Working from home is not more productive than being in an office, after all | Hacker News Reader

Working from home is not more productive than being in an office, after all

economist.com

2 pointsTerretta14 comments

> There is more to work (and life) than productivity. Perhaps the greatest virtue of remote work is that it leads to happier employees. (…) Indeed, several surveys have found employees are willing to accept pay cuts for the option of working from home. Having satisfied employees on slightly lower pay, in turn, might be a good deal for corporate managers.

The author recognises productivity isn’t the only metric that matters and that work from home does have an effect on other areas, yet still chose to call it an “illusion” in the title and exclusively mentioning productivity in the subtitle.

Here in the UK commute, especially into London, is so expensive that being fully remote vs. being fully office-based can be worth about £10,000 a year before tax (i.e. 10k on gross salary)

I.e. for some people switching from having to go to London every day to being fully remote with a ~10k pay-cut is financially neutral (leaving aside any pension contributions). And they still save hours every day.

I don't think the authors typically get to choose the title for publication, and that more often than not, that is the editor's call

Fair. I’m not even seeing the author’s name in this piece, so it makes sense to direct the criticism at the the publication instead.

Number of calls handled per hour in retail does not seem to be the best metric to compare office and home working...

the issue is not that it is more, but that it is not significantly less.

and that there are a lot of benefits to not commuting, such as more time, better work life balance, less traffic, less emissions, and the ability to lower housing costs -- work in rural Kentucky in a 110k house instead of paying 7x that to be in a Nashville or DC suburb.

> it is not significantly less

Maybe the productivity lens isn’t the right one to use.

Companies don’t provide benefits like health insurance and weeks of paid vacation because it makes employees more productive. They do it to retain talent.

The Blue-Ridge Mountains vs a concrete jungle? That's a no-brainer.

For some, in some particular industries, and not creative ones.

https://archive.ph/2rmGK

The Economist preaching to the faithful.

Lies, damn lies, and statistics.

From around 3 months ago, Jun 29th.

Not only that, most of the "after all" seems to be cites from early pandemic.

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