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I wish some of these companies doing a return to office could share the data driving their decisions - and follow up with the impact. I suspect, but have no re

I wish some of these companies doing a return to office could share the data driving their decisions - and follow up with the impact. I suspect, but have no real data to prove, that an in office culture could enhance collaboration - within teams, across teams etc; my intuition is that there is more overhead to get the same people in sync when working remotely, than in an office - but I wonder if data anywhere shows that (and for what sort of return - very easy for these 2-3 day a week returns to not achieve all of the benefits). All these articles reporting about return to office never have any data to share though.

wahnfrieden 3y ago
It’s not productivity data driven.
wenc 3y ago
How would you measure it quantitatively though? I know for me, I solve problems much more quickly when I can walk over to my co-worker's desk and talk it over. Or have someone walk through a problem with me on the board. Or just random stuff I learn from water cooler conversation triggers thoughts in me that help me move quickly on a problem. But it's very difficult to quantify these things. If these things were tickets, I would track their time to close, but they're not.
- jh00ker 3y ago
  Surveys - need to baseline, first, though
  - wenc 3y ago
    Surveys capture stated preferences, not revealed ones. Capturing sentiment is useful in itself — it is a kind of data point. But to really see the productivity difference you need an instrument based less on what people say, but what they actually do.
  - Paul-Craft 3y ago
    Weren't those surveys already done around 3.5 years ago when the pandemic first hit? I seem to recall companies like Microsoft reporting increased productivity when going remote. The same sort of thing happens when you start looking at 4 day work weeks as well. (Sorry, I don't have links to any of those surveys/survey reports/data, so if you want to call me out, I'm just going to plead the 5th on being a little lazy.)
- cmh89 3y ago
  >I know for me, I solve problems much more quickly when I can walk over to my co-worker's desk and talk it over. Or have someone walk through a problem with me on the board. Why don't you just give them a call? What's the difference? For everyone who misses being able to have a quick chat with a coworker, there is another person who is glad that they can get in a work flow without random coworkers coming over to talk about something they aren't currently working on.
  - wenc 3y ago
    It’s fundamentally different. Barring the fact that it’s lower friction to approach someone in person because you can read if they’re busy (you can accomplish the same with a online status but they have to trigger it or you have to send a chat message asking is now is a good time to talk), calling someone is way more intrusive. It’s also lower bandwidth in terms of communication. Losing the ability to gesture and point and to write on a board in real life is significant. It feels like it shouldn’t be, but it is. > there is another person who is glad that they can get in a work flow without random coworkers coming over to talk about something they aren't currently working on. In corporate life, you lose a lot cumulatively if you’re not generally aware of goings on. People who keep their head down and do their work do ok for a while but over a lifetime they lose out on new ideas and don’t work on important problems. Richard Hamming (of Hamming window, Hamming distance fame) noted this in the 1980s and wrote about it in “you and your research” http://www.paulgraham.com/hamming.html http://www.paulgraham.com/hamming.html Quote Another trait, it took me a while to notice. I noticed the following facts about people who work with the door open or the door closed. I notice that if you have the door to your office closed, you get more work done today and tomorrow, and you are more productive than most. But 10 years later somehow you don't know quite know what problems are worth working on; all the hard work you do is sort of tangential in importance. He who works with the door open gets all kinds of interruptions, but he also occasionally gets clues as to what the world is and what might be important. Now I cannot prove the cause and effect sequence because you might say, "The closed door is symbolic of a closed mind." I don't know. But I can say there is a pretty good correlation between those who work with the doors open and those who ultimately do important things, although people who work with doors closed often work harder. Somehow they seem to work on slightly the wrong thing — not much, but enough that they miss fame.
silisili 3y ago
Not productivity driven. It's a lazy way to do layoffs...
LatteLazy 3y ago
While I agree... We can't really define productivity, let alone measure it. And that's for a manager who WANTS to be open and data driven...
ulfw 3y ago
There is no data. And even if there was they would never include ALL data, e.g. you have to weigh paying rent in Hong Kong, New York, Sydney, San Francisco, London etc etc expensive places for an office building that a remote-only work place doesn't need. Being 5% more productive in office might not make up for billions of dollars in rent and overhead.
Turskarama 3y ago
The collaboration thing isn't as simple as it seems though. Yes it becomes easier to reach people, but that means it also becomes easier to disrupt people. If I am disrupted 5 times with 5 small things in an hour, that will slow me down significantly more than if I am disrupted by one big thing in that same hour. For a tech analogy (we're on HN after all), being in the office reduces latency but in doing so can also reduce throughput. For the kind of work managers do latency can be critical, so from their perspective being in the office is extremely helpful. Other can be most productive when given large amounts of time to focus on a single task in which case latency is far less critical.
- coffeedan 3y ago
  >> If I am disrupted 5 times with 5 small things in an hour, that will slow me down significantly But those 5 people who interrupted you are no longer blocked. If they had to schedule a call with you tomorrow or the next day then the overall productivity of the team could very well drop. Companies care less about your individual productivity and more about the productivity of the entire organization.
  - Turskarama 3y ago
    Or more likely they could have sent me a message and still received their update within the hour, all without interrupting me. If you don't have anything else you could be doing for that whole hour you probably aren't that busy anyway, in which case waiting won't hurt you too much.
    - dgoldstein0 3y ago
      The office I worked in pre pandemic had a pretty clear "don't bother people wearing headphones" etiquette. With a variation of that it seems like you could be fine?

wahnfrieden 3y ago

It’s not productivity data driven.

wenc 3y ago

How would you measure it quantitatively though? I know for me, I solve problems much more quickly when I can walk over to my co-worker's desk and talk it over. Or have someone walk through a problem with me on the board. Or just random stuff I learn from water cooler conversation triggers thoughts in me that help me move quickly on a problem. But it's very difficult to quantify these things. If these things were tickets, I would track their time to close, but they're not.

jh00ker 3y ago
Surveys - need to baseline, first, though
- wenc 3y ago
  Surveys capture stated preferences, not revealed ones. Capturing sentiment is useful in itself — it is a kind of data point. But to really see the productivity difference you need an instrument based less on what people say, but what they actually do.
- Paul-Craft 3y ago
  Weren't those surveys already done around 3.5 years ago when the pandemic first hit? I seem to recall companies like Microsoft reporting increased productivity when going remote. The same sort of thing happens when you start looking at 4 day work weeks as well. (Sorry, I don't have links to any of those surveys/survey reports/data, so if you want to call me out, I'm just going to plead the 5th on being a little lazy.)
cmh89 3y ago
>I know for me, I solve problems much more quickly when I can walk over to my co-worker's desk and talk it over. Or have someone walk through a problem with me on the board. Why don't you just give them a call? What's the difference? For everyone who misses being able to have a quick chat with a coworker, there is another person who is glad that they can get in a work flow without random coworkers coming over to talk about something they aren't currently working on.
- wenc 3y ago
  It’s fundamentally different. Barring the fact that it’s lower friction to approach someone in person because you can read if they’re busy (you can accomplish the same with a online status but they have to trigger it or you have to send a chat message asking is now is a good time to talk), calling someone is way more intrusive. It’s also lower bandwidth in terms of communication. Losing the ability to gesture and point and to write on a board in real life is significant. It feels like it shouldn’t be, but it is. > there is another person who is glad that they can get in a work flow without random coworkers coming over to talk about something they aren't currently working on. In corporate life, you lose a lot cumulatively if you’re not generally aware of goings on. People who keep their head down and do their work do ok for a while but over a lifetime they lose out on new ideas and don’t work on important problems. Richard Hamming (of Hamming window, Hamming distance fame) noted this in the 1980s and wrote about it in “you and your research” http://www.paulgraham.com/hamming.html http://www.paulgraham.com/hamming.html Quote Another trait, it took me a while to notice. I noticed the following facts about people who work with the door open or the door closed. I notice that if you have the door to your office closed, you get more work done today and tomorrow, and you are more productive than most. But 10 years later somehow you don't know quite know what problems are worth working on; all the hard work you do is sort of tangential in importance. He who works with the door open gets all kinds of interruptions, but he also occasionally gets clues as to what the world is and what might be important. Now I cannot prove the cause and effect sequence because you might say, "The closed door is symbolic of a closed mind." I don't know. But I can say there is a pretty good correlation between those who work with the doors open and those who ultimately do important things, although people who work with doors closed often work harder. Somehow they seem to work on slightly the wrong thing — not much, but enough that they miss fame.

silisili 3y ago

Not productivity driven. It's a lazy way to do layoffs...

LatteLazy 3y ago

While I agree... We can't really define productivity, let alone measure it. And that's for a manager who WANTS to be open and data driven...

ulfw 3y ago

There is no data. And even if there was they would never include ALL data, e.g. you have to weigh paying rent in Hong Kong, New York, Sydney, San Francisco, London etc etc expensive places for an office building that a remote-only work place doesn't need. Being 5% more productive in office might not make up for billions of dollars in rent and overhead.

Turskarama 3y ago

The collaboration thing isn't as simple as it seems though. Yes it becomes easier to reach people, but that means it also becomes easier to disrupt people. If I am disrupted 5 times with 5 small things in an hour, that will slow me down significantly more than if I am disrupted by one big thing in that same hour. For a tech analogy (we're on HN after all), being in the office reduces latency but in doing so can also reduce throughput. For the kind of work managers do latency can be critical, so from their perspective being in the office is extremely helpful. Other can be most productive when given large amounts of time to focus on a single task in which case latency is far less critical.

coffeedan 3y ago
>> If I am disrupted 5 times with 5 small things in an hour, that will slow me down significantly But those 5 people who interrupted you are no longer blocked. If they had to schedule a call with you tomorrow or the next day then the overall productivity of the team could very well drop. Companies care less about your individual productivity and more about the productivity of the entire organization.
- Turskarama 3y ago
  Or more likely they could have sent me a message and still received their update within the hour, all without interrupting me. If you don't have anything else you could be doing for that whole hour you probably aren't that busy anyway, in which case waiting won't hurt you too much.
  - dgoldstein0 3y ago
    The office I worked in pre pandemic had a pretty clear "don't bother people wearing headphones" etiquette. With a variation of that it seems like you could be fine?