
Microsoft Analyzed Data on Its Newly Remote Workforce - jsnell
https://hbr.org/2020/07/microsoft-analyzed-data-on-its-newly-remote-workforce
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higginsc
I'm surprised and skeptical about some of this. In particular:

    
    
      We also measured networks across more than 90,000 Microsoft employees in the United States. Frankly, we expected to see them shrink significantly, given the rapid shifts in environment, daytime rhythms, and personal responsibilities. Instead, we discovered that most employees maintained their existing connections. Even more encouraging, most people’s network size increased. We had assumed that in a time of crisis, employees might strengthen networks within their own work groups in an insular way. In fact, we saw network growth not only within existing work groups but also across different groups, indicating that to adapt and thrive teams sought to build bridges.
    

This does not square with my lived experience. Close connections at work have
stayed relatively strong, perhaps even strengthening as we shore them up with
recurring 1:1s and social team meetings. Peripheral connections have gone down
the toilet. Team and role homophily run rampant.

I wonder what evidence they actually used to back up this statement. I suspect
the effect is actually in the opposite (and more intuitive) direction, and
that their finding is actually a result of the McNamara fallacy.

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freeone3000
"Network" is measured by Outlook emails, Yammer posts, and Teams conversations
and meetings. I'm willing to wager money most peoples' network metrics
increased simply because offline conversations never happened, and they moved
to online conversations where necessary.

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qeternity
Not only this: online, the cost of “growing” your network by adding more
recipients is (nearly) free which is very much at odds with offline growth. So
my guess is the quality of weaker connections actually diminished even if the
number of connections increased.

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m0zg
I would like Google to publish the report from its statisticians on this. They
have an _amazing_ team who collect data and _really_ rigorously dig into
questions that are important for the company to know answers to. They then
publish some of their findings company-wide (I guess some are only seen by
execs, since there are relatively few public reports coming out of that team).
The quality of their work would always be quite obvious, and I always wondered
how come other large companies I worked for do not have a team like this.

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cflewis
I know this is happening. Without any insight into what the teams are doing,
my guess is that results will be some time as they are likely focusing on
engineering outcomes that require multiple survey styles and longer timelines,
e.g. code metrics, engineering happiness, release frequency, bug trends etc
etc rather than the easily collected metrics presented in the OP.

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schemescape
> The share of IMs sent between 6 PM and midnight has increased by 52%.

While I like the idea of “social meetings” (non-work virtual meet ups), this
trend of IMs outside of core work hours would make the change to remote work a
net negative for me.

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dvtrn
Curious to know if anyone in a fully remote or mostly remote company: does
your employer have even informal etiquette about “off-hours” messaging or is
the stance more ad-hoc and left up to the employee to enforce those sorts of
boundaries?

What’s the proper approach between the two, just looking for general opinion.

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withinboredom
Automattic: off-hours contact is normal, just don't expect a response until
they get back to work. My team is spread out around the world, there's always
someone asleep while you're working. If it's an emergency (like you deployed
broken code and closed your computer) you can probably expect a phone call
and/or text message.

Edit: one of the benefits of getting a late-night IM is to read it and have
plenty of time to think about a response. Though, many people do not have
Slack installed on their phones and only on their work computers.

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kevindong
Remote work is right for some people, but the past few months have convinced
me that it's not right for me.

A thing that puzzles me is how adamantly some of the people who were already
fully remote try to impose the remote-is-always-better mentality on their
fellow employees. Different people have different circumstances/preferences.

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mynegation
I think remote work is most strongly preferred by very experienced individual
contributors. It is not the best setting for many people learning the ropes
and it is an absolute crap for me as a people manager and I do not mean “I
want to see your behind in the seat” style of management.

When I was an individual contributor and the work was very well specified,
well contained, and known, remote work was a breeze.

Teaching new and junior employees is a constant struggle, something very
critical is missing in remote work. It could be that people are wired better
to learn face to face or there is a significant non-verbal component.

Managing people as in - getting them organized and synchronized is also a
challenge. There is an immense value of getting everyone into the same room. I
am not surprised articles points out that managers bear the brunt.

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sinsterizme
Well you are making it seem like how well remote work depends on the type of
work, which while must be true to an extant, is besides the point the parent
was trying to make: that it depends more on the type of person. I agree with
the parent, as I have seen some of my colleagues flourish, and others flounder
in the current environment. We all have similar tasks, the difference is the
individual.

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theboat
It's important to note that remote work in March/April/May (and perhaps even
today) was uniquely coupled with remote life, since most knowledge workers
stayed home due to social distancing guidelines. It should not be surprising
that the boundaries between work and life blurred when life itself came to a
standstill.

I'd be surprised to see if the same tendency to blur life and work, such as by
working on evenings and weekends, persists once life returns to its previous
form.

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Ijumfs
Many companies are now shifting to full time remote work. The new normal is
the new normal, things may never go back to the way they were. And companies
might be able to save a lot of money on office space as well. I know in
Seattle and Portland, there are quite a few firms who are allowing remote work
because of issues of safety as well, chaos and disorder combined with a
pandemic creates a new set of challenges we've never had to deal with before
in concert.

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theboat
Correct, which is why I'd like to see this same analysis redone once social
distancing is relaxed and the situation on the ground (e.g. in
Seattle/Portland) stabilizes, but people are still working from home.

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la6471
What about effect of saving on disgusting commute time? That itself trumps
everything else imho.

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0xy
Forgive my bluntness, but I have never understood the people who buy or rent
houses very far away from work so they can save on a monthly housing payment
when their hourly rate at work times the additional commute time is larger
than the "saving".

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topkai22
You are assuming that people can increase thier income by working more hours.
Most salaried employees can’t do so at all and hourly employees don’t often
get overtime hours. It’s quite possible that commuting really is the only way
to “earn” the bigger house.

Regardless, there are other factors at play. A big one is that the amenities
you want aren’t near your work place at any price point- see all those people
who commute from SF to Mountain View. Another is that your job changed but you
don’t want to move- I once rented a place near the downtown core thinking I’d
always be close to work, and then somehow ended up with 45 minute commute to a
satellite location. Once someone buys a place, get settled, and kids start
school it gets a hard to move your residence as well.

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rcarmo
My experience
([https://taoofmac.com/space/blog/2020/07/11/1830](https://taoofmac.com/space/blog/2020/07/11/1830))
matches this to a T, from the longer hours to the shorter (typically 30m)
meetings.

It bears mentioning, however, that I have been remote for a good while, but
now have _so many more meetings_ that it isn’t even funny anymore.

The switch to all-on video (rather than audio conference calls, which had its
own etiquette and “dances”) and the increase in context switching has made
these very frequent meetings a lot more tiresome and impacted my productivity
to the point where I have blocked out large swathes of “focus” time so I can
actually work rather than constantly “sync” across multiple teams.

It’s not about being remote (the “old” asynchronous remote working was
awesome), it’s about all the newbies wanting synchronous, high-intensity face-
time.

(I get very few IMs, too. Only from other “old timers”, now that I think about
it.)

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mech422
>>It bears mentioning, however, that I have been remote for a good while, but
now have _so many more meetings_ that it isn’t even funny anymore.

This ^^^. The girlfriend and I have both worked remote for years. Since her
company did wfh company-wide, there has been a huge uptick in meetings. Also,
for some reason companies seem to think 'video' calls are better then voice.
Given we did business for almost a century with just voice (telephone) I find
it rather odd. Maybe its just the novelty factor of playing with 'zoom'
backgrounds ??

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austincheney
All the findings in that research completely mirrors my observations at my
current employer.

My personal observation of forced remote work seems somewhat bipolar. If you
have large responsibilities, lots of work, or the freedom to take initiative
the new time flexibility allows you to increase personal performance. If you
have a lot of time availability the new flexibility allows you to do other
things than pretend to work or mindlessly surf the web. Sometimes people see
that gap and try to fill it with more meetings to force engagement.

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d3ntb3ev1l
The issue with the study is this was an “unexpected and unplanned” work from
home situation.

If a team or employee had better preparation I would expect mostly positive
results (ie tools, processes , and employee had time to prepare workspaces,
kids at school, etc)

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flaxton
What’s with the blank white pop up on the website?

