. Maybe I'm wrong. If I'm not, he/she has very little say in their environment. At least that's my experience.
- frockington 8y ago
  As a contractor you can also be fired. Most states are at will employment. "Bob wasn't performing and we had difficulties reaching him when needed"
  - ende 8y ago

bonestamp2 8y ago

> the biggest problem is getting them to only work the 37 hours they are hired to put in When I started working from home 10 years ago, this hit me hard. I used to work about 10 hour days in the office. When I started working from home I was working 13-14 hours most days. Over time that lead to burn out and that made me even less productive. Some of it was because I felt a little guilty working from home so I put in even more effort to ensure people didn't think I was goofing around. In hindsight, that was unnecessary and a bad way to handle my insecurity... my bosses trusted me fully. Secondly, when you always work from home... you're always at work! So, it's important to have that distinct work time and personal time otherwise they bleed together too much and you just end up working all the time.

ramblerman 8y ago
> When I started working from home I was working 13-14 hours most days. Was this pure development because that seems so unfeasible (at least for me).
- bonestamp2 8y ago
  Yes. That was before I had kids. It was not a good life no matter how you look at it.
geerlingguy 8y ago
It’s important to have a separate computer, and ideally a completely separate room, where you do ‘work’. When your office hours are over, the work computer goes off and you exit your at-home ‘office’. That’s helped me separate work and keep my sanity.

konschubert 8y ago

>Sometimes they come in late and leave early, sometimes they work from home and I can tell by what they produce they spent half the day doing something else. Honest question. You say you manage 20 people. How are your able to judge for 20 people at least weekly if the work they did was in line with your expectations? I feel like I basically have to read and understand every line written by each developer on my team in order to really get a grasp at whether they're productive or not. Sometimes people produce very little code but maybe that little code solves a very hard to find bug. It's something I'm really struggling with as a manager: My boss asks me if the people on my team are worth their money and I am really not sure how to answer this.

eksemplar 8y ago
I manage a mix of developers, architects, project managers and business processors/developers. I measure their productivity on team results compared to their team predictions as well as my own experience. I do have a long history of doing development projects in the public sector with a primary focus on increasing efficiency and benefit realization, but a lot of it is honestly gut feeling and softer management strategies where I encourage openness. If people aren’t feeling well, maybe they are going through a divorce, maybe they’ve run out of motivation I want them to share it, so we can help them get to where they want to be or give them time to process. I guess I could have a single inefficient worker and never spot it through measurements, but I typically notice because it changes the team dynamic and the way people interact. I understand why this would worry some managers, but I don’t believe you can apply factory line thinking or strategies to brain-workers because it doesn’t suit them, especially not if you want them to cooperate in actual teams and not just be a bunch of grouped individuals competing not to be measured as the bottom 15%. I am Scandinavian though, and our work-culture is very different from the American.
- konschubert 8y ago
  > I understand why this would worry some managers, but I don’t believe you can apply factory line thinking or strategies to brain-workers because it doesn’t suit them, especially not if you want them to cooperate in actual teams and not just be a bunch of grouped individuals competing not to be measured as the bottom 15%. I agree and I hope you're not suggesting that I'm doing that. My problem is that "I trust my gut" doesn't work very well either as a strategy fot me because I just don't have that body of experience to draw from. So I'm a bit lost.