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Working from home is powering productivity
- Scoundreller 2y ago15 second cities now!
- CapeTheory 2y agoTake that, Jassy.
- toomuchtodo 2y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck%27s_principle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck%27s_principle > A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.
- zeusk 2y agoIt's an open secret that it is no longer day 1 at Amazon.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- beaconify 2y agoWhat does that mean (genuine question?)
- CapeTheory 2y agoAmazon used to pride itself on behaving like a (very big) startup, trying to be scrappy and focused - but now it has very definitely joined the league of ordinary corporations.
- axpy906 2y agoIt’s like day 22.
- nostrademons 2y agoA corollary is that they existing big-tech companies will never embrace remote work. You need to start new companies which are remote-first and then replace big tech with them.
- staunton 2y agoI don't think that's a useful generalization. It's pretty clear that company culture changes over time (in tandem with changing management and workforce). The point of the Planck quote is that many people (especially the "important" people) have large egos and therefore (among other reasons) are unwilling or unable to change their minds and learn new things. This then significantly hinders progress. The equivalent to your claim in science would be something like "particle physics cannot change, you need to let it die and start a new scientific discipline" (I guess you'll find some people who think that but I don't).
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- mullingitover 2y agoI've definitely heard this as "Science progresses one funeral at a time" before.
- atomicnumber3 2y agoNow we'll get to see which is more powerful: the invisible hand of the free markets, or the human tendency of power to accrete with autocrats, who seem to struggle immensely with the idea of letting people have the freedom to control their work environment and hours.
- tomrod 2y agoI hope for WFH or hybrid to win the day.
- scottyah 2y agoIt'll be determined by who can effectively train the next generations of employees.
- datavirtue 2y agoIf that's what the market wants.
- A4ET8a8uTh0 2y agoHonestly, that I can't find that bet on polymarket is beyond me.
- maxbond 2y agoHow would that contract resolve? Who may authoritatively declare a winner?
- A4ET8a8uTh0 2y agoI would think Amazon RTO order is withdrawn within 10 days of start.
- maxbond 2y agoFair enough, that is narrow enough to be a market. I'm also surprised it isn't one.
- ChrisMarshallNY 2y ago> is highly dependent on how well it’s managed. That's the kicker, right there. I am kind of in despair, at the quality of tech managers; especially "first line" managers, these days.
- sevensor 2y agoI see an absolutely shocking number of managers promoted from the IC ranks, who not only have no preparation for management, but no experience at any other company.
- whatshisface 2y agoThere is no guaranteed way to create managers from scratch, business specialists don't understand the technical facts well enough to resolve the kinds of disputes that arise at the project manager level, and as you observe ICs are not always inclined to make other people's work their primary concern.
- datavirtue 2y agoIt's an outdated arrangement. All you need are respected VPs that know their area and foster collaboration toward ideal technical/operationl goals in line with the business objectives. If your approach is invoking fear and exhibiting aggression to drive outcomes you have already lost half of the productivity battle. Jaime Daimon is the new Jack Welch. Too busy looking good and laying down the law to focus on innovation.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- ChrisMarshallNY 2y agoIn the (US) military, the sergeants run the army. NCOs are highly-trained, and have been the secret of managing battlefield chaos, for generations. They don't do strategy, but they do tactics, like nobody's business, and are often highly valuable input into development of strategies. They are given tremendous agency, and are highly trained. The military does a great job of training and retaining highly-experienced, and highly-skilled NCOs. First-line managers have a similar role, but they are treated like garbage by their superiors, and consider their position a "necessary evil," towards higher ranks. They don't like their jobs, and want to get out, as quickly as possible. In unions, foremen are often quite happy with their roles, and don't really want to go beyond (they wouldn't mind more perks and pay, but they like their jobs). Like bad tech career ladders, the manager career ladders are also pretty terrible.
- dsjoerg 2y ago[flagged]
- atleastoptimal 2y agoCompanies that require RTO, if they actually want their employees to return to office, should prioritize in their messaging the objective benefits/cost to working in the office. No vague-speak, no shaming people claiming that workers "don't work" at home, but rather objective analysis on what exact benefits they seek to accrue by mandating that work that could be done anywhere in the world must be done in separate rooms of a large corporate office space. Since most companies that are enforcing RTO aren't doing this, it only makes sense that it is a covert mass layoff. They just want people to quit because they were planning on culling the herd anyway, and would prefer it be a self-selection of those who aren't willing to put up with bullshit.
- dalyons 2y agoIt’s an open secret that there is no data that supports RTO. If there was, at even one company, it would be screamed from the rooftops. (I don’t believe it’s all covert layoffs either - it’s imho the more banal reason of c-level personal feelings and groupthink)
- montagg 2y agoExecutive brain worms are real. They see each other do things, and they want to be like each other, so they feel safety in numbers, untethered to the data. My company only stopped a strict company-wide RTO when they saw how much senior talent they were losing, and leaders were taken by surprise.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- solidasparagus 2y agoIt's an open secret that we have no idea how to actually measure tech company productivity. That's why there isn't and will not be clear evidence for or against RTO. Best you can do is pick a narrow enough sliver that it is measurable. Then claim it is the "important" view and wow, what a shock, the data supports your position!
- nmstoker 2y agoIt's good to see some serious arguments for WFH. Globally much of the pro-office camp's public position is driven by personal leanings of CEOs who genuinely seem to have made the decisions without evidence, often it's something they're very grumpy about (hardly the best state of mind for good judgement) and often based on the assumption that company productivity is based on workers doing what they do (usually far from the truth, workers in general don't have anything like the same composition of tasks that CEOs do). It's unfortunate to that it has divided into camps, as there are bound to be cases/roles/groupings of workers where one approach comes out better and others where it's worse. But very quickly everyone went pretty much for one-size fits all (with a few exceptions).
- datavirtue 2y agoWe simply are not going back, period. They are fighting the trend. Ask your analysis team and marketing about what happens to people that fight the trend.
- A4ET8a8uTh0 2y agoIf I am called back, I will come in, but only for as long as it takes me to move onto something else. It really is that simple. On the other hand, executives are clearly banking on a good old-fashioned recession to rein in the unruly and ungrateful employees.
- datavirtue 2y agoIt's not just about RTO. The trend is bigger than that. It's just overall reality. If you need to go remote to fill a position then so be it. But some people have certain thoughts lodged squarely in their atrophied boomer brain about how everything has to be, no exceptions because feelings. The companies that don't have fog stuck in their head are going out and hiring remote and they have great cultures and are oozing productivity. That's the trend.
- JoshTriplett 2y ago> Globally much of the pro-office camp's public position is driven by personal leanings of CEOs who genuinely seem to have made the decisions without evidence In some cases, the pressure is also coming from external to the company, from cities and VCs and similar who care about the commercial real-estate value of now-abandoned offices.
- purple-leafy 2y agoWork from home makes me LOYAL to a company, and makes me work my arse off! If you want to keep good employees, give them agency. I do hybrid, I’m half-half from home and in the office. I work so hard when I work from home, and I’m so happy when I work from home, my desk is setup how I need, I get free coffee, I can listen to music, my dog sleeps on the bed. Most importantly, more of the work gets done. I think the option to go into the office (on your own accord) is important. The main pro of the office is I can talk to team-mates and do learning sessions with them (the juniors). But I do these as well from home every day too. Unfortunately my work place is putting in place a 4 day in the office mandate, like we are children. All it does is make me want to look for jobs that respect employee agency.
- tomrod 2y agoWhat do you do?
- purple-leafy 2y agoI’m fortunate to be a software engineer, I have about 4yoe and mainly work on frontend code. But it’s been a very long road from being a university dropout, to getting an Electrical Engineering degree, and then transitioning to Software mostly in my spare time
- criddell 2y agoI think framing the WFH argument in terms of productivity is a bad idea. It’s difficult to win that argument and it might not even be true. Instead, call it a benefit, like paid vacation or health insurance. Nobody argues that employers contributing to an employees 401(k) plan is good for productivity. They do it to attract and retain talent.
- purple-leafy 2y agoI think though, that for hybrid or work from home to win in the shared mindset - productivity has to be accounted for. It feels like employers that switch to RTO office mandates do so on a “hunch” that WFH is less productive. At least that’s what my company is doing. They have not shared any stats that hybrid work has affected outcomes. Yes the company was down in outcomes for 2 quarters, but that’s mostly related to consumers not spending + inflation + economic instability. Because the board need a more tangible boogeyman to point to, they blame the “lazy work from home ethic”. But I’m yet to see ANY evidence that hybrid work decreases productivity or outcomes. In fact, I strongly believe, and could probably produce evidence, that Hybrid work ensures better workplace outcomes on average in a vacuum. Employee agency -> less stress, more loyalty -> better outcomes
- l33tbro 2y agoI despair a little at this. If I can do my job at home, then surely somebody can do it in the global south in tandem with AI for peanuts. Client-facing stuff gets centralised to a smaller team of specialists, and the ship gets much tighter. How long until megacorps and SMEs actually execute this reality? The management class and their unnecessary underlings like me have only been so resilient because companies are still on the last days of this post-covid efficiency wave, coupled with the buffer of capital from the money that was created in the last few years. I'm usually not a doomer, but it's hard to see a way around the next downturn not creating irreversible culture change through AI offshoring and mass layoffs.
- ggm 2y agoThere are latent questions in your response. The fear is justified but equally, viewed from a distance, what is the "worth" of your price point, if the same job can be done and lift somebody out of poverty in the developing world? I'm not saying you're wrong. I'm asking what an economist or social historian might say, much as if a Lancashire cotton worker asked if his job was disappearing into cotton factories in Bangladesh. I share your fears btw. I'm just less sure I "deserve" the pay for my disappearing role(s)
- l33tbro 2y agoCompletely agree. And it is funny how we put so much emphasis on developing our skills and abilities, when really our actual value is always determined by the market. I'm personally at peace with that, and would have a pretty hard time arguing against the logic of off-shoring my job. However, it's also rational to want to hold onto a favourable environmental niche for as long as possible!
- sjsisibdjcj 2y agoHow has western society completely forgotten the point of a country? It is not the to create the most efficient economical configuration for routing wealth from the masses to the capital holders. Your value is not determined by the market, and those who tell you it is are only looking to exploit you. There are people out there who haven’t succumbed to the nihilistic poison of modern liberalism, though the people in power have run a very successful propaganda campaign to convince you they’re evil (and I’m absolutely not talking about staple green cards to diplomas trump).
- GoToRO 2y agono, please, I want to be in office and hear the coffee machine grinding coffee for everybody in the office /sarcasm
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- hu3 2y agoI love working from home and I plan to keep doing it. But I can't deny that when a coworker needs help, rolling my chair next to theirs in office allows for a much larger bandwidth of knowledge sharing. On the other hand my production skyrockets at home.
- beaconify 2y agoI am not sure. Remote working allows you to instantly pair with someone. No shuffling keyboards. There are a lot of software tools that help. Things like Loom let you async stuff. What isn't is as good is social connection. I have not seen going out to a restaurant emulated well remotely.
- tomjakubowski 2y agoZoom's latency is a killer. It is still harder to have the kind of natural back and forth conversation I'm used to having in meatspace pairing. Maybe I should try Discord.
- waveBidder 2y agomaybe I'm just super used to it at this point but I don't really notice any friction in 1-1's. larger groups there's some (4+), but tbh it's not that much worse than the friction of that size in person
- beaconify 2y agoHavent noticed that even on international calls. But it might depend on the type of convo. Latency for talk seemed a problem last in the 2010s skype era. Latency in what is shown on a screenshare.... yeah! A problem.
- hparadiz 2y agoMaybe it's because I have fiber at home with Wifi6 but I never experience this lag.
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- axpy906 2y ago@Andy Jassy
- throwaway918299 2y agoI am literally at least 10x when I work from home. I have ADHD and through years of discipline, cultivating my workspace to suit my needs, and hard work I can be productive most of the day in the zone without (much) sidetracking. Literally impossible for me to do in the modern software dev sweatshop. I also make more money, can spend more time with my family because I don’t commute, and plenty of other positives. I love the work, I enjoy working with my colleagues and I can set my own boundaries by setting office hours and scheduling meetings. There is very rarely anything that derails my day anymore. Everything is much better documented because everything must live in confluence or Jira or it doesn’t exist. The company saves tons of money on real estate. If you can change your processes and workflow to take advantage of tools that suit remote work, it’s superior in basically every way. Pry it from my cold dead hands.
- mewpmewp2 2y agoYeah, at present I can't even imagine going back to the office. It feels almost crazy to me to go back to work in the office. Such a waste of time and efficiency. Wasting time on looking proper, having to do everything at certain time, spending arbitrary hours at work even if there's nothing productive left to do, I would feel guilty leaving early so I just waste time in the office etc. At home I never have to "pretend work". Weird how Covid overall worked out so very well for me. I wonder where I'd be without it. Of course it wasn't a positive event on the whole, but I can't lie that there weren't any positives.
- ahimthedream 2y agoYou are the anomaly, not the norm. WFH takes discipline, work ethic and honestly the ability to manage a work life balance. Doing this is hard, like you said. Problem is most people aren’t disciplined:)
- hirvi74 2y ago> WFH takes discipline That is bizarre to me. I find the office takes far more discipline. Do people really get that distracted at home? What is so distracting?
- m3kw9 2y agoAll I know is some people like it some don’t. It’s based on the environment they have at home. Some people’s home and psyche isn’t good for wfh for various reasons
- theshackleford 2y ago> All I know is some people like it some don’t. It’s based on the environment they have at home. Some people’s home and psyche isn’t good for wfh for various reasons Equally; In office work, all I know is some people like it some don’t. It’s based on the environment they have at the office. Some people’s office and psyche isn’t good for in office work for various reasons I worked for a firm at one point that prior to acquistion, was filled top to bottom with people that enjoyed a quiet working environment that allowed them to think and do deep work. We were an engineering heavy firm doing complex work for large multinationals. I'll admit it was shocking to me when I first joined, you could have heard a pin drop in this place, it took me quite some time to adjust to it, but in time I did. After the original founders decided they wanted to move on and so sold up, we merged with another org that was the opposite. The office became a place of multiple indepedent bluetooth speakers blaring music all day, teams of people walking around from desk to desk and holding incredibly loud non work related conversations at random next to people trying to do deep work, everyone was crammed closer together to assist in "collaboration" etc. One by one, all of the original staff departed as the office had for them become a living hell that destroyed their ability to do deep meaningful or productive work. They didnt dislike their co-workers, they were not against some occasional social interactions, but ultimately, they were engaged with what they did and just wanted a good environment to do it in, an environment that was removed from them by force and thus too was their capability to be as productive as they once were. Some people do better work from office as you note due to the environment they have at home and their psyche, but the exact opposite is also true for a not insignificant amount of people. The problem is that business is going to pretend only one of these groups exists.
- WheelsAtLarge 2y agoThis paper is the first one I've read that outlines a pretty good case as to why WFH is beneficial to both workers and society. I encourage everyone to share it with others. WFH productivity is a matter of management. Pre-covid my company tried it and found that productivity declined. Also, the managers found it hard to trust that some of the workers were working and not doing other things. Working at the office has its drawbacks too. As a developer, the worst one for me was working in an open area. It's extremely hard to concentrate without having to function like a hermit and alienating fellow workers. I think some of that is still the case, but if managers define realistic expectations, I don't see why WFH can't continue to work. It's more work for management at the start but in time, as management and workers get accustomed, it will work out. It seems to be a win for employees and companies.
- mullingitover 2y agoI would wager that there's a dead sea effect happening at these 'my way or the highway' RTO companies. Top tier, upber-productive, marketable talents don't have to tolerate bullying, even in a weak employment market. So the companies pushing RTO the hardest see their hardest to replace talent evaporate quickly, and their most desperate (but thoroughly demoralized) staff cling on for dear life. Not as a rule, but definitely a tendency. Meanwhile the most flexible companies can pick up talent easily, picking and choosing and building very tough rosters for quite reasonable prices.
- BhavdeepSethi 2y ago> Meanwhile the most flexible companies can pick up talent easily, picking and choosing and building very tough rosters for quite reasonable prices. While it sounds good on paper, hiring decent remote folks for a company is actually much harder, especially if you're a startup. It's way easier taking a bet on someone local where you don't have to second guess how productive they are. For similar interview performance, most companies would prefer folks who can come to office instead of full remote. Obviously, there are companies who have made it work (eg. Gitlab) for a long time, but I'd say they are the exception rather than the norm.
- closeparen 2y agoI do think there will be significant remote competition in the middle 50% ($101k-$167k) range [0], and at a given price point in this range the best candidates will be able to demand remote. But top talents can only get paid close to their market value at a few dozen companies structurally capable of affording them. These companies are competitive in the sense that they throw around a lot of money, but they tend to make HR decisions as a herd. Partly because they benchmark against each other, partly because they all copy Google and Facebook, partly because they illegally collude [1]. That's why everyone's waiting to see whether Amazon's move to 5 days starts a stampede. For now there are notable holdouts, like Netflix and Airbnb, that pay in the levels.fyi scale but are still remote friendly. The other FAANGs are already at hybrid. If Netflix, the remaining FAANG-adjacent holdouts, and the HFTs go RTO then that is pretty much it for your chances of earning $300k+. It may still be worthwhile to leave comp on the table in exchange for the lifestyle and cost-of-living benefits, of course. [0] https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes151252.htm https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes151252.htm [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_Litigation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_L...
- MaintenanceMode 2y agoDuh....
- spatley 2y agoIn my field of IT consulting I find the opposite to be true. Developing a shared understanding of client challenges, getting leaders to make and follow through on decisions, and learning our way around customer ecosystems takes forever over Teams, slack, or email. If we knew exactly what needed to be done and were just cranking code I see how solitude works. But the constant streams of low bandwidth meetings to make decisions is brutal.
- theshackleford 2y ago> getting leaders to make and follow through on decisions, and learning our way around customer ecosystems takes forever over Teams, slack, or email. If we knew exactly what needed to be done and were just cranking code I see how solitude works. But the constant streams of low bandwidth meetings to make decisions is brutal. When I was doing that work, even in office, all of those things took place over IM, email or remote meetings anyway. My customers were not in the same building as I was. The vast majority of senior management were not in the same building as I was. Sure sometimes I might go out to the client in person, and sometimes they may have come in to see me. But the vast, vast, VAST majority of it already took place remotely. And how could it not in a global business?
- roland35 2y agoNumber one benefit to companies to allow WFH: they can pay me a senior level pay for staff level seniority, and I still come out ahead living in the Midwest versus moving to SF or NYC.
- SunlitCat 2y agoAren't there some companies that consider this (where the employee lives) when calculating their salaries?
- hotspot_one 2y agoI see this alot. Has always struck me as very unfair.
- mvanbaak 2y agoit is unfair, but it's very common. also, we are very hypocritical about it. When it is about india etc, we (us and western europe) think it's normal to pay less, but when it's about different regions within our own countries, we think it's unfair. In an ideal world, we would pay everyone based on role and output, but this is not how the world economy works at the moment. Dont ask me to explain, because I also dont know all the details, but it is reality
- lolinder 2y agoI'm in a company that doesn't do this—everyone gets paid the same amount, which is way above average for most of the country—and some of the Californians are actively lobbying for location-based pay. I don't think they realize that they're actually lobbying for most of the company to get a pay cut so they can get a greater percentage of the total salary budget, but that's what it would amount to if they got their way.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- erik_seaberg 2y ago
- from-nibly 2y agoArticles like this are talking past the RTO mandates. Ignore what the mandates say in the emails. They are trying to lay people off without suffering the PR downsides. They do not care how productive you were or are going to be. They need to fix the balance sheet for the next quarter, THEN they can worry about productivity.
- bongodongobob 2y agoNo. Most businesses implementing RTO just want people back in the office, take the tinfoil hat.
- cebert 2y agoI’d love to see a study on the carbon and energy impact of WFH vs commuting to an office. I would assume that for knowledge workers, WFH would be more efficient.
- langsoul-com 2y agoTell that one to Amazon. It's really not all about productively. There's more incentives for large businesses, whether that's tax breaks, existing office space obligations or just the feeling of lording over the workers. I don't think that will change too much. A remote company has to be fundamentally remote on all levels otherwise it'd fall apart. That kinda buy in is difficult and usually companies who start remote work best like that. As everyone has already self selected for remote work.
- th3d0t0r 2y agonever forget, that a need exists for people to travel ... working from home reduces the profit of the oil lobby significantly ... i am sorry to point this out ... but its a primary driving point!
- th3d0t0r 2y agofrom the point of view from of the oil lobby ... well, it may be an unsustainabile practive if profits are dramatically reduved this way ...
- th3d0t0r 2y agonever forget that a need to return to office exists ... its a need to travels ... to consume fossil fuels and to benefit effectivly some sharhe holders ... its A primary reason.
- itohihiyt 2y agoI currently work somewhere where I can't WFH. And as a counterpoint to pretty much everyone here I prefer it. My last role I was able to WFH. Reasons I prefer going into the office: - when work is done, I leave, and it's done. - not using my resources (electricity / broadband / etc) for work. - easier interaction with colleagues. I liked it at the start, and liked the flexibility, but after a while hated that my home was also my workplace. I also found it was too easy to do unpaid overtime from home. After a while my productivity fell. Caveat is I live within cycle distance to work. I hate commuting too, and wouldn't do more than 30 minutes.
- BadHumans 2y agoI'm not trying to tell you that liking the office is wrong but most of what you said here applies to WFH. When I finish working, my laptop gets put in a bag and not taken out until I start working again and colleague interaction while remote is going to vary based on how your invested your company is in remote work. As far as your home being your workplace, you could always rent a cheap office to work from. The co-working space around me offers private offices for a few hundred a month.
- itohihiyt 2y agoHang on, why would I rent office space, to WFH? I don't mean to be blunt but I this seems ridiculous. > I'm not trying to tell you that liking the office is wrong but most of what you said here applies to WFH. I'm not saying WFH didn't work for me so is doesn't work for everyone. For me though as soon as the novelty wore off I found it a bad experience. Certainly for me none of it applied. If it works for you I'm happy for you. For me I like that clear separation where it's not easy to slip into working beyond your time.
- BadHumans 2y ago> Hang on, why would I rent office space, to WFH? I don't mean to be blunt but I this seems ridiculous. >If it works for you I'm happy for you. For me I like that clear separation where it's not easy to slip into working beyond your time. You answered your own question. The article is using work from home as a catchall term for remote work but not everyone who works from home wants to literally work from home. Some companies will even reimburse you if you want to get a membership at a co-working space.
- gnulinux996 2y agoI'd really like to see how the American libertarian copes with the return to office mandates. I've had a lot of American colleagues that do not wish to return to office, the types that believe in "freedom", "individual responsibility" and "if you do not like the job go work somewhere else". As the employers are closing in on them, they slowly start to understand that unless they collectively punch back they _will_ yield sooner or later. They are still on their pleading / "negotiating" phase at the moment, but let us see.
- Clubber 2y ago>I'd really like to see how the American libertarian copes with the return to office mandates. The American libertarian will just move to a job that allows remote. >As the employers are closing in on them, they slowly start to understand that unless they collectively punch back they _will_ yield sooner or later. Believe me, companies stand to lose a lot more with an empty dev team than any dev stands to lose moving to another company. RTO companies better have some damn good reasons to work there if they require asses in seats. Companies that don't (most) will struggle and wither.
- wiseowise 2y ago> Believe me, companies stand to lose a lot more with an empty dev team than any dev stands to lose moving to another company. This process might take years or even decade of decay until company feels the pain. They might lose in the long run, but unless all high productivity employees leave in an instant you’re the one to lose in the short run.
- Clubber 2y ago>all high productivity employees leave in an instant That almost never happens, unless a company enacts a very unpopular policy and there are many opportunities for high productivity tech employees elsewhere. That sounds a lot like right now.
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- seanvelasco 2y agoi definitely know myself that i'm less productive working from home than working on the office. the commute (or the ritual of it) and the different environment makes all the difference.
- BoingBoomTschak 2y agoSame, home is associated with relaxation in my mind (and I have an apartment, so no "work desk"). Being quite depressed also makes a big difference, as work gives a social life I otherwise don't have.
- r3d0c 2y agothen the problem doesn't seem to be with wfh but from your lack of socialization ability i have my own social groups that aren't dependant on the people at work, i don't have a job to make friends but to make money
- seanvelasco 2y agoi believe it's not a problem of socialization ability, it's a matter of personality - it's just who we are. as an introvert, i'm not comfortable just striking up conversations with strangers, let alone making friends with them. even if you don't make friends at work, being physically around people has an impact on a person. being in an office has a much higher social component than working from home.
- jnordwick 2y agoThe title of the article doesn't match the rest. Productivity is getting more from the same inputs, not getting more with more inputs. First, there is very little data and just a couple conjectures thrown around. There isn't much substantive evidence of what it claims. Second, even if people aren't commuting, it just assumes people work the same hours, but many people are probably working longer hours so you can't tell the impact on WFH on productivity. Third, it doesn't look at outputs at all, especially the output of the company. While some (or even all) individuals might produce more, the group as a whole will have less communication and each employee might have less context of what else is going on in the company, so much of their contribution might not align as well with company objectives. Management of all the individuals would be more difficult and the company would be less of a team. This would support the idea that the increased productivity is only available to well managed groups. I think this sounds much more likely. Fourth, much of the increase explained is from widening the labor pool. It explicitly mentions those with disabilities, stay at home mothers, and larger geographical inclusion. This isn't increasing productivity, just increasing the labor input. This is more an opinion piece with some hand waving than actual proof
- dangerlibrary 2y ago> This is more an opinion piece with some hand waving than actual proof Pot, meet kettle. Kettle, this is pot.
- THENATHE 2y agoI love work from home, but I can’t help but feel like its only real benefit is removing a lot of the overhead from jobs that are already considered overhead. Agree with this next part or not, it isn’t really debatable: to the average person (which we aren’t), basically anything that can be done on a computer from home is overhead. Coding in the office? Takes up a lot of office space and commute time and energy. Finance department? Takes up a lot of office space and commute time and energy. Basically anything HR related? Takes up a lot of office space and commute time and energy. Middle managers? Takes up a lot of office space and commute time and energy. Graphics designers and the like? Takes up a lot of office space and commute time and energy. Basically every job that has been moved to WFH should have been that way since computers became widespread, and it is essentially a problem that they weren’t WFH already. If it can be done entirely on a computer, it should be done from home. Leave the office space for housing and jobs that can’t be done from the comfort of one’s underwear.
- iamthemonster 2y agoI'm an engineer in the process industries (oil/gas) and we are constantly collaborating and running stuff by other engineering disciplines with different knowledge to us, and coordinating with management, logistics, maintenance, operations, commercial and contractors. Isn't there a similarly high level of interdisciplinary communication involved in coding? How do you keep up the quality of communication? (in my industry in Western Australia we essentially never did work from home because we were Covid-free)
- fy20 2y agoThere is, but remote-first companies have learnt the skills to communicate this effectively without requiring members to be face-to-face or require hours of meetings. That's what I see causes the biggest push-back against WFH: upper management who don't know how to communicate without being in-person, so they assume WFH is bad.
- whstl 2y agoFunny enough, those of us who had to deal with international teams or offshoring had to develop those skills even before remote-first companies were a thing. I remember some of my colleagues were working in an office doing WebEx or whatever it was calls all day already back in the early 2010s.
- dboreham 2y agoI've been much more productive working at home since the 1980s, when we had to use a dolly to take the computer and CRT monitor out the office to the trunk of the car, home for a few days to get some peace to focus.
- theendisney4 2y agoI think we have to go from the factory village to the village factory and start designing/building houses to work from. Examples excluded on purpose. :)
- ziofill 2y agoI have to WFH 100% of the time because my company’s HQ is three time zones away. I think I would be more productive if I could go to the office once or twice a week and have face to face interactions with my colleagues rather than always only slack/videocalls… On the other hand, if I were working at the office every day I would yearn for some WFH days. The best is in a balance of the two, with the flexibility to decide when to do each.
- seydor 2y agoWho wouldn't want their workers boarded up at home working all day for the man.
- ipnon 2y agoWon’t someone think of the commercial real estate investors?!
- jandrewrogers 2y agoI think a lot of people are talking past each other. I’ve mostly WFH since long before the pandemic, in many different capacities at many companies. A lot of people have tunnel vision and the reality is more nuanced than most allow. For IC work that requires minimal collaboration, WFH is often more productive. Fewer interruptions, more focus. However, when the role requires detailed collaboration and regular interaction with others, productivity for WFH falls off a cliff. This has been measurable at every company I’ve worked for that does a decent job of collecting these metrics. And anecdotally, I can feel it in my own job. When I am doing focus work, WFH is great and I get a lot done. When I need a lot of whiteboard time or deep discussions with my peers, WFH is very inefficient regardless of the remote setup, and the difference is so stark that it is difficult to argue. I think most people are talking their own book. If you are an IC or mostly just do individual focus work, then of course WFH is great. If you need to iteratively collaborate with people on complex design problems or work products, WFH objectively has low efficiency in every organization I’ve seen try it, including companies that are remote-centric. There is a lot of motivated reasoning in these discussions and little acknowledgement that productivity between WFH and RTO varies greatly depending on the task at hand. Every company and most roles are a mix of these types of tasks. I think many companies these days recognize this and try to allocate accordingly, but it creates legal, social, and other issues if you treat employees differently in this regard based on the nature of their roles. The reality that some people must commute to do their jobs effectively creates a class system of sorts but organizations needs all roles to be setup to ensure reasonable productivity. This is not a black and white situation, it is a complex social problem.
- J_Shelby_J 2y agoThis is a good comment and I had to think about it for a minute. I do agree with you in practicality, but I also think in person works because most people flat out can’t or won’t take the time to communicate effectively in writing. Put them in a room and they’re suddenly forced to do it. But that said, just because most people can’t effectively communicate and instead use async communications like slack zombies is not my problem. If lawyers can handle contract negotiations over email, you can handle managing people with a ticketing systems and well written emails. I mean, by the sounds of it you won’t, and that’s ok, but that’s either a skill issue or a choice and I’m tired of pretending otherwise.
- stonethrowaway 2y agoAs others mentioned, the shakiness of whatever this is (an opinion piece) doesn’t really convey much effort into a rock solid argument. Put another way, if you are going to look at pro-RTO under a microscope and critique every single thing about it, you have to do the same for pro-WFH. Thus far, I’ve yet to hear anything solid for either. Just flaky nonsense and non sequiturs and jumping from topic to topic.
- geocrasher 2y agoI wrote this back in 2013, and I think much of it is still relevant. 11 years later I'm still WFH, and there's a fat chance you could ever get me into an office again. https://www.tidbitsfortechs.com/2013/08/experiences-and-realities-of-a-work-from-home-it-worker/ https://www.tidbitsfortechs.com/2013/08/experiences-and-real...
- Brajeshwar 2y agoNice article. Small nitpick I saw, your articles has date of MONTH/DAY without the YEAR. I’d have love that to be the full date. Yes, I did see the URL but would still love a full date.
- geocrasher 2y agoThanks for reading. And yeah it's a small thing, I'll probably change it now that that blog is hardly ever updated. It's better for SEO if things aren't dated, generally.
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- byte_head 2y agoI believe that Returning To the Office represents a significant step backward from a societal perspective. Governments should actively legislate against unnecessary in-person gatherings in offices. To illustrate my point, I’ll share an anecdote that highlights the harm caused by this trend. I live in a major EU city, and last Wednesday, I had a doctor’s appointment in the city center at 4 PM, a peak traffic hour. Unfortunately, my bus was caught in a traffic jam. Despite the fact that buses typically have dedicated lanes in the EU, we were still stuck. Suddenly, we heard the sirens of an emergency ambulance behind us. Unfortunately, the ambulance was also trapped in the gridlock. Other drivers tried to make way, but the road was too narrow to allow any effective movement. I don't know what the emergency was or who needed help, but it was clear that valuable time was lost—time that could be critical for saving lives. During the COVID-19 pandemic, such traffic jams were virtually non-existent, as most people worked from home. Now, consider how many similar situations occur daily in cities around the world. RTO policies that force people to commute contribute to dangerous traffic congestion that can literally cost lives. The societal disadvantages extend even further. When people work from an office, their homes still need heating and electricity; you can’t simply turn them off, especially in my climate. This means we end up maintaining two properties with full utility costs. Additionally, there’s the increased wear on city infrastructure from more vehicles on the road, elevated levels of traffic pollution, and the under-utilization of office spaces that could be repurposed into affordable housing. The push for RTO is clearly wasteful compared to the benefits of working from home.
- dt3ft 2y agoWhen in office, I typically spend 70% of my time helping coworkers with their issues, since they feel like it's ok to just walk by and ask for help. When I work from home, my output skyrockets. In essence, I'm a mentor, but have expectations to deliver high quality and reach tight deadlines. I hate going to the office, since my commute is 45+45 minutes. The moment I get forced to go to the office full time is the moment I take another offer where WFH is on the table. Hire expencive, qualified workers who don't require hand-holding, and you won't have to care where they work from. Guaranteed.
- dingaling 2y ago> Hire expencive, qualified workers > who don't require hand-holding, > and you won't have to care where > they work from. But employees only get to that level of capability through early, engaged mentoring. WFH destroys that personal connection. So then you have new, or inexperienced, employees trawling through SharePoint trying to find some nugget of information about how and why X integrates with Y. Hours and hours are lost, I've seen it first-hand. Whereas 15 minutes of face-time doodling on a page with an experienced analyst will accelerate the newbie's capability out of proportion to the time spent.
- tzs 2y agoThe person above said they spend 70% of their time helping others. That's great if that is their actual job and they are only supposed to spend 30% of their time on other things. But that's probably not the case at most companies. Employees don't stay around long enough for most companies to be able to afford paying senior level people to spend most of their time training inexperienced people when there is a good chance that many of those inexperienced people will use that experience to get hired somewhere else. What companies that want everyone to be in the office should be doing is providing actual offices to the senior workers. Then when a senior worker is working on something that they need to focus on they can close their door and people can be told when the door is closed do not interrupt unless it is urgent. When they are doing less demanding stuff they can have their door open and inexperienced workers can come and ask questions. In your particular example optimal would be to teach the new or inexperienced employees how to update the information in SharePoint so when they do learn how and why X integrates with Y (whether by spending hours digging around to find it or by getting someone more experienced to explain it to them) they can then make it so the next new or inexperienced employee will be able to find that on their own. Someone more experienced can review their changes to make sure they are OK, but that doesn't have to be done right away so can be done at a time when the more experienced person does not have some higher priority senior level work they need to be concentrating on.
- Simon_ORourke 2y agoBut but but.... Won't somebody please think of the hurt feelings amongst the commercial landlord community. Seriously though, any of those a-hole CEOs, like Amazon or Intercom may as well come out and say they don't trust their staff, all the while getting chauffeur driven into the office themselves and have legions of housekeepers and nannies taking care of things at home for them.
- jhanschoo 2y ago> To explain the benefits of labor market inclusion, consider that fully in-person jobs can be filled only by nearby employees. A human resources or information technology position in New York can, for example, be filled only by a local resident. Even if there are people in Bulgaria, Brazil, or Belize who would be a better fit, they cannot do the job if they are not there in person. But as soon as positions can be filled remotely, employers go from taking the best local employee to taking the best regional employee for hybrid and the best global employee for fully remote work. Before professionals in HCOL cities celebrate this article, a primary argument of it refers to handing the job over to better qualified labor in a nonlocal talent pool; that is, outsourcing.
- avazhi 2y agoNo it’s not.
- marenkay 2y agoThe answers here seem to only allow for one solution: where no technical requirements exist in favor of RTO, one should provide employees the choice. Each person has their own place where productivity is good, and it may even change between RTO and WFH. Force should not be applied, or else one might start wondering if e.g. the commute time should be paid time, or pay should increase in a WFH case since the employee suddenly shoulders more costs.
- avidphantasm 2y ago> Economics is famous for being the dismal science. Economics is not a science. It’s politics dressed up as a science.
- steelframe 2y agoSometimes politics comes into play at the office. "This is the decision. We're just informing you about it because we agreed in our informal hallway chat that it's the right thing to do." Suddenly all of the doc comments and Slack threads become meaningless and are swept aside in favor of the consensus that a few people came to face-to-face. Remote employees will never be as politically effective as the employees in the hallway.
- greentxt 2y agoWfh is better but going out to lunch, the whole notion of a lunch break, or everyone eating at about the same time everyday is something I miss about offices. Offices are also like the schools we grow up in. There's a continuity through life that's been lost.
- thegrim33 2y agoWell I went into the article expecting it to be the 143rd article in the ouroborous of articles that all reference each other and at the bottom of them all is that one single absolutely horrible WFH study that was done in Europe a few years ago, but I got stuck before even getting into the article. The title: "Working From Home Is Powering Productivity" -> "X is Y". The main headline: "A fivefold increase in remote work since the pandemic could boost economic growth and bring wider benefits" -> "X could Y". Before even getting into the article they went from strongly claiming something to no longer claiming something but instead using a weasel word that could mean anything. I could be the King of France. I could be 9 feet tall. Could doesn't mean anything. Instantly closed the article, and not reading further.
- AbstractH24 2y agoExplain to me why work that can be done form home can't be nearshored?
- spopejoy 2y agoWhy is it ICs will argue endlessly for and against WFH, while at least in the press the main story from employers is pro-RTO? Embracing remote is such a huge win for hiring (access a way larger talent pool) and budgets (who needs a lease??). ICs overall are more open to remote than otherwise so it's decently rare you lose a hire because remote. Are these companies just not giving interviews? I get it: other companies screaming RTO drive ICs into your arms, no need to draw attention to it...
- fortuna_1 2y agoWFH has been a life saver for me. I cannot walk due to an injury and I have IBS, ADHD, and Mysophobia.
- day2punk 2y agoyes, working from home is one of the great solutions if you want a work-life balance. In my country, the term work from home became popular when the pandemic hit at the beginning of 2020, and til now several company (mostly tech, blockchain, and finance) still doing it. But honestly, if you asking about productivity working from the office is still a better choice.