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I am not so sure productivity has definitely improved. I agree there was a good head of steam where people were able to quietly and independently work through

I am not so sure productivity has definitely improved. I agree there was a good head of steam where people were able to quietly and independently work through their "list" of stuff they wanted to do for ages but never had the chance to etc, or whatever had previously been planned out. Now months later I feel like things are starting to grind a bit and productivity is starting to wane because the "pipe" is starting to dry up. Those ad hoc conversations that lead to a new feature, bumping into someone in the corridor who mentions some big issue they're having, meeting and talking to end users, the offsites to work out the strategy for next quarter, day-long workshops with UX and management and users and post-it notes galore where we thrash out ideas and concepts are a distant memory. Instead we have stilted video calls where people sit on mute 95% of the time and there simply is not as much collaboration as there was before. Sure stuff still happens, but it feels like to me that the "spark" from people who usually generate ideas and set the agenda/work items is reduced significantly - if not entirely gone - and people are just going through the motions somewhat mechanically and "doing the best they can given the circumstances" etc.

weeksie 6y ago
I'm talking about macro level gains. When your small local accountant figures out how to manage work from home a few days per week that creates small, cumulative gains over the whole of the economy. Hard to quantify right now, especially because of all the noise going on. i.e. GDP is currently getting slaughtered for reasons other than lack of productive business practices. I do think that it's harder to notice from the vantage of tech since it is probably the most remote-ready industry. Talking to finance bros I get a very strong sense that people are getting a lot more done in some regards and suffering in others. When offices come back, they'll divide up the tasks appropriate to the milieu and gain some incremental productivity as a result. Similarly distance education sucks. It's sucked forever buuuuut, with whole countries attempting to manage distance education at the same time across all educational institutions, I am very optimistic that we will find some new techniques that will have huge returns but it will take a while for those techniques to gain dominance. I could be totally wrong about this, but we'll find out for sure in the next few years.
- mattlondon 6y ago
  > When your small local accountant figures out how to manage work from home a few days per week that creates small, cumulative gains But what are those gains you get from working from home? The only "real" one I can think of is no commute ... but that removes productivity from the businesses now failing and going bankrupt because they have no/reduced customers. Plus the commute is not just dead time, at least for me I usually triage my inbox before I arrive at the office. Now I just waste time and have an extra bowl of cereal it read the internet for half an hour instead of doing anything useful.
  - Nursie 6y ago
    "The commute" is a massive societal inefficiency. How many hours, how much time (and how much CO2) is just wasted? Those businesses may fail, but the money will go somewhere else, somewhere else that doesn't involve me wasting four hours a day. I occasionaly worked on my commute, but most of the time was wasted, and now I'm free to use the time how I want.
  - leetcrew 6y ago
    for me the no commute is huge. I went from putting more than 200 miles a week on my car to barely doing that in a month (and a lot of that is just driving for pleasure). I used to spend $120-150 a month on gas; now I don't even visit a gas station every month. I'm also cooking lunch at home instead of going out several times a week for mediocre takeout. saves me a good chunk of change and I'm eating healthier and tastier food. > Plus the commute is not just dead time, at least for me I usually triage my inbox before I arrive at the office. Now I just waste time and have an extra bowl of cereal it read the internet for half an hour instead of doing anything useful. this one is kinda on you. you get to decide what to do with the extra time. I wake up a little later now to stay up talking and playing video games with my friends that live further west. not very productive, but I value having a slightly more relaxed work week.
    - ghaff 6y ago
      > I'm also cooking lunch at home instead of going out several times a week for mediocre takeout. saves me a good chunk of change and I'm eating healthier and tastier food. I watched a McKinsey presentation last week which, among other things, went into what ways of doing things forced by the pandemic did they want to carry forwards and what they didn't want to carry forward. A couple of things that people most plan to carry forward were increased home cooking and online grocery delivery.
alexbanks 6y ago
I think it's more that the ability to work remotely has been unlocked for pretty much every business that operates online (which, as I type it, sounds kind of crazy that it didn't already work that way). At the very least, for the most part, businesses won't forget that possibility, even if they don't rely on it heavily post-pandemic. We've removed a significant blocker, that doesn't necessarily mean that we've reinvented the office dynamic or anything like that, but we've at least opened up a new channel for some businesses that didn't have it before, which IMO is objective improvement.
watwut 6y ago
The same here. In addition, I see social problems accumulate slowly and the team seems to be failing apart. Interpersonal issues are nit solved until they boil in the home office, in person people were more eager to speak up about issues faster and more often.
goatinaboat 6y ago
Now months later I feel like things are starting to grind a bit and productivity is starting to wane because the "pipe" is starting to dry up. My employer mandated a return to the office about 2 weeks ago. Productivity has declined compared to when we were all WFH for 6 months and I have the stats - pull requests, builds pushed to prod, tickets opened, all are down.
- WrtCdEvrydy 6y ago
  Yes, but some middle manager gets to claim his paycheck due to having more meetings in the office now.
- egsmi 6y ago
  This whole thing is so multifaceted I think it’s hard to draw any conclusions from it. In CA, we have COVID and fires so I’m essentially a prisoner in my house. If you locked me in my office, my productivity might go up too. But now that’s school is on and my kids are locked in here too. Productivity goes down. All in all, it’s a bumpy ride.
  - mmcnl 6y ago
    Is this a problem though? Is business suffering? Are there metrics on that?
- cmwelsh 6y ago
  Is it possible that folks substituted their commute for extra work hours? There’s really not much to do, socially, when everything is locked down. Some people might take it as a chance to be a workaholic (with the possible burnout not in mind). In the office, I am pressured by folks walking by into leaving “on time” (they don’t realize I often start later than them).
  - jonfromsf 6y ago
    Some people I have talked to are seeing this in their workplaces. They are having to tell the engineers not to work too hard so they don't burn out. Seeing 2+ hours a day of extra work.

weeksie 6y ago

I'm talking about macro level gains. When your small local accountant figures out how to manage work from home a few days per week that creates small, cumulative gains over the whole of the economy. Hard to quantify right now, especially because of all the noise going on. i.e. GDP is currently getting slaughtered for reasons other than lack of productive business practices. I do think that it's harder to notice from the vantage of tech since it is probably the most remote-ready industry. Talking to finance bros I get a very strong sense that people are getting a lot more done in some regards and suffering in others. When offices come back, they'll divide up the tasks appropriate to the milieu and gain some incremental productivity as a result. Similarly distance education sucks. It's sucked forever buuuuut, with whole countries attempting to manage distance education at the same time across all educational institutions, I am very optimistic that we will find some new techniques that will have huge returns but it will take a while for those techniques to gain dominance. I could be totally wrong about this, but we'll find out for sure in the next few years.

mattlondon 6y ago
> When your small local accountant figures out how to manage work from home a few days per week that creates small, cumulative gains But what are those gains you get from working from home? The only "real" one I can think of is no commute ... but that removes productivity from the businesses now failing and going bankrupt because they have no/reduced customers. Plus the commute is not just dead time, at least for me I usually triage my inbox before I arrive at the office. Now I just waste time and have an extra bowl of cereal it read the internet for half an hour instead of doing anything useful.
- Nursie 6y ago
  "The commute" is a massive societal inefficiency. How many hours, how much time (and how much CO2) is just wasted? Those businesses may fail, but the money will go somewhere else, somewhere else that doesn't involve me wasting four hours a day. I occasionaly worked on my commute, but most of the time was wasted, and now I'm free to use the time how I want.
- leetcrew 6y ago
  for me the no commute is huge. I went from putting more than 200 miles a week on my car to barely doing that in a month (and a lot of that is just driving for pleasure). I used to spend $120-150 a month on gas; now I don't even visit a gas station every month. I'm also cooking lunch at home instead of going out several times a week for mediocre takeout. saves me a good chunk of change and I'm eating healthier and tastier food. > Plus the commute is not just dead time, at least for me I usually triage my inbox before I arrive at the office. Now I just waste time and have an extra bowl of cereal it read the internet for half an hour instead of doing anything useful. this one is kinda on you. you get to decide what to do with the extra time. I wake up a little later now to stay up talking and playing video games with my friends that live further west. not very productive, but I value having a slightly more relaxed work week.
  - ghaff 6y ago
    > I'm also cooking lunch at home instead of going out several times a week for mediocre takeout. saves me a good chunk of change and I'm eating healthier and tastier food. I watched a McKinsey presentation last week which, among other things, went into what ways of doing things forced by the pandemic did they want to carry forwards and what they didn't want to carry forward. A couple of things that people most plan to carry forward were increased home cooking and online grocery delivery.

alexbanks 6y ago

I think it's more that the ability to work remotely has been unlocked for pretty much every business that operates online (which, as I type it, sounds kind of crazy that it didn't already work that way). At the very least, for the most part, businesses won't forget that possibility, even if they don't rely on it heavily post-pandemic. We've removed a significant blocker, that doesn't necessarily mean that we've reinvented the office dynamic or anything like that, but we've at least opened up a new channel for some businesses that didn't have it before, which IMO is objective improvement.

watwut 6y ago

The same here. In addition, I see social problems accumulate slowly and the team seems to be failing apart. Interpersonal issues are nit solved until they boil in the home office, in person people were more eager to speak up about issues faster and more often.

goatinaboat 6y ago

Now months later I feel like things are starting to grind a bit and productivity is starting to wane because the "pipe" is starting to dry up. My employer mandated a return to the office about 2 weeks ago. Productivity has declined compared to when we were all WFH for 6 months and I have the stats - pull requests, builds pushed to prod, tickets opened, all are down.

WrtCdEvrydy 6y ago
Yes, but some middle manager gets to claim his paycheck due to having more meetings in the office now.
egsmi 6y ago
This whole thing is so multifaceted I think it’s hard to draw any conclusions from it. In CA, we have COVID and fires so I’m essentially a prisoner in my house. If you locked me in my office, my productivity might go up too. But now that’s school is on and my kids are locked in here too. Productivity goes down. All in all, it’s a bumpy ride.
- mmcnl 6y ago
  Is this a problem though? Is business suffering? Are there metrics on that?
cmwelsh 6y ago
Is it possible that folks substituted their commute for extra work hours? There’s really not much to do, socially, when everything is locked down. Some people might take it as a chance to be a workaholic (with the possible burnout not in mind). In the office, I am pressured by folks walking by into leaving “on time” (they don’t realize I often start later than them).
- jonfromsf 6y ago
  Some people I have talked to are seeing this in their workplaces. They are having to tell the engineers not to work too hard so they don't burn out. Seeing 2+ hours a day of extra work.