[HN Gopher] Working from home is powering productivity
___________________________________________________________________
Working from home is powering productivity
Author : rwmj
Score : 172 points
Date : 2024-10-11 20:18 UTC (2 hours ago)
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| Scoundreller wrote:
| 15 second cities now!
| CapeTheory wrote:
| Take that, Jassy.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck%27s_principle
|
| > A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its
| opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its
| opponents eventually die and a new generation grows up that is
| familiar with it.
| zeusk wrote:
| It's an open secret that it is no longer day 1 at Amazon.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Inertia is a heck of a thing.
| axpy906 wrote:
| It's like day 22.
| beaconify wrote:
| What does that mean (genuine question?)
| CapeTheory wrote:
| Amazon used to pride itself on behaving like a (very big)
| startup, trying to be scrappy and focused - but now it
| has very definitely joined the league of ordinary
| corporations.
| nostrademons wrote:
| A corollary is that they existing big-tech companies will
| never embrace remote work. You need to start _new_ companies
| which are remote-first and then replace big tech with them.
| staunton wrote:
| I don't think that's a useful generalization. It's pretty
| clear that company culture changes over time (in tandem
| with changing management and workforce).
|
| The point of the Planck quote is that many people
| (especially the "important" people) have large egos and
| therefore (among other reasons) are unwilling or unable to
| change their minds and learn new things. This then
| significantly hinders progress.
|
| The equivalent to your claim in science would be something
| like "particle physics cannot change, you need to let it
| die and start a new scientific discipline" (I guess you'll
| find some people who think that but I don't).
| mullingitover wrote:
| I've definitely heard this as "Science progresses one funeral
| at a time" before.
| atomicnumber3 wrote:
| Now we'll get to see which is more powerful: the invisible hand
| of the free markets, or the human tendency of power to accrete
| with autocrats, who seem to struggle immensely with the idea of
| letting people have the freedom to control their work environment
| and hours.
| tomrod wrote:
| I hope for WFH or hybrid to win the day.
| scottyah wrote:
| It'll be determined by who can effectively train the next
| generations of employees.
| datavirtue wrote:
| If that's what the market wants.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| _> is highly dependent on how well it's managed._
|
| That's the kicker, right there.
|
| I am kind of in despair, at the quality of tech managers;
| especially "first line" managers, these days.
| sevensor wrote:
| I see an absolutely shocking number of managers promoted from
| the IC ranks, who not only have no preparation for management,
| but no experience at any other company.
| whatshisface wrote:
| There is no guaranteed way to create managers from scratch,
| business specialists don't understand the technical facts
| well enough to resolve the kinds of disputes that arise at
| the project manager level, and as you observe ICs are not
| always inclined to make other people's work their primary
| concern.
| datavirtue wrote:
| It's an outdated arrangement. All you need are respected
| VPs that know their area and foster collaboration toward
| ideal technical/operationl goals in line with the business
| objectives. If your approach is invoking fear and
| exhibiting aggression to drive outcomes you have already
| lost half of the productivity battle. Jaime Daimon is the
| new Jack Welch. Too busy looking good and laying down the
| law to focus on innovation.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| In the (US) military, the sergeants run the army. NCOs are
| highly-trained, and have been the secret of managing
| battlefield chaos, for generations.
|
| They don't do strategy, but they do tactics, like nobody's
| business, and are often highly valuable input into
| development of strategies. They are given tremendous agency,
| and are highly trained. The military does a great job of
| training and retaining highly-experienced, and highly-skilled
| NCOs.
|
| First-line managers have a similar role, but they are treated
| like garbage by their superiors, and consider their position
| a "necessary evil," towards higher ranks. They don't like
| their jobs, and want to get out, as quickly as possible.
|
| In unions, foremen are often quite happy with their roles,
| and don't really want to go beyond (they wouldn't mind more
| perks and pay, but they like their jobs).
|
| Like bad tech career ladders, the manager career ladders are
| also pretty terrible.
| ryandrake wrote:
| > First-line managers have a similar role, but they are
| treated like garbage by their superiors, and consider their
| position a "necessary evil," towards higher ranks.
|
| This is because most companies don't have a promotion track
| above "Senior Software Engineer" that doesn't involve
| people-management, which is an entirely different job. It's
| as if you ran a restaurant and in order for your highest
| rated chef to get promoted, he had to learn how to make
| kitchen cabinets. You'd have a bunch of people who loved
| cooking but had to build cabinets instead because that's
| the only way their career could grow.
|
| And even at the BigTech companies who claim to have
| "parallel" technical promotion tracks that don't involve
| people management, it's often not truly parallel. If you
| work in one of these companies, count how many Directors
| and VPs are in your company, and then compare it to how
| many technical people there are at _equivalent levels_ who
| are not managing people. I bet there are at least 10x as
| many Directors and VPs if not 100x than super-senior-staff-
| ultra-mega Engineers.
| nine_zeros wrote:
| > And even at the BigTech companies who claim to have
| "parallel" technical promotion tracks that don't involve
| people management,
|
| And the promotion to upper technical levels involves -
| once again - larger influence over people as opposed to
| technical growth.
| gradstudent wrote:
| In my experience, there is not much technical growth as
| you go upward because there's not that much need for
| technical depth. What most companies need is armies of
| low and intermediate programmers churning out various
| kinds of CRUD apps. There's a bit of scope to be a
| "senior" grunt, and there may even be some very small
| number of "architects" above that but generally what's
| needed is people to manage the grunts and senior grunts.
|
| Further technical growth requires something like a PhD,
| and even then, that just makes you a grunt on a new
| (=academic) ladder, which has the same structure as
| before.
| ip26 wrote:
| Counter argument: if we accept the military example as
| doing leadership/management well, you can say the same
| about their career track. Far as I can tell, there's no
| "IC" track above Corporal, which has an average age of
| 21yo.
| lokar wrote:
| IMO the bigger difference is there is no direct path from
| NCO to officer. If you are enlisted and you want to be an
| officer, there is no standard path for that, no promotion
| from NCO to office. And officers never serve as enlisted
| solders. Fighting and leading are two different jobs,
| done by different groups of people
|
| I sometimes wonder if the police would be better off with
| that model.
| coredog64 wrote:
| Enlisted =>college (via GI Bill) => ROTC/OCS
| lokar wrote:
| Yeah, exactly, there is a path, but it sort of involves
| quitting the army
| User23 wrote:
| Now I know little about kitchens, but I'm under the
| impression that the entry level job is pretty much just
| following instructions, chopping things up, etc. And as
| you rise from there, yes you get responsibility for those
| beneath you doing their jobs. The sous chef is
| responsible for seeing that whatever you call the
| choppers are doing their job, and the head chef is
| basically boss of the kitchen (and often also an owner).
|
| Viewing "people management" as some kind of job is an org
| smell. Every job involves working with and coordinating
| with other people. The difference is fundamentally one of
| relative authority.
|
| Thanks to Conway's law, among other reasons, even a "non-
| technical" CEO is acting in at least some kind of an
| engineering capacity.
| lokar wrote:
| When I did a check in about 2018, almost all (like, all
| but 2-3) of the Distinguished engineers at Google were
| actually Sr Directors with vanity titles (DE was
| considered better then Sr Dir). Most 50+ person orgs with
| multiple managers working under them.
| alphazard wrote:
| You are describing the best kind of manager for two reasons:
|
| 1. They understand what their reports do, can mentor the less
| experienced ones, and are a competent peer to the more
| experienced ones, rather than an obstacle.
|
| 2. If they turn out to be bad managers, there is a low
| stakes, no hard feelings, path for them to go back to being
| an IC. There is a huge aversion to firing people, so bad
| managers who can't do anything else tend to stay around
| creating problems much longer than bad managers who can also
| contribute.
|
| Your presentation of "experience" and "preparation" as the
| most important things for a manager is typical gatekeeping
| that we see from the bureaucratic class--parasites without
| any real skills.
| torginus wrote:
| I wonder, what do you see as a desirable alternative?
| JoshTriplett wrote:
| I've encountered both good and bad managers who were promoted
| from individual contributors. A key difference is whether
| they _wanted_ to be in management, or whether they found
| themselves forced into management because there wasn 't a
| good technical leadership ladder or a good opportunity to
| climb it.
| eikenberry wrote:
| This is just as true in office. A bad manager is a bad manager
| no matter where they manage.
| atleastoptimal wrote:
| Companies that require RTO, if they actually want their employees
| to return to office, should prioritize in their messaging the
| objective benefits/cost to working in the office. No vague-speak,
| no shaming people claiming that workers "don't work" at home, but
| rather objective analysis on what exact benefits they seek to
| accrue by mandating that work that could be done anywhere in the
| world must be done in separate rooms of a large corporate office
| space.
|
| Since most companies that are enforcing RTO aren't doing this, it
| only makes sense that it is a covert mass layoff. They just want
| people to quit because they were planning on culling the herd
| anyway, and would prefer it be a self-selection of those who
| aren't willing to put up with bullshit.
| dalyons wrote:
| It's an open secret that there is no data that supports RTO. If
| there was, at even one company, it would be screamed from the
| rooftops.
|
| (I don't believe it's all covert layoffs either - it's imho the
| more banal reason of c-level personal feelings and groupthink)
| montagg wrote:
| Executive brain worms are real. They see each other do
| things, and they want to be like each other, so they feel
| safety in numbers, untethered to the data.
|
| My company only stopped a strict company-wide RTO when they
| saw how much senior talent they were losing, and leaders were
| taken by surprise.
| nmstoker wrote:
| It's good to see some serious arguments for WFH.
|
| Globally much of the pro-office camp's public position is driven
| by personal leanings of CEOs who genuinely seem to have made the
| decisions without evidence, often it's something they're very
| grumpy about (hardly the best state of mind for good judgement)
| and often based on the assumption that company productivity is
| based on workers doing what they do (usually far from the truth,
| workers in general don't have anything like the same composition
| of tasks that CEOs do).
|
| It's unfortunate to that it has divided into camps, as there are
| bound to be cases/roles/groupings of workers where one approach
| comes out better and others where it's worse. But very quickly
| everyone went pretty much for one-size fits all (with a few
| exceptions).
| datavirtue wrote:
| We simply are not going back, period. They are fighting the
| trend. Ask your analysis team and marketing about what happens
| to people that fight the trend.
| JoshTriplett wrote:
| > Globally much of the pro-office camp's public position is
| driven by personal leanings of CEOs who genuinely seem to have
| made the decisions without evidence
|
| In some cases, the pressure is also coming from external to the
| company, from cities and VCs and similar who care about the
| commercial real-estate value of now-abandoned offices.
| kvmet wrote:
| Is this actually happening? I have seen this idea thrown out
| a lot online but it always feels like a conspiracy theory to
| me (akin to "fine art is a tax write-off")
| finnh wrote:
| I think it explains some of Amazon's choices, as they made
| multibillion dollar bets on office space and real estate in
| Seattle.
| longnt80 wrote:
| feel like that to me too
|
| I bet there are some incentives in there but it's not the
| whole picture. It's probably the combination of many things
| but mostly management that don't know how to manage people
| remotely, or they started to realise that most middle
| manager positions are obsolete/unnecessary.
| JoshTriplett wrote:
| The conspiracy theory version is that it's the _sole_
| cause, rather than _one of many_ causes.
| Terr_ wrote:
| > real-estate value
|
| Separately but simultaneously, there are often local tax-
| benefits which depend on the company "creating jobs", and
| that's often defined in a way that means butts-in-offices
| downtown.
| notyourwork wrote:
| Ding ding ding ... this is the most overlooked aspect of
| the RTO/WFH dynamic.
| lowbloodsugar wrote:
| And the come back with wonderful anecodotes about how
| serendipitous hallway conversations lead to good ideas, or how
| some junior dev was brought into a conversation so they learned
| something.
|
| Sounds great. Except if you look at what is happening, it's
| just male social rituals that are happening. Quite males,
| females, disabled people are all excluded from the serendipity
| and they don't even see it.
|
| Essentially the argument is: As a male manager or tech lead, it
| is easy for me to feel that I am distributing my wisdom to the
| team because, at no cost to me, I just happen to bump into
| people and include them in my conversation. And look! This
| junior male is presenting properly!
|
| An actual training program, or any kind of systemic approach to
| fostering learning and advancement? Oh noes, that is too hard!
| notyourwork wrote:
| I don't follow the male, female, disabled person argument at
| all.
| purple-leafy wrote:
| Work from home makes me LOYAL to a company, and makes me work my
| arse off! If you want to keep good employees, give them agency.
|
| I do hybrid, I'm half-half from home and in the office. I work so
| hard when I work from home, and I'm so happy when I work from
| home, my desk is setup how I need, I get free coffee, I can
| listen to music, my dog sleeps on the bed. Most importantly, more
| of the work gets done.
|
| I think the option to go into the office (on your own accord) is
| important. The main pro of the office is I can talk to team-mates
| and do learning sessions with them (the juniors).
|
| But I do these as well from home every day too.
|
| Unfortunately my work place is putting in place a 4 day in the
| office mandate, like we are children. All it does is make me want
| to look for jobs that respect employee agency.
| tomrod wrote:
| What do you do?
| purple-leafy wrote:
| I'm fortunate to be a software engineer, I have about 4yoe
| and mainly work on frontend code.
|
| But it's been a very long road from being a university
| dropout, to getting an Electrical Engineering degree, and
| then transitioning to Software mostly in my spare time
| criddell wrote:
| I think framing the WFH argument in terms of productivity is a
| bad idea. It's difficult to win that argument and it might not
| even be true.
|
| Instead, call it a benefit, like paid vacation or health
| insurance.
|
| Nobody argues that employers contributing to an employees
| 401(k) plan is good for productivity. They do it to attract and
| retain talent.
| purple-leafy wrote:
| I think though, that for hybrid or work from home to win in
| the shared mindset - productivity has to be accounted for.
|
| It feels like employers that switch to RTO office mandates do
| so on a "hunch" that WFH is less productive. At least that's
| what my company is doing. They have not shared any stats that
| hybrid work has affected outcomes. Yes the company was down
| in outcomes for 2 quarters, but that's mostly related to
| consumers not spending + inflation + economic instability.
|
| Because the board need a more tangible boogeyman to point to,
| they blame the "lazy work from home ethic".
|
| But I'm yet to see ANY evidence that hybrid work decreases
| productivity or outcomes. In fact, I strongly believe, and
| could probably produce evidence, that Hybrid work ensures
| better workplace outcomes on average in a vacuum.
|
| Employee agency -> less stress, more loyalty -> better
| outcomes
| rgblambda wrote:
| Think it was the FT that reported, there's no data
| indicating RTO improves productivity. It is being done
| either on a hunch or as a form of stealth layoff.
| ozim wrote:
| Benefit for the employee can be cut off any time.
|
| Benefit for the company will go on forever.
|
| I will stay on the ground where WFH is benefit for the
| company. That is what I believe and I want everyone to
| believe and I do not care what any kind of research will say.
| Just if employees will force it in that way it will be.
| rgblambda wrote:
| Consistency and stability is a benefit to the company, but
| execs still periodically fuck that up for no reason with
| random reorgs.
|
| Though I agree that framing WFH as a productivity gain
| makes RTO in the name of productivity harder to sell.
| swatcoder wrote:
| Yes, as a well-paid, introverted, technical contributor who is
| internally motivated by their craft, with the luxury to afford
| good working space and at a moment in one's life where home
| haunts feel secure and supportive, you can't beat it. Like any
| tradesman in history keeping up their own shop, it's really
| quite empowering. I've been doing it for pretty much all of a
| very long career.
|
| _But_ it 's worth keeping in mind that there are a lot of
| implied constraints there, and that the industries that drive
| the society we live in often rely on making the best of people
| who can't meet all those constraints.
|
| There are people whose jobs need them work with other people
| dynamically, extroverts who need to be around others with a
| common aim to thrive, people with compensation to meager to
| carve out an effective home office, people who need on-site
| facilities, people with chaotic or draining home lives, etc
|
| It's _very_ easy to talk about why remote work _can_ be
| extremely rewarding for some, but the big picture of a business
| or an industry needs to balance a whole bunch of other concerns
| -- some intrinsic and some simply inertial.
|
| It's just not a single, simple topic where we can project our
| own experience as if it was universal.
| purple-leafy wrote:
| That's fair, it's definitely not as clear cut as some make
| it.
|
| Anecdotally my team juggles all this well - we are relatively
| shielded from the rest of the business as our own unit.
|
| Within our team or 15, we have introverts, extroverts - and
| some work from home alot (me etc) and others come into the
| office.
|
| But no one in the team, not even the leaders think the RTO is
| the right call.
|
| I'm lucky our team leads are intelligent to form their own
| opinions, and they are happy with having it both ways - it
| works for us
| brailsafe wrote:
| [delayed]
| lazyasciiart wrote:
| > But it's worth keeping in mind that there are a lot of
| implied constraints there
|
| Amazon, Salesforce, etc should all fit well within those
| constraints. And nobody is suggesting that we ban offices -
| just stop pretending that all of us fit into those exception
| buckets.
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| I will offer a counter-example despite being very much pro-wfh.
|
| In my little corner of the universe, the company, its execs and
| some rank and file, who appear to genuinely either want to be
| in office or appears bosses ( or both ) are not super keen some
| of the vocal anti-rto people showing others that they too could
| stay home, leave early.. you know, all those things management
| did not that long ago.
|
| And the thing is, for me anyway, paradoxically I am waiting for
| the other shoe to drop by and, as a result, genuinely doing as
| little as possible ( 'cept for the ridiculous projects, can't
| do much about those ).
|
| Companies had it. They had their gay little compromise in the
| form of hybrid, which I hated anyway. And now I am just saying
| meh. Funny thing is, I am clearly not the only one.
| l33tbro wrote:
| I despair a little at this. If I can do my job at home, then
| surely somebody can do it in the global south in tandem with AI
| for peanuts. Client-facing stuff gets centralised to a smaller
| team of specialists, and the ship gets much tighter.
|
| How long until megacorps and SMEs actually execute this reality?
| The management class and their unnecessary underlings like me
| have only been so resilient because companies are still on the
| last days of this post-covid efficiency wave, coupled with the
| buffer of capital from the money that was created in the last few
| years.
|
| I'm usually not a doomer, but it's hard to see a way around the
| next downturn not creating irreversible culture change through AI
| offshoring and mass layoffs.
| ggm wrote:
| There are latent questions in your response. The fear is
| justified but equally, viewed from a distance, what is the
| "worth" of your price point, if the same job can be done and
| lift somebody out of poverty in the developing world?
|
| I'm not saying you're wrong. I'm asking what an economist or
| social historian might say, much as if a Lancashire cotton
| worker asked if his job was disappearing into cotton factories
| in Bangladesh.
|
| I share your fears btw. I'm just less sure I "deserve" the pay
| for my disappearing role(s)
| l33tbro wrote:
| Completely agree. And it is funny how we put so much emphasis
| on developing our skills and abilities, when really our
| actual value is always determined by the market.
|
| I'm personally at peace with that, and would have a pretty
| hard time arguing against the logic of off-shoring my job.
| However, it's also rational to want to hold onto a favourable
| environmental niche for as long as possible!
| tikhonj wrote:
| I mean, if you can do your job in-office, then surely somebody
| in the global can do it in _their_ office? Or what if somebody
| could do your job in a branch office rather than in HQ?
|
| Is your only differentiation really just being able to
| physically interact with management?
| hu3 wrote:
| I think you're onto something.
|
| Even Indians are losing their IT jobs to Vietnamese. [1]
|
| The squeeze is real.
|
| Good time to start a business I guess.
|
| [1]
| https://www.reddit.com/r/developersIndia/comments/1eckee9/oh...
| beaconify wrote:
| Hope for new job roles. A race to automate all the things needs
| a lot of human effort!
|
| As for location... yeah shit may change. But hey at least we
| give poor countries a fishing rod not a fish. They get richer
| and you could always go live in cambodia. Digital nomad becomes
| something normal people do. Not travelling is for the rich!
| tolerance wrote:
| This was the perspective I was looking for to respond to my
| innate suspicions caused by the source of this post. _Who are
| they signaling toward_?
| alexashka wrote:
| They've been trying and failing to do this with people from
| India and other 'cheap labor' countries for decades.
|
| The end of stupid IT jobs won't be outsourcing - it'll be
| robust, customizable software.
| GoToRO wrote:
| no, please, I want to be in office and hear the coffee machine
| grinding coffee for everybody in the office /sarcasm
| hu3 wrote:
| I love working from home and I plan to keep doing it.
|
| But I can't deny that when a coworker needs help, rolling my
| chair next to theirs in office allows for a much larger bandwidth
| of knowledge sharing.
|
| On the other hand my production skyrockets at home.
| beaconify wrote:
| I am not sure. Remote working allows you to instantly pair with
| someone. No shuffling keyboards. There are a lot of software
| tools that help. Things like Loom let you async stuff.
|
| What isn't is as good is social connection. I have not seen
| going out to a restaurant emulated well remotely.
| tomjakubowski wrote:
| Zoom's latency is a killer. It is still harder to have the
| kind of natural back and forth conversation I'm used to
| having in meatspace pairing. Maybe I should try Discord.
| witx wrote:
| How is that different from just making a call? It's much faster
| and you can both be looking at your respective screens with the
| same information
| axpy906 wrote:
| @Andy Jassy
| throwaway918299 wrote:
| I am literally at _least_ 10x when I work from home.
|
| I have ADHD and through years of discipline, cultivating my
| workspace to suit my needs, and hard work I can be productive
| most of the day in the zone without (much) sidetracking.
|
| Literally impossible for me to do in the modern software dev
| sweatshop.
|
| I also make more money, can spend more time with my family
| because I don't commute, and plenty of other positives.
|
| I love the work, I enjoy working with my colleagues and I can set
| my own boundaries by setting office hours and scheduling
| meetings. There is very rarely anything that derails my day
| anymore. Everything is much better documented because
| _everything_ must live in confluence or Jira or it doesn't exist.
| The company saves tons of money on real estate.
|
| If you can change your processes and workflow to take advantage
| of tools that suit remote work, it's superior in basically every
| way.
|
| Pry it from my cold dead hands.
| m3kw9 wrote:
| All I know is some people like it some don't. It's based on the
| environment they have at home. Some people's home and psyche
| isn't good for wfh for various reasons
| WheelsAtLarge wrote:
| This paper is the first one I've read that outlines a pretty good
| case as to why WFH is beneficial to both workers and society. I
| encourage everyone to share it with others.
|
| WFH productivity is a matter of management. Pre-covid my company
| tried it and found that productivity declined. Also, the managers
| found it hard to trust that some of the workers were working and
| not doing other things.
|
| Working at the office has its drawbacks too. As a developer, the
| worst one for me was working in an open area. It's extremely hard
| to concentrate without having to function like a hermit and
| alienating fellow workers.
|
| I think some of that is still the case, but if managers define
| realistic expectations, I don't see why WFH can't continue to
| work. It's more work for management at the start but in time, as
| management and workers get accustomed, it will work out.
|
| It seems to be a win for employees and companies.
| mullingitover wrote:
| I would wager that there's a dead sea effect happening at these
| 'my way or the highway' RTO companies.
|
| Top tier, upber-productive, marketable talents don't have to
| tolerate bullying, even in a weak employment market. So the
| companies pushing RTO the hardest see their hardest to replace
| talent evaporate quickly, and their most desperate (but
| thoroughly demoralized) staff cling on for dear life. Not as a
| rule, but definitely a tendency.
|
| Meanwhile the most flexible companies can pick up talent easily,
| picking and choosing and building very tough rosters for quite
| reasonable prices.
| BhavdeepSethi wrote:
| > Meanwhile the most flexible companies can pick up talent
| easily, picking and choosing and building very tough rosters
| for quite reasonable prices.
|
| While it sounds good on paper, hiring decent remote folks for a
| company is actually much harder, especially if you're a
| startup. It's way easier taking a bet on someone local where
| you don't have to second guess how productive they are. For
| similar interview performance, most companies would prefer
| folks who can come to office instead of full remote. Obviously,
| there are companies who have made it work (eg. Gitlab) for a
| long time, but I'd say they are the exception rather than the
| norm.
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