But also, keep in mind that while this sample is far from perfect, it’s many times better than people posting on lemmy claiming that they work better from home.
No, it’s literally just as biased, but in the other direction.
You’re missing my point. I get that it’s better for the individual to be full WFH. I don’t deny this. But we’re talking about productivity here in the office.
But here’s the thing, it’s not more productive to go to the office.
Have you read the actual “studies” being cited in that Forbes article?
In the first, they randomly assign employees to work from home scenarios, meaning that random employees here and there are working remotely while everyone else is in office. This is not a study of whether a company can work effectively remotely it’s a study of what happens when you take an in-office company and tell someone to work at home at random once in a while.
In the second working paper from Stanford, if you actually dig into how they’re measuring productivity, every single study they bring up is one that measures the effects when a fully in-office company, like an Indian call-center, suddenly shift to remote work because of a global pandemic, not one studying how fully remote companies or teams compare to their in office or hybrid counterparts.
Can you point me to some study that confirms that this would replace it?
No, but I can point you to many high functioning fully remote teams and companies… As mentioned above there’s not a lot of actual good research on this.
But I think most people work kind of asynchronously, and this is forcing them to sync these moments (when, IME, they happen kind of spontaneously, and I don’t see how it would replace the times when I’m talking to one person, a third overhears it and says “I have something useful to add.”), which isn’t natural.
Regular rituals like stand-ups, retros, demos etc give people some opportunities to ask questions like this, and like I mentioned, pair programming gives constant opportunity for this. When I was at a MAANG company our team also had “in-office zoom hours” where we’d all get on a zoom call for 2 hours, 3 times a week, and it was an opportunity for people to openly discuss things and ask questions as if we were all sitting at desks in the office. One team I was on used gather.town to replicate an office experience for this.
Remote work doesn’t just magically happen, you do need some culture and rituals and effort, and companies that aren’t setup for that aren’t going to thrive like that, but that doesn’t mean they can’t.
In the past year I spent half my time with a team that was entirely in-office with just us contractors being remote, and it was awful. Documentation was terrible, they constantly did conference room zoom meetings where you couldn’t tell who was talking, and critical information was communicated by tapping people on the shoulder. Did it work for them? Sure. But it was a nightmare to try and take their system and suddenly do it remote.
I then spent the second half of the year with a completely remote team, and it was amazing. Even for those of us coming in as relatively green backend devs, we excelled. We were talking with the team on slack and zoom constantly, and pair programming with multiple people on a daily basis and we learned a ton and got a ton done.
High functioning teams get stuff done, if you can put together a high functioning team just using the people who happen to live within biking distance of your office that’s great, but in the long run I have no doubt that company’s that can accept talent from anywhere will come out ahead.
Honestly, that was a lot of words to say you don’t really have anything but personal experience. No offense to you, but your claims and opinions don’t hold any water for me because I don’t know you.
As I said, if you actually have anything that can demonstrate that it’s better, or even equivalent, I would love to see it and would absolutely reconsider my position. But “everyone’s just doing it wrong” rings hollow to me because I just don’t see how it can actually replace what I see happen when everyone is together. Especially if we consider the context where people are saying hybrid is the worst, when evidence seems to be that hybrid hits the sweet spot.
Honestly, that was a lot of words to say you don’t really have anything but personal experience
That was a lot of words to give you examples of practices that make remote work productive.
And it was in response to you typing a lot of words to say absolute jack shit but bring up a Forbes article that found that when companies that weren’t ready for it suddenly shifted to remote work because of COVID, productivity dropped a little. Congratulations genius, that doesnt show that hybrid work is more productive, it shows that you don’t know how to read studies but will take a pro business rags’ trash at face value. No offense but show me a study that shows that hybrid or in-office work is more productive than remote, because you have yet to do that.
The reason you feel the need to attack me is probably because, on some level, you realize I have the stronger position as mine is actually based on the evidence. You want to believe yourself objective and evidence based, but at the same time you really want WFH to be equivalent of even better. So instead of actually being objective and evidence based, and simply accepting the reality of the situation - your position is based on nothing more than gut feeling - it’s best to try and make me not intelligent so you can disregard my position.
The reason you feel the need to attack me is probably because, on some level, you realize I have the stronger position as mine is actually based on the evidence.
What evidence? As I pointed out, the Forbes article linked above does not say that hybrid work is more productive, it says that when in-office companies who aren’t prepared for remote work suddenly have to switch, they do better with hybrid than fully remote.
You want to believe yourself objective and evidence based,
No, that would be you. I don’t think there is good evidence one way or another because it’s a) a brand new en masse practice that’s still evolving, b) people don’t tend to study those things in huge detail because companies aren’t huge fans of their workers being researched rather than working, and c) at it’s best “productivity” is a nebulous concept that is extremely difficult to measure objectively for most jobs that actually matter.
Again, I’ve already pointed out that the previous evidence you presented does not say that hybrid work is more productive, it merely examines the impact of the pandemic on companies.
So do you have any other studies to cite, or are you willing to accept that there isn’t good evidence one way or another and your anecdotal opinions from colleagues who chose to be in office are just as valid as my anecdotal opinions from colleagues who chose to work remotely?
Literally posted an article of a bunch of experts pointing to and discussing the evidence that hybrid works seems to hit the sweet spot. And you’re claiming I’ve provided nothing. The article even notes that Zoom is bringing people back to the office. And you’re suggestion is that Zoom is part of the answer. I’m cracking up over here.
So do you have any other studies to cite, or are you willing to accept that there isn’t good evidence one way or another and your anecdotal opinions from colleagues who chose to be in office are just as valid as my anecdotal opinions from colleagues who chose to work remotely?
False dichotomy. You’ve already proven that you’ll just reject evidence and the opinion of experts when you don’t like it. But I will agree that my anecdotal experience is equivalent to yours. The difference I see is that my anecdotal experience seems to line up with the evidence, yours just lines up with what you want to be true.
Literally posted an article of a bunch of experts pointing to and discussing the evidence that hybrid works seems to hit the sweet spot. And you’re claiming I’ve provided nothing. The article even notes that Zoom is bringing people back to the office. And you’re suggestion is that Zoom is part of the answer. I’m cracking up over here.
Bud, go read the above comments again. I read the studies that the Forbes article links to as its sources and tore them apart and pointed out that they do not even say what the Forbes article says they do.
Measuring a drop in the productivity of Indian call centers when they’re forced remote / hybrid because of a pandemic does not say that hybrid work is more productive, even if a pro business trash mag like Forbes somehow thinks it does.
You’ve already proven that you’ll just reject evidence and the opinion of experts when you don’t like it.
No, I’ve proven that Forbes is a trash magazine that doesn’t accurately report or draw conclusions from the studies it cites, and it just so happens that those conclusions line up with the opinions of management.
I did read your comments. It’s just pooh-poohing the evidence away. Anyone can do that. And people do it all the time when they don’t like what the evidence tells them.
I’m cracking up that you think a Forbes “journalist”, counts as an expert.
Maybe you should try reading the article with an open mind rather than manufacturing reasons to ignore it.
Maybe you should try reading the article with an open mind rather than manufacturing reasons to ignore it.
I had an open mind, but critical thinking occasionally requires criticism. Maybe you should read an article’s sources rather than accept claims from a business mag at face value.
But if you want to stop squabbling and talk evidence, let’s examine each specific claim on the basis of the evidence supporting it.
The Forbes article makes several specific claims and references:
A recent study from the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) found that remote working might not be as productive as once thought. Workers who were randomly assigned to work from home full time were 18% less productive than in-office employees, either taking longer to complete tasks or getting less done.
Now does a study that takes a fully in office company, and randomly assigns some employees to work from home, say that a fully remote company is less productive than a in-office company? No. It says that when you have random employees work from home in an environment not suited for it it doesn’t go well.
Now let’s look at how the Stanford scientists arrived at that. From page 18 of the linked working paper:
Fully Remote Work. Several studies find that fully remote work yields lower
productivity than on-site work. Emanuel and Harrington (2023) analyze data from
a Fortune 500 firm that, before the pandemic, operated call centers with both
remote and on-site employees in the same jobs. In response to the pandemic,
the firm shifted all employees in these jobs to fully remote work. Productivity
among formerly onsite employees fell 4 percent relative to that of already-remote employees. Emanuel and Harrington also find evidence that the closure of phys-ical call centers reduced call quality, especially among less experienced employees. These findings are noteworthy, in part, because they involve a firm with prior
experience in managing fully remote call-center workers. Presumably then,
the firm had already adapted its systems and practices to manage fully remote
workers.
Gibbs, Mengel, and Siemroth (2023) study productivity outcomes for skilled
professionals at a large Indian technology services company. In March 2020, the
company abruptly shifted all employees to fully remote work in response to the
pandemic. Immediately after the shift, average worktime rose by 1.5 hours per day and output fell slightly according to their primary performance measure. They esti-mate that the shift to remote work lowered average labor productivity (output per hour worked) by 8 to 19 percent. They also provide evidence that greater communication and coordination costs drove much of the measured productivity drop. In particular, time spent on meetings and coordination activities rose, crowding out time devoted to a concentrated focus on work tasks.
Do you think the experience of an Indian Call Center suddenly going remote because of the pandemic, and an Indian IT company suddenly going remote because of the pandemic is somehow indicative and generalizable to every company operating in normal times?
Now go and read trough the section on hybrid work and note that it says upfront that studies have found an increase in productivity or no gains in productivity. Then read through and notice how not a single study compares hybrid or in office companies to fully remote companies. All of them deal with studying the jarring transition of an in office company transitioning to partially remote, and none of the studies anywhere listed come close to broad economy wide or even market wide analyses of real world productivity in the long run.
So you want to talk evidence, that is the entirety of the evidence behind your claims that hybrid work is on a broad basis more productive, and it’s basically a bunch of pandemic studies on Indian and Bangladeshi call centers. It certainly does not support the Forbes articles’ general claim that Fully remote workis associated with about 10% lower productivity than fully in-person work., that is a gross mischaracterization at best, if not an outright lie, and shows you the journalistic standards of somewhere like Forbes.
No, it’s literally just as biased, but in the other direction.
But here’s the thing, it’s not more productive to go to the office.
Have you read the actual “studies” being cited in that Forbes article?
In the first, they randomly assign employees to work from home scenarios, meaning that random employees here and there are working remotely while everyone else is in office. This is not a study of whether a company can work effectively remotely it’s a study of what happens when you take an in-office company and tell someone to work at home at random once in a while.
In the second working paper from Stanford, if you actually dig into how they’re measuring productivity, every single study they bring up is one that measures the effects when a fully in-office company, like an Indian call-center, suddenly shift to remote work because of a global pandemic, not one studying how fully remote companies or teams compare to their in office or hybrid counterparts.
No, but I can point you to many high functioning fully remote teams and companies… As mentioned above there’s not a lot of actual good research on this.
Regular rituals like stand-ups, retros, demos etc give people some opportunities to ask questions like this, and like I mentioned, pair programming gives constant opportunity for this. When I was at a MAANG company our team also had “in-office zoom hours” where we’d all get on a zoom call for 2 hours, 3 times a week, and it was an opportunity for people to openly discuss things and ask questions as if we were all sitting at desks in the office. One team I was on used gather.town to replicate an office experience for this.
Remote work doesn’t just magically happen, you do need some culture and rituals and effort, and companies that aren’t setup for that aren’t going to thrive like that, but that doesn’t mean they can’t.
In the past year I spent half my time with a team that was entirely in-office with just us contractors being remote, and it was awful. Documentation was terrible, they constantly did conference room zoom meetings where you couldn’t tell who was talking, and critical information was communicated by tapping people on the shoulder. Did it work for them? Sure. But it was a nightmare to try and take their system and suddenly do it remote.
I then spent the second half of the year with a completely remote team, and it was amazing. Even for those of us coming in as relatively green backend devs, we excelled. We were talking with the team on slack and zoom constantly, and pair programming with multiple people on a daily basis and we learned a ton and got a ton done.
High functioning teams get stuff done, if you can put together a high functioning team just using the people who happen to live within biking distance of your office that’s great, but in the long run I have no doubt that company’s that can accept talent from anywhere will come out ahead.
Honestly, that was a lot of words to say you don’t really have anything but personal experience. No offense to you, but your claims and opinions don’t hold any water for me because I don’t know you.
As I said, if you actually have anything that can demonstrate that it’s better, or even equivalent, I would love to see it and would absolutely reconsider my position. But “everyone’s just doing it wrong” rings hollow to me because I just don’t see how it can actually replace what I see happen when everyone is together. Especially if we consider the context where people are saying hybrid is the worst, when evidence seems to be that hybrid hits the sweet spot.
That was a lot of words to give you examples of practices that make remote work productive.
And it was in response to you typing a lot of words to say absolute jack shit but bring up a Forbes article that found that when companies that weren’t ready for it suddenly shifted to remote work because of COVID, productivity dropped a little. Congratulations genius, that doesnt show that hybrid work is more productive, it shows that you don’t know how to read studies but will take a pro business rags’ trash at face value. No offense but show me a study that shows that hybrid or in-office work is more productive than remote, because you have yet to do that.
The reason you feel the need to attack me is probably because, on some level, you realize I have the stronger position as mine is actually based on the evidence. You want to believe yourself objective and evidence based, but at the same time you really want WFH to be equivalent of even better. So instead of actually being objective and evidence based, and simply accepting the reality of the situation - your position is based on nothing more than gut feeling - it’s best to try and make me not intelligent so you can disregard my position.
What evidence? As I pointed out, the Forbes article linked above does not say that hybrid work is more productive, it says that when in-office companies who aren’t prepared for remote work suddenly have to switch, they do better with hybrid than fully remote.
No, that would be you. I don’t think there is good evidence one way or another because it’s a) a brand new en masse practice that’s still evolving, b) people don’t tend to study those things in huge detail because companies aren’t huge fans of their workers being researched rather than working, and c) at it’s best “productivity” is a nebulous concept that is extremely difficult to measure objectively for most jobs that actually matter.
Again, I’ve already pointed out that the previous evidence you presented does not say that hybrid work is more productive, it merely examines the impact of the pandemic on companies.
So do you have any other studies to cite, or are you willing to accept that there isn’t good evidence one way or another and your anecdotal opinions from colleagues who chose to be in office are just as valid as my anecdotal opinions from colleagues who chose to work remotely?
Literally posted an article of a bunch of experts pointing to and discussing the evidence that hybrid works seems to hit the sweet spot. And you’re claiming I’ve provided nothing. The article even notes that Zoom is bringing people back to the office. And you’re suggestion is that Zoom is part of the answer. I’m cracking up over here.
False dichotomy. You’ve already proven that you’ll just reject evidence and the opinion of experts when you don’t like it. But I will agree that my anecdotal experience is equivalent to yours. The difference I see is that my anecdotal experience seems to line up with the evidence, yours just lines up with what you want to be true.
Bud, go read the above comments again. I read the studies that the Forbes article links to as its sources and tore them apart and pointed out that they do not even say what the Forbes article says they do.
Measuring a drop in the productivity of Indian call centers when they’re forced remote / hybrid because of a pandemic does not say that hybrid work is more productive, even if a pro business trash mag like Forbes somehow thinks it does.
No, I’ve proven that Forbes is a trash magazine that doesn’t accurately report or draw conclusions from the studies it cites, and it just so happens that those conclusions line up with the opinions of management.
I did read your comments. It’s just pooh-poohing the evidence away. Anyone can do that. And people do it all the time when they don’t like what the evidence tells them.
Maybe you should try reading the article with an open mind rather than manufacturing reasons to ignore it.
I had an open mind, but critical thinking occasionally requires criticism. Maybe you should read an article’s sources rather than accept claims from a business mag at face value.
But if you want to stop squabbling and talk evidence, let’s examine each specific claim on the basis of the evidence supporting it.
The Forbes article makes several specific claims and references:
A recent study from the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) found that remote working might not be as productive as once thought. Workers who were randomly assigned to work from home full time were 18% less productive than in-office employees, either taking longer to complete tasks or getting less done.
In another study, Stanford scientists at the Institute for Economic Policy Research found that remote work productivity depends on the mode of remote work. Fully remote work is associated with about 10% lower productivity than fully in-person work.
Do you think the experience of an Indian Call Center suddenly going remote because of the pandemic, and an Indian IT company suddenly going remote because of the pandemic is somehow indicative and generalizable to every company operating in normal times?
Now go and read trough the section on hybrid work and note that it says upfront that studies have found an increase in productivity or no gains in productivity. Then read through and notice how not a single study compares hybrid or in office companies to fully remote companies. All of them deal with studying the jarring transition of an in office company transitioning to partially remote, and none of the studies anywhere listed come close to broad economy wide or even market wide analyses of real world productivity in the long run.
So you want to talk evidence, that is the entirety of the evidence behind your claims that hybrid work is on a broad basis more productive, and it’s basically a bunch of pandemic studies on Indian and Bangladeshi call centers. It certainly does not support the Forbes articles’ general claim that
Fully remote work is associated with about 10% lower productivity than fully in-person work., that is a gross mischaracterization at best, if not an outright lie, and shows you the journalistic standards of somewhere like Forbes.