from Hacker News

Remote work doesn't seem to affect productivity, Fed study finds

by simula67 on 1/18/24, 3:55 AM with 579 comments

  • by neonate on 1/18/24, 4:29 AM

  • by epolanski on 1/18/24, 11:09 AM

    The fundamental issue I see in this debate is a lack of sensibility and nuance in human nature.

    The whole matter is debated (understandably in a way) on big numbers and averages.

    I could write a long post but I'll cut it short to this paragraph stating that humans differ.

    For some commuting is stressful, the offices are noisy and full of distractions and those individuals may thrive in a remote setup. There's people that work in the opposite way. Their house offer many distractions from laundry to videogames. Some people require micro management and constant oversight some tilt in such environments.

    Some teams require a lot of meaningful in-person interactions, brainstorming sessions or work chats around the coffee machine. Some teams thrive with good central top/down planning and workload splitting where syncing isn't very important.

    At the end of the day the decision C-suite have to make when planning projects is not remote vs non-remote and apply blindly rather in forming teams with people that by their own nature or preferences will thrive in the setup that's decided.

  • by randomdata on 1/18/24, 4:39 AM

    > If remote work boosts productivity in a substantial way, then it should improve productivity performance

    Not necessarily given the methodology. For example, if remote work allows a worker to do their laundry in parallel where they would be otherwise unable to in an office, their productivity has increased, but the gains would not show up in the study. It observes industry productivity, not work productivity.

  • by jimt1234 on 1/18/24, 7:31 AM

    How could remote work not be more productive? Most of my friends/colleagues get back at least an hour of their lives each day they don't commute, and they all use the "extra" time to do more work. People wanna work. They just don't wanna sit in traffic, walk through parking lots and ride elevators for an hour every day.

  • by fulafel on 1/18/24, 6:50 AM

    Source: https://www.frbsf.org/economic-research/publications/economi...

    Note that when economists are talking about productivity, it's specific. It's units of output per hour worked (quantitative, not qualitative). https://www.bls.gov/k12/productivity-101/content/what-is-pro...

  • by andyish on 1/18/24, 4:19 PM

    I'm genuinely surprised that your typical exec isn't looking at things like this thinking: "We're spending this much a month on office space for our 500 staff at this location. Let's knock that down to 100 and push everyone to work from home". Give ourselves a big pat on the back and a nice bonus for saving a few million a year.

    If after a few years, it doesn't work, you go back to the market for more office space.

    In the UK government orgs sold off their office space and turned to renting. Now the people renting the office space are annoyed that the demand is dropping. Poor them.

  • by khalid_canada on 1/18/24, 5:24 AM

    As a Tech PM, I can say,remote work definitely increases productivity. I noticed, employees tend to work more when diligently when they were allowed to work remotely.

    In case of complex Troubleshooting, this is definitely an added advantage , as people can focus more and solve these issues comfortably.

  • by paulus_magnus2 on 1/18/24, 3:24 PM

    WFH is an invention equal to washingmachine + dishwasher where 2h each day is not being lost anymore by unproductive activity. With plenty of externalities on top of the lost time.

    If (only as a test excercise) for 5 years we mandated the employer to bare the commute cost we would quickly see if RTO / WFH makes more economical sense.

  • by Roark66 on 1/18/24, 6:42 AM

    People are different. For some it really increases productivity and wellbeing. For others the opposite. I'm not surprised it is about the same on average as measured by work output.

    I've been working 100% remote since 2017 and I'll never willingly change it.

  • by arein3 on 1/18/24, 11:46 AM

    Based on my experience working in IT on complex projects, it is better to work together in the same room/office, if you have a team that is not all seniors and if you work on a greenfield project where you have a lot of structure to put in place.

    Often with people that are doing something new to them, they might have a "mental barrier" of doing something new, because there are a lot of things to take into account, and discussing with somebody experienced in person helps more that having a video call.

    Also making some architectural decisions might take a lot of time if there are multiple potential solutions, each with pros and cons (ex. which message broker / http client / log & metric aggregator / sql database to pick). Being in the same room, a few senior developers and possibly the infrastructure guy makes it easier.

    When working on already launched projects, the architecture is already in place and doing maintenance or adding new features does not need a lot of communication/synchronization between team members, so doing that remotely is not an issue. However it might be if you are not familiar with the project, or don't have experience, or you have associates in the team and you need good performance from them.

    I don't know if it's the same when working on simpler projects.

  • by 2d8a875f-39a2-4 on 1/18/24, 6:23 AM

    It was never about productivity. It was about power and control. And commercial real estate investments.

  • by nutshell89 on 1/18/24, 2:52 PM

    The Fed study mentioned in the Bloomberg article: https://www.frbsf.org/economic-research/publications/economi...

  • by thunfisch on 1/18/24, 6:12 AM

    Does anyone have the link to the study? I'm tired of news articles referencing and summarizing their interpretation of a study, without giving me the option to validate the claims made.

  • by atleastoptimal on 1/18/24, 8:30 AM

    I'm just guessing but this makes sense to me

    Boring email jobs where people are on their computer most of the time anyway and meetings are simply status updates, there's no reason why remote work is any worse, and likely just boosts productivity because of the mental health benefits of no commute, better environment, no distractions, etc.

    In terms of jobs which require more creativity and collaborative rigor, I imagine remote work is where that element suffers.

  • by Kon5ole on 1/18/24, 7:45 AM

    How is productivity measured in the kinds of jobs that can be done from home?

    For manufacturing it's easy - just measure the output per day and number of working hours spent. But how is it done for finance, marketing, software development, creative work and such where the output is either limited (you don't need more financial reporting than last month) or is entirely different in scope and complexity every time?

    If productivity could be objectively measured it seems to me it would be easy to determine objectively whether WFH is better or worse, but the discussion seems to be mostly based on personal opinions. Some feel that workers must be slacking off at home, some feel that they get much more done from home.

  • by biscuit1v9 on 1/18/24, 5:33 AM

    > And while many US companies have been pushing employees to return to the office

    I still don't see the reason why you should go to office if you do your work just right.

    There are more expenses if you go to office rather than being remote.

  • by givemeethekeys on 1/18/24, 12:24 PM

    In my opinion is that the decision to be on-site or remote should be made at the team level. A team, that can't perform well onsite won't do any better remotely and vice versa.

    # How I know if a team member will perform well remotely:

    - They take initiative. They take ownership. They learn how to effectively use different communication tools, and then they use them. They ask questions with the goal of solving problems. They get things done.

    # How I know if a team member will perform poorly remotely:

    - They wait for others to tell them what to do. They tend to disappear. They don't communicate.

    - Turns out that these are shitty traits to have for onsite team members as well.

    # How I know if a manager will perform well remotely:

    - They would perform well as a remote team member (see above), and have a team capable of working remotely.

    - They lead by example, know how to build trust, understand how to set achievable short-term goals that lead up to big longterm successes.

    - When questioned during meetings, they build trust, confidence and alignment.

    # Some signs that a manager will perform poorly with a remote team:

    - They prefer a command and control approach to management.

    - They lack respect for their team members' time, experience, capabilities and / or intelligence.

    - They are unable to explain problems such the team can help solve them.

    - This leads them to micromanage.

    - They perceive questions during meetings as a challenge to their authority, which makes look insecure.

    A micromanager will see more success from poor performing team members if they're all onsite or, as is often the case, frequently on all day conference calls. A micromanager will also quickly lose their best team members.

  • by Sparkyte on 1/18/24, 4:51 AM

    Almost as if people can be more productive working remotely because they are not anchored by a geographical location.

  • by whywhywhywhy on 1/18/24, 5:02 PM

    Does it matter? If the company wants you in the office just don't work there, the people who want to work in the office can work at those companies and the people who want remote can work remote companies. Then we're all happy.

    Only causes issues when remote people demand to be able to do it at companies that value in person working. Studies are irrelevant because at the end of the day you'll never change peoples minds.

  • by anonyfox on 1/18/24, 5:48 PM

    lets take this at face value and assume productivity is equal no matter if in-office or remotely.

    now thinking in business terms. you can run a (remote compatible) company without having an office at all, which may reduce cost very significantly, giving you an economic advantage. being a remote company also forces everyone to exchange thoughts/data/documents digitally one way or the other, making automation ideas with AI tools more feasible, which would then be another economic advantage that still needs to be realized in the future but its there.

    now add ontop that people don't waste their time and pollute the environment by commuting, that employees can live wherever they want (probably: way cheaper and with higher QoL) than in commute distance, so they have more money left each month to spend (instead of it going to insane rent/...), which stimulates the economy in theory.

    not going into the discussion that some people actually like to be in the office with others, basically forcing everyone else to do the same indirectly or directly. just the pure economic advantages. did I miss something that counters my points?

  • by jvmboi on 1/18/24, 9:54 AM

    I am fully remote and have been for a long time but I don't trust productivity studies, especially if they just find what everyone wants to hear anyway.

    If the market can do anything then it that has to be optimizing productivity. Every single company has a weighty incentive to work out what works best and so I fully expect that after a bit of churn the optimal remote/on-premise balance will be found on a job-by-job basis.

  • by redcobra762 on 1/18/24, 6:48 AM

    I’ve said this before, but if productivity isn’t lost, it’s at the expense of a very overworked manager, in companies that weren’t built remote-first, and don’t operate primarily remotely.

    This is a more complex issue than simply measuring work output of one person and comparing it to their work output in different locations.

    For my wife, it is objectively false to claim that remote work is better for her teams, in her specific situation.

  • by heads on 1/18/24, 6:06 AM

    > The researchers examined productivity trends in 43 industries — including chemical manufacturing, retail trade, and accommodation and food services…

    Given the breadth of this study, two different conclusions spring to mind:

    • productivity is up across the board, regardless of wfh; or

    • sending the pen pushers and bean counters home and letting the shop floor people get on with their jobs made both more productive!

  • by SoftTalker on 1/18/24, 4:25 AM

    Most employees can screw around websurfing or shopping just as well at work as at home. They mostly do it because they are bored. Give them interesting, meaningful work and they will be productive.

  • by say_it_as_it_is on 1/18/24, 11:37 AM

    Productivity is one factor. You also have to consider getting away from people at home, joining people because you live alone, sexual pursuits, and other topics that people are dishonest about yet are largely motivated by to work in office. People think RTO is about real estate, but it's really about executives looking for extramarital affairs.

  • by __loam on 1/18/24, 6:08 AM

    This is not what I want to happen, but I have to think the American tech worker gets screwed in the world where remote work is the norm. If you make the labor market global, there's a lot of really smart Europeans who will work for half or a third of what American devs will. Can anyone refute this line of thinking? I'd love to be wrong.

  • by ssijak on 1/18/24, 3:26 PM

    If working from home for all the jobs that do not require physical presence (building a building on a location for example) was a right by law, I can imagine centralisation in big cities reversing and a lot of interesting smaller communities starting to flourish more. Which in my opinion is a great thing.

  • by gumballindie on 1/18/24, 11:19 AM

    People advocating for on site work are people without an inner voice. They need to constantly externalise thinking.

    Anyway working from home does increase productivity for the individual, improves the economy due to more disposable income, benefits the mental health of those with an inner voice, and stimulates family life.

  • by tamimio on 1/18/24, 4:49 PM

    And we all knew this from the day one, it’s just middle management feeling the need to have someone around to breathe around their shoulders and boss them around, and the C-level pushed by the commercial landlords because it’s all about their benefit.

  • by maxehmookau on 1/18/24, 11:49 AM

    I've been working remote for 5 years, so this is anecdotal.

    But it's also incredibly obvious and intuitive. It relies on the right company values, the right processes and the right incentives. But when done right, this will always hold true IMO.

  • by honeybadger1 on 1/19/24, 10:56 AM

    My company did it's own research and found it was sales professionals who could not be trusted with WFH, but engineers for the most part were just as productive ..However, they found they their teamwork and multi-departmental collaboration suffered immensely and were not willing to make technology investments when people could just go into HQ or the many other offices we have.

  • by falsandtru on 1/18/24, 6:59 AM

    The fact that productivity did not increase would also mean that few people used the freed up commuting time to improve their skills. Anybody here?

  • by rldjbpin on 1/19/24, 9:08 AM

    having worked in two countries and several companies in my relatively short career, i personally find that fully remote work has a lot of limitations.

    even when hybrid work is implemented, you require a strong communication culture. this is not a given for all companies, however. when you sit with your team across the desk, simple things like asking about a small detail takes orders of magnitude less time and effort than the digital alternative.

    regardless of your opinions on taking breaks with your colleagues, i found off-work conversations happen much less often when everyone is doing remote. i am not arguing that everyone hates their coworkers (or maybe mine hated me and only stood to talk to me when in person), but despite post-pandemic era, this pattern still seems to hold up.

    i would love to hear how others have done things differently in this context. the point remains that there are some things that need to be in place before you could fully make the most of remote-only teams.

  • by rcbdev on 1/18/24, 4:00 PM

    With the entire commute debate being what it is I will just point out that in Austria there has been somewhat of a solution to this for a long time now - it's called the "Pendlerpauschale" (commuter's flat rate).

    If you live far enough away from your employee (20km+) you are entitled to an added monthly bonus to your salary - depending on your estimated commute time.

  • by Nikolas000 on 1/18/24, 3:45 PM

    Link to the original research article (by SF Fed researchers) https://www.frbsf.org/economic-research/publications/economi...

  • by beams_of_light on 1/18/24, 4:59 PM

    No, but it erodes the control executives want to exert over their workforce, along with the company's real estate values.

  • by greybeardgeek on 1/18/24, 6:08 PM

    Here's the chart. https://www.frbsf.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/el2024-02-3... Not sure if I agree with the headline as a proper summary.

  • by mrbonner on 1/18/24, 9:15 PM

    I'm ok with hybrid work schedule now that my company make th mandate. But, I think we are really dumb for scheduling meetings in the early hours while others commuting to work. Plus, once in the office everyone finds a corner and dial into zoom. Isn't that dumb you think?

  • by LtdJorge on 1/18/24, 5:57 PM

    It really does, I find it close to imposible to concentrate in an office, having to blast music through the earphones so I stop hearing everyone and every movement they do.

    It mostly has to do with ADHD (without the H really), but it's a valid effect.

  • by caturopath on 1/18/24, 3:00 PM

    This is among those topics where I don't expect the opposite result to be reported.

  • by thegrim33 on 1/18/24, 8:30 PM

    Bloomberg doesn't even bother to link to the study that they're writing an article about? Makes me really want to believe them when they hide their source so I can't actually read what it says for myself ...

  • by OnlyMortal on 1/18/24, 6:50 PM

    With the right team, I’d offer it’s more productive than a cubicle farm where folks are having impromptu meetings.

    I think part of this is that when someone wants something, they have a little time to compose their thoughts.

  • by gdcbe on 1/18/24, 5:44 PM

    The one thing I see companies demanding onsite work never do is… commute time paid as any other work hour… sure some pay commute costs or km costs, but those are nothing worth compared to your hourly wage…

  • by ChrisArchitect on 1/18/24, 12:58 PM

    [dupe]

    Some more discussion over here on official post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39028862

  • by mesozoic on 1/18/24, 8:10 PM

    Yes people goof off more but it turns out that just replaces the time wasted commuting, being depressed in offices, being distracted in offices etc

  • by LightBug1 on 1/18/24, 3:04 PM

    Jebus ... this is still being debated?

    Can we just acknowledge the complete an utter failure of managegment around this debate (I am management, btw) such that we can't settle this one fair and square.

    We all have expectations and results from individuals. It doesn't take a Fed study to answer the question around an employees productivity. Either it's better, the same, or worse.

    I'm all for remote and hybrid work. Manage by results and what's the issue? Super strange. Get together every so often to catchup, do the human thing.

    I've had anecdotal evidence of firms falling behind because so many talented employees tell them where to go when flexibility isn't an option.

    Hold the line.

  • by sigzero on 1/18/24, 5:51 PM

    There is no real "connection" being made with remote work. That is something I miss.

  • by tomaszs on 1/20/24, 5:42 AM

    Don't use the linked archive.ph, the page contains copyright infringements

  • by Eridrus on 1/18/24, 4:52 AM

    > The researchers examined productivity trends in 43 industries — including chemical manufacturing, retail trade, and accommodation and food services — and assigned a “teleworkability” score based on the occupational mix of each industry and the share of jobs that can be done remotely.

    This does not seem like a very strong study.

  • by karmasimida on 1/18/24, 10:43 AM

    It doesn't confirm either ways though, not good, not bad.

  • by booleandilemma on 1/18/24, 2:10 PM

    I'm not surprised. Of course people are going to say that working remotely helps them be more productive. Working remotely is nice. They're going to say whatever bullshit they can to keep doing it. Instead of arguing about whether it's' productive or not let's just call it what it is: a really nice perk.

  • by deepsquirrelnet on 1/18/24, 4:42 PM

    How does remote work affect commercial property values?

  • by KorematsuFredt on 1/18/24, 5:00 PM

    I trust actual companies over Fed data any ways.

  • by codie3611 on 1/18/24, 9:16 AM

    These discussions always miss the main point. Remote work gives you the opportunity to decide what suits your life best. It enhances the possibilities a company offers. The main conflict is people trying to convince other people that their way is the right way and vice-versa. Find out what works for you and if you are better off, everyone will be better off around you too including your employer. That is why I mostly ignore these findings. I know what works for me and no study can convince me otherwise. And I know some colleagues like the office more and I'm glad they can go there.

  • by ycombinete on 1/18/24, 7:27 AM

    Now do one for people with ADHD

  • by okokwhatever on 1/18/24, 2:16 PM

    Oh God... here we go again...

  • by mouzogu on 1/18/24, 4:37 AM

    layoffs are mostly done.

    so the media is starting to lay the foundation for offshoring of jobs to remote, cheaper locations.