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Anecdotal evidence does suggest this to be determined on a combination of the individual, and the task. If individuals are more productive, then the company as

Anecdotal evidence does suggest this to be determined on a combination of the individual, and the task. If individuals are more productive, then the company as a whole must be more competitive? In my own case, if we say an ideal productivity output per day is 1 unit, that is 100% productive. Commuting to the office, office distractions, and general tiredness, I would put the hard limit at 50%. I've measured it, and the duration I'm very productive tends to be at best, half the working hours. Usually, it's much less. Any meeting that could be handled in slack, design documents w/feedback do not count (this is almost all meetings). The many "could you..", "do you know...", etc, all take up a good chunk, even though the requests are only 5 minutes worth of work. While working from home, suddenly the deep focus you had 2 hours in, stretches on for 6 hours, or even 10. Or around 2-300% productive. To what extent there is a tradeoff in office culture, and colloquial banter, that has its own value, I'm not sure. But, for people who value getting shit done, the office, and commuting, sure adds a lot of negative value in the mix. And, you might think that this just applies to "hands-dirty" (as much as they get dirty while typing on a keyboard :p) engineering work. Though I would argue it applies equally to secondary work planning, task breakdown, and strategic planning.

Hermitian909 4y ago
> If individuals are more productive, then the company as a whole must be more competitive? This is only obviously true for rote work. For more ambiguous knowledge work increasing task completion rate may make the company less competitive if the tasks are less aligned with the company strategy (ever seen a product became a tangled mess of half-broken features?). If you're mathemtically inclined, it's useful to model tasks as vectors adding to the company's vector of progress; the net result can be a reduction in progress if the task vector and company vector are misaligned. Anecdotally, this misalignment is the what everyone at the middle management layer and above is worried about. You get to the end of the quarter and you realize that the work team A did was misaligned with the work from team B and now their shared business goal is shot. Many people's reaction to this line of thinking is "well that's management's fault" but, as the parent correctly calls out, that's beside the point. "Just hire more competent managers" is not something you can do en masse.

Hermitian909 4y ago

> If individuals are more productive, then the company as a whole must be more competitive? This is only obviously true for rote work. For more ambiguous knowledge work increasing task completion rate may make the company less competitive if the tasks are less aligned with the company strategy (ever seen a product became a tangled mess of half-broken features?). If you're mathemtically inclined, it's useful to model tasks as vectors adding to the company's vector of progress; the net result can be a reduction in progress if the task vector and company vector are misaligned. Anecdotally, this misalignment is the what everyone at the middle management layer and above is worried about. You get to the end of the quarter and you realize that the work team A did was misaligned with the work from team B and now their shared business goal is shot. Many people's reaction to this line of thinking is "well that's management's fault" but, as the parent correctly calls out, that's beside the point. "Just hire more competent managers" is not something you can do en masse.