6 ms·

I don't have a particularly strong stance on RTO, but I can't help but call it how much less rigorous HN is when talking about this issue than, say, anything th

by gipp 3y ago

I don't have a particularly strong stance on RTO, but I can't help but call it how much less rigorous HN is when talking about this issue than, say, anything that doesn't affect them. The putative ways in which poorly organized remote/hybrid work are supposed to affect a company -- culture, creativity, and the other things that come out of personal interaction and long-term proximity -- are things that operate on a multi-year timescale. No half-ass study on a few short term productivity metrics, looking at an RTO process that barely spans one year, are going to surface that. OTOH it's likely to be obvious to people actually in the environment long before it has a measurable impact on any kind of balance sheet

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
aurareturn 3y ago
>but I can't help but call it how much less rigorous HN is when talking about this issue than, say, anything that doesn't affect them. I think it's because it affects people here disproportionately. Let's be honest. I'm guessing a lot of people here are software developers or work in a technical role in general. People in these roles tend to be introverts. Introverts are unlikely to prefer the office. On top of that, people here are only thinking about their own role - but not all of the company. For example, it could be that software development can be done with 100% remote, but what about the company's marketing, finance, HR, operations departments? What if those departments function better in person? Will the company let all the software developers and product managers work remotely and then demand the other departments to come into the office? How does it look if the company only lets their software developers work remotely but everyone else must come in, including retail/factory workers if there are any? I think people here don't consider everything when it comes to RTO. So we keep hearing conspiracy theories here about how executives/companies own real estate so they want employees back. I've always said this. If you are a software developer in the US, you should definitely advocate against remote work. Sooner or later, the company is going to realize they can hire the same developer for 15% of the salary that the company is paying you.
- steveBK123 3y ago
  I don't think its a conspiracy of CRE ownership. It's simply labor losing power to capital again as the economy / job market has turned. CEOs see remote/hybrid as an employee benefit that is at best slightly positive to them, probably neutral, so they are cutting it. Your office lunch and generous health care plans are next.
- randomdata 3y ago
  > Sooner or later, the company is going to realize they can hire the same developer for 15% of the salary that the company is paying you. Only if there is some kind of downturn in the software developer market that frees up those developers from the jobs they are currently doing. Otherwise, the companies will get into bidding wars, and the price will quickly return – at which point it's a lot cheaper to keep you. It's not like companies didn't figure that out in the 1990s. It was on the news like every single day. Granted, there are signs that we may be in the midst of that downturn. But if that's the case, an office isn't going to save you. You won't be needed regardless of where you happen to be sitting.
- scarface_74 3y ago
  I’m in no way an introvert. Part of my day job until six months ago was flying around the country talking to people doing requirements analysis, supporting pre-sales, training, the business dinners after work small talk etc and of course some development. But I also until last year “worked for a FAANG” remotely without having to leave my medium cost of living area and a year in, I was able to move to an even cheaper area with no state income tax where the local job market sucks for my specialty. It’s a big tourist area. As far as the company outsourcing somewhere cheaper, if after all of these years I’ve been in the industry all I can do is “codez real gud” and I’m that easily replaceable, I’ve done something remarkably wrong.
  - steveBK123 3y ago
    Exactly, outsourcing success requires stakeholders and product actually writing down what they want, and the steps they want it done in, in verbose pedantic language and then staying on top of people who overlap for 1 hour per day at best to actually stick to that plan. If you have an org capable of doing that, amazing, sounds great.. I've not seen it once, anywhere, in 20 years. So given how real orgs actually work, the problem with the outsourcing model is - Good luck turning tasks around quickly, or changing directions on a dime, or course correcting devs who do most of their work while you are asleep. If companies really wanted to save money without all the pain, they'd hire nearshore US dev talent for 1/3 the cost of NYC/SF and eliminate most of those issues. But really for most businesses given the margins on software, dev costs end up being tolerable.
yodsanklai 3y ago
> I can't help but call it how much less rigorous HN is when talking about this issue than, say, anything that doesn't affect them. HN is way better than other forums but has never been paragon of objectivity. Many sensitive topics will get you heavily downvoted if you go against the grain.
- lnxg33k1 3y ago
  I mean if a group of people has the same opinion, possibly instead of criticising the group of people, if you think there is a counterpoint to be made, just make the counterpoint:0
  - carlosjobim 3y ago
    Speaking of counterpoints, maybe hackers should make counter points instead of down voting things they disagree with?
- dmje 3y ago
  My favourite: try suggesting that WordPress is ever a good solution for anything. InstaDownVotes.
  - ParetoOptimal 3y ago
    Because its a shining example of "just make things work" to a fault that prioritizes software maintanability and security way less. So its commercial success is a reminder of the poor state of technology for most and the business forces that drive it, veering closely to going off yet another cliff.
ethanbond 3y ago
Aren’t you doing the exact same non-rigorous thing here? The issue is productivity is ludicrously hard to measure in the best case scenario, and all this flux is making it pretty much impossible. Meanwhile, the “it’ll take a few years to wash out” and “it’ll be obvious to the people in the environment before then” are both correct and both applicable to either side of this argument, thus you get the fairly invested/high-conviction but “low rigor” argumentation.
- gipp 3y ago
  Yes, I am, but I'm claiming a lack of firm knowledge, not that I have "more proof" of one particular explanation.
- addicted 3y ago
  The OP is doing the exact opposite. They’re saying we don’t yet know, as opposed to a lot of people who are claiming we know one way or the other.
  - ethanbond 3y ago
    I personally don’t see much of that on this site on this topic. I see a whole lot of people talking about their personal experiences, the few structural things we do know (e.g. office spend), and people making broad factual claims on either side getting reliably downvoted and “citation needed”’d But obviously the “what do you see here” discussion is pointless.
  - dventimihasura 3y ago
    No, the OP says explicitly that some people do know: "OTOH it's likely to be obvious to people actually in the environment long before it has a measurable impact on any kind of balance sheet."
- acuozzo 3y ago
  > The issue is productivity is ludicrously hard to measure And with any luck it will remain so for years and years to come. This difficulty is what levels the playing field in the office. It's what enables untalented-but-hardworking employees to still have a seat even though they have to burn the midnight oil to do so. True meritocracy is a slippery slope I pray we never have to travel down.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
spaceheater 3y ago
It's worse than bitcoin (maybe it's posted by the same people), we have moved from weekly RTO threads to daily. ridiculous.
catapart 3y ago
There was, and is, a lot less rigor in COVID vaccine analysis than most other topics too. My guess as to why has less to do with relaxing analytical standards from the community and more to do with just... data. The COVID vaccines are novel in a lot of ways, and we know a lot more now than we knew two years ago. And we're still learning. Keeping up with the science, however flawed the rigor is at this stage of minimal datasets, is what that learning is about. Keeping discussion bubbling so that the community has a general idea of what the latest reports are saying. Of course, all of that is true of RTO (and work from home) as well. As we get more data on companies that are implementing it, we can get better views of how it affects people individually, and at a macro scale from companies on up to populations. And as more companies interpret the reported effects and try similar schemes or variations thereof, all divorced from the pandemic, we'll get even better data which will, undoubtedly, show fracture lines across various demographics ranging from company output, to location, to employee cultural approval, etc. Put simply: it's dismissive to assume that discussing the latest data about a newer phenomenon is a wholehearted acceptance or tacit approval of that data. Practical academics worth with the tangible material they are given. And so long as you're discussing things on a forum rather than, say, putting plans into action, it's perfectly reasonable to take the data as given and discuss the implications of said data.
brigadier132 3y ago
We have concrete, quantifiable knowledge of the benefits of WFH. We can measure the cost savings from not needing to pay for real estate and we can directly point to quality of life and time savings for employees. We can also point to lower carbon emissions. The return to office argument is very hand wavy. None of the advocates have come out with hard data as to why it's better. edit: And the study from this article is one data point in favor of RTO having no productivity benefit.
- hnfong 3y ago
  This is the classic fallacy of treating absence of evidence as evidence of absence (especially when you're biased towards the conclusion). OP claims that the benefits of RTO cannot be easily assessed, and while the benefits of WFH are easily quantifiable, without further knowledge of the benefits of RTO you can't come to a rational, rigorous conclusion on which is better. You can make guesses, but it's "less rigorous" as OP says.
  - dgfitz 3y ago
    > ... without further knowledge of the benefits of RTO you can't come to a rational, rigorous conclusion on which is better. Better for whom?
  - lolinder 3y ago
    In the absence of evidence that RTO is better for productivity and given the mountain of evidence that WFH eliminates the many harmful externalities of commuting, the rational course of action is to maintain the status quo of WFH until more information is obtained about productivity. Forcing hundreds of thousands of people to upend their lives and move back to large cities so that they can drive to the office again is irrational when there is no concrete evidence that it will make companies perform any better.
    - mrangle 3y ago
      That conclusion isn't rational. Neither in terms of the framing of the evidence that supports it, nor in terms of the logic that follows. Next, I don't see how anyone can generalize these conclusions when company specifics are specific. Last, being unemployed also eliminates the harmful externalities of the fundamental task of commuting. The only reason that managers require for RTO is that they want to see your face. The manager role exists to make human decisions as to what will be best for their specific company. As far as I know, random uncritiqued research doesn't yet manage companies.
bitcharmer 3y ago
I don't need a study to be able to tell WFH has a positive effect on my life without negatively impacting my work output. If anything, I work more because I can and often do sit down late at night and early in the morning to enjoy extended periods of uninterrupted focus and do work that requires that. What's wrong with having evidence-based opinion on WFH?
- ethanbond 3y ago
  I’m like you, for sure. The question is under what conditions does your personal productivity actually map to global productivity of the system. As a trivial example, if your uninterrupted periods of work are stonewalling 15 stakeholders who need something from you, that’s locally good for you but globally bad for the org. That said I think normal office setups are way, way past “collaboration” and well into “distraction” territory and if RTO’ers really cared that much about productivity they’d have addressed these years-old complaints (which have been extremely well-substantiated in research even prior to COVID).
drdrek 3y ago
Iv'e seen the negative effects of WFH with my own eyes. Is it anecdotal? yes. Is the positive impacts anecdotal? also yes. Will people be biased to what is comfortable in the here and now? the exercise is left to the reader.
- reedjosh 3y ago
  > Is the positive impacts anecdotal? No. Lack of commute is concrete and tangible. Even just from an emissions standpoint. Decreased spending on office space is not anecdotal, but again concrete.
  - bordercases 3y ago
    These are externalities to worker productivity, not necessarily correlates of it.
    - reedjosh 3y ago
      Sure, if you don't consider worker productivity to be a ratio work per unit cost. Reduced office costs are real. You would have to pay more per employee just for the office costs alone. This then demands concrete proof that productivity is higher in office -- which has never been provided.
- surajrmal 3y ago
  Agreed I've seen the following downsides first hand: * Lack of drive and motivation about the project. This drive doesn't isn't necessary to make folks work longer hours, but simply care more about wider impacts of choices they make. * Increased rate of depression. Human interaction and getting out of the house are important, and while in office work isn't necessary for this to occur, it's somewhat like paying off a low interest loan. You are more likely to do it and see the benefits than you are to invest the money you would have used into a higher yield investment vehicle. * Decreased physical fitness of my peers (they eat more poorly and perhaps a side effect of depression) * Lack of empathy for peers. Management just seems to be colder as they don't know their reports as well. All of these have material impact on productivity, but more importantly healthy and happiness of employees themselves. The effects are not uniform, but there are tradeoffs and it's not clear to me that wfh is better for everyone.
RcouF1uZ4gsC 3y ago
I think high quality open source software is an existence proof that you fully remote teams can effectively collaborate over decades to produce high quality software. We have known this for a long time. Covid forced the tech companies to acknowledge that as well. These short term studies back up that consensus. I think the evidence is overwhelming in favor that remote teams can build high quality software, not just short term but over a long term horizon.
- jrmg 3y ago
  With open source software, a lot of innovation (not all, certainly, but a lot) comes from companies or teams at academic institutions that are traditionally colocated. Lots of real innovation - or, at least, agreement on direction - has occurred at in-person conferences too. I don’t think this should be dismissed.
  - RcouF1uZ4gsC 3y ago
    > Lots of real innovation - or, at least, agreement on direction - has occurred at in-person conferences too. I don’t think this should be dismissed. This is not at all incompatible with WFH. Getting the team together for a week once every 6 months or once every quarter for these exercises is very reasonable.
    - surajrmal 3y ago
      It can be a lot slower to make major decisions only once every 6 months. Open source isn't exactly known to move very quickly. I think it can work fine for projects which are well established with a roadmap, but for experimental efforts that need fast iteration, it can really hold things back.
jrmg 3y ago
I was going to post the same thing. At the organization I worked at, so much got decided and invented in informal settings, and so much design done in (productive!) meetings around a whiteboard or smaller prototyping in a shared space. Everyone continued to work _really, really, well_ together online during Covid quarantine - and we successfully onboarded incredible new hires. But something was missing. Individuals were productive, but collective decision making took longer in so many small hard-to-measure ways. Arguments took a little bit longer to resolve. I have no measurements on any of this. You’d have to measure full product lifecycle for hundreds of products to get it. Even ‘how long does a design take’ or ‘how long do arguments take to resolve’ would need to be measured for years to get anything objective. Conversely, I’ll admit, the answer to ‘do people get more individual work done more efficiently at home’ was probably ‘yes’ - although collecting data for that would also be basically impossible over a time frame lower than years. I _feel_ like work at home hurt the overall organization in ways that _really mattered_ - innovation, maintainability, shared knowledge - even just in ‘soft’ relationships (Does your manager know that other manager well? Does the one individual engineer have a (or any!) relationship with that other engineer working in a similar, but on-the-org-chart-disconnected system? Do your engineers get along with your designers?). To debunk it would take literal decades to see how the organization was really affected. And even then, economic trends, market competition, even just quality of product _ideas_ - all the stuff that can affect the success or failure of a company or product - would make it really hard to tell how much work-from-home affected things. So all I think it’s _possible_ to go on is ‘feelings’. And it sure felt to me that when we were all WFH something was ‘missing’. Novel innovation was a little ‘less’. I didn’t get to know designers or people in HR like I used to. That new hire, though they were doing _great_ remotely, was _so happy_ to finally meet people for real after a year, and the team so pleased to meet them. I think they were slightly more productive, and the team trusted them better, after they finally worked ‘in person’ together. Maybe I’m just not ‘feeling’ the productivity gains from WFH because of my own bias, and maybe they are so large that they’d overwhelm the added ‘informal collaboration and personal relationships’ friction, but I don’t think so. I think the company would just slowly, over a timeframe of years - decades perhaps - get less ‘innovative’ and slower to react in a way that, from the outside, would just look like a company ever-so-slowly losing it’s edge. I guess the proof of all of this will just have to come from future results. In twenty years, do the most successful, innovative tech companies tend to be the ones that work remote, or the ones with in-person offices? But I know the answer I’d bet on.

by gipp 3y ago

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

aurareturn 3y ago

>but I can't help but call it how much less rigorous HN is when talking about this issue than, say, anything that doesn't affect them. I think it's because it affects people here disproportionately. Let's be honest. I'm guessing a lot of people here are software developers or work in a technical role in general. People in these roles tend to be introverts. Introverts are unlikely to prefer the office. On top of that, people here are only thinking about their own role - but not all of the company. For example, it could be that software development can be done with 100% remote, but what about the company's marketing, finance, HR, operations departments? What if those departments function better in person? Will the company let all the software developers and product managers work remotely and then demand the other departments to come into the office? How does it look if the company only lets their software developers work remotely but everyone else must come in, including retail/factory workers if there are any? I think people here don't consider everything when it comes to RTO. So we keep hearing conspiracy theories here about how executives/companies own real estate so they want employees back. I've always said this. If you are a software developer in the US, you should definitely advocate against remote work. Sooner or later, the company is going to realize they can hire the same developer for 15% of the salary that the company is paying you.

steveBK123 3y ago
I don't think its a conspiracy of CRE ownership. It's simply labor losing power to capital again as the economy / job market has turned. CEOs see remote/hybrid as an employee benefit that is at best slightly positive to them, probably neutral, so they are cutting it. Your office lunch and generous health care plans are next.
randomdata 3y ago
> Sooner or later, the company is going to realize they can hire the same developer for 15% of the salary that the company is paying you. Only if there is some kind of downturn in the software developer market that frees up those developers from the jobs they are currently doing. Otherwise, the companies will get into bidding wars, and the price will quickly return – at which point it's a lot cheaper to keep you. It's not like companies didn't figure that out in the 1990s. It was on the news like every single day. Granted, there are signs that we may be in the midst of that downturn. But if that's the case, an office isn't going to save you. You won't be needed regardless of where you happen to be sitting.
scarface_74 3y ago
I’m in no way an introvert. Part of my day job until six months ago was flying around the country talking to people doing requirements analysis, supporting pre-sales, training, the business dinners after work small talk etc and of course some development. But I also until last year “worked for a FAANG” remotely without having to leave my medium cost of living area and a year in, I was able to move to an even cheaper area with no state income tax where the local job market sucks for my specialty. It’s a big tourist area. As far as the company outsourcing somewhere cheaper, if after all of these years I’ve been in the industry all I can do is “codez real gud” and I’m that easily replaceable, I’ve done something remarkably wrong.
- steveBK123 3y ago
  Exactly, outsourcing success requires stakeholders and product actually writing down what they want, and the steps they want it done in, in verbose pedantic language and then staying on top of people who overlap for 1 hour per day at best to actually stick to that plan. If you have an org capable of doing that, amazing, sounds great.. I've not seen it once, anywhere, in 20 years. So given how real orgs actually work, the problem with the outsourcing model is - Good luck turning tasks around quickly, or changing directions on a dime, or course correcting devs who do most of their work while you are asleep. If companies really wanted to save money without all the pain, they'd hire nearshore US dev talent for 1/3 the cost of NYC/SF and eliminate most of those issues. But really for most businesses given the margins on software, dev costs end up being tolerable.

yodsanklai 3y ago

> I can't help but call it how much less rigorous HN is when talking about this issue than, say, anything that doesn't affect them. HN is way better than other forums but has never been paragon of objectivity. Many sensitive topics will get you heavily downvoted if you go against the grain.

lnxg33k1 3y ago
I mean if a group of people has the same opinion, possibly instead of criticising the group of people, if you think there is a counterpoint to be made, just make the counterpoint:0
- carlosjobim 3y ago
  Speaking of counterpoints, maybe hackers should make counter points instead of down voting things they disagree with?
dmje 3y ago
My favourite: try suggesting that WordPress is ever a good solution for anything. InstaDownVotes.
- ParetoOptimal 3y ago
  Because its a shining example of "just make things work" to a fault that prioritizes software maintanability and security way less. So its commercial success is a reminder of the poor state of technology for most and the business forces that drive it, veering closely to going off yet another cliff.

ethanbond 3y ago

Aren’t you doing the exact same non-rigorous thing here? The issue is productivity is ludicrously hard to measure in the best case scenario, and all this flux is making it pretty much impossible. Meanwhile, the “it’ll take a few years to wash out” and “it’ll be obvious to the people in the environment before then” are both correct and both applicable to either side of this argument, thus you get the fairly invested/high-conviction but “low rigor” argumentation.

gipp 3y ago
Yes, I am, but I'm claiming a lack of firm knowledge, not that I have "more proof" of one particular explanation.
addicted 3y ago
The OP is doing the exact opposite. They’re saying we don’t yet know, as opposed to a lot of people who are claiming we know one way or the other.
- ethanbond 3y ago
  I personally don’t see much of that on this site on this topic. I see a whole lot of people talking about their personal experiences, the few structural things we do know (e.g. office spend), and people making broad factual claims on either side getting reliably downvoted and “citation needed”’d But obviously the “what do you see here” discussion is pointless.
- dventimihasura 3y ago
  No, the OP says explicitly that some people do know: "OTOH it's likely to be obvious to people actually in the environment long before it has a measurable impact on any kind of balance sheet."
acuozzo 3y ago
> The issue is productivity is ludicrously hard to measure And with any luck it will remain so for years and years to come. This difficulty is what levels the playing field in the office. It's what enables untalented-but-hardworking employees to still have a seat even though they have to burn the midnight oil to do so. True meritocracy is a slippery slope I pray we never have to travel down.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

spaceheater 3y ago

It's worse than bitcoin (maybe it's posted by the same people), we have moved from weekly RTO threads to daily. ridiculous.

catapart 3y ago

There was, and is, a lot less rigor in COVID vaccine analysis than most other topics too. My guess as to why has less to do with relaxing analytical standards from the community and more to do with just... data. The COVID vaccines are novel in a lot of ways, and we know a lot more now than we knew two years ago. And we're still learning. Keeping up with the science, however flawed the rigor is at this stage of minimal datasets, is what that learning is about. Keeping discussion bubbling so that the community has a general idea of what the latest reports are saying. Of course, all of that is true of RTO (and work from home) as well. As we get more data on companies that are implementing it, we can get better views of how it affects people individually, and at a macro scale from companies on up to populations. And as more companies interpret the reported effects and try similar schemes or variations thereof, all divorced from the pandemic, we'll get even better data which will, undoubtedly, show fracture lines across various demographics ranging from company output, to location, to employee cultural approval, etc. Put simply: it's dismissive to assume that discussing the latest data about a newer phenomenon is a wholehearted acceptance or tacit approval of that data. Practical academics worth with the tangible material they are given. And so long as you're discussing things on a forum rather than, say, putting plans into action, it's perfectly reasonable to take the data as given and discuss the implications of said data.

brigadier132 3y ago

We have concrete, quantifiable knowledge of the benefits of WFH. We can measure the cost savings from not needing to pay for real estate and we can directly point to quality of life and time savings for employees. We can also point to lower carbon emissions. The return to office argument is very hand wavy. None of the advocates have come out with hard data as to why it's better. edit: And the study from this article is one data point in favor of RTO having no productivity benefit.

hnfong 3y ago
This is the classic fallacy of treating absence of evidence as evidence of absence (especially when you're biased towards the conclusion). OP claims that the benefits of RTO cannot be easily assessed, and while the benefits of WFH are easily quantifiable, without further knowledge of the benefits of RTO you can't come to a rational, rigorous conclusion on which is better. You can make guesses, but it's "less rigorous" as OP says.
- dgfitz 3y ago
  > ... without further knowledge of the benefits of RTO you can't come to a rational, rigorous conclusion on which is better. Better for whom?
- lolinder 3y ago
  In the absence of evidence that RTO is better for productivity and given the mountain of evidence that WFH eliminates the many harmful externalities of commuting, the rational course of action is to maintain the status quo of WFH until more information is obtained about productivity. Forcing hundreds of thousands of people to upend their lives and move back to large cities so that they can drive to the office again is irrational when there is no concrete evidence that it will make companies perform any better.
  - mrangle 3y ago
    That conclusion isn't rational. Neither in terms of the framing of the evidence that supports it, nor in terms of the logic that follows. Next, I don't see how anyone can generalize these conclusions when company specifics are specific. Last, being unemployed also eliminates the harmful externalities of the fundamental task of commuting. The only reason that managers require for RTO is that they want to see your face. The manager role exists to make human decisions as to what will be best for their specific company. As far as I know, random uncritiqued research doesn't yet manage companies.

bitcharmer 3y ago

I don't need a study to be able to tell WFH has a positive effect on my life without negatively impacting my work output. If anything, I work more because I can and often do sit down late at night and early in the morning to enjoy extended periods of uninterrupted focus and do work that requires that. What's wrong with having evidence-based opinion on WFH?

ethanbond 3y ago
I’m like you, for sure. The question is under what conditions does your personal productivity actually map to global productivity of the system. As a trivial example, if your uninterrupted periods of work are stonewalling 15 stakeholders who need something from you, that’s locally good for you but globally bad for the org. That said I think normal office setups are way, way past “collaboration” and well into “distraction” territory and if RTO’ers really cared that much about productivity they’d have addressed these years-old complaints (which have been extremely well-substantiated in research even prior to COVID).

drdrek 3y ago

Iv'e seen the negative effects of WFH with my own eyes. Is it anecdotal? yes. Is the positive impacts anecdotal? also yes. Will people be biased to what is comfortable in the here and now? the exercise is left to the reader.

reedjosh 3y ago
> Is the positive impacts anecdotal? No. Lack of commute is concrete and tangible. Even just from an emissions standpoint. Decreased spending on office space is not anecdotal, but again concrete.
- bordercases 3y ago
  These are externalities to worker productivity, not necessarily correlates of it.
  - reedjosh 3y ago
    Sure, if you don't consider worker productivity to be a ratio work per unit cost. Reduced office costs are real. You would have to pay more per employee just for the office costs alone. This then demands concrete proof that productivity is higher in office -- which has never been provided.
surajrmal 3y ago
Agreed I've seen the following downsides first hand: * Lack of drive and motivation about the project. This drive doesn't isn't necessary to make folks work longer hours, but simply care more about wider impacts of choices they make. * Increased rate of depression. Human interaction and getting out of the house are important, and while in office work isn't necessary for this to occur, it's somewhat like paying off a low interest loan. You are more likely to do it and see the benefits than you are to invest the money you would have used into a higher yield investment vehicle. * Decreased physical fitness of my peers (they eat more poorly and perhaps a side effect of depression) * Lack of empathy for peers. Management just seems to be colder as they don't know their reports as well. All of these have material impact on productivity, but more importantly healthy and happiness of employees themselves. The effects are not uniform, but there are tradeoffs and it's not clear to me that wfh is better for everyone.

RcouF1uZ4gsC 3y ago

I think high quality open source software is an existence proof that you fully remote teams can effectively collaborate over decades to produce high quality software. We have known this for a long time. Covid forced the tech companies to acknowledge that as well. These short term studies back up that consensus. I think the evidence is overwhelming in favor that remote teams can build high quality software, not just short term but over a long term horizon.

jrmg 3y ago
With open source software, a lot of innovation (not all, certainly, but a lot) comes from companies or teams at academic institutions that are traditionally colocated. Lots of real innovation - or, at least, agreement on direction - has occurred at in-person conferences too. I don’t think this should be dismissed.
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 3y ago
  > Lots of real innovation - or, at least, agreement on direction - has occurred at in-person conferences too. I don’t think this should be dismissed. This is not at all incompatible with WFH. Getting the team together for a week once every 6 months or once every quarter for these exercises is very reasonable.
  - surajrmal 3y ago
    It can be a lot slower to make major decisions only once every 6 months. Open source isn't exactly known to move very quickly. I think it can work fine for projects which are well established with a roadmap, but for experimental efforts that need fast iteration, it can really hold things back.

jrmg 3y ago

I was going to post the same thing. At the organization I worked at, so much got decided and invented in informal settings, and so much design done in (productive!) meetings around a whiteboard or smaller prototyping in a shared space. Everyone continued to work _really, really, well_ together online during Covid quarantine - and we successfully onboarded incredible new hires. But something was missing. Individuals were productive, but collective decision making took longer in so many small hard-to-measure ways. Arguments took a little bit longer to resolve. I have no measurements on any of this. You’d have to measure full product lifecycle for hundreds of products to get it. Even ‘how long does a design take’ or ‘how long do arguments take to resolve’ would need to be measured for years to get anything objective. Conversely, I’ll admit, the answer to ‘do people get more individual work done more efficiently at home’ was probably ‘yes’ - although collecting data for that would also be basically impossible over a time frame lower than years. I _feel_ like work at home hurt the overall organization in ways that _really mattered_ - innovation, maintainability, shared knowledge - even just in ‘soft’ relationships (Does your manager know that other manager well? Does the one individual engineer have a (or any!) relationship with that other engineer working in a similar, but on-the-org-chart-disconnected system? Do your engineers get along with your designers?). To debunk it would take literal decades to see how the organization was really affected. And even then, economic trends, market competition, even just quality of product _ideas_ - all the stuff that can affect the success or failure of a company or product - would make it really hard to tell how much work-from-home affected things. So all I think it’s _possible_ to go on is ‘feelings’. And it sure felt to me that when we were all WFH something was ‘missing’. Novel innovation was a little ‘less’. I didn’t get to know designers or people in HR like I used to. That new hire, though they were doing _great_ remotely, was _so happy_ to finally meet people for real after a year, and the team so pleased to meet them. I think they were slightly more productive, and the team trusted them better, after they finally worked ‘in person’ together. Maybe I’m just not ‘feeling’ the productivity gains from WFH because of my own bias, and maybe they are so large that they’d overwhelm the added ‘informal collaboration and personal relationships’ friction, but I don’t think so. I think the company would just slowly, over a timeframe of years - decades perhaps - get less ‘innovative’ and slower to react in a way that, from the outside, would just look like a company ever-so-slowly losing it’s edge. I guess the proof of all of this will just have to come from future results. In twenty years, do the most successful, innovative tech companies tend to be the ones that work remote, or the ones with in-person offices? But I know the answer I’d bet on.