Ask HN: WFH vs. RTO Productivity Data?
At the moment, many companies are trying to enforce RTO to at least some extent. Personally, I found being in the office once a week is my sweet spot although it costs me almost 4 hours of commuting. Both sides, WFH and RTO seem to argue with improved productivity.
So my question:
Is there any published data or research on WFH vs Remote productivity? (2021) WFH seems a little less productive maybe: https://www.chicagobooth.edu/review/are-we-really-more-produ... (2021) "developer productivity was stable or increasing at Microsoft and elsewhere post-COVID.” (Still, 30 percent of the company’s workers who were surveyed reported lower productivity during the pandemic.) More recently, however, Microsoft researchers concluded that “firm-wide remote work caused the collaboration network of workers to become more static and siloed, with fewer bridges between disparate parts.” . . . In the case study of the Chinese company, published in 2015, productivity went up 13 percent among those who worked at home. In the U.S. case study, employees who went remote — this, too, happened before the pandemic — saw their calls per hour increase by 7.5 percent, a healthy boost to short-run productivity. . . . But in both studies, the probability of being promoted for the remote workers roughly halved relative to people who worked in person — suggesting serious long-term consequences of remote work. In the U.S. study, for example, 23 percent of on-site workers were promoted within their first 12 months of work, while the remote promotion rate was 10 percent. https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2021/09/24/working-ho... (2023) WFH makes newbies 18% less productive: https://www.nber.org/papers/w31515 Everything I see is it's either a slight increase or a more significant decrease. You could argue everyone's in cahoots with commercial real estate barons, but it seems like the data backs RTO, from a "productivity" standpoint. I agree with the comment on newbies. My interns (for some reason) are eligible to work from home, which they do regularly. But without in person interaction they do almost nothing and have no motivation because they don't feel like they are part of something. With just two days of in person collaboration they have achieved a week's worth of progress, not because they are being watched but because they feel like they have direction and the work has value. For people new to thev work and the company tools and processes its hard to get that feeling working remotely. Thank you that seems interesting.
Personally, I wonder what the long-term effects will be like. I think reduced cooperation and communication will have an effect on new products, coming up with ideas etc. which cannot be measured right away. Also, I wonder how many of those studies took children into account.
Now that COVID lockdowns are over people can work at home without the family present which definitely leads to fewer interruptions. I found the abstract of this article to be quite interesting[0] and reflects my own experience of WFH. Pre-pandemic I was always in an office and now I'm always at home, I definitely have a longer work day now because there's more distractions. On the very first day of the shut down in San Francisco, my wife looked at me in such a way as to suggest there was absolutely 0% chance of me working from home, ever. I went back to the office one hour later...