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this post was submitted on 13 Jan 2024
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I agree the video is cringy AF, but I don't have a problem with the company demanding its employees return to working in the office rather than remotely. There are a whole host of tangible benefits (for both companies and employees) from coming into work and I don't see a problem with a company insisting on it. There are some industries and/or jobs in which remote work is probably fine, but most organizations benefit more from having people come into a shared workspace.
Do you have any data to back any of that up? Cause the data, by in large, contradicts that: https://www.computerworld.com/article/3711386/why-return-to-office-mandates-fail.html#tk.rss_all
*buyin' large
fuckingcapitalists
That was a good article with lots of great sources. But my tinfoil hat is telling me that all of these large companies demanding return to office aren't doing it because "beliefs". They're doing it because the people have gained too much power in the last few years and this is the strategy to put them back in their place. Lay people off in hordes while interest is skyrocketing and demand more from them if they want to keep their jobs. Make them afraid and vulnerable so we can control them better. But again... that's the tinfoil hat talking.
Definitely makes sense...
Beyond self-reports and perception-based outcomes, most extant studies that I'm aware of have found decreases in real output. For example, a randomized controlled trial published by the NBER found that productivity of employees randomly assigned to work from home was 18% lower than employees randomly assigned to work in the office:
https://www.nber.org/papers/w31515
Another study found that output decreased by around 13% when employees worked from home, even though hours worked increased:
https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10.1086/721803
Cognitive performance may also decline in remote settings:
https://academic.oup.com/ej/article/132/643/1218/6445994
Ah this paper again.
If you look at the paper itself (especially graph 1B) and if you look at normal output levels for basically any complex job, you'll see that this conclusion can easily be reworded as "during WFH, output reduced to levels equal to those of a year before, continuing a trend that had started months before Covid/WFH".
It's basically a useless measurement, and the authors themselves even suggest they should maybe compensate for periodicity, but then don't do that.
First, the RCT is a much stronger study. I'm not sure why you're picking a fight with a correlational paper when there is a causal manipulation that I linked first.
Second, did you actually read the paper? 1B isn't the graph of productivity; 1C is. You can't just look at a graph, either--you need statistics.
"For Output, figure 1B, there is no visible monotonic or linear trend, so a seasonal time correction might be more appropriate here. Moreover, average output appears to be slightly lower during WFH.
For Productivity, figure 1C, the graph is more volatile, which is not surprising for a ratio. There is no clear linear time trend before WFH, but some variation from month to month, so a seasonal correction might be more appropriate. Productivity drops visibly during WFH. Finally, figure 1D plots the log of Productivity, which drops considerably after the start of WFH.
To quantify the WFH effect, and to control for employee and team time-invariant variables (via employee and team fixed effects), we now turn to the regression analyses. Informally, the estimates give us average differences in outcomes before and during WFH for the same employee, controlling for team effects (since employees sometimes switch teams) and time trends.
Table 4 reports WFH effect estimates based on OLS regressions for all three outcome variables, plus the natural logarithm of Productivity, in each case with linear and seasonal time trend corrections. All estimates are in line with the visible effects in the raw data in figure 1.
...
Columns 5 and 6 show that both WFH effect estimates on Productivity are negative, but only the estimate with seasonal time trend is significantly different from zero. We prefer that specification, since both the plot and the linear time trend coefficient indicate that a linear trend is not as appropriate. According to this specification, productivity decreased by 0.26 output percentage points per hour worked. Given an average WFO productivity of 1.36, this estimate corresponds to a 19% drop in output per hour worked. This is economically significant: if employees worked a fixed 40 hours per week, this would imply a drop in output of 10.2 output percentage points in a week. In other words, if employees had not increased time worked during WFH, on average they would have completed only 90 of 100 assigned tasks.
Columns 7 and 8 explain the log of Productivity, which strongly increases the fit of the regression. The WFH effect is negative and significantly different from zero at all significance levels, irrespective of time controls."
Because I don't have access to that one. It could be amazing, it could be shit, I don't know.
Good thing I was talking about output then, and not productivity!
Thanks, I do actually remember a couple of things from when I got my doctorate. And my gripe is with the statistical analysis, or the
One of those things you learn in statistics is that you can't ignore trends when analysing data. You also can't just control for external factor just by doing some ordinary least square regression.
Authors are assuming productivity (which is based basically on output / time worked) is seasonal, when the time worked is barely patterned, and output is very clearly not seasonal in the data shown. If it was seasonal, you would expect a roughly similar increase in at the same time each year, say February. What we see is the exact reverse.
There may be periodicity, but seasonality is not at all shown, and there is too little data shown to make any claims about periodicity in output. Say they're on an 18 month development cycle, and you're controlling for a winter-dip, you'd be skewing your data hugely for no reason.
In other words, the data wasn't significant (see emphasis) until they "corrected" for a factor that they haven't shown exists, and is, in my opinion, completely counterfactual.
And even if we assume the authors are correct, they only show the whole system was less efficient in the first 5 months of WFH, which is hardly a surprise to anyone. They don't show the cause lies with the workers, even though they constantly use wording that seems to imply that it does. I promise you it wasn't the coders who were calling for constant meetings.
So to sum up:
This paper completely assumes a demonstrably incorrect time factor, and uses it to create significance where there was none before. And even if you ignore that, they place blame on workers instead of on the system.
The RCT is free to access (if you haven't downloaded more than three NBER papers; if you have, open the page in a different browser). Scroll down on the page I linked and download it via the button.
Statistically, you can control for variables in OLS regression--that's literally exactly what the model does when you include more than one variable--and, provided that you got your doctorate in anything that uses statistics, I am sure you know that.
Seasonality is one of the more basic economics concepts. The influence of weather and seasonal illness trends on productivity has been shown in a number of studies (e.g., productivity declines during the flu season). The authors didn't "show" it because it would be like showing gravity in a physics paper. Some things can be assumed. Also, productivity didn't have a trend, as was stated in the text that I quoted.
You completely ignored the log transformed results, which the authors note were better fit by the regression than the untransformed data, and which showed less productivity in work from home regardless of whether seasonality was controlled.
Personally, I think people should be able to work from home all they want. Productivity isn't the only important thing in life, nor is it the only important thing to businesses (e.g., retention of top employees is important). I am wholly against WebMD and all other companies requiring employees to return to the office. All I was doing in my comments was trying to clarify the data on WFH and productivity. There are good reasons to continue to allow WFH, but increased productivity is not one.
I'm going to finish my course prep. You can have the final word here; I don't have time to continue debating anymore.
Your claim is you're stupider when you work from home? And you're basing that off of online chess tournaments?
No, it isn't; performance != ability, and it's not clear that cognitive performance declines at all--hence the word "may."
My claim is that
Nothing more.
So your claim is pure speculation and has no real merit. Yes, I agree.
People always say there are tangible benefits, but then rarely ever give any actual evidence. (Note the CEO in the video said the exact same thing and then also did not provide any evidence backing it up, unless you count someone drawing a graph on a whiteboard in an "up" direction evidence)
Covid forced anyone who could work remotely to work remotely, and the economy went through the roof. Tech especially had some of their best years - ever.
I also want to call out that a lot of employees that were hired during the pandemic were hired out of region - in other states, across the country. Most "return to office" mandates are veiled layoffs hiding behind the need for employees to be in person for arbitrary reasons. By forcing them back in office they get to claim employees failed to show up for work, neglecting the whole "They work in Arizona and the job is in Tennessee" bit.
The brass tacks is that:
As a manager, here are my observations. They're qualitative, not quantitative.
I actually really agree with you on these points. I'm hybrid right now and it works well for me. In office I get to socialize, I do have better meetings, and I do feel like we come out with good ideas. But then the other days I'm at home, and those are my heads-down get shit done days. I get more done at home, but we come up with better ideas on what to do in office.
I'm in software, so I push for our scrum process to allow for that. I schedule meeting days in office, where we have sprint close, sprint plannings, retros and everything in office - and then you can go home for the rest of it.
Yeah, that's it exactly. My organization is also software, by the way, but embedded real time control stuff in a very engineering-centric company.
Finally, a sensible comment. Also a manager for a bunch of years, and I completely agree. The best is a hybrid setup, and my team comes into the office together on the same agreed days. I think this is a good balance, and I personally wouldn’t want to work in a fully remote role, as it makes collaboration an informal human connections very difficult.
Thanks for the anecdotes.
Unfortunately in most sectors the data disagrees with whatever bullshit you decided to make up for the sake of argument.
Wow, what an ass. I'm telling you my experience leading an organization. I said it was qualitative, not quantitative. What makes you accuse me of making shit up?
So give us the data if you have it.
https://www.computerworld.com/article/3711386/why-return-to-office-mandates-fail.html
https://www.apollotechnical.com/working-from-home-productivity-statistics/
https://thehill.com/business/4110598-remote-employees-work-longer-and-harder-studies-show/amp/
Is that enough? Should I keep going?
Did you actually read the articles you linked, or did you just search for ones with titles that seem to support your point of view?
That first one cites a number of studies that don't support your view. The first says that less that half of companies had higher productivity with remote employees. The second says a third of managers say productivity increased and 22% say it decreased. The third says it depends on the employee. There's one that says remote employees are happier, which no one is disputing. There's one that says hybrid gives a small benefit to productivity (which was my experience) while fully remote is a net negative, and so on.
Your second article mostly talks about working from home sometimes (e.g., "at least a few times a month") and my whole point was that hybrid seems to be best overall.
Your last one isn't data, it's mostly anecdotal, but the overall thrust is that employees work longer at home, which isn't the same as productivity and which I said in my comment.
None of these touch on my point that teams work more effectively and come up with better solutions when they work together in person. That's my experience over the last four years, and my employees tend to say the same thing.
I don't think I'm a terrible manager and I'm definitely not a micromanager. One problem I had managing a remote team was how to deal with people who were clearly not working when they should have been. I could never prove it so I could never do anything about it.
If they are "clearly not working", why can't you prove it?
Not are, were. I no longer work for that company. I'm typing up more details in my reply to OP.
I never met the burden of proof that my HR team said was required if I wanted to write someone up. The company did not have appropriate spying tools to definitively prove that an employee had not actually typed anything in two hours even though their teams status was showing active. There was always the hypothetical, "I was at my desk but my phone was ringing non-stop with customer calls and that's why I couldn't answer this customer's 5 urgent e-mails over 3 hours."
I'm not saying that I wanted that kind of babysitting spyware installed. I absolutely did not. I don't believe in that sort of thing and wouldn't have wanted something like that installed on my computer for my bosses to spy on me.
To answer your question directly, I'm not an idiot. I'd call an employee's cell to ask why certain things had not been actioned yet and hear background noises that clearly did not come from a home office (traffic noise, wind, PA announcements, etc). My best guess is they would stop whatever they were doing, pull out their laptop for a few minutes to do whatever I was bugging them about and then disappear again. I'd call them out on it, but they knew there was nothing I could actually do so it didn't matter to them.
Most of the team were honest and diligent. They worked just as well at home as they did in the office and we never had any problems. But there are always people who know what they can get away with and will try to get away with as much as they can.
That makes sense, thanks for the thorough response!
Thanks for reading it!
People had no tangible tasks? Wouldn't the proof be that their work was not getting done?
It wasn't so black and white. You'll see what I mean if you want to read my replies to other commenters.
Then your real problem is you don't have an effective way to set and measure goals.
I don't disagree with you. I changed jobs earlier this year. I took a hard look at my successes and failures at the last job. I really wanted to learn from my mistakes and be a better manager. I think I'm a lot better now at setting expectations and holding people accountable, or at least I'm trying to be.
Does it involve spying tools?
No
If you can't prove that someone isn't doing anything then that's on you, the manager. You shouldn't punish everyone else because of one person not doing their job.
Real talk - There are many metrics you can use to gather info on what your team is doing. That's your job, to know if they're working or not. If they aren't, it's your job to prove it and carry out the punishments. If you can't do that then that's your failing, not the team's.
For software I hold my teams to their point commitments. If they commit to so many points of work then that's my metric. Teams will always slip, and miss targets, but there are obviously people who only get one or two points done a sprint. That was my job to collect those metrics and make a case.
Oh wow, I wasn't expecting to get so many passionate replies on a sub-comment. I'll provide some more context now that I'm not on mobile. TL/DR: I'm not the clueless asshole CEO you may think I am from my original comment.
My job is not in software, coding or similar. It's customer service for international logistics. Our field was hit especially hard by the pandemic rebound. Remember when you couldn't buy anything? I was on the front lines of that and it was insane. The current problems in the Red Sea are triggering a sort of PTSD. There are already shortages of empty containers in Asia because they're all on boats going around Africa. Shipping rates from Asia are growing geometrically the past couple weeks, and things will get a lot worse if ships can't safely transit the Suez Canal again soon.
Being customer service, the expectation is that we are available to customers during normal business hours to quickly process requests and resolve problems. There is nothing preventing the job being done remotely if you have the right people. We didn't have all of the right people. But to be fair, they weren't hired for a remote role. Like many jobs, we were full time in the office until March 2020.
I was not upper management setting policy. I was middle management. And I'm not pretending I'm the best manager. I was promoted from operations to build and lead a specialized team for our company's top accounts. My style leans toward hands off / lead by example. No task is beneath me and I back the team up 100%.
The stress and non-stop intensity of that job wore me down. I switched companies earlier this year to a role that was closer to home, less responsibility and a nearly 25% pay increase. When I called a meeting to let the team know I was leaving, I was shocked to see the stunned looks on their faces. A couple of them cried which I was absolutely not prepared for. I'm not trying to toot my own horn, I'm just trying to say I guess I was doing something right to elicit that kind of reaction.
My bosses knew about the problems I had with a few employees taking too many liberties working at home. Other department managers had the same problem with some of their staff, this was not unique to my team. The company didn't have any kind of spyware installed on employee computers to monitor activity, and it's very easy to manipulate teams to make it look like you're at your desk when you aren't. I'm opposed to that kind of monitoring anyway. All of my employees were salaried, so there were no cases to be made for cheating on a time card. Also, the company did not issue VOIP phones to remote workers. I had a company paid cell phone, but my reports were expected to forward their desk phone to their personal cell phone on their home days. For these reasons and a few others, HR would never approve the write ups I wanted to do. I could only have phone calls followed up with e-mails.
I'd see a few urgent e-mails come in from a customer to someone that weren't getting answered. I'd poke them with a teams message and get no reply. So I'd call and could tell that they weren't at home by the background noises on the call. They'd apologize for not seeing the e-mail, power up their laptop, deal with it and disappear again. This was just a couple problem children btw, most of the team were professionals and doing what they were supposed to do. These few employees knew they had the upper hand and frankly took advantage of it. It's not what I would have done, but I can't blame them. I can just look back and whine to strangers on the internet about it.
My managers told me I should force these employees to come in to the office every day, but I refused to do that for a few reasons. First, this went against the company's official pandemic emergency social distancing policy. The hybrid schedules and desk assignments were set up so that the cubicles around you were empty on your in office days. Second, it was extremely hard to hire people during that time. Demand for workers in my field exploded once everyone started making money hand over fist when shipping rates skyrocketed. Forcing them to come in unfairly like that would have led them to quit, and there was no shortage of companies out there willing to snatch them up. Then their desks would fall on me and the rest of my already over-worked team.
Lastly, I was hybrid too. So I'm going to force someone to come in every day when I'm only there 2 or 3 days per week? For what? The solution proposed to me by management was that I should come in every day. Mind you this was in the alpha / delta days. I had a 2 year old and a severely asthmatic wife at home. I wasn't about to come in and sit next to someone I knew wasn't social distancing based on the phone interactions I mentioned above. Masking policies weren't enforced I believed in the science and took that sort of thing very seriously in those days.
Real talk: I did my best to take a hard look at my own strengths and weaknesses as a manager at that job. I wanted to learn from my mistakes and do my best to not repeat them in my new position. The new job is 100% in office, work from home is by exception only. I know this is not a popular opinion around these parts, but I prefer it this way. Our job is fast paced and customer facing, and I'm in the process of re-writing and re-training the team's entire workflow. All of this is easier to do when we're in the same physical space and can call quick, impromptu huddles. I can hear problems brewing on the floor and coach everyone on how to solve them then and there. We all worked remotely today due to a snow storm and there were no problems.
The challenges I have with my new team are different because, honestly, they're kind of a shitty team. My predecessor picked some real duds. I'm actively trying to manage 3 of them out for one reason or another (constant Friday/Monday flu, direct insubordination, refusal to complete assigned tasks, failure to meet deadlines, etc). So now I'm learning and growing in a different way. I'm forced to be more punitive and micro-managing than I want to be. I'm alienating the staff I don't want to lose trying to weed out the bad apples and trying to figure out how to keep them motivated. I also have a few recent new hires I like that I don't want to get the wrong impression, but I can't give anyone a reason to claim that I'm picking on them when that's absolutely what I'm doing. I'll take tips if you have any! (no /s)
Long term, I don't want to manage an operations team or have a ton of direct reports. I want to move into a product or commercial role and work on bigger picture stuff. But I have to prove myself in my current role first.
I think you're headed in the right direction, and it sounds like you understand what I was trying to say. I'm sorry you have so many duds on your team, but you know the game, and sounds like you're acting on it.
You're absolutely right, remote workers - especially those in customer service or any on-demand platform must be available at all times. The nice thing of being at home is that you can be a bit more relaxed, but that doesn't mean shutting your computer and walking away, it means you can hear the call coming in while you're getting a cup of coffee.
Good managers aren't micromanagers like I said, but you're seeing the other side, but they will be if forced. I agree with your bosses, your specific employee you have in mind has lost work from home privileges, it's how you carry that out in your head now. Personally, I would start keeping a record of missed calls and if you have it in your company, start building a PIP. Missed calls is absolutely a metric for a customer service agent. I'm not saying anyone is a perfect 0 missed calls, but you can take the average that everyone else has (double it to be generous maybe), and then you have this person's target level. If they're consistently above that, well, there you go. PIP and then if no improvement out the door.
For the flus, well, for that one since it's health I would inform your HR team of what you suspect is happening along with the proof of the pattern and ask for guidance. They'll probably guide you on how you should proceed there so that the company doesn't come off as "not caring about health" - but they're definitely not going to be happy with an employee faking illness.
As for the rest of the team, motivation may come from that. Not saying from fear, but they probably know Kevin is over there dicking around and offline most of the time, and so it makes them think that he's just getting away with it, and demoralizes them because they probably do care about the job. I know I've been in that position before, nothing kills morale like a teammate who doesn't care at all.
I really do wish you good luck. Management isn't easy when you have a team of duds, but I've seen great managers come in and turn a team around - and a large part of that is cutting the chaff so to speak. Sounds like you know what sort of boss you like and who you want to be, and that's the boss I strive to be too, but for some people they just don't want a boss at all. And for them we have to become the bosses we hate.
Thanks for the thoughtful reply. Yes, I absolutely got where you were coming from. That's why I felt the need to elaborate. It sounds like you have more managerial experience than me, but we're on the same page.
I have a team of 11 including 1 supervisor under me. They're all mostly ok besides the 3 troublemakers. We're not in turnaround territory and it definitely could be worse.
I no longer have remote workers. Only by exception (home repair, sick kid, etc.) And not to play semantics, but back when I had most of the problems with remote workers, working from home wasn't a privilege. It was a health & safety mandate from global hq to allow for proper social distancing. I would take a different approach today if I were put in that situation again.
HR does know about my chronic friday/Monday call off gal. I was able to write her up once, but then she got wise. She'll pay a co-pay to go to some random immediate care place and get a one sentence doctor's note saying "she was seen here today." HR says those absences have to be excused. She's killed off a few relatives too. It's a shame because she has the best attitude on the team when she's there.
For us, PIPs are the last step to getting someone out the door. By then you should have had a couple verbal warnings and a write up or two.
Once I finally get my KPIs finalized, documented and trained, then I can really start auditing and enforcing more aggressively. I'm already getting a lot of pushback, but they were underperforming quite a bit when I joined. We have capacity.
I don't think they realize how close I was to having to lay off 2 or 3 of them due to falling customer demand. I agreed to take on more business from the region to keep everyone busy. We're actually growing now, but my RVP won't have infinite patience if I can't get results. If he pulls the plug then I'm overstaffed by about 6. I just hired 3 to handle this new business.
Now I'm motivated to write up some SOPs!
why should people's lives be drastically worsened just so organizations benefit (in nebulous, bullshit, business school ways)?
There are zero tangible benefits to coders reporting to the office. They are less productive, less happy, and more frequently interrupted.
I worked a hybrid schedule at my last job. There was not one single benefit for me to come into the office half the week. I achieved nothing there that I didn't achieve at home because all I needed was a computer, an internet connection and two monitors, and, despite it being open plan, we still did all of our communications on slack and all of our meetings on zoom. I just wore noise-cancelling headphones all day. I was interrupted maybe once a week at most and usually by someone who wanted to know where someone else was.
It didn't even benefit the company because it was an office in a large industrial space and they could have removed the offices and put in more equipment if they just made all of us, not one of whom needed to be in the office to do our work, work from home.
And if you tell me that socialization is a benefit, you can fuck right off. I already have friends and a family if I want to socialize. If I make a friend at work, fine, but if they're all just polite acquaintances, I'm happy to live with that. I can count on my fingers the people I've worked with in the past who I've lost touch with that I'd even remotely care about if they got back in touch with me.
False. The vast majority of office jobs can be completed more efficiently via remote work, with less personal cost to the employee, too. I can't actually think of any office job that can't be done just as well, if not better, working from home.
There's nothing backing this. Just a bunch of CEOs saying they've "noticed" productivity. Which they have to say. The only actual study I've ever seen said there was zero benefit partly because having to host all the workers and provide amenities for them counters any benefit that could possibly happen, with company annual performance not showing any increase.
There are plenty of benefits from remote working too, as well as drawbacks from office work, and it hasn't been decisively shown that at-office work is always better. For some management styles, sure, I guess. The sort of work they do - website development, I'm guessing? - has been shown to be amenable to a remote work style. Advantages include being able to hire people from all over, not have to spend big money on an office, employees can save money on housing and cost of living (don't have to live near a city center) and automobile (don't have to pay for gas to drive in or maybe even have a car) and time of commute - rather than get up, shower, drive for an hour and park, they can just start work. If the employer makes tasks and time flexible, also child care, which can be crucial for some people (it can be very expensive). And if the employer really wants, they can pay people less and save those costs themselves.
Of course, some employees like it, some don't - there are people who work better remote and some prefer being around colleagues. I agree the choice of offering remote work belongs to the employer.
The tangible benefits:
Free (bad) coffee
Vibes you forgot vibes
Can you list those tangible benefits?
As someone who has worked remotely since 2016 (well before covid), I don't see them for a company such as WebMD.