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> any kind of absolute statements one way or the other are bound to be incorrect. The article: "Data proves it: Remote work boosts productivity." "This groundb

> any kind of absolute statements one way or the other are bound to be incorrect. The article: "Data proves it: Remote work boosts productivity." "This groundbreaking study, involving 16,000 participants, was conducted by Stanford professor Nicholas Bloom" Of course different people work better in different modes. But since there's no reason to believe that we are uniformly distributed through those modes, one mode could be net more productive by objective absolute measures even if lots of people are in a suboptimal mode.

compiler-guy 7y ago
The mistake people and companies will inevitably make is believing that because, on net, having everyone work from home makes people more productive, it will make a specific person more productive. In other words, companies may misinterpret this study as "everyone working from home" is the optimal solution. But the optimal solution is some people working from home and some people not.
- robotresearcher 7y ago
  Agreed. I just looked at the study itself, and there's an important fact that the article does not mention. There were two test groups WFH and on-site. The WFH groups were volunteers, and their outcomes were better. It's interesting that the net productivity of the on-site workers did not go up despite the removal of the self-selected WFH-curious population. The study: https://nbloom.people.stanford.edu/sites/g/files/sbiybj4746/f/wfh.pdf https://nbloom.people.stanford.edu/sites/g/files/sbiybj4746/...
  - rv-de 7y ago
    That is a really important detail I must say.
  - James_Henry 7y ago
    This is great in that it shows that people who volunteer to work from home end up being more productive at home. However, knowing that you are part of a study that is measuring how effective people are at home and in the office and being someone who volunteered to work from home, there are clearly incentives for those assigned to work from home to work harder and for those assigned to work in the office to work less hard.
    - lutorm 7y ago
      Except the people who worked in the office also volunteered to stay, so why wouldn't they work harder too so they don't have to start working at home when they don't want to?
      - deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
      - James_Henry 7y ago
        Sorry, that is just pertaining to the first part of the study. After seeing those results they did indeed allow all who wanted to work from home and saw an increase in their productivity.
chadash 7y ago
> "This groundbreaking study, involving 16,000 participants, was conducted by Stanford professor Nicholas Bloom" I clicked through to the study and it is 16,000 call center employees. This simply doesn't translate to a lot of other jobs. If you are a call center employee, you're probably not doing a lot of collaborative work. Moreover, it's easy to track your time on the phone, so being at home doesn't necessarily make it easier for you to slack off. Also, of note, the participants all volunteered for it. It's a strong assumption to assume that people who want to work from home being more productive will mean that everyone working from home will improve productivity. In short, this article makes a lot of assumptions about how the data would generalize. A more accurate, but less click-baity title would be "Remote Work Can (And Does) Boost Employee Productivity For Certain Types of Workers".
- Supermancho 7y ago
  Remote work seems to slow EVERYTHING down every time my teams have been fully (or near fully) remote. I expect the shortening of the work week to boost productivity, but I don't see remote work doing the same, at large.
  - toomuchtodo 7y ago
    How do you explain successful fully remote orgs such as Gitlab, Hashicorp, and Zapier (in no particular order, just off the top of my head)?
    - joshuamorton 7y ago
      It's possible to succeed while being non optimal.
      - deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
      - deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
      - deleted 7y ago

compiler-guy 7y ago

The mistake people and companies will inevitably make is believing that because, on net, having everyone work from home makes people more productive, it will make a specific person more productive. In other words, companies may misinterpret this study as "everyone working from home" is the optimal solution. But the optimal solution is some people working from home and some people not.

robotresearcher 7y ago
Agreed. I just looked at the study itself, and there's an important fact that the article does not mention. There were two test groups WFH and on-site. The WFH groups were volunteers, and their outcomes were better. It's interesting that the net productivity of the on-site workers did not go up despite the removal of the self-selected WFH-curious population. The study: https://nbloom.people.stanford.edu/sites/g/files/sbiybj4746/f/wfh.pdf https://nbloom.people.stanford.edu/sites/g/files/sbiybj4746/...
- rv-de 7y ago
  That is a really important detail I must say.
- James_Henry 7y ago
  This is great in that it shows that people who volunteer to work from home end up being more productive at home. However, knowing that you are part of a study that is measuring how effective people are at home and in the office and being someone who volunteered to work from home, there are clearly incentives for those assigned to work from home to work harder and for those assigned to work in the office to work less hard.
  - lutorm 7y ago
    Except the people who worked in the office also volunteered to stay, so why wouldn't they work harder too so they don't have to start working at home when they don't want to?
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - James_Henry 7y ago
      Sorry, that is just pertaining to the first part of the study. After seeing those results they did indeed allow all who wanted to work from home and saw an increase in their productivity.

chadash 7y ago

> "This groundbreaking study, involving 16,000 participants, was conducted by Stanford professor Nicholas Bloom" I clicked through to the study and it is 16,000 call center employees. This simply doesn't translate to a lot of other jobs. If you are a call center employee, you're probably not doing a lot of collaborative work. Moreover, it's easy to track your time on the phone, so being at home doesn't necessarily make it easier for you to slack off. Also, of note, the participants all volunteered for it. It's a strong assumption to assume that people who want to work from home being more productive will mean that everyone working from home will improve productivity. In short, this article makes a lot of assumptions about how the data would generalize. A more accurate, but less click-baity title would be "Remote Work Can (And Does) Boost Employee Productivity For Certain Types of Workers".

Supermancho 7y ago
Remote work seems to slow EVERYTHING down every time my teams have been fully (or near fully) remote. I expect the shortening of the work week to boost productivity, but I don't see remote work doing the same, at large.
- toomuchtodo 7y ago
  How do you explain successful fully remote orgs such as Gitlab, Hashicorp, and Zapier (in no particular order, just off the top of my head)?
  - joshuamorton 7y ago
    It's possible to succeed while being non optimal.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - deleted 7y ago