[HN Gopher] Proximity to coworkers increases long-run developmen...
___________________________________________________________________
Proximity to coworkers increases long-run development, lowers
short-term output (2023)
Author : delichon
Score : 172 points
Date : 2025-12-02 14:01 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (pallais.scholars.harvard.edu)
(TXT) w3m dump (pallais.scholars.harvard.edu)
| ilc wrote:
| To Quote the Page:
|
| Notes Revise and resubmit, Quarterly Journal of Economics
|
| I'd wait for the revision.
| Clent wrote:
| It's quite telling that this is nothing more than an abstract
| but it has gained votes so fast it hit the top link.
| delichon wrote:
| The abstract page has a link to the whole paper as a PDF:
|
| https://pallais.scholars.harvard.edu/sites/g/files/omnuum592.
| ..
| jacquesm wrote:
| Cue lots of managers using this title to push the 'back to the
| office' movement a bit further.
|
| There are so many axis other than 'output', and some of them are
| a lot more important. For instance 'quality'. And 'employee
| happiness' and 'employee retention'. The term 'human capital' is
| such a terrible one to use as an abstraction. Capital is
| something you expend, once you start looking at people as just
| another resource to make ROI on you're asking to be treated the
| same way in reverse.
|
| @Dang: suggested title change: "The Power of Proximity to
| Coworkers: Training for Tomorrow or Productivity Today?"
|
| full text:
|
| https://pallais.scholars.harvard.edu/sites/g/files/omnuum592...
| noobermin wrote:
| The abstract did say the result is mixed. You have "long term"
| increase in human capital development...primarily because
| connections help mentor more junior developers, but output is
| reduced...for obvious reasons.
|
| The "output is reduced" especially for certain crunches where
| time is of the essence IS an argument for WFH in those
| circumstances, and for me, when I need the most time alone.
| jacquesm wrote:
| The abstract says one thing, the title here suggests an
| entirely different thing. Besides that not-so-subtle editing,
| I also find the sample size used more than a little bit lower
| than one that you could draw such a sweeping conclusion from.
| delichon wrote:
| I thought that the title drops the lede so I abreviated the
| second sentence of the abstract: We find
| being near coworkers has tradeoffs: proximity increases
| long-run human capital development at the expense of short-
| term output.
| ghaff wrote:
| Which seems very consistent with everything I've seen
| over a fairly long career. I'd add not just co-workers
| but also other interactions with industry peers.
| jacquesm wrote:
| That's up to you, but context matters and that simply
| isn't the title. That finding too is not well supported
| by the article, sample size = 1 and the company they
| looked at is not exactly a typical company either. Imnsho
| this paper is very low quality.
|
| It is entirely possible that these conclusions (which by
| themselves are not all that shocking or novel) hold true
| over larger samples and across multiple types of company
| but that's not what they did. They looked at _one_
| entity:
|
| "We study the impact of sitting together in the office
| for software engineers at a Fortune 500 online retailer.
| This firm gave us access to the online feedback that
| engineers write about each other's computer code as well
| as metrics of engineers' programming output. "
|
| So they base the entirety of this conclusion on code
| review comments and lines-of-code produced or something
| like that. That makes the conclusion even less supported
| than if they had done some actual research.
|
| For a statement like this to hold you would at least need
| a control and a larger sample.
| JamesBarney wrote:
| > Imnsho this paper is very low quality
|
| Compared to like a phase 3 clinical trial, sure. Compared
| to your average paper, and especially your average
| business paper I don't think that's the case.
| jacquesm wrote:
| I think there is some room in between those two.
|
| At a minimum you'd expect a few more companies, more
| sources than just code review and code productivity
| metrics (this alone disqualifies the study because it
| centers on just one task: software development) etc.
| jamespo wrote:
| Would you be saying that if you agreed with the findings?
| jacquesm wrote:
| I have not made up my mind either way so I'm not sure
| where you pulled that from. I even wrote in another
| comment upthread: "It is entirely possible that these
| conclusions (which by themselves are not all that
| shocking or novel) hold true over larger samples and
| across multiple types of company but that's not what they
| did. "
|
| But you probably missed that.
| hyperpape wrote:
| > Capital is something you expend
|
| Or hoard
| Aurornis wrote:
| I'm in a big peer group for managers where a lot of us are
| remote managers. (Let me repeat before the angry downvotes and
| comments: _I am a remote manager and proponent of remote work_
| )
|
| This was all common knowledge. It has been for a long time. The
| big companies who tracked a lot of metrics and followed
| employees from hire onward already knew that remote
| environments are harder for new people to thrive in. This is
| why a lot of the companies who did return to office still allow
| remote work, but they require new hires on-site first and to
| accumulate a track record of delivering within the company.
|
| It's also why a lot of full remote companies have gone back to
| hiring people who already have a lot of remote experience.
|
| The period after COVID where companies hired anyone into remote
| roles and assumed it would work for everyone was not a good
| thing for remote work, IMO. A lot of people cannot handle
| remote work for different reasons: Many don't communicate well.
| Some can't focus at home. Some can't cooperate with people via
| text, even though they're fine in person. Some just want remote
| work to disappear into the background and respond to a couple
| emails or Slack messages from their phone while they're on
| vacation all the time. It all added up to excessive problems
| for companies that threw in the towel for RTO.
|
| I know this comment will anger remote maximalists who think
| everything and everyone should be remote, but we tried that and
| it didn't work. I think we've overcorrected for now, but the
| future is probably going to settle into a norm where remote is
| a limited option for companies and candidates who can handle
| it, but not the norm for everyone.
| candiddevmike wrote:
| What is your definition of "new person" though? If someone
| has been remote for years, are they still a "new person"? If
| you trust them enough to hire them, why is there a need to
| keep earning trust for more privileges. This just seems like
| a carrot to squeeze some kind productivity or control out of
| people.
| zeryx wrote:
| I've only ever worked remote professionally and I've got a
| track record, when I apply to a new role there's no
| question that I can adapt to working remotely at X company.
|
| If I just finished my PhD in comp sci and have never worked
| professionally in my life let alone remotely, going day 1
| remote is a huge risk
| Aurornis wrote:
| I knew this was going to turn into a shoot the messenger
| (or downvote the messenger) situation.
|
| Look, I also work remote and have for years. This is just
| the situation that's happening out there. Having 5 years
| of remote experience no longer means as much because some
| companies let everyone work remote and waited until now
| to start firing and laying people off. We've hired some
| real duds into remote roles who had years of remote
| experience, apparently doing the same thing they tried to
| do with us: Work a couple hours a week or maybe collect
| paychecks from multiple jobs.
|
| Every remote manager I know has stories like this. The
| remote world changed a lot since COVID and the rise of
| /r/overemployed and "Four Hour Workweek" junk has only
| made it worse for those of us who just want to work
| remote without shenanigans.
| jacquesm wrote:
| > We've hired some real duds into remote roles who had
| years of remote experience, apparently doing the same
| thing they tried to do with us: Work a couple hours a
| week or maybe collect paychecks from multiple jobs.
|
| Did you ever hire any duds when you were not hiring
| remote?
|
| > The remote world changed a lot since COVID and the rise
| of /r/overemployed and "Four Hour Workweek" junk has only
| made it worse for those of us who just want to work
| remote without shenanigans.
|
| A four hour work week is very normal in plenty of
| countries and in some there are common constructs built
| around even shorter work weeks.
| matwood wrote:
| > Did you ever hire any duds when you were not hiring
| remote?
|
| Bingo. I had an exec ask me once how will we know people
| are working if they are remote? I asked back, how do we
| know they are working now?
|
| Remote work _is_ harder on management and leadership.
| It's easy to see if someone is at their desk and seems
| friendly, it's hard to really think about what value a
| person brings.
| jacquesm wrote:
| I've worked at a bank where one of the oft heard jokes
| was that 'I spend 8 hours per day there but I really
| wouldn't want to work there'. It was true too. 145 people
| in the IT department, and absolutely nothing got done.
|
| This was a bit of a let-down for me, all these people, so
| much fancy hardware. I had a hard time believing it at
| first. The whole place was basically caretakers that made
| the occasional report printing program and that based
| their careers on minor maintenance of decades old COBOL
| code that they would rather not touch at all.
|
| Something as trivial as a new printer being taken into
| production would turn into a three year project.
|
| On Friday afternoons the place was deserted. And right
| now I work 'from home' and so do all of my colleagues and
| I don't think there are any complaints about
| productivity. Sure, it takes discipline. But everything
| does, to larger or lesser degree and probably we are
| a-typical but for knowledge work in general WFH _can_
| work if the company stewards it properly. It 's all about
| the people.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| > Did you ever hire any duds when you were not hiring
| remote?
|
| That only worked a couple hours a week and collected
| multiple paychecks? Probably not.
|
| Sure, they hired duds. Just not that level of dud. And if
| they were, they found out much more quickly.
| jacquesm wrote:
| That doesn't happen remote either. Unless management is
| utterly incompetent, another variable a study like this
| should probably compensate for by increasing the sample
| size and pool diversity.
| Aurornis wrote:
| New to the company. Being in-person makes it easier to
| build new relationships, make friends with people you
| wouldn't normally run into in your corner of Slack, and
| pick up more info about how the company works.
|
| > If you trust them enough to hire them, why is there a
| need to keep earning trust for more privileges.
|
| In person accelerates onboarding for all the reasons I
| mentioned above. It's not a game of trust or "carrots".
| jayd16 wrote:
| Why have managers and reviews and non-automated promotions
| and security groups if you trusted them enough to hire
| them...
|
| Well because obviously that trust only goes so far.
| Aurornis wrote:
| The "if you trusted them enough to hire them you should
| trust them with everything unconditionally" meme is
| popular, but it's a very weak argument.
|
| Everyone has to build trust and establish a reputation at
| any job. Every company treats new employees as
| probationary, whether they make it explicit or not.
|
| You don't get hired into a company and immediately have
| the same trust level as the guy who has been there for 5
| years and has a long history of delivering results.
|
| For some issues with new employees you can pivot quickly:
| If you discover that someone is not good at interacting
| with databases and is causing downtime and restore from
| backup situations, you pivot quickly and remove their
| database privileges while you observe their skill growth.
|
| With remote, you can't pivot quickly. If you're 12 weeks
| in and the new remote hire obviously can't communicate
| remotely or focus at home, you can't pivot quickly and
| have them work in the office most of the time because
| remote hires don't necessarily live by the office. So
| it's a slowly earned privilege in companies that aren't
| remote-first.
|
| I'm surprised this is a foreign concept. This was
| actually the common situation with remote work before
| COVID: Gaining WFH ability was something earned and
| negotiated over time. It wasn't widely publicized, but
| that's how many of us started working remote.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Building trust is a gradual thing. You give some, you get
| some, you do that long enough and you will have a lot of
| trust. You can still lose it all in a heartbeat. But
| you're never going to get the keys to the kingdom on day
| #1.
|
| 'Trust comes on foot, but leaves by horse'.
| unethical_ban wrote:
| I say that hiring someone is not an absolute vote of
| confidence in a person. Even if someone is a veteran
| worker, most companies have a new employee orientation.
| Having a "probation period" where someone comes into the
| office to integrate and meet people and work more
| collaboratively makes sense to me.
|
| Disclaimer: While I benefit and often like a remote work or
| hybrid setup, I also know that my career and my ability to
| absorb new technologies has been crippled by the isolation
| of remote work. And, my success and my level of knowledge
| in my field is directly attributed to being physically
| around a lot of people and several related departments in
| order to ask questions and mingle with experts.
|
| Remote work sucks for learning, for me - and I know I'm not
| alone.
| angiolillo wrote:
| > This was all common knowledge. It has been for a long time.
|
| Many years ago my advisor passed on an observation (edit:
| originally from Hamming's 1987 "You and Your Research"):
| faculty who generally kept their office door closed published
| more papers each year, while faculty who generally kept their
| office door open had more successful careers.
|
| Correlation is not causation of course, and sometimes you do
| just need to get a paper out. But it's worth noting that
| optimizing for daily productivity has costs.
| wiseowise wrote:
| > A lot of people cannot handle remote work for different
| reasons
|
| So how come those who can handle it are being punished?
| agf wrote:
| Where do companies otherwise prioritize long-run development
| over short-term output? In my experience, generally nowhere. So
| why would this make managers push RTO more?
|
| Some who already want RTO may use this as an excuse, but I
| would think it would actually reduce RTO pressure overall, as
| it confirms less short-term productivity, which is what
| companies actually care about.
| Insanity wrote:
| I think this will do exactly nothing for RTO, neither
| increase nor decrease the push from management.
|
| The decisions around RTO seem to be more "gut feeling" based
| than data driven. Look at Amazon, a supposedly "data driven
| company". During RTO, Andy Jassy admitted there's no data to
| back it up but that they "believe" it will help due to
| improving culture.
|
| Fast forward a year and they just did a first round of
| layoffs because "culture". So I guess ultimately RTO was a
| failure for them that they won't admit to.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| RTO was always about reducing labor costs by incentivizing
| people to resign.
| apercu wrote:
| I think that is only part. The other part is pushback
| against "uppity" labour.
| wiseowise wrote:
| > So why would this make managers push RTO more?
|
| > Proximity [office] *increases* development
|
| Do you seriously expect managers to read anything beyond
| title?
| Esophagus4 wrote:
| Cue the developers dismissing any evidence that RTO has
| benefits because they don't like it.
| jacquesm wrote:
| That's not what it is about though. There is plenty of
| evidence that there are pros and cons both to WFH and work-
| at-the-office, assuming the work lends itself to work-from-
| home to begin with. This is at best a datapoint and not so
| much a grand conclusion worthy one at that.
|
| The metric 'code productivity' alone is such a terrible one.
| I remember the 80's when such things were introduced. The
| best one that I ran into professionally was 'object code
| size' (because we don't want to count those pesky comment
| lines as production now, do we?). It didn't take long for the
| rookie in the team to outscore everybody else based on those
| metrics. He found the largest library in the system to link
| to...
|
| In general I'm against such metrification of productivity and
| in software I'm more against it than in other industries
| because I think software quality is a very hard thing to
| measure to begin with. Lines-of-code and such are useful on
| an assets list during a business transaction in a descriptive
| way. But they're not very useful in other contexts.
|
| As for the code review data they analyzed:
|
| "We find that sitting near coworkers increases the online
| feed- back that engineers receive on their computer code.
| Engineers ask more follow- up questions online when sitting
| together, and so, proximity can not only increase in-person
| but also digital communication. Proximity is particularly
| integral to the online feedback received by young and less
| tenured engineers. "
|
| I've seen the exact opposite happen as well. Proximity
| decreased the feedback because there was no need to
| communicate formally what could be communicated informally.
| wiseowise wrote:
| > [has benefits]
|
| Long-term and for the company. Of course I'm going to dismiss
| it lol, why the fuck would I want to be left holding the bag?
| ElevenLathe wrote:
| This is only a harm if you are ambitious and career-oriented.
| I'm remote and know it won't be conducive to promotion, but I
| also get to:
|
| 1) live in the low CoL area that I grew up in,
|
| 2) be near family and friends (and therefore free, high-
| quality childcare),
|
| 3) avoid a hellish commute in one of the sprawl-y hellscapes
| that grow up around tech hub cities,
|
| 4) live in a paid-off house instead of 50%+ of my income
| going directly to rent or a mortgage, and
|
| 5) have a massive nest egg due to all the money I'm saving.
|
| Could I get faster promotions by going back to the office?
| Maybe, though I see the careers of my at-the-office
| colleagues around me stagnating just about as much as mine.
| But...I don't want to be management. I don't even necessarily
| care for promotion as an IC unless that's the only way to
| tread water with inflation.
|
| The only major downside I think about is that it will
| obviously be harder to get a remote position if I lose the
| one I have, but we're financially prepared for that. With a
| paid-off house in a single-car neighborhood, we can make ends
| meet with a normal job stocking groceries or something. At
| the worst case, I have connections to get a job at the
| factory a town over, though that would mean getting a second
| car.
|
| In other words: I, as a worker, do not care about maximizing
| the value of my human capital stock. I am not cattle. I am
| not a slave. I have preferences that are unrelated to my
| ability to receive praise and promotions from my boss. In
| short, I deserve respect from my employer, whether they are
| currently being forced to give it or not.
| eschneider wrote:
| Is my remote experiences strange or do other remote workers not
| have some sort of chat where people ask if you've got a minute
| and drop in a video conference link if they need a quick chat
| on something?
| jacquesm wrote:
| No idea, but yes, that's exactly how we do it. We've been
| full remote since COVID and honestly, I don't think any of us
| would want it any other way but we're a very small team so
| not representative of larger trends.
| b00ty4breakfast wrote:
| how convenient for Meta.
|
| And, as ilc (dunno how to link to other hn users, sorry) has
| pointed out, this has been notated "revise and resubmit"
| ilc wrote:
| Thanks. :) And yeah, I skimmed it. I stand by my comment.
| afavour wrote:
| Makes sense. I consider myself very lucky to have become a senior
| engineer before COVID. As much as I appreciate WFH flexibility
| (especially as a parent) I do worry that the next generation of
| engineers don't have anywhere near the same level of mentorship.
| I get a lot of mileage out of video conference pairing tools but
| it's still not the same as sitting together. But I guess I
| probably am more efficient in the short term when I don't spend
| so much time on mentorship...
|
| All that said, I still prefer where we are compared to where we
| were.
| talkingtab wrote:
| The question is what do you mean by proximity? Is this only
| physical proximity?And does it mean that if you isolate people,
| but they are within 10 feet of each other they are more
| productive? And do the results change when there is not physical
| proximity, but substitutes or alternatives?
| throw10920 wrote:
| It's probably pretty close to the Allen Curve.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allen_curve
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| It's in the study, generally it's sitting close enough to
| converse
|
| they didn't study alternatives to proximity, which isn't
| surprising because I'm not away of anyone that regularly works
| with a constant audio or video stream active?
| candiddevmike wrote:
| Open floor plan hotel seating with 1' distance between you and
| the next person who eats raw onions at their desk while talking
| to their spouse constantly
| robinhouston wrote:
| From Richard Hamming's famous speech _You and Your Research_:
|
| > Another trait, it took me a while to notice. I noticed the
| following facts about people who work with the door open or the
| door closed. I notice that if you have the door to your office
| closed, you get more work done today and tomorrow, and you are
| more productive than most. But 10 years later somehow you don't
| know quite know what problems are worth working on; all the hard
| work you do is sort of tangential in importance. He who works
| with the door open gets all kinds of interruptions, but he also
| occasionally gets clues as to what the world is and what might be
| important.
|
| > Now I cannot prove the cause and effect sequence because you
| might say, "The closed door is symbolic of a closed mind." I
| don't know. But I can say there is a pretty good correlation
| between those who work with the doors open and those who
| ultimately do important things, although people who work with
| doors closed often work harder. Somehow they seem to work on
| slightly the wrong thing--not much, but enough that they miss
| fame.
| bluedino wrote:
| > I notice that if you have the door to your office closed, you
| get more work done today and tomorrow, and you are more
| productive than most.
|
| Or you end up with the lone coder problem.
| ambicapter wrote:
| You're basically restating exactly what he's saying.
| riskable wrote:
| According to most big companies these days, "lone coder" is
| the peak of business efficiency!
| PunchyHamster wrote:
| It is. If you have defined end goal.
|
| But to define that end goal to align with business needs
| you need some more people involved.
|
| day in week in office works well for us because of that.
| Enough to talk about what's going on and what needs to be
| done, and plenty of time for mostly uninterrupted work
| Aeolun wrote:
| Maybe it's more that those who work with the door open do work
| that is hailed as important. It might be based on the work of
| those that worked with the door closed, but those citations are
| ultimately irrelevant in the grand scheme of things.
| angiolillo wrote:
| > but those citations are ultimately irrelevant in the grand
| scheme of things
|
| It depends on your goal. Is it enough to know that your work
| is excellent, or do you also want it to be used by others?
|
| I've worked with researchers who had brilliant ideas that
| never caught on in their field, at least partly because they
| neglected to develop relationships with colleagues.
|
| (I've similarly worked on products that failed in the market,
| partly because the teams believed that a focus on technical
| superiority was sufficient.)
| stuffn wrote:
| Research is not corporate labor. Rarely are there "good
| problems" to work on. I'd bet dollars to donuts 99.99999% of
| employed HNers could close their door at work, or work from
| home, rarely interact with anyone, and know exactly what needs
| to be worked on. It's another CRUD app.
|
| Conflating actual productive academic research with the mundane
| triviality of a day job is crazy.
| hosh wrote:
| I prefer heads down time. At my remote workplace, I found
| several channels where people ask for help. Combined with
| office hours, it is the main way I keep in touch with what is
| going on.
|
| We also write up a weekly priorities (by team), and all the
| leadership put it together into emails. It is a great way for
| me to read what is going on.
|
| I shift between deep work and collaborative problem solving.
|
| It is not as if you can't try structure things to have both.
| Cerium wrote:
| Keep your eyes open for a better job? The work you do should
| have impact of some kind. In the corporate world there is
| business impact (increase revenue, decrease direct costs or
| improve system efficiency), social impact (make a product
| that directly helps people in some way), or personal impact
| (work on something that you find intrinsically interesting or
| helps you grow your skills or understanding).
|
| I don't see any reason to permanently stay in a role filled
| with mundane triviality .
| wiseowise wrote:
| > Keep your eyes open for a better job?
|
| This is literally opposite of "keep doors open", if you
| find a better job you need to grind leetcode to get there.
| lucianbr wrote:
| > But 10 years later somehow you don't know quite know what
| problems are worth working on
|
| How would someone notice this? It's not like they can run
| multiple 10-year experiments and notice a pattern.
| wongarsu wrote:
| By observing multiple people who have done either thing for
| 10+ years.
|
| Sure, there might be lots of confounding factors, and it
| might not be causation at all. That's why the quote is from a
| speech, not a paper
| lucianbr wrote:
| Here's another quote, I don't know if it's from a speech or
| anything:
|
| > What can be asserted without evidence can also be
| dismissed without evidence.
| ajkjk wrote:
| or you can thoughtfully consider it and maybe learn
| something
|
| quotes like this are only used to dismiss observations
| you don't like
| kaffekaka wrote:
| The quote makes a statement, we don't know if it is true.
| What can you learn from that? It might spark some
| thoughts, maybe.
| ajkjk wrote:
| exactly. maybe you think of it as a smidge more credible
| because someone else thinks it, even. Especially if
| they're a generally intelligent person whose other
| thoughts you like.
| wiseowise wrote:
| Bro, you literally provided zero evidence, learn what?
| ajkjk wrote:
| When someone suggests an idea without evidence there's
| still a modicum of data in the fact that they believe it.
| You don't have to, like, suddenly change your mind, but
| you also don't have to blow it off as unsubstantiated
| entirely. Probably they believe it, and said it, for a
| reason. Anyway whether or not you blow it off is entirely
| an indication of your trust in them, and has nothing to
| do with whether they presented evidence.
| JackFr wrote:
| Well Hamming observed it. It's not a randomized
| controlled study. It's anecdotal of course, and if one
| observed something to the contrary they would be well
| served to discount it. But presumably Hamming was there
| was a reason Hamming was addressing Bellcore.
| consp wrote:
| > Well Hamming observed it.
|
| I observe so many ways to have known and unknown bias in
| this I call any outcomes cow manure.
| pengaru wrote:
| He delivered that speech in 1986, so this would have been based
| on professional experience through the 60s-70s. A time before
| ubiquitous electronic communications. Back then you really
| would have been disconnecting by keeping your office door shut
| and focusing on your work.
|
| Mapping those observations to today's environment, the
| individual in a closed private office is more like a hermit
| with a mailbox but no cell/internet connection.
| thfuran wrote:
| I think that hermit now would be significantly more isolated
| than the closed door person, since no one else now is using
| physical mail for professional communication.
| pengaru wrote:
| True, but it doesn't change the fact that in 2025 an
| engineer with a closed door but ethernet and cell
| connectivity is still likely to be inundated with a
| continuous stream of notifications and other forms of
| electronic correspondence with his peers.
| paulddraper wrote:
| You're going to have lots of disgruntled naysayers, but this
| principle is 100% true.
|
| The world is full of people who moan "why do idiots run things,
| get all the opportunities, make money from easy ideas."
|
| Meanwhile those same people fester, working away on their
| little corner.
| michaelmrose wrote:
| Idiots run things for a lot of reasons.
|
| Managing people, social networking and self aggrandizement,
| and doing INSERT THING, are all different skills and people
| who only know how to do C, A and B, or even just B are well
| positioned to end up in charge and suck at it.
|
| Worse at the highest levels B is so important to actual
| success not least of which because of the virtue of getting
| money from those whose only virtue is having it that it may
| well actually make sense to hire idiots only good at B so
| long as they don't hire too many like self and rot the entire
| org. This may happen but even as the corpse rots it may have
| acquired enough inertia, money, market that they are without
| life or virtue but still successful for a long time in spite
| of their stupidity.
|
| Looking at a whole perverse assortment of cretins is likely
| to give one the wrong impression about what actually succeeds
| and if you constitute a new enterprise around lessons learned
| you may be surprised when it implodes.
| wiseowise wrote:
| > Meanwhile those same people fester, working away on their
| little corner.
|
| Maybe because idiots usurp all power and ostracize those
| loners?
|
| Ever tried to _really_ go against the grain in a relatively
| big corp? And I'm not talking about writing a couple angry
| emails /slack messages.
| roadside_picnic wrote:
| The principle applies to a world where people work in
| _offices_ doing serious long term R &D work. The quote is
| entirely irrelevant to people in working open offices for
| projects that change direction quarterly building features
| designed to make PMs look busy.
| paulddraper wrote:
| Be the change you want to see in the world.
| reactordev wrote:
| Doors? All I've ever known were cubicles and open office plans.
| What world is this where offices have doors?
| wiseowise wrote:
| Post WW2 times. The dude was born in 1915, this quote is just
| a copium for romantics.
| roadside_picnic wrote:
| I had an office with a door multiple times in my (early)
| career. An open office door is a universe away from sitting
| in an open office. Even when everyone has their doors open, a
| true office setup allows for plenty of focus.
|
| On top of that "closed"/"open" is a false dichotomy, since
| you can trivially change the state of your office. Have a
| hard problem that needs to be solved by the end of the day?
| You can _close_ your door and have absolute focus. After that
| task is solved, you can just open that office again.
|
| Real offices also entirely change the tradeoffs for remote/in
| office. A true office _feels like your room_. It 's
| considered a private space. I knew people that would bring in
| their own lamps (and keep the florescent lights off), bring
| in rugs, hang art from the walls, have tea setups, a
| bookshelf filled with reference material etc.
| reactordev wrote:
| I was being facetious while pointing out that Office Plans
| only have doors to the floors and conference rooms. Even
| the bathrooms lack doors now where they have designed it so
| you can't see inside from the hallway.
|
| Early in my career, we had offices, with doors, that you
| could close. Earlier in my career we still were writing
| Flash ActionScript. I wasn't asking about what it was like
| back in the old days where offices had doors. I was being
| cheeky about the fact that someone decided they weren't
| effective at bringing the "pod" together like it's some
| sort of nursery for software or day care for adults.
|
| It's been a _strange_ ride.
| wiseowise wrote:
| Richard Hamming's second most famous quote:
|
| > I would never work in an open office big tech sweatshop, fuck
| that
|
| Irony aside, this has zero relevance for your run of the mill
| dev. They're not researchers working in cozy offices of 60-70s
| on psychics and math problems.
|
| Also:
|
| > 10 years
|
| Average tenure of a tech worker is around 2-3 years, who even
| cares what happens in 10 years in those companies? They're
| literally living quarter to quarter while VC money lasts.
| aleph_minus_one wrote:
| > They're not researchers working in cozy offices of 60-70s
| on psychics and math problems.
|
| "psychics": pun intended? ;-)
| roadside_picnic wrote:
| I love Richard Hamming but
|
| > But 10 years later somehow you don't know quite know what
| problems are worth working on
|
| Is clearly a quote from a different era. Not only have most
| engineers I've known never had a tenure at a job _close_ to 10
| years, I 've found the foresight/planning window of companies
| I've joined is shrinking each year. In the era of "AI",
| leadership in most companies I've been at seem to think 3
| months ahead is a bit too forward looking.
|
| Also... how many people on HN even _remember_ having an office?
| I had multiple jobs early in my career where I had an actual
| _office_ with a _window_ and a _door_. An open door office is
| _nothing_ close to the misery of sitting at a desk in an open
| floor plan. The fact that you _could_ close the door means you
| do have the opportunity for pure focus. Even when the door was
| open, it was customary to knock gently on the frame after very
| checking if it looked like the inhabitant was focused.
|
| Richard Hamming describes a world of research that frankly
| doesn't exist any more today (I know because I briefly got a
| taste of the old world of research 20 years ago).
| Night_Thastus wrote:
| This feels so pretentious. People can keep it closed or open
| for whatever reason they want, and it has no correlation to how
| they solve problems or learn.
|
| Personally, I like it open when I'm feeling social and in a
| good mood, and close it when it's noisy outside and/or I need
| to hunker down and focus for a bit without distractions. That
| doesn't say anything about understanding or solving problems,
| other than 'sometimes people need quiet to focus' which is not
| a very shocking revelation.
| huherto wrote:
| Paraphrasing. Closed doors (focused work) lets you reach local
| minimum faster. Open doors (More connections) lets you escape
| local minimums.
|
| I guess you need focused work to make progress but once in a
| while you need contact with others to find inspiration or new
| ideas.
|
| Another one similar phrase(kinda). "If you want to go fast go
| alone. If want to go far go together". African proverb.
| AndrewKemendo wrote:
| This is exactly the right framing and that was going to be
| the same quote I chose (go far together...)
| PunchyHamster wrote:
| Seems very simple, working more with people than with problems
| gets you more social capital; people gonna remember someone
| helping them with something relatively trivial directly more
| than "they saw a bunch of code commited regularly".
|
| Probably anyone working long enough saw a case of someone being
| promoted over "better" technically candidates, just because he
| happened to be always there when important things happened.
| hinkley wrote:
| Devs listen to who they trust. And how can you trust that
| worker you never work with?
| hinkley wrote:
| When I was piecing together how I got to be a relatively young
| lead developer, it came down to my open door policy. I
| essentially rediscovered Hamming's wisdom just by extending a
| policy that started with my college roommate who was struggling
| with our CS homework. That lead to me helping other kids in the
| computer lab (with C/C++ bugs, not with the algorithms), and if
| you have skills at <5YOE you're going to use them at work if
| you can, because what else can you do to not look like a newb?
|
| But open door policy doesn't have to mean a literal open door.
| When I went remote I was _still_ helping people sort out
| problems, and when you ask for the back story you get to find
| out what other teams are working on, and where 1 /3 of your
| coworkers are all struggling with the same API. That's a lot of
| ammo for a Staff, Lead, or Principal-track role.
|
| Because you understand a lot more of the project, and you
| already have the trust of half the org chart.
| dickiedyce wrote:
| 1 company? 2 buildings? Over < 5 years? Any evidence for
| "dampening short-run pay raises but boosting them in the long
| run" must be pretty sketchy.
| mdrzn wrote:
| (2023) and still waiting for a resubmit and review.
|
| Why is this here in the first page?
| jmyeet wrote:
| It's absolutely true that team cohesion impacts results but so do
| other factors, such as psychological safety [1], work-life
| balance and flexibility.
|
| And you know what? Employers don't care about any of this, like
| at all. RTO mandates are nothing more than soft layoffs aimed to
| suppressing labor costs. Why? Because some people will quit,
| which is cheaper than severance, and those that remains will have
| to do their work for no extra compensation and also won't be
| asking for raises because they fear losing their own jobs. Win
| win (for the employer).
|
| Profits have a tendency to decrease over time [2]. Investors
| demand it. To a point you can expand to counteract this.
| Ultimately though, every company either goes bust or reaches the
| end-state of having to raise prices and lower costs to maintain
| profit growth.
|
| Employers are not on your side. We collectively saved companies
| from going bust in the pandemic by WFH. For tech companies in
| particular who had had a decade of market-driven increases in
| labor costs, this turned into a massive opportunity to institute
| what I call permanent layoff culture. These companies will layoff
| 5% of their staff every year forever for no other reason to
| suppress labor costs.
|
| [1]: https://psychsafety.com/googles-project-aristotle/
|
| [2]:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tendency_of_the_rate_of_profit...
| stuffn wrote:
| If remote work didn't actually result in higher productivity
| the entire industry wouldn't be trying to ship the labor base
| to India. Everything is going overseas. Even some doctors
| offices are employing video check in services.
| wil421 wrote:
| I've heard the same thing since 1999 and yet many of us on HN
| graduated high school or college in the 2000s/2010s and have
| been employed for decade(s) with successful careers.
| gdulli wrote:
| If remote work actually resulted in higher productivity, the
| first attempt to ship the labor base offshore would have
| worked. (Not that remote is the only variable there, but you
| brought it up.) With LLMs they see an opening to try again,
| now that they view labor as commodity babysitters of LLM
| output.
| angiolillo wrote:
| Reminds me of a pair of papers from 25 years ago: Olson & Olson's
| "Distance Matters" [1] and Teasley, Covi, Krishnan, and Olson's
| "How Does Radical Collocation Help a Team Succeed? [2].
|
| If I recall correctly the benefits of collocated work only apply
| when you're actually physically proximal to collaborators.
| There's not much benefit to just "being in an office" if the
| people you work with aren't there, and even working with people
| on different floors dramatically reduces the benefit, which is
| one part of the research a lot of RTO proponents ignore.
|
| A while ago I worked on a handful of research projects in
| "virtual collocation" or "computer-supported cooperative work"
| where the holy grail was to come up with something that made
| remote teams as productive as collocated ones. It's no longer my
| area of focus so I haven't kept up on the literature -- I'd be
| interested in any hard evidence that someone has cracked that.
|
| [1](https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1207/S15327051HCI1523_4)
| [2](https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/358916.359005)
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| At one job, when we moved into a new building, we very
| deliberately located the QA for our team an aisle or two away
| from the devs. When they said, "It did this", we would just
| walk over and say "Show me". That was often very enlightening.
| "Oh, I see, the step that you didn't write down in the bug
| report is..."
|
| On the other side of the same floor would have been far enough
| to change the dynamic. And the building was not that big.
| runako wrote:
| This is fascinating, and possibly relevant to companies that hire
| for the long term. Unfortunately, that excludes most of corporate
| America.
| riskable wrote:
| In the current business environment, employees aren't _people_
| they 're "jobs". As long as they're treated as "jobs" why do
| you care where they sit as long as "the job" gets done? In
| fact, you shouldn't care WTF they're doing at _all_ as long as
| "the job" gets done! Money goes in and work gets done. Simple,
| right?
|
| Forcing employees into the office is just pretending. Companies
| that do this are like little girls having a tea party with
| their dolls. They can see the faces and pretend like their
| presence at the desk is somehow an important part of "the job".
| diogenescynic wrote:
| What about all the time spent commuting? For all the drawbacks of
| working remotely, the amount of time/energy saved not commuting
| has to be the most significant. I get more 'focus time' where I
| can deeply concentrate when I work from home. If I have a
| commute, I feel frazzled and drained by the time I even step foot
| in the office.
| lenerdenator wrote:
| I will say this: as a person with ADHD, I, _personally_ , am more
| productive in the office than I am at home. When I was hybrid,
| I'd go to the local library to work. That also helped.
|
| It's also worth noting that I don't have a family to take care
| of, and that there are still issues with working in the office,
| like the commute.
|
| If I had a missus and kids, I might feel differently.
| codr7 wrote:
| Libraries or cafes for me, I need some kind of outer stimuli to
| keep me going.
|
| Most offices unfortunately drain my will to live real fast.
|
| Maybe if we tried to build offices what people enjoy spending
| time in...
| wil421 wrote:
| I'm the opposite too much noise and commotion in the office.
| Lots of people to talk to and others that stop by. WFH was much
| more efficient for me, even with distractions like interesting
| things at home and wife/kids.
| lenerdenator wrote:
| See, I do remember that when I was in the office pre-COVID.
| It was annoying.
|
| The thing is, though, is most days, it's just me and my
| manager working at the office. Pretty much all of my
| teammates are in India, or are somewhere else in the US/CAN.
| We do have an intern but he's not here most days. As a
| result, it's basically me driving to the office to host
| meetings with people who, unless they buy plane tickets,
| cannot come by my desk to bother me.
|
| So I've got that part of it going for me, which is nice.
| rcpt wrote:
| I've been remote for 5 years at faang. It's ridiculous they
| haven't fired me yet. The productivity hit from remote work is
| huge.
|
| For self-contained coding exercises remote is fine. AI does all
| that now but I guess I still need to prompt it.
|
| Getting myself impactful projects, winning turf wars, new
| collaboration with a cousin team? Forget it. Impossible from
| home.
| wiseowise wrote:
| > winning turf wars, new collaboration with a cousin team
|
| Get a life, bro.
| rcpt wrote:
| Did you miss the part about me being remote for 5 years?
| maerF0x0 wrote:
| > These results can help to explain national trends: workers in
| their twenties who often need mentorship and workers over forty
| who often provide mentorship are more likely to return to the
| office.
|
| Too bad the former is the least likely to be hired thanks to
| "AI", and the latter the most likely to be laid off cause of
| ageism that says "You cant teach an old dog new tricks"
| warkdarrior wrote:
| Off-the-shelf AI can replace workers in their twenties and AI
| fine-tuned over a few months for your company's needs can
| replace workers in their forties. Problem solved!
| theideaofcoffee wrote:
| That's great for whoever wants this to justify their fearful,
| uninspired, fashion-driven back to office policies, love that for
| them, I hope you get the company you deserve. I also hope all of
| your best people (read: most expensive) leave, because aren't
| these dumb decisions always done to prod people into leaving
| without paying out severance? See also: fiefdom-building by
| cowardly managers, "leaders" who hate their home life, etc.
|
| I, however, will continue to never go back to an office and will
| continue to be productive far beyond what I can be in an office.
| Why is that? Because I'm a professional who is quite good at the
| work he does and is able to collaborate with people regardless of
| their location and lead successful projects and can adapt myself
| to others' working styles. Thanks, hold the babysitting, please.
| JamesBarney wrote:
| This work would suggest that the WFH movement would see a rise in
| sr. engineer salaries and a reduction in jr. engineers salaries,
| which we haven't seen.
| throw-the-towel wrote:
| Does the industry even have as much junior folks as it used to?
| Because cutting them, or not hiring them in the first place, is
| an alternative to lowering their salaries.
| bradly wrote:
| One of my best and most productive work situations was remote
| with a week[0] together every quarter. Key to this was scheduling
| the next trip while we were together to make sure it was on the
| books. We got to meet new team members, share some meals
| together, work through new architecture designs with a
| whiteboard, and plan. Not much got done during that week, but we
| sure got a lot done each quarter.
|
| [0]: This was actually Monday-Thursday with travel on Friday
| jsight wrote:
| This sounds like what PI planning is imagined to be in "safe".
| bradfa wrote:
| I feel that my highest productivity was the 4 years I spent on
| the same team working remotely but having many interactions per
| day with my coworkers and manager. I only physically was in-
| person with my team for 1 week during that 4 year span. But every
| day I was working WITH my teammates, interactively. My manager
| was open and honest about things and the company culture embraced
| discussing "What if we did X?" to debate how we could improve
| things and dream up new ideas.
|
| Prior to that I worked in-person in offices doing similar types
| of engineering. I was never as productive there but I did see
| more sides of the business and I got to do more varied tasks.
| Having lunch or going for a short walk physically with teammates
| and non-teammates definitely spawns opportunities which otherwise
| don't naturally happen.
|
| Now, I do consulting/contracting remotely. Often I'm working on
| weeks to months long contracts. All my customers are remote. It's
| very clear that my value is in short term results, to get the
| customer past their current problem. If any planning for the
| future is found, I recommend it, but unless the customer wants me
| to pursue it then the recommendation is all I give.
|
| All 3 kinds of work have pros and cons. I do miss regularly
| having lunch with coworkers. I _MUCH_ prefer my remote work
| commute, flexibility, and work /life balance.
| sureglymop wrote:
| Not to simplify too much, but I think it comes down to
| accountability and responsibility.
|
| I've worked remotely with a team where everyone was very
| engaged, saw similar shared goals to work towards and everyone
| took accountability for doing work to reach that.
|
| I've also worked remotely with people who basically barely
| noticed the work everyone else even did, nor cared, nor
| appreciated it. There was a sense of, let's just get any
| interactions over with and go back to our doing the minimum we
| can to not get fired.
| stego-tech wrote:
| This all vibes with what I observed during the pandemic myself,
| also in a Fortune 500 SV enterprise:
|
| * Working together in close proximity resulted in higher
| distractions that lowered output, but made it easier to identify
| meaningful priorities beyond what was on the Sprint Board and
| jump in to help when necessary. This extended to mentoring
| Juniors as well, who thrived on proximity-based work to a
| significant degree.
|
| * Working apart allowed us to work at our individual best, with
| the consequence of a loss of cohesion. This was mitigated through
| daily standup ceremonies as a way of checking-in and asking for
| help, and I credit a string of three excellent people managers
| for building that functional working relationship between
| colleagues who didn't share timezones or continents. This was
| frustrating for Juniors to adapt to ( _especially_ new hires),
| but at the same time the independent working mode forced them to
| figure stuff out on their own, learn to ask for help when they
| needed it, and build confidence in their own skills.
|
| * The best balance involved hybrid/remote work models with a
| yearly (ideally quarterly or semi-annually), week-long "crunch
| week" of sorts. The global team got together in-person for a
| week, did some off-site activities first (offroading,
| volunteering, sight-seeing) to build rapport, then we spent a
| week in a conference room together banging out eighteen months(!)
| of bigger project timelines, planning, and triaging in-person
| issues with other teams (like PKI changes). This was always
| followed on with nightly dinners where we dropped work entirely
| and focused on human connection, especially with Juniors who
| lacked self-confidence still and needed to be shown that work
| isn't what defines existence.
|
| My ultimate takeaway is that it's all about balancing the three
| for optimal outcomes: letting folks knuckle down at home or
| privately when they need to focus, building in-person
| collaboration around intention rather than spontaneity of
| presence, and ensuring global teams meet together regularly (in-
| person and over video conferencing) to build rapport.
| apercu wrote:
| Huh. Well, what's the average tenure at a company now?
|
| Bureau of Labor Stats says: As of January 2024, the median tenure
| for all U.S. wage-and-salary workers was 3.9 years.
|
| So that means we should all be working remotely, if productivity
| was the actual thing the capital & management classes were trying
| to solve.
|
| https://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2024/median-tenure-with-current...
| boh wrote:
| During COVID, studies supporting working from home leading to
| higher productivity were highlighted. Now when companies want
| people to come back, studies supporting working in an office
| producing higher productivity are highlighted. Funny how that
| works and this post is already 100+ points.
|
| *cant wait to see those down votes for this comment
| sc68cal wrote:
| It's called consent manufacturing
| hshdhdhj4444 wrote:
| If an alien was reading many of the comments here, before they
| knew much about the world, they'd probably first believe that
| working from office is this new fangled idea that had never
| existed before.
|
| Once they were shocked to learn that until 2019 office work was
| the norm, they'd probably expect to see massive improvements in
| employee health, satisfaction, productivity, reduced commuter
| miles, reduced emissions, children with better mental health,
| children doing better in school, etc.
|
| Imagine their shock when they find that none of those are true,
| and in fact, some of those metrics have actually gone the other
| way.
|
| This isn't to suggest remote work cannot be helpful. Maybe things
| would have been far worse otherwise. But (a) it's very hard to
| see in the data, and (b) remote work proponents need to stop
| sounding like the world disnt exist before 2020 and/or as if
| everyone was just miserable and life was basically impossible at
| the time.
| lnsru wrote:
| The thing is that office can be very different environment. I
| have my own office at current workplace. But I was sitting in
| 20 seat open office too. People were hiding in the toilets to
| do some coding...
| wrxd wrote:
| So, when are we forbidding teams to have members in different
| offices?
|
| I must have also missed the email telling everything about the
| re-org so that teams will only need to work with other teams in
| their proximity
| exabrial wrote:
| Precisely why we do:
|
| * No Mail Mondays. Engineers are deep in the code and are not
| disturbed other than the on-call. Engineers are expected to have
| a stack of work they can make the progress on if they get stuck.
| These days are in-office.
|
| * Work from Home Wed: Coordinated work from home day. This forces
| everyone to be available online, and nobody is missing in-person
| meetings. Response times expected to be quick in slack.
|
| While not perfect, and we do have some employees that struggle
| with output on WFH days, this is far more productive than 5
| straight days in office.
| hephaes7us wrote:
| I like this kind of thinking. I wonder though if you're paying
| as much attention to see who's "struggling with output" on
| Tues, Thurs, and Fri?
|
| As in, are you skeptical of WFH and looking for downsides, or
| does your particular team just work better with more time in
| the office? I only ask because it's foreign to me; offices
| completely destroy my focus and I don't know how anyone does
| it.
| indycliff wrote:
| Currently sitting in an open office floor plan surrounded by 4
| other developers less than 3 feet away speaking in Hindi. I don't
| speak Hindi. There are constraints to this open door distraction.
| alikimovich wrote:
| From personal experience after working 4 years remotely, I
| started going to the office three days a week, and while
| efficiency per day is definitely smaller, we achieve much better
| results much faster, just because we can solve a lot of problems
| just where we are, without scheduling meetings or waiting for
| people to answer. Not to mention how much more I personally learn
| from my colleagues.
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