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What grass though? This subset of employees seem to value working remotely above free food or massages or whatever other in-office perks. Work-from-home as a p

What grass though? This subset of employees seem to value working remotely above free food or massages or whatever other in-office perks. Work-from-home as a perk has a negative cost, so it's not crazy to think that companies might start offering it.

ryan_j_naughton 5y ago
>Work-from-home as a perk has a negative cost Negative cost but also negative revenue / productivity loss if not done properly. Most data appears to show the hybrid model is the best for productivity. WFH several days a week, enabling focus and limiting distractions. Work from the office a couple days a week to enable coordination, connection, innovation, and alignment. This forced experiment in 100% WFH was clearly bad for productivity. The reason tech companies provided so many perks in the past wasn't simply as a recruitment technique. A lot of it was to create an environment where workers worked longer hours and thus the firm got more productivity out of each worker. The cost-benefit analysis clearly supported that before. A caterer's salary is far lower than an engineer's.
- d0mine 5y ago
  > This forced experiment in 100% WFH was clearly bad for productivity. Could you link to some data that demonstrates that? > A lot of it was to create an environment where workers worked longer hours and thus the firm got more productivity out of each worker. "longer hours" "more productivity" is obviously false for the extremes. It is unclear what is the threshold when a programmer starts to introduce more issues than they fix. It is hard to measure productivity for a programmer (e.g., what might be productive short-term may be counter-productive long-term).
- TomSwirly 5y ago
  > Most data appears to show the hybrid model is the best for productivity. Can we see the data? > Work from the office a couple days a week to enable coordination, connection, innovation, and alignment. I see you are fully buzzword enabled. > This forced experiment in 100% WFH was clearly bad for productivity. "Clearly"? Can you back up your dramatic claims with evidence? When I worked at Google, it was so noisy that I did most of my work from home anyway, but showed up for a few hours a day because I had to.
- jumby 5y ago
  > A lot of it was to create an environment where workers worked longer hours and thus the firm got more productivity out of each worker Also known as: working for free
- BTCOG 5y ago
  As an ISP engineer, I can tell you my company has numbers and figures that we are much more productive in networking, applications teams and development, and a handful of other teams across the board by working remotely. Been selling off officespace all last year and continuing to do so. We do work more working from home. And all that said, they know full well what teams should be back in the office and those of us who could feasibly work permanently from home.
lhorie 5y ago
In this case, by "grass" I mean the combination of which subset of employers pay comparably to google, plus allow unrestricted WFH, plus have similar levels of infrastructure quality (such that your day to day doesn't involve dealing with broken infra or some such), number of meetings, levels of autonomy, etc. I'm sure that there is a subset of jobs that ticks all those boxes, but what I don't believe is that they're in such abundance that one can simply quit google and stumble into one by simply waving around their xoogler status. More likely than not, people following through w/ quitting will realize that work satisfaction does not solely depend on a single dimension (WFH-ness)

ryan_j_naughton 5y ago

>Work-from-home as a perk has a negative cost Negative cost but also negative revenue / productivity loss if not done properly. Most data appears to show the hybrid model is the best for productivity. WFH several days a week, enabling focus and limiting distractions. Work from the office a couple days a week to enable coordination, connection, innovation, and alignment. This forced experiment in 100% WFH was clearly bad for productivity. The reason tech companies provided so many perks in the past wasn't simply as a recruitment technique. A lot of it was to create an environment where workers worked longer hours and thus the firm got more productivity out of each worker. The cost-benefit analysis clearly supported that before. A caterer's salary is far lower than an engineer's.

d0mine 5y ago
> This forced experiment in 100% WFH was clearly bad for productivity. Could you link to some data that demonstrates that? > A lot of it was to create an environment where workers worked longer hours and thus the firm got more productivity out of each worker. "longer hours" "more productivity" is obviously false for the extremes. It is unclear what is the threshold when a programmer starts to introduce more issues than they fix. It is hard to measure productivity for a programmer (e.g., what might be productive short-term may be counter-productive long-term).
TomSwirly 5y ago
> Most data appears to show the hybrid model is the best for productivity. Can we see the data? > Work from the office a couple days a week to enable coordination, connection, innovation, and alignment. I see you are fully buzzword enabled. > This forced experiment in 100% WFH was clearly bad for productivity. "Clearly"? Can you back up your dramatic claims with evidence? When I worked at Google, it was so noisy that I did most of my work from home anyway, but showed up for a few hours a day because I had to.
jumby 5y ago
> A lot of it was to create an environment where workers worked longer hours and thus the firm got more productivity out of each worker Also known as: working for free
BTCOG 5y ago
As an ISP engineer, I can tell you my company has numbers and figures that we are much more productive in networking, applications teams and development, and a handful of other teams across the board by working remotely. Been selling off officespace all last year and continuing to do so. We do work more working from home. And all that said, they know full well what teams should be back in the office and those of us who could feasibly work permanently from home.

lhorie 5y ago

In this case, by "grass" I mean the combination of which subset of employers pay comparably to google, plus allow unrestricted WFH, plus have similar levels of infrastructure quality (such that your day to day doesn't involve dealing with broken infra or some such), number of meetings, levels of autonomy, etc. I'm sure that there is a subset of jobs that ticks all those boxes, but what I don't believe is that they're in such abundance that one can simply quit google and stumble into one by simply waving around their xoogler status. More likely than not, people following through w/ quitting will realize that work satisfaction does not solely depend on a single dimension (WFH-ness)