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One pandemics and FAANG learns about advantages of remote work. I can imagine FB's productivity goes way up as people wouldn't need to share the same huge open
by bitL 7y ago
One pandemics and FAANG learns about advantages of remote work. I can imagine FB's productivity goes way up as people wouldn't need to share the same huge open office. Maybe they'll even figure out some useful ideas in the end...
- jariel 7y agoSo the most profitable companies of all time will zillions of intelligent workers have thus far been unable to grasp a simple and easy way to jump their profitability substantially? Hmm ...
- bitL 7y agoWhat worked 10 years ago before their IPOs might not work now. Plenty of talented people won't even consider non-remote work these days and those are often the most driven ones that don't want to be stuck in offices/traffic all day long but have some life as well.
- jariel 7y agoNot that much has changed in 10 years and FAANGs had their IPOs 20 years ago.
- JDiculous 7y agoYou assume anything any big corporation does is the optimal way of doing things?
- jariel 7y agoNo, I'm saying that 'big corporations' universally do not have easy, low-hanging fruit sitting in front of them that would instantly improve productivity. If 'remote work' were some really expensive investment, then we could see that it would take some to make it's way into big corps. But it's relatively easy, and trivial to experiment with, and most companies don't do it in most cases.
- natalyarostova 7y agoWell... The counter is that I have trouble being productive when my city is slowly being shut down and I'm scared of a pandemic lol.
- MperorM 7y agoI don't know I'd measure it, but if someone can provide a good measure, I'd be willing to bet against wfh increasing productivity. I have a feeling a lot of value is created during casual lunch conversations.
- davidw 7y agoI feel more productive in the office, but I would guess that I'd be more productive at home than in the hospital. I will be really happy when this is all over and I can just go into the office and not think about it.
- MperorM 7y agoOh yes for sure! I did not mean to suggest WFH is a bad idea under these circumstances. I'm only trying to argue against a common sentiment here on HN, that working from home is more productive. My personal beliefs are that a single WFH day a week in most instances might be net-positive for the company.
- tjr225 7y agoI think it can be much more productive if done properly. The problem is most likely of our established companies are only equipped- culturally- to do things the old way. I’ve never grown more or learned more from other people than in the last 13 months at a remote startup. Even if it all folds over tomorrow I’m better off because of the opportunity. I say all of this as someone who is vocal about the challenges of remote work here and among my friends and colleagues.
- hermitdev 7y agoFor myself, WFH is hit and miss in terms of productivity. Some days I'm super productive and might even stay logged on for extra hours. Other days, I'm hardly productive at all. My home "office" is a desk in my living room, so there can be a lot of distractions between wife watching TV and pets. I can usually get by listening to music with headphones on. Contrasting with work in the office, there are far more distractions. People walking by, drive bys from the boss, etc. And I dont even work in an open office, just low cube walls that I can see over while seated.
- Infinitesimus 7y agoFAANG employees who's jobs benefit from face-time will probably not see a productivity boost tho. But let's see where this experiments takes society
- bitL 7y agoI worked in/led remote teams for around 8 years. Initial first few weeks are weird, then everybody hops on asynchronous communication (you can use phones/iPads whenever face2face is needed), people can take a walk in a park/forest to get fresh ideas (e.g. problems that took a week to resolve in the office took 2 hours while walking outside and refocusing brain). It's just too few companies are willing to take that "leap of faith". Some of my most memorable experiences were programming for two months in a cottage overlooking Pu`uhonua O Hōnaunau on Hawai`i - that made me superbly productive, happy and driven - I would absolutely recommend/wish everybody to experience the same.
- MperorM 7y agoIf I may ask, what type of work did the remote teams do? It might be that a lot of disagreement about the viability of WFH is simply due to people having different types of work in mind.
- bitL 7y agoOne was a distributed messaging system (imagine geographically partitioned real-time clusters for investment banking and their transacted operations), another was a web app for creatives from a top company utilizing bleeding-edge tech and we created some innovative things competitors lack till this day. I don't think we would if we all were stuffed in some open-plan office somewhere as it required individual creativity and surprising solutions one could figure out in solitude only and only then discuss with the others... Both companies extremely well-known and darlings of developers world-wide (producing tech almost everybody used).
- josephjrobison 7y agoI would hope most tech firms would not notice or would encourage employees to go for a walk from 1-3pm if it helps solve a problem they’ve been working on for weeks!
- frenchman99 7y agoProductivity is only a compelling argument if employees keep working the same hours, which they shouldn't unless they get paid more: producing more without any more salary is just another way of working for free. And while remote work has its upsides, it has its downsides too: loneliness is one that I've experienced myself and heard other colleagues mention.
- bitL 7y agoUsually FAANG's competitive culture pushes developers to stay week-long at the office: https://www.teamblind.com/post/Every-Engineer-in-my-team-at-Facebook-works-on-weekends-and-nights-w0HKZ7Mv https://www.teamblind.com/post/Every-Engineer-in-my-team-at-... I cope with loneliness by throwing parties inviting people I don't know but am somehow connected with, either via language studies, art clubs, hobbies etc. I partied with billionaires, professors from Princeton etc. that way.
- joshuamorton 7y agoI'm in the minority of people who I work with who check my email on weekends. Going into the office is practically unheard of. I've visited Google offices occasionally on weekends, and they're ghost towns.
- bitL 7y agoGoogle is different to other FAANGs though even there e.g. SREs might be pretty overloaded at times.
- gowld 7y agoYou are citing someone from Amazon suprised at their Facebook experience. So it's obviously not "usually FAANG's competitive culture"
- sidibe 7y agoIf schools close it will really muddy the data and make it look like remote work is bad.
- beamatronic 7y agoMaybe they will learn that big fancy offices are a big waste of money. And so is flying people to big fancy conferences.
- blahblah12 7y agoAnecdote, at one of the affected companies and we’ve been wfh. I honestly think my productivity has tanked. That’s the general sentiment for other folks that I’ve talked to, too
- kccqzy 7y agoMy productivity has gone down as well. Because (a) I didn't have a coffee machine at home, and ended up either having to take a mile-long walk to Starbucks or fight against my morning drowsiness; (b) I now need to cook, do the dishes, etc, which are previously handled by the office cafeteria; (c) I tried to reduce my screen time by not having external monitors at home, and now I code on a small 13-inch laptop display.
- bitL 7y agoOh yes, but that's easily solvable by a $2k investment into coffee machine, dishwasher and a monitor or two. I assumed people had comfortable living/working conditions at home.
- jjeaff 7y agoTwo thousand dollars for those 3 things? Are you Bill Gates? (See YouTube vid of Bill guessing how much household items cost.) More like $30 for a coffee machine and $250 for a dishwasher. Then $150+ each for external monitors.
- bitL 7y agoLet's say you want to have two higher end monitors, those would get you to around $1k each. Coffee machine/dishwasher are cheap. You might also want to invest into some cooking machine or some kitchen equipment that could allow you to prepare healthy meals quickly.
- jkachmar 7y agoMy motorized standing desk, VESA amounting arm, and 27” FreeSync + color-calibrated monitor _combined_ total at around $1000 dollars. To highlight the absurdity of this estimate: $2000 USD should be enough to pay for an entire work-from-home setup with a high quality office chair, an ergonomic keyboard, and a whiteboard in addition to what I have mentioned above (assuming that work provides your computer).
- antiterra 7y agoI was significantly more productive in that huge open office than at home, even when the rest of my team was in a different office. Open offices are significantly flawed, but productively working at home is tough for a lot of people.
- tjr225 7y agoA company with an open and communicative culture can be more productive remotely than located in prem. I also believe an on prem company that has a communicative and open culture can be more productive than a remote company. However, you can’t deny the benefits of going remote if the above is a wash depending on the company.
- chillacy 7y agoAll depends how you measure productivity as well. I write more code when I work from home, but lines of code don't necessarily correlate with "useful productivity", since it's entirely possible to work on an epic project that solves no useful problems, or the project fails for other reasons.
- throwaway1777 7y agoThe only advantage is not getting sick with a deadly disease. Productivity is not the goal and will probably decrease.
- starpilot 7y agoOr it'll go down as people get distracted by YouTube, video games, family, porn.
- skocznymroczny 7y agoFamily is a big one. I live with my parents, and WFH occasionally (when sick for example), and it's very hard to convince them that I am WORKING from home. And no, just because I am on my PC all day doesn't mean I'm playing videogames all day.
- untog 7y agoI actually think it could backfire. Remote work that is thoughtfully implemented can definitely be a productivity boost, but thrown together last minute stuff like this is going to make people more wary of remote, not less.
- dmitshur 7y agoIn addition to that, people are distracted by the virus concerns, and so may be working at lower than 100% capacity regardless if it's from office or home.
- swader999 7y agoI require decent soft ear plugs with hunting earmuffs at home because kids and wife.
- clarry 7y agoThe other thing is that people might just treat this period of WFH as a temporary distraction (caused by external forces out of your control), which justifies lower productivity and a bit more goofing around than usual. Kinda like various company internal events, fire drills, or those weird days when things just aren't normal and internet is dead / you have blackouts / office renovation / maintenance that takes a lot of stuff you need for work offline... It's a different thing when you go into it with the attitude that 1) it is permanent 2) you're expected to be productive as any other full time employee on normal days, onsite or not 3) you'll be fired if you goof off too much.
- ehsankia 7y ago> FAANG learns about advantages of remote work I'm not sure how you get to that conclusion. Or were you saying that as "they will now learn about the advantages after this experiment"? I also don't think it's a clean experiment as many other factors are impacting people's productivity anyways, but the results will definitely be interesting to look at.
- tylerl 7y agoOh yes? A productivity bonanza you think? I'm in the Seattle area and my office has been shut down for at over a week now. It's not been as rosy as you think. Here's what it's actually like: First, the company has always been extremely supportive. Many employees have been working from home exclusively for years and nearly all of us WFH from time to time at least. The processes and expectations are well established. Engineers have always been supplied with a laptop in addition to their workstation, so WFH has always been immediately possible for everyone. You get your pick of hardware, but all the systems and services and processes have been optimized to make it reasonable (not just possible) to get serious engineering work done with nothing but a Chromebook. I've seen many programmers working _at the office_ from a Chromebook because they liked the interface. But for most of us... it's not optimal. Corp work has to be done on Corp-owned hardware. This is enforced by technical controls that can't readily be circumvented, so even if you have a great computer at home, you'll be working from your laptop. Many of us at the kitchen table. Unless, of course, you've gotten a corp-issued rig in your house... which can't have happened in the past couple of months because the computer hardware supply chain in China has been shut down for a long time. Think you'll just go buy a nice monitor from Best Buy and dock it with your laptop? You weren't the first to think that; computer monitors are sold out across the city (having 4 giant tech companies all go 100% WFH at the same time will do that). At a team level, it's been a mess. Productivity is definitely not up. We still get a lot of stuff done and we haven't adjusted any of our forecasts, but coordination has become a whole lot harder. Sure the company has been generally ready for this for a long time, but as individuals we were a bit blind-sided by the suddenness of it. Oh, and the local school district has gone "remote-learning" as well for this month (think WFH, but for 9-year-olds), so local parents are doubling as home-school proctors. It's not a distraction-free environment. Thing is, we wouldn't have offices if it we didn't work more efficiently there. It's not like working from home is something foreign to us; like I said, we all do it as often as we like. Each of us maybe a couple of days a month, as circumstances require. But sending everyone home at the same time, that hasn't been the utopia it might seem to the casual onlooker.
- Polylactic_acid 7y agoCant you grab the monitor from the office and bring it home?
- siruncledrew 7y agoI don’t know... I pessimistically have doubts that employees “won’t return to the office again” - as some headlines or hot takes have alluded - as a result of WFH. IMO, it’s a real estate thing more than a productivity thing. If we’re talking about weeks-months of WFH, then going from Office->WFH->Office seems like the more likely plan. Like how experiencing a blizzard may mean not going to the office for 1-2 weeks, but at some point a return will happen. Companies that own/rent nice, expensive buildings to contain hundreds/thousands of employees are not going to write it off and stop using them for full-remote all of a sudden. The physiological value of WFH is not as quantifiable to bean count as property asset value.
- decebalus1 7y agoThere's remote work and there's remote work.. I used to work remotely for a day or two a week but now after one straight week of working from home and not having any social interaction due to the coronavirus thing, I'm climbing up the walls a bit. There is barely any traffic on the street here in the Seattle area, everyone is anxious and I personally find it very hard to focus and be productive.
- bryanrasmussen 7y agoI think it depends on your home life. My productivity goes really down, however I assume most people have it better than I do.
- Kiro 7y agoPretty sure productivity will go down. When I WFH I just slack off.
- speedplane 7y ago> When I WFH I just slack off. I've worked in an office for years, and then transitioned to working from home for years. The initial transition was rough: snacking, lack of motivation, lack of structure. But it only took about a month to get past that. You start building your own routine and structure, optimized to your life, not a mandated 9-5. Not only am I more efficient and less stressed at home, I'm pretty certain I actually "work" more hours than sitting at an office. And I'm a pretty extroverted person, that thrives with other human contact. When working from home, I get to choose when to socialize/collaborate, it isn't hoisted on me.
- Kiro 7y agoYes, I believe that's how it needs to be done but I'm worried that since this is imposed directly and is temporary people will not get past that.
- bashwizard 7y agoPretty sure productivity will go up. When I WFH I do nothing but work.
- Kiro 7y agoI truly wish that was the case for me. I need an office.
- odiroot 7y agoSpeak for yourself then. There's nothing stopping people from slacking off in the office. And this is what I usually observed in my workplaces.
- Kiro 7y agoYes, I'm speaking for myself and all other people who simply can't be productive working from home. No idea why that's so hard to believe or why you need to be so borderline about it. Great that it works for some but that doesn't mean it's the right thing for everyone.
- animalnewbie 7y agoMAGA not FANG, Netflix and facobook haven't recommended WFH yet. All of MAGA have though- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22540831 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22540831
- JDiculous 7y agoThese acronyms are getting ridiculous
- animalnewbie 7y agori -> j
- teekert 7y agoCheers to that, I'm "forced" to work from home this week, I seriously hope some benefits for higher management will emerge. I predict so. I hope the will thoroughly evaluate this week.