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How do they control for the fact that people who are falling behind frequently work more after hours? Is it that after hours works causes loss of productivity

How do they control for the fact that people who are falling behind frequently work more after hours? Is it that after hours works causes loss of productivity or is that slow people work after hours to try to make up for falling behind?

balderdash 3y ago
100% I feel like a lot of the time after hours work is driving by lack of productivity / prioritization / understanding “good enough”
- caminante 3y ago
  I smile out of respect on calls when a subject matter lead says a. they've gotten as far as they can given incomplete inputs/scope b. and they're not going to prioritize further meetings until the lead provides what they need Not being a "team player" in a fuzzy sense is actually "helping the team" prioritize efficiently!
  - saiya-jin 3y ago
    You can't be a team player while being in 1-man team, and everybody else doing their own stuff not related to your goals. That's not much of a team work.
ImaCake 3y ago
They do mention it in passing, but there is no way to statistically control for that without a randomised controlled trial (or Mendelian Randomisation). There is no reason to think that working outside hours is the cause of the problem. It could be a consequence of an individual struggling outside of work that then leads to having to try to catch up.
halfcat 3y ago
> How do they control for… They don’t. It’s an observational, self-reporting study, which can only establish correlation, and not causation.
matrix87 3y ago
> people who are falling behind frequently work more after hours? From my experience it's the opposite, the people who are falling behind aren't the ones working irregular hours
__MatrixMan__ 3y ago
I'll give them the benefit of the doubt and say that the marketers who wrote this have probably heard of a control variable at some point in their life.
isaacremuant 3y ago
I think there's a vicious cycle of correlation. People like that tend to work in the wrong ways and always make up for it in extra time and stress. If they said "no more extra time" they might be more willing to change the bad habits that lead them to be unproductive. I've seen it a lot. People become so used to their zombie state they waste hours without really thinking and if they just stopped and analyzed the situation, they'd approach things in a much better way or troubleshoot rather fast. Obviously, it's all mixed with career incentives and so many other factors, but I'm a big proponent on having people work on their contractual quantity of hours and not more (except on a rare occasion which ahould not happen often, like 1-3 times in a year).

balderdash 3y ago

100% I feel like a lot of the time after hours work is driving by lack of productivity / prioritization / understanding “good enough”

caminante 3y ago
I smile out of respect on calls when a subject matter lead says a. they've gotten as far as they can given incomplete inputs/scope b. and they're not going to prioritize further meetings until the lead provides what they need Not being a "team player" in a fuzzy sense is actually "helping the team" prioritize efficiently!
- saiya-jin 3y ago
  You can't be a team player while being in 1-man team, and everybody else doing their own stuff not related to your goals. That's not much of a team work.

ImaCake 3y ago

They do mention it in passing, but there is no way to statistically control for that without a randomised controlled trial (or Mendelian Randomisation). There is no reason to think that working outside hours is the cause of the problem. It could be a consequence of an individual struggling outside of work that then leads to having to try to catch up.

halfcat 3y ago

> How do they control for… They don’t. It’s an observational, self-reporting study, which can only establish correlation, and not causation.

matrix87 3y ago

> people who are falling behind frequently work more after hours? From my experience it's the opposite, the people who are falling behind aren't the ones working irregular hours

__MatrixMan__ 3y ago

I'll give them the benefit of the doubt and say that the marketers who wrote this have probably heard of a control variable at some point in their life.

isaacremuant 3y ago

I think there's a vicious cycle of correlation. People like that tend to work in the wrong ways and always make up for it in extra time and stress. If they said "no more extra time" they might be more willing to change the bad habits that lead them to be unproductive. I've seen it a lot. People become so used to their zombie state they waste hours without really thinking and if they just stopped and analyzed the situation, they'd approach things in a much better way or troubleshoot rather fast. Obviously, it's all mixed with career incentives and so many other factors, but I'm a big proponent on having people work on their contractual quantity of hours and not more (except on a rare occasion which ahould not happen often, like 1-3 times in a year).