Hacker News Reader

Comment by eksemplar | Hacker News Reader

We've measured productivity of remote work compared to in house work. I work in the public sector so it's mainly not programming, but caseworking and similar. We've found that productivity is way down when people work at home, we've however also found that allowing people to slack once in a while increases their overall performance.

The optimal results come from people working mainly at the office. Now this may be completely different for development houses, our coders are some of the most productive when working remote, IT in general is below average though.

View on HN

It's very cool that you guys actually gathered some data on the topic.

I wonder how much your conclusions would hold for non-public-sector jobs.

AFAIK it's typically harder to fire a public-sector worker for under-performance, than in the private sector. Perhaps that either (a) adds to the temptation to goof around at home, or (b) attracts the kinds of workers who were always more apt to goof around, given the opportunity.

I do a lot of work with public-sector employees. I always thought they were lazy (which I think is a fairly common feeling throughout the private sector). Some are, of course. But unfortunately the problem is not one of drive but of competence. In technology specifically, the public-sector employees I've worked with simply do not have the skills of a private-sector employee with similar responsibilities/experience. I don't know if it's the lower salary or what but I can count on one hand the number of technical public-sector employees who would be able to have a similarly-titled position in any of the private sector companies I've worked for.

Main problem is that all the high-quality tech talent is vacuumed up by the private sector. For what it's worth, I once worked at the Munich government and since a couple years in the private sector. In Munich, BMW, Microsoft and the various suppliers for BMW are the most likely target for fresh university graduates, mainly due to the prestige and in the case of BMW the enormous pay.

Those who end up in public sector usually are those who value the job security or do it out of dedication. Which doesn't mean they're bad at their job, in my experience it was the exact opposite, but the government sector is waaaaay understaffed, and pay can't be risen to private-sector levels because of rigid union agreements.

Also, the competence problems are related more to regulations... why spend your time e.g. learning Docker when you're happy enough you can finally use Ubuntu instead of RHEL? So basically unless you lesrn it in your time off there's no motivation to learn new stuff because it will be outdated when regulation molasses finally catches up.

Our only measure of data is what we've used for testing our velocity. We've found that velocity increases when 2 or more are working from home on any given day. When I know a particular feature is going to require a lot of concentration, I don't think twice about popping into our #standup channel around 6am and saying: "wfh today".

Now, when it comes to bugs, I'll admit, tossing it up on big screens and inviting a few co-workers is just awesome. It's like playing solitaire with someone watching... they always see things that you would not.

Note that working remotely takes some getting used to just as with working at an office. Yes, you can dump someone into unfamiliar conditions and draw conclusions from that, but that's just confirming your prior assumptions without actually trying.

Some jobs aren't totally "remote - compatible" no doubt.

My take on this is people who actually "develop stuff" or to put it bluntly - get shit done - developers, architects, field consultants, release engineers, etc etc - are used to being judged by easily quantifiable metrics - repo commits, defects, system downtime etc etc - for these folks working from home is no different than going to the office with a couple of logistical adjustments.

Developer productivity is not easily quantifiable though...

If there's a baseline I don't see why it should be rocket science - person X's velocity when working from home is Y and when working from the office is Z. Compare Z and Y and there you have it. Sure, it's not apples-to-apples week-to-week/sprint-to-sprint but the averages are pretty consistent.

If you don't have the baseline there are other ways of getting this figured out, not as accurate but good enough typically - instead of comparing someone's office vs. home velocity you go by the average velocity you're after and see if they can hang with that while working from home (and again, I don't see why this would be difficult to figure out).

From the few people I know in the public sector, "working from home" is code for "working as little as possible". I suspect organizational culture plays a large role.

Can you provide any studies on that?

In my experience, it depends on the person. Some people are more productive at home, others are distracted, end up playing video games and are never available online. Good mgmt would recognize this and enable employees to maximize their output.

The problem is that a bad apple ruins it for everyone. Now managers have to deal with the constant complaints fo those who aren't as productive at home. "why is it ok for Bob to work from home twice a week, but not me?" Once that starts you either start aggressively firing (unlikely) or just take away work from home entirely.

I imagine this problem only grows with the size of the group/company.

This is precisely what top-level comment addressed by stating that 'a multi-billon dollar company' shouldn't be 'kindergarten'.

"shouldn't be", but is. Wishing something away doesn't actually make it go away. I'm a tech lead, not even a true manager, but I have to deal with kindergarten level emotional problems all of the time.

So what do I do? Fire everyone? Don't think that's a practical solution. Try to hire people who are easier to work with? Sure, but good luck. Hard to determine that during the interview process. I don't think telling people to 'grow up' is a real solution here.

No, ideally anyone with similar roles should be able to work from home.

You also say to the complaining employee that you monitor all of your employees and ensure that they are being productive (any good manager should be doing this.) and that their productivity is none of their concern. Then you ask them if they are holding up the project, and how, and then you go from there.

It's just poor management. Managers are mostly incompetent, or if they are, they are afraid of backlash and unable to lead.

I still don't see how you're solving the problem if people who aren't productive working from home, but will also feel that a selective policy is unfair. It's going to happen.

It's simple, if they are not productive, then you tell them they need to be more productive. If they continue to be, you put them on probation as per the standards, and they will have to come into the office.

This isn't nuclear fusion. If this is difficult for a manager they shouldn't be a manager.

Have you ever been a manager? Do you really think dealing with people, all of whom have different strengths and weaknesses, is this simple? Do you appreciate that putting someone on a PIP may very well lead to them quitting? Maybe they don't work well from home, but you still need them. Hiring has overhead, causes some amount of friction and (hopefully) short term loss of productivity as you ramp them up (bigger problem for small teams).

>This isn't nuclear fusion. If this is difficult for a manager they shouldn't be a manager.

That's what makes me think you don't actually have any experience here. That... or you've just been blessed with more luck in your management endeavours than I have (or maybe I am just bad, certainly a possibility.)

Don't put them on probation. Just simply ask them to work in the office because they are not meeting deliverables.

Ahh, so I must never have done it, if I offer a different experience. I've managed teams before-with a mix of remote and onsite. And trust me-it is not that difficult, for competent managers. Managers are too often afraid to lead. The peter principle is very true.

The fact is not offering WFH causes many people to move on as well. I've lost many team members to it. Just as low pay does. People leave. This is the new reality. Businesses want to disrupt but don't want to be disrupted. They want to commoditize workers-not be commoditized themselves.

My problem is to ensure my team's success, and my team knows what their deliverable are by their deadlines. If you don't do anything for 20 days and finish it on 21 because it's easy? Fine by me. Just get it done.

Good that you measured. What sort of training/support did you put in place for people (management, caseworkers, etc) before trialing "work from home"?

What is caseworking?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com