Time to repeat my topical story.

I worked for a startup that prided itself on being "data driven". They'd talk about how other startups were doing stupid things because they followed their feelings instead of data.

One day in one of those all hands meetings, the CEO was taking questions. Someone said, "Studies are showing that four day work weeks are more effective on like every metric. Can we look into that?"

The CEO said "No, we're not doing that ". Didn't read the linked studies. Didn't entertain it at all. His mind was made up, and the data was irrelevant.

Because he doesn't really care about data. He cares about feeling smart and irreverent. He cares about being seen as a cool disruptive startup guy who's going to grind his way to success.

The dishonesty makes me want to puke.

But you know what also makes me sick? All the sycophantic boot lickers that would gather round and tell him his every idea was great. The people who would work unpaid long hours to "get shit done". Bunch of fucking wormtongues who would sell out their coworkers for crumbs.

Maybe he was a real person once who really did care about data. But by the time I met him, he was an empty suit

They know this. A schismed individual is a compliant employee.

I've been studying managers for much longer, and I've reached a very clear conclusion: they don't care.

This has been correct for all of human history. I’m not sure why anyone would have assumed the invention of the cubicle would have changed this.

I find it really weird that companies would want to pay the enormous cost of maintaining huge buildings full of people, that don't actually need to be there, in person. That just seems like a huge waste of money.

If I was working again I'd rather work at the office. I wouldn't be productive working at home. I need accountability. Not everyone likes working from home

AI article and website

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eudaimonia

But then how will they make money renting out the office space?

Could’ve just asked.

The only advantage to me being in the office is that I get free access to the gym.

Working from home sucks. Yeah I said it.

I'm a software engineer, and yes, there are days that working from home really does help with concentration and focus on a particular project, but unless you're a contractor, tasked with "build this and come back when it's finished", building anything is typically a collaborative process. You know what sucks for collaboration? Working from home.

There are no tools that can sufficiently replace what the office offers: interaction, chance conversation, camaraderie and socialising with the people with whom you're trying to build The Thing. It's why people still go to actual conferences and no one cares about gigantic Zoom calls masquerading as real interaction. Slack sucks, Jira sucks, Teams suuuuuuucks. They'll do in a pinch, but they'll never offer real collaboration. For that, you still have to be in the same building.

That's not to say that offering remote work isn't great. There are people who work best in isolation, but that's not all of us. I'd argue that it isn't even most of us, and headlines like this "working from home makes us thrive" aren't helping. They're objectively bullshit. Having been in software development for 25 years, I can categorically state that the more remote the team I've been in, the less organised, the more disjointed and disconnected it is.

And don't get me started on the whole "overemployment" trend, where people try to hold down two jobs by doing neither well at all. Yet another "perk" of remote work I guess.

Working in an office for 8 hours a day costs me an additional hour getting ready and commuting to to work, an hour away from home for lunch, an hour commuting back home and unwinding after work, turning 8 hours of paid labor into 11 hours of doing shit for other people.

Working at home claws back 15 hours a week.

Advancing tech was sold as a way to make all our lives better. Here is an instance of tech making our lives better, but instead companies dismiss it because the real purpose of tech for the capital class is control.

It largely depends on if you can afford to have a room dedicated as your home office.

Working/relaxing cannot happen in the same space. Our brains are not wired to do such a dramatic difference in mental activity in the same location. That's also why bedrooms should be used for sleeping and fucking ONLY. Once you start reading/scrolling in bed, your brain makes that connection, "Oh, I'm in bed, I should doomscroll for the next 3 hours" instead of "Oh, I'm in bed. I should sleep."

You mean we had a worldwide event that proved to us that an incredible technology that allows us to work remotely could actually be used to work remotely, then our overlords chose to ignore that and now studies are proving what we already knew was true, is true?

Neat.

CEOs: NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Does anyone have a link to the actual study? The article doesn't seem to have it.

Every time this comes up i tell my personal and data driven experience as a middle manager in a company, and every time people trash me, but i keep saying it.

IT FUCKING DEPENDS!

From purely data point of view (note: this is from my place of work) workers whose work is purely executing more or less the same duties every day had their productivity have a nose dive when working long stretches from home. Also their works quality got worse. Its easy to reinforce bad habits whitout even noticing it, if the feedback comes from email and and not straight from the supervisor.

BUT with jobs like coders or artists where the job is more open ended instead of monotous labor there was no ill effects.

Then on the other side communication has gotten much slower with the people working from outside office. Where i used to just walk to the other room and ask something from my collegue i now need to message them in our internal and hope they notice it. Getting answers for questions have turned from 5 minute thing to 10-40 minute things.

Also from the point of more inventive things on my work we have lost a lot of changes to brainstorm ideas. No more throwing ideas around during lunch or coffee breaks

I liked working from home at first, but after so long it becomes harder and harder to leave your work at "work" when your workplace is also your home. Now I am back in the office and actually prefer it that way. I have the flexibility to work from home on weekends or when I need to be home for some reason, which is good enough for me.

Of course. Saving an hour of meaningless commute every day is a huge positive change.