[HN Gopher] Work from home and productivity: evidence from perso... ___________________________________________________________________ Work from home and productivity: evidence from personnel and analytics data [pdf] Author : amadeuspagel Score : 40 points Date : 2021-06-11 00:15 UTC (22 hours ago) (HTM) web link (bfi.uchicago.edu) (TXT) w3m dump (bfi.uchicago.edu) | dang wrote: | Whoops, I put this in the second-chance pool but it looks like | this already had a discussion. Sorry! | | _Work from Home and Productivity_ - | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27154368 - May 2021 (131 | comments) | taneq wrote: | > Employees with children living at home increased hours | workedmore than those without children at home, and suffered a | bigger decline in productivity than thosewithout children. | | This tells you all you need to know about the study. You can't | analyse the relative effectiveness of working from home and | working in the office when you're conflating "remote work" with | "trying to get something done on your laptop on the kitchen table | while working from home due to the pandemic, while your two | early-primary-school-aged kids, who you are simultaneously trying | to home-school due to the pandemic, are running amok in the | lounge room." | _jal wrote: | > This tells you all you need to know about the study. | | Your comment only tells me you wanted a different study than | the one they did. | | Asking what happened in the real world, including in a range of | work situations, is a very interesting question to ask. | | Looking for/at the delta between optimal work-at-home and the | office would _also_ be interesting, for different reasons. | taneq wrote: | Then call it what it is, "Working from home while | homeschooling during a pandemic, compared with normal office | work: Evidence from the trenches." | gnicholas wrote: | > _Your comment only tells me you wanted a different study | than the one they did._ | | Of course, don't we all? It would be much more useful to have | data on what remote work will be like in the future (i.e., | when kids are in school/daycare). | | There is something interesting about knowing the pros/cons of | what happened during the pandemic, but most of the time | research is done so that the conclusions can inform future | decisions. Here, the future decisions about WFH would benefit | from disentangling the WFH aspect from the COVID-induced | remote school aspect. | | One way to accomplish this is to assume that all workers who | have kids (and lost productivity as a result) would have had | the same productivity gains of people without kids. There are | probably smarter/more nuanced ways to determine the global | pros/cons of WFH in the future. | ClumsyPilot wrote: | A study of unprepared people being locked at home without | childcare or schooling, without time to setup an office and | in companies in dissarray is about as representative of home | working as people falling overboard the titanic are | representatice of health benefits of swimming. | | Similarly if a group of tourists gets lost in the jungle we | don't call that a study of prehistoric tribal life. | PragmaticPulp wrote: | I managed mixed in-office and WFH teams before the pandemic. | | There was a stark productivity drop every summer when kids were | out on summer break. This includes parents with dedicated home | offices who had been WFH for many years. | | The effect was so predictable that we planned for lower | velocity during summer months. It was also common practice for | WFH employees to spend more time in the office for more focus | during summer months if they lived close enough. | | That's not to say that kids are the biggest WFH productivity | killer. IMO the people who struggled most were the young people | who thought they could travel around and work remotely because | it doesn't matter where they're working from. It turns out it's | plainly obvious that they don't get much work done when they're | away from home. But that's another story. | jvanderbot wrote: | Vitriolic discussion around this. I'm completely unsurprised. All | the key findings are easy to see in my own group. People are | working longer hours because they are unaccustomed to working | from home near their gaming rigs, or are making up unproductive | day hours that their kids interrupted. Its harder to drop in and | get quick exchange of information, leading to more meetings, etc. | | The danger is that people (c-suite) see this and think it can't | be done. It can, but COVID was an imperfect laboratory for | studying this. | PragmaticPulp wrote: | I managed mixed WFH teams before COVID. It was widely | understood that WFH was a productivity obstacle long before | quarantines. We usually gave it as a perk to high performing | employees who had already proven their ability to get things | done and self-manage, or for exceptional employees who couldn't | or wouldn't relocate near an office. | | The idea that WFH is no different than in-office work didn't | really become popular until COVID. | | Offices and in-person communication are unmatched for | collaboration and communication efficiency. Any company doing | work that requires significant collaboration (most tech | companies of size) pays a price for WFH. For many companies | that overhead is fine if accounted for and managed, but it's | still a price. | saas_sam wrote: | I remember reading on a different post (can't find it) that | productivity went up sharply at the beginning of the pandemic- | induced WFH trend, but then subsided over time. The thinking was | that people were on their toes early on for fear of being viewed | as a slacker, but then once they adjusted to WFH they relaxed. | Maybe someone else saw this study... | mikelward wrote: | People were running on adrenaline at first. Then the fatigue of | having kids at home and not having the usual ways to let off | steam eventually hit. | rodcoelho wrote: | This doesn't really take into consideration that a lot of | businesses/teams within orgs had to quickly pivot strategies due | to market conditions. Scrapping plans and shifting priorities | last minute, a.k.a. thrash, comes at a cost. So yes it's not | totally surprising that people had to work more hours to | accomplish a similar output | stinkbomb wrote: | My company started doing a serious WFH 'experiment' about 18 | months before COVID hit. The team I oversee consists of a dozen | or so teams of about 40-50 developers each, with a manager that | reports directly to me. I don't manage the devs directly, but | deal with dev productivity and budgets for (amongst other things) | staffing. So our N is not small, but not huge either. | | 50% of our devs - randomly selected - were offered the chance to | WFH, and about 95% of them wound up doing WFH at least 3 days a | week, rising to 5 days a week after a few months. The other 50% | stayed in the office. The teams that went WFH and the other 50% | don't work on the same projects or in the same location. | | After about 6 months, we started looking at productivity metrics | using a couple Pinpoint-like tools that we built. Simple metrics | like: backlog change time, on-time delivery, workload balance, | LOC/Checkins ratio, etc. We also tracked things like non-code | calendar hours, time logging delays, and other non-development | related activity. | | Neither group knew what we were tracking or how often. The | results were pretty clear as soon as 6 - 9 months in: WFH numbers | sucked pretty hard. Everything was down across the board, and it | seemed like WFH devs were spending 15-30% more time in non- | development tasks, their PR reject rate was as much as 40% higher | than office-based devs. | | Things were so bad that if COVID had not hit, we were going to | abandon the idea of letting people WFH altogether outside of | extreme circumstances. | | We aren't a unique shop. We're not doing anything out of the | ordinary - we're developing on a variety of web and RT device | platforms, but doing the same stuff in similar ways as other | companies. We have a pretty flat team structure, and teams have a | lot of flexibility and decision-making power, which has always | worked well for us. | | However, it's clear to me and the other execs that WFH absolutely | does not work for us. | PragmaticPulp wrote: | This matches my experience as well: Measurably reduced | velocity, noticeably higher rates of rejected PRs and broken | builds, and a palpable worsening of productivity and team | happiness. | | The strangest part is that if you asked individual developers, | they would insist that WFH made them more productive and | increased their efficiency. Yet managers and the data | universally agreed that the opposite was true. | | There's something about WFH that puts distance between | individuals and the overall big picture reality in a way that | makes these overall issues difficult to see from individual | perspectives. It also slowed and dampened all of the feedback | loops, giving people the wrong impression that they were | working on the right thing or producing proper results until | much later. We tried compensating with even more manager effort | and over-the-top communication repetition to try to keep | everyone informed but it didn't really help. | | There were a few exceptions of people who had identical levels | of performance during WFH, but they generally achieved it with | significantly more work and proactive communication. Those who | struggled the most were juniors who felt like they fell through | the cracks. | | It's a difficult topic to discuss on HN because few of us like | to admit that WFH is, on average, a struggle for companies. No | one likes the idea that WFH comes at a cost. | layoric wrote: | Would make a great write up. Interested in the details around | what was changed in the company to support this hybrid | approach. Also breakdown of devs first time WFH. | | From my experience, office->hybrid doesn't work well as the the | staff don't have the same level of support and processes don't | change to adjust to the change. My first year of WFH (nearly 7 | years ago now) was a pretty rough adjustment even though I | wanted to do it (glad I stuck with it). | | Like most things in life, "Is WFH is more productive?", "it | depends". Props for doing the experiment and sharing details. | tayo42 wrote: | Does your company help make remote work easier? I guess I could | understand that if you took a group used to an office and then | forced them to be remote there would be some struggles. I think | effective remote work has a bit of a learning curve and needs | some investment up front. I think you would need to believe the | potential is there and worth chasing. | wcarss wrote: | This is really interesting! | | Do you know anything about the tools/methodologies of the teams | that went part WFH and the adjustments they made when changing | up their workstyle? | | For example, do you know things like whether meetings were held | at their previously scheduled times, vs. whether people started | shifting them around to "meet when we're all here", or whether | conversations and decisions were pushed organizationally to be | more public, visible, and documented, vs made by whoever was in | the office, because they could have a hallway chat? | | Anecdotally, a friend of mine works at a "remote-first" | company, where even when the whole team is in the office, | they'll typically meet through zoom/hangouts at their desks, | and I have other friends who are "the remote person" on an in- | office team. There's a _huge_ gap in the experiences of those | two, which is why I ask about those kind of factors in your | experience. | renewiltord wrote: | Interesting data driven approach to the problem. Would you be | available to share more details about aggregate outcomes in | private? Curious if you were able to slice out common patterns. | geodel wrote: | I hope people do not much from this study done in a single IT | Service company based in India. One critically important thing to | remember is they are "Outlay based" instead of "Outcome based". | So things measured are hours billed, time-sheets filled and | reports generated. What work got done and was it even half useful | to client is of secondary importance at these companies. | | I interviewed few years back so thing they ask it if person is | married or have kids because they are likely to take more | vacations. | | I wish they actually detailed the company name. Because if they | did and my guess is correct this company is getting hammered as | J2EE/.net support model is collapsing. There were some very large | layoffs in last few year even before Covid. | st8675309 wrote: | Surprised this post isn't getting more comments. The result is | pretty clear with over 10,000 participants in the study. | | >>Total hours worked increased by roughly 30%, including a rise | of 18% in working after normal business hours. Average output did | not significantly change. Therefore, productivity fell by about | 20%. Time spent on coordination activities and meetings | increased, but uninterrupted work hours shrank considerably. | tetranomiga wrote: | >The result is pretty clear with over 10,000 participants in | the study. | | They're all from the same Asian company, it's far from clear. | altdataseller wrote: | All from the same company though. | rootusrootus wrote: | Anecdotally, I've seen this happen on my team, and it is the | single biggest factor that makes me somewhat receptive to going | back into the office. It's easier to draw a line between work | and home that way. | | Maybe we should just turn Slack off altogether outside of | business hours, and only enable it in emergencies. LOL | chasedehan wrote: | You should turn Slack off outside business hours! And, remove | from your phone. If there is a true emergency, this is why | people are on call. | | This applies equally to whether wfh or in office. | geodel wrote: | > Surprised this post isn't getting more comments. | | From article: | | "The company that provided data is one of the world's largest | IT services companies. They have over 150,000 employees who | work with clients across the globe. Most work in the home | country, a rapidly- developing Asian nation." | | This is about a half-assed Indian "IT Services" company. (From | where I am. Need to specify lest I also be branded as racist | white dude or whatever). So there is hardly anything to learn | in general. Of course similar type IT companies can learn that | their lazy micro-managers need to do even more micro managing | to get anything done. | | The only thing I learned is that one can get even prestigious | institution like University of Chicago to do shady shit if | there is enough money to motivate. | mym1990 wrote: | Pretty hostile here from multiple angles. You ok? | geodel wrote: | Never been better. Thanks for asking! | carabiner wrote: | Interesting. This contradicts the prevailing HN sentiment that | WFH increases productivity because there's less time spent | socializing or dealing with distractions. | postalrat wrote: | I'm confident that HN sentiment is a fantasy created by | people who are barely working. | Spooky23 wrote: | It varies dramatically by circumstance. I had coworkers who | struggled with 3-4 kids and working spouse at home. | | For me, my son is 9 and my wife was partially at home. No big | deal for my productivity. For my sister, she sold her car and | hired a nanny for a year. | songshuu wrote: | While it is given a brief nod in the paper, it is worth | reiterating: | | WFH during a global pandemic is not the same as WFH generally. | | I say this as someone who has been remote for years. | | Run this same study starting in September (barring huge Delta | variant outbreak in the US) and you'll see a totally different | set of numbers. | adflux wrote: | I have been unfortunate enough to be "diagnosed" with ADHD at a | young age. Oh how strange it is that a child can't concentrate | with 25 of his peers hopping and chatting around him, let's | medicate him as soon as possible! /rant off | | Well, a few years ago I rented an office space with a friend of | mine, just the two of us in a very spacious (100m2), light and | well-ventilated office. We received no phone calls, there were no | people walking in, or cats and girlfriends asking for attention. | I had less distractions than I had at home, and much less than in | a traditional office. And it was a dedicated area for "work". A | comfortable desk and chair, two monitors and a fast pc. | | All these factors made it so much easier to concentrate and get | into the flow... If I had to put a number on it I'd say I would | be at least 1.5x more effective working in an area like that | compared to a traditional office or at my desk at home. | | I will NEVER again say that I am someone who has trouble | concentrating, having worked in a place like that. | | I wonder if (and how much) the lack of a proper workplace | explains the decrease in output when working from home in this | study. I can imagine a decrease in productivity if you have to | share your home and workplace with other people or even | children... But when your children and partner are at work, or if | you have a seperate workspace, I wonder how the two compare then. | throwasquirrel wrote: | I have been unfortunate enough to _not_ be diagnosed with ADHD | until middle age, and I 'm sorry to hear about your apparent | misdiagnosis but for people who actually do have the condition, | it's very real and it very much sucks. It's not just "someone | walked into the room and I lost my train of thought", it's "I | have one simple task to do and I know exactly how to do it and | it's been hours but I still can't make myself do the thing no | matter how much I want to." | | It's "I haven't done my taxes for 18 months even though it | would only take a day, and I _cannot_ force myself to do it no | matter how hard I try. " | | It's "I've been unable to fold my laundry for six weeks even | though I've alphabetized my cutlery drawer, twice." | | It's "I have to document this project but no matter how much I | want to just do it, I nevertheless continually find myself on | imgur or Facebook or Hacker News or some random other website | reading up about how switched-reluctance motors or Monte Carlo | tree search or whatever works." | | It's lack of executive function when you need it and it's the | inability to think about anything else when something's grabbed | your focus and it's a built-in character flaw that you can't | "just choose to not have" and it's growing up thinking you're | "just lazy" but "have so much potential" and it just. f*king. | sucks. | | If all you need in order to focus on the thing you want to | focus on is for no-one to interrupt you, you don't have ADHD. | | /rant | throwaway256978 wrote: | I haven't been diagnosed and don't know where to start. One | of my teachers had suggested in early grade school that I had | a "developmental disability" but my parents resisted and | prevented me from being assessed and prevented me from being | in the special needs program. Partially because they didn't | really believe in the concept and partially because they | feared that it would negatively affect my social development. | | I struggled throughout school, struggled even harder | throughout university (it took me _many_ years to graduate) | and am currently floundering in my job. | | I have had the exact same experience with my | taxes/laundry/reports but I have no family doctor and no way | to get one. Besides a GP, the mental health options for such | things in my city are limited to minors and adults in | assisted living situations. | cecilpl2 wrote: | > "I have to document this project but no matter how much I | want to just do it, I nevertheless continually find myself on | imgur or Facebook or Hacker News or some random other website | reading up about how switched-reluctance motors or Monte | Carlo tree search or whatever works." | | This is why I learned more about grain bins and low-head dams | this week than I did the tool I was supposed to be building. | [deleted] ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2021-06-11 23:00 UTC)