
To Raise Productivity, Let More Employees Work from Home (2014) - edward
https://hbr.org/2014/01/to-raise-productivity-let-more-employees-work-from-home
======
spiritplumber
The problem with working for home is that the person who gets half of what you
do done, but stays in the office, is more visible to the higher ups. So you
want everyone to work from home and meet when needed, rather than half and
half.

In 2011-2012 I had one guy actually consistently take credit for what I was
doing because I would work at my place and show up once a week with
deliverables (there was a hardware part to the job, and I'd rather use my
small workshop built next to my home if I can).

Essentially he told everyone that he was the team leader for the project, and
people started to believe him. All he did was walk around the offices and make
powerpoints.

He kept telling people that he needed more men and resources to complete the
project... all the while, me and another guy were doing good on the project
(about on budget, a little ahead of schedule).

Eventually this guy's whining, intended to give him a little empire, is heard
by one of the actual bosses. We get called in to explain why we're behind and
need more people.

And that's where the crazy thing happens. We show up with the first batch of
production devices -- not even prototypes -- and do a full demo, and say "this
has actually been ready to field test for a couple weeks now". Great, right?
Except... everyone was so used to talking with the douche guy that they didn't
really pay attention to us. So we got a dressing down for being late (douche
said "it'll take two months for this to be ready to go unless I get two more
guys on it"), with the finished product happily beeping and logging data on
the conference table!

I felt like Galileo before the Conclave. These were scientists and scientific
administrators, believing some twerp's word over their own eyes.

And that's the story of why I quit NASA.

~~~
zaphar
I work from home and it's less than half and half for our team. But working
from home doesn't mean you don't communicate. Email, Document collaboration,
Regular VC all contribute to the visibility of your work. No one can take
credit for my work because I'm _extremely_ visible through multiple channels.
I don't even show up at the office more than once every few months.

Visibility doesn't have anything to do with being in the office. It has
_everything_ to do with communication and you can do that with a VC pretty
much as easily as you can face to face.

~~~
enraged_camel
It's worth noting that, in a lot of companies without an established work-
from-home culture, you need to over-communicate in order to compensate for the
lack of physical presence in the office. As the saying goes, when you're out
of sight, you tend to be out of mind. Therefore you always have to remind
people that you're in front of your computer or on the phone busting your ass,
instead of watching TV or taking a nap, which is what people assume you're
doing by default because that's what they would be doing if they were at home.

~~~
s_q_b
Github checkins, Hipchat comments, JIRA tickets opening and closing, emails,
texts, etc. If you work from home I recommend :

1\. Overcommunicating, which also creates documentation 2\. Leaving an audit
record, like a time log 3\. Going to as many office social functions as
possible. You can up your visibility as much with one party as you can with
ten days in a cube.

------
lfender6445
3 years WFH - I could never go back. Flexible core hours make handling daily
life chores a breeze (normal life stuff, doctors appointments, etc) and so
long as you get your work done, the company doesn't bat an eye.

If I need to I split up the day and in many cases this ends up working out for
the company, as I'll have done more work than I needed to even sometimes
working the weekends (which most people say to avoid for obvious reasons, but
it doesnt bother me).

It also helps when you love what you do - software is passion and career for
me. The ability to work remotely allows me to explore things like programming
in creative capacity , wfh provides distraction free environment which in the
end leads to more creative well rounded employees.

~~~
feedjoelpie
I've noticed our employees who often work from home seem to work more hours in
the end. For better or for worse. On the one hand, yay for me. On the other, I
imagine it has serious implications for work/life balance when that dividing
line isn't there.

~~~
duck
I know I factor in the commute time saved, so the actual net balance might be
the same for a lot of people (i.e. saved one hour of commute / work an extra
hour).

------
istvan__
To be fair, this is happening because of the wide spread "open office"
movement ruined office work in the US. Who thought that putting 10-20+ people
in the same space without boundaries is going to increase productivity when we
know that humans are not good with context switching at all. Now, working in
an open office environment is a series of continuous interruptions from
different sources. I am not surprised that working form home fixes this. :)

~~~
addicted44
Great point...

I have worked, in order, in a no WFH open office, yes WFH with private
cubicles in the office, and yes WFH open office.

#1 was terrible. In the case of #2 while I could WFH, I would deliberately
make it to the office at least 4 days a week because I was so much more
productive. And #3 has me staying at home when I want to work, and showing up
in the office when I want others to know that I am working.

Take away the nonsensical open office system (which may work great for jobs
which are almost completely collaborative at all times, but are terrible for
most jobs) and an office which provides some privacy is actually pretty
awesome.

You get to control your interactions with coworkers, and are far more
efficient interacting when you really need to.

~~~
_delirium
Yeah, for me personally an office is better than working from home, _if_ it's
a real office. A cube may suffice, but walls and a door are even better. In my
last university job, I went in to the office typically 4 days/week even though
I strictly could've gotten away with only going in the two days I had classes,
because I had a real office, and I liked the separation of my apartment not
also being "at work". I'd take the 5th (and sometimes 6th) day to work in
coffee shops or libraries as a change of pace. Interestingly those don't
bother me the way open offices do. Libraries tend to have an explicit ethos of
quietness, and coffee shops have noise but to me it's more of a background din
that's not very distracting. Maybe because I don't know the people like I do
in an office.

If it was a bad commute I probably wouldn't have gone in either, I'll admit.
But for the me the commute was actually one of the reasons I went in; it was
about a ~40 minute walk, which "forced" me to get some regular exercise and
fresh air.

------
mavdi
Been working from home for a year now and I will never go back. My
productivity has gone up 2X, mainly because I'm not physically present in an
office pretending to work by just being there. I need to push code in to prove
I've done work.

Once you're comfortable with your setup, you can pretty much work from
anywhere. I've been travelling regularly lately. As long as I have my laptop
and a decent internet connection, I'm good to go. Huge benefits for the
business and for me.

~~~
transpy
>As long as I have my laptop and a decent internet connection, I'm good to go.

What about a chair? I've found a good chair is also essential

~~~
oalders
I had trouble finding a decent chair, so I switched to the IKEA Bekant
sit/stand desk. I work standing for about half the day, so if I'm having
issues with my chair at least it's not for the whole day.

~~~
wambotron
Do you like the Bekant? I thought about getting one for my home office, but it
seemed a bit expensive for IKEA furniture...

~~~
oalders
I really like it. It's a bit pricey for IKEA, but compared with other
adjustable height desks, the price seemed quite good to me. Also, since it
looks like what you would expect from an IKEA desk, it blends into the room
nicely. It doesn't look as utilitarian as some other desks might.

------
pdxandi
I've been working from home for the last three years and I can say that I'm
far happier and more productive on a day to day basis. I worked in offices for
about 10 years and just never felt comfortable in the cube life.

I think one of the biggest improvements is that when I need to take a break,
my breaks feel productive. 20 minutes of cleaning the house, as an example,
feels completely mind-clearing and, in some cases, actually helps me solve an
issue I may have. I really enjoy my daily runs or bike rides, which help me
feel like I'm more than just a developer, that I get to take advantage of the
day.

That being said, I believe the biggest drawback is the monotony of the at-home
routine. Some days and some weeks just feel like one large workday, and
sometimes I can go for a day or two without saying a word to anyone other than
my wife, or my cats. That's the greatest challenge for me. Working in a busy
coffee shop probably appears like it would help the improve the feelings of
isolation, but it oddly does the opposite. I see the same folks coming and
going, day after day, and rarely do I get in conversations. And I'm actually
quite social.

I don't think I'd go back to an office if given the choice, but I'm still
working on the best way to feel less alone. I've been road bike racing on a
team for the last few years and I believe having that constant outside-of-work
social activity has helped quite a bit. For me, the cats are also huge! Plus,
I just love cats. But there's certainly room for improvement and that's
something I think about often.

I should note that I was hired to work remotely. My whole team is remote and
spread out around the country.

~~~
davidjairala
I've been having similar difficulties lately. I've been thinking about shared
workspaces. Have you given them a shot?

~~~
pdxandi
I actually have an office in town that I can go to (I work for a larger
company that's in a lot of cities) so I try to go once or twice a week. I just
have an open cube in a quiet corner. It does help, but I usually don't talk
with anyone because it's both a very small office and the team there works on
different web properties. I'm moving in a few months to a really small town so
I imagine I'll checkout shared space there, if I can find it.

------
blister
This is my first "work-from-home" job. Honestly, I don't see how I ever
survived working in an office before this. Between massive gas expenditures,
thousands of hours lost in commutes, and daily distractions, my productivity
and happiness have increased 10-fold at least.

I can't go back to the office. I've been spoiled. :)

~~~
onion2k
I worked from home for 4 years in my late 20s. It's brilliant. There's one
thing I wish I'd been told at the beginning: You really have to _strive_ to
maintain your social life. Work _hard_ at saying yes to going out and doing
things. Do not make the mistake of believing that online chat, gaming, forums,
and Facebook is the same as meeting people in the real world. If there's one
thing that working from home does, especially if you have a job you really
enjoy, it's that it makes it exceptionally easy and fun to just sit write code
(or whatever you do) for 14 hours straight without actually talking to anyone
face to face. That will absolutely _destroy_ your social life.

~~~
pm90
I think that is good advice. What I don't understand is why does social life
have to be tied to work? I mean, its quite clear this happens a lot, to the
extend that the President and First Lady met while working (not to say dating
is the only form of social life too, btw). Although I don't work from home, I
do try to develop and maintain more friendships outside of work than from
within it. It helps to keep "work" and "play" separate.

~~~
untog
_What I don 't understand is why does social life have to be tied to work?_

It doesn't. But as you get older there are fewer and fewer other avenues to
meet people, unless you proactively join social clubs and the like.

------
Angostura
One problem with working from home - being forgotten about.

I worked as a technology analyst for many years and when my kids were born
opted to go part time, working from home. While the routine work came through,
those 'interesting little projects' that makes work so interesting dried up,
partly because I lost sight of the interesting little problems that cropped up
that would make interesting little projects.

After about 4 years, I was in the situation where I was being paid really
quite a lot of money for not doing an awful lot. The CEO was was very nice and
we would meet up sometimes and he would say "I promise there will be something
very engaging to work on soon, we value your experience"

But in the end, I ended up resigning, despite the fact that they wanted me to
stay on and pay me lots - I just couldn't keep taking their money in good
conscience. Shame - it was a great firm.

~~~
rorykoehler
Sounds like you needed to use something like Slack for office communication.
It's very important that everyone adjusts their habits to integrate remote
working rather than just the ones who are remote. When the communication stays
within 4 walls but some of the team is not within those walls then problems
such as yours arise.

~~~
cookiecaper
It's impossible to get people to really do this if you have 98 of them in an
office and 2 of them remote. You can try to mandate it, but people are going
to revert to human-talk. If you're serious about a mixed environment of remote
and in-person workers, you must develop systems that account for the
resolution the remote workers _will_ inevitably lose.

------
driverdan
And yet every single YC company job post is on site only. I've been watching
the jobs section for about a month and I haven't seen a single remote job.

There really needs to be a culture shift in SV to support remote workers.

~~~
ryanSrich
Well when the president of YC speaks openly about apposing remote work I think
it's safe to say there's a huge bias to asses in seats [1]. That said I know
of at least one YC alum that supports remote work [2].

I can't stress enough that remote work is not an organizational tactic. It's a
cultural one. You must design and grow your remote working culture just as you
would your product. Half-assing remote work and having 10 people in house with
2 people remote just doesn't work. It's in that scenario where I think remote
work gets a bad rap.

1\. [http://blog.samaltman.com/how-to-hire](http://blog.samaltman.com/how-to-
hire) 2\. [https://zapier.com/](https://zapier.com/)

------
Shivetya
The problem with work from home is that you have to get past the one issue
most offices cannot do right, the personnel issue.

As in, there are people who don't work well at work and management knows they
likely won't work well if not worse if from home. However because personnel
issues are hard these people linger on and stifle benefits that others could
enjoy because no one wants to put up with the idiocy when they are told, so
and so can work from home but you cannot.

To raise productivity first act on those who are not productive so that the
rest of the team doesn't have to tip toe around a problem that has been to
obvious.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
That's the FUD factor talking. The OP reported none of this happening. Its an
unfounded fear.

Anyway its the same problem whether or not they work from home - some people
will underperform and have to be let go.

Finally, use some collaboration software and folks 'working from home' or from
other sites will seem as connected as people working in the office. Even more
so - a meeting of remote workers works better in fact, because each one has a
headset and can be clearly heard and distinguished. Instead of for instance a
crowd of people 'in the office' sharing a desktop microphone and heard as a
babble by everyone remote.

We use Sococo (I work there). Its got the best presence information in the
industry. Its clear who's working and who isn't. You can see everybody in the
area, who's active and who's idle, whom they are talking to and what meetings
are going on. Managers love it!

Working 'remotely' for 5 years now, in a company where everyone does it. Its
superior in almost every way.

~~~
cookiecaper
I work remotely right now. We have 2-3 people call in and 4-5 people who are
sitting together in person in a conference room in the office. The problem is
that you lose the physical cues that indicate when it's someone's turn to
talk. The remote workers end up trouncing all over everyone else when they try
to speak, because they don't have the cues that the people in the conference
room are using to determine it's someone's turn to talk. Remote people talk
far less than they would otherwise because they can't tell when it's safe to
interject. The meetings still function, but it's a significant disadvantage
over being present in the same room. It can also be hard to appropriately
distinguish speakers until you learn the voices of your colleagues really
well.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Exactly. Get them out of the conference room and back at their desks. They can
put on headsets, run a collaboration tool (like Sococo) and turn on their
video cameras. Now everyone is on an even footing! And its actually better
than what you're doing now - everyone can share docs with everyone else;
others can be called into the meeting in seconds; folks can chat privately and
get their stories straight so presentations go smoother.

Even though we make Sococo, we had to train our management to ONLY do Sococo
conferences for exactly the reasons you mention. Everything went much faster
after that.

In fact we have to train them to stop calling it a 'conference call'. Its just
a meeting, like any other meeting you ever held before. Except everyone can
hear everyone perfectly; more than one person can share docs (at the same
time!) and everyone can keep in sync effortlessly.

~~~
cpwright
You might make everyone on an even footing; but the people around the table
would have been more effective around the table than in their separate cubes
with a headset.

~~~
ebrenes
At work we don't use Sococo but instead rely on Skype, Google Hangouts or Lync
(depending on the project/client), but our experiences have matched what
JoeAltmaier has said so far.

Whenever possible we prefer everyone be connected individually as opposed to
sitting together in a conference room. The conference room becomes a
distraction, impedes proper communication between all members and the
attention spans increased when everyone connects from their workstation. The
conference room creates two areas with two distinct conversations so if we're
really aiming for an integrated environment we enforce people connecting from
their workstations as opposed to using a conference room.

Culturally it also spreads that idea that those sitting together are better
than the remote workers, which given our line of work is an unproductive idea
to keep propagating. And while there might be differences, they pale in
comparison to the negative impact that ignoring or discriminating remote
workers has in our projects.

------
BinaryIdiot
Working at home is so incredibly context specific I wonder how applicable this
data is to other industries. I'd love to see more studies done to figure out
how good or bad working at home is in general and what industry(ies) it works
in versus doesn't work in.

Personally I usually get more work done at home (especially since there is no
commute time) but I also usually work more hours because I get constantly
interrupted at home and context switching is hard (at least for me) (wife and
kids = interruptions). Even though I love being able to see my family more,
saving money on gas, etc I still prefer to work the majority of my time at an
office mostly because it's far easier for me to avoid context switches at an
office than at home (switching too much is exhausting).

~~~
ryanSrich
That's why you need an office. If you own a home I encourage you to build a
small separate structure in you back yard to house your office. If you're in
an apartment it's much tougher.

The context switching is all about setting expectations. Everyone in the house
needs to know that when you are in your office or have headphones on then
you're not to be bothered.

~~~
BinaryIdiot
Ha, I do have a small office but it's hard with multiple kids that are able to
run around and open doors. Sometimes it works out and sometimes not so much.

~~~
brixon
Put a lock on the door.

------
tamaatar
Story about a large enterprise: I have worked for a startup and I can honestly
say that working from home can be very productive.

However, I work for a large enterprise now. The problem is most of the team
doesn't really have much to do most of the time. To show off, people either

    
    
        1) spend minimum 8 hours or more in office or 
        2) Blabber all the time about how challenging and demanding their work is. I am looking at you, the sysadmin, who takes 3 weeks to create a server.
    
    

If I work from home, or use my free time in office for working out/ my own
learning, they get frustrated. They pass passive aggressive comments like
showing me the clock when I come in or go out.

The only criteria for them to show their work is the hours, and they never
lose a chance to make sure that they remind me and the manager about that-
like how they had to do something on weekends or how they have a meeting after
6 p.m. I tried to ignore all this. but it's hard. Those kind of people are the
majority. So here is what I did:

Since I don't get to utilize my time properly, I decided to make sure that I
at least piss them off more: I have always been an early morning person. I now
come to work before anyone else. At least I enjoy the look on their faces.
They have nothing to bitch about now :)

------
Illotus
I've worked both full-time remotely and full-time at the office(both own
single person office and open office plan) and much in between. For me the
significant variables are commuting time, office plan, co-workers and family.

When I had my own office it was easy to concentrate at work, however I
couldn't remote at that job. My commute distance was okay in summer (20 min
cycling), but in winter it was too much (45min in bus or cycling).

Previously when I worked in an open office I remoted a lot, going couple of
weeks without visiting the office at times. Then the commute was hour in bus
or by bike so remoting was convenient. Also the open plan office was pretty
bad for my productivity. We also didn't have a daughter then so there were no
daytime distractions at home.

So I think its all about the balance. Any way you slice it, I need low-
distraction environment to get coding done and much prefer short commute. In
my current job I can remote couple of days a week which is okay and gives nice
bit of flexibility for life. However I think I could handle more, but only
after our daughter starts to go to daycare.

------
fixxer
As a developer, I can't agree more. Unfortunately, I have to work with sales
teams and a variety of groups/individuals that just refuse to buy into the
concept. The irony is that I get more done in 4 hours at home than I do during
8-9 hours in the office. But, some people are all about that "face time".
Seems to be on the downtrend, though.

------
chollida1
> Question: So Marissa Mayer, who famously banned working from home at Yahoo
> last year, was wrong?

> Answer: It’s not so simple. There are lots of factors that could lead to
> such a ban, including a culture where remote workers tend to be slacking
> because of low morale. Also, we were studying call center work, which is
> easily measured and easily performed remotely.

I let most of my team work from home when they want to and I think the above
answer has a fair bit of truth to it. You need to start with some way of
measuring productivity to know if an activity works for your team or not.

The nature of work my team does is very exploratory and by definition, alot of
it won't pan out in the real world so we spend a lot of time thinking about
how to track progress to figure out what types of activities pay off for us
and what don't.

Not to suck up to Hacker News here, but the best predictor of success we've
had is does a person have demonstrated startup success.

------
fensterblick
I work from home because the office is not always a pleasant place to be. I
peg the reasons as due to an open office floorplan and micromanagement.

Management has torn down the cubicles in favor of open workspaces. Several of
my coworkers carry on loud conversations or use their speakerphones. There are
frequent interruptions. I can't concentrate.

The preponderance of micromanagement (in the form of Agile + Scrum) also
encourages working from home. Instead of sitting in useless meetings in
person, I can dial in and get work done while the meeting drones on and on...

------
pixie_
I know people who work from home and get a lot done, but the general feeling
when you get the 'WFH' email in the morning is that the person is taking the
day off :\ it's hard for the people taking advantage of it not to create a
stigma that effects everyone. Especially to management.

~~~
mattbeckman
Exactly.

My company is 100% virtual, and we've been WFH for about 4 years. I remember
taking an official day off with my family, where we met up with another family
for a fun outing. The other dad (who worked for a non-WFH company) was
"working from home" while we were out enjoying ourselves.

Irked.

------
sambrand
WFH doesn't just pay off in productivity, it pays in compensation, too. Our
latest survey shows that full-time remote devs get paid 40% more than never
remote devs:

[http://stackoverflow.com/research/developer-
survey-2015#work...](http://stackoverflow.com/research/developer-
survey-2015#work-compensation-remote)

There are probably a few reasons behind this phenomenon, not least of which is
richer countries outsourcing to cheaper countries. But even in wealthier
countries, remote devs get paid more.

No surprise then that more developers are working remote than ever before.
This year 29% of devs told us they work at least part-time remote vs. 21% last
year.

~~~
tericho
> Our latest survey shows that full-time remote devs get paid 40% more than
> never remote devs

Anecdotally, I would suggest the demographic of employees who work remotely
plays a part in this. In my experience, employers are more willing to let
senior or "better" developers work remotely than less ambitious, less
productive ones who need more day-to-day managing. Since quality developers
(senior or otherwise) are generally paid more, I would presume this
contributes to a higher average salary for remote workers.

~~~
pcurve
Agreed. Not everybody is good candidate for WFH. There will be slackers,
especially during non-busy times.

------
trustfundbaby
I think I've been stunned in my career to find that companies only pay lip
service to Working from home. They'll let you take a day here and there but to
paraphrase a manager at one of my jobs "we wouldn't want it to become a
regular thing"

It really just blows my mind that every company doesn't have WFH days or let
their employees pick a day or two to work from home with regularity.

------
keithwarren
I have been at home as an independent dev for almost 15 years and I love the
flexibility..BUT, there is one thing that work-from-home people almost
universally agree is a drag. When work is just a few feet away, it is hard to
draw a line from where work ends and life begins. I hate the fact that the
first place my kids ever come looking for me is my home office.

------
Kiro
I have the possibility to work from home as much as I want but I very seldom
do since I literally get nothing done. I would be a useless employee in a
remote company. Even when I need to work on weekends and no-one is at the
office I go there (all alone).

To be honest I feel that most people are like me and that the success stories
this thread are not representative.

~~~
blister
I'm curious about this thought. I wonder if in the post-automation economy,
people like you will simply be out of a job. I run a small engineering team
and would gladly have them be 100% remote if our current circumstances didn't
require a certain amount of on-site work.

Do you lack the motivation to do the work, or do you just not like working at
all? Would you work on side projects in your spare time if you could, or do
your creative juices only flow at the office?

I worked for 10+ years as an engineer in a traditional office environment.
Working from home in my current gig has been eye-opening for me. My
productivity is through the roof compared to how I used to be. You'd have to
pay me a lot of money to make me want to go back to working in an office
again.

~~~
crpatino
It is a fallacy that creative people find all work inherently interesting.
Specially if you are holding a paid job, there will be a mix of interesting,
self-actualizing work, and mere grunt work. You'll thrive doing the former but
need to exercise will power to complete the later. And if the mix is
unbalanced and geared towards the grunt work type (or your life situation
forces you to deplete your will at a higher rate than your average peer)
you'll benefit from a more structured environment with less opportunities to
goof around.

Another point that happens to me, is that my standard setup is at the office.
I don't work enough hours from home to justify replicating my cube at home
(and on my own dime), so whenever I end up working from home, there's
friction: the monitor is smaller (and wrong aspect ratio), the keyboard layout
is slightly different, the chair's not ergonomic, etc). I understand this is
not an issue for remote workers, but that may help explain the perceived gap
between two camps.

------
fishnchips
Working from home is a problem when you have a toddler of two running around.
I'd imagine that even if I worked remotely I'd go for co-working instead.

~~~
randlet
I work from home with a 3 year old and 4 month old. It really hasn't been an
issue for me. As long as you have a place where you can close the door[1] it's
fine and it's really nice to be able to see the kids during lunch/break. It's
just important to set ground rules: while you are working kids/wife don't
interrupt you.

[1] I _do_ need to wear headphones most of the time since it can be loud
sometimes :)

~~~
fishnchips
> set ground rules

Oh wow, I wish I could enforce that ;)

~~~
randlet
At the risk of asking a stupid question...why can't you?!?

If it's kids who are the problem, just lock the door.

------
up_and_up
I have worked 100% remote for the past 3 years and am way more productive at
work and at home.

It takes discipline though to ignore issues at home and keep delivering.

Another key is to find an organization that is `Results Driven` vs politics `I
see you in your chair` driven and that everyone there embraces a remote work
culture.

------
wandernotlost
I'm surprised by the ridiculously broad conclusion (headline) based on the
narrow conditions of the experiment and how little emphasis was placed on the
factors that lead to success. It's no surprise that work that's extremely
limited in scope and may actually benefit from limited collaboration could
benefit from remote work.

As a simple example, working on the wrong thing for a few hours can easily
have a negative effect on real productivity over the long term. "Amount of
stuff produced" is therefore a terrible measure for that type of work, where
collaborating continuously can help to cut off unproductive paths at their
root.

I don't think there's anything here to suggest that similar results would
transfer to more creative work such as software development.

------
moron4hire
I've been working from home for 3 years now. I am part time now, but still
manage to get more done than the other people in the office. I use the rest of
my time to... work! I work on my own projects in the VR space, which probably
nobody would have ever hired me for if I had just applied to jobs.

As other people have mentioned, I can't imagine going back. I've actually
looked at going back, gone to interviews and such (I get pinged by recruiters
constantly and sometimes I cave and listen to what they have to say). And
every time, I'm just struck by how alien everyone's behavior is in the office.
It's creepy, and then I remember I used to be like that, too. And then I'm
good for another year or two.

------
Xeoncross
I have worked for years from home. I'm currently at the first job that
requires me to be in the office every day. However, there are no managers here
- in fact, they are the ones that are remote while all of us developers get
work done.

I actually like being in an office where I can talk with other developers
about projects. That is something I missed working remotely as it was harder
to tell if I could call someone up and would be interrupting them if we just
talked about programming or ideas.

At any rate, I'll be returning to working from home in the near future I
think. Even good algorithm talks don't beat time with family.

------
datashovel
We may not be there yet, but I think a company's ability to efficiently and
effectively allow employees to work from home will eventually be predictors of
a company's future success.

The company executives may not see the benefits, but my prediction is that as
soon as the pendulum has swung and more companies allow working from home than
don't (and are successful at it because they've been thinking about it since
they have a long-term vision of their company's future), the companies who
paid no attention and weren't planning for this inevitable future will quickly
become extinct.

------
j-c-m
I imagine for this article the "office" was a call center bullpen type setup.
It is not surprising to see increased productivity due to the reduced
distractions of actually having a private personal workspace provided by the
_employee_ at home.

To keep costs down it seems most companies now design for maximum bodies per
square foot rather than productivity. I really wish companies, especially
those with the ability to absorb some extra costs, would actually try to
design for productivity and not solely cost savings.

------
mheiler
Someone finally ran a real study. I wish companies would run such experiments
much, much more often.

~~~
harmegido
I don't know...

I've been looking through the comments to see if anyone else noticed the fact
that the experiment was not a randomized control setup. They've let self-
selection bias creep into the results, so I'm wondering how much we can infer
from them?

~~~
judemelancon
"Half the volunteers were allowed to telecommute; the rest remained in the
office as a control group."

It's an RCT of people who wanted to work remotely.

------
katielo
I love working from home, but having everyone on the team using tools like
slack to communicate is essential - I don't think it would work otherwise. The
team and managers need a certain level of trust too. It was pretty hard to get
"onboarded" initially and start feeling like part of the team but it got
better over time thanks to over-communicating on my part and much use of the
slack /giphy feature!

------
normloman
I have a question. For those working from home, how did you get your job? I'd
love a job where I could work free from the distractions of an office. But I'm
not a programmer. I'm a copywriter / marketer. And all my remote work has come
from freelance gigs. I'd love full time employment with a remote company, but
most jobs I see are for programmers. So how did you find remote work?

~~~
danpat
[https://github.com/lukasz-madon/awesome-remote-
job](https://github.com/lukasz-madon/awesome-remote-job)

Many coding jobs, but a lot of other stuff too.

There are several job boards dedicated to remote-only work listed on that
page.

~~~
normloman
This is incredible! Thank you.

------
ryan90
I've had jobs where working from home was the greatest thing, and jobs where
being able to shout over to coworkers and have face-to-face conversations is
irreplaceable. It depends on the work and the team dynamic. Developers working
from home makes a lot of sense in most cases. Trading futures makes absolutely
zero sense. There's no one size fits all answer.

------
tempestn
>Will knowledge and creative workers also be more productive at home?

>The more robotic the work, the greater the benefits, we think.

Certainly don't agree with this. I work from home, and find the lack of
distractions _most_ beneficial for creative work. Certainly there are
challenges for _collaborative_ work, but those can be overcome, or at least
mitigated.

------
ajdlinux
I currently work from home, and I find actually starting work is hard for me
when there's no-one to force me to get to the office by 9am.

(Then again, on the handful of occasions I have actually worked in the office,
I've _really_ noticed the office banter - it's probably on par with whatever
distractions I have at home.)

~~~
itgoon
I start my day just as if I were going to work. Get up with the alarm, do
morning chores, take a shower, dress decently (but not office-nice), sit down
and start working.

My first task: send email to someone, preferably a team.

There might be a little web surfing first, but I did that in the office, too.

My work doesn't require set hours. I do it this way simply for the discipline.

~~~
ajdlinux
I feel I could benefit from having a consistent routine like this, though it
doesn't help that I work part-time and due to various factors my hours tend to
be scattered throughout the week. (Ultimately doesn't really matter for me any
more since I'm finishing at my current employer shortly and will be going 9-5
in-person very soon.)

------
abalone
This study was for call center work. That work is easily measured by objective
metrics, not particularly creative, and doesn't particularly benefit from
serendipitous face-to-face interactions among colleagues. Be careful when
extrapolating to software engineering.

------
jqm
I absolutely get more done working from home. But after a couple of years of
working by myself on project for business who I would communicate with once a
week (if) I felt I was getting out of touch with the human race.

I went and got an office job, and it was so nice to get up and go be with
other people. Even the office politics was amusing rather than annoying. Even
the annoying people were interesting. Now, after nearly a year of that the
novelty is wearing off and I'm wanting to be really productive and remove
myself from foolish social games again.

My ideal situation would be 2 days a week in the office, 3 at home.

------
habosa
I think WFH is great for individual contributors (especially software
engineers) that are a fraction of a team that has some people who go into the
office every day. It can be a really easy way to let those people focus and be
productive without arbitrary hours.

However I have seen what happens at a company that is all-remote and it can be
a disaster. My girlfriend worked remote for Cisco for 2 years and almost
nothing got done. The latency on all-email communication was too high and you
never knew what was going on because nobody had a full picture of the state of
the project. It was a total mess.

~~~
jmccree
I can't imagine an all remote team that relies on email. I've worked remote my
entire career and chat is the lifeblood of a remote company. In essence, the
chat server becomes the virtual office. When people sign on in the morning,
you know they are there. People say bye before signing off (leaving the
office). There's a #watercooler channel for people to have idle chitchat. A
project manager can ask a question in the project chat room just as they would
the teams open office room, etc.

------
ktran03
Anyone work out of a co-working space? Totally recommended?

I been doing the work from home for 2 years now. It's getting a little meh.
Love the freedom, but it would be nice to have actual physical co-workers, or
something like it.

~~~
dopeboy
I work out of a co-working space but I also work for myself rather than for a
company.

I could work at home but the social monotony would get to me. I need to be
around other people shooting the breeze, catching up, networking, or getting
help on a programming problem. I'd become too depressed being home alone all
the time.

I'd recommend it. It can be pricey though (I pay $400 for a reserved desk in
Brooklyn).

------
loocsinus
I worked remotely in my previous job for 3 years and noticed team cohesion
suffered. There is something about being in close proximity with coworkers
help people care more about each other.

------
adrianlmm
I work from home 2 days of the week, two of the biggest advantages are:

1) You never get late to work, you are already there. 2) You can work just in
your underware.

Disadvantages:

Kids, if you have them, will also demand your attention.

------
72deluxe
I would love to work from home again. I used to do a couple of days from home
but now am office-based, a short distance from where I live so the commute
isn't too bad.

But I would love to be back at home again.

Anyone who wants a remote-working developer for C++, let me know! I write
under OSX/Windows/Linux and also do Android, SQL in various guises and some
web stuff, but I prefer native to web - web is in constant flux. I did Qt a
long time ago, now it's wxWidgets. I can do C# too if you want it.

------
vipulg
Data is very interesting but will it be same for all industries?

~~~
keithwarren
I have a friend who fuels airplanes for UPS, I don't think he is going to get
to work from home anytime soon.

~~~
ceejayoz
Teleoperated robots to do aircraft refueling is probably already
technologically possible.

~~~
jerf
The window between "teleoperated robots to fuel airplanes being economically
viable" and "autonomous robots to fuel airplanes being economically viable" is
probably too small for teleoperation to become a big thing in general.

(Be sure to ponder the full meaning of "economically viable". As you say,
teleoperated robots to fill gas tanks are already _possible_ today, but
clearly they are not _economically viable_ in any but the most expensive of
situations because humans are still cheaper.)

~~~
VLM
How about legal liability?

You hire a remote guy to fuel the airplane watching the cameras and gauges and
signing off personally on delivering certain amounts to certain planes
following certain safety procedures and documentation procedures including
everything being automatically recorded. And if there is a screw up then you
can initiate legal proceedings (well, not if you outsource, but if you
teleoperate in the USA it would at least be possible).

With a fully autonomous robot then the first time there's any problem, the
deep pockets robot mfgr will be sued out of existence regardless of having
anything to do with the problem other than having deep pockets. Only in
business until the first airliner crash, and not a day longer, even if it has
nothing to do with fuel.

In a way I'm talking myself out of the idea, because non-teleoperated can't be
documented for all eternity like remote work can be documented. So the remote
fueler is on camera fueling up a jet without commenting on the obvious metal
fatigue crack far in the background that a monday morning quarterback knowing
what to look for can see if he ignores the fuel dude's job and zooms in on
finding the wing crack... this is a legal problem that non-teleoperated
doesn't have.

------
coldcode
I like the opportunity to work from home but I'd rather be around people most
of the time. Sadly the place I am working at is anal about people being in the
office.

------
yodsanklai
I can work either from home or from my office. My office is fine but I'm
usually more productive in the comfort of my home because I'm less likely to
be distracted. An other good thing is that I have more options if I want to
take a break. I can pick up the guitar for 10 minutes, enjoy the sun outside,
relax on the bed and so on... better than browsing the web where you don't
even leave your desk.

~~~
jjarmoc
> I can work either from home or from my office. My office is fine but I'm
> usually more productive in the comfort of my home because I'm less likely to
> be distracted.

This is definitely different for each individual. For me, I'm more likely to
be distracted at home.

> An other good thing is that I have more options if I want to take a break. I
> can pick up the guitar for 10 minutes, enjoy the sun outside, relax on the
> bed and so on... better than browsing the web where you don't even leave
> your desk.

See above, re: distractions.

~~~
random_rr
Distractions exist everywhere. For me, at least, there is tangible benefit to
throwing frisbee for 10 minutes vs. browsing reddit for ten minutes. I feel
more clear-headed and productive after frisbee or doing my laundry. I don't
get much out of surfing the web while bored in my office.

Unfortunately, no one lets me bring a frisbee into the office.

------
ArtDev
More productive, more focused and healthier lifestyle.

You can live somewhere less urban, and have a happier wife and kids.

If all you need is a computer and a connection, there is no reason to waste
time and efficiency in an office environment.

If you can't find the time and money for a real vacation, consider having a
working vacation. Spend afternoons on vacation, work in the morning and
evening. Its really works!

------
chrisbennet
Pffft, ignore that advice big companies. Move along, nothing to see here. Open
concept offices with butts-in-the-seats is the only way to go. Don't let them
undermine your management authority! /s

As a self employed work at home developer with a distraction free environment,
having businesses adopt this sort of thing can only decrease my competitive
advantage. ;-)

------
Brakenshire
Is there terminology to search for, for jobs which are part remote, part on-
site? You would've thought companies would be looking for people happy to work
on that basis.

------
lscore720
No mean to brag, but I retired at 31; under 5 years in sales, working from
home. My remote productivity level far exceeded my prior experience in an
office.

------
fr0styMatt2
is there a directory or job site somewhere that specifically deals with
commpanies with this kind of culture?

I'd LOVE to work at a place which allowed me to work from home most days or
which didn't have set office hours, where remote working was part of the
culture. It seems hard to find such places.

~~~
saiprashanth93
[https://weworkremotely.com/](https://weworkremotely.com/)

------
jheriko
the article points out itself, how biased it is by focusing on a particular
kind of work, and one that is very amenable to not just doing from home, but
measuring remotely.

the title is a bit of a bold claim in the face of the content...

------
chris123
Interesting to see HBR posts thriving on HackerNews.

------
wahsd
Does anyone have an understanding of whether there are corporate accounting
and tax incentives that would explain some of the opposition to remote work?

I suspect there is some incentive for corporations and companies in general to
spend money on real estate and offices, even though they would not really be
necessary. It would explain things like Yahoo requiring all their remote
employees to move to SF even though the city becomes ever less livable. Sure
there are reasons to live there, but something seems off, why make people move
there? Austin (and Dallas and Houston to a lesser extent) is another good
example of there possibly being some kind of corporate tax and accounting
incentive really driving this matter. Austin's tech boom is really an
artificial concoction that was initiated while Bush was governor to
incentivize and attract, and even poach tech firms to Texas and Austin.

I have my suspicions that the tax and accounting regulations are far greater
of a force of nature than is recognized regarding WFH and remote work,
especially once companies grow to a certain size.

If you think about it. it's absolutely insane that the tech industry is so
obsessed with co-locating when, if you get off the fence, you can develop
proper management and technology solutions that could make your workforce far
more effective and productive. I mean what can you do to enable effective
remote working with around $100,000+ in office space costs over a year? It
makes no damn sense.

~~~
ArtDev
Old business culture? Not sure. I have thought about this too.

------
steamy
I'd advise against working from home for everyone in compliance with the
separation of concerns principle as context switching is not easy at all and
it will burden the person with a lot of stuff to sort out with regard to the
work/life balance and the mixture of the incompatible job/home environments.

However, I'd definitely vote for and favor a more balanced approach that
combines both remote work from a dedicated office that has been set up
specifically to handle this type of activity that is independent and detached
from the home environment, and the formal workplace to maintain the bond and
harmony between team members.

~~~
beobab
I remember reading about a chap who context switched from "home" to "work" by
walking round the block as his commute. He was reported as saying it really
made a difference to him.

~~~
tveita
That reminds me of this study, "Walking through doorways causes forgetting":
[http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/17470218.2011.571...](http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/17470218.2011.571267)

Even if you return to the same place, the context switches break your
concentration and make you forget things. I guess sometimes that's exactly
what you want.

------
ucaetano
From TFA: "gave the staff at Ctrip’s call center the opportunity to volunteer
to work from home for nine months."

There is zero value added to a call center employee from working in proximity
to other workers. Actually, that probably has a negative value, since the
insane chatter just makes it harder to hear whoever is on the phone. The same
isn't necessarily valid for other jobs.

Making a generic conclusion (such as the clickbaity title) from such a limited
category of workers is just shitty journalism. Apparently, not even HBR is
beyond that...

------
simonswords82
Anybody else getting a Web Script Status 500 - Internal Error?

