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Now that we have some distance from the whole forced-at-home-during-pandemic episode, what are people's opinions on the topic? I do feel seeing people face to

Now that we have some distance from the whole forced-at-home-during-pandemic episode, what are people's opinions on the topic? I do feel seeing people face to face a couple of times per week does help teams function better. Random water-cooler conversation lead to meaningful ideas. Overhearing team members talking about some related problem gives you the chance to jump in. Also better for overall motivation from what I've experienced.

xyzelement 4y ago
Exactly right. As an employee and a father of young kids, I love WFH. As a manager, and someone who values creativity and productivity, I know that there's a HUGE tax being paid from people not being physically together, exactly as you described. To the extent that everyone WFH, the tax is paid uniformly. But once people head back to the office, teams and companies that have more physical presence together will outperform and put the other people out of business.
- 6gvONxR4sf7o 4y ago
  That's possible, but you could make the argument about any perk. Having free lunches, or paying high salaries puts companies at a disadvantage relative to competitors, all else equal. But if you free people to focus on what matters, and attract more competitive talent, it might balance out. Especially in light of attracting more competitive talent, it remains to be seen how it will balance out.
  - misterprime 4y ago
    Good point. Also consider this scenario: Direct competitors choose different WFH policies. Company A: exclusively in-office. Company B: exclusively WFH. Company B can allocate all the savings from office space and infrastructure towards increased employee compensation (or whatever else they choose to spend on). Will the cost of office space prove valuable for the benefit of the in-person bonus performance? I think that a "Company C" that kept all their office space and still allowed employees to exclusively WFH would be making a mistake.
- deleted 4y ago
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- 11235813213455 4y ago
  it's possible that the "team" concept works better when reunited physically. Working at distance, there are misunderstandings, and more difficulty to communicate, synchronize our views, etc.. But, I do have at least twice more energy and productivity if I work from home, and choose when to eat, go for a walk (and have good ideas at that time usually), when to sleep, no commuting, no worries like dresscode etc.. So for small companies, I believe distance working can be very interesting
- DanHulton 4y ago
  Citation needed. I'd be willing to say that companies that work in ways that require more physical presence and _have it_ will outperform companies that require more physical presence and _don't have it._ But the companies that adapt to remote work and aren't trying to just do everything the same way they did before should be able to continue to compete at a high level. They have before, there's no reason why they shouldn't continue to be able to.
- CharlesW 4y ago
  > But once people head back to the office, teams and companies that have more physical presence together will outperform and put the other people out of business. I'd love to see data if you have it. Many studies show the opposite. https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/faculty-research/working-papers/does-working-home-work-evidence-chinese-experiment https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/faculty-research/working-papers... I understand that companies have expensive real estate handsomely equipped with the finest of cubes, and that it comforts the old guard to see an army of business-casual-attired employees staring at screens, but it seems extremely unlikely that this costly and anachronistic model is going to outperform virtual competitors.
  - xyzelement 4y ago
    It depends a lot on how you define productivity. If it's heads down hours, sure. But on the flip side, here's some things from my experience that I would count as productive: - saw someone looking angry at their computer for several days. Asked them what was going on. After a chat realized his project was never going to work so we canceled it. It would have taken weeks/months for us to realize this if I didn't see him physically boiling at the desk. - need a quick chat with Bob and Alice. Saw they are at their desk, just rolled over and had the chat because they happened to be there. Vs trying to find time on calendar, ending up weeks later. - crown jewel: ran into a dude I used to work with, now in a different department. Turns out he's working on something similar to me. That started a bunch of conversations, ended up combining efforts and building platform. Now running essentially 3 businesses based on 1 tech investment. Wouldn't have happened if I didn't bump into him in the elevator.
    - dudul 4y ago
      So some guy doesn't feel secure enough to report to his team mates and manager that he is struggling. Rando feels entitled to interrupt 2 Co workers whenever instead of working around their schedule. Sounds like a few things need fixing here.
      - Shaanie 4y ago
        The "I can just roll over, interrupt them and get my chat done" is a pretty funny thing to bring up as a positive. I guess for non-developer roles that actually is a positive, but eh.
- dougmwne 4y ago
  That’s funny because I was remote for years before the pandemic. My ability to get heads down work done and focus make me greatly outperform my in-office colleagues. Several of them were made redundant because my projects and automations swallowed up the work they were doing. My ability to document everything in writing led me to rapidly expand the knowledge under my domain while they were having their random water cooler conversations. I’m not some antisocial person either. I would enjoy traveling to the office and be sad to leave the little camaraderie party. But nothing was getting done and all that busy bee hustle was a smokescreen.
- slantedview 4y ago
  Your theory doesn’t explain the success of companies who were fully remote before the pandemic. Being in the office does not necessarily mean you outperform.
the_snooze 4y ago
Yup, being in-person lowers the friction to asking questions and exchanging ideas. It's way easier to gauge people's understanding of things when working with them in the same space than having to explicitly coax it out of them over chat or video.
- iLoveOncall 4y ago
  > being in-person lowers the friction to asking questions and exchanging ideas This is a downside, not a benefit. I don't want to hear about your compilation error when I'm heads down on my own work.
  - the_snooze 4y ago
    We're very explicit about it in our hiring process. Our culture is that team leads serve to mentor junior people. If we introduce barriers to question-asking, then we're shooting ourselves in the foot. "Shut up and code" isn't our culture, by choice, and we let candidates sort themselves out accordingly.
    - SketchySeaBeast 4y ago
      What stopped your team lead from regularly reaching out via teams/slack/zoom and from letting the juniors know they were available and open to communicate?
      - the_snooze 4y ago
        Absolutely nothing. I'm the team lead and I bug people all the time for their questions and ideas. Quite explicitly so, like "why aren't you reaching out to me with questions?" But it's like trying to squeeze water out of a rock when they're online. But when I call them into the office to chat in person, then they have tons to talk about. With few exceptions, juniors are in the default mindset that they're bothering people when they have problems. My job is to socialize them out of that. I accomplish that by bringing them into the office, because the alternatives very rarely work.
Spivak 4y ago
As with all things, it depends on the person. My motivation is shot in an office, wfh is the most productive and least tired from work I've ever been. No more doom scrolling on Reddit when I need a break, everything is in chat so it's searchable and you can't miss anything. When we need to get together for something we just hang out in a call. I imagine it's gonna be a generational thing where older folks won't acclimate to "hanging out" in a digital space. Having tools like Slack/Discord change the game completely.
bobleeswagger 4y ago
Office culture matters a ton and greases the gears. What we had pre-pandemic was good enough, and required employees to show their employers they were capable of remote work. Now, the bar is lower... you tell me what that does to the quality of work over a long period.
pugworthy 4y ago
Agreed. It also helps newer employees better integrate with existing teams that have a past history of face to face. Our project team of 20 has only 1 person who's always home now - but it seems to be basically a social anxiety / hypochondria issue. With the rest of the team onsite, those that stay home get forgotten a lot - out of site, out of mind.
ignoramous 4y ago
Jassy seems to agree: https://youtube.com/watch?t=2190&v=izbg7CpoSqg https://youtube.com/watch?t=2190&v=izbg7CpoSqg
drusepth 4y ago
Definitely won't be going back to a physical office, but I understand some people prefer it and/or struggled with working remotely. A little sad that some companies are moving to a limited-hybrid approach instead of making either option available for whatever works best for each employee.
sefrost 4y ago
I don't have children and my partner goes in to the office 4 days a week. I realized I was sitting alone in my apartment for 8 hours a day and that was quite a sad thought I haven't been able to shake. I started going in to the office with a few of my team members 2 days a week, but the vast majority don't want to. That's fine - I don't want to be the person that makes people do things they don't want to. But I joined this company during the pandemic when all offices were closed and I have learned so much and made some really important professional connections simply by turning up to the office and meeting people there. It feels like you can have more 'casual' yet still work-related chats in person that I've never been comfortable having on video calls for some reason. WFH we are in silos. Maybe that's okay for people who were a part of the organization before WFH.
- eyko 4y ago
  It would be interesting to see what career trajectories people that work exclusively from home have, when compared to people that work in offices. What you say about professional connections rings very true. Most work related friendships I have are people I met in person, be it in an office or at meetups.
brotoss 4y ago
I would love to see some empirical evidence surrounding these magically enlightening "water cooler" conversations that managers claim creates value out of thin air, because I am convinced it is just lip service from managers and capital holders to justify their existence
- darkwizard42 4y ago
  I don't know about empirical evidence but surely personal experience must lend some credence to this topic. It is far easier to just hit a whiteboard with a colleague (all virtual options for this are always a mess) and iterate quickly. I wouldn't know how we would get empirical evidence but collaboration in the office is definitely valuable...I think the debate now is: is it worth all the downsides of commuting and colocating around high COL areas
  - dudul 4y ago
    Surely, definitely, and at the end no evidence. It is also valuable to be at home in a quiet environment.
  - Root_Denied 4y ago
    "The plural of anecdote is not data" is a saying I feel like I've been using a lot the last few years.
- __derek__ 4y ago
  Knowing Amazon, the S-team absolutely used real data about productivity/cohesion/resilience for teams that spend more time in the office to make this decision, but they are absolutely not going to share it with anybody else.
  - fmajid 4y ago
    They do seem to be more analytical and data-driven than most, as with their "WBR" methodology, so I would give them some benefit of doubt: https://commoncog.com/goodharts-law-not-useful/#:~:text=Amazon%20does%20it.-,How%20the%20WBR%20Accomplishes%20This,-In%202000%2C%20Amazon https://commoncog.com/goodharts-law-not-useful/#:~:text=Amaz... (if you don't have a Chromium-based browser, scroll to the heading "How the WBR Accomplishes This").
drewg123 4y ago
The other side is: - watercooler conversation is not searchable and is ephemeral, so team members that have valuable input may not even know the conversation occurred. Had the conversation taken place on slack or some other chat system, others with valuable input would see it and chime in. And somebody looking for context can search for the conversation years from now. - the office is full of distractions, from unrelated teams in the same space doing some kind of team building to co-workers phone calls, to random irrelevant conversations between coworkers that I have to tune out. So pretty soon I put on noise-canceling headphones and tune out ALL conversations, which negates most of the purported benefits of in-office conversations. - Commutes suck
- rcme 4y ago
  Would water cooler conversations even happen if the participants felt they were being recorded for later reference?
  - tacotime 4y ago
    Strictly work related ones probably still would, but maybe at a reduced rate. What if there was the promise of a friendly AI used to filter out all non-work related discussions? Then a chatGPT model fine tuned based on previous team discussions, that automatically replies in the team chat any time it has some especially high confidence that it's generated a good answer to a new question. On my team, there is a lot of "tribal knowledge" that is known to part of the team, and buried in Microsoft Team's chat history somewhere, but having to use Team's search for anything is always the last resort. Maybe add a process where you have to wait for a team member to "like" the AI generated post before the person who posed the question uses the AI answer.
- Popeyes 4y ago
  Yep. I get less work done on an in office day because I am catching up with colleagues or being interrupted by colleagues because I can't put a busy status on my chair.
- rez9x 4y ago
  Mostly just to 'poke fun' at Amazon, but I'm sure all their employees watercooler conversations are well indexed and searchable.
Brendinooo 4y ago
I've worked remotely for...9 years, I think? I do like facetime in the office, but I've found that as long as people are willing to give a little bit extra to the work chat and also make a real effort to put faces to names when you are in person, you can build meaningful connections wherever you are. Success in remote work is all about proactive communication and good use of tools.
- jon-wood 4y ago
  Likewise, I think I’m now at 12 years majority remote. I actually prefer working in an office, but I moved out of London when my son was born and all the good jobs are there. I find a good balance for me is to be in the office once or twice a month, and on those days I don’t expect to get any real work done, it’ll all be either formal meetings or less formal catching up with people. At least in my experience this hasn’t really held me back, even in predominantly office based companies. I definitely miss a bit of gossip, but I saw a steady stream of promotions over the years, ending up in fairly senior management, and I had good relationships with everyone I worked with. I’m now in a different job which has a very remote focused culture - there is an office, but apart from one guy most of the technical team don’t really use it as much more than a hub for meeting up now and again.
ilickpoolalgae 4y ago
I've mostly worked at FAANG and in general I think it breaks down to (but obviously generalization)... 1. Juniors like to come into the office. For those that went from fully remote to -> hybrid, they really relish the social aspect + mentorship they get from more experienced engineers. 2. Mid-level is split. Less experienced mid-level prefers WFH as they can work independently and the type of work they have does not generally require high levels of collaboration. For people that are close to senior it is split between those that do more collaborative work vs complex individual work. The former tends to prefer coming into the office vs the latter prefers WFH 3. Senior and above tends to prefer hybrid with 2 days or so in office on the same day. Most people at this level are either doing some form of mentorship and/or collaborating across multiple individuals both within and external to the immediate team. This work tends to be more easily facilitated in person. This area also tends to more likely have families and there is a split between those that feel coming to work provides them good Work/Life separation vs relishing the opportunity to step back from work for a second throughout the day to spend with family. I also see the tendency for those that come into the office to be perceived more positively, even when controlled for the actual outcome of work as well as whether the evaluator comes into the office or not. I'm a "senior" manager, and I personally feel like coming into the office or not doesn't really change my day. I'm basically in group meetings or 1:1's all day, so whether I'm in the office or not I barely spend any time at my actual desk.
ipaddr 4y ago
Hybrid feels good but produces very little. The context switch tricks us into thinking we are more productive at those hybrid meetings and on those in person days it's about socializing
- paulcole 4y ago
  > Hybrid feels good but produces very little. Isn't feeling good something worth producing?
  - chadlavi 4y ago
    Doesn't directly make line go up so company doesn't care, but you're right it should be.
iLoveOncall 4y ago
I fucking hate it. I (work at Amazon and) already have to go in once a week, and I literally do NOTHING that day. Being at home allows me to delay answering coworkers so that I don't have to shift focus every 15 minutes between what I am doing and between helping Bob with his other shit. Being at home also allows me to not be in a constantly noisy environment, where even with top of the line noise canceling technology you still cannot focus properly. Lastly, the offices are NOT suited to handle the growth that Amazon has seen in the past 2-3 years. In Luxembourg for example it went from 4K to 6K employees, but no new buildings have been added (some have closed actually). Already when it was 4K employees, people had to go through MULTIPLE BUILDINGS before finding a seat that was free. And Luxembourg is not the office that grew the most, by far not. This is a disaster in the making. People are trying to justify RTO by "muh innovation". The truth is that you are not innovating 90% of your time. What you gain in "innovation" you lose 10 fold in actual productivity.
johnchristopher 4y ago
> Random water-cooler conversation lead to meaningful ideas. Overhearing team members talking about some related problem gives you the chance to jump in. Also better for overall motivation from what I've experienced. I'll be that guy, so: People who were the most vocal about going back to the office... turned out they missed their work buddies more than work (I am okay with that) but me and my direct colleagues don't ever see them anymore at the water cooler. Those conversations have dried out. Oh, they are in the building, just behind their doors. The cafeteria is empty 90% of the time.
- juve1996 4y ago
  These mythical water cooler discussions really are quite amusing. I'd say the water cooler discussions were more about things not work related than work related, or about office politics. I don't think I've ever had a "productive" water cooler talk without going in with that in mind already (i.e. I would've scheduled a meeting or walked to the desk anyway.)
  - gedy 4y ago
    Yeah in 20 years in industry, I've never experienced these important water cooler interactions. Important conversations need thought and be intentional.
ghaff 4y ago
In addition to the other comments about the downsides of in-person, upsides also largely depend on people you work with actually being in physical proximity. If they're in a different city, building, or even floor you lose most of the potential benefits.
- the_snooze 4y ago
  I think this is a really good detail you bring up. Often, I see the conversation talking about the absolute worst forms of in-office setups: cubicles or open office, with teams far apart, and long driving commutes everyday. In my world, my team and I are in adjacent shared offices (not cubes), and we all walk or bike to the office. It works wonderfully.
  - ghaff 4y ago
    I've been more remote than not for almost 20 years with it varying a bit depending on what I was working on. But, if I could walk to the office or even have 5-10 minute drive? If people I worked with were mostly there? I would absolutely come in some of the time.
fzeroracer 4y ago
Water cooler conversations never lead to anything, other than me shooting the shit with Coworker Jim while I was waiting on my build to finish baking. I feel like people romanticize office working and it confuses the hell out of me. I never saw the benefits people argue existed across multiple jobs and no. Personally WFH has been nothing but beneficial for me. We still have informal calls which are more relaxed and similar to Discord calls for discussing problems or talking tech nonsense because we generally enjoy each others company, but if y'all aren't talking while WFH then moving to the office isn't going to change anything. Though there were a few people that liked to be annoying and just pop around desks to ask random questions and interrupt work.
jimbob45 4y ago
Companies want to have it both ways and not have anyone notice what they're doing. If you want butt-in-the-seat work, you're getting 40 hours from every employee and nothing when they get home. If things break, they get fixed the next morning. If you want remote work, you're getting however much work is allocated per Scrum iteration. People will work weekends and evenings as they need. If you want both, you're going to have people finishing their assigned iteration work and then fucking around for the rest of their butt-in-the-seat office time.
dheera 4y ago
I don't actually mind RTO 3 days a week as long as (a) it's not 5 days a week and (b) there is flexibility to work from a remote location for a month or two a year as necessary for family/relationships/seasonal-related mental health. I wish we had a cafeteria though, my location doesn't have one. Last time I went to the office I spent 40 minutes waiting at the Tender Greens across the street. UberEats usually runs circles around the office complex, gives up, and leaves my lunch at some random office building and then I have to hunt it down.
joegahona 4y ago
I prefer coming into the office, but my commute influences my decision: 15 minutes of stress-free, pleasant driving, and I charge my car (free) at my office. Selfishly I wish everyone would come in -- way more productive side conversations, and more humanity. A coworker opened up to me a few weeks ago about a vacation that got denied, and just needed someone to vent to. That wouldn't have happened over a scheduled Zoom. I also suspect some coworkers are working 2 or more other jobs, or are just insanely checked out and filling their day with errands, long workouts, ballgames, etc. The same few people have "internet issues" all the time, etc.
- cableshaft 4y ago
  > A coworker opened up to me a few weeks ago about a vacation that got denied, and just needed someone to vent to. That wouldn't have happened over a scheduled Zoom. Happens to me plenty of times, with multiple people (like I'll have a scheduled meeting with the PM and we'll do the meeting, then chat about some things, then it'll drift into bitching/venting about stuff at work, etc). I probably have had way more of those over Zoom than not, because there's no chance anyone can overhear us (assuming we're both not in the office). I think I tend to give off that vibe, though. Like you can share that stuff with me, and I'll understand and reciprocate and won't tell anyone because I'm obviously not playing office politics, not sucking up to anyone, I'm just there to do my job and help get others unstuck when possible.
- baq 4y ago
  > I also suspect some coworkers are working 2 or more other jobs I suspect this is the real reason. The internet is full of people boasting about having 2, 3, 4, 7 senior jobs pulling in millions in TC doing nothing but interviewing for next sucker employers. If WFH ends, it’ll be because of them.
wvenable 4y ago
Not having a commute is such a game changer for work/life balance that it's hard to give up. I would actually prefer to go into the office more often if I could instantly teleport there and home as needed. I'd rather read my emails in the morning at home, go into work, and leave early to spend the afternoon in silent working.
AlotOfReading 4y ago
You get wildly different results depending on how the team and leadership adapts to the situation. Neither is guaranteed to succeed and either can work if the team is committed. For context, I work with hardware in a role most employers think is necessarily in-person. The team I started the pandemic with adapted to lockdown by spending $500/person on buying equipment and having "just chat" times a couple times a week or before meetings where you could talk naturally. Periodic in-person drinks/dinner/events and an active chat helped too. That worked really well and the infrastructure we built turned out to be useful for all sorts of automation where people wouldn't be physically present anyway. The team is overall in a better position than before. I also observed a team that didn't do any of that and simply went back to being in-person when lockdown ended. One way that manifested was as excluding remote workers from meetings/information flow. By complete coincidence, that team has trouble hiring and retaining people. When the people they do have take normal vacations or need visa renewals, they're completely unable to work because they never dedicated the time to building infrastructure around employees not being physically present. They're no worse off than they were pre-pandemic, but they effectively wasted 2 years.
- nicolas_t 4y ago
  I've been working remotely since 2008 and what you describe has been my experience. Working remotely effectively requires leadership to change their ways. It only work if it's "remote first" and if there's no hybrid of having a some people being remote and others in the office. But making the effort to build a remote team does have a lot of advantages, automation has to be built in which, in the end, helps having greater flexibility when there are issues and people cannot be present. It helps with recruiting talent because you no longer restrict yourself to a single area... People also say that it's impossible to form friendships with remote coworkers but it's not been my experience, I've made a lot of friends with coworkers who live in different countries and timezones than my own.
CalRobert 4y ago
I have a paid-off house in a beautiful place with gigabit fibre an hour from a major city by train. If I needed to go in to the office it would need to be for roughly €90,000 extra per year to offset that.
chadlavi 4y ago
There's no legitimate reason to force knowledge workers to commute to a dedicated work space. It is a good practice to offer it as an option for those who want it, though.
theshrike79 4y ago
I could be 100% remote, but I usually end up in the office 0-2 times a week just because some things are just easier when I knock on a door and chat compared to trying to do the same thing via Slack or Zoom. Also free snacks & drinks, great people and a nice atmosphere :)
- symlinkk 4y ago
  “Easier” aka I used my physical presence to intimidate and/or pressure people into responding to me
  - theshrike79 4y ago
    The last person whose office I popped in to benches around 400 pounds and does MMA on a competitive level. I’m pretty sure my pudgy form can’t intimidate them even if I tried.
TurkishPoptart 4y ago
WFH requires wearing clothes. I'm OK with this. Working in an office requires an "outfit", and in American culture you can't wear the same "outfit" multiple days in a row, for some reason, probably because of television. I dislike this.
- ihatepython 4y ago
  > WFH requires wearing clothes. This has not been my experience.
- fmajid 4y ago
  Wear a "uniform", as Steve Jobs did. He had multiple copies of the same jeans and turtleneck sweater, one less decision to make in the morning. Now Elizabeth Holmes famously copied this, but she wasn't a con woman because she cargo-culted Jobs, it's the other way round.
karaterobot 4y ago
I took a work from home job 3 months or so before the pandemic, because I was already sold on never going into the office again. It's not that I'm extra-productive at home, it's that I was operating below my baseline level when working in the office, with its many distractions. For me, I consider the office a hindrance more than than working from home is a bonus. In late 2019, when I switched to remote work, it was not particularly hard to find a WFH job. It was a little harder than finding a job at an office. There were certainly fewer companies who offered it than there are now. At the end of quarantine, I think it's probably easier to find a WFH job than it was before the pandemic, and (ignoring the current job market) not much more difficult than ever to find a company that will let you work from the office if you want. What I mean is, people generally have a better set of options with respect to choosing how they want to work today, compared to late 2019. So, it's a good thing, except we still have to allow time for things to settle down. Companies who make all their employees return to the office will lose some of those employees, and companies who allow WFH will gain some of them. In the end, I still think it's a better situation than before.
dudul 4y ago
What happens if you're not around while team members are having this random conversation? What if you're not next to the water cooler? When random convos happen in slack I don't miss them if I step away for a 15min walk. I can even search them.
ricardobayes 4y ago
Personally, I enjoy being sick less, working from home. In an in-person job I was sick every year for a week or more. Now during these 2 years nada.
- gedy 4y ago
  But "I'm not contagious cough sniff"
  - ricardobayes 4y ago
    And just like that, someone in my family got covid because their coworker decided to tough it out and come to the office sneezing their head off. Even though they have unlimited PTO and unlimited paid sick days.
fmajid 4y ago
I am conflicted. The argument that individual productivity improves but teamwork and innovation suffers is plausible. Here is one data point: https://steveblank.com/2023/02/14/startups-that-have-employees-in-offices-grow-3-%C2%BD-times-faster/ https://steveblank.com/2023/02/14/startups-that-have-employe... I've also seen some pandemic data that individual unit productivity suffered, but was more than made up by the fact people worked longer because they did not have to endure the commute: https://bfi.uchicago.edu/insight/finding/work-from-home-productivity-evidence-from-personnel-analytics-data-on-it-professionals/ https://bfi.uchicago.edu/insight/finding/work-from-home-prod... It probably also depends on the job function, software developers are likely more productive when they can work uninterrupted. WFH does not guarantee that, however, if you have young kids at home or a small apartment without a dedicated home office. I suspect companies will start offering perks like being able to "WFH" not from actual home but from a WeWork-like space that is a shorter commute from your residence. Some company cultures are clearly more congenial to remote working than others, and those companies will have a competitive advantage in attracting and retaining talent. Automattic (makers of WordPress) sold their underutilized SF office because no one was coming in anyway. Culture eats strategy for breakfast and I'm sure it's hard to impossible for a behemoth like Amazon to turn its culture around to be remote-first, even if they wanted to. Still, it would be useful for researchers to do proper studies on how to make this work. Making WFH more widespread would improve workforce participation, specially for women or caregivers when the population is aging, and thus benefit the economy as a whole.

xyzelement 4y ago

Exactly right. As an employee and a father of young kids, I love WFH. As a manager, and someone who values creativity and productivity, I know that there's a HUGE tax being paid from people not being physically together, exactly as you described. To the extent that everyone WFH, the tax is paid uniformly. But once people head back to the office, teams and companies that have more physical presence together will outperform and put the other people out of business.

6gvONxR4sf7o 4y ago
That's possible, but you could make the argument about any perk. Having free lunches, or paying high salaries puts companies at a disadvantage relative to competitors, all else equal. But if you free people to focus on what matters, and attract more competitive talent, it might balance out. Especially in light of attracting more competitive talent, it remains to be seen how it will balance out.
- misterprime 4y ago
  Good point. Also consider this scenario: Direct competitors choose different WFH policies. Company A: exclusively in-office. Company B: exclusively WFH. Company B can allocate all the savings from office space and infrastructure towards increased employee compensation (or whatever else they choose to spend on). Will the cost of office space prove valuable for the benefit of the in-person bonus performance? I think that a "Company C" that kept all their office space and still allowed employees to exclusively WFH would be making a mistake.
deleted 4y ago
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11235813213455 4y ago
it's possible that the "team" concept works better when reunited physically. Working at distance, there are misunderstandings, and more difficulty to communicate, synchronize our views, etc.. But, I do have at least twice more energy and productivity if I work from home, and choose when to eat, go for a walk (and have good ideas at that time usually), when to sleep, no commuting, no worries like dresscode etc.. So for small companies, I believe distance working can be very interesting
DanHulton 4y ago
Citation needed. I'd be willing to say that companies that work in ways that require more physical presence and _have it_ will outperform companies that require more physical presence and _don't have it._ But the companies that adapt to remote work and aren't trying to just do everything the same way they did before should be able to continue to compete at a high level. They have before, there's no reason why they shouldn't continue to be able to.
CharlesW 4y ago
> But once people head back to the office, teams and companies that have more physical presence together will outperform and put the other people out of business. I'd love to see data if you have it. Many studies show the opposite. https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/faculty-research/working-papers/does-working-home-work-evidence-chinese-experiment https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/faculty-research/working-papers... I understand that companies have expensive real estate handsomely equipped with the finest of cubes, and that it comforts the old guard to see an army of business-casual-attired employees staring at screens, but it seems extremely unlikely that this costly and anachronistic model is going to outperform virtual competitors.
- xyzelement 4y ago
  It depends a lot on how you define productivity. If it's heads down hours, sure. But on the flip side, here's some things from my experience that I would count as productive: - saw someone looking angry at their computer for several days. Asked them what was going on. After a chat realized his project was never going to work so we canceled it. It would have taken weeks/months for us to realize this if I didn't see him physically boiling at the desk. - need a quick chat with Bob and Alice. Saw they are at their desk, just rolled over and had the chat because they happened to be there. Vs trying to find time on calendar, ending up weeks later. - crown jewel: ran into a dude I used to work with, now in a different department. Turns out he's working on something similar to me. That started a bunch of conversations, ended up combining efforts and building platform. Now running essentially 3 businesses based on 1 tech investment. Wouldn't have happened if I didn't bump into him in the elevator.
  - dudul 4y ago
    So some guy doesn't feel secure enough to report to his team mates and manager that he is struggling. Rando feels entitled to interrupt 2 Co workers whenever instead of working around their schedule. Sounds like a few things need fixing here.
    - Shaanie 4y ago
      The "I can just roll over, interrupt them and get my chat done" is a pretty funny thing to bring up as a positive. I guess for non-developer roles that actually is a positive, but eh.
dougmwne 4y ago
That’s funny because I was remote for years before the pandemic. My ability to get heads down work done and focus make me greatly outperform my in-office colleagues. Several of them were made redundant because my projects and automations swallowed up the work they were doing. My ability to document everything in writing led me to rapidly expand the knowledge under my domain while they were having their random water cooler conversations. I’m not some antisocial person either. I would enjoy traveling to the office and be sad to leave the little camaraderie party. But nothing was getting done and all that busy bee hustle was a smokescreen.
slantedview 4y ago
Your theory doesn’t explain the success of companies who were fully remote before the pandemic. Being in the office does not necessarily mean you outperform.

the_snooze 4y ago

Yup, being in-person lowers the friction to asking questions and exchanging ideas. It's way easier to gauge people's understanding of things when working with them in the same space than having to explicitly coax it out of them over chat or video.

iLoveOncall 4y ago
> being in-person lowers the friction to asking questions and exchanging ideas This is a downside, not a benefit. I don't want to hear about your compilation error when I'm heads down on my own work.
- the_snooze 4y ago
  We're very explicit about it in our hiring process. Our culture is that team leads serve to mentor junior people. If we introduce barriers to question-asking, then we're shooting ourselves in the foot. "Shut up and code" isn't our culture, by choice, and we let candidates sort themselves out accordingly.
  - SketchySeaBeast 4y ago
    What stopped your team lead from regularly reaching out via teams/slack/zoom and from letting the juniors know they were available and open to communicate?
    - the_snooze 4y ago
      Absolutely nothing. I'm the team lead and I bug people all the time for their questions and ideas. Quite explicitly so, like "why aren't you reaching out to me with questions?" But it's like trying to squeeze water out of a rock when they're online. But when I call them into the office to chat in person, then they have tons to talk about. With few exceptions, juniors are in the default mindset that they're bothering people when they have problems. My job is to socialize them out of that. I accomplish that by bringing them into the office, because the alternatives very rarely work.

Spivak 4y ago

As with all things, it depends on the person. My motivation is shot in an office, wfh is the most productive and least tired from work I've ever been. No more doom scrolling on Reddit when I need a break, everything is in chat so it's searchable and you can't miss anything. When we need to get together for something we just hang out in a call. I imagine it's gonna be a generational thing where older folks won't acclimate to "hanging out" in a digital space. Having tools like Slack/Discord change the game completely.

bobleeswagger 4y ago

Office culture matters a ton and greases the gears. What we had pre-pandemic was good enough, and required employees to show their employers they were capable of remote work. Now, the bar is lower... you tell me what that does to the quality of work over a long period.

pugworthy 4y ago

Agreed. It also helps newer employees better integrate with existing teams that have a past history of face to face. Our project team of 20 has only 1 person who's always home now - but it seems to be basically a social anxiety / hypochondria issue. With the rest of the team onsite, those that stay home get forgotten a lot - out of site, out of mind.

ignoramous 4y ago

Jassy seems to agree: https://youtube.com/watch?t=2190&v=izbg7CpoSqg https://youtube.com/watch?t=2190&v=izbg7CpoSqg

drusepth 4y ago

Definitely won't be going back to a physical office, but I understand some people prefer it and/or struggled with working remotely. A little sad that some companies are moving to a limited-hybrid approach instead of making either option available for whatever works best for each employee.

sefrost 4y ago

I don't have children and my partner goes in to the office 4 days a week. I realized I was sitting alone in my apartment for 8 hours a day and that was quite a sad thought I haven't been able to shake. I started going in to the office with a few of my team members 2 days a week, but the vast majority don't want to. That's fine - I don't want to be the person that makes people do things they don't want to. But I joined this company during the pandemic when all offices were closed and I have learned so much and made some really important professional connections simply by turning up to the office and meeting people there. It feels like you can have more 'casual' yet still work-related chats in person that I've never been comfortable having on video calls for some reason. WFH we are in silos. Maybe that's okay for people who were a part of the organization before WFH.

eyko 4y ago
It would be interesting to see what career trajectories people that work exclusively from home have, when compared to people that work in offices. What you say about professional connections rings very true. Most work related friendships I have are people I met in person, be it in an office or at meetups.

brotoss 4y ago

I would love to see some empirical evidence surrounding these magically enlightening "water cooler" conversations that managers claim creates value out of thin air, because I am convinced it is just lip service from managers and capital holders to justify their existence

darkwizard42 4y ago
I don't know about empirical evidence but surely personal experience must lend some credence to this topic. It is far easier to just hit a whiteboard with a colleague (all virtual options for this are always a mess) and iterate quickly. I wouldn't know how we would get empirical evidence but collaboration in the office is definitely valuable...I think the debate now is: is it worth all the downsides of commuting and colocating around high COL areas
- dudul 4y ago
  Surely, definitely, and at the end no evidence. It is also valuable to be at home in a quiet environment.
- Root_Denied 4y ago
  "The plural of anecdote is not data" is a saying I feel like I've been using a lot the last few years.
__derek__ 4y ago
Knowing Amazon, the S-team absolutely used real data about productivity/cohesion/resilience for teams that spend more time in the office to make this decision, but they are absolutely not going to share it with anybody else.
- fmajid 4y ago
  They do seem to be more analytical and data-driven than most, as with their "WBR" methodology, so I would give them some benefit of doubt: https://commoncog.com/goodharts-law-not-useful/#:~:text=Amazon%20does%20it.-,How%20the%20WBR%20Accomplishes%20This,-In%202000%2C%20Amazon https://commoncog.com/goodharts-law-not-useful/#:~:text=Amaz... (if you don't have a Chromium-based browser, scroll to the heading "How the WBR Accomplishes This").

drewg123 4y ago

The other side is: - watercooler conversation is not searchable and is ephemeral, so team members that have valuable input may not even know the conversation occurred. Had the conversation taken place on slack or some other chat system, others with valuable input would see it and chime in. And somebody looking for context can search for the conversation years from now. - the office is full of distractions, from unrelated teams in the same space doing some kind of team building to co-workers phone calls, to random irrelevant conversations between coworkers that I have to tune out. So pretty soon I put on noise-canceling headphones and tune out ALL conversations, which negates most of the purported benefits of in-office conversations. - Commutes suck

rcme 4y ago
Would water cooler conversations even happen if the participants felt they were being recorded for later reference?
- tacotime 4y ago
  Strictly work related ones probably still would, but maybe at a reduced rate. What if there was the promise of a friendly AI used to filter out all non-work related discussions? Then a chatGPT model fine tuned based on previous team discussions, that automatically replies in the team chat any time it has some especially high confidence that it's generated a good answer to a new question. On my team, there is a lot of "tribal knowledge" that is known to part of the team, and buried in Microsoft Team's chat history somewhere, but having to use Team's search for anything is always the last resort. Maybe add a process where you have to wait for a team member to "like" the AI generated post before the person who posed the question uses the AI answer.
Popeyes 4y ago
Yep. I get less work done on an in office day because I am catching up with colleagues or being interrupted by colleagues because I can't put a busy status on my chair.
rez9x 4y ago
Mostly just to 'poke fun' at Amazon, but I'm sure all their employees watercooler conversations are well indexed and searchable.

Brendinooo 4y ago

I've worked remotely for...9 years, I think? I do like facetime in the office, but I've found that as long as people are willing to give a little bit extra to the work chat and also make a real effort to put faces to names when you are in person, you can build meaningful connections wherever you are. Success in remote work is all about proactive communication and good use of tools.

jon-wood 4y ago
Likewise, I think I’m now at 12 years majority remote. I actually prefer working in an office, but I moved out of London when my son was born and all the good jobs are there. I find a good balance for me is to be in the office once or twice a month, and on those days I don’t expect to get any real work done, it’ll all be either formal meetings or less formal catching up with people. At least in my experience this hasn’t really held me back, even in predominantly office based companies. I definitely miss a bit of gossip, but I saw a steady stream of promotions over the years, ending up in fairly senior management, and I had good relationships with everyone I worked with. I’m now in a different job which has a very remote focused culture - there is an office, but apart from one guy most of the technical team don’t really use it as much more than a hub for meeting up now and again.

ilickpoolalgae 4y ago

I've mostly worked at FAANG and in general I think it breaks down to (but obviously generalization)... 1. Juniors like to come into the office. For those that went from fully remote to -> hybrid, they really relish the social aspect + mentorship they get from more experienced engineers. 2. Mid-level is split. Less experienced mid-level prefers WFH as they can work independently and the type of work they have does not generally require high levels of collaboration. For people that are close to senior it is split between those that do more collaborative work vs complex individual work. The former tends to prefer coming into the office vs the latter prefers WFH 3. Senior and above tends to prefer hybrid with 2 days or so in office on the same day. Most people at this level are either doing some form of mentorship and/or collaborating across multiple individuals both within and external to the immediate team. This work tends to be more easily facilitated in person. This area also tends to more likely have families and there is a split between those that feel coming to work provides them good Work/Life separation vs relishing the opportunity to step back from work for a second throughout the day to spend with family. I also see the tendency for those that come into the office to be perceived more positively, even when controlled for the actual outcome of work as well as whether the evaluator comes into the office or not. I'm a "senior" manager, and I personally feel like coming into the office or not doesn't really change my day. I'm basically in group meetings or 1:1's all day, so whether I'm in the office or not I barely spend any time at my actual desk.

ipaddr 4y ago

Hybrid feels good but produces very little. The context switch tricks us into thinking we are more productive at those hybrid meetings and on those in person days it's about socializing

paulcole 4y ago
> Hybrid feels good but produces very little. Isn't feeling good something worth producing?
- chadlavi 4y ago
  Doesn't directly make line go up so company doesn't care, but you're right it should be.

iLoveOncall 4y ago

I fucking hate it. I (work at Amazon and) already have to go in once a week, and I literally do NOTHING that day. Being at home allows me to delay answering coworkers so that I don't have to shift focus every 15 minutes between what I am doing and between helping Bob with his other shit. Being at home also allows me to not be in a constantly noisy environment, where even with top of the line noise canceling technology you still cannot focus properly. Lastly, the offices are NOT suited to handle the growth that Amazon has seen in the past 2-3 years. In Luxembourg for example it went from 4K to 6K employees, but no new buildings have been added (some have closed actually). Already when it was 4K employees, people had to go through MULTIPLE BUILDINGS before finding a seat that was free. And Luxembourg is not the office that grew the most, by far not. This is a disaster in the making. People are trying to justify RTO by "muh innovation". The truth is that you are not innovating 90% of your time. What you gain in "innovation" you lose 10 fold in actual productivity.

johnchristopher 4y ago

> Random water-cooler conversation lead to meaningful ideas. Overhearing team members talking about some related problem gives you the chance to jump in. Also better for overall motivation from what I've experienced. I'll be that guy, so: People who were the most vocal about going back to the office... turned out they missed their work buddies more than work (I am okay with that) but me and my direct colleagues don't ever see them anymore at the water cooler. Those conversations have dried out. Oh, they are in the building, just behind their doors. The cafeteria is empty 90% of the time.

juve1996 4y ago
These mythical water cooler discussions really are quite amusing. I'd say the water cooler discussions were more about things not work related than work related, or about office politics. I don't think I've ever had a "productive" water cooler talk without going in with that in mind already (i.e. I would've scheduled a meeting or walked to the desk anyway.)
- gedy 4y ago
  Yeah in 20 years in industry, I've never experienced these important water cooler interactions. Important conversations need thought and be intentional.

ghaff 4y ago

In addition to the other comments about the downsides of in-person, upsides also largely depend on people you work with actually being in physical proximity. If they're in a different city, building, or even floor you lose most of the potential benefits.

the_snooze 4y ago
I think this is a really good detail you bring up. Often, I see the conversation talking about the absolute worst forms of in-office setups: cubicles or open office, with teams far apart, and long driving commutes everyday. In my world, my team and I are in adjacent shared offices (not cubes), and we all walk or bike to the office. It works wonderfully.
- ghaff 4y ago
  I've been more remote than not for almost 20 years with it varying a bit depending on what I was working on. But, if I could walk to the office or even have 5-10 minute drive? If people I worked with were mostly there? I would absolutely come in some of the time.

fzeroracer 4y ago

Water cooler conversations never lead to anything, other than me shooting the shit with Coworker Jim while I was waiting on my build to finish baking. I feel like people romanticize office working and it confuses the hell out of me. I never saw the benefits people argue existed across multiple jobs and no. Personally WFH has been nothing but beneficial for me. We still have informal calls which are more relaxed and similar to Discord calls for discussing problems or talking tech nonsense because we generally enjoy each others company, but if y'all aren't talking while WFH then moving to the office isn't going to change anything. Though there were a few people that liked to be annoying and just pop around desks to ask random questions and interrupt work.

jimbob45 4y ago

Companies want to have it both ways and not have anyone notice what they're doing. If you want butt-in-the-seat work, you're getting 40 hours from every employee and nothing when they get home. If things break, they get fixed the next morning. If you want remote work, you're getting however much work is allocated per Scrum iteration. People will work weekends and evenings as they need. If you want both, you're going to have people finishing their assigned iteration work and then fucking around for the rest of their butt-in-the-seat office time.

dheera 4y ago

I don't actually mind RTO 3 days a week as long as (a) it's not 5 days a week and (b) there is flexibility to work from a remote location for a month or two a year as necessary for family/relationships/seasonal-related mental health. I wish we had a cafeteria though, my location doesn't have one. Last time I went to the office I spent 40 minutes waiting at the Tender Greens across the street. UberEats usually runs circles around the office complex, gives up, and leaves my lunch at some random office building and then I have to hunt it down.

joegahona 4y ago

I prefer coming into the office, but my commute influences my decision: 15 minutes of stress-free, pleasant driving, and I charge my car (free) at my office. Selfishly I wish everyone would come in -- way more productive side conversations, and more humanity. A coworker opened up to me a few weeks ago about a vacation that got denied, and just needed someone to vent to. That wouldn't have happened over a scheduled Zoom. I also suspect some coworkers are working 2 or more other jobs, or are just insanely checked out and filling their day with errands, long workouts, ballgames, etc. The same few people have "internet issues" all the time, etc.

cableshaft 4y ago
> A coworker opened up to me a few weeks ago about a vacation that got denied, and just needed someone to vent to. That wouldn't have happened over a scheduled Zoom. Happens to me plenty of times, with multiple people (like I'll have a scheduled meeting with the PM and we'll do the meeting, then chat about some things, then it'll drift into bitching/venting about stuff at work, etc). I probably have had way more of those over Zoom than not, because there's no chance anyone can overhear us (assuming we're both not in the office). I think I tend to give off that vibe, though. Like you can share that stuff with me, and I'll understand and reciprocate and won't tell anyone because I'm obviously not playing office politics, not sucking up to anyone, I'm just there to do my job and help get others unstuck when possible.
baq 4y ago
> I also suspect some coworkers are working 2 or more other jobs I suspect this is the real reason. The internet is full of people boasting about having 2, 3, 4, 7 senior jobs pulling in millions in TC doing nothing but interviewing for next sucker employers. If WFH ends, it’ll be because of them.

wvenable 4y ago

Not having a commute is such a game changer for work/life balance that it's hard to give up. I would actually prefer to go into the office more often if I could instantly teleport there and home as needed. I'd rather read my emails in the morning at home, go into work, and leave early to spend the afternoon in silent working.

AlotOfReading 4y ago

You get wildly different results depending on how the team and leadership adapts to the situation. Neither is guaranteed to succeed and either can work if the team is committed. For context, I work with hardware in a role most employers think is necessarily in-person. The team I started the pandemic with adapted to lockdown by spending $500/person on buying equipment and having "just chat" times a couple times a week or before meetings where you could talk naturally. Periodic in-person drinks/dinner/events and an active chat helped too. That worked really well and the infrastructure we built turned out to be useful for all sorts of automation where people wouldn't be physically present anyway. The team is overall in a better position than before. I also observed a team that didn't do any of that and simply went back to being in-person when lockdown ended. One way that manifested was as excluding remote workers from meetings/information flow. By complete coincidence, that team has trouble hiring and retaining people. When the people they do have take normal vacations or need visa renewals, they're completely unable to work because they never dedicated the time to building infrastructure around employees not being physically present. They're no worse off than they were pre-pandemic, but they effectively wasted 2 years.

nicolas_t 4y ago
I've been working remotely since 2008 and what you describe has been my experience. Working remotely effectively requires leadership to change their ways. It only work if it's "remote first" and if there's no hybrid of having a some people being remote and others in the office. But making the effort to build a remote team does have a lot of advantages, automation has to be built in which, in the end, helps having greater flexibility when there are issues and people cannot be present. It helps with recruiting talent because you no longer restrict yourself to a single area... People also say that it's impossible to form friendships with remote coworkers but it's not been my experience, I've made a lot of friends with coworkers who live in different countries and timezones than my own.

CalRobert 4y ago

I have a paid-off house in a beautiful place with gigabit fibre an hour from a major city by train. If I needed to go in to the office it would need to be for roughly €90,000 extra per year to offset that.

chadlavi 4y ago

There's no legitimate reason to force knowledge workers to commute to a dedicated work space. It is a good practice to offer it as an option for those who want it, though.

theshrike79 4y ago

I could be 100% remote, but I usually end up in the office 0-2 times a week just because some things are just easier when I knock on a door and chat compared to trying to do the same thing via Slack or Zoom. Also free snacks & drinks, great people and a nice atmosphere :)

symlinkk 4y ago
“Easier” aka I used my physical presence to intimidate and/or pressure people into responding to me
- theshrike79 4y ago
  The last person whose office I popped in to benches around 400 pounds and does MMA on a competitive level. I’m pretty sure my pudgy form can’t intimidate them even if I tried.

TurkishPoptart 4y ago

WFH requires wearing clothes. I'm OK with this. Working in an office requires an "outfit", and in American culture you can't wear the same "outfit" multiple days in a row, for some reason, probably because of television. I dislike this.

ihatepython 4y ago
> WFH requires wearing clothes. This has not been my experience.
fmajid 4y ago
Wear a "uniform", as Steve Jobs did. He had multiple copies of the same jeans and turtleneck sweater, one less decision to make in the morning. Now Elizabeth Holmes famously copied this, but she wasn't a con woman because she cargo-culted Jobs, it's the other way round.

karaterobot 4y ago

I took a work from home job 3 months or so before the pandemic, because I was already sold on never going into the office again. It's not that I'm extra-productive at home, it's that I was operating below my baseline level when working in the office, with its many distractions. For me, I consider the office a hindrance more than than working from home is a bonus. In late 2019, when I switched to remote work, it was not particularly hard to find a WFH job. It was a little harder than finding a job at an office. There were certainly fewer companies who offered it than there are now. At the end of quarantine, I think it's probably easier to find a WFH job than it was before the pandemic, and (ignoring the current job market) not much more difficult than ever to find a company that will let you work from the office if you want. What I mean is, people generally have a better set of options with respect to choosing how they want to work today, compared to late 2019. So, it's a good thing, except we still have to allow time for things to settle down. Companies who make all their employees return to the office will lose some of those employees, and companies who allow WFH will gain some of them. In the end, I still think it's a better situation than before.

dudul 4y ago

What happens if you're not around while team members are having this random conversation? What if you're not next to the water cooler? When random convos happen in slack I don't miss them if I step away for a 15min walk. I can even search them.

ricardobayes 4y ago

Personally, I enjoy being sick less, working from home. In an in-person job I was sick every year for a week or more. Now during these 2 years nada.

gedy 4y ago
But "I'm not contagious cough sniff"
- ricardobayes 4y ago
  And just like that, someone in my family got covid because their coworker decided to tough it out and come to the office sneezing their head off. Even though they have unlimited PTO and unlimited paid sick days.

fmajid 4y ago

I am conflicted. The argument that individual productivity improves but teamwork and innovation suffers is plausible. Here is one data point: https://steveblank.com/2023/02/14/startups-that-have-employees-in-offices-grow-3-%C2%BD-times-faster/ https://steveblank.com/2023/02/14/startups-that-have-employe... I've also seen some pandemic data that individual unit productivity suffered, but was more than made up by the fact people worked longer because they did not have to endure the commute: https://bfi.uchicago.edu/insight/finding/work-from-home-productivity-evidence-from-personnel-analytics-data-on-it-professionals/ https://bfi.uchicago.edu/insight/finding/work-from-home-prod... It probably also depends on the job function, software developers are likely more productive when they can work uninterrupted. WFH does not guarantee that, however, if you have young kids at home or a small apartment without a dedicated home office. I suspect companies will start offering perks like being able to "WFH" not from actual home but from a WeWork-like space that is a shorter commute from your residence. Some company cultures are clearly more congenial to remote working than others, and those companies will have a competitive advantage in attracting and retaining talent. Automattic (makers of WordPress) sold their underutilized SF office because no one was coming in anyway. Culture eats strategy for breakfast and I'm sure it's hard to impossible for a behemoth like Amazon to turn its culture around to be remote-first, even if they wanted to. Still, it would be useful for researchers to do proper studies on how to make this work. Making WFH more widespread would improve workforce participation, specially for women or caregivers when the population is aging, and thus benefit the economy as a whole.