The Case Against Working Remotely Full-Time (msn.com) 189
A new article in Time magazine argues it's time to "follow the science" on working from home.
"The solution for the future is a structured hybrid model, acknowledging that working from home doesn't work long-term for most jobs, while still giving workers flexibility." (Alternate URL here.) One way to do that would be to allocate time slots — perhaps specific days — of in-office working for all employees to maintain workplace productivity and collaboration, while also allowing working from home to continue outside those hours... For some, remote work leads to increased productivity, as well as job satisfaction, particularly for those working in technical jobs that require minimal teamwork... But the science tells us that workers like them are in a minority and, however topical their case is, we should be cautious about applying such a drastic change across our economies.
Since before the pandemic began I have been assessing multi-disciplinary collaboration in a work-from-home environment for my PhD research at Imperial College, London. Individuals employed on creative projects in virtual teams reported feeling more like a 'worker', and less like a member of a family. One respondent said of employers: "They don't see how early you show up in front of your computer...They don't see how hard I'm working." But more damaging than the effects of working from home on individuals, is what it does to teams. Remote work often breaks the mechanisms that allow a team to work together creatively. Studies have found that the best creative work occurs when a team is in a state of flow, or focuses its collective attention on a single problem together, known as 'team flow'. But remote work makes it harder to keep everyone engaged in solving that problem.
In my study, many respondents said it was hard to gauge when a team member had zoned out during a Zoom call. There is currently no digital technology that can reliably create 'flow' remotely, and we shouldn't pretend there is. If it did exist, it wouldn't have taken the necessity of pandemic restrictions for us to work remotely — managers and employees would have already embraced it. There's other evidence that points to this problem. Utah-based virtual whiteboard app Lucidspark found that 75% of 1,000 respondents surveyed in September last year said collaboration was the thing that suffered most when working remotely.
"It is clear from my research that fully autonomous working from home across all industries is neither desirable nor sustainable," the article concludes.
"That's why we need to carve out a third way, where teams that thrive on collaboration are given mandatory times each week when everyone is expected to be in the office."
"The solution for the future is a structured hybrid model, acknowledging that working from home doesn't work long-term for most jobs, while still giving workers flexibility." (Alternate URL here.) One way to do that would be to allocate time slots — perhaps specific days — of in-office working for all employees to maintain workplace productivity and collaboration, while also allowing working from home to continue outside those hours... For some, remote work leads to increased productivity, as well as job satisfaction, particularly for those working in technical jobs that require minimal teamwork... But the science tells us that workers like them are in a minority and, however topical their case is, we should be cautious about applying such a drastic change across our economies.
Since before the pandemic began I have been assessing multi-disciplinary collaboration in a work-from-home environment for my PhD research at Imperial College, London. Individuals employed on creative projects in virtual teams reported feeling more like a 'worker', and less like a member of a family. One respondent said of employers: "They don't see how early you show up in front of your computer...They don't see how hard I'm working." But more damaging than the effects of working from home on individuals, is what it does to teams. Remote work often breaks the mechanisms that allow a team to work together creatively. Studies have found that the best creative work occurs when a team is in a state of flow, or focuses its collective attention on a single problem together, known as 'team flow'. But remote work makes it harder to keep everyone engaged in solving that problem.
In my study, many respondents said it was hard to gauge when a team member had zoned out during a Zoom call. There is currently no digital technology that can reliably create 'flow' remotely, and we shouldn't pretend there is. If it did exist, it wouldn't have taken the necessity of pandemic restrictions for us to work remotely — managers and employees would have already embraced it. There's other evidence that points to this problem. Utah-based virtual whiteboard app Lucidspark found that 75% of 1,000 respondents surveyed in September last year said collaboration was the thing that suffered most when working remotely.
"It is clear from my research that fully autonomous working from home across all industries is neither desirable nor sustainable," the article concludes.
"That's why we need to carve out a third way, where teams that thrive on collaboration are given mandatory times each week when everyone is expected to be in the office."
Personal experience (Score:5, Interesting)
For my work a hybrid model works exceedingly well. I'm something of a jack of all trades; programmer, manager, IT...all rolled into one. Prior to the pandemic I was in a week on/week off model; I'd work in the office one week, I'd work remote the next. I found this approach to be ideal as I could work with staff and collaborate during the first week, then work on my focused activities the following week ( hard to focus when people are constantly walking into your office and needing your attention ).
When the pandemic hit, I went back to full time in the office and my focused work suffered for it. No longer could I dive deep into the code without interruptions, and my increased presence in the office resulted in more distraction-related duties. It was a net loss for the company and lowered my job satisfaction ( as I enjoy the focused work more ).
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Come to think of it, I should have agreed more strenuously. But enough to justify a "mod parent up" reply?
I should have included my my last job under "hybrid". It was mostly remote work, and it did go pretty well. However I wound up doing about five hours of unpaid work at home for every paid hour. So, even though the pay looked generous, the hourly rate wasn't. However I'm not complaining because I understood that was how it was going to be when I accepted the job, and I mostly accepted the job as a kind o
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One of the best things about being where I live: Max work hours are enforced by law. Sure you can have a crunch week here and there, but it absolutely is forbiden to insist on more than a 40hr work week outside of special cirumstances (ie FIFO miners who fly in for 2 weeks and work a 60 hour week) and then fly home for 2 weeks and work a 0 hour week, all paid. And possibly JR doctors, because theres some real abusive bullshit in that profession unfortunately not helped by he pandemic)
Re: Personal experience (Score:2)
Iâ(TM)ve been remote in leadership roles for over 5 years. Iâ(TM)m happier, healthier, and i feel more productive. My current company doesnâ(TM)t even have an office. I have no plans to ever consider a position that requires a physical presence.
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I wouldn't be surprised if the reason companies didn't collapse from WFH was because of the trend towards open plan offices. Getting rid of offices and later cubes has a huge effect on morale and productivity.
It's suddenly harder to do work that requires concentration. So working from home, where you have your own home office, means effectively you went from a hot desk in the worst case to a complete office where you have some privacy, you have the ability to blast music as you need, or take phone calls on
Stop it (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Stop it (Score:5, Insightful)
This is much easier achieved in a solitary home than at the office. I'm really tired of being considered non-productive when non-communicative. People who think that simply don't understand the task, and what makes quality and innovation possible. And they have no business managing it.
Re:Stop it (Score:5, Insightful)
Hybrid working is a non starter too. All the disadvantages of being in the office 5 days a week (need to live nearby, waste time and money commuting and on lunch etc.) AND reduced productivity.
Oh, and from time to time you get COVID in the office, loads of people off with flu etc.
Re:Stop it (Score:5, Insightful)
If you're expecting multiple people from different time zones to immediately respond to every emergency, then you may be part of the "problem" of total work from home. Allowing "flexibility" really just means not only do we expect 8 hours of work to be done at some point during the day, but we also expect you to always be available for a meeting or emergency.
Some of us prefer the 9-5 where we can turn our work phones off when we go home.
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My current employer has been remote for 20+ years. Coming here I've found they really respect your bounds. I've never had anyone try to get ahold of me outside working hours, and we have a team that is global. If I need to meet with someone in another time zone we work out either an overlap or some time near the beginning or end. If there were an emergency, I would simply remove the hours from the next day.
As for just turning off the work phone when you go home, this can be accomplished working from home to
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Many places just have core hours, say 10-4, and people spread over timezones work those and some either side. The place I'm at now doesn't even have that, they just have one fixed meeting a day (max 30 minutes) and otherwise you work what you want and meet your deadlines.
Re:Stop it (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh, and from time to time you get COVID in the office, loads of people off with flu etc.
The reduction in flu and other contagious disease that spread in the office give more productivity gain than any of the supposed "benefits" of having people in the office instead of working from home.
re: hybrid work (Score:3)
I have to say I completely disagree. The people who are complaining about what a big problem it is having to live close to their work are the ones trying to "game" the whole system. Throughout history, it was ALWAYS the case that you had to consider working for someone relatively close to where you lived. If that wasn't really viable? Then you looked at relocating. All of a sudden, COVID came along and out of fear of the virus, companies temporarily relaxed the rules and let a bunch of people temporarily
Re:Stop it (Score:4, Interesting)
Agreed. There's a reason most really good programmers tend towards night mode. Office environments are practically designed to prevent flow. Home environments work better, but the overnight hours are even better because all the "one quick phone call that totally won't disturb you" people are asleep.
Re:Stop it (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm not sure how many sentences of the summary you read, if any. Essentially it says there are some tasks best done alone, and some things work best talking to people face to face.
That certainly matches my experience (for me) in decades of working mostly from home. At one company 15+ years ago, we all started out coming into the office. That was good for me, partly because before I had an office I didn't always make it "to work" on time. Okay, I often didn't start working until well after I should have. It helped me to have people see when I walked in.
After a while of that, we started working from home more, and that certainly had benefits. We also found out we could end up working at cross purposes, or getting very different ideas about what the priorities were, because text communication isn't as rich as face to face. So we decided to go into the office 2-3 days per week and that worked best for us. We had both solitary time and communication /team time.
Of course that's just my experience. My boss goes into the office even when he's all alone there because for him it puts him in the work frame of mind. He likes to work when he's work and only when he's at work, not mixing up work time vs family / play time. When he's wearing his work clothes and sitting in his office, he naturally focuses on work and isn't distracted by home life. When he puts on his shorts and goes on a boat, he's not thinking about work. It gives him needed separation between the two.
I understand that fully. That's why I have an OFFICE in my house, a dedicated room. I put on work clothes and go upstairs to my office. He's in California, so having another room for a home office would cost him a trillion dollars or whatever. I'm in Texas, so my 3,500 square feet only cost me $240K. I have several spare rooms I can use for an office.
Different strokes for different folks, and different ways work best for doing different things. Writing lines of code is a solitary exercise. Architecting the overall information systems flow across four different businesses in the enterprise is a fundamentally collaborative endeavor.
An interesting thing about that. Management, especially top management, involves mostly tasks that are communication based. The CIO needs to talk to the COO and CEO, and all of them need to talk to the VPs that work for them. On the other hand, configuring a router or writing code is basically solitary. So naturally management values easy communication and collaboration, naturally individual contributors value individual time - being left alone.
Re:Stop it (Score:5, Interesting)
An interesting thing about that. Management, especially top management, involves mostly tasks that are communication based. The CIO needs to talk to the COO and CEO, and all of them need to talk to the VPs that work for them.
I think the elephant in the room with this whole debate is that the vast majority of these 'collaborator' types are earning enough money that they can afford a house either near the office, or good transport links. Or (as in the case of my wife's boss) they get a private limo service to take them too and from work.
For example, using my experience of London, I doubt there would be many low level workers who would mind going into the office in Soho, if they could afford a nice comfortable house in Primrose Hill (a 10min bus ride/30min walk away), or if they could afford a 2 bed flat in the West End and a country house in Surrey for the weekends.
The trouble is they are stuck at the end of expensive and uncomfortable commutes, and likely still in poor quality housing. This is the equation that remote working has fixed.
It's pretty obvious that there is a concerted effort among the owner class to 'shame' workers back into the office, because remote working is not a personal benefit to themselves. It is also massively threatening their investments in real estate. This is likely both a combination of ignorance as to just how bad the commuter plight has become, and pure self interest.
Either way, I think they are massively blinkered and fighting a losing battle. Forcing your employees back into the office sends the message that you (a) don't give a stuff about their personal living situation; (b) don't trust them; (c) think climate change is a joke.
This will not be a useful way to attract and retain the best employees.
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You've been reading about six times too many of those blogs or YouTube videos.
You know that weird relative who can't stop talking about UFOs, or the government following them?
> It's pretty obvious that there is a concerted effort among the owner class to 'shame' workers back into the office, because remote working is not a personal benefit to themselves. It is also massively threatening their investments in real estate.
You're turning into that weird one who is obsessed with "the owner class".
Btw, the ow
Open floorplans suck .... (Score:2)
The idea of the open office floor plan is categorically awful, and we saw that before COVID was even a thing.
Using that as a reason you're more productive working from home says more about how poor an idea that office design was than it makes for a compelling argument that there's no value in coming back to an office.
Having worked in I.T. in all different situations, from a company demanding they always saw me at a desk every minute of the day I was paid to work, to working entirely from home, to hybrid sce
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Some people have an office all from them and this could work well also because people can concentrate. But on most of office situation there was a badly designed open space possibly with badly regulated HVAC, bad quality furniture and so on.
Pro
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You'd think that wouldn't you. In practice, at least for real engineering, they aren't much of a threat. Also, I doubt they'd work for just $15000 (just checked, they would!). I know of one large multinational company that thought it could get all the CAD and FEA drudgework done in India. That's almost all back in the first world now.
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Amen! If someone is fearful enough to think remote work won't let people see "how early you show up" or "How hard I'm working", then maybe that person should grow some self-confidence and let their work speak for itself. Otherwise, they're welcome to return to the office to receive the affirmation they seek.
Evidently some people enjoy being constantly judged on the basis of irrelevant proxies for actual productivity, while others don't. People who believe showing up early is the most important thing they do can send email as soon as they start working, or they can schedule Zoom calls for 7 a.m.
Re:Stop it (Score:5, Insightful)
> Evidently some people enjoy being constantly judged on the basis of irrelevant proxies for actual productivity, while others don't.
Except that there are no relevant proxies for work (or at least interesting work). Lines of code? Meeting delivery deadlines which are all mostly WAGs anyway? Answering questions quickly so that everyone else on your team can maintain their flow?
Measuring employees value is incredibly difficult and subjective, and almost always ends up as just a "feeling" that one has about one's staff. (Or we can be "fair" and select a bunch of almost irrelevant measurements.)
It's irrelevant proxies all the way down.
Many of us who trust that out work speaks for itself are not so coincidentally in the fortunate position of fitting the cultural and visual expectations that their boss may have about people in their position (perhaps the most powerful proxy for productivity there is) .Those who are not so fortunate need to find other irrelevant proxies by which to be evaluated, such as hours in the office or emails sent out, etc.
Sneering at others for being aware of this reality shows a blindness to human nature. Indeed, if one happens to conform to the boss' expectation in culture or appearance, I might say blindness to one's privilege.
(I say this as one who liked to think that my work spoke for itself until I finally understood that what *really* gave me credibility in my boss' eyes (over multiple organizations) was that I conducted myself as a geek who could communicate effectively. And why shouldn't they use that irrelevant proxy? They had no means of telling which 5 lines of code were brilliant insight, which 5,000 lines of code were cut and paste, which architecture change was from Stack Overflow and which were innovations that would save man years of effort over the long haul.)
Re:Stop it (Score:5, Insightful)
I left my previous job back in June specifically because they were forcing us back to the office. It was not until I could work from home full time did I realize how much my 1+ hour commute was cutting into my productivity. I was always a clock-watcher to make sure I didn't miss my train (If I took public transit that morning) or that I didn't hit the road too late in the day. This meant not finishing everything I needed to get done and I would just have to boot up my work laptop at home and finish the day after I just had a long commute.
In my new job, the commute is less than 10 minutes, but I might as well not bother as almost my entire team work out of different branch offices of the company in different time zones. There is zero lack of collaboration. Last week we had a production issue. Three of us on the team immediately hopped on a zoom call, troubleshooted the issue, brainstormed solutions, and implemented them. The outage lasted less than a half hour. I doubt we could've done any better in person.
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TFA isn't making an all or nothing argument. From my understanding, it's arguing for finding an appropriate balance between in-office & telecommuting on a case by case basis. I'd think that this is what many employers are thinking about nowadays & how it might boost/maintain productivity while reducing costs (i.e. less office space needed).
I'm in online & distance education (BTW, not the "emergency remote teaching" you've been reading about in the media for the past 18 or so months) & there
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TFA is arguing that while kicking heroin was a good thing, perhaps just a little heroin might be even better.
The last desperate attempt by a junkie to avoid getting clean.
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There are alternatives. At one point I was staring down the gun of a 2 hour commute each way, for 2 consecutive days a week. I figured that would literally kill me as i tend to fall asleep on that road if I'm tired. So 4 hours at $100 an hour would actually pay for a decent hotel room and a meal out.
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The problems you worked on had a solution. You knew it had a solution, your boss did and the entire management did. All they have to do was to point you towards the problem and get out of your way. It is all well and good, a skilled person you are, you will have decent degree of success and advancement in career.
Then there are a whole category of problems that might not have a solution. Or the problems are actually the solutions found in the previous iteration. They might have more than one
Re:Stop it (Score:5, Insightful)
This is a good thing for the employee but the bosses don't want you to realize it. They want family-like loyalty from you but the ability to shitcan your ass when convenient for them.
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Those people might be more productive in face to face collaboration...
Or more likely they just burn a bunch of time and gas preventing the quiet moment of mental clarity needed to have the AH-HA that solves the problem.
If the problem has no solution, you might as well be comfortable while failing.
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But if everyone is working at home, who is going to powder the PHB's tushie and make him feel powerful?
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Some need you in the office 100% of the time. That's going to be an overwhelming majority of the jobs.
I would argue that the last 18 months have shown that a good part of office jobs can be done 100% from home.
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Maybe we should wait and see. (Score:5, Informative)
Let things play out naturally without forcing people into an office if they don't want to go, and see if those businesses do well.
That seems a more reasonable response than getting all panicky about how something is different and trying to force it to stay the same.
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We will be seeing how things play out naturally, but PR pieces like this Times article are part of the natural process. You will see researchers coming up with reasons why working remote is better for companies, and those who advocate for returning to the office. You will see companies who go both ways as well. Time will tell how this works out for companies throughout the economy.
One significant reason why research is unclear is that research is usually very targeted in the hypothesis they set up to challe
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This includes a lot of people in the upper echelons of government as well as big business.
A lot of those also are either in media or have connections to media and they are a bit scared shit their investments may lose a good bit of money if people don't come back to work and companies no longer need to spend $$$ on expensive office real estate.
This is ESPECIALLY true in very expensive
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Do you not understand how businesses work? They tell you what to do and you either do it or you get fired.
Do you not understand how businesses work? Employers negotiate with workers for their labor in return for pay. If either side is unreasonable given their bargaining power then no work is done and no pay is given. That is bad for both sides.
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Well, the negotiation is really really rare, especially with the decline in unions. Now maybe if you have one of those highly valued jobs you can do this, but for the average worker the job is "take it or leave it". Meanwhile tech workers who bemoan that their jobs are being outsourced still think that they have some negotiating leverage.
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Now maybe if you have one of those highly valued jobs you can do this, but for the average worker the job is "take it or leave it".
I did not mean to imply there is always a discussion where both sides haggle over pay. But employers are always setting pay and benefits based on the need to convince people to apply for jobs and accept employment offers. I concede that isn't what most are referring to when they say there was a negotiation, but it was my intent.
Bullshit. (Score:5, Insightful)
Individuals employed on creative projects in virtual teams reported feeling more like a ‘worker’, and less like a member of a family. One respondent said of employers: “They don’t see how early you show up in front of your computerThey don’t see how hard I’m working.”
You are an idiot if you think you are anything except a worker. If they could replace you with someone better then they would fire you on the spot.
Remote work often breaks the mechanisms that allow a team to work together creatively. Studies have found that the best creative work occurs when a team is in a state of flow, or focuses its collective attention on a single problem together, known as ‘team flow’. But remote work makes it harder to keep everyone engaged in solving that problem. In my study, many respondents said it was hard to gauge when a team member had zoned out during a Zoom call.
This is crux of the argument, interplay in creative collaboration. Don't know about the rest of you but it sounds like middle manager bullshit.
Re:Bullshit. (Score:5, Insightful)
Then the teleconference is too big and too useless. That's why you can't gauge.
Yeah, you can't monitor everyone in a big frikking meeting, period. Apparently their attempts to "engage people" usually consist of putting as many people as possible into big useless meetings, even when they are in person.
I have a news flash for the companies that were surveyed: The big useless meetings in person STILL had people who zoned out. It's just that you had them trapped in a room and you had some theory that they were "engaged".
Re:Bullshit. (Score:5, Informative)
Having been thru two layoffs- there *is* no family- that's a fiction they burn to the ground when it suits them.
Reminds me of the management mania to "work like the Japanese" back in the '80s. Loyalty, sing the company song, calisthenics in the parking lot. But when I said, "Cool - so lifetime employment with no layoffs?" the tune changed quickly.
Flip-flop isn't just a shoe. (Score:3, Informative)
And then there's the opposite.
'No Evidence' Chance Meetings at the Office Boost Innovation [slashdot.org]
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Perhaps instead of "the opposite," the important metric is something other than "innovation?"
Innovation should only be happening in small doses at the planning stages of a project. After that it implies the technical staff didn't understand what to do, and just winged it. It won't be maintainable.
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Anecdotes don't mean anything full stop. There have been brilliant innovations conceived while someone was taking a a shower. I don't see corporate America queueing up to put showers in cubicles.
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And then there's the opposite.
'No Evidence' Chance Meetings at the Office Boost Innovation [slashdot.org]
It's publish or perish. The article author was doing his PhD and he *needs* to publish *something*, hopefully relevant enough.
Zoning out (Score:5, Insightful)
"In my study, many respondents said it was hard to gauge when a team member had zoned out during a Zoom call."
And this is a problem because ...
People zone out while you are sitting in a single room. Zoom is no different. You zone out for a variety of reason, mainly because this is yet another meeting that could have been done by email.
I don't know ... based on statements like that, I think the author is reaching. It just feels like yet another PhD trying to find relevance, but maybe I'm being too hard on them.
I've never really felt like there has ever been "team flow" any place I've been at. I've had good discussions and have worked with many fine individuals, but "in person" group discussion in a room never really felt productive. I've personally have had better results via email - I need time to think about a point and respond, and that doesn't work well in and interactive environment.
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It's actually really easy to tell. You involve the zoned out person directly, you'll know soon enough if they were slacking off or not. But, oh wait, this only applies to teams of peers, not hour long monotonic manager speeches.
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More Clever Propaganda (Score:5, Interesting)
Anyone else smell a rat?
The author of this piece, Mimi Nguyen, hasn't written for Time before. Interestingly, her bio reads as follows:-
"Nguyen is R&D lead at Mana Search, co-founder of Mana Labs, a PhD fellow at Imperial College London, and Innovation Lecturer at Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London."
Mana Labs, the company that Nguyen co-founded, has an interesting description on their "About" page:-
"Mana Search is FinTech’s all-in-one search firm. We partner with the most exciting VC & growth equity backed fintechs. Strategic search into the CxO suite, venture building through delivering teams in Engineering, Data Analytics, Product and Commercial. Our clients are backed by the likes of Blenheim Chalcot, Goldman Sachs Growth, Blackstone Tactical Opportunities, Passion Capital or Index Ventures."
The financial services industry was one of the first [and most successful] when it came time to pivot to working-from-home in 2020. What they have discovered over the intervening period of time is that their staff love working remotely, but their middle managers are less effective. Which isn't a reflection on the dynamic of remote working, but on the (lack of) quality manifest in their middle managers.
Rather than find that remote working acts to the detriment of collaboration, the Team I work in has found it has improved our ability to collaborate. We have 30-minute check-in sessions 3 mornings [Mon/Wed/Fri] and on Tuesdays and Thursdays we have longer "Team Workshops" where we brainstorm problems, work collaboratively on the "tricky stuff", conduct training and - wonder of wonders - actually bond as a Team. If/when we need to "down tools" and discuss an issue with a colleague, we can do it in seconds. When we need to have a group huddle to solve something more complex, we can not only do so instantly, but we don't have to run round the building in search of a free meeting room - and we don't end up getting the "evil eye" from other Teams who want to know why we get up and walk away from our desks when we feel like it.
We're working on a long-term [5+ year] project. It contains big blocks of "crunching" - working through data; it contains software design; it contains process definition; it contains the development of external-publish-grade documentation [and lots of that!]. I have detailed performance metrics of these activities prior to the lockdown last March and I have even more detailed performance metrics of what we've achieved during the lockdown. In almost every category I see a significant, measurable up-tick. By far - by far - the most significant being "job satisfaction" among the Team in the annual "Employee Survey".
I don't claim to have a magic formula. I don't claim to be using revolutionary or secret technologies. Really - it's just VDI, Zoom, Skype for Business with Screen Share, Sharepoint, Confluence and the regular suite of Office products. What I have done is completely change my style of working. Daily checkpoints. Much broader 1-2-1 check-ins with the Team. We've revolutionised our reporting, to make demonstration of progress easier. We went out and embraced JIRA (OK, if I'm honest I'm not really a fan - but that's not the point) and we now use it to manage our workflow in a way that is really easy for us to use, but also to demonstrate key performance deliverables.
We take more time to make sure all our colleagues are "OK". One of our Team has been supporting his wife, who was furloughed for several months and found that a very anxious time, so we worked on it, adapted, and as a Team did a really good job. Another Team member has an amazing Persian cat (kitten) that joins her for the daily check-in and gives her seal of approval to our priorities for the day.
We ad
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Agreed. I read the time article, and aside from simply declaring things like:
" Remote work often breaks the mechanisms that allow a team to work together creatively."
" Studies have found..."
"The verdict is clear: "
"—working from home simply doesn’t work"
There's not evidence provided, no footnotes. Nothing to back any of this up. Looking at the authors papers on https://scholar.google.com/cit... [google.com], I could only open one of them (essentially a synopsis of other, actually original works) And there
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Agreed. I read the time article, and aside from simply declaring things like:
" Remote work often breaks the mechanisms that allow a team to work together creatively."
" Studies have found..."
"The verdict is clear: "
"—working from home simply doesn’t work"
There's not evidence provided, no footnotes. Nothing to back any of this up. Looking at the authors papers on https://scholar.google.com/cit... [google.com], I could only open one of them (essentially a synopsis of other, actually original works) And there is nothing in that paper to justify the author's view. Time magazine has apparently become Buzzfeed.
There are definitely techniques, technology, and processes that can improve the effectiveness of WFH, but for this person to declare it DOA is crazy talk.
Yeah, but he confidently used the magic words "the science is in" and "the verdict is clear" so anyone who thinks otherwise must be a denier.
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Re:More Clever Propaganda (Score:4, Insightful)
"Middle managers suddenly realised that the team can get by without them so they are feeling threatened and are trying to find excuses to bring back the old status quo."
Re: More Clever Propaganda (Score:5, Funny)
Desperation (Score:4, Interesting)
The only downside I see to full time work from home time is that outsourcing it to other states is a short jump from some idiot manager going whole hog and moving it to India or China.
Re: (Score:3)
For the responses to the above saying "ooh, what global property management conspiracy is there". It's not like that, but rather there are divisions of companies tasked with managing the offices and properties. These things can cost a good bit of money, and there are VP's and senior directors, and directors who are on the hook for these decisions. If you are a pre-IPO tech firm that happened to lease 300,00 sq ft of office space in downtown SF in 2019 with the idea of using some and subleasing the rest..
Re: (Score:3)
You must be from Japan because you're confusing 'butts in chairs' with 'work getting done'
Re: (Score:2)
Yup:
The REAL reason you CAN'T work remote (Commercial Real Estate Value) [youtu.be]
Diversity and exclusion (Score:3)
For some, remote work leads to increased productivity, as well as job satisfaction, particularly for those working in technical jobs that require minimal teamwork... But the science tells us that workers like them are in a minority...
Well then, employer, remember your commitment to diversity when you feel like whining about my working full time from home, which has been working just fine for 17 months already.
No fun being a boss (Score:2)
If you can't get in someone's face and boss them.
This is being driven by middle managers (Score:2)
Most middle management is supposed to make work for the pawns. Middle management is usually made up of control freaks who have to monitor and control what the pawns do for 40 or more hours per week. After all the company owns you for 40+ hours per week cuz thats what they pay you for! The thing is, most middle management is unproductive. They donâ(TM)t bill to projects, they donâ(TM)t contribute to margins, they are just overhead that occasionally mentors employees. When the C level realizes how m
You Can't Generalize Human Beings (Score:3)
Let me see here. ... on Zoom?
The rest of my team members are scattered around the country, and my customers are on the other side of the planet. Tell me again how driving two hours to work in an uncomfortably cold office (70 degrees F year-round) only to meet with people on Zoom creates a better collaborative environment than working in a comfortable home office (with no commute and zero gasoline consumption FTW) and meeting with Team mates and customers
Articles and "studies" like these do more harm than good, as it gives managers an excuse to ban working from home for everybody. The truth of the matter is that management won't believe employees are working unless they can *see* them at their desk all day. All they need is a reasonable-sounding excuse to support their already-formed opinion.
"Look Busy" (Score:5, Insightful)
One respondent said of employers: "They don't see how early you show up in front of your computer...They don't see how hard I'm working."
That's good. They should be measuring your work output based on your actual output and not based on if you appear to be busy. It's strange to see this comment immediately after the part about people feeling like a "worker" and not part of a family when working remote. Being viewed like a machine that should always be "running" if seen is certainly a characteristic of an employee being dehumanized into another interchangeable cog.
creative work at the office ? (Score:2)
"Studies have found that the best creative work occurs when a team is in a state of flow, or focuses its collective attention on a single problem together, known as 'team flow'."
Let's set tech work aside for a moment so that we can remove our personal thoughts from the equation. Instead let's consider purely creative work, such as that done by artists and musicians. Are they more creative when they are at the office?
The Beatles were very creative as a group, perhaps less so as individuals. Can you think of
Musicians aren't tech workers. (Score:2)
You should be ashamed of the comparison.
What big corporates don't like about remote work.. (Score:3)
...is that you as a person, get too much freedom to think on your own.
There are several advantages for businesses from people working from home, these they've already experienced:
- You aren't less effective, if anything - you're MORE effective because you don't smalltalk so much at work, and you have a better working environment so you can focus on your job, this makes you feel more refreshed too.
- You don't waste time on travel, so you get a LOT more free time on your hands.
- The business saves $$$ on maintenance and cleaning staff, and can utilize their offices for something else, this is a tremendous cost savings.
- You don't get free coffee and they don't have to provide any catering services anymore either.
- Less sickdays (at least in Sweden, they found that hardly anyone reported in sick, so basically everyone was at work).
- Zoom meetings were effective, much more so than having to gather all members to meetings in a room, things get done quicker.
But there's another thing that Businesses DON'T like AT ALL... ...and that is that you're more FREE. In Sweden they noticed something interesting, this has been all over the news a lot of times now during the pandemic, and that is that people are SWITCHING JOBS like NEVER before, people get extra time on their hands due to lower travelling time, and can now focus on getting a BETTER job.
Not only that, they don't have the same "Our Corporate is the best" constant worker indoctrination that happens at the workplace, you know - when your manager comes in to the office - Annonces with the HR and PR department some PEP Talk how GREAT the company you work for IS, and how amazing it is for you to be able to work there.
The truth comes out - people hate their shitty jobs, and now seek greener grounds, and it's happening on a LARGE scale, we're talking 33%ish people who have already relocated, for better salaries, and for better overall deals, finding places that makes them more happy as an individual.
The usual suspects (Score:3)
Selling sandwiches to people during their break is a huge industry that has been hit hard.
Behind the "Get Back In The Office!" Movement is.. (Score:5, Interesting)
We can make a list of the top players who get a smaller slice of pie when people just happily work from home:
1) power tripping bosses, 2) office landlords, 3) petroleum industry, 4) automobile industry, 5) insurance industry, 6) developers, 7) dry cleaners, 8) psychiatrists, 9) drug industry, 10) residential burglars...
One gargantuan negative is that power will move into the hands of an already epicly corrupt Broadband Internet industry... They'll want to continue to provide you with "service tiers" that actually put up obstacles which you must pay to get around.
Re: (Score:2)
If you work from home fulltime (Score:2)
There really isn't any other cases out there. For every elevator pitch that goes well there's a hundred terrible ideas that get greenlit because they were pushed by a good lucking 20 year old instead of an ugly-ass 50 year old engineer. Which is why when it's been studied there's been moderate productivity gains associated with WFH.
But if you think they're go
Commuting drives global warming so stop wanting it (Score:4, Insightful)
Most driving is commuting is wasted energy, wasted time, wasted wear on vehicles and infrastructure, wasted heat production in hot urban areas, and in general unleashes destruction and death on the globe we inhabit.
Stop wanting to commute. Start wanting to kill off commuting and be creative about it. Stop humoring bosses who demand commuting if your talent and skill are valuable enough you've a choice. Every hour commuting is an hour of unpaid labor away from everything you are working to obtain for yourself.
Creativity can and has replaced many meat gatherings. Computers killed off stenographer pools and should kill off other wasted labor. The sooner we automate ourselves to a less wasteful world the better for everyone. It is all win so get it done and crush any human obstacles to this desperately necessary change. The trillions of dollars spent schlepping meatbags could be improving human quality of life instead.
"More like a worker" (Score:4, Interesting)
it's got nothing to do with "family" or "culture" and this guy knows it. It's got to do with people seeing you work hard in the vain hope you'll get a promotion or a raise.
News flash, that doesn't work anymore. The people who decide who to promote and who to fire are so far removed it doesn't matter. Most of the time they're on a different continent.
What works is one of 2 things: a) get your hands in a lot of cookie jars so you can jump to another team when the axe inevitable comes down or b) go to a different company every couple years (only viable if you've got at least a 4 year degree).
"Networking" doesn't work anymore because companies siloed us ages ago so that we'd all be easily replaceable cogs. It's telling that it's all the older workers who grew up before that happened calling for a return to the office. The ones who already have those networks that are now basically impossible to form.
Then again, I've watched those networks prove to be useless even for some of the older workers. So we're back to my main point: the only thing that saves you is being ready to jump when the ship sinks. And your time and effort is spent on that. The work you do is a by product of that process. And that process can be done just as if not more easily without a 90 minute commute taking up time.
Ah... yes. "Collaboration" (Score:2)
Collaboration is what brought the hated "open office" plans into being with the distractions that they introduced into everyone's work experience but were beloved by office managers who were able to tout reduced office costs -- and likely earned a nice bonus for reducing office space needs while indirectly working for office furniture companies sales forces -- and by insecure managers who enjoyed the ability to look out of their private office doorways and gaze longingly on the butts-in-chairs workplace the
Sus (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
10% want full time remote. (Score:2)
My personal experience, is that it I do not want to be a software engineering working full time remote.
I am more productive in office, and have a better quality of life working in an office, 3-4 days a week.
That said, for vacations, I like to work elsewere remotely for MTW, and enjoy the off-hours in another country, and use vacation days for only ThFr.
We have software engineers spread across offices in 7 countries, covering thousands of employees and contractors. The general sentiment is most want to work
Developer Apathy (Score:2, Insightful)
It's a secret every tech worker knows but never admits. You can make up random shit as to why your work isn't completed and the ass-hat middle managers will never know the difference. It doesn't have to b
Ok, spill it. Why the propaganda? (Score:2)
If the past year showed us anything, then that productivity actually goes up when we cut out the time and space wasters called middle management from the production process and concentrate on producing. So I don't buy the "home office kills productivity" garbage spiel.
Spill it. What's the real agenda? Because productivity isn't it, that much we have seen already. So what is it?
Depends on the job (Score:2)
work in the office? I'll quit! (Score:2)
There's a great demand for IT professionals these days, more jobs than people to fill them. The power is with the employees. If my employer insists that I can no longer work remotely, I will simply find a new job. There's just no way I am going to make that commute, 98 miles each way from my new house, more than maybe one or twice a month. Even that's a bit much.
I don't want or need to feel like 'family' to my co-workers and supervisors. At a former employer, one of the bosses was a bit too 'handsy', and it
Make it work (Score:2)
The article misses the fact that the huge amount of commuting people do everyday is wasteful and cannot continue.
How many cars have been taken off the road whilst this pandemic has been going? The real issue is not if telecommuting can be made to work but how long can we continue to use finite resources, like oil, on something as dumb as millions of people sitting in traffic for hours doing nothing but burning oil.
The real question is "What is the difference in energy consumption for someone using the
I prefer in-office (Score:2)
And I know that will offend some, I'm not trying to offend those that are working remote. Everyone's situation is different, but I think collaboration is easier in the office. We have all the collaboration tools in the world, but the remote people always seem a little less available for collaboration than the in-office people. That's been the case regardless of where I've worked over the past more years than I care to count. Also, my commute is ~ 10 minutes now so it's not much of an issue. Then again, we a
Re: (Score:2)
Summing up your proposal: full time collaboration, no actual work.
Way to assume the conclusion... (Score:2)
The whole argument rests on this notion that remote work can't be more productive because if it was, it would already been done by companies and managers already.
No. Companies and managers have had a mindset of control and hierarchy. Sure, that can be very productive, but at the overall cost of worker well being and consumption of resources. What scares traditional companies and managers is that more self organizing teams and worker driven collaboration is productive enough (if not more productive) while ma
Re: (Score:2)
No doubt these remote hate articles are motivated by management mentality that sees their low effort gravy train slip slip slipping away.
The science is in and the verdict is clear! (Score:2)
From the article:
"We followed the science on COVID-19. Now, as the end of the pandemic draws closer, it’s time to follow the science on working from home.
The verdict is clear: For many jobs—particularly collaborative, high skill level, high-value roles—working from home simply doesn’t work, and we shouldn’t confuse a temporary abnormal with a new normal."
I guess since "The science is in" and "the verdict is clear" that's the final word. Don't argue that this is nonsense or you
Re: (Score:2)
I can pull a hardened wad of science out of my ass just like they did.
Wrtitten by PHBs for PHBs (Score:2)
They don't see how early you show up in front of your computer...They don't see how hard I'm working.
Only if they're stupid. Nuff said.
Working from home is by far the most productive (Score:2)
Productivity soars when working from home. People can concentrate on their work, and collaboration through slacks, chats etc is far more efficient, too the point and time manageable. The lack of office noise and distractions makes for a very high level of concentration. Everything about the office is a productivity killer, useless meetings which consume time, the lack of ease of juggling communications with work. Look at some of the videos put up by Josh Fluke of the ridiculous kindergarten group activity s
"They don't see how early you show up ..." (Score:2)
This is probably one of the WORST aspects of office working.
If you have a team lead or boss that is constantly at the office earlier than everyone else, there's an unsaid expectation in the team that everyone should be doing that.
If there's a team member constantly doing this and they are noticed and receive praise for starting early, it can cause friction in the team.
Sure, if that person finishes work ear
This is no dichotomy. Remote should be an option. (Score:2)
For software / IT experts that needn't run cables and set up switches with the customer the ruling is 100% clear: Remote should be an option of choice, by default. There is no two ways about it. And, btw., good luck to any software gig demanding their new crewmember be present. Right now it's a sellers market for IT people, they probalby won't even get back to you.
BTW: I'm commuting into the office more than not right now.
Here's why:
- Great office, huge desk and sceen, got the room to myself (right now)
- ni
"workplace productivity" (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Or, if enough people decide they like working from home, businesses will have trouble finding employees and will have to allow remote work.
It all depends on the specific job. Some can be done just as well or even better from home, some are completely impossible and most are somewhere in between.
Re: (Score:3)
For you, spineless drone, it might end. But not for me. I was working from home before it became popular and it will stay that way. Little point sitting near 10 people all wearing headphones to try get some actual work done in those oh so favoured open plan offices.
Re: (Score:2)
You missed out "noise cancelling" but yes, that is exactly how our section used to work.
Re: (Score:2)
What it Means to be a Virtual Company with a Distributed Team [business2community.com]
A nice list of "failures". ;-)
This banal point keeps getting made (Score:2)
True for clerical jobs, but i have first hand experience of a multinational that tried to get real engineering done in India. The pilot programs were for CAD and FEA meshing. The project was terminated after one year and the vast majority (90%ish) of the work came back to us.