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>REMOTE EMPLOYEES ARE SIMPLY MORE PRODUCTIVE >remote employees simply produce better results than their traditional counterparts. >employees who spend a bulk

• wastedhours 7y ago
  It's odd they're pushing "more" productive. Wouldn't a similarly compelling argument that'd be easier to prove be "as" productive, but you'd save $XXXk on overheads per year?
  • CPLX 7y ago
    Productivity is the measure of economic output per unit of economic input.
    • wastedhours 7y ago
      But it's not an especially compelling framing of the point though. To influence decision makers then tapping into a loss aversion mindset with a tangible dollar figure attached seems much more likely to work than the more nebulous (and much harder to prove on an employee by employee basis) "productivity" metric.
      • ghaff 7y ago
        I’d question how much cost savings there is. Maybe in the highest cost areas. But, leaving aside the implications of hiring people in lower cost areas and paying them less, it wouldn’t surprise me if additional travel costs for team meetings etc. balanced out the cost of a desk. A fair number of remote workers also get their companies to pay for coworking spaces.
        • wastedhours 7y ago
          Personal anecdata, but I've expensed only £120 in train travel in the last 2 years, and my employer doesn't pay for/subsidise coworking. Obviously it'll depend on company policy, but my benefits expectations with my current employer are minuscule to start with, so don't need any additional sweeteners over and above agile working to balance out.
          • ghaff 7y ago
            It’s fairly common and probably a good practice for distributed teams to get together F2F a couple of times a year. The broader team I’m on does this. We’re spread around NA and Europe mostly with a combination of WFH, offices, and hybrids.
    • redleader9345 7y ago
      If someone has figured out how to measure developer productivity, they're positioned to win a Nobel prize or something. I have yet to see it done. That's why butts in seats is the de facto measurement.
• d33 7y ago
  I guess you're looking for Gitlab then. They even documented their work culture and publicly share it: https://about.gitlab.com/company/culture/all-remote/resources/ https://about.gitlab.com/company/culture/all-remote/resource...
  • jasode 7y ago
    >I guess you're looking for Gitlab then. Gitlab would be the opposite example of an influential company the business decision makers are looking for. Gitlab has gotten $350M in VC money but they haven't yet demonstrated high profitability. And so far, they haven't "won" over Github. The business world hasn't yet seen a trendsetting and influential company that has shown obvious evidence of competitive advantages because of remote work. The evidence includes beating the competition. Examples of influential companies where their business practices spread would be Ford Motors and the assembly line improving manufacturing efficiency and therefore being copied by other manufacturers. Or Toyota's lean manufacturing and JIT inventory management reducing defects and saving money and also widely copied. Or Google's single-repository and Facebook's trunk-based-instead-of-branch-based development with continuous deployment to production being widely copied. The Gitlab/Automattic/Basecamp companies are not influential enough (not big enough, not succesful enough, etc) ... so their remote work culture isn't copied like the previous practices of Ford/Toyota/Google/Facebook.
    • nscalf 7y ago
      How about Stripe? They recently announced that their 5th engineering hub would be fully remote: https://stripe.com/blog/remote-hub https://stripe.com/blog/remote-hub Though I would probably argue with this article to some extent, the strength of remote isn't as big a sell for this large influential companies. I think the real selling point is that you can get high level talent form anywhere, the Googles and Facebooks of the work already have access to that talent, and have hubs all over the world. I would argue remote work is a bit of a bottom up movement, and we won't really see it shift to top down unless there is another wide market adoption that it becomes a requirement by potential employees. And as long as you're offering at least 50% more than competitors, I don't see that happening.
• wolfgke 7y ago
  Just a consideration: I don't believe that remote is so much more productive. The central advantage that I see is that in other regions than the Bay Area, the costs of living are much cheaper. Since for the employee, the central metric of revenue is "salary - costs of living" you get: - "better programmers/employees for the same money", - "cheaper programmers with the same quality", - you have it easier to find good employers (less skill shortage) since you can also include potential employees who live somewhere else and are not willing to relocate.
  • jddj 7y ago
    As a remote worker, it feels like spin to me too. Or, at least it's only being compared to cubicle farms or cargo-cult open plan spaces. I know that personally the most productive I've ever been was attending an office each day which had people co-located in rooms of 4-7 people by team / project. I absolutely love my remote situation, it's 1000% better for my general happiness (I feel like my work is a part of my life rather than something which puts my life on hold) and stress levels, and there are days where I can be very productive, but due to the simple factor of motivation and the symbiosis which can occur in co-located teams it simply doesn't compare to the productivity I experienced as a part of a good team in a well-planned office. As an employee I definitely prefer remote, but as a (heartless) employer optimising only for medium term productivity (and ignoring the trade-offs of overheads etc) it wouldn't be so straightforward and would probably depend on the people and projects. Edit to add: here I'm talking about productivity as quality output per unit time
    • meowface 7y ago
      Yeah, remote work seems to be a double-edged sword for productivity. As you say, the quality of life/work improvements are great, but the motivation and accountability and shared situation of a co-located team can provide the morale and accountability that push you to actually be productive. I think remote work can theoretically be a lot more productive for solo-ish tasks like coding. On some days this is definitely the case for me, after I pull marathon coding sessions that likely couldn't have really happened so smoothly in an office setting. For some days or weeks where I'm consistently in the "zone", I really feel like I've gotten more done than I could've if I spent those days in an office. But in practice, unless you have very high self-discipline, you're probably going to be battling motivation and boredom to some degree on a daily basis. You often might in an office, too, but it's not the same. In an office, you see everyone else working around you, probably talking about work, some of whom can see your screen (maybe not ever actually looking, but still in line of sight), and that's a potent cocktail for human psychology. At home, you're in or right near the same place you watch TV and movies and relax and sleep, alone or with your SO/family, and there's probably nothing really going on around you, so the environment is basically the same as your non-work environment. There's nothing around to light a fire under your ass. I also prefer remote work, but I'm definitely trying to find ways to feel more motivated and symbiotic, and am interested in ways a manager or employer could help foster that for remote employees. I've been trying to work from coffee shops more, and that sometimes seems to help.
• LunaSea 7y ago
  Every single co-worker I know that has worked remotely was less productive.
  • autra 7y ago
    Not my experience. That being said, if your team was mainly non-remote with some remote employees, then I'm not surprised: it is the worst possible organization and a motivation killer for the remote person. Every article about experience of remote work I've read says: "don't put remote people on non-remote team" and I wholeheartedly agree.
• JustSomeNobody 7y ago
  I work remote and have some colleagues who do as well. Working remote does not make you more productive. Having the discipline to work and stay on top of communication is what makes you productive. A couple of those remote colleagues are not as productive as people who are in the office. A good part of the reason is they just aren't good communicators. Being remote, even when the company is geared towards being remote, means you have to be proactive in getting the information you need to do your job.
• topkai22 7y ago
  GitHub was acquired for $7.5B. That's pretty unicorny. There seems to be limits to remote first though- GitHub is a remote first culture, but even then they had a non-insignificant in-office population, ~30% if I remember correctly. There are many job functions that require geographic presence- dealing with physical things obviously, but also some types of sales and I’m sure other functions I’m not thinking of. It is also harder to onboard entry level workers in a fully remote team.
  • jasode 7y ago
    >GitHub was acquired for $7.5B. That's pretty unicorny. According to analysts, Github in 2018 was still losing money when Microsoft acquired them. This is another example of remote work enthusiasts inadvertently undermining their case. If the strategy is "use remote workforce for happier employees and it doesn't matter if you're bleeding money because one of the FAANG companies might swoop in to acquire you" -- you can see why that narrative is not convincing at all to business leaders! This is the same issue as citing Gitlab's remote work culture while the CEO (Sid Sijbrandij) mentions they're not yet profitable. (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18443014 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18443014) Another example is highlighting Elastic's IPO with 700-employee distributed workforce: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18168423 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18168423 Elastic has also been losing increasing amounts of money for the last 3 years (see their SEC 10-K filings) and has never had a profit since their IPO. They lost $109 million in 2019. To be fair, it doesn't mean that financial losses should be blamed on remote work -- but you also can't use them as positive case studies either. tldr: do not cite Gitlab/Github/Elastic as evidence of remote work "being a success" to convince skeptical business managers. To re-iterate the issue: the Remote Work Movement still needs a slam-dunk-world-beating story of its success. They haven't gotten one yet that convinces skeptical business leaders to fully adopt it.
    • jayventura 7y ago
      What if Github was specifically optimizing for that end-goal though? It is hard to definite what productivity means unless you had inside knowledge of the goals of the business. Amazon took 14 years after their IPO to turn a profit, but that isn't to say that their employees were not productive. In the same vein, Github may have never turned a profit, but if that was not the goal, it's hard to say if their remote employees were not productive.
• stronglikedan 7y ago
  I wish I was more productive working from home. I mean, I am, in the sense that I get more chores done than I do when I work from the office, since I seem to procrastinate by doing anything but actual work related tasks.
  • Bedon292 7y ago
    This is me. I really wish I was, but home is where I sit around and watch TV, or whatever else. When I am home, I might get a half day of work at best. I am sure I could eventually, but I would have to re-arrange and set aside a place that is only work, and probably block things like amazon and netflix from that room even. Besides, I want the in person interaction with everyone at work. Couple days home and I am stir crazy. I need to get out and interact with people in person. And not just a random person at a coffee shop.
    • davidjnelson 7y ago
      It’s not for everyone. > set aside a place that is only work Crucial.
• commandlinefan 7y ago
  > repeatedly say "remote is more productive" Even if the CEO and the board are truly, honestly, sincerely pursuing actual productivity (which is far from granted), there are lines and lines of middle managers below them who have realized that achieving the illusion of productivity by cramming people elbow to elbow in a cacophonous open office and demanding daily or even hourly status reports is far easier than achieving actual productivity.
• bevacqua 7y ago
  Elastic. Public since last year. 5.5B mktcap