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Unfortunately, game theory says that remote work will not stay once people can go back to work from the office safely. The reality is that there is a real adva

Unfortunately, game theory says that remote work will not stay once people can go back to work from the office safely. The reality is that there is a real advantage in working in person. Whether it’s increased trust, communication, or lower friction. We could see it pre-COVID in a he fact that there are barely any successful remote offices (let alone individuals). This means that employees would see advantages to coming to work, and those that don’t would fare worse in promo and productivity on average, bringing the equilibrium state back to the office.

MattGaiser 6y ago
I love remote work. But yeah, I have also realized that if I didn’t show up for a few days, nobody would notice. And that presents a long term problem.
- chronofar 6y ago
  Whether or not you show up shouldn't matter. Whether your work gets done should.
- stjohnswarts 6y ago
  If you didn't do any work for a few days no one would notice? That does not compute. What do you do for a living? If I didn't show up for even a couple of days they would send out the police and possibly the state militia due to there being a lot of "village knowledge" at my company.
  - ghaff 6y ago
    If I didn't have meetings scheduled or didn't have particular deliverables due? No. No one would notice if I didn't "do any work" for a few days. They would probably start to notice if I wasn't responding to chats or emails. But it probably wouldn't reach critical mass until after a few days.
  - MattGaiser 6y ago
    We do work in two week sprints, so that is when work is noticed. I am a software engineer.
Skunkleton 6y ago
There are plenty of examples of successful fully remote teams and companies. Not sure why you are saying there aren't.
- tomerico 6y ago
  Because I’m not referring to fully remote teams but to the weird hybrid situation.
chronofar 6y ago
> The reality is that there is a real advantage in working in person. Whether it’s increased trust, communication, or lower friction. There is no inherent advantage to "working in person." Lower trust or communication or higher friction are not inherent to working remotely, they are the product of poor and overconfident management (at least in tech, given our forum here) and can be seen in any number of environments. You can replace "working in person" with various other specious truisms like "having an organized workspace" or "having weekly status meetings" or "using agile methodologies" and the two sentences above will be likewise banal and true only in specific instances. Most technology work can be done remotely, and I'd argue should be done both remotely and asynchronously (many companies recently forced to do the remote piece are still are holding dearly to 9-5 and constant meetings), unless there are specific use cases that require more in person synchronous efforts (and to be sure this is the case in some cases, especially when specific hardware must be used for instance). The perception that there is something "better" about 9-5 in-office work is more a product of tradition and resistant over-management than inherent advantages to either setup.
- d1zzy 6y ago
  People are different and they have different needs and skills. Working in meatspace is different from working remotely so those needs and skills may better match one model or the other. That is, SWEs aren't bug tracking robots that only need to communicate online using emotionless text.
  - chronofar 6y ago
    To be sure different models fit different situations, and there are other needs people have aside from getting shit done, namely social interaction (which is at its root the biggest cause of resistance). If you don't get those needs meet elsewhere, the workplace is historically a good place to do so. But of course there are all sorts of ways outside a traditional office to optimize for this.
- jayd16 6y ago
  >There is no inherent advantage to "working in person." I really miss whiteboard sessions and and being able to chat without lag.
somewhereoutth 6y ago
I mostly agree with you, but is it not possible that we were stuck in a local minima, and Covid might have shocked us out of that?
stjohnswarts 6y ago
Game theory doesn't know everything. History tells us that when people are exposed to new ideas they will often adapt. After managers see that working from home isn't necessarily the devil they will allow more of it. However, it's not going to be wholesale shift to home, unless there is a big monetary advantage (say rent was insane to be in the middle of the city) companies will meet with the idea somewhere in the middle, especially in tech jobs.
doopy-loopy2 6y ago
This. I wish there was a way I could make a bet that 100% remote will NOT become the norm. Given how contrarian this opinion seems to be, surely there must be some way to profit if I am right?
- atwebb 6y ago
  Invest in commercial real estate? WeWork? Start a janitorial supply company?
- ghaff 6y ago
  >bet that 100% remote will NOT become the norm I think it's pretty obvious that 100% will not become the norm. But maybe 50% for some types of jobs? And some number of smaller companies will go 100%? Those seem plausible.
atwebb 6y ago
Anecdotal, but I've worked remotely for over a decade and been able to advance and grow at 2 companies. It may be luck or happenstance. It isn't always easy, I think that remote can allow one to be more productive. Sometimes you do need to do more than if you weren't in the office and you need to communicate, a lot.
efficax 6y ago
I don't think there's any real evidence that remote work is any worse (or better) for productivity than in person work.
- hellisothers 6y ago
  I actually thought it was a forgone conclusion that remote work is _more_ productive (for IC work) but the problem is ideation and serendipitous interactions leading to novel IP is more likely to happen when people are physically near each other. Hence the aversion at a corp. level to remote work.
  - meheleventyone 6y ago
    Is there any evidence for lower rate of IP generation? The same argument was made for open offices as well and has proven false. Similar to the studies with brainstorming where people doing it in a group come up with fewer and less diverse ideas than people brainstorming individually and collating the results.
  - efficax 6y ago
    There's a plausible story that is told here about spontaneous interactions producing new and interesting ideas, but what I don't know is if there is any actual evidence to believe this is the case. As contrasted to having regular planning meetings over zoom and then mulling over ideas in private (which I find to be a very fruitful way of coming up with solutions to problems, much more than "brainstorming" or whatever in a group)
alicemaz 6y ago
>The reality is that there is a real advantage in working in person. it depends what their goals are. having worked in-office and remote for the same company, it's way easier to get shit done in the office. at least if you're reasonably extroverted/persuasive/bold. there are so many times I was able to walk up to someone's desk and spend ten minutes to save multiple weeks of protocol and runaround. partly because it's easier to apply pressure, but also partly because communicating face-to-face is so much higher bandwidth. but if you're remote you're easier to ignore, and a lot of office workers are very good at ignoring people who want to create more work for them but the flip side is it's way easier for remote workers to fade into the background and hardly do anything. a skilled developer can emulate a mediocre developer while working a fraction of the hours. a skilled manipulator can "work" a fraction of the hours managing expectations and barely produce much of anything. plenty of people will figure out how to automate their jobs and just never tell anyone there's this idea that remote will benefit introvert/aspie types because it's so word-focused. you have few face-to-face conversations but you write tons and tons. but really, apsie types will produce reams of literal-minded descriptive and often very helpful documentation and discussion, while people-people types will manipulate their image to appear very legibly valuable and come out ahead more often than not my honest opinion for awhile is that remote is going to a massive efficieny drain on big tech companies and startups doing stuff that's easy to phone in like webdev/saas/whatever, such that if you founded a small committed colo team you could probably outcompete them in whatever domain you want even without any special edge
- Tomis02 6y ago
  > I was able to walk up to someone's desk and spend ten minutes to save multiple weeks of protocol and runaround. partly because it's easier to apply pressure, but also partly because communicating face-to-face is so much higher bandwidth Let's ignore how you interrupting someone cost them potentially hours of productivity. I agree face-to-face is higher bandwidth for easy/simple topics. "Bob, what's the mainframe password" is easier shouted than written, and the reply likewise (assuming Bob knows it by heart). It gets tricky when the topic is complicated or when Bob is distracted and confused. You might get a half-assed dismissive and incomplete answer (which you may or may not notice), or it might take Bob much longer to figure the answer out than if you had messaged it to him. The quality of your communication depends on many factors, and your perception may not necessarily match reality.
mNovak 6y ago
But the real game changer would be if the managers stayed remote, evaporating the 'facetime' detriment typically faced by remote workers.
jjcm 6y ago
Normally yes, but we have one major difference with Atlassian - our teams are split between SF and Sydney (for the most part, we have other offices but those are the major ones). Even before COVID we had a pretty strong remote culture. We were doing video chat based meetings where everyone dials in separately even before COVID hit. We also acquired Trello, which was a remote-first company. There's a LOT of push internally to make sure remote people are first party citizens in the company.
dt3ft 6y ago
> game theory says I'm curious as to what you base this statement on. Game theory is modeling of strategic interaction between two or more players in a situation containing set rules and outcomes. Did you create the actual model? Is there an insight you mind sharing?

MattGaiser 6y ago

I love remote work. But yeah, I have also realized that if I didn’t show up for a few days, nobody would notice. And that presents a long term problem.

chronofar 6y ago
Whether or not you show up shouldn't matter. Whether your work gets done should.
stjohnswarts 6y ago
If you didn't do any work for a few days no one would notice? That does not compute. What do you do for a living? If I didn't show up for even a couple of days they would send out the police and possibly the state militia due to there being a lot of "village knowledge" at my company.
- ghaff 6y ago
  If I didn't have meetings scheduled or didn't have particular deliverables due? No. No one would notice if I didn't "do any work" for a few days. They would probably start to notice if I wasn't responding to chats or emails. But it probably wouldn't reach critical mass until after a few days.
- MattGaiser 6y ago
  We do work in two week sprints, so that is when work is noticed. I am a software engineer.

Skunkleton 6y ago

There are plenty of examples of successful fully remote teams and companies. Not sure why you are saying there aren't.

tomerico 6y ago
Because I’m not referring to fully remote teams but to the weird hybrid situation.

chronofar 6y ago

> The reality is that there is a real advantage in working in person. Whether it’s increased trust, communication, or lower friction. There is no inherent advantage to "working in person." Lower trust or communication or higher friction are not inherent to working remotely, they are the product of poor and overconfident management (at least in tech, given our forum here) and can be seen in any number of environments. You can replace "working in person" with various other specious truisms like "having an organized workspace" or "having weekly status meetings" or "using agile methodologies" and the two sentences above will be likewise banal and true only in specific instances. Most technology work can be done remotely, and I'd argue should be done both remotely and asynchronously (many companies recently forced to do the remote piece are still are holding dearly to 9-5 and constant meetings), unless there are specific use cases that require more in person synchronous efforts (and to be sure this is the case in some cases, especially when specific hardware must be used for instance). The perception that there is something "better" about 9-5 in-office work is more a product of tradition and resistant over-management than inherent advantages to either setup.

d1zzy 6y ago
People are different and they have different needs and skills. Working in meatspace is different from working remotely so those needs and skills may better match one model or the other. That is, SWEs aren't bug tracking robots that only need to communicate online using emotionless text.
- chronofar 6y ago
  To be sure different models fit different situations, and there are other needs people have aside from getting shit done, namely social interaction (which is at its root the biggest cause of resistance). If you don't get those needs meet elsewhere, the workplace is historically a good place to do so. But of course there are all sorts of ways outside a traditional office to optimize for this.
jayd16 6y ago
>There is no inherent advantage to "working in person." I really miss whiteboard sessions and and being able to chat without lag.

somewhereoutth 6y ago

I mostly agree with you, but is it not possible that we were stuck in a local minima, and Covid might have shocked us out of that?

stjohnswarts 6y ago

Game theory doesn't know everything. History tells us that when people are exposed to new ideas they will often adapt. After managers see that working from home isn't necessarily the devil they will allow more of it. However, it's not going to be wholesale shift to home, unless there is a big monetary advantage (say rent was insane to be in the middle of the city) companies will meet with the idea somewhere in the middle, especially in tech jobs.

doopy-loopy2 6y ago

This. I wish there was a way I could make a bet that 100% remote will NOT become the norm. Given how contrarian this opinion seems to be, surely there must be some way to profit if I am right?

atwebb 6y ago
Invest in commercial real estate? WeWork? Start a janitorial supply company?
ghaff 6y ago
>bet that 100% remote will NOT become the norm I think it's pretty obvious that 100% will not become the norm. But maybe 50% for some types of jobs? And some number of smaller companies will go 100%? Those seem plausible.

atwebb 6y ago

Anecdotal, but I've worked remotely for over a decade and been able to advance and grow at 2 companies. It may be luck or happenstance. It isn't always easy, I think that remote can allow one to be more productive. Sometimes you do need to do more than if you weren't in the office and you need to communicate, a lot.

efficax 6y ago

I don't think there's any real evidence that remote work is any worse (or better) for productivity than in person work.

hellisothers 6y ago
I actually thought it was a forgone conclusion that remote work is _more_ productive (for IC work) but the problem is ideation and serendipitous interactions leading to novel IP is more likely to happen when people are physically near each other. Hence the aversion at a corp. level to remote work.
- meheleventyone 6y ago
  Is there any evidence for lower rate of IP generation? The same argument was made for open offices as well and has proven false. Similar to the studies with brainstorming where people doing it in a group come up with fewer and less diverse ideas than people brainstorming individually and collating the results.
- efficax 6y ago
  There's a plausible story that is told here about spontaneous interactions producing new and interesting ideas, but what I don't know is if there is any actual evidence to believe this is the case. As contrasted to having regular planning meetings over zoom and then mulling over ideas in private (which I find to be a very fruitful way of coming up with solutions to problems, much more than "brainstorming" or whatever in a group)

alicemaz 6y ago

>The reality is that there is a real advantage in working in person. it depends what their goals are. having worked in-office and remote for the same company, it's way easier to get shit done in the office. at least if you're reasonably extroverted/persuasive/bold. there are so many times I was able to walk up to someone's desk and spend ten minutes to save multiple weeks of protocol and runaround. partly because it's easier to apply pressure, but also partly because communicating face-to-face is so much higher bandwidth. but if you're remote you're easier to ignore, and a lot of office workers are very good at ignoring people who want to create more work for them but the flip side is it's way easier for remote workers to fade into the background and hardly do anything. a skilled developer can emulate a mediocre developer while working a fraction of the hours. a skilled manipulator can "work" a fraction of the hours managing expectations and barely produce much of anything. plenty of people will figure out how to automate their jobs and just never tell anyone there's this idea that remote will benefit introvert/aspie types because it's so word-focused. you have few face-to-face conversations but you write tons and tons. but really, apsie types will produce reams of literal-minded descriptive and often very helpful documentation and discussion, while people-people types will manipulate their image to appear very legibly valuable and come out ahead more often than not my honest opinion for awhile is that remote is going to a massive efficieny drain on big tech companies and startups doing stuff that's easy to phone in like webdev/saas/whatever, such that if you founded a small committed colo team you could probably outcompete them in whatever domain you want even without any special edge

Tomis02 6y ago
> I was able to walk up to someone's desk and spend ten minutes to save multiple weeks of protocol and runaround. partly because it's easier to apply pressure, but also partly because communicating face-to-face is so much higher bandwidth Let's ignore how you interrupting someone cost them potentially hours of productivity. I agree face-to-face is higher bandwidth for easy/simple topics. "Bob, what's the mainframe password" is easier shouted than written, and the reply likewise (assuming Bob knows it by heart). It gets tricky when the topic is complicated or when Bob is distracted and confused. You might get a half-assed dismissive and incomplete answer (which you may or may not notice), or it might take Bob much longer to figure the answer out than if you had messaged it to him. The quality of your communication depends on many factors, and your perception may not necessarily match reality.

mNovak 6y ago

But the real game changer would be if the managers stayed remote, evaporating the 'facetime' detriment typically faced by remote workers.

jjcm 6y ago

Normally yes, but we have one major difference with Atlassian - our teams are split between SF and Sydney (for the most part, we have other offices but those are the major ones). Even before COVID we had a pretty strong remote culture. We were doing video chat based meetings where everyone dials in separately even before COVID hit. We also acquired Trello, which was a remote-first company. There's a LOT of push internally to make sure remote people are first party citizens in the company.

dt3ft 6y ago

> game theory says I'm curious as to what you base this statement on. Game theory is modeling of strategic interaction between two or more players in a situation containing set rules and outcomes. Did you create the actual model? Is there an insight you mind sharing?