6 ms·

"COVID has generally proven to both employers and employees that productivity doesn't drop that much" Is that a personal observation of yours, or has this now

by jspash 5y ago

"COVID has generally proven to both employers and employees that productivity doesn't drop that much" Is that a personal observation of yours, or has this now become "fact"? The reason I ask is that I would like to find studies - not just surveys or anecdotal evidence - that attempt to quantify the quality and productivity of WFH since the recently pandemic changes. At work, we've had countless discussions about this and the jury is still out. The introverts claim to be no less than twice as productive, the extroverts claim they are lying and they really miss leaving work early on Fridays to go to the pub - somehow that makes them better employees. Management hate not being able to peer over your shoulder (although they have recently installed "security" software on everyone's laptops for "security purposes"). But I have nothing to point to other than my own experience managing a remote team of devs. I've yet to come to a solid conclusion as to how it works for others. I only know that my productivity and depth of work has never been greater. So if there are any resources you could point me to I'd be grateful.

FpUser 5y ago
>"really miss leaving work early on Fridays to go to the pub" I used to have this when I was employed (about 20 years ago). Somehow my personal take was that it gets tiring pretty fast. I've had enough friends outside of employment and wit the very rare exception would very much prefer to socialize with them rather than coworkers. I then went on my own and have never looked back. The fact that I am doing quite ok means that I am productive. I design and implement new software products for my own company or for clients.
- lexapro 5y ago
  A lot of people don't have enough friends outside of employment.
  - WJW 5y ago
    Surely OP, who is "very extraverted" in their own words, would not lack friends outside of employment. Even if they did, they could always go out and make new ones.
    - jdavis703 5y ago
      People have become much more insular since the pandemic. I live in the night life district. Nearly two years in, the neighborhood is still clearly far less lively than in 2019, despite the fact that at least the businesses that didn’t go bankrupt have all reopened at 100% capacity, and our neighborhood has a 95%+ vaccination rate (meaning vax mandates aren’t keeping people in, and vaxxed folks should feel safe going out).
      - sokoloff 5y ago
        > vaxxed folks should feel safe going out This might be over-estimating the numeracy and relative risk-judgment of people.
  - dev_tty01 5y ago
    True enough. But is this a problem with WFH vs in-office? Or this just an issue of people not prioritizing having a life outside of work? For most of us, it won't happen unless we actively commit energy to the process. (I am commenting outside of the constraints of the pandemic. Covid obviously makes it much harder.)
  - cybertronic 5y ago
    Even "extroverts"?
lumost 5y ago
Anecdotally, this has been coming in waves. Early in the pandemic ( Mar 2020 ) -> no one knows how to WFH as a team. There is insanity in the world and work takes a backburner for most people. Mid-Pandemic (Fall 2020) -> Companies push workers to get back to productivity and deliver. Workers are used to the remote world and productivity returns to normal. Current ( Fall 2021) -> Workers just seem tired. Retention is through the floor, leadership is skiddish of pushing new projects in case people leave. I'm not sure where we'll be in Summer 2022, but my suspicion is that workers aren't getting something they used to have in the office. Personally, I'm probably signing up for a co-working space in the new year to have something vibrant to look forward too and hopefully some other engineers to chat tech with on occasion. I do miss the whiteboard and "bouncing idea" conversations.
- marcind 5y ago
  Hey, lumost, I agree with most of your assessment. I particularly like the focus on fatigue. I think this tiredness (in oh so many ways) has yet to be fully understood - not to mention, addressed. If I may be so bold, I'll go one step further: something has got to give! People can't be tired all the time. Something has to (and will) change. Here's hoping that in 2022 it'll be largely for the better. As for the whiteboard, I humbly offer our team's answer: https://sharetheboard.com https://sharetheboard.com We too couldn't bear to be whiteboard-less and have come up with at least a partial solution. If you have time to kick the tires on it, I'd love some feedback. All the best in the New Year!
  - lumost 5y ago
    Hey Marcind! this is an interesting app a few questions that I wasn't able to get a clear answer on in your FAQ. 0) What data is shared through your servers? 1) What video conference tools does this support? 2) Can I use a mobile phone to capture the whiteboard? 0 is the most important part for my current employer as we can't use any tools which share any data with third parties without a lengthy approval process. If there is a guarantee that the app doesn't share data with a third party then it can more easily be tested at a team level (somewhat of a unique requirement for large tech companies). Feedback on the experience: I tested out the tool from my personal linux machine (Razer blade 15) using a hand written note pad. 0) The experience is really promising 1) I can't hold a notepad steady enough for the video to capture the text appropriately, flipping the notepad around to write more text removes the existing text from the space. 2) I had to hold the notepad within ~6 inches of the laptop camera to have the pen/handwritten text appear clearly. This could be due to the quality of the laptop camera - which is certainly inferior to my iphone 12 pro's camera, and my work machines MBP 16 inch camera. 3) Overall I'd give it a proper test with my coworkers if not for the data sharing/video conference requirements of my current employer.
midjji 5y ago
I too am curious, but its going to be very difficult to measure, and as you say, it it absolutely not a fact. Lockdown has certainly damaged some industries, but it has also taught a generation of people tech things they probably would have retired without learning, and the value of that may exceed everything else long term. It is very difficult to isolate things like this, and we wont get another sample, even if we get another pandemic later. I totally get its been good for some, but it was bad time for me, though people are terrible at self evaluating stuff like this. I know that students at my university did worse the past two years than they did the year before. And by worse I mean substantially beyond the typical variance. This is in terms of student results like course completion and grades. As well as mental health metrics such as surveys on stress etc, and in terms of the number who seek aid through uni services. But there are confounders everywhere. The way they did worse differs in character more than magnituide as well. It looks like the majority did just about normal, with what looks like a small minority doing very badly. However, this is just one uni and it will be another few years before it gets collated, anonymized further, and published. It also may not apply to real work. Leadership overall seem to be somewhere between cautiously neutral and rather pessimistic in the organisations where I have insight which is a bad sign, as except for the ones who personally wanted to work from home, no one seems to be happy with it, including showing up in management stress level surveys. The snooping management meme does not apply. Most of us researchers had permission to work from home before we started too.
- bfung 5y ago
  Schools and learning social interactions for young people def. is taking a significant hit.
hindsightbias 5y ago
It’s close to two years. If WFH increased productivity, the entire front page of HN should be blitzed with studies and metrics proving that. But all we have anecdata from a population highly biased to lean introvert.
- alecbz 5y ago
  Tangent: I guess this is maybe just the term "introvert" being overloaded, but I don't see the introversion => likes being alone connection. I'm absolutely an introvert in the sense of finding that social interaction requires energy, but the past two years have proved beyond a doubt that I'm absolutely miserable being alone for long periods of time.
  - hindsightbias 5y ago
    As someone once said, I hate people, but I don’t mind working with other people who hate people.
    - alecbz 5y ago
      I mean I also wouldn't say I hate people though. Just because something requires energy from me doesn't mean I hate it.
      - hindsightbias 5y ago
        /s ;)
bfung 5y ago
Anecdotally - again, at least for tech and not the whole market. It does really boil down to if your company has a culture of documentation, reading and writing, before needing to interface with someone in real-time. Anyone who’s contributed to open source software understands this style of “remote” working, as that’s the default.

by jspash 5y ago

FpUser 5y ago

>"really miss leaving work early on Fridays to go to the pub" I used to have this when I was employed (about 20 years ago). Somehow my personal take was that it gets tiring pretty fast. I've had enough friends outside of employment and wit the very rare exception would very much prefer to socialize with them rather than coworkers. I then went on my own and have never looked back. The fact that I am doing quite ok means that I am productive. I design and implement new software products for my own company or for clients.

lexapro 5y ago
A lot of people don't have enough friends outside of employment.
- WJW 5y ago
  Surely OP, who is "very extraverted" in their own words, would not lack friends outside of employment. Even if they did, they could always go out and make new ones.
  - jdavis703 5y ago
    People have become much more insular since the pandemic. I live in the night life district. Nearly two years in, the neighborhood is still clearly far less lively than in 2019, despite the fact that at least the businesses that didn’t go bankrupt have all reopened at 100% capacity, and our neighborhood has a 95%+ vaccination rate (meaning vax mandates aren’t keeping people in, and vaxxed folks should feel safe going out).
    - sokoloff 5y ago
      > vaxxed folks should feel safe going out This might be over-estimating the numeracy and relative risk-judgment of people.
- dev_tty01 5y ago
  True enough. But is this a problem with WFH vs in-office? Or this just an issue of people not prioritizing having a life outside of work? For most of us, it won't happen unless we actively commit energy to the process. (I am commenting outside of the constraints of the pandemic. Covid obviously makes it much harder.)
- cybertronic 5y ago
  Even "extroverts"?

lumost 5y ago

Anecdotally, this has been coming in waves. Early in the pandemic ( Mar 2020 ) -> no one knows how to WFH as a team. There is insanity in the world and work takes a backburner for most people. Mid-Pandemic (Fall 2020) -> Companies push workers to get back to productivity and deliver. Workers are used to the remote world and productivity returns to normal. Current ( Fall 2021) -> Workers just seem tired. Retention is through the floor, leadership is skiddish of pushing new projects in case people leave. I'm not sure where we'll be in Summer 2022, but my suspicion is that workers aren't getting something they used to have in the office. Personally, I'm probably signing up for a co-working space in the new year to have something vibrant to look forward too and hopefully some other engineers to chat tech with on occasion. I do miss the whiteboard and "bouncing idea" conversations.

marcind 5y ago
Hey, lumost, I agree with most of your assessment. I particularly like the focus on fatigue. I think this tiredness (in oh so many ways) has yet to be fully understood - not to mention, addressed. If I may be so bold, I'll go one step further: something has got to give! People can't be tired all the time. Something has to (and will) change. Here's hoping that in 2022 it'll be largely for the better. As for the whiteboard, I humbly offer our team's answer: https://sharetheboard.com https://sharetheboard.com We too couldn't bear to be whiteboard-less and have come up with at least a partial solution. If you have time to kick the tires on it, I'd love some feedback. All the best in the New Year!
- lumost 5y ago
  Hey Marcind! this is an interesting app a few questions that I wasn't able to get a clear answer on in your FAQ. 0) What data is shared through your servers? 1) What video conference tools does this support? 2) Can I use a mobile phone to capture the whiteboard? 0 is the most important part for my current employer as we can't use any tools which share any data with third parties without a lengthy approval process. If there is a guarantee that the app doesn't share data with a third party then it can more easily be tested at a team level (somewhat of a unique requirement for large tech companies). Feedback on the experience: I tested out the tool from my personal linux machine (Razer blade 15) using a hand written note pad. 0) The experience is really promising 1) I can't hold a notepad steady enough for the video to capture the text appropriately, flipping the notepad around to write more text removes the existing text from the space. 2) I had to hold the notepad within ~6 inches of the laptop camera to have the pen/handwritten text appear clearly. This could be due to the quality of the laptop camera - which is certainly inferior to my iphone 12 pro's camera, and my work machines MBP 16 inch camera. 3) Overall I'd give it a proper test with my coworkers if not for the data sharing/video conference requirements of my current employer.

midjji 5y ago

I too am curious, but its going to be very difficult to measure, and as you say, it it absolutely not a fact. Lockdown has certainly damaged some industries, but it has also taught a generation of people tech things they probably would have retired without learning, and the value of that may exceed everything else long term. It is very difficult to isolate things like this, and we wont get another sample, even if we get another pandemic later. I totally get its been good for some, but it was bad time for me, though people are terrible at self evaluating stuff like this. I know that students at my university did worse the past two years than they did the year before. And by worse I mean substantially beyond the typical variance. This is in terms of student results like course completion and grades. As well as mental health metrics such as surveys on stress etc, and in terms of the number who seek aid through uni services. But there are confounders everywhere. The way they did worse differs in character more than magnituide as well. It looks like the majority did just about normal, with what looks like a small minority doing very badly. However, this is just one uni and it will be another few years before it gets collated, anonymized further, and published. It also may not apply to real work. Leadership overall seem to be somewhere between cautiously neutral and rather pessimistic in the organisations where I have insight which is a bad sign, as except for the ones who personally wanted to work from home, no one seems to be happy with it, including showing up in management stress level surveys. The snooping management meme does not apply. Most of us researchers had permission to work from home before we started too.

bfung 5y ago
Schools and learning social interactions for young people def. is taking a significant hit.

hindsightbias 5y ago

It’s close to two years. If WFH increased productivity, the entire front page of HN should be blitzed with studies and metrics proving that. But all we have anecdata from a population highly biased to lean introvert.

alecbz 5y ago
Tangent: I guess this is maybe just the term "introvert" being overloaded, but I don't see the introversion => likes being alone connection. I'm absolutely an introvert in the sense of finding that social interaction requires energy, but the past two years have proved beyond a doubt that I'm absolutely miserable being alone for long periods of time.
- hindsightbias 5y ago
  As someone once said, I hate people, but I don’t mind working with other people who hate people.
  - alecbz 5y ago
    I mean I also wouldn't say I hate people though. Just because something requires energy from me doesn't mean I hate it.
    - hindsightbias 5y ago
      /s ;)

bfung 5y ago

Anecdotally - again, at least for tech and not the whole market. It does really boil down to if your company has a culture of documentation, reading and writing, before needing to interface with someone in real-time. Anyone who’s contributed to open source software understands this style of “remote” working, as that’s the default.