30 ms·

Why Working from Home Will Stick [pdf]

• troydavis 6y ago
  > Based on 15,000 survey responses from working age Americans, carried out between May and October 2020, we estimate that one half of paid hours were provided from home during this period. After the pandemic, employers are planning for about 23 percent of paid days to be spent working from home, a four-fold increase relative to before the pandemic. This works out as roughly 2 days a week for the roughly 50% of employees than can work from home.
• WalterGR 6y ago
  I haven’t read all 63 pages, but I’m surprised that the abstract doesn’t mention: All the $$$ that businesses get to save by eliminating or reducing office real estate, including $$$ saved by pushing some of those costs onto employees.
  • news_to_me 6y ago
    Hopefully we can get some legislation to correct for this. It seems like the sort of thing the labor market should balance out eventually, but... the labor market is pretty irrational all over the place, so I wouldn't trust it.
    • mech422 6y ago
      TBH, I don't think companies will fight it - its still cheaper to give an employee a budget and let them kit out a home office then to pay for cubicles, desks, etc. Office furniture is dam expensive! Oh! can't forget conference rooms! Those tables ain't cheap either.
      • news_to_me 6y ago
        I think you're right, but I get the feeling that companies will still come out ahead in the end — and employees will be stuck with some amount of loss.
        • mech422 6y ago
          Perhaps...I agree companies will come out ahead - they always do :-P But I'm hopeful there's room for employees to come ut ahead as well.
      • benibela 6y ago
        Although it might be badly incentivized If they give the employee a budget, it is a wage, and they have to pay social security fees on it (?). If they buy stuff for the company office, it is an expense and tax deducible.
    • Darmody 6y ago
      This is already being talked about in Europe. It'll probably end in some sort of bonus for the employee as they use their own computer powered by their home power supply and in most cases they have to buy extra stuff.
  • chrisseaton 6y ago
    What costs? Even people who work from an office still usually have a home study or office for doing their bills or whatever. Do you mean electricity costs to run your laptop? What does that add up to?
    • ghaff 6y ago
      The main argument--and really the only significant one--is that people choosing to live in dense cities near an urban employer suddenly need a bigger place which is $$$. But I don't actually expect many employers to not have an urban office (assuming they have one currently) for those who want to come in--albeit maybe in a hoteled type of arrangement. But eliminating routine commutes is a big win for most people who choose to take advantage of it.
    • throwaway45349 6y ago
      I live in the UK - very few places in London will have the space for a separate home office + space for family. It will get incredibly expensive if we all need to buy more space (and I'm not having my office setup in my living room forever).
      • varjag 6y ago
        Maybe the employees will be able to buy/lease space in (now emptied out) office buildings!
      • chrisseaton 6y ago
        But you don't need to live in London anymore, due to work from home? So that's not a problem.
        • sinsterizme 6y ago
          So instead of agreeing that there are extra costs to the employees working from home, you argue that they should move to a cheaper city in order to afford a home office. That's definitely... an option. But consider that this is a tradeoff, given that people choose to live in big cities for other reasons than being close to work
  • mech422 6y ago
    "All the $$$ that businesses get to save" This. And not just on office space - all the perks: snacks, on-site gym/child care/etc. Not to mention janitorial/security staff, utilities. I think now companies have tried WFH/Remote, they'll remain open to it in the future.
    • throwaway45349 6y ago
      Very few companies have on-site gyms, snacks and child care. These are competitive advantages, and as long as top-tier SWEs are a sellers market, these businesses will have no choice but to spend money to attract talent. The cost of those things is a drop in the ocean compared to salaries anyway.
      • mech422 6y ago
        >>Very few companies have on-site gyms, snacks and child care. I'm not seeing your point here? it IS still a sellers market, and companies do pay for those things. So its still a savings for them. As for a 'drop in the bucket', I've seen companies try to save money by buying cheaper pens. So I'm sure cheaper rents, utilities, perks, etc. will be considered... edit: grammar
        • throwaway45349 6y ago
          What I mean is that WFH employees will still demand perks, just of a different nature (maybe higher salaries). As long as the market dynamics we have today stick, employers will still be spending money on perks. Just as employers can now access remote employees anywhere in the world, employees can access any company hiring remote.
          • mech422 6y ago
            oh yeah - WFH is not gonna do anything about say signing bonuses or stock options. I just think it has enough cost savings potential that companies will be open to it going forward. I especially like the "employees can access any company.." part, as it gives me a lot more options. Up till this now, it was basically only SV companies and small startups that were open to it.. So I'm looking forward to being able to cast a wider net next time I need to look for work.
  • twodave 6y ago
    It’s arguable whether those are actual savings or not. Those things are all corporate benefits that cost much less for a company to provide once than for each employee to provide for themselves separately. So employees will eventually start demanding compensation for those things, or else there’s inefficiency in the job market that will eventually be erased.
  • canofbars 6y ago
    I have saved an absolute fortune not having to go to the office and having my own kitchen for lunch.
  • refurb 6y ago
    Exactly. Suddenly you’re paying for a place to work. You’re likely giving up space in your own home (for at least part of the day) without any compensation.
• croutonwagon 6y ago
  The problem is multi-faceted. While this is entirely anecdotal I have observed a LOT of time theft by employees. And been asked more than ever to investigate employee behavior (even when I normally try and advise against the approach) Some more egregious than others. While most probably aren’t going to awol for a day at a time I know a LOT of people that now spend working hours doing leisure things. Maybe that’s a substitute for them browsing internet all day and just weren’t busy. But even some of my direct reports will slack significantly more if they think I’m not online. Responses that are normally in minutes take hours etc.I have to now probe for updates etc. Much less time is spent on projects of interest (that also benefit the business) during periods of less “fires”. Instead it’s more bare minimum. I know many try to be understanding (myself included) because many have more than just work to deal with but it would need to be addressed if it’s becomes a norm. Maintaining network and IP security is harder in many sectors. Just look at the SW breaches where m365 tenants seem to be vector. Look at the vectors cropping up. Huge rashes of phishing, people loading up corporate email on personal equipment. Rdp dos and the multiple flaws etc. and even if you have the hardware on lock, home networks are a cesspool. Support teams are getting pinged at all sorts of hours because people are shifting work hours to ones more of convenience (again anecdotal) I see more cultures being more amenable to wfh or flex schedules. But I still see the need for brick and mortar work for certain....job types
  • tjr225 6y ago
    Kind of twisted to be upset with people for working less when productivity has increased and wages have stagnated for fifty years.
    • xiphias2 6y ago
      Most of the difference in value was captured by banks and central banks giving out low interest loans. I think it will revert in the next 15 years though.
  • TameAntelope 6y ago
    Caring about the specific hours an employee is working rather than the quality of their output is something I hope dies along with mandatory physical presence in an office.
• usremane 6y ago
  Work from home for people living by themselves away from family (separated by countries) gets depressing and will most likely impact productivity at work.
  • mech422 6y ago
    While I fit the profile you mention...After 20 years WFH, I can't say I find it depressing. YMMV, but I think its how you do it. The lockdowns have probably made WFH seem a lot more isolating (no working from hacker spaces, coffe shops, etc.)
  • canofbars 6y ago
    Possibly why I haven't found wfh at all a problem like others here. I live in a house with 4 other people so its not at all lonely.
• NestedLoopGoBrr 6y ago
  I really hope it doesn’t. I miss the office. Workplace environments prevent myself from socially isolating beyond weekends at best — I know I’m not alone in that.
  • aisengard 6y ago
    There will always be jobs with offices. There just may be fewer of them, which is a good thing, because it means there are more jobs that allow for flexibility of location, which benefits those who are disadvantaged in where they happen to choose to live.
  • devoutsalsa 6y ago
    I miss parts of the office. But I sure as hell don’t miss commuting, staying until the of end of the day because I feel like I need to, and being forced to wear pants.
    • tjr225 6y ago
      There are benefits to working remotely- nobody is questioning that.
  • tjr225 6y ago
    I’m with you in regards to missing the office. I posted this before but I wonder how many of the newly WFH are merely in the honeymoon phase of remote work. We should have flexibility however.
    • thebigman433 6y ago
      Yea I personally think a lot of the WFH hype is just people wanting to do it because times are stressful and its still new. I have a feeling after the pandemic is over and times seem more "normal", many people will want to return to work because it can provide a decent social setting throughout the day. Hopefully there will be flexibility both ways
    • ghaff 6y ago
• sputknick 6y ago
  I think WFH continues until a company misses financial numbers for a quarter, or a competitor brings their people back into the office, or performance slips. This won't last beyond that.
  • dehrmann 6y ago
    I think it lasts until a startup (not necessarily in tech) dethrones an incumbent because working in-person helped with vision, alignment, and performance. My hunch is that WFH projects are less ambitious and have less collaboration.
    • altgeek 6y ago
      ^This Everyone gets into "heads down" mode, "get tickets" done mode, and the big picture gets missed when everyone is scattered with 100% WFH. Also, hiring new engineers with 100% WFH has been an total nightmare. I think that 3 days in-office is "just right"
      • InsaneOstrich 6y ago
        We did 3 days-in office before the pandemic and it was great. Working from home all the time feels like being under house arrest.
  • kamaal 6y ago
    Absolutely. I remember doing a project sometime back for a whole year entirely out of a war room. I'd imagine it would take 2.5+ years without that sort of close collaboration. WFH ends the day your competitions beats you a few years/month in 'Time to market'.
• konjin 6y ago
  One thing I don't see mentioned is the class action lawsuits that will be incoming for unsafe working environments. I haven't gotten the flu once last year, yet in open offices I got it like clockwork at the end of fall and at the start of spring. If covid is dangerous enough to lock down society yet is only x5 as deadly as bad flu seasons open offices are literal murder.
  • Smaug123 6y ago
    Did you really get the flu twice a year like clockwork? That must put you in like the top 0.01% of flu-getters; you have my sympathy.
    • dehrmann 6y ago
      A lot of people refer to the common cold and flu interchangeably, but they're very different, and it's usually just a cold.
      • disgruntledphd2 6y ago
        I used to do this, and then I got the flu. I was unable to function for 2-3 days (as in, I would fall asleep if I attempted to read a book) and was pretty rough for a week after. Flu != cold.
  • throwaway45349 6y ago
    > If covid is dangerous enough to lock down society yet is only x5 as deadly as bad flu seasons open offices are literal murder. Flu is only deadly for a very small segment of society, though.
    • konjin 6y ago
      As is Covid.
      • throwaway45349 6y ago
• AndrewKemendo 6y ago
  I've been 100% remote and run remote teams since 2014 and I promise that it won't stick for the broader society. Here's why: 1. Socializing is the primary activity that happens at work for the vast majority of workers. The gal or guy coming by your desk to "check in" or "see how your weekend was" etc... is literally where they find their social outlets and personal connections. 2. Managers like to be able to watch their direct reports because it makes them feel more in control than they are 3. The commuting routine, even if it's a nightmare, offers a sense of normalcy that most people have gotten used to and in a weird way rely on for grounding. 4. For a huge swath of Americans at least, work is an escape from the drudgery of the home. To truly work from home 100% of the time you have to be a master at controlling yourself and your ability to be distracted. Most people don't have this control and need a framework to insert themselves into. Add to that the contextual dimension of an "other" place that is a world apart from your home life and you have something that allows for a depressurization for most people.
  • zabzonk 6y ago
    > The commuting routine, even if it's a nightmare, offers a sense of normalcy that most people have gotten used to and in a weird way rely on for grounding. You have obviously never been on the Tube at rush-hour in London. All it offers is a sense of stress and anger.
    • mrcartmenez 6y ago
      Weirdly grounding stress and anger
      • nine_k 6y ago
        Undergrounding, even. The 25 minutes of commute in NYC subway, even packed (but not London-packed, though) are my 25 minutes of uninterrupted reading, or thinking, or otherwise being alone and on my own, paradoxically. I miss it.
        • ameister14 6y ago
• DC1350 6y ago
  WFH makes the new grad experience miserable if you go to college somewhere far from where you grew up. I’m graduating soon and the only place I have geographic ties to is my home town where I tried very hard to get away from forever. Everyone I know from college is scattering all over the continent. Does anyone have tips for choosing where to live as a remote worker, or how to make friends as a young person in a new city without an office? I’m feeling pretty lost. I don’t think I would ever accept a job that isn’t promising a return to the office as soon as possible
  • fartcannon 6y ago
    Well, pick a big city? While it will definitely happen, it's unhealthy to befriend only coworkers. Learn how to make friends outside of your office life. That way your employer can't use your social life against you leaving. Trust me, after the pandemic, when the daily grind kicks in and your office life and daily commute drains every ounce of energy, you'll be happy to WFH.
    • DC1350 6y ago
      > Well, pick a big city? I know. I guess it’s just choice paralysis.
      • fermentation 6y ago
        Making friends in a new city is really hard even without covid. Anecdotally I found meetup helped me out a lot. After a few weeks of awkward gatherings I finally found people I clicked pretty well with. Forcing yourself to go is hard though.
        • thekyle 6y ago
          What types of meetups did you find worked best?
          • fartcannon 6y ago
• ttul 6y ago
  All of the tech CEOs I talk to have plans to downsize their offices. All of them. Employee surveys strongly indicate a desire to work remotely as a permanent option, with the office being for meetings. The OpEx on office space is significant - 10-15% of salary costs. So getting rid of the office or reducing its size and cost is like cutting pay by perhaps 5-7%. That’s a big deal.
  • pram 6y ago
    Yeah this has to be long-term catastrophic for commercial real estate, which was already on the rocks. My previous company commissioned/leased and furnished an entire 12 story building in 2019, and now it's practically abandoned. Who is going lease such a thing afterwards? Seems grim to me.
    • konjin 6y ago
      Same thing as old industrial buildings: artists, then gentrification. "This is the old converted office of Microsoft. In these very rooms people used to write the operating system that used to run the world."
    • ttul 6y ago
      I’m a party of one, but I definitely won’t be renewing my lease in November. The floor above and below are already empty with no sign of interest. This is in a typical, formerly pricy “brick and timber” loft office area of a tech heavy city.
• stupidcar 6y ago
  If my employer tries to remain 100% remote I will leave and go somewhere with an office. I find working from home too lonely, and I detest spending hours of every day on video calls. Of course, I'm just a single data point, and perhaps not representative, but I'm also generally less social than other people, so I find it hard to believe there won't be a lot of people feeling the same. I'm sure that there will be a much greater prevalence and acceptable of working from home after the pandemic, but I'm equally sure that there will be a gradual but significant shift back to large numbers of people working in offices. The only way this won't happen is if there genuinely is a major uplift in productivity from remote work, and I'm incredibly sceptical about that. Self-reported improvements in productivity are worthless, IMO.
  • ghaff 6y ago
    I suspect that even if you go back to an office, you'll generally still spend hours of your days on video calls in most places because others won't be in the office. And, TBH, I already was because I work with people all over the world.
    • erik_seaberg 6y ago
      Half of my Google meetings were over video because we didn't want to blow a half hour getting to the other end of the Mountain View campus.
      • ghaff 6y ago
        Yes, it's a very small company view of the world that everyone was a few minute walk from each other. I would sometimes walk into co-workers now and then but I haven't been in a situation where I was really co-located with people I worked with for years.
  • lostdog 6y ago
    Where are you even going to take your video calls from? Everywhere I've worked constantly runs out of conference rooms. Are you going to take your video calls from your desk, and disrupt the work of 30 people around you every time you have a meeting?
• wernercd 6y ago
  Working from home will stick FOR SOME... but not for others. I have a long commute and don't miss it... i do miss the books/podcasts and I miss the office. I hope we go to a 3 day home, 2 day office but we'll see. Managers like having butts in seats. we'll see how it goes long term
  • altgeek 6y ago
    So true. The big (top 5) global bank I worked for loved butts-in-seats. I've finally arrived at a place where I refuse anything that requires more than 3 days in-office.
    • wernercd 6y ago
      I work at a bank and they had remote tools in place that were very flexible... but it was still "be in the office" 5 days a week. The pay and perks are too good to pass up and I didn't have "remote experience" before - which I have a year of now. I'm still enjoying the job so we'll see how things go over the next, say, year.
• altgeek 6y ago
  I feel that the 71% approach (in-office 5 out of 7 days) is, in general, too much commuting (NYC area). But, the current pandemic's 0% is not optimal either. Too much is lost in translation from our early-to-mid stage startup that has definitely shown negative impact to our ability to deliver. Before the pandemic, we took a mon-weds approach which was the right balance. Now, performance-wise, it's obvious when people aren't doing the work by looking at their commits. Fully in-office or 100% remote won't mask that.
• chasd00 6y ago
  Whether it’s healthy or not teams and slack are just fine for socializing to me. I’ve been wfh 100% for about 6 years now. I’m as productive as I’ve ever been if not more so. Lunch is walking to the kitchen and back not an hour long ordeal. It kind of boggles my mind to think about driving somewhere to do the same thing but in a different place.
• condour75 6y ago
  I anticipate a hybrid model where most deep work is from home, but certain weeks have employees gather, like for project kickoffs or critical junctures later in the process. Only problem with that is the lack of a stable routine.
• condour75 6y ago
  Another factor: office space is expensive. In a past job I remember seeing that the cost for our midtown office was 3000 per month per employee. A company might drastically reduce their costs by having an office that only accommodates some fraction of the staff
• cooleddy89 6y ago
  Many of these debates about work from home remind me of the arguments about “online banking” or “e-commerce” in the early internet days. One side argues that the interpersonal relationships are critical and can never be replicated fully online. The other points at the convenience factor and claims a higher productivity for all involved. The truth as always is somewhere in the middle. I do most of my banking online, but still visit financial institutions for important events (mortgages, large checks, etc.) It does seem to me slightly odd that some people working in “tech”, aka an industry built on disruption, are adamant that WFH can never work. If anything, remote employees are a goldmine of valuable data that can be tracked. Wondering if a meeting is valuable? In person you have to gauge people’s thoughts or rely on surveys. For online meetings just see (anonymously) in real time who’s firing up their slack or multitasking. Obviously there’s a extensive employee privacy issues, but the bottom line is that we have all the fundamental technologies needed to provide as much data on remote employees as we do in the office.
  • knicknic 6y ago
    Employees will just slack on another device. A phone or something. I haven’t been in a bank in over 5 years. I have refinanced my home twice, and will probably do so again without stepping inside an office. The only reason I see to have an in person bank is if I wanted a safety deposit box, or frequently needed to get money changed.
    • ghaff 6y ago
      For certain types of large transactions, identity verification still sometimes makes it easier to go into an office if doing so is convenient enough. That said, I had a large transaction I needed to do fairly early in the pandemic. I'd gone into an office to do an earlier iteration on this but I really didn't want to do so in April. I was able to do it over the phone. I remarked to a friend of mine who is regularly involved in such things that "A lot of orgs are discovering they don't actually need to do their traditional processes" and she fully agreed that a lot of people are discovering they don't actually need to do everything they thought they did.
  • ntsplnkv2 6y ago
• ddingus 6y ago
  I have been way more productive. Hard to imagine going back to worse performance. And it takes less time overall too. Total win! I do go to the office when physical things have to happen. Our business is a mix of software, hardware, service. And I time shift physical stuff to o'dark 30 in the morning, so there is some overlap, but not much. And sometimes a whole day is needed, or a long one. Frankly, I no longer care because most days are home days and I have a nice place to work setup just the way I like it. The biggest benefit, outside the commute savings and other easy items mentioned here is no longer worrying about an emergency or crunch of some kind. Shit happens. Ok fine. We all just step right up and deal. Whatever it takes. And we are ready for it, nicely charged up, ready to nail it. On the social front, a bunch of us in my industry ended up on Zoom. We miss all the shows and some of us miss the travel (I don't and was high travel), but we connect now more than ever! SMS, Skype, Zoom, email just work! Frankly, I know my industry peers way better than I did before and things like mentoring or being mentored, help finding everyone a gig, all are improved. Like I said, net win for my niche. I rather doubt there will be much of a discussion about a return to before, other than travel. And on that front, I poured a lot of time into eliminating the need for it. It will prove to be a killer investment and the time freed up made doing it possible without also cutting into home life. And the little things matter. We have a young one in our home again. One of my kids fell into drugs. Sucks. I am raising my grandchild. Normally, I would find that depressing, but I can interact a lot more, be present, and those things do not take much time, but also may need to happen at the right time. Which 10 minutes can have a huge impact! At best, it all is a modest time shift and or longer work day when needed and balance is good otherwise. Count me as a fan. Who knew! I went into this pandemic very critical and a bit depressed and worried. Many shut down. We have thrived. It is good.
• swamiji 6y ago
  I need to suck up to my boss and coddle him or her - so I need to work at the office. I just got fired in-spite of exceptional work but I think working remotely had something to do with it.
• terrencewells 6y ago
  To those who prefer the office due to a feeling of isolation. Do you think WFH during an international pandemic influences your preferences?
• terrencewells 6y ago
  To those who prefer returning to office due to feeling isolated. Do you think your preferences could be influenced by the pandemic as well? Have you thought about how WFH could feel different with normal freedoms that come with a world without COVID-19?
  • Barrin92 6y ago
    I've done work from home pre-covid. Absolutely hated it after a month. My sleep schedule drifts off, I don't get to see coworkers, had to spent way too much time around relatives etc, I felt like I was trapped in that cabin from The Shining. It's just way harder to organise going out for a drink after work if you're already at home. If you're in the office and it's a 10 min walk to the bar you just go. There's absolutely no spontaneity in working from home. At work you can have a conversation over dinner, or over a coffee or a smoke, it just doesn't work over Zoom. Covid has been hell for my social life and probably at least 80% of people in my social circle feel the same. I honestly don't think any of this will persist.
    • rhodysurf 6y ago
      Counterpoint. If you set string routines and boundaries, your first point is no longer valid. The only reason your sleep schedule drifts is due to having no hard routine, which you can create for yourself. For instance, I have always walked my dog fir 45 minutes before work and 45 mins right after work even pre covid. So I still have that routine start that forces me to not to let my sleep schedule bleed or work to bleed into my free time
• tracyhenry 6y ago
  As a grad student who has the freedom to choose wfh or going to work place: being at home all the time doesn't really work for me. Although I spend maybe half of the time working at home, at workplace I can enjoy my lunch with colleagues without cooking (possibly free if it was a company), work in an environment that is less distracted and avoid being with my family 24/7.
• phendrenad2 6y ago
  I miss standup meetings where people actually stand. My experience has been: Physical standup meetings that have exceeded 25 minutes: 00%. Virtual "standup" meetings that have exceeded 25 minutes: 60-70%.
• ryanSrich 6y ago
  I doubt it. Maybe those that haven’t been remote never saw this side of businesses, but as someone that will only work remotely, the options pre-Covid were exceedingly thin. Almost no public companies allowed 100% remote work. Almost none. Honestly I can’t even name a single company that did, but I’m sure there is at least one right? Also, it should be noted that when I say remote I mean they allow anyone, literally anyone that works at the company to work from Home. Not some one off anomaly for high performers (which I know companies like Google or Microsoft have allowed under certain circumstances). Why companies have, and I think will continue to be , anti-remote and anti-worker is because of nepotism, elitism, and an over reliance on physical queues for communication. It’s similar to how Silicon Valley is becoming Wall Street, with pay (often in clout) to play apps (ex: Clubhouse, which feels more like Harvard than an early social network - it’s also painfully uncool) and how they mirror closed minded and closed off business operations — these businesses and their yuppy middle managers rely on a physical presence to coerce employees into drinking the kool aid. My hope is that employees start to reject these practices and instead force employers to accept remote work, but I’m doubtful since the leverage is mostly in the hands of business - think of the power FAANG companies have. Once they go back to forced commute work, everyone else will see it as an opportunity to do the same.
  • arfatsalman 6y ago
    > Almost no public companies allowed 100% remote work. Almost none. Honestly I can’t even name a single company that did, but I’m sure there is at least one right? Automattic?
    • adventurer 6y ago
      They're not public yet.
      • anticensor 6y ago
        Do you imply that investors care about presenteeism?
• missedthecue 6y ago
  It seems unlikely to me that the same work-from-home that's been a disaster for all levels of education has been a stunning success for professional work.
• woutr_be 6y ago
  I work for a large multinational bank with close to 100K employees, and while especially in Asia, people have been working from home for almost a year, I fully expected the business to force everyone to come back to the office as soon as possible. But much to my surprise, we recently learned that we'll be allowed to continue working from home for up to 3 days a week. In a recent survey, most people preferred to work from home, but also missed the human interaction from time to time. And it looks like there was no negative impact when people started working from home.
• idownvoted 6y ago
  As it already was established, that most social distancing as well as most Work-From-Home (WFH) are being done by High Income Earners (HIE), one can read the papers results quite differently: Yes, Quarantine measures propulsed WFH. But only for those which jobs allow it. Also: The rate of „investments in physical and human capital enabling WFH“ will be highly aligned with HEIs and will be much lower per worker the lower you get in the income scale (worse connection, worse hardware, worse software, more requirements to keep minuscule track of working hours). So a) these „investements“ are either done or will compound for HIEs b) income disparities are being increased massively c) the low-income end of WFH will suck significantly more than the high-income end. And maybe even worse in terms of pay and conditions than the offline version of same job (more ability for bosses to micro-manage, commoditize and near-shore you). „Third, many workers report being more productive at home“ d) again, this will highly concentrate around HIEs, because HIEs will be more likely to bring the most important „investment in WFH“ with them: Office Space at home.
• fredliu 6y ago
  Beside the lack of social interactions between co-workers, the biggest problem of WFH for me is the difficulty for collaborative discussion, mostly due to the lack of a usable whiteboarding software that doesn't suck. Any recommendation that works for you would be really appreciated.
• bryanrasmussen 6y ago
  Bigger companies that dominate their industry and own their offices will probably return to onsite. If those buildings are really nice, as they tend to be for companies of this sort, they will really want to go back. Companies that have a component to their office space that requires onsite work - for example manufacturing companies with an IT office somewhere on site or big media companies will probably return to onsite. companies in which management is predominantly older might return to working onsite - supposing that more of the older management will see this last year as a deviance and working onsite a return to the normalcy they want. (obviously some older management will be able to see the possibilities but, as an old guy myself, I find that most older people are not as quick to change as I am) companies in which a dominant force of the management would prefer to work onsite will do so. Some people like to work onsite and if they are in management you will do as management wants. finally I know of one company that has recently had a bunch of high profile moves and are thinking it is caused by working from home and the lessening of social ties this implies.
• petejames 6y ago
  > Our survey evidence says that about 25 percent of all full work days will be supplied from home after the pandemic ends, compared with just 5 percent before. 25% seems reasonable to expect given not all jobs are suitable for remote. Personally I think this is a tiny change compared to the changes coming with AI and automation.
• wqTJ3jmY8br4RWa 6y ago
  Remote work may be possible for coding type folks. But for real business, especially around sales, relationship building, decision-making, problem-solving...I just don't see how this will be feasible.
• anonytrary 6y ago
  This is ironic coming from Stanford, who is currently fucking up every single aspect of their handling of covid, as many Stanford students will attest to. Colleges are basically scammers at this point. The whole benefit of going to college is being able to meet like-minded smart, young people like yourself. Remote college isn't a thing and never will be. College is about people, as much as it is about learning. The unfortunate K-12 and college students are learning this the hard way. Personally, I don't think that remote is here to stay. I think working will be augmented by remote tools, but it cannot be replaced by remote. Humans just aren't robots and they need community, and work is the biggest source of community after college. To me, online college is a complete joke and is not what students after high school need. It's just not healthy. Humans need interaction in person, and they do their best work when they are working with people who they see on a weekly basis, especially young 20-somethings. This whole thing is becoming evident as people are starting to really just not care for the lockdowns at this point. Parks in SF are a complete shitshow because people want to be out and about. You will never be able to force them to be purely remote, and after covid, if your company is purely remote, you will not attract the best young talent, period. You might attract older folks, but you know you want young talent. This whole thing makes no sense.
  • ekianjo 6y ago
    > Humans need interaction in person, and they do their best work when they are working with people who they see on a weekly basis, especially young 20-somethings. I dont if you have ever been in uni but in my time it was all about putting 200 students in huge amphitheaters with one lecturer not caring at all about their audience. It has to be the worst way to learn anything.
    • ghaff 6y ago
      For me at least, university, at the end of the day, had very little to do with going to lectures.
  • js8 6y ago
    Maybe good idea would be to have a community decoupled from business? In any case, you could still have offices as a place for people meeting face2face and do the most "thinking" or "creative" work at home, it's not mutually exclusive.
• _Understated_ 6y ago
  For me, the issue is not black and white: it's not "we're all gonna work from home" / "we're all gonna work from the office"... it's being given the choice based on my circumstances. If I was king of the world I'd tell businesses (where feasible - warehouses still need people to be onsite, small businesses may not have the money for the tools for example) that they need to be able to offer home working for those that want/need it and office working for those that want/need it. With that comes the correct tools and equipment, e.g. video conferencing, desktop sharing, telepresence, laptops, whatever. I have been working remotely for several years with only occasional visits to an office and it works for me. I would hate to have to travel every day to an office but I like the occasional visit. I get enough interaction with my family and friends (current COVID restrictions not withstanding ofc) but I have a separate room upstairs where I work so I don't have to sit in the kitchen. It's horses for courses imo... the future needs to be flexibility-based.
• johndoe42377 6y ago
  Remote, like almost everything else, is just not for everyone. For some people, which are usually called "introverts" and similar names, remote is a bliss, and for people like Torvalds, it worked well for decades. The only real problem is for mostly useless management positions, who will have difficulty to justify their necessity without in-person social signalling bullshit. For really capable people a simple and straightforward text-based workflow is all what is required. Again, the development of Linux kernel would be the use case. My bet is that the actual developers of the Pfizer vaccine do not need any bullshit meetings either. One more time - for some of us not facing idiots in person is a bliss, and we are capable of writing communication at the level way beyond what is required for most jobs or business relations. And it is not Slack and other synchronous bullshit. Async email and tickets will do.
• jo23562 6y ago
  Everyone seems to forget the most important factor in this whole debate: we aren't in a "mass social experiment in working from home", we're in a "mass social experiment in working in isolation during a pandemic". They're very much not the same thing, for a whole host of reasons. Just a few examples of how they differ: * higher stress from living through a pandemic (and everything around it) gives us reason to set ourselves up to reduce stress in ways that normally might be unnecessary. * having no alternative to working from home makes it easier to ignore the downsides, because it's not a downside when there's no alternative without it * childcare / care responsibilities means many of our home lives are totally different right now from normal, so not even comparable to normal * consistent working from home by everyone (on a given team) tends to be more inclusive because ignoring remote people means ignoring everyone so we work hard not to do it. It's much easier to accidentally get lazy about ensuring inclusivity when at least some people are in the office (and I've seen this first-hand pre-COVID, never maliciously). * no alternative for many employers means they accept any (if any) productivity losses of work from home because it is that or else lose all productivity (which is obviously worse for business) To be clear, I'm not arguing remote work will/won't stick in the future. I'm just arguing that nearly all of this debate is moot right now, because most people are basing it on an "experiment" with far too many variables different from the reality of remote work during a normal world.
  • Blarger 6y ago
    Thanks for mentioning this point. We are living in an exceptionally constraining time, and while it does give some insights about what is possible it also allows us to ignore much about what we already know about the dynamics of working from office vs. remote work. The decisions to become fully remote, or to go back to working from office with hybrid options will be made at a high level within companies - and which is better for the company is really the question. I speculate most go hybrid and it will just be time until there is a quorum of work from office people. Before the pandemic, many people who could have and perhaps even wanted to work from home didn't because that would mean they are missing something at work. Imagine scenarios where people who are working in office are having a virtual conference with a remote employee, then when the call is hung up they don't stop talking or working on the problem. Decisions or tweaks are made in office after the official meeting and remote workers have less say unless they have a hell of a backbone. One of our better developers committed suicide over the summer. He told me days earlier that work from home was not for him and that he missed going out after work. We planned an outdoor outing for the next week but he was gone by then. One time when I went into office over the summer another co-worker was there, in tears, and said "I'm not a homebody". Personally, I'm handling it a little better and didn't realize how bad it is for some, but even I'd surely quit if I'm not allowed to go into office if this ends. I'll solve my problem with working from home by getting a different job. How many employees will companies lose if they go fully remote over having a hybrid option? My guess is that remote only companies and work from office only companies will lose more headcount than hybrid; therefore, hybrid is likely the goto. A bunch of workers working in office have a competitive advantage over remote workers; therefor, you go to work to compete. End result is a hybrid model that leans heavily towards work from office. I'm a 99% of success is showing up kind of person and I really liked it when I worked 9-6pm in office, nobody bugged me when I was working, nobody bugged me after hours. Now people who are Away all day bug me at 7pm and passive aggressively ask "Are you working today?" I want to respond "Yeah, I worked 10 hours today, bozo! What about you?" Don't get me started on the pings, ping ping ping ping. People used to see you are working and give you time but now they just ping to their hearts content and even being in DND does not stop them from @'ing you several times in a room full of 50 people.
• jl2718 6y ago
  I think they’re missing the point that remote work is just another step in the direction of a massive trend toward distributed work. If you work for a big global megacorp, your entire life is passive online meetings with way too many people invited from across the world and across the hall. You go into work just to sit in a conference room with one other person or fight for a private phone booth by yourself, but inevitably take calls at your desk and annoy everybody else around you. You have an advanced degree in whatever, but your workplace resembles a multilingual call center and you’ve never spoken to your cubicle neighbors. There are social spaces to make the place look hip, but the latest trend is always social avoidance. They’ll allow 1 or 2 days per week remote and people will make is 4 or 5. The effect of the pandemic is to normalize remote, but more importantly, scatter all teams so that in-person is impossible. I don’t think productivity is measurable in an environment of massive economic chaostimulus, but commercial real estate costs are, and now you have high-salary workers arguing against their own best defense from offshore outsourcing. Now that offshore workers can join any team directly, managers will dedicate their budgets to packing their org charts with cheap workers to justify promotion to second level. I expect a lot of visa workers will return with their higher-salary jobs secured remotely, and engineering will gradually shift to asian hours. So this all just looks like acceleration to me, nothing new.
• rorroe53 6y ago
  I think hybrid approach will be the best for most people. It's good to see co-workers regularly, maybe once or twice a week max. It's nice, though not a requirement for tasks that require high level of collaboration, and at least for me helps avoiding certain feeling of detachment from my work. However, I would never want to return to working from office 100% of the time. When I really need to concentrate alone, I find home to be much better for that. Having to go to office every working day is also way too limiting in terms of where I can live - the hybrid model allows people much more freedom to choose where they live, long commute is perfectly fine if you only do it once or twice a week.
• azizsaya 6y ago
  People here are tending towards a hybrid model. I don't think the hybrid model is optimum, Companies who take decisive steps towards remotely-only or office-only defaults will be better off, as the tools and culture will will adapt better.
• avipars 6y ago
  Depends on the field of work
• philip142au 6y ago
  Why so many pages to say this?? Omg
• roca 6y ago
  One effect this paper doesn't talk about is how remote work can snowball. For many people the main reason to go into the office is to meet other people on your team. The more they choose to work from home, the less their team members are incentivized to leave home. I've seen this cycle lead to everyone working from home all the time. Organizations can try to set policies to avoid this, e.g. require everyone to be in the office Tuesday through Thursday. But then you start to wonder why you're paying for office space that you only use 3 days a week. You can try to save the money with hot-desking etc but that has its own effects.
• JoeAltmaier 6y ago
  Hm. While work-from-home can be very productive, there's a bias when you mix work-at-office and work-from-home. The remote folks are left out of things happening in the office. Folks not aware of this, and thus doing nothing to mitigate it, will quickly conclude the remote workers must come back to the office. Rather than work on a hybrid model. Because that's easier.
• Fnoord 6y ago
  I really miss the daily commute which counts as physical exercise, a mental switch from family mode to work mode, and a work environment where like minded people get together in physical space, able to share and communicate easily. While I'm sure some work and some appointments can (and remain) be done remotely, and I am glad its good for the environment, the current way of life (although it is necessary) is not my cup of tea.
• ameister14 6y ago
  Paradoxically, I think one of the reasons companies will go back to the office is because a lot of administrative staff has been shown to be completely unnecessary in work from home environments. There are systems of great social and political power in administrative staffing and they don't want to be cut out, so they'll push to go back to the office. It's happened in a lot of places already.
• timdaub 6y ago
  Funnily enough, I started to notice the sentiment of wanting to go back to the office this month with friends. When I started working from home a few years pre-covid, I also had the loneley-blues after a year or so. It's wasn't nice and, in fact, lead me to try working from an office again. And what can I say. While yes, when I moved back in the office I loved socializing more, I soon became miserable again. See, suddenly I couldn't lie down on my couch anymore for a quick rest. I couldn't "let my self go". Meditate. I had much more fast food and started to feel stressed and sick. So I went back to home office. And indeed it's true what another commentor said here: WFH during covid is much different from WFH in normal times as me and other WFH friends made it a habbit of working together. You can visit cafe, work from park benches or convert your parent's place into your mega office while they're on vacation. Ultimately, I ended up renting a room for myself. Now, you say it's an office. I say it's a cosy room that's 10min bike ride away from my home... I wouldn't call it office, but also not home. PS: Maybe it's what some people call an Attelier.
• dustinmoris 6y ago
  Anyone who works for a company with more than 150 employees has already worked remotely before COVID, even if they didn't realise.
• mobb_solo 6y ago
  I for one, am at LEAST 50% less effective with people if I am not face-to-face with them. [ONE reason why ] I'm convinced that this whole pandemic thang is a conspiracy against ME, personally. I do not make friends online --never mind participate in social media-- due to the simple Fact that I just don't seem to translate over the wire. Only my closest friends seen to avoid being offended by my text messages..
• cs702 6y ago
  It seems many commenters here have not bothered to click the link and read the paper, or even the abstract. NO ONE is claiming or predicting that everyone or even a majority of people will work from home. The authors, from three different universities, surveyed 15,000 Americans and documented a permanent shift towards more remote work going forward, going from 5% of work days used for remote work pre-pandemic to 25% of work days used for remote work post-pandemic. If you think for even a moment how much solo work must be done by individuals at most companies (think: one-on-one sales calls, proposal writing, spreadsheet modeling, coding, design work, writing employee reviews, updating accounting/ERP data, etc.), the authors' findings make complete sense. Here's the abstract: > We survey 15,000 Americans over several waves to investigate whether, how, and why working from home will stick after COVID-19. The pandemic drove a mass social experiment in which half of all paid hours were provided from home between May and October 2020. Our survey evidence says that about 25 percent of all full work days will be supplied from home after the pandemic ends, compared with just 5 percent before. We provide evidence on five mechanisms behind this persistent shift to working from home: diminished stigma, better-than-expected experiences working from home, investments in physical and human capital enabling working from home, reluctance to return to pre-pandemic activities, and innovation supporting working from home. We also examine some implications of a persistent shift in working arrangements: First, high-income workers, especially, will enjoy the perks of working from home. Second, we forecast that the post-pandemic shift to working from home will lower worker spending in major city centers by 5 to 10 percent. Third, many workers report being more productive at home than on business premises, so post-pandemic work from home plans offer the potential to raise productivity as much as 2.4 percent.
• ilaksh 6y ago
  The strange part to me is that people seem to be completely discounting the possibilities of socializing online. It's not the same as in person but it is not nothing. And better/more confortable VR/AR gear coming out in the next few years is probably going to be a game changer. And if you want more water-cooler interactions online or whatever there are ways to facilitate that with software. Also there is nothing about remote-first that precludes people from meeting in person on a regular basis.
• arcbyte 6y ago
  I imagine managers must also be worried about losing employees by requiring them to return. Im not going back to an office 5 days a week. If they make that demand, I'm out. My guess is many others are in the same boat and managers will be careful in how they reintroduce office time to avoid large scale turnover.
• victor106 6y ago
  The problem for US/UK/EU employees is greater than ever with things going remote. If everyone is remote, then a person in India is the same as a person in US/UK/EU and the two differentiating factors are 1.Cost 2.Talent This puts a very big burden on employees in the US/UK/EU in that they have to increase their talent to match their offshore counterparts while at the same time fighting to make sure their salaries don’t go down
• troydavis 6y ago
  I'm a little disappointed at the percentage of comments which extrapolate personal anecdotes into societal behavior, and without addressing the data in this study - even to poke holes in the methodology, which is totally fair game (though IMO quite good, especially for what they had to work with). The whole point of a 15,000-person survey like this is so that we're not all stuck guessing based on our own experiences. Obviously one can argue that what employers were telling employees they would do post-COVID as of October 2020 is not what employers will actually do (and give reasons why!), but it's still likely to be more accurate than any individual's speculation (including mine!). In particular, the survey addressed 2 topics that a lot of comments seem to not incorporate: 1. At population, employer, and individual level, it's not either/or. The paper title doesn't do a good job of conveying this. All 3 entities seem open to everything on the continuum, based on their employees, work type, and so on. Statements like "I promise that it won't stick for the broader society" imply a more binary outcome than the survey results predict (and maybe than anything predicts). The survey concludes that, of the roughly 50% of employees who can work from home, they'll average 2 days per week (or 23% of total hours worked). IOW, WFH doesn't need to move everyone all the time in order to have massive effects. Some people changing some of the time is enough. 2. Employer plans vs. employee desires. Lots of commenters state their preferences and then try to generalize from that, but.. the survey captured that too. To just skim those results, scroll to page 60 for employee-desired vs. employer-planned % of working days. Gist: if WFH is roughly the same productivity, employers plan ~22% of days and employees desire ~45% of days to be WFH. In all productivity cases, employees preferred a higher % of days to be WFH than employers. Page 43 shows answers to the pay raise or cut employees would take in order to work from home 2-3 days per week. It also breaks down the change in perception about WFH by demographic cohort on page 55. For example, those with no children and those with children at home both had significant improvements in their perception of WFH. Those with children had more improvement in perception than those without children. As the study wrote: "This 23 percent figure [post-COVID WFH as a % of full time days] is almost five times larger than in the pre-pandemic time use data, but still half as large as what workers want in a post-pandemic world." Of course, there's a place for speculation and anecdotes. This paper - and hopefully soon, more studies like it - should let us evolve from speculating based on only our personal experience to thinking about its methodology and results.
• unstatusthequo 6y ago
  Here’s why I think it won’t: commercial real estate and what happens of that industry crashes and the retirement and pension funds that are heavily invested in Comm RE are decimated.
• mrwoggle 6y ago
  So, let's say after COVID, people start getting back to their cubicles and continue to crank out office hours just as before. Except you, you continue working from home (after some convincing arguments to your boss/management that you are just as effective WFH). How long will you last? Do you coworkers get jealous (although that could have done the same).
• enriquto 6y ago
  Oh hell. If I cannot go back to work when this shit ends, I'll quit everything and ask for work in a macdonalds.
• DonutAtwork 6y ago
  It should because honestly, why not if it could make employees more productive. Yes, only if they could be more productive. Although WFH will more likely become a hybrid rather than full WFH as work commitments always demand some sort of work outside. I do agree with what this articles' final outcomes although largely much of it will depend on demographic culture, beliefs of management etc. as well.
• offtop5 6y ago
  I see it's sticking around for strictly senior level employees. Junior level, and management will have to stay on site, just because almost no one has the maturity to stay on task working remote at their first job. I'm seeing full remote jobs at 200k or so. I reckon I could move to a small city, live off 60k. Then retire at 40.
• 0xTJ 6y ago
  I absolutely hate working form home. I'm less productive and enjoyed life less.
• ancient_art 6y ago
  We'd have to be working from home in the first place for it to stick! We're around 10 people in what's basically a glorified living room and it would be "too hard" to do wfh..