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Are remote workers more productive? That's the wrong question

thenerdhead 3y ago
Yeah and there's that adage that you want to hire lazy people because they will find an easy way to solve something. The right question as alluded to in this article being "where are you happiest working?" is equally dumb. Of course people are happier in their preferred environment. This whole discussion is just a distraction and the points don't even matter as to who wins the argument.
- atoav 3y ago
  The problem with that adage is that the easy way might or might not automatically be the sustainable, legal, safe, secure or cost-effective way. Every time I heard that phrase it was always used as an excuse.
aaron695 3y ago
[dead]
5350-uiop-1130 3y ago
would be nice if companies were run in some kind of democratic way. one employee one vote. so that if management called for RTO and most employees voted against, the management would lose. but of course management is there to serve themselves and the shareholders foremost. and so the employees are expected to do the same. see the "bigger picture" as i was recently condescendingly told after refusing RTO.
- strgcmc 3y ago
  Such structures exist, i.e. worker owned co-ops. They're obviously just not the norm under capitalist systems.
  - collyw 3y ago
    You could always start your own. Absolutely nothing stopping people from doing that but if you are going to make the effort of starting a company, I can understand why most people would want to profit from that.
Eridrus 3y ago
From talking to senior folks at tech companies, there's a real perception that, modulo the first few months of covid where there was not much to do hut work, productivity has suffered at their companies. In other circumstances (eg MOOC discussions) it is not controversial that many people have self control/motivation problems, so it's not super surprising that being less visible leads to less output. And while everyone likes flexibility as an employee, we are all familiar with the mythical man month and why saving some money on real estate or salaries doesn't help offset productivity losses. As long as these two beliefs remain in place, remote work will keep getting squeezed out at places that see themselves as being in competitive markets where they need to bring their A game.
deterministic 3y ago
Companies that doesn’t offer WFH will simply be less competitive in the employee market. Which will have a medium to long term negative impact on revenues. The best developers I know refuse to work for companies that aren’t WFH flexible.
armchairhacker 3y ago
Are your remote workers more productive? Look at the individual, if they're under-performing or under-communicating maybe set (or at least threaten) in-office, if they're at expectations putting them in-office will only make them worse. Also, the kind and culture of the remote environment or office matters much more than "remote vs in-office". I don't really care working in-office, but I have a lot of things I do really care about (short commute, peace and quiet, breaks, decent office temperature) which make me prefer remote whenever possible. But of course these "let all your employees be remote vs. force everyone to the office" blog posts take this "wrong" question and completely miss the right ones. And a lot of companies who are doing RTO are for their own specific reasons like getting people to quit.
didibus 3y ago
Companies have pretty good metrics for "productivity", its just their overall performance: revenue, profit, cash flow and dept. They could use that, but if they did, it would show that work from home isn't negatively affecting their performance, and they couldn't use it as an argument to irrationally force people back at the office. People dispute this by asking: "But would we have made more profit if people worked in-office?" And I think the reality is, no, the truth is, when you look at it, whatever impact to company performance remote vs in-office has is so minimal either way that you won't actually see it impact performance in a measurable way. So many other decisions you're taking matter more, that probably whatever allows you to attract and retain better talent and make them happy will actually have the most positive effect on your bottom line.
- splitstud 3y ago
  [dead]
- ssss11 3y ago
  “But my job of managing and co-ordinating people will be made obsolete if everyone stays home” …
  - collyw 3y ago
    I had a remote manager a few years ago and kind of thought that he didn't ad much value to the process. Then they got rid of him and I had to deal with the company owners directly. Absolute nightmare. Good management is one of these things that you don't really notice. Bad management you do notice and not for positive reasons.
    - Breza 3y ago
      I agree. Early in my career, I thought a manager was like a driving teacher, someone to help guide you and hit the brake when you're about to crash. Now that I'm a manager, I think of it more like being a snowplow; you wake up in the morning and you can get your job done thanks to the work that someone else is doing behind the scenes.
wildrhythms 3y ago
Lazy article. Not a single mention of tax breaks these companies receive by forcing workers into the office. These tax breaks were extended during COVID, and are now being re-assessed, hence the sudden and coordinated push to RTO. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2023-02-21/another-threat-to-work-from-home-tax-breaks https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2023-02-21/another-t... https://archive.is/eOeIv https://archive.is/eOeIv

Yeah and there's that adage that you want to hire lazy people because they will find an easy way to solve something. The right question as alluded to in this article being "where are you happiest working?" is equally dumb. Of course people are happier in their preferred environment. This whole discussion is just a distraction and the points don't even matter as to who wins the argument.

atoav 3y ago
The problem with that adage is that the easy way might or might not automatically be the sustainable, legal, safe, secure or cost-effective way. Every time I heard that phrase it was always used as an excuse.

aaron695 3y ago

[dead]

5350-uiop-1130 3y ago

would be nice if companies were run in some kind of democratic way. one employee one vote. so that if management called for RTO and most employees voted against, the management would lose. but of course management is there to serve themselves and the shareholders foremost. and so the employees are expected to do the same. see the "bigger picture" as i was recently condescendingly told after refusing RTO.

strgcmc 3y ago
Such structures exist, i.e. worker owned co-ops. They're obviously just not the norm under capitalist systems.
- collyw 3y ago
  You could always start your own. Absolutely nothing stopping people from doing that but if you are going to make the effort of starting a company, I can understand why most people would want to profit from that.

Eridrus 3y ago

From talking to senior folks at tech companies, there's a real perception that, modulo the first few months of covid where there was not much to do hut work, productivity has suffered at their companies. In other circumstances (eg MOOC discussions) it is not controversial that many people have self control/motivation problems, so it's not super surprising that being less visible leads to less output. And while everyone likes flexibility as an employee, we are all familiar with the mythical man month and why saving some money on real estate or salaries doesn't help offset productivity losses. As long as these two beliefs remain in place, remote work will keep getting squeezed out at places that see themselves as being in competitive markets where they need to bring their A game.

deterministic 3y ago

Companies that doesn’t offer WFH will simply be less competitive in the employee market. Which will have a medium to long term negative impact on revenues. The best developers I know refuse to work for companies that aren’t WFH flexible.

armchairhacker 3y ago

Are your remote workers more productive? Look at the individual, if they're under-performing or under-communicating maybe set (or at least threaten) in-office, if they're at expectations putting them in-office will only make them worse. Also, the kind and culture of the remote environment or office matters much more than "remote vs in-office". I don't really care working in-office, but I have a lot of things I do really care about (short commute, peace and quiet, breaks, decent office temperature) which make me prefer remote whenever possible. But of course these "let all your employees be remote vs. force everyone to the office" blog posts take this "wrong" question and completely miss the right ones. And a lot of companies who are doing RTO are for their own specific reasons like getting people to quit.

didibus 3y ago

Companies have pretty good metrics for "productivity", its just their overall performance: revenue, profit, cash flow and dept. They could use that, but if they did, it would show that work from home isn't negatively affecting their performance, and they couldn't use it as an argument to irrationally force people back at the office. People dispute this by asking: "But would we have made more profit if people worked in-office?" And I think the reality is, no, the truth is, when you look at it, whatever impact to company performance remote vs in-office has is so minimal either way that you won't actually see it impact performance in a measurable way. So many other decisions you're taking matter more, that probably whatever allows you to attract and retain better talent and make them happy will actually have the most positive effect on your bottom line.

splitstud 3y ago
[dead]
ssss11 3y ago
“But my job of managing and co-ordinating people will be made obsolete if everyone stays home” …
- collyw 3y ago
  I had a remote manager a few years ago and kind of thought that he didn't ad much value to the process. Then they got rid of him and I had to deal with the company owners directly. Absolute nightmare. Good management is one of these things that you don't really notice. Bad management you do notice and not for positive reasons.
  - Breza 3y ago
    I agree. Early in my career, I thought a manager was like a driving teacher, someone to help guide you and hit the brake when you're about to crash. Now that I'm a manager, I think of it more like being a snowplow; you wake up in the morning and you can get your job done thanks to the work that someone else is doing behind the scenes.

wildrhythms 3y ago

Lazy article. Not a single mention of tax breaks these companies receive by forcing workers into the office. These tax breaks were extended during COVID, and are now being re-assessed, hence the sudden and coordinated push to RTO. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2023-02-21/another-threat-to-work-from-home-tax-breaks https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2023-02-21/another-t... https://archive.is/eOeIv https://archive.is/eOeIv