[HN Gopher] What remote work does to engineering productivity ___________________________________________________________________ What remote work does to engineering productivity Author : tonioab Score : 49 points Date : 2021-03-14 20:25 UTC (2 hours ago) (HTM) web link (www.okayhq.com) (TXT) w3m dump (www.okayhq.com) | Disgardia wrote: | I used to be alone, so being lonely is boosting my productivity, | i can do whatever i want | Shank wrote: | I think there's always some skepticism that should be expressed | around wild articles like this. | | At a core level, remote work during the COVID-19 pandemic is | unlikely to mirror remote work outside of the pandemic. It's one | thing if you choose to work remotely and if your company | willingly embraces remote work. It's an entirely different beast | if your company is forced to transition to remote work while | stay-at-home orders keep everyone locked indoors with minimal | activities to do outside of work. | | The pandemic is challenging for many people, including people | like me, who are full time remote workers. It's a poor time to | evaluate the productivity differences of remote versus non-remote | workers. | | This article states: | | > Operational improvements -- like scientific experiments -- | shouldn't operate on guesses and hope. In our current mass | experiment of remote work, we should form hypotheses, act | deliberately, and measure results. | | One of the most critical things you must consider when designing | an experiment is confounding variables. COVID-19 didn't just | shift people to remote work. It created a lot of stress, anxiety, | and changed society dramatically in more ways than simply moving | people's office locations. It cannot be ignored in judging the | efficacy of remote work as a subject. | [deleted] | sokoloff wrote: | It added some and also removed some of the possible | distractions from remote work. | | Kids at home for schooling is an addition. Many of the fun | activities being closed is a removal. There's no bar or | restaurant to get together with friends, no club/rec level | sports to play, etc. | | I agree that there are a lot of confounding variables, but | think many were pro-efficiency rather than all being | detrimental. | endisneigh wrote: | What a strange take. I disagree, I believe people in general | will be more unproductive if there's nothing fun to do. | tracerbulletx wrote: | Having no outlet for socializing or getting a change of | scenery is a massively bad thing when you also suddenly find | yourself working in your house all day for a lot of people. | There might be some personality types that don't mind, but | it's driving me bonkers personally. | cybwraith wrote: | > There's no bar or restaurant to get together with friends, | no club/rec level sports to play, etc. | | Not having these kinds of things available for long periods | of time can cause people who relied upon them for an outlet | to become depressed, which almost always hurts productivity | eecc wrote: | Yeah, and however much I enjoyed the opportunity to spend | copious amount of time with my son when the kindergartens were | shut, it did destroy my capacity as I juggled parental | oversight shifts with my wife... | ivanhoe wrote: | Absolutely, working from home is only one possible form of the | remote work, and probably the most boring one. Working from a | park, or a caffe, or a local hub, or some hotel anywhere in the | world are all much nicer options, but quite impossible these | days. | leoc wrote: | Children not being in school is another major difference. | deathanatos wrote: | This is an ad, Hacker News: | | > _[More sophisticated tools] can understand these aspects ' in- | depth impact on your productivity, catching the unseen blockers | and pain points that remote work has brought. Then, based on that | data, you can implement changes and measure the results._ | | ... which links to their product. The submitter/author is the co- | founder. | | > _Not only have office interruptions increased; for many | engineers, home life poses an entirely new set of challenges._ | | It's a different set of interruptions. In the office, I have all | the din and chaos of all of my coworkers around me, since private | offices and cubicles have fallen out of fashion in favor of | stuffing in as many people in as few square feet as possible. | | At home, well, I don't have an office there either, since when | the average cost of a home is north of $1M in many metros1, home | ownership is fairly out of reach, even for a SWE. No home, and no | apartment big enough, means I also don't have a home office. I | also didn't have a desk or chair, either; I started this pandemic | at a couch and coffee table, and found out the rest of the world | was too when I started shopping for desks and chairs and they | were well out of stock. | | > _If an engineer in an office needed a mouse or monitor, the | company would buy them the relevant tools._ | | Most companies will buy tooling for, but the company; that is, | whatever is purchased is owned by the company. I don't partake in | this, as it's an incredible amount of e-waste. | | 1and in most of the data I've seen, rent:wage is high in _any_ | geo. "SWEs are paid more" is true, but it doesn't change the | cost of a house. Put them in terms of salary years to control for | changes over time, and it's 3-10x (depending on location) more | expensive for me than it was for my father, who held a similar | "highly paid" service industry job. | heavyset_go wrote: | > _and in most of the data I 've seen, rent:wage is high in any | geo. "SWEs are paid more" is true, but it doesn't change the | cost of a house._ | | In other words, worker compensation has not kept up with | increases in the cost of living, and even engineers are not | exempt from this trend. | anonytrary wrote: | Easiest way to benefit from decreased value of the dollar is | to switch companies and demand a more fair salary. This at | least worked for me. Companies will start hiring engineers at | a higher rate are less willing to increase compensation for | existing engineers if they don't have to. Most people do not | ask for what they want. | samatman wrote: | I've been remote for three years now, and the last couple of | months my productivity has plummeted, this has been a problem | company wide. | | It's the pandemic. Next question. | vz8 wrote: | Maybe I'm the outlier here, but with the pandemic came a | significant cultural shift, reducing office politics, and it's | been something of a productivity renaissance for my organization. | | Communication has downshifted to a few mandatory team and all- | staff gatherings, one on ones with direct reports, and that's | about it. We handle things through email and Teams for urgent | matters. Overall, management has been light touch, trust but | verify, and staff are given flexibility to set "project hours" to | avoid interruptions. | | Frank communication about what works, what doesn't, and setting | realistic agendas (from the meeting level up to the epic | projects) has been very helpful. | bengale wrote: | A lot of the differences seem to have come down to how flexible | an organisation is to change in general. | philmcp wrote: | I think offering positions on a 4 day week (e.g. 32hrs) is one | possible solution. | | Developers are more burnt out than ever whilst needing less money | to live. Remote work generally reduces living costs: no travel | expenses, no expensive lunches, no expensive coffees etc. | | A 4 day week reduces burnout at a time when many developers are | spending less. Of course, the best outcome would be 4 day roles @ | 100% salary, but often this isn't possible. | | I honestly believe in years to come we will look down on the 5 | day working week in the same way we currently do with 15hr | factory shifts during the industrial revolution. It blows my mind | that 99% of office roles are still 5 days / week, Monday to | Friday - why is there basically no variation on this model? | | It annoys me so much that I've just launched | https://www.fourdayweek.io/ (shameless plug) | geoduck14 wrote: | I think there are some very real cultural limitations around a | 4 day (10 hr) work day. For one, my kids need to be picked up | from school and they need to eat dinner. | | Perhaps in 18 years, when I'm an empty nester, I can revisit | this opinion. | philmcp wrote: | Sorry, I wasn't talking about a compressed 5 day week. I was | talking about 4 x 8hr days @ 80% of salary. There are many | companies starting to offer this, some at full salary. | kshacker wrote: | Talking of cultural limitations and extending them to other | examples, what if I am able to work 6 days? Can I do 7 hours | on 5 days and 5 hours on the 6th to make up the 40? Or how | about I work just 35 hours a week? | | Why would I do that? ... just saying. Maybe my family needs | allow me to spend only 7 dedicated hours (plus commute) for | work. | | I think the corporations will go crazy coordinating such | things. Retail where this happens is quite different and | continuity of 1-person to another may not be important there, | but in many corporate roles, continuity is important. | sul_tasto wrote: | For some reason, our management is still under the impression | that we're being paid for the amount of time we are available, | rather than the value we produce. Our company sent us all to | agile training 18 months ago, but our managers seem to be the | only ones who didn't pass the cert test. | goxygini wrote: | You could consider coming to Switzerland. Working 32hrs/week is | very popular there. For example jobs.ch has 7368 offers in IT | right now and 2138 of them have the "80%" option. | angrais wrote: | I get it and agree that four day work week would be nice for | mental health, potentially productivity, etc. | | My question to you: why 4 days? Why not 3? Why not 2? Seems as | arbitrary as 5. | sdesol wrote: | > False Assumption #1: Geographic Location Doesn't Matter | | I can't find it, but maybe somebody from Microsoft can, but they | (Microsoft) actually found building distance made a difference in | productivity. This was in a research paper that I read, but for | the life of me, I can't find it. I should also add a disclaimer | that, this research paper was done before remote work became more | of a norm and we had less technical options. | | > Night owl behavior is actually the exception, not the norm. | | I'm currently not tracking hours that people work with my | developer analytics solution, but I think if would be flawed to | just take into consideration when a pull request is authored to | gauge behaviour. | | If you look at the pull request information for vscode (my goto | project for good data points) at: | | https://public-001.gitsense.com/insights/github/repos?q=wind... | | you can see that for some pull requests, there can still be quite | a bit of work from when a Pull request is authored to when it | get's merged. | mprovost wrote: | The classic study of how distance affects communication was | done by Thomas Allen in the 70s and results in the Allen Curve | [0] which shows that people are four times as likely to | communicate regularly with someone sitting six feet away as | with someone 60 feet away, and that they almost never | communicate with colleagues on separate floors or in separate | buildings. | | [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allen_curve | musingsole wrote: | I submit pull requests based around a few hours throughout the | day my team seems most likely to be between tasks (and so | likely to check out a PR). Such as around 11 or 2 for pre/post | lunch ramp down/up. Point being, the time my PRs are submitted | has no bearing on when I did the work for that PR. | | Using repo metadata to arrive at productivity metrics always | strikes me as willfully bullheaded. If you timestamp my | keystrokes, you can't know when I designed the algorithm I'm | coding with those keystrokes. Spoiler alert: it was probably | while I was falling asleep the night before. | sdesol wrote: | I wouldn't go as far as calling it "willfully bullheaded" as | I do believe knowing when somebody creates a pull request can | provide some data points worth mulling over. Having studied | hundreds of popular open source projects, there does seem to | be a pattern as to when people prefer to create a merge | request, which is mid week. | | I do agree that GitPrime, GitHub Insights and other similar | solutions are pushing developer metrics in a dangerous | direction, by latching onto low hanging fruit metrics. I | written a bit about what I believe is a positive direction | and this is focusing on impact, which I talk about at | | https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=26457072&goto=threads%. | .. | lemoncucumber wrote: | I started a new job during the pandemic, and the experience has | been much worse than I expected. There's no opportunity to ask | simple questions without always worrying that I'm interrupting. | Whereas in an office it's easy to see who's on the phone or | focusing on something and simply ask someone else (or wait). | | There's also no opportunity for the kind of work-related | conversations that might happen over lunch where I'd learn more | about the team, the org, the project, and the history of it all. | In the past I've gotten a lot out of being present for casual | conversations among more experienced teammates and asking the | occasional question. | rovr138 wrote: | >There's no opportunity to ask simple questions without always | worrying that I'm interrupting. Whereas in an office it's easy | to see who's on the phone or focusing on something and simply | ask someone else (or wait). | | Just ask the question on a channel or send a message to the | person. They'll reply when they get back or can. | | And to the other side, if you get a message, you don't have to | drop it all to respond immediately. We are all adults and | professionals. I'm not going to be doing nothing waiting for | the answer while you reply. | | > There's also no opportunity for the kind of work-related | conversations that might happen over lunch where I'd learn more | about the team, the org, the project, and the history of it | all. | | This is true. We've worked out some times in the past where we | get to expense things and everyone just chills and talks. | People can come in and out, turn cameras on or not. It's nice | to just talk. | | > I started a new job during the pandemic, | | I will say, it depends on the team and company. I've been | remote for years and it varies a lot. If the company/team | wasn't remote before, they might not have the tools or | knowledge to make it work. That's what I'm gathering from a lot | of friends comparing our situations. | mrzimmerman wrote: | I know it can seem silly, but asking people to have lunch via | video chat is a great way to get around some of that distance. | | Honestly this is just leadership dropping the ball for you and | the rest of the team (though it can be easy to miss since it's | sort of a hidden problem). They should put more remote team | things together like group learning sessions or just having | coffee for 30 minutes to chat. It's not hard to get on a | calendar and although work required socialization is usually | eye-roll worthy it does help. | leoedin wrote: | I'm in the same boat, and it is definitely worse than starting | a job in normal times. | | I think it's an invisible problem because the decision makers | and influential people in the organisation were mostly around | before lockdown, so they already know everyone - they know who | to ask when they have a problem, they have a feeling for who is | friendly, who can be helpful etc. So to most of the staff that | aspect just doesn't cross their radar. | | It's very easy for remote work to feel much more contractual - | you do the work needed for your team and deliver it. You lose | the wider context - which I think makes it very hard for the | wider team to change direction or have new ideas. The fallout | of that inflexibility is intangible and immeasurable, but I bet | it will come eventually. | | An organisation has to both be productive on a daily basis and | choose correctly what to work on. If you don't do both, you | fail. Working remotely broadly improves the first, but I think | without really good systems in place it completely throws off | the second one. | waheoo wrote: | You have to create a culture of safety to enable people to | ask questions. And if you get annoyed by the repeating | questions you need to back that up with extremely accessible | documentation around culture and expectations. | jcun4128 wrote: | Does your chat service not have a status? It usually can | indicate like "in a meeting, busy, etc..." I usually make sure | at least that they're not presenting or have busy on. | | There is one aspect that kind of sucks, how everything you post | is public/persists, I'm the dunce boy oh well. | | The positive though is future people that have the same problem | can search in the app and see the solution. | spideymans wrote: | >Does your chat service not have a status? It usually can | indicate like "in a meeting, busy, etc..." I usually make | sure at least that they're not presenting or have busy on. | | That depends on everyone being disciplined enough to keep | their status up to date. | jcun4128 wrote: | Yeah if it's Teams/integrated in Outlook calendar it's | pretty good... sometimes people just set it to always busy | ha. | ArkanExplorer wrote: | This is even more difficult if starting a new job _and_ | changing your job qualification - eg. moving from SWE to | product manager. Making that kind of leap without being able to | rely on a physical office environment is too difficult. | | This Government response to COVID, and WFH, seems to have | frozen people's career and social status as it was at the end | of 2019. | wikibob wrote: | Be the squeaky wheel. It is to your benefit. | | Drop the questions in a public channel. | | People who are confident about their skills are less worried | about appearing to look dumb for not knowing something. | | Because you know you're competent at your skills, so if you | can't figure out something, obviously it's poorly documented. | Therefore just ask loudly. | halfmatthalfcat wrote: | Completely agree. People want you to ask questions because, | in a remote world, your visibility is via the real-time | channels (Slack, Teams, etc). | paranorman wrote: | I switched jobs during the pandemic and my productivity has been | incredible. I was doing great WFH in my last role but my current | employer has much better support for this environment. | | I won't claim that any single tool is a miracle but I have found | Clockwise combined with Google Calendar to make coordinating with | others a breeze. The automatic status management in Slack when | you're in "focus time" or a meeting is great for signaling to | others whether their question is better suited for a public | channel over DMs. | | For me at least, productivity when WFH comes from having a proper | environment (noise cancelling headphones and an office are a life | saver when your partner is watching the screaming toddler) and | working in an organization that embraces distributed teams. | | Edit: If you're considering a switch to an org that does remote | right, feel free to hit me up for a quick chat. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2021-03-14 23:01 UTC)