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> Employees with children living at home increased hours workedmore than those without children at home, and suffered a bigger decline in productivity t

by taneq 5y ago

> Employees with children living at home increased hours workedmore than those without children at home, and suffered a bigger decline in productivity than thosewithout children. This tells you all you need to know about the study. You can't analyse the relative effectiveness of working from home and working in the office when you're conflating "remote work" with "trying to get something done on your laptop on the kitchen table while working from home due to the pandemic, while your two early-primary-school-aged kids, who you are simultaneously trying to home-school due to the pandemic, are running amok in the lounge room."

_jal 5y ago
> This tells you all you need to know about the study. Your comment only tells me you wanted a different study than the one they did. Asking what happened in the real world, including in a range of work situations, is a very interesting question to ask. Looking for/at the delta between optimal work-at-home and the office would also be interesting, for different reasons.
- taneq 5y ago
  Then call it what it is, "Working from home while homeschooling during a pandemic, compared with normal office work: Evidence from the trenches."
- gnicholas 5y ago
  > Your comment only tells me you wanted a different study than the one they did. Of course, don't we all? It would be much more useful to have data on what remote work will be like in the future (i.e., when kids are in school/daycare). There is something interesting about knowing the pros/cons of what happened during the pandemic, but most of the time research is done so that the conclusions can inform future decisions. Here, the future decisions about WFH would benefit from disentangling the WFH aspect from the COVID-induced remote school aspect. One way to accomplish this is to assume that all workers who have kids (and lost productivity as a result) would have had the same productivity gains of people without kids. There are probably smarter/more nuanced ways to determine the global pros/cons of WFH in the future.
- ClumsyPilot 5y ago
  A study of unprepared people being locked at home without childcare or schooling, without time to setup an office and in companies in dissarray is about as representative of home working as people falling overboard the titanic are representatice of health benefits of swimming. Similarly if a group of tourists gets lost in the jungle we don't call that a study of prehistoric tribal life.
  - yoloyoloyoloa 5y ago
    This is the funniest comment Ive read all week.
PragmaticPulp 5y ago
I managed mixed in-office and WFH teams before the pandemic. There was a stark productivity drop every summer when kids were out on summer break. This includes parents with dedicated home offices who had been WFH for many years. The effect was so predictable that we planned for lower velocity during summer months. It was also common practice for WFH employees to spend more time in the office for more focus during summer months if they lived close enough. That’s not to say that kids are the biggest WFH productivity killer. IMO the people who struggled most were the young people who thought they could travel around and work remotely because it doesn’t matter where they’re working from. It turns out it’s plainly obvious that they don’t get much work done when they’re away from home. But that’s another story.
- travisjungroth 5y ago
  Traveling and even just being new to a town is a huge time suck. Every errand takes twice as long because you don't just have to do it. You have to choose a place, find it, etc. I won't try to visit somewhere and work for less than three months. There are two ways to make it work I just thought of. One is to have your errands taken care of. Maybe this is because you're visiting family and the groceries are already there. Or, you're rich enough (in that place at least) to pay for someone to do everything. The other big option is to be on tour. Travel in a big group where the work and the travel blend together and there's an efficiency in numbers.
- taneq 5y ago
  > It turns out it’s plainly obvious that they don’t get much work done when they’re away from home. But that’s another story. That's really interesting - I primarily work from a home office, but if I'm struggling to buckle down and get some documentation done, sometimes I'll head out to a random coffee shop and set up there for a while. It's easier to stay focused when the internet's just that bit slower...
  - alexpetralia 5y ago
    I think the comment was more about globetrotting than visiting the local cafe.

by taneq 5y ago

_jal 5y ago

> This tells you all you need to know about the study. Your comment only tells me you wanted a different study than the one they did. Asking what happened in the real world, including in a range of work situations, is a very interesting question to ask. Looking for/at the delta between optimal work-at-home and the office would also be interesting, for different reasons.

taneq 5y ago
Then call it what it is, "Working from home while homeschooling during a pandemic, compared with normal office work: Evidence from the trenches."
gnicholas 5y ago
> Your comment only tells me you wanted a different study than the one they did. Of course, don't we all? It would be much more useful to have data on what remote work will be like in the future (i.e., when kids are in school/daycare). There is something interesting about knowing the pros/cons of what happened during the pandemic, but most of the time research is done so that the conclusions can inform future decisions. Here, the future decisions about WFH would benefit from disentangling the WFH aspect from the COVID-induced remote school aspect. One way to accomplish this is to assume that all workers who have kids (and lost productivity as a result) would have had the same productivity gains of people without kids. There are probably smarter/more nuanced ways to determine the global pros/cons of WFH in the future.
ClumsyPilot 5y ago
A study of unprepared people being locked at home without childcare or schooling, without time to setup an office and in companies in dissarray is about as representative of home working as people falling overboard the titanic are representatice of health benefits of swimming. Similarly if a group of tourists gets lost in the jungle we don't call that a study of prehistoric tribal life.
- yoloyoloyoloa 5y ago
  This is the funniest comment Ive read all week.

PragmaticPulp 5y ago

I managed mixed in-office and WFH teams before the pandemic. There was a stark productivity drop every summer when kids were out on summer break. This includes parents with dedicated home offices who had been WFH for many years. The effect was so predictable that we planned for lower velocity during summer months. It was also common practice for WFH employees to spend more time in the office for more focus during summer months if they lived close enough. That’s not to say that kids are the biggest WFH productivity killer. IMO the people who struggled most were the young people who thought they could travel around and work remotely because it doesn’t matter where they’re working from. It turns out it’s plainly obvious that they don’t get much work done when they’re away from home. But that’s another story.

travisjungroth 5y ago
Traveling and even just being new to a town is a huge time suck. Every errand takes twice as long because you don't just have to do it. You have to choose a place, find it, etc. I won't try to visit somewhere and work for less than three months. There are two ways to make it work I just thought of. One is to have your errands taken care of. Maybe this is because you're visiting family and the groceries are already there. Or, you're rich enough (in that place at least) to pay for someone to do everything. The other big option is to be on tour. Travel in a big group where the work and the travel blend together and there's an efficiency in numbers.
taneq 5y ago
> It turns out it’s plainly obvious that they don’t get much work done when they’re away from home. But that’s another story. That's really interesting - I primarily work from a home office, but if I'm struggling to buckle down and get some documentation done, sometimes I'll head out to a random coffee shop and set up there for a while. It's easier to stay focused when the internet's just that bit slower...
- alexpetralia 5y ago
  I think the comment was more about globetrotting than visiting the local cafe.