[HN Gopher] Work from home and productivity: evidence from perso...
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Work from home and productivity: evidence from personnel and
analytics data [pdf]
Author : amadeuspagel
Score : 40 points
Date : 2021-06-11 00:15 UTC (22 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (bfi.uchicago.edu)
(TXT) w3m dump (bfi.uchicago.edu)
| dang wrote:
| Whoops, I put this in the second-chance pool but it looks like
| this already had a discussion. Sorry!
|
| _Work from Home and Productivity_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27154368 - May 2021 (131
| comments)
| taneq wrote:
| > Employees with children living at home increased hours
| workedmore than those without children at home, and suffered a
| bigger decline in productivity than thosewithout children.
|
| This tells you all you need to know about the study. You can't
| analyse the relative effectiveness of working from home and
| working in the office when you're conflating "remote work" with
| "trying to get something done on your laptop on the kitchen table
| while working from home due to the pandemic, while your two
| early-primary-school-aged kids, who you are simultaneously trying
| to home-school due to the pandemic, are running amok in the
| lounge room."
| _jal wrote:
| > This tells you all you need to know about the study.
|
| Your comment only tells me you wanted a different study than
| the one they did.
|
| Asking what happened in the real world, including in a range of
| work situations, is a very interesting question to ask.
|
| Looking for/at the delta between optimal work-at-home and the
| office would _also_ be interesting, for different reasons.
| taneq wrote:
| Then call it what it is, "Working from home while
| homeschooling during a pandemic, compared with normal office
| work: Evidence from the trenches."
| gnicholas wrote:
| > _Your comment only tells me you wanted a different study
| than the one they did._
|
| Of course, don't we all? It would be much more useful to have
| data on what remote work will be like in the future (i.e.,
| when kids are in school/daycare).
|
| There is something interesting about knowing the pros/cons of
| what happened during the pandemic, but most of the time
| research is done so that the conclusions can inform future
| decisions. Here, the future decisions about WFH would benefit
| from disentangling the WFH aspect from the COVID-induced
| remote school aspect.
|
| One way to accomplish this is to assume that all workers who
| have kids (and lost productivity as a result) would have had
| the same productivity gains of people without kids. There are
| probably smarter/more nuanced ways to determine the global
| pros/cons of WFH in the future.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| A study of unprepared people being locked at home without
| childcare or schooling, without time to setup an office and
| in companies in dissarray is about as representative of home
| working as people falling overboard the titanic are
| representatice of health benefits of swimming.
|
| Similarly if a group of tourists gets lost in the jungle we
| don't call that a study of prehistoric tribal life.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| I managed mixed in-office and WFH teams before the pandemic.
|
| There was a stark productivity drop every summer when kids were
| out on summer break. This includes parents with dedicated home
| offices who had been WFH for many years.
|
| The effect was so predictable that we planned for lower
| velocity during summer months. It was also common practice for
| WFH employees to spend more time in the office for more focus
| during summer months if they lived close enough.
|
| That's not to say that kids are the biggest WFH productivity
| killer. IMO the people who struggled most were the young people
| who thought they could travel around and work remotely because
| it doesn't matter where they're working from. It turns out it's
| plainly obvious that they don't get much work done when they're
| away from home. But that's another story.
| jvanderbot wrote:
| Vitriolic discussion around this. I'm completely unsurprised. All
| the key findings are easy to see in my own group. People are
| working longer hours because they are unaccustomed to working
| from home near their gaming rigs, or are making up unproductive
| day hours that their kids interrupted. Its harder to drop in and
| get quick exchange of information, leading to more meetings, etc.
|
| The danger is that people (c-suite) see this and think it can't
| be done. It can, but COVID was an imperfect laboratory for
| studying this.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| I managed mixed WFH teams before COVID. It was widely
| understood that WFH was a productivity obstacle long before
| quarantines. We usually gave it as a perk to high performing
| employees who had already proven their ability to get things
| done and self-manage, or for exceptional employees who couldn't
| or wouldn't relocate near an office.
|
| The idea that WFH is no different than in-office work didn't
| really become popular until COVID.
|
| Offices and in-person communication are unmatched for
| collaboration and communication efficiency. Any company doing
| work that requires significant collaboration (most tech
| companies of size) pays a price for WFH. For many companies
| that overhead is fine if accounted for and managed, but it's
| still a price.
| saas_sam wrote:
| I remember reading on a different post (can't find it) that
| productivity went up sharply at the beginning of the pandemic-
| induced WFH trend, but then subsided over time. The thinking was
| that people were on their toes early on for fear of being viewed
| as a slacker, but then once they adjusted to WFH they relaxed.
| Maybe someone else saw this study...
| mikelward wrote:
| People were running on adrenaline at first. Then the fatigue of
| having kids at home and not having the usual ways to let off
| steam eventually hit.
| rodcoelho wrote:
| This doesn't really take into consideration that a lot of
| businesses/teams within orgs had to quickly pivot strategies due
| to market conditions. Scrapping plans and shifting priorities
| last minute, a.k.a. thrash, comes at a cost. So yes it's not
| totally surprising that people had to work more hours to
| accomplish a similar output
| stinkbomb wrote:
| My company started doing a serious WFH 'experiment' about 18
| months before COVID hit. The team I oversee consists of a dozen
| or so teams of about 40-50 developers each, with a manager that
| reports directly to me. I don't manage the devs directly, but
| deal with dev productivity and budgets for (amongst other things)
| staffing. So our N is not small, but not huge either.
|
| 50% of our devs - randomly selected - were offered the chance to
| WFH, and about 95% of them wound up doing WFH at least 3 days a
| week, rising to 5 days a week after a few months. The other 50%
| stayed in the office. The teams that went WFH and the other 50%
| don't work on the same projects or in the same location.
|
| After about 6 months, we started looking at productivity metrics
| using a couple Pinpoint-like tools that we built. Simple metrics
| like: backlog change time, on-time delivery, workload balance,
| LOC/Checkins ratio, etc. We also tracked things like non-code
| calendar hours, time logging delays, and other non-development
| related activity.
|
| Neither group knew what we were tracking or how often. The
| results were pretty clear as soon as 6 - 9 months in: WFH numbers
| sucked pretty hard. Everything was down across the board, and it
| seemed like WFH devs were spending 15-30% more time in non-
| development tasks, their PR reject rate was as much as 40% higher
| than office-based devs.
|
| Things were so bad that if COVID had not hit, we were going to
| abandon the idea of letting people WFH altogether outside of
| extreme circumstances.
|
| We aren't a unique shop. We're not doing anything out of the
| ordinary - we're developing on a variety of web and RT device
| platforms, but doing the same stuff in similar ways as other
| companies. We have a pretty flat team structure, and teams have a
| lot of flexibility and decision-making power, which has always
| worked well for us.
|
| However, it's clear to me and the other execs that WFH absolutely
| does not work for us.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| This matches my experience as well: Measurably reduced
| velocity, noticeably higher rates of rejected PRs and broken
| builds, and a palpable worsening of productivity and team
| happiness.
|
| The strangest part is that if you asked individual developers,
| they would insist that WFH made them more productive and
| increased their efficiency. Yet managers and the data
| universally agreed that the opposite was true.
|
| There's something about WFH that puts distance between
| individuals and the overall big picture reality in a way that
| makes these overall issues difficult to see from individual
| perspectives. It also slowed and dampened all of the feedback
| loops, giving people the wrong impression that they were
| working on the right thing or producing proper results until
| much later. We tried compensating with even more manager effort
| and over-the-top communication repetition to try to keep
| everyone informed but it didn't really help.
|
| There were a few exceptions of people who had identical levels
| of performance during WFH, but they generally achieved it with
| significantly more work and proactive communication. Those who
| struggled the most were juniors who felt like they fell through
| the cracks.
|
| It's a difficult topic to discuss on HN because few of us like
| to admit that WFH is, on average, a struggle for companies. No
| one likes the idea that WFH comes at a cost.
| layoric wrote:
| Would make a great write up. Interested in the details around
| what was changed in the company to support this hybrid
| approach. Also breakdown of devs first time WFH.
|
| From my experience, office->hybrid doesn't work well as the the
| staff don't have the same level of support and processes don't
| change to adjust to the change. My first year of WFH (nearly 7
| years ago now) was a pretty rough adjustment even though I
| wanted to do it (glad I stuck with it).
|
| Like most things in life, "Is WFH is more productive?", "it
| depends". Props for doing the experiment and sharing details.
| tayo42 wrote:
| Does your company help make remote work easier? I guess I could
| understand that if you took a group used to an office and then
| forced them to be remote there would be some struggles. I think
| effective remote work has a bit of a learning curve and needs
| some investment up front. I think you would need to believe the
| potential is there and worth chasing.
| wcarss wrote:
| This is really interesting!
|
| Do you know anything about the tools/methodologies of the teams
| that went part WFH and the adjustments they made when changing
| up their workstyle?
|
| For example, do you know things like whether meetings were held
| at their previously scheduled times, vs. whether people started
| shifting them around to "meet when we're all here", or whether
| conversations and decisions were pushed organizationally to be
| more public, visible, and documented, vs made by whoever was in
| the office, because they could have a hallway chat?
|
| Anecdotally, a friend of mine works at a "remote-first"
| company, where even when the whole team is in the office,
| they'll typically meet through zoom/hangouts at their desks,
| and I have other friends who are "the remote person" on an in-
| office team. There's a _huge_ gap in the experiences of those
| two, which is why I ask about those kind of factors in your
| experience.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Interesting data driven approach to the problem. Would you be
| available to share more details about aggregate outcomes in
| private? Curious if you were able to slice out common patterns.
| geodel wrote:
| I hope people do not much from this study done in a single IT
| Service company based in India. One critically important thing to
| remember is they are "Outlay based" instead of "Outcome based".
| So things measured are hours billed, time-sheets filled and
| reports generated. What work got done and was it even half useful
| to client is of secondary importance at these companies.
|
| I interviewed few years back so thing they ask it if person is
| married or have kids because they are likely to take more
| vacations.
|
| I wish they actually detailed the company name. Because if they
| did and my guess is correct this company is getting hammered as
| J2EE/.net support model is collapsing. There were some very large
| layoffs in last few year even before Covid.
| st8675309 wrote:
| Surprised this post isn't getting more comments. The result is
| pretty clear with over 10,000 participants in the study.
|
| >>Total hours worked increased by roughly 30%, including a rise
| of 18% in working after normal business hours. Average output did
| not significantly change. Therefore, productivity fell by about
| 20%. Time spent on coordination activities and meetings
| increased, but uninterrupted work hours shrank considerably.
| tetranomiga wrote:
| >The result is pretty clear with over 10,000 participants in
| the study.
|
| They're all from the same Asian company, it's far from clear.
| altdataseller wrote:
| All from the same company though.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| Anecdotally, I've seen this happen on my team, and it is the
| single biggest factor that makes me somewhat receptive to going
| back into the office. It's easier to draw a line between work
| and home that way.
|
| Maybe we should just turn Slack off altogether outside of
| business hours, and only enable it in emergencies. LOL
| chasedehan wrote:
| You should turn Slack off outside business hours! And, remove
| from your phone. If there is a true emergency, this is why
| people are on call.
|
| This applies equally to whether wfh or in office.
| geodel wrote:
| > Surprised this post isn't getting more comments.
|
| From article:
|
| "The company that provided data is one of the world's largest
| IT services companies. They have over 150,000 employees who
| work with clients across the globe. Most work in the home
| country, a rapidly- developing Asian nation."
|
| This is about a half-assed Indian "IT Services" company. (From
| where I am. Need to specify lest I also be branded as racist
| white dude or whatever). So there is hardly anything to learn
| in general. Of course similar type IT companies can learn that
| their lazy micro-managers need to do even more micro managing
| to get anything done.
|
| The only thing I learned is that one can get even prestigious
| institution like University of Chicago to do shady shit if
| there is enough money to motivate.
| mym1990 wrote:
| Pretty hostile here from multiple angles. You ok?
| geodel wrote:
| Never been better. Thanks for asking!
| carabiner wrote:
| Interesting. This contradicts the prevailing HN sentiment that
| WFH increases productivity because there's less time spent
| socializing or dealing with distractions.
| postalrat wrote:
| I'm confident that HN sentiment is a fantasy created by
| people who are barely working.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| It varies dramatically by circumstance. I had coworkers who
| struggled with 3-4 kids and working spouse at home.
|
| For me, my son is 9 and my wife was partially at home. No big
| deal for my productivity. For my sister, she sold her car and
| hired a nanny for a year.
| songshuu wrote:
| While it is given a brief nod in the paper, it is worth
| reiterating:
|
| WFH during a global pandemic is not the same as WFH generally.
|
| I say this as someone who has been remote for years.
|
| Run this same study starting in September (barring huge Delta
| variant outbreak in the US) and you'll see a totally different
| set of numbers.
| adflux wrote:
| I have been unfortunate enough to be "diagnosed" with ADHD at a
| young age. Oh how strange it is that a child can't concentrate
| with 25 of his peers hopping and chatting around him, let's
| medicate him as soon as possible! /rant off
|
| Well, a few years ago I rented an office space with a friend of
| mine, just the two of us in a very spacious (100m2), light and
| well-ventilated office. We received no phone calls, there were no
| people walking in, or cats and girlfriends asking for attention.
| I had less distractions than I had at home, and much less than in
| a traditional office. And it was a dedicated area for "work". A
| comfortable desk and chair, two monitors and a fast pc.
|
| All these factors made it so much easier to concentrate and get
| into the flow... If I had to put a number on it I'd say I would
| be at least 1.5x more effective working in an area like that
| compared to a traditional office or at my desk at home.
|
| I will NEVER again say that I am someone who has trouble
| concentrating, having worked in a place like that.
|
| I wonder if (and how much) the lack of a proper workplace
| explains the decrease in output when working from home in this
| study. I can imagine a decrease in productivity if you have to
| share your home and workplace with other people or even
| children... But when your children and partner are at work, or if
| you have a seperate workspace, I wonder how the two compare then.
| throwasquirrel wrote:
| I have been unfortunate enough to _not_ be diagnosed with ADHD
| until middle age, and I 'm sorry to hear about your apparent
| misdiagnosis but for people who actually do have the condition,
| it's very real and it very much sucks. It's not just "someone
| walked into the room and I lost my train of thought", it's "I
| have one simple task to do and I know exactly how to do it and
| it's been hours but I still can't make myself do the thing no
| matter how much I want to."
|
| It's "I haven't done my taxes for 18 months even though it
| would only take a day, and I _cannot_ force myself to do it no
| matter how hard I try. "
|
| It's "I've been unable to fold my laundry for six weeks even
| though I've alphabetized my cutlery drawer, twice."
|
| It's "I have to document this project but no matter how much I
| want to just do it, I nevertheless continually find myself on
| imgur or Facebook or Hacker News or some random other website
| reading up about how switched-reluctance motors or Monte Carlo
| tree search or whatever works."
|
| It's lack of executive function when you need it and it's the
| inability to think about anything else when something's grabbed
| your focus and it's a built-in character flaw that you can't
| "just choose to not have" and it's growing up thinking you're
| "just lazy" but "have so much potential" and it just. f*king.
| sucks.
|
| If all you need in order to focus on the thing you want to
| focus on is for no-one to interrupt you, you don't have ADHD.
|
| /rant
| throwaway256978 wrote:
| I haven't been diagnosed and don't know where to start. One
| of my teachers had suggested in early grade school that I had
| a "developmental disability" but my parents resisted and
| prevented me from being assessed and prevented me from being
| in the special needs program. Partially because they didn't
| really believe in the concept and partially because they
| feared that it would negatively affect my social development.
|
| I struggled throughout school, struggled even harder
| throughout university (it took me _many_ years to graduate)
| and am currently floundering in my job.
|
| I have had the exact same experience with my
| taxes/laundry/reports but I have no family doctor and no way
| to get one. Besides a GP, the mental health options for such
| things in my city are limited to minors and adults in
| assisted living situations.
| cecilpl2 wrote:
| > "I have to document this project but no matter how much I
| want to just do it, I nevertheless continually find myself on
| imgur or Facebook or Hacker News or some random other website
| reading up about how switched-reluctance motors or Monte
| Carlo tree search or whatever works."
|
| This is why I learned more about grain bins and low-head dams
| this week than I did the tool I was supposed to be building.
| [deleted]
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