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> but even if you believe you’d be more productive in a private office, you’re not going to be 15-30% more productive. 15-30% is probably low for quite a few i

by zepto 5y ago

> but even if you believe you’d be more productive in a private office, you’re not going to be 15-30% more productive. 15-30% is probably low for quite a few individuals. It could be as much as 2-3x. I have experimented with it and it certainly is for me. The problem is that on average you may be right, since there are also a lot of people who barely benefit from it.

sokoloff 5y ago
Do you think it’s 2-3x averaged for the entire year? I’m way more effective at writing complex code in an office. I’m not any more effective at random administrative tasks (due to procrastination tendencies, I might even be less effective at them). I’m modestly more effective at reading emails or design docs, but not integer factors more productive. I’m a huge supporter of offices and was extremely salty when we got kicked out of them (for cost reasons). It’s why I love remote working now.
- cyphertruck 5y ago
  The 2-3X factor includes the lower return from administrative tasks. For code writing it is probably 10X - 15X.
- himinlomax 5y ago
  It's not that people are more productive with private offices, it's that some (many) people are extremely unproductive with open floor plans. So that 2-3x figure is realistic, no matter how you average it.
AmericanChopper 5y ago
The problem with extraordinary claims like this, is that you’re much more likely to be estimating your own productivity incorrectly than you are to be correctly. There’s no doubt that most people would write more LoCs sitting a in quiet room undisturbed, but that’s likely a rather poor measurement of your ability to productively provide value to your employer. I worked with a guy recently who was a notoriously poor communicator. He’d spend 4 days/week WFH, would barely give any updates on what he was doing, and was in general incredibly hard to get a hold of. He did write a lot of code, and most of it was very high quality. But almost none of it was ever used. His excellent code would almost never end up solving the problems we needed it to solve, or provide the functionality we needed it to provide, and nobody ever learned anything from working with him and his very senior-level skill set. In my experience, people who make extraordinary estimates about how much more productive they’d be if left to work on problems alone are much more likely to be similar to that guy rather than the person you’re describing. This person was a rather extreme case, but I’ve worked with plenty of people like him.
- zepto 5y ago
  > The problem with extraordinary claims like this, is that you’re much more likely to be estimating your own productivity incorrectly than you are to be correctly. There’s no doubt that most people would write more LoCs sitting a in quiet room undisturbed, but that’s likely a rather poor metric of your ability to productively provide value to your employer. It’s not an extraordinarily claim. You are making assumptions you have no insight into. > In my experience, people who make extraordinary estimates about how much more productive they’d be if left to work on problems alone are much more likely to be similar to that guy rather than the person you’re describing. This is an extraordinary claim. You are making the generalization that the large majority of people who have high productivity gains when working in a private office are poor communicators who don’t contribute usefully. The extraordinary claim is that your experience has given you access to the large number of people, their productivity, and their work habits to understand this phenomenon objectively. If you are a researcher who has done field work and published papers in this field, please feel free to link to one. If not, what you are saying seems like bullshit.
  - lucumo 5y ago
    GP explicitly states that it is their experience. They do not need a peer reviewed paper to describe their experience. That's ridiculous.
    - zepto 5y ago
      > GP explicitly states that it is their experience. GP states that their experience gives them enough insight into other people’s productivity to make a detailed assessment. > They do not need a peer reviewed paper to describe their experience. They aren’t describing their experience. That’s the point. They are adding the words ‘in my experience’ to a generalization that they almost certainly don’t have the experience to make. What would make their claim plausible would be if they were a researcher. > That's ridiculous. No it isn’t.
  - Veen 5y ago
    But people are notoriously terrible at estimating their own productivity and how they spend their time. Almost everyone I know who has tried time tracking and life logging is shocked at how different reality is from their expectations (mostly that they do less and work less than they think).

by zepto 5y ago

sokoloff 5y ago

Do you think it’s 2-3x averaged for the entire year? I’m way more effective at writing complex code in an office. I’m not any more effective at random administrative tasks (due to procrastination tendencies, I might even be less effective at them). I’m modestly more effective at reading emails or design docs, but not integer factors more productive. I’m a huge supporter of offices and was extremely salty when we got kicked out of them (for cost reasons). It’s why I love remote working now.

cyphertruck 5y ago
The 2-3X factor includes the lower return from administrative tasks. For code writing it is probably 10X - 15X.
himinlomax 5y ago
It's not that people are more productive with private offices, it's that some (many) people are extremely unproductive with open floor plans. So that 2-3x figure is realistic, no matter how you average it.

AmericanChopper 5y ago

The problem with extraordinary claims like this, is that you’re much more likely to be estimating your own productivity incorrectly than you are to be correctly. There’s no doubt that most people would write more LoCs sitting a in quiet room undisturbed, but that’s likely a rather poor measurement of your ability to productively provide value to your employer. I worked with a guy recently who was a notoriously poor communicator. He’d spend 4 days/week WFH, would barely give any updates on what he was doing, and was in general incredibly hard to get a hold of. He did write a lot of code, and most of it was very high quality. But almost none of it was ever used. His excellent code would almost never end up solving the problems we needed it to solve, or provide the functionality we needed it to provide, and nobody ever learned anything from working with him and his very senior-level skill set. In my experience, people who make extraordinary estimates about how much more productive they’d be if left to work on problems alone are much more likely to be similar to that guy rather than the person you’re describing. This person was a rather extreme case, but I’ve worked with plenty of people like him.

zepto 5y ago
> The problem with extraordinary claims like this, is that you’re much more likely to be estimating your own productivity incorrectly than you are to be correctly. There’s no doubt that most people would write more LoCs sitting a in quiet room undisturbed, but that’s likely a rather poor metric of your ability to productively provide value to your employer. It’s not an extraordinarily claim. You are making assumptions you have no insight into. > In my experience, people who make extraordinary estimates about how much more productive they’d be if left to work on problems alone are much more likely to be similar to that guy rather than the person you’re describing. This is an extraordinary claim. You are making the generalization that the large majority of people who have high productivity gains when working in a private office are poor communicators who don’t contribute usefully. The extraordinary claim is that your experience has given you access to the large number of people, their productivity, and their work habits to understand this phenomenon objectively. If you are a researcher who has done field work and published papers in this field, please feel free to link to one. If not, what you are saying seems like bullshit.
- lucumo 5y ago
  GP explicitly states that it is their experience. They do not need a peer reviewed paper to describe their experience. That's ridiculous.
  - zepto 5y ago
    > GP explicitly states that it is their experience. GP states that their experience gives them enough insight into other people’s productivity to make a detailed assessment. > They do not need a peer reviewed paper to describe their experience. They aren’t describing their experience. That’s the point. They are adding the words ‘in my experience’ to a generalization that they almost certainly don’t have the experience to make. What would make their claim plausible would be if they were a researcher. > That's ridiculous. No it isn’t.
- Veen 5y ago
  But people are notoriously terrible at estimating their own productivity and how they spend their time. Almost everyone I know who has tried time tracking and life logging is shocked at how different reality is from their expectations (mostly that they do less and work less than they think).