3 ms·

I know this is going to be unpopular, but I just want to think about this companies perspective to add a bit of balance to this thread. I know a lot of people

I know this is going to be unpopular, but I just want to think about this companies perspective to add a bit of balance to this thread. I know a lot of people on here feel like work from home is just as productive or even more so than working in the office, especially in the case of open office layouts, but it's just not universally true. Some people are really good with responsibility, and some people really are not. As an illustrative example, you might have 20% of workers working at 120% efficiency, 50% of workers working at 80% efficency, and 30% of workers working at 10% efficiency. This example comes out to about 67% productivity overall. But you are still paying 100% of the salaries. It would be nice if you could just tell the 30% who have terrible efficiency to come in while everyone else can work from home, but you can't. It immediately going to be seen as unfair. "Why does X get to work from home and I don't?!". Many people don't even have the self awareness to tell that they are terrible at working from home. Another option would paying people for the amount of work they are actually delivering. Yeah, that isn't going to happen. I mean, for a start, it's hard to even quantify most of the time. A good manager knows who is delivering and who isn't, but you can't exactly point to number of bugs closed, or lines of code checked in to prove it. And aside from anything else differing pay is a hard pill to swallow even without WFH involved. The guy earning 200k might be 4x as useful as the guy being paid 100k, or he may be no better or even worse! My point is that there is no really satisfactory option here. I mean, you can make the argument "It's a pandemic, they should be happy to pay the same amount for 67% of the work" and sure, maybe that's just the way the cookie crumbles. I mean, lots of people are being totally forced out of business due to this pandemic so it's better situation than those guys I guess? But you can at least understand that it's a sucky position to be in.

dry_soup 6y ago
Paying employees according to the true value of their labor is tempting at first, but you better be careful-- Apply the principle too consistently and the C-suite gets a huge pay cut.
- eddyfromtheblok 6y ago
  yeah, imagine having to have to wear a suit all day, a horror that only a 8 figure salary can compensate for.
- m463 6y ago
  And that 22-year old who's good at factorio will probably get the 7-figure salary because only he gets logistics.
FrojoS 6y ago
If they do only 10% you could just fire them, at least in most places in the US, afaik.
roel_v 6y ago
"As an illustrative example, you might have 20% of workers working at 120% efficiency, 50% of workers working at 80% efficency, and 30% of workers working at 10% efficiency. This example comes out to about 67% productivity overall." While I agree with your overall point, this is a terrible way of making it. Of course I can argue any position if I can just make up numbers to support it.
- defertoreptar 6y ago
  It relates the overall principle to a concrete example. The particular example isn't important. As you said, we can tweak the numbers to go either way. What's useful about it is showing an example of how the numbers could work to logically explaining Epic's decision. I find concrete examples like this really helpful for comprehension.
Kednicma 6y ago
This sort of fundamental misunderstanding of engineer productivity is precisely why we're so tired. Our emotions and our ability to produce aren't simply under your control. We are fundamentally about maintaining systems, and productivity is the wrong way to measure maintenance.
flipchart 6y ago
Your argument is based on the premise that employees in office are 100% efficient.
- m463 6y ago
  I wonder about people blocked on a decision, or folks working on a project that will ultimately be cancelled, or... a lot of knowledge workers literally work on "research and development" which might be hard to map to widgets shipped.

dry_soup 6y ago

Paying employees according to the true value of their labor is tempting at first, but you better be careful-- Apply the principle too consistently and the C-suite gets a huge pay cut.

eddyfromtheblok 6y ago
yeah, imagine having to have to wear a suit all day, a horror that only a 8 figure salary can compensate for.
m463 6y ago
And that 22-year old who's good at factorio will probably get the 7-figure salary because only he gets logistics.

FrojoS 6y ago

If they do only 10% you could just fire them, at least in most places in the US, afaik.

roel_v 6y ago

"As an illustrative example, you might have 20% of workers working at 120% efficiency, 50% of workers working at 80% efficency, and 30% of workers working at 10% efficiency. This example comes out to about 67% productivity overall." While I agree with your overall point, this is a terrible way of making it. Of course I can argue any position if I can just make up numbers to support it.

defertoreptar 6y ago
It relates the overall principle to a concrete example. The particular example isn't important. As you said, we can tweak the numbers to go either way. What's useful about it is showing an example of how the numbers could work to logically explaining Epic's decision. I find concrete examples like this really helpful for comprehension.

Kednicma 6y ago

This sort of fundamental misunderstanding of engineer productivity is precisely why we're so tired. Our emotions and our ability to produce aren't simply under your control. We are fundamentally about maintaining systems, and productivity is the wrong way to measure maintenance.

flipchart 6y ago

Your argument is based on the premise that employees in office are 100% efficient.

m463 6y ago
I wonder about people blocked on a decision, or folks working on a project that will ultimately be cancelled, or... a lot of knowledge workers literally work on "research and development" which might be hard to map to widgets shipped.