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People on HN love to pretend that no one was slacking off while ostensibly "working from home"

mercwear 2y ago
Or maybe they just don’t feel like they need to state the obvious? We all know some people slack off, they find ways to do it in office too.
dboreham 2y ago
That's an indication of poor management. People can slack off when in the office too.
- SketchySeaBeast 2y ago
  Hell, I'd argue for knowledge professions it's required throughout the day. I cannot stay in the zone for 8 hours a day, so I'm going to need to take breaks. When I'm at home I can at least be productive. I can make lunch, start a load of laundry, something. At work I have to sit there and pretend to work because exec loves watching people work, which is ultimately not as refreshing and doesn't allow me to get back in the zone as quickly.
- grandempire 2y ago
  Ok. So environment and social factors have no effect? Suddenly all these ideas from behavioral economics about implicit bias and contextual framing don’t apply, and we are now all Austrians studying rational and disciplined labor units.
dividefuel 2y ago
At the same time, execs love to paint with a broad brush that everyone working from home is slacking off... while also not sharing any data about how many people are being lazy. Either your performance management can catch lazy employees or it can't. If it can't, then that's what you should be fixing.
watwut 2y ago
Slacking off is super easy in the office. You just have to spend a lot of time there, you can drag meetings forever, goof off behind computer - even if the screen is visible. But bonus if it is not visible.
flerchin 2y ago
Our metrics went up, and stayed elevated. Do you not have metrics? Those metrics will slide when RTO in invoked.
matwood 2y ago
Years before COVID or WFH was a thing, I knew a guy at work who played some MMO literally all day. He was also the main sysadmin and always got all of his work done on time. But yes, people can slack off anywhere. 'Butts in seats' is one of the laziest metrics for management to use for 'working'.
- grandempire 2y ago
  “I know a guy who slacked off in the office”, is not evidence that it’s better or worse.
- snozolli 2y ago
  I remember reading about SysAdmins who wrote mods for MUDs (Multi-User Dungeons, like a text-based MMO) to give them system status notifications in-game. For example, "a pigeon arrives with a note: Server 3 is down". Plenty of jobs are intermittently high-demand and high-stakes while leaving a ton of free time throughout the day.
  - matwood 2y ago
    I knew a sysadmin at a different job who did that. And since MUDs were text, many in the office at the time had no idea what was on his screen. And to your point about high-demand/high-stakes, at the same job as the MUD guy there was an old guy. He would leave before lunch go play tennis, nap under his desk in his cube, etc... I asked one of the other young people one day (I was still in college), what the old guy did. Apparently he was the only one who knew how to code a certain system, and he was only there to do that job when the system needed a change or had a problem.
- dumbledoren 2y ago
  > He was also the main sysadmin and always got all of his work done on time. I fail to see the problem there...
radnor 2y ago
All my former co-workers who slacked off don't work at my company any more. It was painfully obvious who was working and who was not.
ohgr 2y ago
Anon for obvious reasons. I'm one of the few full time home workers at my org. I slack off all the time. I mean literally I did an hour of work on Friday. But this was a complete restart of something two of my in-office colleagues fucked up over the space of 2 weeks. The problem in orgs is shit people, not working from home.
anti-soyboy 2y ago
My boy got triggered
chasd00 2y ago
I’ve been wfh long before covid. I work in consulting so the metric is very easy. If a percentage of your time (typically 75-80%) isn’t billed to a client that yields a predefined margin then you’re fired. It seems brutal but it’s humane in a way. As long as I’m profitable to the firm they don’t care what I do or how I do it.
olyjohn 2y ago
People like you pretend that people in the office never slack off.
farts_mckensy 2y ago
People slack off no matter their location, and managers generally don't care as long as they do the basics.
datavirtue 2y ago
Where I work we are all remote and executives have to beg for a potty break because they are so busy. If you slack off when remote, you are probably worse in the office. WFH vs the office has nothing to do with a person's work ethic and dedication.
asdf6969 2y ago
Why do you care if people slack off? That’s the company’s problem
missedthecue 2y ago
It is very interesting to me that in my social/professional circle, and indeed here on HN, remote schooling during covid is practically universally seen as a massive failure resulting in serious consequences, yet remote work is a huge success and it's an outrage and borderline human rights violation whenever it's reduced or taken away. Of course, there are some incentives at play here. The people voicing these opinions are adults, and adults benefit both when their children are taken away to free daycare... err i mean school all day, and when they get to enjoy the flexibility of home office. This set of incentives could create the confusing combination of beliefs above. But I also think that maybe it's the sample group. Not all kids failed disastrously at remote school, some excelled and worked far ahead of their classmates. And similarly, a lot of adults truly do get a lot more work done from their laptop at home. My suspicion is that technical people like those in my social circle and here on HN are both the types that would have excelled at remote schooling, and also those that do well working as hermits in a remote home office environment. There's just a huge blindspot that the other 90% of the population is handling things really badly. The other 90% of kids are reading 3 grade levels behind, and the other 90% of coworkers are doing an hour of work per day, going to the shopping mall at 10am and the dog park at 2, and doing it all with low levels of team cooperation that, just like with a teacher and her remote 5th graders, no level of management or coaching is going to materially improve.
- dumbledoren 2y ago
  > It is very interesting to me that in my social/professional circle, and indeed here on HN, remote schooling during covid is practically universally seen as a massive failure resulting in serious consequences, yet remote work is a huge success and it's an outrage and borderline human rights violation whenever it's reduced or taken away. Because children are not adults. They don't have the attention span and concentration skills to focus on something for 8 hours a day. Evolutionarily so - the job of children is to play, discover and learn. The job of adults is to concentrate and run the show. Even the existing schooling system that crams kids into classrooms and gets them to look at a board to learn things is contrary to human evolution actually. Its the product of the early education system that developed from late medieval scholastic religious education practices.
- 2y ago

Or maybe they just don’t feel like they need to state the obvious? We all know some people slack off, they find ways to do it in office too.

dboreham 2y ago

That's an indication of poor management. People can slack off when in the office too.

SketchySeaBeast 2y ago
Hell, I'd argue for knowledge professions it's required throughout the day. I cannot stay in the zone for 8 hours a day, so I'm going to need to take breaks. When I'm at home I can at least be productive. I can make lunch, start a load of laundry, something. At work I have to sit there and pretend to work because exec loves watching people work, which is ultimately not as refreshing and doesn't allow me to get back in the zone as quickly.
grandempire 2y ago
Ok. So environment and social factors have no effect? Suddenly all these ideas from behavioral economics about implicit bias and contextual framing don’t apply, and we are now all Austrians studying rational and disciplined labor units.

dividefuel 2y ago

At the same time, execs love to paint with a broad brush that everyone working from home is slacking off... while also not sharing any data about how many people are being lazy. Either your performance management can catch lazy employees or it can't. If it can't, then that's what you should be fixing.

watwut 2y ago

Slacking off is super easy in the office. You just have to spend a lot of time there, you can drag meetings forever, goof off behind computer - even if the screen is visible. But bonus if it is not visible.

flerchin 2y ago

Our metrics went up, and stayed elevated. Do you not have metrics? Those metrics will slide when RTO in invoked.

matwood 2y ago

Years before COVID or WFH was a thing, I knew a guy at work who played some MMO literally all day. He was also the main sysadmin and always got all of his work done on time. But yes, people can slack off anywhere. 'Butts in seats' is one of the laziest metrics for management to use for 'working'.

grandempire 2y ago
“I know a guy who slacked off in the office”, is not evidence that it’s better or worse.
snozolli 2y ago
I remember reading about SysAdmins who wrote mods for MUDs (Multi-User Dungeons, like a text-based MMO) to give them system status notifications in-game. For example, "a pigeon arrives with a note: Server 3 is down". Plenty of jobs are intermittently high-demand and high-stakes while leaving a ton of free time throughout the day.
- matwood 2y ago
  I knew a sysadmin at a different job who did that. And since MUDs were text, many in the office at the time had no idea what was on his screen. And to your point about high-demand/high-stakes, at the same job as the MUD guy there was an old guy. He would leave before lunch go play tennis, nap under his desk in his cube, etc... I asked one of the other young people one day (I was still in college), what the old guy did. Apparently he was the only one who knew how to code a certain system, and he was only there to do that job when the system needed a change or had a problem.
dumbledoren 2y ago
> He was also the main sysadmin and always got all of his work done on time. I fail to see the problem there...

radnor 2y ago

All my former co-workers who slacked off don't work at my company any more. It was painfully obvious who was working and who was not.

ohgr 2y ago

Anon for obvious reasons. I'm one of the few full time home workers at my org. I slack off all the time. I mean literally I did an hour of work on Friday. But this was a complete restart of something two of my in-office colleagues fucked up over the space of 2 weeks. The problem in orgs is shit people, not working from home.

anti-soyboy 2y ago

My boy got triggered

chasd00 2y ago

I’ve been wfh long before covid. I work in consulting so the metric is very easy. If a percentage of your time (typically 75-80%) isn’t billed to a client that yields a predefined margin then you’re fired. It seems brutal but it’s humane in a way. As long as I’m profitable to the firm they don’t care what I do or how I do it.

olyjohn 2y ago

People like you pretend that people in the office never slack off.

farts_mckensy 2y ago

People slack off no matter their location, and managers generally don't care as long as they do the basics.

datavirtue 2y ago

Where I work we are all remote and executives have to beg for a potty break because they are so busy. If you slack off when remote, you are probably worse in the office. WFH vs the office has nothing to do with a person's work ethic and dedication.

asdf6969 2y ago

Why do you care if people slack off? That’s the company’s problem

missedthecue 2y ago

It is very interesting to me that in my social/professional circle, and indeed here on HN, remote schooling during covid is practically universally seen as a massive failure resulting in serious consequences, yet remote work is a huge success and it's an outrage and borderline human rights violation whenever it's reduced or taken away. Of course, there are some incentives at play here. The people voicing these opinions are adults, and adults benefit both when their children are taken away to free daycare... err i mean school all day, and when they get to enjoy the flexibility of home office. This set of incentives could create the confusing combination of beliefs above. But I also think that maybe it's the sample group. Not all kids failed disastrously at remote school, some excelled and worked far ahead of their classmates. And similarly, a lot of adults truly do get a lot more work done from their laptop at home. My suspicion is that technical people like those in my social circle and here on HN are both the types that would have excelled at remote schooling, and also those that do well working as hermits in a remote home office environment. There's just a huge blindspot that the other 90% of the population is handling things really badly. The other 90% of kids are reading 3 grade levels behind, and the other 90% of coworkers are doing an hour of work per day, going to the shopping mall at 10am and the dog park at 2, and doing it all with low levels of team cooperation that, just like with a teacher and her remote 5th graders, no level of management or coaching is going to materially improve.

dumbledoren 2y ago
> It is very interesting to me that in my social/professional circle, and indeed here on HN, remote schooling during covid is practically universally seen as a massive failure resulting in serious consequences, yet remote work is a huge success and it's an outrage and borderline human rights violation whenever it's reduced or taken away. Because children are not adults. They don't have the attention span and concentration skills to focus on something for 8 hours a day. Evolutionarily so - the job of children is to play, discover and learn. The job of adults is to concentrate and run the show. Even the existing schooling system that crams kids into classrooms and gets them to look at a board to learn things is contrary to human evolution actually. Its the product of the early education system that developed from late medieval scholastic religious education practices.
2y ago