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Finally someone said it. There was a reason for the office. As an employer I can tell you most (not all) workers are not able to properly contribute remotely.

Finally someone said it. There was a reason for the office. As an employer I can tell you most (not all) workers are not able to properly contribute remotely. Some jobs further require people to be together to properly collaborate. Communication is already very hard already, and “Out of sight, out of mind” is a real thing. I hope more companies insist workers come back to the office and end the madness of everyone demanding remote work. In principle remote is doable but in practice most humans are easily distracted and we will be distracted.

and0 4y ago
I was significantly more distracted and less productive in an office. It's the same with everyone I've spoken to, in tech or not. And with all the side effects, particularly the crazy energy use to move people around needlessly, it's such a net positive for society to just embrace remote work. I'm going to guess that, as an employer, you're doing something massively wrong to not be able to to trade 2 extra hours saved by the commute into at least equal productivity. Unless the work requires in-person & physical collaboration for a very specific reason, you're doing something wrong.
- api 4y ago
  I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say this is very much a "your mileage may vary" situation and that there is no panacea in terms of work arrangement. It's pros and cons all the way down. Same goes for debates over what type of office layout or setup to use. There is no panacea, only tradeoffs. If you run a company it's your responsibility to decide for your company, taking into account your industry and team and such. Don't just follow trends or reactions-to-trends. All the remote work success stories I know of are in software, law, consulting, graphical or video design/editing, or finance where one is dealing almost 100% with intangible things that can be transferred just fine in digital form. Tesla makes cars. With the exception of the software team most Tesla work involves physical objects, and even with the software team it involves making software to operate a physical object. That sort of work is quite a bit harder to send remote. Factory work is basically impossible to remote and will remain so unless we get telepresence level robots that can be operated remotely. Lastly I have to keep harping on a major hidden driver of so many employees demanding remote work: fucking housing costs in major cities. Remote work has allowed a ton of people to escape high cost of living cities where they are subjected to ever-increasing rents and are permanently locked out of homeownership without a liquidity event. I've heard multiple stories of people being pushed to return to the office in Silicon Valley only to retort with a demand for a 2X raise to afford housing. Unless housing costs in these cities improve employers are going to have a hard time recruiting anyone who isn't straight out school in those places. You simply can't raise a family in e.g. San Francisco unless you are rich. The choices will be remote or to relocate the whole company to a more affordable locale. Also IMHO means nobody should be building new companies in these cities unless they are going remote-first or remote-optional or are willing to pay 2-4X salaries... but the latter will only drive local RE higher. Build where it is economically rational to build.
ctvo 4y ago
> There was a reason for the office. As an employer I can tell you most workers are not able to focus or properly contribute remotely. Can you share what method you used to determine this? Has productivity dropped in a measurable way or is it something like the duration between when you send a Slack message and when they respond?
- eric4smith 4y ago
  Unless you hire and manage people working remotely it’s difficult for you to speak as an employee.
  - turtledove 4y ago
    I hire and manage people who work remotely. We've never been a stronger team. Maybe remote isn't the problem, maybe you are? Building the culture and systems to support remote takes effort and belief that it will succeed.
  - ctvo 4y ago
    That's a lot of assumptions there about me, and what I do without answering the question.
  - taylodl 4y ago
    Sorry. I've hired several remote employees over the past 2.5 years. We now have teams comprised of individuals from all over the country - something that was simply impossible working in an office building. I have the stats showing our productivity has soared. My company is now hiring execs (VP-level folks) from all around the country. The WFH culture has been fully adopted, and quite successfully at that. Oh, and my company is a Fortune 200 blue chip that's over 115 years old...
  - rurp 4y ago
    OK, educate us. What evidence have to drawn from your experience as a manager to draw such a firm conclusion?
abfan1127 4y ago
we don't get distracted in the office? no water cooler chats about the weekend? no loud conversations one cube over? no foot traffic all day long breaking your concentration? no hour long lunch breaks where I leave the office?
wasmitnetzen 4y ago
Don't generalize your own situation. I live alone in a decently big apartment, I have way less distractions at home than at the office. It's different for every person.
yboris 4y ago
Why are you worried about distractions? Is the sole focus of your company that the people you pay are 100% focused on something? Obviously not. Pick a better metric, measure it, and see if it is performing worse than before remote work. And if you don't have the metric to back it up, you can't claim remote work is bad. If you think you can't measure something, read How to Measure Anything: Finding the Value of Intangibles in Business https://www.amazon.com/How-Measure-Anything-Intangibles-Business-ebook/dp/B00INUYS2U https://www.amazon.com/How-Measure-Anything-Intangibles-Busi...
NKosmatos 4y ago
Remote work is not suitable for all positions and for all people. There is a percentage of us (mainly in the software industry) who work better remotely, but this is heavily related to the team composition, experience, environment, management... Can we please all of us stop being at the two extremes, office or remote, and accept that there are shades between black and white. The companies that will benefit from all this shift of mentality will be the ones that will adapt, allow remote work to those that can really utilize it and benefit from it and on the other hand bring back to work the ones that thrive in an office :-)
- eric4smith 4y ago
  Thank you for saying it better than I did. Everyone seems to want remote these days. But it’s really not possible for even half of employees. If say maybe at most only 20% qualify for remote work.
  - LosWochosWeek 4y ago
    In which industry are you in? I'm in the automotive industry and apart from the obvious factory workers I cant think of a single group of colleagues for whom it would not be possible to work remotely. I also dont agree with the "software industry" asterisk. As long as your work is done 100% on a computer, remote work is more likely than not suited for you. Don't take this as a toxic comment, but we're talking about taking away 1-2 hours of time of living and breathing human beings. Out of what? 6-8 hours free time? If anything, the employers should need to prove why remote work isnt possible. Anything else is damn near unethical. I should add, that I'm blessed with a great union that allows me to cut my weekly hours, which I will do once I reach a comfortable level of income that suits my lifestyle. Which is to say: I really, really, really like spending my own time on myself. So my view on this topic is highly skewed.
ar_lan 4y ago
This is more a reflection on you than other people.
hindsightbias 4y ago
It's been two years. If WFH was as productive or more the the front page of HN would be blitzed every day with studies proving that. But nothing. Least studied mass cultural/work change in modern history and apparently not worth any academics time.
- eric4smith 4y ago
  Yup. Everyone is saying remote work is better. But there are no studies to prove that it is.
  - maz- 4y ago
    'Better' is not measurable. What metric are you after? As an employer I bet 'productivity' is your main driver. An employee of yours would probably say 'quality of life'.
- LosWochosWeek 4y ago
  Are there studies that prove that working from the office is more effective? You must have studies proving this, as I'm sure you're not advocating for collectively wasting billions of hours of time each week on commuting "because we've always done it that way". Surely.
- disgruntledphd2 4y ago
  It takes a loooooooonnnnnggggg time to published peer reviewed research, and the better studies will need to compare pre vs post so I wouldn't expect them till next year, at least.
redbonsai 4y ago
I could tell you stories about how remote work has made my team exponentially more productive, but what would it matter? Anecdata is cheap. Sounds like you’ve been making the wrong hiring decisions, honestly.
vsareto 4y ago
I'd only go back if I got an individual office. Managers didn't really want us present and focused when open floor plans and removing walls became a thing.
dtjb 4y ago
Distractions can be overwhelming in an office.
adrian_b 4y ago
This depends a lot on what kind of job it is. I have worked in many companies, in several countries, from startups to a few of the largest companies. Without exception, work in the office has been far more distracting than work at home. Counting also the hours lost with commuting, in a day of work at home I have always worked about a double number of effective hours per day compared to most offices. There have been only two places with a productivity somewhat approaching the work at home, and that was because every pair of engineers had their own closed office, well separated from the others. Discussions with the colleagues from time to time can be very useful, but most of the real coding or design work is better done alone.
quonn 4y ago
There was also a reason for The Office.

and0 4y ago

I was significantly more distracted and less productive in an office. It's the same with everyone I've spoken to, in tech or not. And with all the side effects, particularly the crazy energy use to move people around needlessly, it's such a net positive for society to just embrace remote work. I'm going to guess that, as an employer, you're doing something massively wrong to not be able to to trade 2 extra hours saved by the commute into at least equal productivity. Unless the work requires in-person & physical collaboration for a very specific reason, you're doing something wrong.

api 4y ago
I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say this is very much a "your mileage may vary" situation and that there is no panacea in terms of work arrangement. It's pros and cons all the way down. Same goes for debates over what type of office layout or setup to use. There is no panacea, only tradeoffs. If you run a company it's your responsibility to decide for your company, taking into account your industry and team and such. Don't just follow trends or reactions-to-trends. All the remote work success stories I know of are in software, law, consulting, graphical or video design/editing, or finance where one is dealing almost 100% with intangible things that can be transferred just fine in digital form. Tesla makes cars. With the exception of the software team most Tesla work involves physical objects, and even with the software team it involves making software to operate a physical object. That sort of work is quite a bit harder to send remote. Factory work is basically impossible to remote and will remain so unless we get telepresence level robots that can be operated remotely. Lastly I have to keep harping on a major hidden driver of so many employees demanding remote work: fucking housing costs in major cities. Remote work has allowed a ton of people to escape high cost of living cities where they are subjected to ever-increasing rents and are permanently locked out of homeownership without a liquidity event. I've heard multiple stories of people being pushed to return to the office in Silicon Valley only to retort with a demand for a 2X raise to afford housing. Unless housing costs in these cities improve employers are going to have a hard time recruiting anyone who isn't straight out school in those places. You simply can't raise a family in e.g. San Francisco unless you are rich. The choices will be remote or to relocate the whole company to a more affordable locale. Also IMHO means nobody should be building new companies in these cities unless they are going remote-first or remote-optional or are willing to pay 2-4X salaries... but the latter will only drive local RE higher. Build where it is economically rational to build.

ctvo 4y ago

> There was a reason for the office. As an employer I can tell you most workers are not able to focus or properly contribute remotely. Can you share what method you used to determine this? Has productivity dropped in a measurable way or is it something like the duration between when you send a Slack message and when they respond?

eric4smith 4y ago
Unless you hire and manage people working remotely it’s difficult for you to speak as an employee.
- turtledove 4y ago
  I hire and manage people who work remotely. We've never been a stronger team. Maybe remote isn't the problem, maybe you are? Building the culture and systems to support remote takes effort and belief that it will succeed.
- ctvo 4y ago
  That's a lot of assumptions there about me, and what I do without answering the question.
- taylodl 4y ago
  Sorry. I've hired several remote employees over the past 2.5 years. We now have teams comprised of individuals from all over the country - something that was simply impossible working in an office building. I have the stats showing our productivity has soared. My company is now hiring execs (VP-level folks) from all around the country. The WFH culture has been fully adopted, and quite successfully at that. Oh, and my company is a Fortune 200 blue chip that's over 115 years old...
- rurp 4y ago
  OK, educate us. What evidence have to drawn from your experience as a manager to draw such a firm conclusion?

abfan1127 4y ago

we don't get distracted in the office? no water cooler chats about the weekend? no loud conversations one cube over? no foot traffic all day long breaking your concentration? no hour long lunch breaks where I leave the office?

wasmitnetzen 4y ago

Don't generalize your own situation. I live alone in a decently big apartment, I have way less distractions at home than at the office. It's different for every person.

yboris 4y ago

Why are you worried about distractions? Is the sole focus of your company that the people you pay are 100% focused on something? Obviously not. Pick a better metric, measure it, and see if it is performing worse than before remote work. And if you don't have the metric to back it up, you can't claim remote work is bad. If you think you can't measure something, read How to Measure Anything: Finding the Value of Intangibles in Business https://www.amazon.com/How-Measure-Anything-Intangibles-Business-ebook/dp/B00INUYS2U https://www.amazon.com/How-Measure-Anything-Intangibles-Busi...

NKosmatos 4y ago

Remote work is not suitable for all positions and for all people. There is a percentage of us (mainly in the software industry) who work better remotely, but this is heavily related to the team composition, experience, environment, management... Can we please all of us stop being at the two extremes, office or remote, and accept that there are shades between black and white. The companies that will benefit from all this shift of mentality will be the ones that will adapt, allow remote work to those that can really utilize it and benefit from it and on the other hand bring back to work the ones that thrive in an office :-)

eric4smith 4y ago
Thank you for saying it better than I did. Everyone seems to want remote these days. But it’s really not possible for even half of employees. If say maybe at most only 20% qualify for remote work.
- LosWochosWeek 4y ago
  In which industry are you in? I'm in the automotive industry and apart from the obvious factory workers I cant think of a single group of colleagues for whom it would not be possible to work remotely. I also dont agree with the "software industry" asterisk. As long as your work is done 100% on a computer, remote work is more likely than not suited for you. Don't take this as a toxic comment, but we're talking about taking away 1-2 hours of time of living and breathing human beings. Out of what? 6-8 hours free time? If anything, the employers should need to prove why remote work isnt possible. Anything else is damn near unethical. I should add, that I'm blessed with a great union that allows me to cut my weekly hours, which I will do once I reach a comfortable level of income that suits my lifestyle. Which is to say: I really, really, really like spending my own time on myself. So my view on this topic is highly skewed.

ar_lan 4y ago

This is more a reflection on you than other people.

hindsightbias 4y ago

It's been two years. If WFH was as productive or more the the front page of HN would be blitzed every day with studies proving that. But nothing. Least studied mass cultural/work change in modern history and apparently not worth any academics time.

eric4smith 4y ago
Yup. Everyone is saying remote work is better. But there are no studies to prove that it is.
- maz- 4y ago
  'Better' is not measurable. What metric are you after? As an employer I bet 'productivity' is your main driver. An employee of yours would probably say 'quality of life'.
LosWochosWeek 4y ago
Are there studies that prove that working from the office is more effective? You must have studies proving this, as I'm sure you're not advocating for collectively wasting billions of hours of time each week on commuting "because we've always done it that way". Surely.
disgruntledphd2 4y ago
It takes a loooooooonnnnnggggg time to published peer reviewed research, and the better studies will need to compare pre vs post so I wouldn't expect them till next year, at least.

redbonsai 4y ago

I could tell you stories about how remote work has made my team exponentially more productive, but what would it matter? Anecdata is cheap. Sounds like you’ve been making the wrong hiring decisions, honestly.

vsareto 4y ago

I'd only go back if I got an individual office. Managers didn't really want us present and focused when open floor plans and removing walls became a thing.

dtjb 4y ago

Distractions can be overwhelming in an office.

adrian_b 4y ago

This depends a lot on what kind of job it is. I have worked in many companies, in several countries, from startups to a few of the largest companies. Without exception, work in the office has been far more distracting than work at home. Counting also the hours lost with commuting, in a day of work at home I have always worked about a double number of effective hours per day compared to most offices. There have been only two places with a productivity somewhat approaching the work at home, and that was because every pair of engineers had their own closed office, well separated from the others. Discussions with the colleagues from time to time can be very useful, but most of the real coding or design work is better done alone.

quonn 4y ago

There was also a reason for The Office.