4 ms·

Cue lots of managers using this title to push the 'back to the office' movement a bit further. There are so many axis other than 'output', and some of them are

Cue lots of managers using this title to push the 'back to the office' movement a bit further. There are so many axis other than 'output', and some of them are a lot more important. For instance 'quality'. And 'employee happiness' and 'employee retention'. The term 'human capital' is such a terrible one to use as an abstraction. Capital is something you expend, once you start looking at people as just another resource to make ROI on you're asking to be treated the same way in reverse. @Dang: suggested title change: "The Power of Proximity to Coworkers: Training for Tomorrow or Productivity Today?" full text: https://pallais.scholars.harvard.edu/sites/g/files/omnuum5926/files/pallais/files/power_of_proximity_nov2023.pdf https://pallais.scholars.harvard.edu/sites/g/files/omnuum592...

noobermin 1y ago
The abstract did say the result is mixed. You have "long term" increase in human capital development...primarily because connections help mentor more junior developers, but output is reduced...for obvious reasons. The "output is reduced" especially for certain crunches where time is of the essence IS an argument for WFH in those circumstances, and for me, when I need the most time alone.
- jacquesm 1y ago
  The abstract says one thing, the title here suggests an entirely different thing. Besides that not-so-subtle editing, I also find the sample size used more than a little bit lower than one that you could draw such a sweeping conclusion from.
  - delichon 1y ago
    I thought that the title drops the lede so I abreviated the second sentence of the abstract: We find being near coworkers has tradeoffs: proximity increases long-run human capital development at the expense of short-term output.
    - ghaff 1y ago
      Which seems very consistent with everything I've seen over a fairly long career. I'd add not just co-workers but also other interactions with industry peers.
    - jacquesm 1y ago
      That's up to you, but context matters and that simply isn't the title. That finding too is not well supported by the article, sample size = 1 and the company they looked at is not exactly a typical company either. Imnsho this paper is very low quality. It is entirely possible that these conclusions (which by themselves are not all that shocking or novel) hold true over larger samples and across multiple types of company but that's not what they did. They looked at one entity: "We study the impact of sitting together in the office for software engineers at a Fortune 500 online retailer. This firm gave us access to the online feedback that engineers write about each other’s computer code as well as metrics of engineers’ programming output. " So they base the entirety of this conclusion on code review comments and lines-of-code produced or something like that. That makes the conclusion even less supported than if they had done some actual research. For a statement like this to hold you would at least need a control and a larger sample.
      - JamesBarney 1y ago
        > Imnsho this paper is very low quality Compared to like a phase 3 clinical trial, sure. Compared to your average paper, and especially your average business paper I don't think that's the case.
        jacquesm 1y ago
        I think there is some room in between those two. At a minimum you'd expect a few more companies, more sources than just code review and code productivity metrics (this alone disqualifies the study because it centers on just one task: software development) etc.
        jamespo 1y ago
hyperpape 1y ago
> Capital is something you expend Or hoard
Aurornis 1y ago
I’m in a big peer group for managers where a lot of us are remote managers. (Let me repeat before the angry downvotes and comments: I am a remote manager and proponent of remote work) This was all common knowledge. It has been for a long time. The big companies who tracked a lot of metrics and followed employees from hire onward already knew that remote environments are harder for new people to thrive in. This is why a lot of the companies who did return to office still allow remote work, but they require new hires on-site first and to accumulate a track record of delivering within the company. It’s also why a lot of full remote companies have gone back to hiring people who already have a lot of remote experience. The period after COVID where companies hired anyone into remote roles and assumed it would work for everyone was not a good thing for remote work, IMO. A lot of people cannot handle remote work for different reasons: Many don’t communicate well. Some can’t focus at home. Some can’t cooperate with people via text, even though they’re fine in person. Some just want remote work to disappear into the background and respond to a couple emails or Slack messages from their phone while they’re on vacation all the time. It all added up to excessive problems for companies that threw in the towel for RTO. I know this comment will anger remote maximalists who think everything and everyone should be remote, but we tried that and it didn’t work. I think we’ve overcorrected for now, but the future is probably going to settle into a norm where remote is a limited option for companies and candidates who can handle it, but not the norm for everyone.
- candiddevmike 1y ago
  What is your definition of "new person" though? If someone has been remote for years, are they still a "new person"? If you trust them enough to hire them, why is there a need to keep earning trust for more privileges. This just seems like a carrot to squeeze some kind productivity or control out of people.
  - zeryx 1y ago
    I've only ever worked remote professionally and I've got a track record, when I apply to a new role there's no question that I can adapt to working remotely at X company. If I just finished my PhD in comp sci and have never worked professionally in my life let alone remotely, going day 1 remote is a huge risk
agf 1y ago
Where do companies otherwise prioritize long-run development over short-term output? In my experience, generally nowhere. So why would this make managers push RTO more? Some who already want RTO may use this as an excuse, but I would think it would actually reduce RTO pressure overall, as it confirms less short-term productivity, which is what companies actually care about.
- Insanity 1y ago
  I think this will do exactly nothing for RTO, neither increase nor decrease the push from management. The decisions around RTO seem to be more “gut feeling” based than data driven. Look at Amazon, a supposedly “data driven company”. During RTO, Andy Jassy admitted there’s no data to back it up but that they “believe” it will help due to improving culture. Fast forward a year and they just did a first round of layoffs because “culture”. So I guess ultimately RTO was a failure for them that they won’t admit to.
  - lotsofpulp 1y ago
    RTO was always about reducing labor costs by incentivizing people to resign.
    - apercu 1y ago
      I think that is only part. The other part is pushback against "uppity" labour.
- wiseowise 1y ago
  > So why would this make managers push RTO more? > Proximity [office] *increases* development Do you seriously expect managers to read anything beyond title?
- venturecruelty 1y ago
  Because the C-suite needs to justify those 15-year commercial leases, and anything with a veneer of credibility will be used to do so (in addition to simply firing people who don't comply).
Esophagus4 1y ago
Cue the developers dismissing any evidence that RTO has benefits because they don’t like it.
- jacquesm 1y ago
  That's not what it is about though. There is plenty of evidence that there are pros and cons both to WFH and work-at-the-office, assuming the work lends itself to work-from-home to begin with. This is at best a datapoint and not so much a grand conclusion worthy one at that. The metric 'code productivity' alone is such a terrible one. I remember the 80's when such things were introduced. The best one that I ran into professionally was 'object code size' (because we don't want to count those pesky comment lines as production now, do we?). It didn't take long for the rookie in the team to outscore everybody else based on those metrics. He found the largest library in the system to link to... In general I'm against such metrification of productivity and in software I'm more against it than in other industries because I think software quality is a very hard thing to measure to begin with. Lines-of-code and such are useful on an assets list during a business transaction in a descriptive way. But they're not very useful in other contexts. As for the code review data they analyzed: "We find that sitting near coworkers increases the online feed- back that engineers receive on their computer code. Engineers ask more follow- up questions online when sitting together, and so, proximity can not only increase in-person but also digital communication. Proximity is particularly integral to the online feedback received by young and less tenured engineers. " I've seen the exact opposite happen as well. Proximity decreased the feedback because there was no need to communicate formally what could be communicated informally.
- wiseowise 1y ago
  > [has benefits] Long-term and for the company. Of course I’m going to dismiss it lol, why the fuck would I want to be left holding the bag?
- ElevenLathe 1y ago
  This is only a harm if you are ambitious and career-oriented. I'm remote and know it won't be conducive to promotion, but I also get to: 1) live in the low CoL area that I grew up in, 2) be near family and friends (and therefore free, high-quality childcare), 3) avoid a hellish commute in one of the sprawl-y hellscapes that grow up around tech hub cities, 4) live in a paid-off house instead of 50%+ of my income going directly to rent or a mortgage, and 5) have a massive nest egg due to all the money I'm saving. Could I get faster promotions by going back to the office? Maybe, though I see the careers of my at-the-office colleagues around me stagnating just about as much as mine. But...I don't want to be management. I don't even necessarily care for promotion as an IC unless that's the only way to tread water with inflation. The only major downside I think about is that it will obviously be harder to get a remote position if I lose the one I have, but we're financially prepared for that. With a paid-off house in a single-car neighborhood, we can make ends meet with a normal job stocking groceries or something. At the worst case, I have connections to get a job at the factory a town over, though that would mean getting a second car. In other words: I, as a worker, do not care about maximizing the value of my human capital stock. I am not cattle. I am not a slave. I have preferences that are unrelated to my ability to receive praise and promotions from my boss. In short, I deserve respect from my employer, whether they are currently being forced to give it or not.
eschneider 1y ago
Is my remote experiences strange or do other remote workers not have some sort of chat where people ask if you've got a minute and drop in a video conference link if they need a quick chat on something?
- jacquesm 1y ago
  No idea, but yes, that's exactly how we do it. We've been full remote since COVID and honestly, I don't think any of us would want it any other way but we're a very small team so not representative of larger trends.

noobermin 1y ago

The abstract did say the result is mixed. You have "long term" increase in human capital development...primarily because connections help mentor more junior developers, but output is reduced...for obvious reasons. The "output is reduced" especially for certain crunches where time is of the essence IS an argument for WFH in those circumstances, and for me, when I need the most time alone.

jacquesm 1y ago
The abstract says one thing, the title here suggests an entirely different thing. Besides that not-so-subtle editing, I also find the sample size used more than a little bit lower than one that you could draw such a sweeping conclusion from.
- delichon 1y ago
  I thought that the title drops the lede so I abreviated the second sentence of the abstract: We find being near coworkers has tradeoffs: proximity increases long-run human capital development at the expense of short-term output.
  - ghaff 1y ago
    Which seems very consistent with everything I've seen over a fairly long career. I'd add not just co-workers but also other interactions with industry peers.
  - jacquesm 1y ago
    That's up to you, but context matters and that simply isn't the title. That finding too is not well supported by the article, sample size = 1 and the company they looked at is not exactly a typical company either. Imnsho this paper is very low quality. It is entirely possible that these conclusions (which by themselves are not all that shocking or novel) hold true over larger samples and across multiple types of company but that's not what they did. They looked at one entity: "We study the impact of sitting together in the office for software engineers at a Fortune 500 online retailer. This firm gave us access to the online feedback that engineers write about each other’s computer code as well as metrics of engineers’ programming output. " So they base the entirety of this conclusion on code review comments and lines-of-code produced or something like that. That makes the conclusion even less supported than if they had done some actual research. For a statement like this to hold you would at least need a control and a larger sample.
    - JamesBarney 1y ago
      > Imnsho this paper is very low quality Compared to like a phase 3 clinical trial, sure. Compared to your average paper, and especially your average business paper I don't think that's the case.
      - jacquesm 1y ago
        I think there is some room in between those two. At a minimum you'd expect a few more companies, more sources than just code review and code productivity metrics (this alone disqualifies the study because it centers on just one task: software development) etc.
        jamespo 1y ago

hyperpape 1y ago

> Capital is something you expend Or hoard

Aurornis 1y ago

I’m in a big peer group for managers where a lot of us are remote managers. (Let me repeat before the angry downvotes and comments: I am a remote manager and proponent of remote work) This was all common knowledge. It has been for a long time. The big companies who tracked a lot of metrics and followed employees from hire onward already knew that remote environments are harder for new people to thrive in. This is why a lot of the companies who did return to office still allow remote work, but they require new hires on-site first and to accumulate a track record of delivering within the company. It’s also why a lot of full remote companies have gone back to hiring people who already have a lot of remote experience. The period after COVID where companies hired anyone into remote roles and assumed it would work for everyone was not a good thing for remote work, IMO. A lot of people cannot handle remote work for different reasons: Many don’t communicate well. Some can’t focus at home. Some can’t cooperate with people via text, even though they’re fine in person. Some just want remote work to disappear into the background and respond to a couple emails or Slack messages from their phone while they’re on vacation all the time. It all added up to excessive problems for companies that threw in the towel for RTO. I know this comment will anger remote maximalists who think everything and everyone should be remote, but we tried that and it didn’t work. I think we’ve overcorrected for now, but the future is probably going to settle into a norm where remote is a limited option for companies and candidates who can handle it, but not the norm for everyone.

candiddevmike 1y ago
What is your definition of "new person" though? If someone has been remote for years, are they still a "new person"? If you trust them enough to hire them, why is there a need to keep earning trust for more privileges. This just seems like a carrot to squeeze some kind productivity or control out of people.
- zeryx 1y ago
  I've only ever worked remote professionally and I've got a track record, when I apply to a new role there's no question that I can adapt to working remotely at X company. If I just finished my PhD in comp sci and have never worked professionally in my life let alone remotely, going day 1 remote is a huge risk

agf 1y ago

Where do companies otherwise prioritize long-run development over short-term output? In my experience, generally nowhere. So why would this make managers push RTO more? Some who already want RTO may use this as an excuse, but I would think it would actually reduce RTO pressure overall, as it confirms less short-term productivity, which is what companies actually care about.

Insanity 1y ago
I think this will do exactly nothing for RTO, neither increase nor decrease the push from management. The decisions around RTO seem to be more “gut feeling” based than data driven. Look at Amazon, a supposedly “data driven company”. During RTO, Andy Jassy admitted there’s no data to back it up but that they “believe” it will help due to improving culture. Fast forward a year and they just did a first round of layoffs because “culture”. So I guess ultimately RTO was a failure for them that they won’t admit to.
- lotsofpulp 1y ago
  RTO was always about reducing labor costs by incentivizing people to resign.
  - apercu 1y ago
    I think that is only part. The other part is pushback against "uppity" labour.
wiseowise 1y ago
> So why would this make managers push RTO more? > Proximity [office] *increases* development Do you seriously expect managers to read anything beyond title?
venturecruelty 1y ago
Because the C-suite needs to justify those 15-year commercial leases, and anything with a veneer of credibility will be used to do so (in addition to simply firing people who don't comply).

Esophagus4 1y ago

Cue the developers dismissing any evidence that RTO has benefits because they don’t like it.

jacquesm 1y ago
That's not what it is about though. There is plenty of evidence that there are pros and cons both to WFH and work-at-the-office, assuming the work lends itself to work-from-home to begin with. This is at best a datapoint and not so much a grand conclusion worthy one at that. The metric 'code productivity' alone is such a terrible one. I remember the 80's when such things were introduced. The best one that I ran into professionally was 'object code size' (because we don't want to count those pesky comment lines as production now, do we?). It didn't take long for the rookie in the team to outscore everybody else based on those metrics. He found the largest library in the system to link to... In general I'm against such metrification of productivity and in software I'm more against it than in other industries because I think software quality is a very hard thing to measure to begin with. Lines-of-code and such are useful on an assets list during a business transaction in a descriptive way. But they're not very useful in other contexts. As for the code review data they analyzed: "We find that sitting near coworkers increases the online feed- back that engineers receive on their computer code. Engineers ask more follow- up questions online when sitting together, and so, proximity can not only increase in-person but also digital communication. Proximity is particularly integral to the online feedback received by young and less tenured engineers. " I've seen the exact opposite happen as well. Proximity decreased the feedback because there was no need to communicate formally what could be communicated informally.
wiseowise 1y ago
> [has benefits] Long-term and for the company. Of course I’m going to dismiss it lol, why the fuck would I want to be left holding the bag?
ElevenLathe 1y ago
This is only a harm if you are ambitious and career-oriented. I'm remote and know it won't be conducive to promotion, but I also get to: 1) live in the low CoL area that I grew up in, 2) be near family and friends (and therefore free, high-quality childcare), 3) avoid a hellish commute in one of the sprawl-y hellscapes that grow up around tech hub cities, 4) live in a paid-off house instead of 50%+ of my income going directly to rent or a mortgage, and 5) have a massive nest egg due to all the money I'm saving. Could I get faster promotions by going back to the office? Maybe, though I see the careers of my at-the-office colleagues around me stagnating just about as much as mine. But...I don't want to be management. I don't even necessarily care for promotion as an IC unless that's the only way to tread water with inflation. The only major downside I think about is that it will obviously be harder to get a remote position if I lose the one I have, but we're financially prepared for that. With a paid-off house in a single-car neighborhood, we can make ends meet with a normal job stocking groceries or something. At the worst case, I have connections to get a job at the factory a town over, though that would mean getting a second car. In other words: I, as a worker, do not care about maximizing the value of my human capital stock. I am not cattle. I am not a slave. I have preferences that are unrelated to my ability to receive praise and promotions from my boss. In short, I deserve respect from my employer, whether they are currently being forced to give it or not.

eschneider 1y ago

Is my remote experiences strange or do other remote workers not have some sort of chat where people ask if you've got a minute and drop in a video conference link if they need a quick chat on something?

jacquesm 1y ago
No idea, but yes, that's exactly how we do it. We've been full remote since COVID and honestly, I don't think any of us would want it any other way but we're a very small team so not representative of larger trends.