I've heard endless people state that WFH productivity is through the roof with absolutely no evidence. And lets not pretend that we can accurately measure productivity of software devs - we've all been down this road with agile.
I've heard endless people state that WFH productivity is through the roof with absolutely no evidence. And lets not pretend that we can accurately measure productivity of software devs - we've all been down this road with agile.
I think part of the shift is because companies are realizing it isn't as bad as they expected. A friend works for a company that announced they will allow 100% WFH in the future too. The CEO said she thought WFH would cause a 50% loss of productivity. But after 2 months of it, no significant loss in velocity has been noticed. Not just for development work, but for other office work as well.
It is also hard on people that are used to working in the office to be told that they now have to work from home suddenly. I'm sure a non-trivial amount of people did not have a space for themselves to be able to work and they are trying to figure things out as they go. Not to mention figuring out how to communicate properly while everyone is remote.
There is also not a one size fits all solution. People will be more productive being where they are more comfortable. That may be at home, in a coffee shop, at a library, in the office or any other number of places. People are expected to work from home right now, so a lot of those other options are out of the question.
TL;DR, don't judge work from home when everyone has to do it during a pandemic.
Two things:
1. Working-from-home-during-global-pandemic-with-kids-and-spouses-and-roommates-and-not-ideal-setup isn't the same as working-from-home. Undoubtedly some people are less productive today.
2. Commits isn't necessarily a great proxy for productivity to begin with. For example, with greater focus comes less "oops I missed a unit test and broke the build" type commits, or even just more time to interactive rebase and clean up commits before pushing. "Go slower, you'll be done sooner."