3 ms·

This is interesting because it does not jibe at all with the people I know and how productive they are. The friends I know working big tech hybrid jobs work may

by isahers 7mo ago

This is interesting because it does not jibe at all with the people I know and how productive they are. The friends I know working big tech hybrid jobs work maybe 25 hours in a good week, whereas the friends I know in office 4/5 days a week are easily at double that. I'd imagine there are some confounding variables here. I wonder if a lot of those hybrid companies driving high revenue growth are just profit machines that don't really rely on employees being productive to grow (i.e. Google). Either way surprising findings to me!

farisa_lives 7mo ago
[dead]
graemep 7mo ago
Do they do more work by working longer hours? People often do not. Output is not the same thing as hours worked. Productivity is output per hour, so its also possible for output to fall and productivity to rise. This will be the usual case with fewer hours.
- red-iron-pine 7mo ago
  > Output is not the same thing as hours worked. factories would disagree. there are diminishing returns as people get tired and productivity dips, but there is still a direct, linear relationship. however its very different from knowledge- or social-based (e.g. sales) workers. there is often no direct 1-to-1
wrs 7mo ago
I think you may be confusing work with "work". It's easy to find yourself spending 40 hours in an office and accomplishing 6 hours of actual work, and conversely it's easy to spend 25 hours at home and do 20 hours of actual work. This obviously depends on what the work is. People whose job is to focus on building things for hours at a time have very different optimal work environment from people who meet with and coordinate other people in short bursts. So no one-size-fits-all top-down policy can be effective; local flexibility is required.
xnx 7mo ago
> don't really rely on employees being productive to grow (i.e. Google) How do you think Google grows? They invented PageRank and have been on a set trajectory since? Google didn't catch up to and surpass OpenAI by doing nothing.
croes 7mo ago
Do they work or is that just their at the office?
- SoftTalker 7mo ago
  Same question applies at home. Are you working, or just logged in to Slack/Teams (or whatever) and available if it pings? I work from home quite a bit, but I'm expected to be available and working during business hours. So other than not commuting to the office, it's not a huge difference.
  - jjk166 7mo ago
    If you are working from home, you are judged solely by your productivity. If you work in an office, there is productivity and there is also attendance. Someone can show up every day and appear to be working hard, yet get nothing done. You just can't do that working from home (not for very long anyways). For most professionals, attendance shouldn't really matter. You're not creating value by merely being present. There are exceptions - customer service for example - but even in those cases being just logged into Slack/Teams is perfectly cromulent.
  - croes 7mo ago
    Exactly. It’s rather useless to just look at the clocked hours.
thewebguyd 7mo ago
> The friends I know working big tech hybrid jobs work maybe 25 hours in a good week, whereas the friends I know in office 4/5 days a week are easily at double that. But are they actually more productive, or are they just spending additional hours "looking busy"? When I worked in office I "worked" 40 hours/week because I had to. Most of that wasn't actually work, maybe about 20-30 hours of actual work, sometimes less. Working from home I have no pressure to pretend to work, there's no "butt-in-chair" requirements. I get slightly more done from home, and exchange I don't have to waste 10-15 hours/week at my desk for no reason other than to make some manager feel good about having butts in chairs.
- bonesss 7mo ago
  And what about frequent chats with work friends? No, not work, just hey how ya doin, and then someone brings coffee, then there’s a quick gab about the game, then a half baked question before a little catchup about that show. 2-4x salaries and minutes being burnt in small untracked chunks. Hours clocked and hours worked are not the same.
  - _DeadFred_ 7mo ago
    When I worked at a public company I was told to expect 80% max productivity from my people. If my team routinely entered more time than that against capitalizable projects I would get called out and have to explain how that could be true. What you are talking about is people being people and should already be accounted for. If you need to track untracked chunks and minutes something is very wrong, and it is either your management of your people or that you work at a zombie company that can't afford enough workers and is only surviving on unrealistic labor expectations.
adamhartenz 7mo ago
That is a lot of thoughts and feelings. There is plenty of research you can read before throwing out opinions.
asdff 7mo ago
If someone is actually working 8 solid hours every day 5 days a week on office work, I would expect they are neurodivergent in some way. Even in college when you were still young, people couldn't sustain that level of focused intensity for very much more than maybe a week ahead of an exam, often with the help of adderall.
IAmBroom 7mo ago
You claim a significant amount of qualitative data here; how did you measure it? Sounds like some WAGs. Confounding variables don't matter when the "data" is guesswork.
palmotea 7mo ago
> The friends I know working big tech hybrid jobs work maybe 25 hours in a good week, whereas the friends I know in office 4/5 days a week are easily at double that. Hours "worked" != productivity.

by isahers 7mo ago

farisa_lives 7mo ago

[dead]

graemep 7mo ago

Do they do more work by working longer hours? People often do not. Output is not the same thing as hours worked. Productivity is output per hour, so its also possible for output to fall and productivity to rise. This will be the usual case with fewer hours.

red-iron-pine 7mo ago
> Output is not the same thing as hours worked. factories would disagree. there are diminishing returns as people get tired and productivity dips, but there is still a direct, linear relationship. however its very different from knowledge- or social-based (e.g. sales) workers. there is often no direct 1-to-1

wrs 7mo ago

I think you may be confusing work with "work". It's easy to find yourself spending 40 hours in an office and accomplishing 6 hours of actual work, and conversely it's easy to spend 25 hours at home and do 20 hours of actual work. This obviously depends on what the work is. People whose job is to focus on building things for hours at a time have very different optimal work environment from people who meet with and coordinate other people in short bursts. So no one-size-fits-all top-down policy can be effective; local flexibility is required.

xnx 7mo ago

> don't really rely on employees being productive to grow (i.e. Google) How do you think Google grows? They invented PageRank and have been on a set trajectory since? Google didn't catch up to and surpass OpenAI by doing nothing.

croes 7mo ago

Do they work or is that just their at the office?

SoftTalker 7mo ago
Same question applies at home. Are you working, or just logged in to Slack/Teams (or whatever) and available if it pings? I work from home quite a bit, but I'm expected to be available and working during business hours. So other than not commuting to the office, it's not a huge difference.
- jjk166 7mo ago
  If you are working from home, you are judged solely by your productivity. If you work in an office, there is productivity and there is also attendance. Someone can show up every day and appear to be working hard, yet get nothing done. You just can't do that working from home (not for very long anyways). For most professionals, attendance shouldn't really matter. You're not creating value by merely being present. There are exceptions - customer service for example - but even in those cases being just logged into Slack/Teams is perfectly cromulent.
- croes 7mo ago
  Exactly. It’s rather useless to just look at the clocked hours.

thewebguyd 7mo ago

> The friends I know working big tech hybrid jobs work maybe 25 hours in a good week, whereas the friends I know in office 4/5 days a week are easily at double that. But are they actually more productive, or are they just spending additional hours "looking busy"? When I worked in office I "worked" 40 hours/week because I had to. Most of that wasn't actually work, maybe about 20-30 hours of actual work, sometimes less. Working from home I have no pressure to pretend to work, there's no "butt-in-chair" requirements. I get slightly more done from home, and exchange I don't have to waste 10-15 hours/week at my desk for no reason other than to make some manager feel good about having butts in chairs.

bonesss 7mo ago
And what about frequent chats with work friends? No, not work, just hey how ya doin, and then someone brings coffee, then there’s a quick gab about the game, then a half baked question before a little catchup about that show. 2-4x salaries and minutes being burnt in small untracked chunks. Hours clocked and hours worked are not the same.
- _DeadFred_ 7mo ago
  When I worked at a public company I was told to expect 80% max productivity from my people. If my team routinely entered more time than that against capitalizable projects I would get called out and have to explain how that could be true. What you are talking about is people being people and should already be accounted for. If you need to track untracked chunks and minutes something is very wrong, and it is either your management of your people or that you work at a zombie company that can't afford enough workers and is only surviving on unrealistic labor expectations.

adamhartenz 7mo ago

That is a lot of thoughts and feelings. There is plenty of research you can read before throwing out opinions.

asdff 7mo ago

If someone is actually working 8 solid hours every day 5 days a week on office work, I would expect they are neurodivergent in some way. Even in college when you were still young, people couldn't sustain that level of focused intensity for very much more than maybe a week ahead of an exam, often with the help of adderall.

IAmBroom 7mo ago

You claim a significant amount of qualitative data here; how did you measure it? Sounds like some WAGs. Confounding variables don't matter when the "data" is guesswork.

palmotea 7mo ago

> The friends I know working big tech hybrid jobs work maybe 25 hours in a good week, whereas the friends I know in office 4/5 days a week are easily at double that. Hours "worked" != productivity.