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Comment by 0xy | Hacker News Reader

Remote work is terrible for productivity especially if the company was not already remote first. In my employer, we've noticed a 30-40% productivity dip across the board. Not only that, but people are reporting more stress and are working unhealthy hours. Replying to emails at 9pm, etc.

The communication breakdowns are constant. Previously you'd absorb information through osmosis, but the watercooler chat about projects and upcoming initiatives has outright stopped.

If in person meetings are 10 in terms of information bandwidth, video calls are less than 6. They're just terrible. Oh, I accidentally interrupted someone yet again because of lag despite us all having fiber internet. Amazing.

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In the last 21 years, I've worked 2 years in an office, for Google. Those were by far the least productive I've ever felt. I resorted to getting into the office at 5:30 am to have some quiet time before the obnoxious group next to us in the office arrived and started joking around and flying RC helicopters in the building.

I'm another one with 20 years WFH... Its amazing how much controversy it engenders. I think a good part of it, might be having consciously made the decision vs. having to 'fall into' it during the pandemic.

Interviewing for my last job, I asked if I could bring in a pinball machine, and they said they just moved from a shared office where they had to steal the ping-pong balls from the other occupants so they could work.

I didn't bring in the machine, but it was a nice work environment.

Odd. We supposedly saw a doubling of productivity.

We have many offices in offices in different timezones, and remote-only helped cross office collaboration.

Also, the company is open floor plan, which is well-known to be productivity minimizing.

On top of that, we’re pathologically meeting-heavy (“Don’t write it down or send an email. Schedule a meeting instead.” is part of new-hire training.)

If I weren’t under NDA, and I had business school contacts, I’d try to write this up as a case study.

Are you sure the elevated stress and lowered productivity are due to remote work, and not other environmental factors (i.e., a global pandemic, lockdown, etc.)?

Oddly at the place I was with we saw literally the exact same metrics but inverse: productivity increase by mid-30%. Everyone hated the office so that makes sense.

My philosophy on it is that management is key. If butts-in-seats gives management the illusion of productivity then they will likely find out they are dead wrong. You can practically objectively measure productivity with remote work. Collaboration is more challenging and therefore surfaces many efficiencies you can make in your process.

Your feelings are very much not shared in regards to productivity.

https://www.pwc.com/us/en/library/covid-19/us-remote-work-su...

I will grant you that multi-person video meetings are subpar. Which is a blessing, because now we have smaller meetings.

Would Google be doing this if they thought it would reduce productivity?

You should never assume businesses, corporations, and people are rational actors. Corporations make irrational decisions all the time, often to their demise. Why do we think Google is exempt?

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