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Comment by zbird | Hacker News Reader

> and the companies I’ve worked for have only seen record profits

This cannot be sufficiently overstated.

To be fair, most tech based companies have very long pipelines. Google is making money off software written over the course of two decades. Intel has a 4 year pipeline for chip tape outs. A lot of tech companies were positioned well to increase revenue due to the pandemic.

So just because companies are making more money, doesn't mean productivity hasn't gone down. It could be that it's just lost in the noise at the moment and won't show up in the data for a few years.

I feel like this is a really good point - Most people are likely pretty bad at measuring their productivity, and honestly my expectation is that (if present), the productivity impacts of long term WFH are likely to manifest in ways that aren't entirely obvious.

For example, it seems evident to me that there's going to be a lot less "cross pollination" (for lack of a better metaphor) between people in a WFH environment as opposed to an office. For those with plenty of experience, this will have a fairly minimal impact, but for anyone else I'm concerned about missing out on the little things that are seamlessly transferred in face-to-face interactions over time. That thing that takes you 30 minutes that can be resolved with a 5 minute chat with the guy who knows, etc. Things you won't even really think to ask about that don't get brought up.

Even less direct things as well - eg random new product ideas that come from a chat with a coworker, or improvements, anything like that. Those can all add up to improving products and productivity, and are difficult to measure the effect of.

All of this stuff is in the tail though, and we probably won't see the effects for years (and it'll be muddied by people who do genuinely work well in WFH environments too)

>random new product ideas that come from a chat with a coworker, or improvements

I've had this happen plenty of times over text.

I suspect the "cross pollination" might get balanced out by the ability to interact with anyone at the company, rather than just those on your floor or building.

That's a good point as well - I suppose you could argue the likelihood of entering a conversation like that over text vs in person. In my experience you're generally a bit less likely to end up off track in text as opposed to talking, simply because it's usually slower - you can't bounce ideas back and forth at the same rate (not to say you can't, though)

Unpopular opinion, but you can’t just look at “companies made more profits” and decide that means WFH is more productive.

People starting dying from covid while crypto markets soared, so I guess killing people with covid fuels bitcoin.

Or possible they huge money printing influenced the picture.

EDIT: Not saying we weren’t more productive, just saying that HN tends to be very scientific but is really ignoring correlation != causation which we all would point out for most other things.

I didn’t say work from home is more productive, I meant the record profits while the ENTIRE company was WFH suggests that at the very least, drop in productivity cannot be an excuse to bring EVERYONE in.

Correlation does not imply causation. A company achieving "record profits" does not necessarily have to be because there was no drop in productivity.

It's entirely possible that a company can have a drop in productivity and record profits at the same time.

Anecdotally, my company had record profits during the period of WFH, and I personally think my productivity stayed the same or improved. However, as a company we also shipped significantly less new features/products than we did in years past (and my opinion as to why is because we had significant organizational delays caused by miscommunication about timelines and priorities (stuff that in theory might have been improved if we were not WFH)). If we had not had a drop in the amount we shipped, it's possible our record profits would have been even higher record profits.

If correlation does not imply causation, does that mean corporate productivity might correlate with, but not cause, profits?

Sure, which is why the entire "productivity" discussion is a bit speculative. I note that in the OP article, productivity of any kind is not cited as a reason for the return to office. Neither is profit, for that matter.

Clear "Correlation does not imply causation" case. The fact that people stayed more time at home implied they consumed more of everything online and accelerated digital services adoption making companies related with digital services sell more, plus less expenses (no travel, less expenses in facilities) made higher profits. Remote work correlating with Higher profits is a correlation not a cause afaik.

Not trying to be nitpicky but that sounds like actual causation. I would describe it as a second-order effect.

Corporate overlords will only sacrifice the bottom line for one thing: the illusion of control. It's why open-plan offices and Scrum are still things, despite the money left on the table by adopting them.

How do you propose to keep in touch without periodic team meetings (aka scrum)?

You cannot do a scrum meeting over Zoom?

Over zoom is 99% all we do. Office is optional for those who want to get away from their families.

You get on a call periodically.

Scrum is more than "periodic team meetings". It's daily standups, sprints, sprint planning, backlog grooming, retro (cited lengths for these meetings are aspirational; usually they take 1.5x-2x the recommended times). It's sprint goals and sprint commitments, failure to meet which will be recorded and used against you in performance reviews and disciplinary actions. (Don't tell me they're "forecasts" now. They're commitments because people higher than you in the org chart use them for long-term planning.)

The only reason why major companies undergo Agile transformations -- and why these almost always take the form of Scrum -- is because of the promise of fine-grained metrics, analytics, and control of the SDLC by upper management. That's what the agile consultants pitched to the CTO. Everybody involved in a typical Scrum shop is playing a game of Mornington Crescent -- of pretending to deliver quality software in an organic developer-customer relationship when what they're really expected to deliver is stories, estimates, and burndown data to their bosses (or their bosses' bosses).

Anyway, that has not much to do with WFH, aside from the fact that calling workers into the office comes from the same place as imposing Scrum: the bosses need to feel in total control.

I was introduced to Scrum at 2 companies that didn't use Scrum this way, and am currently at a company that uses it exactly as you describe. It was a shock and it's a real pressure cooker.

Scrum is notorious for not being rigorously implemented. It's pretty much just daily meetings.

With a task tracker, forum, and chat software.

Many have commented on correlation-vs-causation. We get it, there is lag in the economics and the profits have partly been boosted by COVID. However, there has also been inflation-riding on behalf of these companies, and the same argument can be made in reverse: what evidence have they presented that WFH is causing a drop in productivity? None whatsoever. This move is simply to get employees back on the chairs so that the corporations may exert the same level of control they had in the past. On the other hand, those that are doing just fine and aren't cynical about their work practices are embracing WFH.

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