The perks workers want also make them more productive

The only thing this might measure is time you are available to do work, but the same can be done remotely.

As soon as your job involves thought work, there is rarely any connection whatsoever between where the job is done and productivity. For example, in software development it's common that NOT writing code right now is the best choice if you haven't done the other steps. For jobs like this, productivity is a cycle that involves first learning, then planning, then finally maybe writing some code. Or maybe learning some more first and then continuing to plan.

Planning is by far the most important piece, and it can be done literally anywhere and even while performing another task as long as it isn't a mentally-demanding one. So, at least in my experience you literally cannot plan while coding. Not anymore than you could write a novel. But you can do it while lifting weights, going for a jog, eating lunch, sleeping, taking a shower etc. etc.

Where's the most comfortable place to plan? It's okay for that to be answered differently by different people. For some people that's the office. For many more people it's sitting at home in pajamas or whatever.

Only if butts-in-seats is your company's output. Anything else, and you still have to quantify productivity by looking at output.

As a manager it would be your job to identify those folks and treat them accordingly. Arguing that "I can't manage remotely" is mainly an admission that you can't manage at all.

He began working in-person as principal of Providence's E Cubed Academy on July 22, 2020. Meanwhile, he remained employed virtually as the assistant principal of Kramer Middle School in Washington D.C., a role he held since 2019.

https://www.newsweek.com/man-accused-simultaneously-working-...

I know someone who used to come in, put his coat on a chair, then go off fixing problems with desktops all over the campus. Eventually they found he was popping back to his car and doing 6 hours driving for a minicab firm.

On the other hand if you measure presenteeism in the chair I had a colleague that would sit down browsing various websites all day taking calls for some business he ran doing scaffolding or cars or something (right dodgy dealer).

Instead, I looked at a number of things. Are you making progress? Are you getting help quickly when you stop making progress? Does your code have lots of bugs later on? Do you take constructive criticism well? Do you give constructive criticism well? Do you help out your team mates? But how fast you got work done is not something I considered at all, as long as you were showing up, not wasting exorbitant amounts of time, and not putting in extra hours if there wasn't an emergency, I figure it will get done when it gets done.

Eg, I cared about work ethic instead of productivity, and that is much harder to gauge with work from home. Without it, I feel like I have to start judging based on perceived productivity and I hate that.

That said, I personally love WFH and so do my team mates, and I know them and trust them so it isn't an issue, but I wonder about how new people will work out.

Conversely I don’t much care how you get the results. As long as they’re there when you said they would be. If you can do 10h of Netflix followed by 1h of frantic work, respect. You do you.

The issue is with hiring. When hiring remote junior, you need to look out for above average communication skills and debugging abilities. That's often not present for a lot of new grads entering the market because of a lack of experience or relevant work. Think of three month bootcamp grads where each week's assignment was spoon fed by the instructors who themselves are students who couldn't get a real job.

Some places that hired from that pipeline are finding out it's simply impossible to bring these programmers up to speed, but places hiring real engineers have way less issues (because a serious program will include challenging work and select for people capable of debugging and reasoning independently).

It's also "clear to many" this is not the case.

Perhaps not all "junior members" are fungible. Perhaps this is a characteristic of their employer.

I think juniors and, to some extent all technical new hires, are really vulnerable to the problems presented by remote work and these shitty tools we use like Slack, Confluence, Zoom, or God help you if you're in an org using Teams.

You need mentors and folks to on-board you who have a high EQ and can empathize with the position of the mentee/new-hire. That's hard.

Often, the source of the forgetting is, in fact, the assumptions made by the earlier generation that 'everyone knows' something - when the truth is that new generations were never taught those things.

Our shop foreman was very keen that everyone looked busy if you were clocked in, you were getting paid to work so you should be working. I was trained by my seniors in the two key activities to do to avoid standing around: spraying things with a hose, and sweeping the floor. It didn't matter if you were going over what you did five minutes ago, it just had to look like you were doing something useful.

Personally I try to avoid perpetuating a culture where looking busy is important because people will find ways to look busy.

I'm not sure that's true. My manager messages and asks if I'm free to talk and if I am, she gives me a call on Teams right then. Asking if someone is busy doesn't seem like a high bar.

Now, I do think its harder for them to do their daily ramble around the office to chat with everybody and interrupt their work. I agree its much harder for them to get information on office politics and relationship dynamics, which is really valuable if you are a corporate climber.

Pro athletes are maintaining their physical health just like knowledge workers; it's not like they can step onto the field to work our or compete, and it's not like they can just sit at any keyboard, and achieve optimal performance immediately. Resting well, eating good foods, stress management, and other factors that happen away from the actual event are critical for both athletes and employees!

Spend Friday morning wrapping up the week, making to-dos for the next week, no meetings, minimal email, and generally shutdown for the day by lunchtime.

Developers get assigned tasks. A guesstimate is made by the dev over the time/effort required, which is approved as plausible by a senior dev/manager. Then the task is done or not done on time. If done, good, next task. If not, the explanation ought to be reasonable.

That’s all you really need to know.