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Agreed! The elephants in the room for me are the self-reported hours (Did "hours worked" really increase, or was that time spent changing laundry and running e

Agreed! The elephants in the room for me are the self-reported hours (Did "hours worked" really increase, or was that time spent changing laundry and running errands that got classified as work time) and the obvious confounder of children being at home rather than in school.

majormajor 5y ago
> (Did "hours worked" really increase, or was that time spent changing laundry and running errands that got classified as work time) Let's keep in mind here too that "hours between commute to/from office" != "hours working." Coffee shop runs, lunches, snack breaks, chatting, walking around...
- munk-a 5y ago
  It's really unfortunate that modern productivity metrics try and maximize things like butt-in-chair hours and time spent actively typing. I work in a rather creative part of CS and those coffee runs and walks are pretty productively spent time for me. One of my issues early on into the pandemic is that I was fearful of taking walks and my productivity actually dropped as my physical exercise decreased. When I realized this and started emphasizing active movement while working (dancing to techno) and taking walks to get in bursts of fresh air I found that things more than reversed. I would note that I have to deal with ADD and physical activity has a long history of positive impacts on folks with such - so that advice might not go for everyone.
tdeck 5y ago
Keep in mind also that this is a consulting company, where people are always encouraged to report more hours in order to bill the client.
- SketchySeaBeast 5y ago
  That's kind of bizarre - I've worked in a couple of consulting gigs now and the hours have always been tightly reigned in - the company wanted all the hours for sure, but they wanted you producing things constantly, just throwing more hours at something and going over estimates was a way to get yourself in trouble quick.
  - akiselev 5y ago
    You're talking about the interface between the worker and the employer, the GP is talking about the interface between employer and client. The employer doesn't want the worker slacking off but that doesn't mean that they won't create situations that result in more billable work, such as by taking an inefficient path under the cover of intangible factors. The irony is optimizing for productivity in one while optimizing for billing in the other.
cortesoft 5y ago
I think that doing household chores and errands for supplies SHOULD count a work time if you are working from home. If you are WFH, then you are not only doing your main job, but you are also working in the facilities department. If you go to the office, there are people who clean the office, take out the garbage, maintain equipment, clean the bathroom, etc. At home you have to do all of that.
- munk-a 5y ago
  You make a decent argument but... society doesn't judge that commute times or medical appointments should necessarily be reimbursed, so I think that there isn't really a "sane baseline" to compare against in non-covid times. There's also the very real question of division of usage - most of us are likely working in spaces that intersect heavily with our private spaces (since we didn't move to our current residences with having a dedicated home office in mind) and that creates a pretty complex process to actually assign responsibility - it shouldn't be 100% in either direction, but it's hard to figure out how much of that time was legitimately caused by you working from home.

majormajor 5y ago

> (Did "hours worked" really increase, or was that time spent changing laundry and running errands that got classified as work time) Let's keep in mind here too that "hours between commute to/from office" != "hours working." Coffee shop runs, lunches, snack breaks, chatting, walking around...

munk-a 5y ago
It's really unfortunate that modern productivity metrics try and maximize things like butt-in-chair hours and time spent actively typing. I work in a rather creative part of CS and those coffee runs and walks are pretty productively spent time for me. One of my issues early on into the pandemic is that I was fearful of taking walks and my productivity actually dropped as my physical exercise decreased. When I realized this and started emphasizing active movement while working (dancing to techno) and taking walks to get in bursts of fresh air I found that things more than reversed. I would note that I have to deal with ADD and physical activity has a long history of positive impacts on folks with such - so that advice might not go for everyone.

tdeck 5y ago

Keep in mind also that this is a consulting company, where people are always encouraged to report more hours in order to bill the client.

SketchySeaBeast 5y ago
That's kind of bizarre - I've worked in a couple of consulting gigs now and the hours have always been tightly reigned in - the company wanted all the hours for sure, but they wanted you producing things constantly, just throwing more hours at something and going over estimates was a way to get yourself in trouble quick.
- akiselev 5y ago
  You're talking about the interface between the worker and the employer, the GP is talking about the interface between employer and client. The employer doesn't want the worker slacking off but that doesn't mean that they won't create situations that result in more billable work, such as by taking an inefficient path under the cover of intangible factors. The irony is optimizing for productivity in one while optimizing for billing in the other.

cortesoft 5y ago

I think that doing household chores and errands for supplies SHOULD count a work time if you are working from home. If you are WFH, then you are not only doing your main job, but you are also working in the facilities department. If you go to the office, there are people who clean the office, take out the garbage, maintain equipment, clean the bathroom, etc. At home you have to do all of that.

munk-a 5y ago
You make a decent argument but... society doesn't judge that commute times or medical appointments should necessarily be reimbursed, so I think that there isn't really a "sane baseline" to compare against in non-covid times. There's also the very real question of division of usage - most of us are likely working in spaces that intersect heavily with our private spaces (since we didn't move to our current residences with having a dedicated home office in mind) and that creates a pretty complex process to actually assign responsibility - it shouldn't be 100% in either direction, but it's hard to figure out how much of that time was legitimately caused by you working from home.