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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, cumulativ

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.
- weeksie 6y ago
  You've identified it. We're talking about productivity gains, so that accountant gets as much done as they did before, minus the commute time. At a bare minimum, that's doing 8 hours of work in 8 hours, versus 8 hours of work in 10 hours, or whatever your commute is. People who drive (most people) cannot usually perform economic activity during their commute. Better yet, maybe that accountant figures that they really work for 4-6 hours of the day and the rest is kind of wasted on chitchat or looking busy. The autonomy to quietly get work done in less time will grant that worker even more hours in the day. There may be GDP effects that counterbalance this. Less money spent on gas or at small businesses near the employer. However, as suburbs have more at-home workers, more lunch spots will pop up nearby so I doubt the GDP effects are big. Sure, some might spend their productivity gains enjoying an extra bowl of cereal, but there's nothing wrong with that.
  - saiya-jin 6y ago
    I think the economy and productivity and everything else that makes economy and work tick are way more complex than your simplification to no commute = massive gains for economy, companies and happy new future for everybody is coming. I see it in abundance in every single discussion here and elsewhere - people who hate commute but for whatever bad/stupid reason ended up far far away and were wasting hours every day on it suddenly have extra time and its great. These people keep praising current state as the best invention since fire. Most companies aren't organized around that last time I checked. Maybe its a very US thing and true there on really massive scale. But here in Europe its not like that, not that much at least. Most folks commute 20-50 minutes. That is for 2nd biggest city in the country, smaller are more effective. There are massive issues right now. Physical fitness is rapidly declining. People are going less out, less sun exposure. Amount of mental issues is understandably shooting through the roof (saw some firures about 5x increase in some cases). Economy is going down the toilet, some parts of it will crash very hard, possibly unrecoverably in current generation. These are effects that will be around for very long time even if we have 100% cure for covid tomorrow for 1 cent per dose. Plus what parent wrote is absolutely, 100% true - I see people tired from constant conf calls and full remote. Mailboxes are exploding, it becomes hard to track emails even few weeks old. Brainstormings are mostly gone, people became more robot-like. Whatever you gain from not commuting from that middle of nowhere you live in means nothing compared to all this. For companies and for economies.
- timwaagh 6y ago
  You are free to spend that time however you like. I get to sleep for three hours longer. Needless to say i produce a lot more code these days.

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.
weeksie 6y ago
You've identified it. We're talking about productivity gains, so that accountant gets as much done as they did before, minus the commute time. At a bare minimum, that's doing 8 hours of work in 8 hours, versus 8 hours of work in 10 hours, or whatever your commute is. People who drive (most people) cannot usually perform economic activity during their commute. Better yet, maybe that accountant figures that they really work for 4-6 hours of the day and the rest is kind of wasted on chitchat or looking busy. The autonomy to quietly get work done in less time will grant that worker even more hours in the day. There may be GDP effects that counterbalance this. Less money spent on gas or at small businesses near the employer. However, as suburbs have more at-home workers, more lunch spots will pop up nearby so I doubt the GDP effects are big. Sure, some might spend their productivity gains enjoying an extra bowl of cereal, but there's nothing wrong with that.
- saiya-jin 6y ago
  I think the economy and productivity and everything else that makes economy and work tick are way more complex than your simplification to no commute = massive gains for economy, companies and happy new future for everybody is coming. I see it in abundance in every single discussion here and elsewhere - people who hate commute but for whatever bad/stupid reason ended up far far away and were wasting hours every day on it suddenly have extra time and its great. These people keep praising current state as the best invention since fire. Most companies aren't organized around that last time I checked. Maybe its a very US thing and true there on really massive scale. But here in Europe its not like that, not that much at least. Most folks commute 20-50 minutes. That is for 2nd biggest city in the country, smaller are more effective. There are massive issues right now. Physical fitness is rapidly declining. People are going less out, less sun exposure. Amount of mental issues is understandably shooting through the roof (saw some firures about 5x increase in some cases). Economy is going down the toilet, some parts of it will crash very hard, possibly unrecoverably in current generation. These are effects that will be around for very long time even if we have 100% cure for covid tomorrow for 1 cent per dose. Plus what parent wrote is absolutely, 100% true - I see people tired from constant conf calls and full remote. Mailboxes are exploding, it becomes hard to track emails even few weeks old. Brainstormings are mostly gone, people became more robot-like. Whatever you gain from not commuting from that middle of nowhere you live in means nothing compared to all this. For companies and for economies.
timwaagh 6y ago
You are free to spend that time however you like. I get to sleep for three hours longer. Needless to say i produce a lot more code these days.