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Comment by xhrpost | Hacker News Reader

A lot of comments here saying that this is a flawed study because we don't know how the pandemic may have impacted a statistical decline in productivity. I must ask, why is this not a concern when someone anecdotally or statistically shows an increase in productivity from Covid WFH? The response is instead something like "we've known it all along! WFH is better!".

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>WFH is better!

Honestly, I think if that's the general consensus, then who gives a shit about productivity?

Employees, especially in America already have almost no bargaining power, literally no statute mandated vacation, terrible worker protections like "exempt (from overtime pay) employees" which I'm sure almost everyone on this board falls under. So literally the more hours they make you work, the less per hour you earn. How that one got passed congress without a revolt I'm not sure I'll ever understand.

But I digress....if employees like WFH a lot better then they should have it.

For me personally, the reason is that I fully expect the pandemic to negatively impact productivity in ways completely unrelated to WFH (children in home instead of school, stress, lack of preparedness to proper WFH, etc.). In contrast, I find it difficult to think of pandemic-related but not WFH-related aspects that I expect to improve productivity. I'd be happy to be convinced otherwise.

I think the biggest one is that most people's social lives also dried up during the pandemic. You weren't finishing up WFH and then rushing out to get dinner and see a movie with friends. You weren't traveling or taking vacation. I've had a lot of conversations with people on my team over the last year that were some version of:

Them: "I finished this over the weekend."

Me: "That's great, but you're to be clear you're not expected to do that. You should feel free to take weekends off to recharge!"

Them: "Yeah but what else am I going to do right now?"

If there hadn't been a pandemic, they would've been doing all of these other things and then more likely to cut back on work when the end of work hours roll around.

That's a good point, thanks!

I think thats still a negative, becauss it's a recepie for depression and low morale

And this is where I am right now after a year of this s**. Let's get reopened for those who are struggling.

Probably just intuition, wfh was more productive despite a global pandemic. Intuitively covid is a disruption that would decrease in productivity like other distractions

Confirmation bias.

Honestly, IMO most of economics "research" is just a random assortment of bullshit viewed through a lens of confirmation bias. Results don't match your priors? Make adjustments to your model assumptions until it does. Disagree with a result? Point out at all the ways in which those assumptions are imperfect. Results match your priors? LGTM.

The research papers go through reviewers who can very easily spot these things. In fact in most research articles you have to explicitly show that relaxing certain assumptions don't completely invalidate your results.

Ironically, your comment can be interpreted as confirmation bias. Predisposed to not trusting economic research -> see an article about economic research -> confirms previous beliefs.

It might be because a global pandemic is assumed to depress people's spirits, which isn't what we'd expect to increase productivity. So we rely on our intuition for directionality?

Should be studied more, but wouldn't you be surprised to know that the pandemic itself (stress, isolation, deferred medical care, etc.) caused an increase?

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