Hacker News Reader

Comment by not-chatgpt | Hacker News Reader

Worked at a couple FAANG companies and from what I've seen, management is absolutely right that remote work, overall, is inefficient. There was a Blind poll and I believe half the people admitted they were slacking off more frequently while remote.

However, being laid off is just a completely different matter. Depending on the company, the motivation for the layoff could significantly differ. Some did it to save costs, others have quotas to meet, etc. But I believe it is fair to say there is no observable correlation between remote work and chances of being laid off.

View on HN

As someone else said, I think that poll is fundamentally flawed. People just didn't realize how much time they "wasted" being in the office.

For me:

When I was in the office I would be fairly regularly distracted by coworkers (which does have some advantages but is a loss when its every day) which causes me to loose my focus. Now I am "distracted" by my cat wanting on my lap which doesn't cause me to loose focus (if anything that keeps me in my chair for longer).

I would need a break from something and browse news and the internet A LOT in the office. I needed that mental break.

I would often try to force myself to not take a break for appearances causing the actual work output over the same period of time to go down.

I feel more comfortable in my home environment since it is decorated how I want so I am less stressed.

Finally the biggest one? I work more hours now than I did before. I am no longer commuting so I don't feel stressed if I need to finish something before going offline. Or if I am doing something that only needs half my focus I may work on it at night while doing something else (like maybe the final rounds of finishing a script that has a fair amount of downtime while it runs each time). Or if I just turn on my computer a bit earlier in the morning and do a quick something and then get back to my coffee, breakfast, whatever.

We can do anecdotes for days. I have worked at 3 remote companies, 2 transitioned from in person. It was clear to me that productivity at the 2 that transitioned became much worse due to remote. Productivity was never great at the other. I don't think it has much at all to do with hours worked but collaboration absolutely takes a nose dive when remote for the average employee.

I love working remote for the same reasons you do. Doesn't mean I think it's good for the company though.

> people admitted they were slacking off more frequently while remote

Honestly, I think people didn't realize just how much they slacked off while in the office. It was just a lot less fun and a lot less free.

Over a long period, I can sustain about 3-5 hours of truly hard productive work per workday. I can grind out an all-nighter once in a while; I can do an isolated back-to-back 10-12 hour day, but I can't sustain 8 hours of actual, hard nose-to-grindstone work per day on average (and I'm not ashamed to admit it).

In the office, this looked like dicking off with co-workers. At home, it looks like throwing in a load of laundry or taking the dog for a 20 minute walk. Those "feel" much better (because they are) and that feeling better I think people report as a form of guilt that they're slacking off more.

Talking to your co-worker about the TV show you both follow or the local sports team is every bit as much slacking off; it just doesn't engender any feeling of guilt.

There is no guarantee that slacking off more frequently means less efficiency.

Slacking off but then returning to focused, deep work, without distraction can absolutely be more productive than working consistently in a distracting environment. I've even found that "slacking off" is embraced by companies who have worked remotely. In one prior gig, letting the team know, "Hey, I'm going skiing for a couple hours and will be online this evening" was not at all an unusual message to see. People work when they are going to be productive and "slack" when they wouldn't be productive anyway. Remote work means you can optimize for your personal productive times... and still slack off more. Best of both worlds.

> remote work, overall, is inefficient

I dont see how one anonymous poll at a FAANG company proves that. Just because you are doing busywork doesn't mean it's efficient. FWIW I agree with your other points.

Don’t base any opinion off of something you see on Blind. That’s a very self-selecting group who participate there, and probably the majority of responses were just trolling.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com