17 ms·

Remote work doesn't seem to affect productivity, Fed study finds

• ycombinete 3y ago
  Now do one for people with ADHD
• neonate 3y ago
  https://archive.ph/1waXO https://archive.ph/1waXO
• SoftTalker 3y ago
  Most employees can screw around websurfing or shopping just as well at work as at home. They mostly do it because they are bored. Give them interesting, meaningful work and they will be productive.
  • d3w4s9 3y ago
    Nah If I am waiting for code to compile and I'm tired, the most interesting thing happens on my phone not what I need to do next, regardless of what that is
  • goalieca 3y ago
    Some do it to get a break. Doing 40 hours of straight “creative” work is impossible.
    • postalrat 3y ago
      What other things are you doing for 40 straight hours?
    • maxmorlocke 3y ago
      Seriously. As an engineer and engineering leader, I cannot maintain focus to code, sit in meetings, and a variety of other tasks for more than 2-3 hours without a break. It is good to get up, move around, catch up on the news, etc. Taking appropriate breaks and conducting self care gives my mind an opportunity to decompress, allowing me to come back to work more focused and productive. Very long sessions (5+ hours) without a break tend to run into a wall - I may still be doing work, but the quality drops precipitously. Sometimes, I can raise my productivity by distracting myself with home chores (e.g. laundry). Sometimes, I find a quick dip into the news or a catchup on our friend group's discord server productive. This may not be the same for all of us, but studies have repeatedly shown breaks improve productivity for most individuals. Being outside the office, I find it much more convenient to take a productive break without having other coworkers distracting me. Looking over studies and suggestions, it seems interesting to me that tasks like meditation, power naps, small chores, snacks, listening to music, and interacting with pets are much more easily conducted in the comfort of our homes. https://learningcenter.unc.edu/tips-and-tools/taking-breaks/ https://learningcenter.unc.edu/tips-and-tools/taking-breaks/ https://hbr.org/2023/05/how-to-take-better-breaks-at-work-according-to-research https://hbr.org/2023/05/how-to-take-better-breaks-at-work-ac...
      • helboi4 3y ago
        Or you can be in the office and speak to people. I've never been in an office for a professional job where chatting, popping down to the canteen, stepping outside for a bit etc are not completely normal things to do and not frowned upon. For young people without families and pets, having a thriving office where we can take social breaks sometimes is important. Otherwise I literally just sit in my room and want to die. This is why I'm glad my company has 3 days compulsory.
    • mportela 3y ago
      Not only creative work, but manual work too. It's been over 100 years that Frederick Taylor showed regular breaks reduces fatigue and increases productivity. [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_management https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_management
      • williamcotton 3y ago
        Taylor would, correctly, have knowledge workers filling out very detailed timesheets of their daily activities in order to optimize overall efficiency. Sure, let's factor in breaks, but let's also factor time spent in meetings, emails, interviewing candidates, maintenance work, capitalization work, training new hires, R&D, etc, etc. Only then can we understand the true costs of this kind of labor. Taylor had factories where it was easy to inspect and measure. If you want the kind of scientific management that shows a measurable increase in how long and how many breaks that a knowledge working should take, then you need detailed data on their baseline productivity.
        • shermantanktop 3y ago
          Sweet is the lore which Nature brings; Our meddling intellect Mis-shapes the beauteous forms of things:— We murder to dissect. Ok, with high school poetry class over…this “scientific management” approach seems to hold a particular appeal to technical types, who also say it could never apply to them. So bravo for volunteering your own working life to the altar of manageable metrics, but for me, I’d rather not.
          • williamcotton 3y ago
            As margins slim in our industry, which they will, would you rather have management understand the true costs of things or would you rather have over-hiring followed by mass firing? I already fill out hourly timesheets as I work in legal services and we bill clients by the half hour, albeit just for external purposes. This isn’t just Taylorism. I’m also describing Activity-Based Costing, a key component in managerial accounting for high complexity services and products with lots of fixed costs. Most non-VC backed companies engage in such practices. This if course needs to: 1.) come from the top down. The CEO should be doing the same thing, and 2.) have an incentive structure tied directly to profits and “public” reporting. Buy-in from the entire organization is required and everyone must be motivated to keep costs under control. Look at the efficiency of software developers for Formula 1 teams. Any additional costs in that division impacts time spent in the wind chamber, etc, because there is a cap if $190 million per team. They are motivated to win and their costs are constrained by the format. Motivation for organizational cost analysis must be shared amongst all employees.
    • deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    • suslik 3y ago
      A semi-relevant anecdote: over the Christmas break (which was > 2 weeks for me), I was pouring 12-14 hours a day into my personal hobby project and didn’t feel tired or bored at all. I literally couldn’t stop working on it. Now that I’m back at my regular job (which, I must concede, is an amazing job on paper and something I spent a lifetime getting to), I can barely survive the day and have zero energy after 16:00.
      • ChatGTP 3y ago
        I'm the same, I been busting out the pomodor method to help me get through it.
    • ryanSrich 3y ago
      Managing 50+ remote workers taught me that results matter, not hours. It's all about the output. Work asynchronously, focus on the end goal, and as long as it's legal and ethical, the 'how' and 'when' are often irrelevant. Traditional managers struggle with this mindset, often due to their own managers outdated approaches. The real game changer is axing all scheduled internal meetings. No standups, no weekly grooming, no syncs. Scrap these time-wasters and you'll be surprised at the productivity spike. If not, then you likely don't have the right people working for you.
      • rebeccaskinner 3y ago
        I started managing a team with the “no meetings, let people do good work” philosophy and I can just say that I’m glad I was given the space as a new manager to find my feet, because I didn’t find that it worked well when taken to an extreme. Remote work offers very little structure. As someone who thrives on autonomy and chafes at process this always felt great to me, but a lot of people thrive with a bit of structure. These days I’m of the opinion that remote work needs to both adapt to not demand too much structure, but also needs to mindfully provide enough that people can work effectively. Most people on my team have around 5 to 6 hours of standing meetings each week, plus ad-hoc synchronous discussions when they seem valuable. That seems to be the right balance for my team but every team will be different in the exact numbers. The important thing I think is to let the structure emerge naturally and serve a specific purpose rather than doing meetings to replicate in-office processes or to serve some theoretical process.
        • allset_ 3y ago
          > 5 to 6 hours of standing meetings each week Wow that is a lot. That is (almost) a WHOLE DAY of meetings each week just for syncs. I can only provide my own anecdotes, but I'm at 0.5-1hr for standup status-report type meetings.
          • rebeccaskinner 3y ago
            Everyone replying seems to be assuming this time is all for standups and status meetings, but in practice it’s probably about half an hour a week for status updates for us to. The rest of the time is a mix of reserved time for synchronous technical collaboration (e.g. reserved time for pairing, time to talk about technical architecture at a higher level and for people to opt in to presenting some of their work for feedback) My team skews a bit junior right now, and I generally expect a pretty high degree of autonomy. We’re not a feature factory and people aren’t pulling tickets from a backlog mindlessly- I expect them to understand what they are building, why, talk to users, take ownership of a problem and exercise sound judgement. That requires some coordination. More senior people can handle that with less structure. For a highly competent but less experienced engineer I’ve found asking them to work mostly asynchronously was setting them up for failure. Giving the a bit of structure, making them available to one another to help themselves grow, and giving me more opportunities to recognize when I needed to intervene early has been successful. For some teams it might feel like too many meetings, but that’s why I said that you need to pick what works for the specific team. Don’t cargo cult process and structure, but don’t be afraid of it when it can help either.
  • aurareturn 3y ago
    >Give them interesting, meaningful work and they will be productive. How much meaningful and interesting work do you think exists in this world? Every time this topic gets brought up, someone will say "Just give people interesting work, pay them well, don't micromanage them!" as if these jobs grow on trees. And even if these jobs do exist, they're usually reserved for workers who are extremely motivated and capable - in other words, they earned those rights. (except the zero interest covid era).
    • williamcotton 3y ago
      > How much meaningful and interesting work do you think exists in this world? If you're willing to take a salary cut, lots.
      • irrational 3y ago
        Depends on your definition of meaningful and interesting. I have no doubt that public school teaching, working in a nursing home, working as a social worker is meaningful, but I wouldn’t find any of those to be interesting.
        • echelon 3y ago
          Working on a startup pursuing your topic / field of interest might do the trick. There are also lots of technical fields that vastly underpay due to the number of people that want to do it (eg. video games industry) and/or the lack of demand or immediate utility (eg. academia and research). There's also art, film, stage, music, and all of the liberal arts. Imagine what you want to do, then find a job that hits close to that. It might not pay well, but it might satisfy you.
          • jdlshore 3y ago
            Building a startup is full of uninteresting work. Same for games and any other field. Everything has its boring parts. (Especially building startups. What a slog that is. The fun part is building the product, and that’s a fraction of what you have to do.)
  • Sparkyte 3y ago
    Water cooler chat used to be the big thing when I worked in an office.
    • bediger4000 3y ago
      Bah, thing of the past! Now it's mostly organic breakthrough moments of creativity. At a few places it's serendipitious collaboration, of course.
    • irrational 3y ago
      I’ve worked in an office for over 25 years. I’ve never chatted with anyone at the water cooler (those, these days it is a water dispenser machine that can dispense cold or hot still water or sparkling water). I assume this water cooler chat thing must be from farther back in time.
      • jdlshore 3y ago
        Water cooler chat doesn’t need to involve a literal water cooler. It’s an expression for the casual chit-chat that occurs when you encounter someone in the hallway.
    • nox101 3y ago
      I've chatted with a co-worker about all kinds of interesting topics related to our with the last few days. We both work on GPU related stuff, he's been optimizing compute shaders and finding out new and interesting things. The conversations are not conversations I've never seen in chat. He could make a formal presentation but that's not really the point. The point is, as I sat down into the seat next to him, it was obvious to say "Good morning, what's up" and have him tell me. This has happen the last 3 days, each day I learned something I would unlikely have learned any other way. I had stuff to share with him too. This is what I don't personally get from "work from home". I'm in no way suggest you should therefore work from office. I'm only relating my experience. This type of experience has been common in my career but maybe I'm an outlier.
      • Gigachad 3y ago
  • randomdata 3y ago
    Work avoidance typically stems from fear of failure, not boredom. If workers are screwing around when there is work that needs to be done, that is indicative of an environment that doesn't provide the proper failsafes. That said, a lot of jobs simply don't have a constant stream of work that needs to be done, with the work available being dependent on when the customer chooses to engage. It is likely that for a lot of jobs downtime is just the name of the game and without changing customer habits there isn't much you can do.
    • nikkwong 3y ago
      I feel like you are wearing some very strong rose colored glasses; I personally think it’s naive to believe that remote workers are always highly engaged. People optimize their work productivity around different personal goals.. and I have worked with many who seem to try to do as little work as possible to not get fired. Which often involves a lot of loathing and procrastination. It would be wonderful for employers and employees alike if computer work was always interesting. But it just isn’t. Amazon Turk workers are in front of computer out of necessity and probably would like to commit the least amount of work for the maximal possible reward. I happen to be of slightly better means but share their sentiment exactly.
      • randomdata 3y ago
        > and they would kill to do anything else with their time And yet they don't. That is not because they are bored, but because they fear the possible failure.
        • nikkwong 3y ago
          No; they don’t, because they cannot afford to not.
    • oceanplexian 3y ago
      > Work avoidance typically stems from fear of failure, not boredom. For me work avoidance is a symptom of not having enough interruption free time. And in-person is actually substantially worse than remote. Most of the problems I’m working on you can’t bang out in 10 minutes. Reality is that for some problems you need a highly skilled engineer to spend 4-8 continuous, highly focused hours producing iterations or trying to troubleshoot a broken build in a 20,000 line log file across 100 interconnected dependencies. So if you’re going to be productive it requires a time commitment and a certain working style.
  • huytersd 3y ago
    [flagged]
    • dang 3y ago
      Yikes, you can't attack another user like this and we ban accounts that do, so please don't do it again. If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it.
  • wodenokoto 3y ago
    Isn't that why people are paid to work? Because it isn't interesting or meaningful?
    • caseyohara 3y ago
      This is a pretty dim view, especially here on HN. People are paid to work because their labor is valuable. That is in no way mutually exclusive with how interesting and meaningful the job is. Jobs at the intersection of employer value and employee interest are obviously the most desirable. I'd imagine every laborer attempts to maximize these two qualities of their day job.
      • haizhung 3y ago
        It’s not completely wrong though. To be clear, I think basically any role can be meaningful to someone, depending on their views and upbringing. However, some roles lend themselves more easily to find meaning in them, think e.g. roles with patient contact in health care. Or the gaming/entertainment industry. As a consequence, the competition on the labor side is much fiercer, and as a consequence of that, pay is lower and the chance for exploitation is higher. So the GP basically has stated the contraposition of this effect: you get paid more if you do (what most perceive as) less meaningful work.
        • gambiting 3y ago
          >>As a consequence, the competition on the labor side is much fiercer, and as a consequence of that, pay is lower and the chance for exploitation is higher. Well, again - there are these golden jobs that offer both. As an example, if you're good enough as a rendering programmer with video games experience, you can command almost any kind of salary, work wherever you want, and change jobs at a whim - because any games company will pay you your weight in gold to employ you. And (while not a given) the opportunity to work on something meaningful/interesting there is very high.
      • Gigachad 3y ago
        The payment is a pretty big part of it. If you offered people the option to be paid the same amount for doing nothing, how many people do you think would stay doing their exact same current job vs leaving and perusing a hobby?
  • makeitdouble 3y ago
    TBF, I think the balance shifts when you're at home. At the office, websurfing/shopping wold have felt like a complete waste of time, where doing the laundry or cleaning my room is definitely not. Emotionally some of the home chores will feel more meaningful than many bullshit tasks we do. This was one of the prime reasons I switched job, even as the pay was mostly the same. Doing a job that feels meaningful in itself is I think more precious than ever.
  • steve1977 3y ago
    Also, don’t force them to be “at work” for 8 hours just because this worked in a factory.
  • wahnfrieden 3y ago
    Or, give them real equity.
    • flanked-evergl 3y ago
      What would this involve? And can't they buy equity with their salaries if they wanted to?
      • wahnfrieden 3y ago
        Usually my employers haven’t let me buy as much equity as I’ve wanted to, they severely constrain the employee equity pool allocation and dole it out as occasional rewards and reserve most for non-worker investors and owners or executive roles. For how it could work you can look at worker-owned cooperative structures, sociocracy, etc
        • flanked-evergl 3y ago
          Maybe you should consider working for publicly listed companies then, there is no mechanism where they can limit how much equity you own. The one customer owned cooperative I have worked for did limit equity to one share per shareholder, in addition to being the most pathologically corporate and political company I have ever worked for or known off. Maybe worker owned cooperatives work better.
          • wahnfrieden 3y ago
            I don't need to work at public companies to buy their equity. I work in earlier stages to gain access to pre-growth equity. I would certainly not want to work at a non-worker-owned cooperative. That's not an incentive alignment for me as a worker, and it's a hierarchy placed above workers. Customer-owned coops are only meant to be good for the customer, it’s standard hierarchical wage labor bs for workers. Not that worker-owned ones are able to avoid politics though - all social relations have varying degrees of success and conflict.
  • Kiro 3y ago
    The only thing that can stop me from slacking off is my screen being visible to others.
    • prmoustache 3y ago
      Duh, nobody is looking at it. Everybody is either slacking off on their own screen or working.
      • petesergeant 3y ago
        ah there's a solution to this: https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/our-open-plan-office-failed-so-were-moving-to-a-towering-panopticon https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/our-open-plan-office-fai...
  • falsandtru 3y ago
    It is interesting that this opinion is getting high marks in HN. Useful information for employers.
  • VoodooJuJu 3y ago
    Bullshit jobs. If people are so bored and idle to the point that they can just screw around on the internet until the clock strikes 5 while the world keeps turning, then that's a huge red flag they're in a bullshit job. The answer isn't to invent work for them to do. If there's nothing to do, then there's nothing to do. They should probably go home and spend time with their family, write a novel, do some home improvement, tinker, maintain their tools, do some chores. Now that's meaningful work.
• 5350-uiop-1130 3y ago
  layoffs are mostly done. so the media is starting to lay the foundation for offshoring of jobs to remote, cheaper locations.
  • mc32 3y ago
    Maybe Jeff (or Mike) can kickstart offshoring journalists for the Washpost. (or B’berg) See how they like them apples.
  • yedava 3y ago
    Offshoring has been a thing for a few decades now. So has the technology that facilitates remote work. So I don't think this is some new push for offshoring.
    • randomdata 3y ago
      In fairness, there does seem to be a lot of concern amongst the management class around keeping their jobs if they don't get back into the office. Historically, offshoring's biggest struggle has been finding a cultural alignment with those still working in the onshore office. But when everyone is remote there is no such barrier. That is, in the grand scheme of things, something new.
      • 13of40 3y ago
        My two cents on that last bit: I have a team of people working in the US, more than half of them from India, and another team actually in India. Culturally there's a fair amount of overlap, but the real ball buster is the timezone difference. There's no way to both get regular face time and have everyone work normal hours.
        • prmoustache 3y ago
          On the other hands this is interesting for sys/cloud admins/ops workers. With colleagues in different timezones you can say goodbye to on-call shifts and being woken up in the middle of the night for issues. An indian or euro colleague can do maintenance stuff on infra used by US developers and customers and the US ones can do the same for indian/euro facing ones. All this without the fatigue and risk of mistakes that comes with working very late into the night or early in the morning. I've worked in a team with indian, euro and us workers and we could find a way to get meetings because indian people do not usually know how to say No. So they tend to stay later than us euro guys and we would have most of our meetings in a short window in early evening (India) / afternoon (Europe) / morning (USA). Actually that was a good thing because it meant most of our calls would be concentrated in that same time window so you could focus on actual work the rest of the day instead of having calls spread out over a full day of work and lots of interruptions / context switches.
• randomdata 3y ago
  > If remote work boosts productivity in a substantial way, then it should improve productivity performance Not necessarily given the methodology. For example, if remote work allows a worker to do their laundry in parallel where they would be otherwise unable to in an office, their productivity has increased, but the gains would not show up in the study. It observes industry productivity, not work productivity.
  • safety1st 3y ago
    Sure, but then we're discussing remote work as an employee benefit, which is a different discussion driven by a different part of the company etc. Not as a thing which improves the company's bottom line which is where C suite and shareholders spend the vast majority of their attention. If it doesn't improve job productivity then at the level where decisions get made I can think of two really significant points regarding remote work. A. There might be an opportunity to reduce cost because we don't need to pay for as much office space and whatever other expenses are incurred by the employee's physical presence B. There might be an opportunity to reduce cost because we could recruit contractors in other countries instead of full-time US employees. (Which in turn is going to undermine labor's bargaining power in the US...) I personally love remote work and believe in the benefits but I think a lot of people with an employee mindset just don't want to acknowledge the existence of B, they may even downvote me for bringing it up, but I guarantee that is one of the main conversations that will come up in the board room as remote work is normalized. Not "oh hey great, now labor can do laundry on company time!"
    • makeitdouble 3y ago
      In most companies option B has been on the table for a very long time and they most probably partially took it while asking their workers to keep coming to the office up until recently. CS is the running joke, but server management, manual data processing, moderation etc. have been prime candidates for outsourcing for a long time. The reason one's job is/was not outsourced has I think little to do about whether general remote work was an option or not.
      • 3y ago
• Sparkyte 3y ago
  Almost as if people can be more productive working remotely because they are not anchored by a geographical location.
  • deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
• Eridrus 3y ago
  > The researchers examined productivity trends in 43 industries — including chemical manufacturing, retail trade, and accommodation and food services — and assigned a “teleworkability” score based on the occupational mix of each industry and the share of jobs that can be done remotely. This does not seem like a very strong study.
  • williamcotton 3y ago
    Why?
    • hugh-avherald 3y ago
      To put it pithily: it uses proxies of both dependent and independent variables, which increases the noise of both, in a study to determine signal-to-noise ratio.
      • viraptor 3y ago
        Which proxies do you think are bad / why? The moment you go more coarse than documenting every single worker's perfect timesheet and working out their direct individual output, you're introducing some kind of proxy. What you wrote applies to every economics statistical analysis so far.
        • ororroro 3y ago
          > The researchers examined productivity trends in 43 industries — including chemical manufacturing, retail trade, and accommodation and food services — and assigned a “teleworkability” score based on the occupational mix of each industry and the share of jobs that can be done remotely. They never actually measured the amount of work hours being done remotely. They never measured the number of employees working remotely. They just had some guy make up "remote-ability" numbers for each sector and then carefully pretended to be doing science. Meanwhile all these sectors have seen unrelated changes to operating environment that have not been controlled for. It's BS on BS on BS. Overall I am not even convinced their remote work metric would correlate with hours worked remotely.
• khalid_canada 3y ago
  As a Tech PM, I can say,remote work definitely increases productivity. I noticed, employees tend to work more when diligently when they were allowed to work remotely. In case of complex Troubleshooting, this is definitely an added advantage , as people can focus more and solve these issues comfortably.
  • lemme_tell_ya 3y ago
    I know I am more productive for sure. I started working remotely in 2017, but I wasn't allowed to jump right into it. I had an agreement with my manager and I started doing one day remote a week, then two, and eventually built up to fully remote, and eventually even working remotely from all over the world. But it wasn't overnight, I had to build that trust. I honestly got a little nervous when everyone started working from home suddenly. I think everyone that can, should have the option, but some people just don't have the discipline or haven't learned it yet. I know this because another person on my team wanted to emulate my success (pre-COVID) and blew it and proved they couldn't get work done outside the office.
  • redcobra762 3y ago
    This is the problem; for “focus” work, perhaps. But as a TPM, you know that not all work is “focus work”, and the “collaborative work” suffers when done remotely. You also know that even “focus” work doesn’t make up even one whole job that someone can do without any “collaboration”. The myth of the “guy in a room” is just that — a myth, at best, and a classic antipattern at worst.
  • forinti 3y ago
    I manage a small (understaffed) team and we managed wonders during the pandemic. Other teams in our company also kept producing like crazy. Now that we are forced back into the office, morale is crashing.
• biscuit1v9 3y ago
  > And while many US companies have been pushing employees to return to the office I still don't see the reason why you should go to office if you do your work just right. There are more expenses if you go to office rather than being remote.
  • deelowe 3y ago
    Depends, did you get a sweet tax deal for locating your HQ with the implicit understanding that putting the HQ there would drive tax revenue back to the city? Did you tell your friends and top investors of this decision and did they purchase real estate in the area with the implicit understanding that they'd be landlords for your new HQ? Work from home is a cost savings companies so it would seem they'd be motivated to downsize office space, but this isn't what's happening. In a world where costs are always the highest priority, I'm not buying the culture/work ethic argument.
    • meindnoch 3y ago
      This. The investor class is furious about remote work, because it affects their real estate pyramid scheme.
  • lumost 3y ago
    I recently went RTO in a major metro, the post tax hit was between 10-15k USD, I was fortunate to already own a home near enough to my office. The majority of which comes from parking, and lunch. Pre-pandemic you didn’t really notice these things, but it adds up fast.
  • jansan 3y ago
    Work is not only getting a task done. It also involves helping struggling or new colleagues. How does "learning on the job" even look like with remote work? When I started as an engineer after university, I learned so much during lunch breaks or at the water cooler. This does not happen with remote work and there is nothing to compensate for this.
    • 3y ago
• deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
• heads 3y ago
  > The researchers examined productivity trends in 43 industries — including chemical manufacturing, retail trade, and accommodation and food services… Given the breadth of this study, two different conclusions spring to mind: • productivity is up across the board, regardless of wfh; or • sending the pen pushers and bean counters home and letting the shop floor people get on with their jobs made both more productive!
• __loam 3y ago
  This is not what I want to happen, but I have to think the American tech worker gets screwed in the world where remote work is the norm. If you make the labor market global, there's a lot of really smart Europeans who will work for half or a third of what American devs will. Can anyone refute this line of thinking? I'd love to be wrong.
  • npsomaratna 3y ago
    1. Labor law is local. This adds (on a per-country basis) legal risk and compliance costs, as well as operational costs (e.g., you might need to have specific policies that apply to employees in specific countries). 2. Taxation regimes. These too vary by country, and add compliance and operational costs. 3. Other laws (both U.S. and foreign) that make hiring foreign nationals complex in certain situations, e.g., ITAR. When considered together, these costs and operational obstacles can be significant.
    • lemme_tell_ya 3y ago
      I work for a small tech company in the US (~25 employees) and a few of them are in Europe. My boss didn't seem to have any issue hiring them and he wears a lot of hats, and we didn't hire them due to cost but to their very specific expertise.
    • redcobra762 3y ago
      No, sorry. These are all defeated by hiring contractors. The real issues are, ironically, the collaborative barriers. Different cultures have different standards of work, a different working culture, and honestly different time zones. The “24 hour dev shop” is a risk, but work moving overseas is only a problem at the commodified software level, like a SaaS b2b where a shit tool with one little innovation saves five minutes can scale to millions in savings.
      • npsomaratna 3y ago
        Not necessarily. Consider this situation: you hire a contractor. They work for you for several years, and then you fire them. The contractor goes to the labor court in their country and files a claim stating that, yes, their contract says that they are an independent contractor, but no, since you've employed them "full-time" for several years continuously, they are a defacto/de jure employee. (Which is a valid argument under the labor laws of certain countries) What will you do: - Spend the time and money refuting their claim? (You need to find a good lawyer in that foreign country; lawyers are expensive; and someone on your side needs to spend their time coordinating with them) - Ignore the claim? (Not a good idea if you ever want to visit that country in the future) The claim itself might be nonsense; that's immaterial. You're faced with a Hobson's choice if said contractor drags you to court. (Addendum: this is why I made the point that labor law is local. When you hire a national of a foreign country, in general, you subject yourself to the jurisdiction of the courts of that country for labor related disputes. I am not sure if a clause in an employment contract stating that the agreement is governed by U.S. law would be accepted by a local court; and even if it did, in litigation, you'd most likely have to represent yourself before the local court to make that objection.)
• thunfisch 3y ago
  Does anyone have the link to the study? I'm tired of news articles referencing and summarizing their interpretation of a study, without giving me the option to validate the claims made.
• 2d8a875f-39a2-4 3y ago
  It was never about productivity. It was about power and control. And commercial real estate investments.
  • YetAnotherNick 3y ago
    How is this about real state investment?
    • e_i_pi_2 3y ago
      If you own a big office building and companies don't need as much office space then you can't charge as much for rent, and the property loses value. Similar to how online shopping has led to a bunch of malls closing down
      • jvmboi 3y ago
        Do you mean that the landlord is instructing the employees of it's tenants to RTO so that he can keep his income and property value? How does that work? "Hello CEO of Awesome Inc, it's me CEO of Rentalz Co. Your people have to return to office so that I can keep collecting the rent". CEO of Awesome Inc: "No." CEO of Rentalz Co.: "shucks!"
    • scaryclam 3y ago
      This is something that gets trotted out every time this topic comes up. It's got little to do with the actual conversation, and it only relevant to some companies. Basically, some companies own buildings that need to be leased out and some companies have long leases which would mean money "down the drain" if they're not utilised. That's wrapped up to equate being told to come into the office as a profit driven thing, rather than a productivity driven thing. As a blanket statement it's not true as not all companies care about it, and when we're talking just about productivity, it's irrelevant as it's not actually a consideration. If we're talking about motivations for coming back into the office, then sure, it's a very relevant topic there.
  • reducesuffering 3y ago
• Roark66 3y ago
  People are different. For some it really increases productivity and wellbeing. For others the opposite. I'm not surprised it is about the same on average as measured by work output. I've been working 100% remote since 2017 and I'll never willingly change it.
  • denvrede 3y ago
    Working remote showed me how much I value direct interaction with people. For me, and I spoke to a lot of people for whom it's the same, the sweet spot is a hybrid model. Three days remote, two days on-site. Sometimes the other way round, depends on the tasks for the week. If I need to do 100% remote, because I may have a light cold and don't want to spread it, I feel miserable after two weeks. That being said, I also will never work 100% on-site again, only if I can walk to work, which given my location, will not happen in the near future.
    • xur17 3y ago
      > If I need to do 100% remote, because I may have a light cold and don't want to spread it, I feel miserable after two weeks. I will say - moving from fully onsite to fully remote was a bit of a shock for me, and initially I felt the same. Overtime I replaced the in office "social" time with out of the office social time (going rock climbing with friends, joining a sports league, etc).
    • charlieyu1 3y ago
      I'm completely opposite, so much energy wasted dealing with people. Just give me the requirements, only contact me for technical reasons please. I'm not a social animal, I work to collect my salary to pay bills, full stop. Less contacts means better work quality because I'm not wasting my energy somewhere else.
  • knallfrosch 3y ago
    I will hopefully soon join an on-site only work place with the pre-2015 exception for the plumber visit. Don't really like being at home all the time, what do I talk to my wife about then? Then again, I do choose jobs where I don't commute 3 hours into SF. More like 30 minutes, preferably by bike rather than car (location:Europe)
• redcobra762 3y ago
  I’ve said this before, but if productivity isn’t lost, it’s at the expense of a very overworked manager, in companies that weren’t built remote-first, and don’t operate primarily remotely. This is a more complex issue than simply measuring work output of one person and comparing it to their work output in different locations. For my wife, it is objectively false to claim that remote work is better for her teams, in her specific situation.
  • mtlguitarist 3y ago
    I really do not understand what could possibly be hard about it for the manager here. People have tickets in some issue tracker, they move them into whatever status they're in, and the manager just sends out some messages to check in on the status if there haven't been new updates in a few days. Yeah, you also have 1-1s, status meetings, performance reviews, etc but these are all things you'd have anyway. My managers have done basically nothing different for me while I was remote and everything seemed to be fine.
    • redcobra762 3y ago
      And how do you get those tickets into the issue tracker in the first place? How will an issue tracker help a team coordinate on a complex problem that needs to be worked through as a group? How does moving a ticket to a different status help you connect with the people you work with to build social capital you then spend on conflict? Who is coordinating and lubricating these interactions constantly because natural human interaction isn’t there to do it? And god forbid somewhere have a job that isn’t software engineering… Your comment feels like the comment a person might make if they thought building a cohesive team was a paint-by-the-numbers exercise.
      • mtlguitarist 3y ago
        > And how do you get those tickets into the issue tracker in the first place? I mean depends on the team but approximately: 1. Discuss high level initiative 2. Write tickets with coarse descriptions 3. Have team refine tickets (define scope + estimate) 4. Prioritize work and assign tasks > How will an issue tracker help a team coordinate on a complex problem that needs to be worked through as a group? Do you have an example where you think that a complex problem can't be broken into tasks and solved this way? I can understand with ongoing incidents maybe you need to solve them as a group in a time-sensitive manner, but those are rare events and the world's large companies have been solving them in distributed ways anyway so I don't think this is a remote vs. in-person problem. > How does moving a ticket to a different status help you connect with the people you work with to build social capital you then spend on conflict? Who is coordinating and lubricating these interactions constantly because natural human interaction isn’t there to do it? Honest question here: have you really had this problem at work? I think this is a pretty toxic situation to be in if you need to build social capital to solve conflicts. I really don't want to work in an environment where people are fighting hard enough to warrant needing social capital to get them through the discussions. > Your comment feels like the comment a person might make if they thought building a cohesive team was a paint-by-the-numbers exercise. It approximately is honestly. There are some small differences I'm sure, but it seems somewhat narrow-minded to focus on the relatively small differences when the vast majority of problems are universal (coaching/mentorship, working with stubborn/difficult personalities, removing single points of failure, giving people opportunities to advance their careers, etc.).
• fulafel 3y ago
  Source: https://www.frbsf.org/economic-research/publications/economic-letter/2024/january/does-working-from-home-boost-productivity-growth/ https://www.frbsf.org/economic-research/publications/economi... Note that when economists are talking about productivity, it's specific. It's units of output per hour worked (quantitative, not qualitative). https://www.bls.gov/k12/productivity-101/content/what-is-productivity/home.htm https://www.bls.gov/k12/productivity-101/content/what-is-pro...
• falsandtru 3y ago
  The fact that productivity did not increase would also mean that few people used the freed up commuting time to improve their skills. Anybody here?
  • denvrede 3y ago
    I now have more time that I can spend with daughter, so I guess I may improved my parenting skill? IMO it's also totally fine to use that freed up time to just get a break from... anything. No need to be after self-improvement all the time.
    • falsandtru 3y ago
      That's a right incentive for workers, but what is needed here for workers is an incentive for companies to expand remote work.
      • prmoustache 3y ago
        I don't know about productivity but the quality of my work is better, and I am a much more sociable person when I am happy and awake than when I am draggy my ass, still sleepy to an office. I think that should be enough for any company.
      • charlieyu1 3y ago
        Employee retention
  • ssl-3 3y ago
    That's an interesting perspective. I think that for most people, commuting time is neither work time nor personal time: For most workers, it is just unpaid downtime that is (or at least was) necessary for work. And especially for those who commute by driving: It's not really a good time to improve their skills, in particular because notetaking and sketching out problems and whatnot is kind of out of the question while performing the primary task of driving. It really is mostly just downtime and it can't (safely) be much more than that. And now that many folks no longer have such an every-day downtime commute: Why should they use that new-found time to further their skillset, instead of do anything else that they might wish to do? Is it wrong that they take some of that new time to prepare and cook a healthy, fresh, and delicious meal for lunch instead of packing a lunch or going out (or visiting the cafeteria or, in some workplaces, the breakroom's Wheel of Death)? Is it wrong that they spend the extra hour or two (or three, or whatever) that they've gained in a day with their families, or to enjoy nature by themselves, to goof around, or exercise, or work on a hobby (or a dumb game, or a good game) or to get ahead on housework, or to finally get a chance at a healthy amount of sleep? Why is it even remarkable that when a person finds that they have an extra hour or two every day, that they don't immediately use that time for education and career-oriented self-improvement to directly boost their workplace productivity? And I'm not saying that career-oriented skills should never be improved on one's own time, or that doing so is in any way an undesirable thing, either. There's absolutely nothing inherently wrong with doing that with one's own free time, either. And many do, as many always have. But I am saying that I think the subset of folks who chose to use some of their personal free time educationally before the plague are likely to closely resemble the same subset of people who choose to use their time that way after the plague. And certainly, some do use their new time for more of that. Subtracting a commute from a day doesn't necessarily change one's personal proclivities at all, I don't think, but it may enable some of them to actually be possible. (This prompts another question. If some people who are predisposed to spend their free time learning are spending more of that time learning, and individually becoming more productive, then: Why is productivity still averaging flat? Remote work can also allow for more opportunities for active slacking while on the clock for those who are predisposed for slack, for one example of a way in which the average can be brought down. Mouse wigglers, anyone?)
• jimt1234 3y ago
  How could remote work not be more productive? Most of my friends/colleagues get back at least an hour of their lives each day they don't commute, and they all use the "extra" time to do more work. People wanna work. They just don't wanna sit in traffic, walk through parking lots and ride elevators for an hour every day.
  • helboi4 3y ago
    No I don't want to work if i never see human beings, i have no connection to my team and I'm deeply depressed because I am a young single person who doesn't have a family waiting for me at home
    • stemlord 3y ago
      Your coworkers are not your friends and your company is not your family, and if your job is keeping you from having friends and family outside of work then you need to find a new job or place to live.
      • helboi4 3y ago
        Your coworkers can 100% be your friends what the hell man. You must be very unpleasant to be around if you refuse to make friends with any of the people you spend most of your waking hours dealing with. The key is making friends with coworkers who are a similar level of seniority to you who you get along with. My job isn't preventing me from having friends or family outside work at all, but I choose not to be miserable and antisocial for the majority of my waking day. Most people make friends at work, school or at sports teams. It's not weird to like making friends at work. I dunno how my job could be preventing me from making friends elsewhere but yeah its hard to spontaneously make friends in other settings when you don't naturally see the same people regularly. But my main point in the above comment was that I don't have the morale to do shitty work to make a corporation rich unless I have human connection with my team. I don't value any fucking corporation enough to lift a single finger for them. It's only having other humans around me that makes work feel at all bearable to do.
  • 3y ago
• Kon5ole 3y ago
  How is productivity measured in the kinds of jobs that can be done from home? For manufacturing it's easy - just measure the output per day and number of working hours spent. But how is it done for finance, marketing, software development, creative work and such where the output is either limited (you don't need more financial reporting than last month) or is entirely different in scope and complexity every time? If productivity could be objectively measured it seems to me it would be easy to determine objectively whether WFH is better or worse, but the discussion seems to be mostly based on personal opinions. Some feel that workers must be slacking off at home, some feel that they get much more done from home.
  • hffgj 3y ago
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• OfficeChad 3y ago
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• atleastoptimal 3y ago
  I'm just guessing but this makes sense to me Boring email jobs where people are on their computer most of the time anyway and meetings are simply status updates, there's no reason why remote work is any worse, and likely just boosts productivity because of the mental health benefits of no commute, better environment, no distractions, etc. In terms of jobs which require more creativity and collaborative rigor, I imagine remote work is where that element suffers.
• codie3611 3y ago
  These discussions always miss the main point. Remote work gives you the opportunity to decide what suits your life best. It enhances the possibilities a company offers. The main conflict is people trying to convince other people that their way is the right way and vice-versa. Find out what works for you and if you are better off, everyone will be better off around you too including your employer. That is why I mostly ignore these findings. I know what works for me and no study can convince me otherwise. And I know some colleagues like the office more and I'm glad they can go there.
• jvmboi 3y ago
  I am fully remote and have been for a long time but I don't trust productivity studies, especially if they just find what everyone wants to hear anyway. If the market can do anything then it that has to be optimizing productivity. Every single company has a weighty incentive to work out what works best and so I fully expect that after a bit of churn the optimal remote/on-premise balance will be found on a job-by-job basis.
  • advael 3y ago
    I can't help but read this as a severely pessimistic take on the capabilities of markets, since we can trace trying to "optimize productivity" back to essentially the earliest things even remotely resembling the modern economy and most of the enormous amount of research, money, and effort that has been poured into this endeavor has been at best occasionally better than chance at consistently improving any kind of "productivity" in the long term through labor practices, unless we directly define the suffering of workers as "productivity." Most meaningful gains in productive capacity come from either resource windfalls or technological progress, and general theories of how to reproducibly increase worker productivity via policy are more akin to sacred rituals than settled science. To be clear, I personally do think that markets function as optimizers, though as with any optimizer this tends to function in a very narrow scope. Most extant companies, for example, are driven by capital markets, not consumer ones, which means that ROI for shareholders - even when that's driven by essentially marketing stocks or goosing metrics - is the main thing being optimized. Hypothetically, markets could optimize for organizational productivity in some other sense, but I think it's even pretty unclear whether there's a way to subdivide that usefully into any kind of apples-to-apples comparison of individual workers within organizations.
  • kraftman 3y ago
    If that were the case, it seems like it wouldnt have taken covid to tip the balance so much, and it would have tipped back much more quickly. I've never worked at a company that would come anywhere being classed as optimizing for productivity, there has always been a huge amount of wasted time and resources.
  • knallfrosch 3y ago
• karmasimida 3y ago
  It doesn't confirm either ways though, not good, not bad.
• epolanski 3y ago
  The fundamental issue I see in this debate is a lack of sensibility and nuance in human nature. The whole matter is debated (understandably in a way) on big numbers and averages. I could write a long post but I'll cut it short to this paragraph stating that humans differ. For some commuting is stressful, the offices are noisy and full of distractions and those individuals may thrive in a remote setup. There's people that work in the opposite way. Their house offer many distractions from laundry to videogames. Some people require micro management and constant oversight some tilt in such environments. Some teams require a lot of meaningful in-person interactions, brainstorming sessions or work chats around the coffee machine. Some teams thrive with good central top/down planning and workload splitting where syncing isn't very important. At the end of the day the decision C-suite have to make when planning projects is not remote vs non-remote and apply blindly rather in forming teams with people that by their own nature or preferences will thrive in the setup that's decided.
  • boppo1 3y ago
    >forming teams with people that by their own nature or preferences will thrive in the setup that's decided So offering people remote work for a 20% TC reduction?
    • mlrtime 3y ago
      Not across the board, no. Most companies do this by using a cost of labor index for areas. NYC/SF/Seattle being the highest, and then smaller reductions outside. Basically you don't want to be in a HCOL (High Cost of Living) remote area with a LCOL (Low cost of Labor)
  • blagie 3y ago
    This is my experience. My productivity on coding is a lot hire remote. On many leadership / management-style tasks, it's a lot lower. Come to think of it, I'm wondering if that's where the split comes in. Upper management sees their productivity go down -- on what's fundamentally an interpersonal endeavour -- while individual contributors see theirs go up -- on what's primarily solitary ones. As a result, there is friction with top-down work-from-office mandates.
• gumballindie 3y ago
  People advocating for on site work are people without an inner voice. They need to constantly externalise thinking. Anyway working from home does increase productivity for the individual, improves the economy due to more disposable income, benefits the mental health of those with an inner voice, and stimulates family life.
• say_it_as_it_is 3y ago
  Productivity is one factor. You also have to consider getting away from people at home, joining people because you live alone, sexual pursuits, and other topics that people are dishonest about yet are largely motivated by to work in office. People think RTO is about real estate, but it's really about executives looking for extramarital affairs.
• arein3 3y ago
  Based on my experience working in IT on complex projects, it is better to work together in the same room/office, if you have a team that is not all seniors and if you work on a greenfield project where you have a lot of structure to put in place. Often with people that are doing something new to them, they might have a "mental barrier" of doing something new, because there are a lot of things to take into account, and discussing with somebody experienced in person helps more that having a video call. Also making some architectural decisions might take a lot of time if there are multiple potential solutions, each with pros and cons (ex. which message broker / http client / log & metric aggregator / sql database to pick). Being in the same room, a few senior developers and possibly the infrastructure guy makes it easier. When working on already launched projects, the architecture is already in place and doing maintenance or adding new features does not need a lot of communication/synchronization between team members, so doing that remotely is not an issue. However it might be if you are not familiar with the project, or don't have experience, or you have associates in the team and you need good performance from them. I don't know if it's the same when working on simpler projects.
  • gumballindie 3y ago
    > IT on complex projects, it is better to work together in the same room/office I guess it depends. If the most “complex IT projects” out there can work without ever meeting in person so can your team.
    • maigret 3y ago
      Which ones?
    • arein3 3y ago
      Depends from case to case. It might be a complex project, but the lead/architect already has the right answers and there will be smooth sailing. On the contrary it might be a project with constantly changing requirements, new portions of tech stack for all the team, tight deadlines, some tool chosen for a task does not support something, bugs, estimations did not meet reality. In that case (a challenging project) I would prefer the team in the office. Also if you are a begginer, I would recommend to search for work in office if it works for you. I dislike commuting more than half an hour, however I would like the team to be together if it's something challenging. I know it is hard to commute long time, especially if you have other responsibilities, but that does't change my opinion on what is the best for the team.
• maxehmookau 3y ago
  I've been working remote for 5 years, so this is anecdotal. But it's also incredibly obvious and intuitive. It relies on the right company values, the right processes and the right incentives. But when done right, this will always hold true IMO.
• givemeethekeys 3y ago
  In my opinion is that the decision to be on-site or remote should be made at the team level. A team, that can't perform well onsite won't do any better remotely and vice versa. # How I know if a team member will perform well remotely: - They take initiative. They take ownership. They learn how to effectively use different communication tools, and then they use them. They ask questions with the goal of solving problems. They get things done. # How I know if a team member will perform poorly remotely: - They wait for others to tell them what to do. They tend to disappear. They don't communicate. - Turns out that these are shitty traits to have for onsite team members as well. # How I know if a manager will perform well remotely: - They would perform well as a remote team member (see above), and have a team capable of working remotely. - They lead by example, know how to build trust, understand how to set achievable short-term goals that lead up to big longterm successes. - When questioned during meetings, they build trust, confidence and alignment. # Some signs that a manager will perform poorly with a remote team: - They prefer a command and control approach to management. - They lack respect for their team members' time, experience, capabilities and / or intelligence. - They are unable to explain problems such the team can help solve them. - This leads them to micromanage. - They perceive questions during meetings as a challenge to their authority, which makes look insecure. A micromanager will see more success from poor performing team members if they're all onsite or, as is often the case, frequently on all day conference calls. A micromanager will also quickly lose their best team members.
• ChrisArchitect 3y ago
  [dupe] Some more discussion over here on official post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39028862 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39028862
• booleandilemma 3y ago
  I'm not surprised. Of course people are going to say that working remotely helps them be more productive. Working remotely is nice. They're going to say whatever bullshit they can to keep doing it. Instead of arguing about whether it's' productive or not let's just call it what it is: a really nice perk.
• okokwhatever 3y ago
  Oh God... here we go again...
• nutshell89 3y ago
  The Fed study mentioned in the Bloomberg article: https://www.frbsf.org/economic-research/publications/economic-letter/2024/january/does-working-from-home-boost-productivity-growth/ https://www.frbsf.org/economic-research/publications/economi...
• caturopath 3y ago
  This is among those topics where I don't expect the opposite result to be reported.
• LightBug1 3y ago
  Jebus ... this is still being debated? Can we just acknowledge the complete an utter failure of managegment around this debate (I am management, btw) such that we can't settle this one fair and square. We all have expectations and results from individuals. It doesn't take a Fed study to answer the question around an employees productivity. Either it's better, the same, or worse. I'm all for remote and hybrid work. Manage by results and what's the issue? Super strange. Get together every so often to catchup, do the human thing. I've had anecdotal evidence of firms falling behind because so many talented employees tell them where to go when flexibility isn't an option. Hold the line.
  • sokoloff 3y ago
    My hypothesis is that the debate is difficult because of some mix of difficulty in precisely measuring productivity (which everyone can see) and in the mix of most tasks which work 100% fine remotely and some tasks that work better in-person ("the human thing"). (I'm also management and very much pro-remote.)
    • LightBug1 3y ago
      Agreed. It's just so clear to me that role(s) flex between those set of tasks as need be ... and that should be clear to both manager and managed ... The manager shouldn't be a control freak about being in the office 5 days a week ... and the managed shouldn't be a whiny baby when asked to come do some human stuff ... somewhere in the middle is the promised land and it should't be that hard to find. Having said that ... I had an experience with a colleague recently that reminded that not much of this is based on reason.
• paulus_magnus2 3y ago
  WFH is an invention equal to washingmachine + dishwasher where 2h each day is not being lost anymore by unproductive activity. With plenty of externalities on top of the lost time. If (only as a test excercise) for 5 years we mandated the employer to bare the commute cost we would quickly see if RTO / WFH makes more economical sense.
  • gtirloni 3y ago
    This is something governments with an interest in protecting employee wellbeing could step in. The employer pays for the time you're engaged in working AND trying to work by commuting. That 10-15h/week would, as you say, show up pretty quickly in reports. But incentives are tricky. I can imagine companies would add the requirement that you live 10min from work because they only have budget for that much time spent on transportation costs. Like with RTO, that would backfire but I'm sure companies would insist on that instead of remote work.
• ssijak 3y ago
  If working from home for all the jobs that do not require physical presence (building a building on a location for example) was a right by law, I can imagine centralisation in big cities reversing and a lot of interesting smaller communities starting to flourish more. Which in my opinion is a great thing.
• Nikolas000 3y ago
  Link to the original research article (by SF Fed researchers) https://www.frbsf.org/economic-research/publications/economic-letter/2024/january/does-working-from-home-boost-productivity-growth/ https://www.frbsf.org/economic-research/publications/economi...
• rcbdev 3y ago
  With the entire commute debate being what it is I will just point out that in Austria there has been somewhat of a solution to this for a long time now - it's called the "Pendlerpauschale" (commuter's flat rate). If you live far enough away from your employee (20km+) you are entitled to an added monthly bonus to your salary - depending on your estimated commute time.
• deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
• andyish 3y ago
  I'm genuinely surprised that your typical exec isn't looking at things like this thinking: "We're spending this much a month on office space for our 500 staff at this location. Let's knock that down to 100 and push everyone to work from home". Give ourselves a big pat on the back and a nice bonus for saving a few million a year. If after a few years, it doesn't work, you go back to the market for more office space. In the UK government orgs sold off their office space and turned to renting. Now the people renting the office space are annoyed that the demand is dropping. Poor them.
  • throwup238 3y ago
    The typical exec's tenure is shorter than the six year office leases so they'd never see any praise or bonus for making that change. As far as they're concerned, the option doesn't exist.
  • admax88qqq 3y ago
    > If after a few years, it doesn't work, you go back to the market for more office space. Isn't this what they did? It's been a few years since the big shift to WFH and some execs think it's not working and are pushing for return to office. Don't get me wrong, I think the reality of WFH is a lot more nuanced than the public debate is making it seem, it works for some and not for others. But if the typical exec was to do what you are proposing, I feel like the visible affects to us would be exactly what we're already seeing.
    • mk89 3y ago
      It's a bit more complicated than that I think. In some cases, some companies rent an office for 2-3+ years. So let's say, they renewed from 2020-2023. They were "forced" at first (to do WFH) and money got literally "burned", because the offices were empty, but insurances and all that had to be paid. Now they had a chance at using more alternative approaches (rent spaces, or smaller offices), yet they want many to come back. There was almost never a saving, because contracts were still running (for many companies, I believe).
  • sam0x17 3y ago
• deepsquirrelnet 3y ago
  How does remote work affect commercial property values?
• tamimio 3y ago
  And we all knew this from the day one, it’s just middle management feeling the need to have someone around to breathe around their shoulders and boss them around, and the C-level pushed by the commercial landlords because it’s all about their benefit.
• beams_of_light 3y ago
  No, but it erodes the control executives want to exert over their workforce, along with the company's real estate values.
• KorematsuFredt 3y ago
  I trust actual companies over Fed data any ways.
• whywhywhywhy 3y ago
  Does it matter? If the company wants you in the office just don't work there, the people who want to work in the office can work at those companies and the people who want remote can work remote companies. Then we're all happy. Only causes issues when remote people demand to be able to do it at companies that value in person working. Studies are irrelevant because at the end of the day you'll never change peoples minds.
  • Fire-Dragon-DoL 3y ago
    The problem is here because companies saying "we now support remote workers" changed their mind and threw remote workers away
    • noitpmeder 3y ago
      Then it seems you should leave and find another job if remote work is one of your priorities.
      • Fire-Dragon-DoL 3y ago
        Of course, I'm just saying this is how the problem was born: remote workers were going to remote companies, than the remote companies flipped over and messed up remote workers lives. As a remote worker you should go to a remote company
• gdcbe 3y ago
  The one thing I see companies demanding onsite work never do is… commute time paid as any other work hour… sure some pay commute costs or km costs, but those are nothing worth compared to your hourly wage…
• anonyfox 3y ago
  lets take this at face value and assume productivity is equal no matter if in-office or remotely. now thinking in business terms. you can run a (remote compatible) company without having an office at all, which may reduce cost very significantly, giving you an economic advantage. being a remote company also forces everyone to exchange thoughts/data/documents digitally one way or the other, making automation ideas with AI tools more feasible, which would then be another economic advantage that still needs to be realized in the future but its there. now add ontop that people don't waste their time and pollute the environment by commuting, that employees can live wherever they want (probably: way cheaper and with higher QoL) than in commute distance, so they have more money left each month to spend (instead of it going to insane rent/...), which stimulates the economy in theory. not going into the discussion that some people actually like to be in the office with others, basically forcing everyone else to do the same indirectly or directly. just the pure economic advantages. did I miss something that counters my points?
• sigzero 3y ago
  There is no real "connection" being made with remote work. That is something I miss.
• LtdJorge 3y ago
  It really does, I find it close to imposible to concentrate in an office, having to blast music through the earphones so I stop hearing everyone and every movement they do. It mostly has to do with ADHD (without the H really), but it's a valid effect.
• greybeardgeek 3y ago
  Here's the chart. https://www.frbsf.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/el2024-02-3.png https://www.frbsf.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/el2024-02-3... Not sure if I agree with the headline as a proper summary.
• OnlyMortal 3y ago
  With the right team, I’d offer it’s more productive than a cubicle farm where folks are having impromptu meetings. I think part of this is that when someone wants something, they have a little time to compose their thoughts.
• mesozoic 3y ago
  Yes people goof off more but it turns out that just replaces the time wasted commuting, being depressed in offices, being distracted in offices etc
• thegrim33 3y ago
  Bloomberg doesn't even bother to link to the study that they're writing an article about? Makes me really want to believe them when they hide their source so I can't actually read what it says for myself ...
• mrbonner 3y ago
  I'm ok with hybrid work schedule now that my company make th mandate. But, I think we are really dumb for scheduling meetings in the early hours while others commuting to work. Plus, once in the office everyone finds a corner and dial into zoom. Isn't that dumb you think?
• rldjbpin 3y ago
  having worked in two countries and several companies in my relatively short career, i personally find that fully remote work has a lot of limitations. even when hybrid work is implemented, you require a strong communication culture. this is not a given for all companies, however. when you sit with your team across the desk, simple things like asking about a small detail takes orders of magnitude less time and effort than the digital alternative. regardless of your opinions on taking breaks with your colleagues, i found off-work conversations happen much less often when everyone is doing remote. i am not arguing that everyone hates their coworkers (or maybe mine hated me and only stood to talk to me when in person), but despite post-pandemic era, this pattern still seems to hold up. i would love to hear how others have done things differently in this context. the point remains that there are some things that need to be in place before you could fully make the most of remote-only teams.
• honeybadger1 3y ago
  My company did it's own research and found it was sales professionals who could not be trusted with WFH, but engineers for the most part were just as productive ..However, they found they their teamwork and multi-departmental collaboration suffered immensely and were not willing to make technology investments when people could just go into HQ or the many other offices we have.
• tomaszs 3y ago
  Don't use the linked archive.ph, the page contains copyright infringements