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> These types of managers have deluded themselves into believing that butts in seats correlates to productivity. It definitely correlates! Not 100%, but a lot

> These types of managers have deluded themselves into believing that butts in seats correlates to productivity. It definitely correlates! Not 100%, but a lot better than nothing. You can at least be sure they're not working another job!

kelnos 4y ago
Someone could totally work in an office while doing work for a different job. It's not even that difficult, or all that much more likely they would get caught than if they were to work multiple jobs from home.
- jdminhbg 4y ago
  I really think it would be a lot easier to get away with taking part in two Zoom standups per day from home than from an office.
  - randomdata 4y ago
    Even if you could get away with it, no amount of money is worth having to endure two standups per day.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - kwhitefoot 4y ago
      When I was working on a team with people from all over Europe our standup was a 15 minute video conference at 09:00 CET. Each of us briefly said what we had done yesterday, what we intended to do today, and mentioned any problems that we thought that someone else might offer some insight into. The team leader would then summarize any concerns that were raised, suggest that person A contact person B to discuss the aforementioned concerns and that was it. We were mostly pretty self motivated but the standup helped us keep moving together. Fifteen minutes or even half an hour at the beginning of the day doesn't seem like much of a chore to me. And this was long before Zoom existed. Can someone explain to me why Zoom is such a big thing? We were using video conferencing in the last century without it.
      - jdminhbg 4y ago
        > And this was long before Zoom existed. Can someone explain to me why Zoom is such a big thing? We were using video conferencing in the last century without it. a) Zoom is very good at reducing the number of clicks between a link in your email and being on a call b) Zoom is easier to say and type than “video conferencing,” so people say it even when the actual application they’re using might differ
        buggy6257 4y ago
        The number of clicks from a Zoom email to a zoom call: - Click the Link - Click the "Start the meeting button", nothing happens - Click "join meeting from browser" after waitint for it to eventually show me that option - I'm in the meeting! 3 clicks Number of clicks from a Google Meets email to a Zoom call: - Click the Link - I'm in the meeting! 1 click.
  - Apocryphon 4y ago
    Offices tend to have conference rooms and other places for private calls.
    - jdminhbg 4y ago
      I'm not saying it's completely impossible, I'm just saying it is, contra OP, more likely that if you are in an office and take a conference room every morning at 10 for 15 minutes that you will be caught, versus working two jobs from home.
      - ghaff 4y ago
        That seems uncontroversial. Plus you probably can't separate the jobs on two different laptops to prevent accidental crossing of the streams--where one or more of those laptops may be managed by a company. Could someone get off with letting some side consulting work bleed into work hours? I'm sure in a lot of cases--though it would be easier at home. But I have to believe that, as in the case of relationships per upthread, working full-time in-person and remote jobs at the same time must start looking to people like something is odd here.
- JackFr 4y ago
  I personally have seen (twice, both before 2000) people operating as their own IT consulting firm from their desks while working full time. One was fired immediately as soon as it was discovered. The other was told to quietly wind it down within the month or face termination.
mysterydip 4y ago
Not necessarily :) I was thinking of a different example, but this is the first one I could find: He began working in-person as principal of Providence's E Cubed Academy on July 22, 2020. Meanwhile, he remained employed virtually as the assistant principal of Kramer Middle School in Washington D.C., a role he held since 2019. https://www.newsweek.com/man-accused-simultaneously-working-principal-two-schools-located-400-miles-apart-1656001 https://www.newsweek.com/man-accused-simultaneously-working-...
iso1631 4y ago
Really? When I used to work in an office I could I know someone who used to come in, put his coat on a chair, then go off fixing problems with desktops all over the campus. Eventually they found he was popping back to his car and doing 6 hours driving for a minicab firm. On the other hand if you measure presenteeism in the chair I had a colleague that would sit down browsing various websites all day taking calls for some business he ran doing scaffolding or cars or something (right dodgy dealer).
pavon 4y ago
Yes. I've never been a manager, but when working as technical lead productivity was the one thing I've never bothered trying to measure, as a metric or even an informal impression. Estimating how long something is going to take is really difficult, and as a developer I constantly run into something I thought would take a few hours, and then hit a snag that took a week to rundown and fix. That is despite being a programmer myself, and being very familiar with the codebase and program area. If I can't set a reasonable bar for my own productivity, how can I do so for my team mates, let alone how could a manager removed from the day-to-day work do so? I've felt like the people who thought they could measure productivity were the ones where were fooling themselves. Instead, I looked at a number of things. Are you making progress? Are you getting help quickly when you stop making progress? Does your code have lots of bugs later on? Do you take constructive criticism well? Do you give constructive criticism well? Do you help out your team mates? But how fast you got work done is not something I considered at all, as long as you were showing up, not wasting exorbitant amounts of time, and not putting in extra hours if there wasn't an emergency, I figure it will get done when it gets done. Eg, I cared about work ethic instead of productivity, and that is much harder to gauge with work from home. Without it, I feel like I have to start judging based on perceived productivity and I hate that. That said, I personally love WFH and so do my team mates, and I know them and trust them so it isn't an issue, but I wonder about how new people will work out.
- itsdrewmiller 4y ago
  Why do you find those characteristics more challenging to track in a WFH environment? Shouldn't things like commits, PRs, bug reports, etc. be better indicators than your in-person observations anyway?
  - pavon 4y ago
    Yes many of the things I listed are just as easy to track with WFH, and even before WFH online interactions were a significant part of those. It is the showing up, putting the hours, and not wasting too much time part that is hard to track remotely.
    - 4y ago
mock-possum 4y ago
That’s some weird jealousy thing right? Paranoia that your employees might possibly be working for someone else? Like that’s some jealous boyfriend “I don’t let my girl go out and party because she might be flirting with other guys” level of controlling behavior. Why would you want to date / work for someone who treated you like that in the first place, gross.
- BurningFrog 4y ago
  You can all it "weird" if you like, but people do cheat in relationships, and employees do secretly work several jobs. If you naively trust people, you will probably be taken advantage of.
  - mock-possum 4y ago
    Sorry, what's 'weird' is thinking that taking out your feelings of jealousy on the object of your jealousy is acceptable behavior - that it's anything other than unproductive petulant spite. Deliberately hurting your workers by enforcing RTO because you're jealous of who else they might be working for while WFH is wrong, is what I'm trying to say. That's not feelings of jealousy, that's an act of jealousy.
- SergeAx 4y ago
  This is not about jealousy. When people working second jobs, their productivity tanks dramatically.

kelnos 4y ago

Someone could totally work in an office while doing work for a different job. It's not even that difficult, or all that much more likely they would get caught than if they were to work multiple jobs from home.

jdminhbg 4y ago
I really think it would be a lot easier to get away with taking part in two Zoom standups per day from home than from an office.
- randomdata 4y ago
  Even if you could get away with it, no amount of money is worth having to endure two standups per day.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - kwhitefoot 4y ago
    When I was working on a team with people from all over Europe our standup was a 15 minute video conference at 09:00 CET. Each of us briefly said what we had done yesterday, what we intended to do today, and mentioned any problems that we thought that someone else might offer some insight into. The team leader would then summarize any concerns that were raised, suggest that person A contact person B to discuss the aforementioned concerns and that was it. We were mostly pretty self motivated but the standup helped us keep moving together. Fifteen minutes or even half an hour at the beginning of the day doesn't seem like much of a chore to me. And this was long before Zoom existed. Can someone explain to me why Zoom is such a big thing? We were using video conferencing in the last century without it.
    - jdminhbg 4y ago
      > And this was long before Zoom existed. Can someone explain to me why Zoom is such a big thing? We were using video conferencing in the last century without it. a) Zoom is very good at reducing the number of clicks between a link in your email and being on a call b) Zoom is easier to say and type than “video conferencing,” so people say it even when the actual application they’re using might differ
      - buggy6257 4y ago
        The number of clicks from a Zoom email to a zoom call: - Click the Link - Click the "Start the meeting button", nothing happens - Click "join meeting from browser" after waitint for it to eventually show me that option - I'm in the meeting! 3 clicks Number of clicks from a Google Meets email to a Zoom call: - Click the Link - I'm in the meeting! 1 click.
- Apocryphon 4y ago
  Offices tend to have conference rooms and other places for private calls.
  - jdminhbg 4y ago
    I'm not saying it's completely impossible, I'm just saying it is, contra OP, more likely that if you are in an office and take a conference room every morning at 10 for 15 minutes that you will be caught, versus working two jobs from home.
    - ghaff 4y ago
      That seems uncontroversial. Plus you probably can't separate the jobs on two different laptops to prevent accidental crossing of the streams--where one or more of those laptops may be managed by a company. Could someone get off with letting some side consulting work bleed into work hours? I'm sure in a lot of cases--though it would be easier at home. But I have to believe that, as in the case of relationships per upthread, working full-time in-person and remote jobs at the same time must start looking to people like something is odd here.
JackFr 4y ago
I personally have seen (twice, both before 2000) people operating as their own IT consulting firm from their desks while working full time. One was fired immediately as soon as it was discovered. The other was told to quietly wind it down within the month or face termination.

mysterydip 4y ago

Not necessarily :) I was thinking of a different example, but this is the first one I could find: He began working in-person as principal of Providence's E Cubed Academy on July 22, 2020. Meanwhile, he remained employed virtually as the assistant principal of Kramer Middle School in Washington D.C., a role he held since 2019. https://www.newsweek.com/man-accused-simultaneously-working-principal-two-schools-located-400-miles-apart-1656001 https://www.newsweek.com/man-accused-simultaneously-working-...

iso1631 4y ago

Really? When I used to work in an office I could I know someone who used to come in, put his coat on a chair, then go off fixing problems with desktops all over the campus. Eventually they found he was popping back to his car and doing 6 hours driving for a minicab firm. On the other hand if you measure presenteeism in the chair I had a colleague that would sit down browsing various websites all day taking calls for some business he ran doing scaffolding or cars or something (right dodgy dealer).

pavon 4y ago

Yes. I've never been a manager, but when working as technical lead productivity was the one thing I've never bothered trying to measure, as a metric or even an informal impression. Estimating how long something is going to take is really difficult, and as a developer I constantly run into something I thought would take a few hours, and then hit a snag that took a week to rundown and fix. That is despite being a programmer myself, and being very familiar with the codebase and program area. If I can't set a reasonable bar for my own productivity, how can I do so for my team mates, let alone how could a manager removed from the day-to-day work do so? I've felt like the people who thought they could measure productivity were the ones where were fooling themselves. Instead, I looked at a number of things. Are you making progress? Are you getting help quickly when you stop making progress? Does your code have lots of bugs later on? Do you take constructive criticism well? Do you give constructive criticism well? Do you help out your team mates? But how fast you got work done is not something I considered at all, as long as you were showing up, not wasting exorbitant amounts of time, and not putting in extra hours if there wasn't an emergency, I figure it will get done when it gets done. Eg, I cared about work ethic instead of productivity, and that is much harder to gauge with work from home. Without it, I feel like I have to start judging based on perceived productivity and I hate that. That said, I personally love WFH and so do my team mates, and I know them and trust them so it isn't an issue, but I wonder about how new people will work out.

itsdrewmiller 4y ago
Why do you find those characteristics more challenging to track in a WFH environment? Shouldn't things like commits, PRs, bug reports, etc. be better indicators than your in-person observations anyway?
- pavon 4y ago
  Yes many of the things I listed are just as easy to track with WFH, and even before WFH online interactions were a significant part of those. It is the showing up, putting the hours, and not wasting too much time part that is hard to track remotely.
  - 4y ago

mock-possum 4y ago

That’s some weird jealousy thing right? Paranoia that your employees might possibly be working for someone else? Like that’s some jealous boyfriend “I don’t let my girl go out and party because she might be flirting with other guys” level of controlling behavior. Why would you want to date / work for someone who treated you like that in the first place, gross.

BurningFrog 4y ago
You can all it "weird" if you like, but people do cheat in relationships, and employees do secretly work several jobs. If you naively trust people, you will probably be taken advantage of.
- mock-possum 4y ago
  Sorry, what's 'weird' is thinking that taking out your feelings of jealousy on the object of your jealousy is acceptable behavior - that it's anything other than unproductive petulant spite. Deliberately hurting your workers by enforcing RTO because you're jealous of who else they might be working for while WFH is wrong, is what I'm trying to say. That's not feelings of jealousy, that's an act of jealousy.
SergeAx 4y ago
This is not about jealousy. When people working second jobs, their productivity tanks dramatically.