Hacker News Reader

Comment by Joky | Hacker News Reader

There is something to be said about individual productivity (whatever that means in a very innovative/creative environment) vs team/company output, just today I saw this in my feed: https://flocrivello.com/changing-my-mind-on-remote-about-bei... And that's coming from someone who actually tried to build a business out of remote work (TeamFlow was the product).

I can be much more productive at home when it is about my individual contribution (me coding to deliver something unambiguous), but xxx individuals doing this does not necessarily align into a great product: that does not scale.

View on HN

I while back I was slammed on here for making essentially a statement that my remote team seems to individually claim/feel more productive but the net team productivity I felt decreased as we transitioned from in office to remote.

I think this observation is spot on - and you don't have to look far to understand why individual productivity != systems productivity. 100% individual utilization in a system is a negative - manufacturing companies learned this years ago and is where the principles of the toyota system/kanban/lean manufacturing/etc. rose from. The only resource that should be 100% utilized in a process is the bottleneck - and anytime anyone is interrupted to help the bottleneck, that is a net win for the company output, even if individually it feels annoying.

It's really unfortunate that it seems so many people are in the "you can pry remote work from my cold dead hands" camp that it's hard to even have a conversation that doesn't devolve into "I feel more productive remote, so you shouldn't care where I work".

Definitely seems like it’s a strange hill that people are willing to die on these days.

I’m pragmatic. I’d rather have a job than look for one. So if my company decides to RTO, I am going to RTO.

For some, it's a pay cut, in money and free time. It's a valid reason they'd rather change job.

I have zero problem with that. If your current gig is not a good fit for any reason, change it. I guess I mean it’s strange to me how some folks feel entitlement enough to think that their individual preference should be important enough to demand their employers accommodate them. i.e. they shouldn’t have to find another job.

It’s simply not the same thing as safe working conditions, ADA accommodations, etc… it’s a preference…and one mostly born out of the pandemic.

I have the experience that the quality of the office building makes a difference. We moved to a new building a few months back with more space, fewer people crammed into one room, generally quieter. People that used to work from home now prefer to be in the office as much as possible.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com