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> It has been proven that knowledge workers can work productively and efficiently without being required to be in the office a set number of days. I'm a big pr

> It has been proven that knowledge workers can work productively and efficiently without being required to be in the office a set number of days. I'm a big proponent of "I don't care where you work as long as your work gets done" and have been since before covid, but I haven't come across anything that actually proves that, so... source? If there's a good study out there that shows that that is true, I'd love to see it so I can use it as evidence, but so far every study I've seen that claims this tends to either have some very narrow definition of productivity (like number of emails sent) or fails to take overall impact on the organization into account (more work completed, but less coordination between teams may not be a net positive).

s1artibartfast 3y ago
It's obviously not true as a generalization. If your job is bolting together cars, you can't work from home effectively. There might be some individuals and job classes that can do it effectively
kcplate 3y ago
It’s my opinion that people feel like they are more productive at WFH, but it’s a bit of a hard metric to actually measure. I get the sense that the freedom and flexibility might create a feeling of personal productivity to accomplish many things (not just career related) they couldn’t before WFH, but as for job productivity…I bet it’s probably a wash overall. I say this as a remote worker who wouldn’t want to RTO—because I feel like I am more productive at work from home. However, I wouldn’t bet the farm on that if there was a reliable way to measure it.
- polka_haunts_us 3y ago
  My first job was 40 hours a week in an office, my current job has been full WFH because of covid, transitioning into 3 days in the office. I can tell you factually that the days I'm actually at home in this hybrid setup that I'm way less productive in terms of getting my actual job done than I am days I'm in the office. I think when I was full WFH my at home productivity was actually much higher. However, the days I'm actually in office are way more productive than the average day at my previous job, and I'm pretty sure it's because of the low job productivity WFH days. I think return to office 5 days a week will lower my average in office productivity, resulting in approximate equal job productivity, and leave me less happy overall.
  - ineedasername 3y ago
    I've noticed a similar trend in myself. WFH was, averaged out by day, (to the extent I can objectively do that through my own memory) more productive when I was 100% WFH than now, where I am 40-60% WFH. Overall I think it's probably a wash: I think I'm a bit more focused when in the office now than pre-covid, which makes up for the the less focused time at at home. However there may be less tangible benefits, even if overall productivity is a wash, to having the WFH times. 1) Is the obvious work/life balance. Everything that comes with the convenience of not having to commute, freedom to intersperse everyday household chores during the workday even when it means extending working hours a little later, etc. 2) Is that when I'm WFH I seem to be a little less concerned with the immediate work issues and more likely to drift off into peripheral & speculative projects, things that may yield less results in the short term but might (too soon to really say) yield more in the long term. Overall I think my general output is about the same, but I'm more content, and perhaps (though not definitively) doing things that will be more productive in the long term. But there are countless different jobs and responsibilities and personalities that intersect in a way that doesn't lend itself to a single one size fits all rule. But unfortunately, "One rule for all" tends to be the top down approach in most work environments.
  - jrochkind1 3y ago
    The first two years of covid pandemic may not be a typical time though. The non-work demands on most people's time and energy, and most people's psychological state, were pretty different than usual. All things that seem like they could effect "productivity" (and/or your perception of productivity) (and hypothetically in either direction), in addition to the factor of whether you were full-time WFH or not.
- Joky 3y ago
  There is something to be said about individual productivity (whatever that means in a very innovative/creative environment) vs team/company output, just today I saw this in my feed: https://flocrivello.com/changing-my-mind-on-remote-about-being-in-san-francisco/ https://flocrivello.com/changing-my-mind-on-remote-about-bei... And that's coming from someone who actually tried to build a business out of remote work (TeamFlow was the product). I can be much more productive at home when it is about my individual contribution (me coding to deliver something unambiguous), but xxx individuals doing this does not necessarily align into a great product: that does not scale.
  - kcplate 3y ago
    I while back I was slammed on here for making essentially a statement that my remote team seems to individually claim/feel more productive but the net team productivity I felt decreased as we transitioned from in office to remote.
    - avocabros 3y ago
      I think this observation is spot on - and you don't have to look far to understand why individual productivity != systems productivity. 100% individual utilization in a system is a negative - manufacturing companies learned this years ago and is where the principles of the toyota system/kanban/lean manufacturing/etc. rose from. The only resource that should be 100% utilized in a process is the bottleneck - and anytime anyone is interrupted to help the bottleneck, that is a net win for the company output, even if individually it feels annoying. It's really unfortunate that it seems so many people are in the "you can pry remote work from my cold dead hands" camp that it's hard to even have a conversation that doesn't devolve into "I feel more productive remote, so you shouldn't care where I work".
      - kcplate 3y ago
        Definitely seems like it’s a strange hill that people are willing to die on these days. I’m pragmatic. I’d rather have a job than look for one. So if my company decides to RTO, I am going to RTO.
- cortesoft 3y ago
  I have been WFH since the pandemic, and I have grown used to it. My company doesn’t even have offices anymore. However, last week we had a happy hour to all meet in person, and I had a 20 minute conversation with someone about a work topic, and it was amazing how much productive information we were able to share with each other in such a short time. It was just easier to work through things in person than on slack or zoom.
  - danaris 3y ago
    But this is not a universal thing. I have absolutely no problem shooting the shit over text, voice, or video chat, and since I went mostly-remote, I have had a number of highly productive conversations over Zoom that looked a lot like a typical casual interaction resulting in good brainstorming. In fact, some of those times, it was even easier to communicate what we needed because one or another of us could share our screens (which is fine in person when you happen to be at someone's desk, or carrying your laptop with you, but if you just run into each other at the water cooler, it often requires a "hey, I'll send you that thing when I get back to my desk and we can continue this over email" or whatever). I think the biggest thing that far too many RTO proponents fail to understand is that different people work differently, have different experiences, and need different environments to be most effective. This has been hidden to a large extent by the fact that (nearly) everyone has been required to work in an office, but now that we've all experienced something different, many of us have seen firsthand that we can do just as well or even so much better if we're not forced into a particular box.
    - kcplate 3y ago
      The problem with that argument is that WFH has a short history with a unmeasurable productivity benefit to the organization vs a long history with in office work productivity measurements. The other problem is that people advocating WFH over RTO tend to focus on the individual benefit to them rather than the holistic benefit to the organization.
      - danaris 3y ago
Swizec 3y ago
> more work completed, but less coordination between teams may not be a net positive Here's one anecdata: I have never in any job coordinated as much with my team mates and other teams as I have in the past ~3 years of working remotely. The trick wasn't that we're remote or on-site, what increased our level of coordination was how we work. As a team instead of as a random grouping of individuals.
- listenallyall 3y ago
  So, you all set up a bunch more meetings?
- avocabros 3y ago
  It's worth considering whether that's a positive, or if the extra coordination is required simply because there are fewer and slower information channels available to communicate vs. on-site.
  - Swizec 3y ago
    The positive is that we get more done faster with better quality. Hard to compare with on-site comms volume because the on-site stuff goes into a mental black hole and nobody thinks of it as a measurable event. A 10min chat with a colleague remotely feels like a thing. A 20min chat in the office feels like “yeah of course I was coding this whole time”. I think this effect is also why people like async meetings via documents. They don’t realize it’s still a meeting and is taking waaaay more of their time than just sitting down synchronously for 10min to hash things out. They’d rather do it in 10x 2min bursts between other things.
8note 3y ago
There's no actual difference in interteam coordination when all the teams you have to coordinate with are far away in timezones, or distance. Calling a conference room from another conference room is strictly worse than a laptop to laptop call
hn_throwaway_99 3y ago
Glad to see this is the top comment here. If anything, I think jobs where productivity can be easily measured (think customer service agents that handle a particular volume of calls, radiologists that already have a very well defined "Relative Value Unit" system for calculating productivity, etc.) are the ones that make the most sense working from home, and these are also the types of tasks most likely to be compared in these remote work studies. But the thing that tech companies are the most worried about is a long term slide in innovation and competitiveness, and the effect of WFH on that has definitely not been proven one way or the other.

s1artibartfast 3y ago

It's obviously not true as a generalization. If your job is bolting together cars, you can't work from home effectively. There might be some individuals and job classes that can do it effectively

kcplate 3y ago

It’s my opinion that people feel like they are more productive at WFH, but it’s a bit of a hard metric to actually measure. I get the sense that the freedom and flexibility might create a feeling of personal productivity to accomplish many things (not just career related) they couldn’t before WFH, but as for job productivity…I bet it’s probably a wash overall. I say this as a remote worker who wouldn’t want to RTO—because I feel like I am more productive at work from home. However, I wouldn’t bet the farm on that if there was a reliable way to measure it.

polka_haunts_us 3y ago
My first job was 40 hours a week in an office, my current job has been full WFH because of covid, transitioning into 3 days in the office. I can tell you factually that the days I'm actually at home in this hybrid setup that I'm way less productive in terms of getting my actual job done than I am days I'm in the office. I think when I was full WFH my at home productivity was actually much higher. However, the days I'm actually in office are way more productive than the average day at my previous job, and I'm pretty sure it's because of the low job productivity WFH days. I think return to office 5 days a week will lower my average in office productivity, resulting in approximate equal job productivity, and leave me less happy overall.
- ineedasername 3y ago
  I've noticed a similar trend in myself. WFH was, averaged out by day, (to the extent I can objectively do that through my own memory) more productive when I was 100% WFH than now, where I am 40-60% WFH. Overall I think it's probably a wash: I think I'm a bit more focused when in the office now than pre-covid, which makes up for the the less focused time at at home. However there may be less tangible benefits, even if overall productivity is a wash, to having the WFH times. 1) Is the obvious work/life balance. Everything that comes with the convenience of not having to commute, freedom to intersperse everyday household chores during the workday even when it means extending working hours a little later, etc. 2) Is that when I'm WFH I seem to be a little less concerned with the immediate work issues and more likely to drift off into peripheral & speculative projects, things that may yield less results in the short term but might (too soon to really say) yield more in the long term. Overall I think my general output is about the same, but I'm more content, and perhaps (though not definitively) doing things that will be more productive in the long term. But there are countless different jobs and responsibilities and personalities that intersect in a way that doesn't lend itself to a single one size fits all rule. But unfortunately, "One rule for all" tends to be the top down approach in most work environments.
- jrochkind1 3y ago
  The first two years of covid pandemic may not be a typical time though. The non-work demands on most people's time and energy, and most people's psychological state, were pretty different than usual. All things that seem like they could effect "productivity" (and/or your perception of productivity) (and hypothetically in either direction), in addition to the factor of whether you were full-time WFH or not.
Joky 3y ago
There is something to be said about individual productivity (whatever that means in a very innovative/creative environment) vs team/company output, just today I saw this in my feed: https://flocrivello.com/changing-my-mind-on-remote-about-being-in-san-francisco/ https://flocrivello.com/changing-my-mind-on-remote-about-bei... And that's coming from someone who actually tried to build a business out of remote work (TeamFlow was the product). I can be much more productive at home when it is about my individual contribution (me coding to deliver something unambiguous), but xxx individuals doing this does not necessarily align into a great product: that does not scale.
- kcplate 3y ago
  I while back I was slammed on here for making essentially a statement that my remote team seems to individually claim/feel more productive but the net team productivity I felt decreased as we transitioned from in office to remote.
  - avocabros 3y ago
    I think this observation is spot on - and you don't have to look far to understand why individual productivity != systems productivity. 100% individual utilization in a system is a negative - manufacturing companies learned this years ago and is where the principles of the toyota system/kanban/lean manufacturing/etc. rose from. The only resource that should be 100% utilized in a process is the bottleneck - and anytime anyone is interrupted to help the bottleneck, that is a net win for the company output, even if individually it feels annoying. It's really unfortunate that it seems so many people are in the "you can pry remote work from my cold dead hands" camp that it's hard to even have a conversation that doesn't devolve into "I feel more productive remote, so you shouldn't care where I work".
    - kcplate 3y ago
      Definitely seems like it’s a strange hill that people are willing to die on these days. I’m pragmatic. I’d rather have a job than look for one. So if my company decides to RTO, I am going to RTO.
cortesoft 3y ago
I have been WFH since the pandemic, and I have grown used to it. My company doesn’t even have offices anymore. However, last week we had a happy hour to all meet in person, and I had a 20 minute conversation with someone about a work topic, and it was amazing how much productive information we were able to share with each other in such a short time. It was just easier to work through things in person than on slack or zoom.
- danaris 3y ago
  But this is not a universal thing. I have absolutely no problem shooting the shit over text, voice, or video chat, and since I went mostly-remote, I have had a number of highly productive conversations over Zoom that looked a lot like a typical casual interaction resulting in good brainstorming. In fact, some of those times, it was even easier to communicate what we needed because one or another of us could share our screens (which is fine in person when you happen to be at someone's desk, or carrying your laptop with you, but if you just run into each other at the water cooler, it often requires a "hey, I'll send you that thing when I get back to my desk and we can continue this over email" or whatever). I think the biggest thing that far too many RTO proponents fail to understand is that different people work differently, have different experiences, and need different environments to be most effective. This has been hidden to a large extent by the fact that (nearly) everyone has been required to work in an office, but now that we've all experienced something different, many of us have seen firsthand that we can do just as well or even so much better if we're not forced into a particular box.
  - kcplate 3y ago
    The problem with that argument is that WFH has a short history with a unmeasurable productivity benefit to the organization vs a long history with in office work productivity measurements. The other problem is that people advocating WFH over RTO tend to focus on the individual benefit to them rather than the holistic benefit to the organization.
    - danaris 3y ago

Swizec 3y ago

> more work completed, but less coordination between teams may not be a net positive Here's one anecdata: I have never in any job coordinated as much with my team mates and other teams as I have in the past ~3 years of working remotely. The trick wasn't that we're remote or on-site, what increased our level of coordination was how we work. As a team instead of as a random grouping of individuals.

listenallyall 3y ago
So, you all set up a bunch more meetings?
avocabros 3y ago
It's worth considering whether that's a positive, or if the extra coordination is required simply because there are fewer and slower information channels available to communicate vs. on-site.
- Swizec 3y ago
  The positive is that we get more done faster with better quality. Hard to compare with on-site comms volume because the on-site stuff goes into a mental black hole and nobody thinks of it as a measurable event. A 10min chat with a colleague remotely feels like a thing. A 20min chat in the office feels like “yeah of course I was coding this whole time”. I think this effect is also why people like async meetings via documents. They don’t realize it’s still a meeting and is taking waaaay more of their time than just sitting down synchronously for 10min to hash things out. They’d rather do it in 10x 2min bursts between other things.

8note 3y ago

There's no actual difference in interteam coordination when all the teams you have to coordinate with are far away in timezones, or distance. Calling a conference room from another conference room is strictly worse than a laptop to laptop call

hn_throwaway_99 3y ago

Glad to see this is the top comment here. If anything, I think jobs where productivity can be easily measured (think customer service agents that handle a particular volume of calls, radiologists that already have a very well defined "Relative Value Unit" system for calculating productivity, etc.) are the ones that make the most sense working from home, and these are also the types of tasks most likely to be compared in these remote work studies. But the thing that tech companies are the most worried about is a long term slide in innovation and competitiveness, and the effect of WFH on that has definitely not been proven one way or the other.