
Study Shows a Productivity Boost of Working From Home - mpweiher
https://www.inc.com/scott-mautz/a-2-year-stanford-study-shows-astonishing-productivity-boost-of-working-from-home.html
======
adriand
I think it depends on what you want to optimize for. If you want to optimize
for individual productivity (and there are no trust issues) then sure, working
from home is effective.

However, you may decide that the individual productivity loss of having people
work in an office is outweighed by the group productivity and morale gain from
having people working together. Here are some reasons from a holistic company
perspective for requiring people to work out of the office:

\- To more effectively add to the culture of the company.

\- To take part in ad hoc training opportunities, either to teach someone who
needs help, or to learn something from someone when an obstacle is
encountered.

\- To be able to attend in-person meetings or stand-ups when urgent things
come up - without the awkwardness and delays of conferencing in multiple
people.

\- To provide mentorship to junior staff.

\- To collaborate more effectively.

\- To show clients/prospective clients, partners and recruits, a vibrant and
energetic team and working environment that is worth investing in/joining.

\- To build morale and a sense of teamwork and camaraderie.

At the same time, measures need to be taken in the office working environment
to ensure that individuals _can_ be productive, which means providing quiet
working spaces, enforcing do-not-disturb rules, etc.

Last point. To anyone who is running a business where your employees can
easily choose to work from home for any company in the world, such as software
engineers: creating a vibrant company culture is one of the ways in which you
can attract and retain team members. Many people like being part of an in-
person team and working with each other on a regular basis. But if they're
already working from home and rarely seeing their co-workers, what difference
does it make if they choose to work for some startup out of SF?

~~~
throwawaymath
This comment seems like a great microcosm of remote work discussions on Hacker
News. You didn't dismiss remote working in a thread about it, but you tried
(maybe imperfectly) to suggest times when it would be a good idea to not work
remotely. It is not being received well!

In response most commenters are criticizing your point by focusing on whether
or not it is technically possible to achieve any of those things while working
remotely, which is not your point. One person has even accused you of
responding to data with anecdotes and opinion, and another has called your
comment BS. Yikes!

Remote work kinda seems like a religious topic now. If you don't provide an
airtight, empirical justification for why you're not in favor of remote work,
you'll hear from people talking your ear off about how everything you
suggested is absolutely possible in a remote setting. "But you can mentor
someone remotely!", or "You can collaborate super effectively on a remote team
if you just do ..." People are talking about "valid reasons" to be working in
an office instead of working remotely, as though remote working needs to be
the default consideration. There's a disconnect here.

To conclude this pretentious meta-analysis of mine: I've worked remotely for
four or five years now. I like it, it's cool. I can pick up groceries on a
Monday when no one is at the store! But companies shouldn't have to defend why
they don't support remote work. Universal telecommuting does not need to be
the next step in our evolution as a society, and that's okay.

~~~
otakucode
The difference is that one side is trying to justify the traditional designed-
for-repetitive-manufacturing-work office setup, while the other is trying to
justify remote work. One side is content to point out that there are
limitations to remote work while almost totally ignoring the limitations to
office work, while the other does the inverse.

Both scenarios have advantages, and both scenarios have disadvantages. Whether
you are willing to accept certain disadvantages or whether you actually value
certain advantages brings in many personal values. Some people are
exceptionally invested in office work because they rely upon their gregarious
nature to navigate the working world. Some are exceptionally invested in
remote work because they are introverted and constantly overruled by more
aggressive colleagues (to the detriment of the business, not just themselves).

As many do not understand why offices are constructed the way they are, why
companies are centralized entities, why authority is set up as a hierarchy,
etc, its difficult to have a competent conversation about the whole thing.
It's a big topic. And it's never as simple as 'this thing just saves us money
with no drawbacks' or 'this thing just has drawbacks with no material
benefit'. Such discussions need to be extensive, nuanced, and detached.

We really are in a position, however, where the differences in productivity
and cost are so stark that in order to justify operating expensive centralized
offices, they have to show either that it is Impossible to solve problems
technologically with remote work, or that there are benefits to the
centralization that are extremely valuable. Being able to keep employees,
mentioned in the original comment, is an interesting choice. Since the 1980s,
employee total dispensability has been top priority in management culture.
Moving toward valuing employees and trying to keep them would be a monumental
shift in corporate behavior and change all kinds of things all on its own. It
might be advisable, though. As I see it, companies started abandoning
everything they offered to workers in the 1980s.... right around the time
computers came around and started making it practical for workers to leave and
compete against the companies while undercutting them hugely just through not
having an office to pay for.

~~~
Karrot_Kream
Your comment is fantastic but this:

> Some people are exceptionally invested in office work because they rely upon
> their gregarious nature to navigate the working world. Some are
> exceptionally invested in remote work because they are introverted and
> constantly overruled by more aggressive colleagues (to the detriment of the
> business, not just themselves).

really is a gem. I think this really offers clarity into why there are 2
"sides" of this debate.

------
ak39
First para hits the nail on the head. The issue is: trust between managers and
employees.

Also, "work from home" paradigm will only succeed when management paradigm
changes from managing time to managing outcome. And changing that management
style is not easy. Managing outcomes requires managers to understand not only
the strategic agendas set by the bosses higher up but also the technical paths
to achieve them confronted by the "serfs" under. It also requires that
managers themselves are empowered to make decisions on budgets and execute on
outcomes - managers who can't make decisions daily without checking in on
higher up bosses for authorisation will be unlikely to agree to a work from
home scenario.

~~~
cameldrv
Trust is a continuum. If I'm a manager, I can't afford to know every single
detail of what you're doing. Managing outcome sounds nice, but suppose I
assign you a task that I think will take two days in my limited understanding,
and it takes you two weeks. I have to figure out the cause. Some common ones
are:

1\. Neither of us understood the full complexity of the task at the outset. If
we want to improve, we'll have to put in more work upfront to figure out the
problem.

2\. You're less capable than I thought you were -- it just takes you longer or
you make more mistakes than I had expected.

3\. I didn't adequately describe the job to you, and you spent time going down
blind alleys and readjusting trying to figure out what exactly I want.

4\. You're a slacker, you didn't work very hard on it and so it took longer.

It's easy to say that I should manage outcome, but if you repeatedly fail to
achieve the outcome, what should I do? It depends on why. If you're remote,
you're going to say it was #1 with a fallback position of #3. If you're in the
office I can probably get a reasonable sense of whether or not it's #4, and if
it's #3, we're naturally going to communicate more and so I'm more likely to
fix it sooner. This is why office space in SF costs so much.

~~~
lagadu
> but suppose I assign you a task that I think will take two days in my
> limited understanding

Why would the manager be the one making estimates? That's a task either for
the team, if applicable, or for the implementer.

edit: I work from home, every sprint we have a planning meeting where we do
the estimates together, my manager isn't even involed in it.

Only if we're expecting to exceed an estimate by 20% do we contact the project
manager (not my manager) so we can figure out how to proceed.

How we work: we have a bunch of tasks available that we create during the
sprint planning and we pick them as we have time, some may be marked as
priority. My manager only hears from me if I'm ever blocked for some reason
and need him to either get in touch with the person that is blocking the task
or similar, otherwise we don't.

For us at least the manager is someone who enables us to spend our time
productively, generally speaking he'll have no idea what I'm doing most of the
time. I guess you could say we're self-managed.

~~~
HenryBemis
Assuming that "the "manager" knows his 'stuffs', should know that TaskA
requires 5 hours, and TaskB requires 1 hour. Now to that add a 20% for
interruptions, emails, etc.

With my team(s) I (almost) always knew (more or less) the time for various
tasks.

I was also expecting any feedback/'negotiation' to happen at the time of task
assignment OR as soon as someone can see that deadline is at risk.

I know that Tasks from Tasks vary, but hey, this setup requires knowledge from
both parties AND trust.

~~~
lagadu
> should know that TaskA requires 5 hours, and TaskB requires 1 hour.

I contest this. This assumes the manager is also some sort of software
engineer plus I don't understand why would there be any negotiation: a project
asks for an estimate and we give it based on how much we feel it's going to
take, there is no negotiation; either the project manager accepts it or
reduces scope and we make a new estimate, my manager is uninvolved.

I suspect this might be a work culture thing: in my country managers aren't
timekeepers, their responsibility is making sure we have all the conditions we
need to be productive and be "invisible" otherwise.

~~~
smileysteve
> should know that TaskA requires 5 hours, and TaskB requires 1 hour.

> This assumes the manager is also some sort of software engineer plus I don't
> understand why would there be any negotiation:

We have whole methodologies based on the premise that we (software engineers
or managers) are incredibly horrible at estimating software.

------
pilingual
“If companies want hackers to be productive, they should look at what they do
at home. At home, hackers can arrange things themselves so they can get the
most done. And when they work at home, hackers don't work in noisy, open
spaces; they work in rooms with doors. They work in cosy, neighborhoody places
with people around and somewhere to walk when they need to mull something
over, instead of in glass boxes set in acres of parking lots. They have a sofa
they can take a nap on when they feel tired, instead of sitting in a coma at
their desk, pretending to work. There's no crew of people with vacuum cleaners
that roars through every evening during the prime hacking hours. There are no
meetings or, God forbid, corporate retreats or team-building exercises. And
when you look at what they're doing on that computer, you'll find it
reinforces what I said earlier about tools. They may have to use Java and
Windows at work, but at home, where they can choose for themselves, you're
more likely to find them using Perl and Linux.”

[http://paulgraham.com/gh.html](http://paulgraham.com/gh.html)

~~~
gowld
> hackers don't work in noisy, open spaces; they work in rooms with doors.

> They work in cosy, neighborhoody places with people around

Which is it?

That article did not age well.

~~~
roansh
I guess it's about the freedom to have either one at the time your prefer.
Quite environment doesn't exist at open offices. :)

~~~
occamrazor
Counterpoint: I work in a very quiet open space office and I like it. If
people want to chat they go to the kitchen. Have to say however that other
departments are intolerably noisy.

~~~
loco5niner
Counter-Counterpoint: In my almost-never quiet open space office, if people
want to chat, they do it at their desks. Right next to my desk. I don't like
this. However, with enough people complaining, it has slowly been getting
better...

------
OpenDrapery
As usual, the workers and managers are playing different games. As a
developer, it's easy to assume that productivity is the game. Form a strong
team and add business value through execution, right? Wrong.

Management is playing a game of consistency and control. Blanket policies are
the name of the game. I don't care if you are 100x more productive at home. I
can't have all these other losers asking me why they aren't allowed to work
from home. God forbid I consider a stratified policy where some people get
privileges that others don't.

This is why small companies move the needle on innovation, because they don't
have to cater to lowest common denominator of 5000 people. Large companies are
ruled by old men, and are beholden to status quo.

~~~
lev99
Wow. This really highlights the differences between a small company and a
large company. I have a hard time justifying keeping B- employees on my team,
I couldn't imagine calling people under me in the org chart "losers" without
having an active plan to remove them.

~~~
OpenDrapery
Yeah, it's fairly gross. Insurance and banking are chock full of corporate
cockroaches. They can hide for years without adding any real value. But boy,
do they want their fair treatment.

------
Rainymood
PhD student here so take my opinion with a grain of salt. I personally love
the fact that I can choose to work at home or at the office.

I can really concentrate at home (private room where I feel comfy) but on the
other hand it is also significantly easier to distract yourself from work.
Netflix is just one tab away and there's no one to look over your shoulder and
whisper in your ear "Don't watch Netflix when you're working".

It also depends a lot on my mood. When I feel down and worthless because my
research feels like its going nowhere I distract myself more easily. If I feel
optimistic like I'm a predator hunting some prey because my research is
leading somewhere fruitful I can work anywhere with great focus without the
need for distraction.

~~~
jkcorrea
That last sentiment really resonated with me.

I'm currently working somewhere that more or less requires a typical M-F 9-5
schedule. I often don't feel in the "mood" on various weekdays, while some
weekends I get that "predator" feeling you described and can code non-stop for
hours on end. However, since I need to be in the office M-F I more often feel,
and give in to, the pressure to not work weekends lest my family and social
life/general well-being suffer.

I wonder how many productive hours I've lost due to this conundrum, and beyond
that how many productive hours have been lost in my company or the modern
workplace.

~~~
wool_gather
> the pressure to not work weekends

It's interesting that you describe feeling pressure to _not_ work; usually I
think people talk about feeling the pressure _to_ work.

But I know what you mean. It's hard to know how to balance the two. On the one
shoulder is a little voice saying "Don't be a sucker and spend your free time
making money for the company! It's just a job! Go have a life". On the other
is the pride of craft, and the thrill of having a really good idea that you
want to see to the end.

I've been thinking a lot about this, not least because my relationship was a
bit strained last year due to both of us probably putting too much emphasis on
our work. I don't know if ultimately one side or the other is the right
answer. Doing good and creative work is important and fulfilling. But friends
and family are equally important and fulfilling. Maybe the only way is to
carefully guard against either one predominating.

------
a_imho
Participants were not even selected random

 _Enter Bloom, who helped design a test whereby 500 employees were divided
into two groups--a control group (who continued working at HQ) and volunteer
work-from-homers (who had to have a private room at home, at least six-month
tenure with Ctrip, and decent broadband access as conditions)._

~~~
inglor
Came here to find this. Precisely what I thought - I think that some people
work better remotely and some work better in an office setting (like myself).

If you ask people to volunteer for remote work then people who are better
remote workers are likely to volunteer and more likely to work harder to prove
it can work.

~~~
lawnchair_larry
Still interesting that people who volunteer for remote work are more
productive on average than those who prefer office work.

~~~
isostatic
And cheaper of course - no need for a desk ($2k/yr), means they should be paid
more.

~~~
MoBattah
Have you ever seen the accounting side of this?

I've previously seen accounting docs at a major defense firm I worked for.
They tallied the exact dollar amount spent on each employee's square footage
of office space on a monthly basis.

Furthers the argument you make.

~~~
isostatic
Well it's fairly simple - we have a building that only has office people in
(not many, but some)

The cost of that building divided by the number of people there.

There's then power, heat, cleaning, etc, but that's all small fry compared
with the rent or opportunity cost of an office building.

The technical infrastructure (Cisco switches don't come cheap) is probably
offset by the cost of supporting remote infrastructure, vpns etc.

The cost per deal in central London is on the order of $10k-$20k a year. I'll
take that in cash thanks.

[http://www.cityam.com/233082/london-office-rents-tube-map-
he...](http://www.cityam.com/233082/london-office-rents-tube-map-heres-how-
much-desk-space-costs-across-the-capital-in-one-simple-map)

------
maxfurman
At my job, we do Monday-Wednesday-Friday in the office and work from home the
other two days. It seems to me to be the perfect balance between the
coordination and social benefits of being in an office and the freedom and
productivity gains of remote work. I'm surprised more companies don't try this
kind of schedule.

~~~
jaaames
This is excellent.

Combined with some basic rules like no meetings on Fridays it can quickly
become a simple and effective company culture.

------
eksemplar
I’m not sure realism/positivism is the best approach to empirical data on
this.

Only one of my workers is more productive from home, in the IT department
almost all the workers are more productive from home.

We haven’t done any research on the causality, but the personality’s profiles
for or digitization and IT departments are vastly different, so too is the
work we donald the way we go about it.

If you looked at us over all, there’s 20 workers in my department and around
60 in the IT department and around 55 of the 80 are more productive from home.

The setup I personally use to gain the most out of my employees is letting
them work their own hours the way they want. I don’t check their hours but
trust them to put in the hours they need, and they do, in fact the biggest
problem is getting them to only work the 37 hours they are hired to put in.

Sometimes they come in late and leave early, sometimes they work from home and
I can tell by what they produce they spent half the day doing something else.
But then sometimes I’ll get an email at 2am on a Saturday because someone
found his/her coding flow at an off hour.

This would be extremely unhealthy if I required it, but my employee
satisfaction went up from 4.3 out of 7 under the previous manager to 6.3/7
under me and our performance output nearly doubled.

Working at home is fine, but I don’t think you can truthfully say that it
works for everyone. I think it’s important to leave the option open along with
other options in a framework that encourages team work and communication, and
then trust your employees to do the right thing and only intervene in their
schedule and where they want to work, when you begin to spot trouble.

~~~
bonestamp2
> the biggest problem is getting them to only work the 37 hours they are hired
> to put in

When I started working from home 10 years ago, this hit me hard. I used to
work about 10 hour days in the office. When I started working from home I was
working 13-14 hours most days.

Over time that lead to burn out and that made me even less productive. Some of
it was because I felt a little guilty working from home so I put in even more
effort to ensure people didn't think I was goofing around. In hindsight, that
was unnecessary and a bad way to handle my insecurity... my bosses trusted me
fully.

Secondly, when you always work from home... you're always at work! So, it's
important to have that distinct work time and personal time otherwise they
bleed together too much and you just end up working all the time.

~~~
ramblerman
> When I started working from home I was working 13-14 hours most days.

Was this pure development because that seems so unfeasible (at least for me).

~~~
bonestamp2
Yes. That was before I had kids. It was not a good life no matter how you look
at it.

------
tex0
It depends a lot on the type of work you do and the company setup.

As a developer in regular software companies I like working from home one or
two days a week. That gives some nice focus time while still giving enough
days for meetings and communication.

Working from home 100% probably only works in remote only companies (like
GitLab), otherwise there a huge information gap.

In general I'd love to see a right to home office as a law. That could help to
cut a lot of emissions and useless commuting back and forth.

~~~
ghaff
It doesn’t need to be at an entire company level. Where I work, some teams are
mostly co-located, others are more distributed, some are pretty much fully
remote. And things can shift over time.

------
atypeoferror
Link to the actual paper:
[https://people.stanford.edu/nbloom/sites/default/files/wfh.p...](https://people.stanford.edu/nbloom/sites/default/files/wfh.pdf)

~~~
thinkingemote
This really needs to be higher, and the paper actually read by us, as it
addresses the nature of the work, the study size and methodology, as well as
sociological issues. All things that these other comments speculate about

Crucially it's not IT, the work is a call centre travel agency (and it's also
in China).

"First, the job of a call center employee is particularly suitable for
telecommuting. It requires neither teamwork nor in-person face time. Quantity
and quality of performance can be easily quantified and evaluated. The link
between effort and performance is direct. These conditions apply to a range of
service jobs, such as sales, IT support, and secretarial assistance, but they
are far from universal. Second, the firm can closely monitor the performance
and labor supply of the employees thanks to its extensive centralized
database. Team leaders and managers could generate a report from the database
of the performance of the team members daily and easily detect problems in
individual employees’ performance. Third, the extent of WFH was limited, so
that it did not require a significant reorganization at the workplace. Team
leaders continued to supervise their teams with a mix of home and office
workers without any major reshuffling of team membership."

~~~
netsharc
Geez, a call-centre? I thought "virtual call centers" are common nowadays,
i.e. you can be at home doing laundry, when the phone rings, it will say "Call
for $COMPANY", you pick up and say "Hello, $COMPANY, Angela speaking, how may
I help you?"...

------
anoplus
I work from office (40min train) and some days from home. Home working enables
me to recharge quickly and stay healthy. Office is good for seamlessly
collaborative work. If I had to choose just one mode I would go for "home".
It's just saves huge amount of time and energy. Feels much healthier. You can
still collaborate fairly well if you have internet.

~~~
piva00
I have worked exclusively remotely for a couple of years in my career and I'd
say the perfect world for me is this hybrid. I can go to the office when I
need or want, it's better to collaborate, to do pair or mob programming and to
get discussions going on.

Working from home is great when I have a clear view of priorities and the task
at hand but I sorely missed the social interactions of an office when I didn't
have the option for it.

As most things in life, it's a spectrum, there are some people that probably
work much better away from the office, personally I still need sometimes the
social aspect of work to be my most productive self.

------
piyush_soni
Did their sample involve men with a 2 year old at home that constantly needs
their attention as long as they are at home, and thinks that when their father
is sitting on the laptop, he's making pink and blue spheres in paintbrush?

Honestly, I can achieve little at home these days and feel like I'm doing
injustice to both, work and the kid.

~~~
inglor
Honestly one of the biggest motivations I have to work from home which I
otherwise dislike is to be there for my children when they're 2.

Especially since where I live (Israel) like most of the world men and women
are still usually not equally responsible regarding child care and I
personally think remote work could help with that (as well as personal
motivation to be there for my kids).

~~~
GordonS
I work from home, and my wife looks after our children during the day.

Working from home has been great for us all - we get to have breakfast and
lunch together every day, and I'm around to help out at those times (if you've
got young kids, you'll know meal times can be stressful at times!).

------
DecayingOrganic
I think it's important to be cautious here. People have the tendency to search
for, interpret, favor, and recall information in a way that confirms one's
preexisting beliefs.

So we need to look at the issue in a rather more elaborate way and look for
both its upsides and downsides.

For example Ray Dalio may have not succeeded applying this technique to his
own company; Bridgewater. Because for him, creating a culture of radical
transparency and truthfulness is so important. I wonder how he would be able
to create such a culture and preserve it if the employees were not working in
a common building.

------
kccqzy
On the other hand, it is also imaginable that working at home away from
everyone else makes communication harder, and more opaque. Or it can make you
lonelier. Not every company has policies and culture that makes it conducive
to work from home.

~~~
ILikeConemowk
> lonelier

How can being at home ever make you lonely when it gives you more time to
focus on relationships that actually matter.

Am I alone in thinking that those who expect any kind of meaningful bonding at
work are misguided?

Yeah, one can enjoy smalltalk and the like but I'd much rather change that for
a chat with a friend or my dad early in the morning.

~~~
paganel
> How can being at home ever make you lonely when it gives you more time to
> focus on relationships that actually matter.

Not all of us have kids or live with our family, and as such those 8 hours of
office work are the only option for having a human presence around us during
the day. Working 8 hours trapped in the loneliness of your house's walls each
day, every day can be quite unsettling in the long run.

~~~
John_KZ
In my experience even family men get frustrated with working at home. Sure, 1
or 2 days per week is fine, but more than that is generally too much.

Work is probably the most common (or even exclusive for some) way adults meet
new people, especially people they wouldn't otherwise meet. It sounds dumb
when you don't experience it, but after spending a month or two working at
home it start becoming apparent that you are getting too detached from
society.

------
partycoder
Library etiquette = staying quiet, don't disturb people

But suddenly if you are programming, reading and writing code, you require
_less_ concentration?

TV dramas show people talking over their desks and try to convince people this
is what being productive looks like, but that's far from reality.

Joel Spolsky said it in 2000: "Do you programmers have quiet working
conditions?" [https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/08/09/the-joel-
test-12-s...](https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/08/09/the-joel-
test-12-steps-to-better-code/)

------
throwaway84742
As a manager: some people can work from home, and some just can’t. The problem
is, you don’t know which is which when recruiting, and firing someone even
remotely in a protected class is a huge hassle.

Even so, if I were to start a company today, I would try very hard to hire
remote, for many reasons, the most important of which is this would
dramatically expand the talent pool, and (I believe) lead to less stressed
employees and better results. People who lack intrinsic motivation typically
don’t perform well even in the office.

~~~
minipci1321
> As a manager: some people can work from home, and some just can’t. The
> problem is, you don’t know which is which when recruiting, ...

Interesting! So, has it ever happened to you to hire a remote worker with a
proven track record (say, 3-5 years, references checked) and then realize
after some time that this person "doesn't fit the bill" for working remotely
for _you_?

(If it has happened, I'd be interested to know details -- was it because of
the specifics of your company's procedures, or something else?)

~~~
throwaway84742
I had employees who would ask to “work from home” and then not actually do
much, hoping I won’t notice. But good managers do notice, of course,
especially when some of the peers work from home as well and turn in reams of
high quality code at a rapid clip.

I never had anyone who had a track record of _remote_ work specifically,
though.

------
TomMckenny
Relative to an open office environment, working in a gas station bathroom is
more productive.

~~~
ende
I knew one of you would be in here.

------
acrive
I had work from home. Never again in my life. Going to the office helped me to
split the time in my day and mark when work and when I can rest. Also, when
stressed a coworker can help much more easier than from home. My home is my
home, my office is my office. Never mix these places.

~~~
dijit
There are people who prefer the office, there are people who prefer the home.
Surely not forcing everyone either way is the right approach?

~~~
acrive
You're right. At the beginning I'm was very happy, but after two months I
wanted to go back to the office. I was lucky because nobody forced me a
choice.

------
mr_tristan
I've worked remotely for my last two jobs, and in general, love it. I live in
a city I love, and the companies I've worked for are in places I really don't
want to be in, physically.

What I don't see, however, is a "third option" that I'd really, really want:
the option, say, one day a week, to work in a shared space, with people
related to my domain.

My company actually has an office that's in a suburb of where I live now. But
it's inhabited by people who work in completely different functions and
unrelated products. So going there would mean... I'd just basically sit there
and chat with my coworkers online all day. Maybe have awkward superficial
conversations in meatspace with a sales member, but I find the chats are just
not very interesting, because I end up spending all my time explaining what I
do, instead of actually having a conversation.

Again, what I'd love, is a shared space with other software engineers working
on different products or tech. Sure, there are always issues of IP and
privacy, but, I'd guess that the random watercooler conversation with someone
tackling a very different kind of problem would be valuable. The added bonus
of networking would be useful too.

~~~
Nowyouknow
Have you tried a coworking space? Look into it! I'm actually trying to come up
with a way to regularly do this and expense it, just got to pitch it the right
way :)

~~~
mr_tristan
Yeah, in the end, I guess I'm just trying to find ways to justify a budget for
a coworking space. Seems like option that's not frequently discussed when
researching remote work.

------
vfc1
The arguments against remote work often remind me of the arguments that we
used to hear against Amazon vs brick and mortar retailers:

"Amazon is never going to replace them because people like too much the social
aspect of going to the store and maybe bump into their neighboors".

Yes, of course, working from home is much more productive. This is true for
creative professions especially (like software development or content
creation), where the ability to focus and concentrate is essential for getting
anything done.

It's very demoralizing and stressful to have your day split up into 1000
random interruptions, very hard to code or write productively in those
circumstances.

Most meetings are useless and this is especially true for standups, and deep
down we all know it.

In most companies, people get to their desk and just start emailing people 3
meters away, might as well do it from home.

All this wasted time, unnecessary facetime and excessive long hours, polution
caused by transports, wasted time from peoples lives comutting, simply in the
name of doing things the way that they where always done.

Remote work will be very common in 10 years, the economics are there: people
want it as they want a better life, they save money, and the companies save
money too.

~~~
detaro
Problem is, you could have said your last paragraph 10 years ago too. So while
I hope you're right, it's far from clear that your arguments will win now.
Still lots of companies building massive campuses instead of distributing.

~~~
OpenDrapery
Things that have gotten better in the last 10 years: ubiquity of high speed
internet, tools such as voip, screen share, chat, cloud hosting across
regions, lower cost of home office hardware like monitors

Things that have gotten worse: traffic and congestion, real estate prices

The needle is moving in the direction of wfh, I definitely believe that those
that embrace it will be ahead of the game.

~~~
isostatic
I said exactly the same thing in 2010, and I've worked away from the office
most of the time for 6 years (not necessarily working from home - I visit a
lot of locations for work, next week it's Windsor, last week was Nairobi,
Moscow's coming up early next month)

Because I have to be able to work from anywhere, it makes working from home
easy.

I may see the rest of my team on the 22nd, and we have an away day to a
supplier on the 30th.

------
merinowool
I find it bizarre that most of companies I worked with had recognised working
from home as a privilege and it was mostly frowned upon by colleagues who for
any reason had to work in the office. It was also not recognised that people
working from home got more things done and thought of compensating employee
extra for using their own space, internet connection, electricity at home was
a fantasy. Some employees that tried to force others to be in the office often
had problems at home and office was their escape. If work in the office would
have become optional, then that would have been their bad dreams come true -
if their spouse for example learned they don't have to come every day. This
has a big impact on people who don't have problems, but also don't want to be
subjected to open office shenanigans. I think solution would be to pay
employees more so that they can either rent their own offices or cover the use
of their homes. That way those who don't want to stay at home could have their
own private space to work in.

------
jakebaker
I think that the productivity boost may be somewhat binary -- some people are
AMAZINGLY more productive at home vs an office environment. For me, I've
personally struggled with the home environment at times.

The shared team construct of an office setting helps me get over my common
obstacle of procrastination. When I do work from home, I've used some forms of
productivity and accountability tools to get over that barrier.

These have included services like Focusmate [1] which lets you schedule co-
working video sessions with a partner. That has been incredibly helpful for
me, getting me to move immediately to working on whatever the difficult task
at hand is.

[1] [https://www.focusmate.com](https://www.focusmate.com)

------
tehlike
I would also like to see long term effects on one's career progress when
working from home.

~~~
49bc
Or even the long term productivity boost. How long does it last, and why?

~~~
tribaal
Full remote engineer for 7 years here.

I don't think it ever stops. If I had to venture an answer as to why, I'd say
"fewer interruptions" \- most interactions are asynchronous (email, IRC in my
case but slack just as much). The only times I need to have synchronous
discussions are either our "watercoolers" (social face-to-face over google
hangouts) or the eventual meeting.

Note: the companies I've worked for in this setup are all committed to 100%
remoteness, and understand that keeping meetings to a minimum is a good thing
(note, not abolish - but make sure "meetings" are only called for when
actually needed).

~~~
tehlike
Distractions are indeed costly, and productivity (as in technical throughput)
i can see increase quite a lot. That might end up keeping one happy for quite
a long time - i noticed my happiness for a day depends a lot on how much stuff
i got done that day.

------
elieldepaula
Very good!

I work remotely a few years (about 8 years) and it definitely changed my life.
Less traffic time, more family time and all the advantages we already know
about remote work. But there are a few butts in all this.

1- You definitely need a good working environment at home, no use sitting on
the kitchen table with your notebook. 2- A certain level of self-discipline is
required for those who will work remotely to avoid procrastination. I know a
lot of people who can not work at home, it turns into Facebook and Netflix.
3\. Remote work is a culture that has to be applied to the whole family. For a
long time, and even nowadays, because I was at home, people thought I was at
ease and / or their disposition, which caused some friction. The remote worker
has to make it clear to family members that at that time it is as if he is not
there.

Other than that, I think it's very valid, and I think it's good that everyone
could work remotely.

------
bryanh
We've got a lot of experience running a remote team, in fact, we wrote a
guide/book on it: [https://zapier.com/learn/remote-
work/](https://zapier.com/learn/remote-work/)

We certainly don't claim to have all the answers, but we've found it makes
people pretty happy and we all seem pretty productive. If you want to give it
a go, we're hiring! ;-) [https://zapier.com/jobs/](https://zapier.com/jobs/)

------
nicodjimenez
I've been working "from home" for two years now and I've learned a couple
thing. Living with family is huge because it really relieves the burden of
loneliness as well makes you feel safe, which makes it a lot easier to take
bigger risks in your work. Living with my girlfriend has been great, but it
was terrible when she had a 9 to 5. It really throws you off to live with
people on a 9 to 5 schedule imo because it's a totally different mindset and
increases perceived social isolation.

~~~
sparrish
I've been working remotely for 10 years now. I've got 7 kids that my wife and
I homeschool. I'm never 'lonely' <grin>.

------
godzillabrennus
Guess the answer needed a study but to me it was answered when Yahoo killed
work from home options back when they tried to give it another go. We all know
how well that worked.

------
elbear
I can confirm the part about feeling isolated after working remotely for 7
years. I try to compensate by going to co-working spaces or cafes and working
from there.

Another thing that doesn't help my situation is that I'm mostly working alone
on the project that I'm working on. I tried to compensate for that by
volunteering my programming skills for an NGO.

~~~
dfsegoat
Isolation led to mental health issues for me as well. What you describe sounds
like a very good solution to that part of this (Also: Meetups).

~~~
elbear
Yes, I've also started going to meetups.

------
atrexler
I wonder at how this would vary across industries and also company sizes. I'm
surprised the study had positive results at a relatively large firm. I think
its easy to imagine working-from-home gains in small firms and startups where
typically there's a much stronger selection for highly motivated and
enthusiastic people. It's not clear the same would result in a huge firm where
you have less of that selection.

Also how does one measure productivity? (this is probably a naive question as
a relative neophyte) An article I found on this says they were 13.5% "more
efficient" but I'd love to get the details on what that means. Its a travel
agency so are they just booking, scheduling, organizing, etc? Would love to
see a similar study in a SW dev environment, alternately something less tech
focused but collaborative...I dunno but something creative most likely.

------
tribby
of course it's a productivity boost, but is it healthy for the worker?

~~~
heurist
No commute, homemade lunch, more family time...?

~~~
cs02rm0
Home gym, quiet working environment with walls and a door, ability to receive
online orders, monitors as large and high res as I wish to pay for, fridge and
kitchen to myself stocked as I wish. Friends and family nearby if you want to
lunch with them.

You bet it's healthier. Except perhaps slightly increased exposure to the
three germ incubating kids under 5 that live here, but there's not much I can
do about that now apparently.

~~~
tribaal
Not to mention: able to live in a large, comfortable house in the country side
in the middle of nature (if that's your thing).

EDIT: I think kids-flu is hard to avoid at that age, home office or not :P

------
chiefalchemist
I'd like to see a study that looks at commute time, commute method (e.g., car,
bus, rail, bike), and commute time.

Personally, I find having to take the train to a client site and being on site
invigorating (to some extent). The ride in, I read and generally get mentally
prepared. The ride home I read and decompress. The defined start and end keep
the time in between focused.

Mind you, we're talking a couple (or three) days a week (not all five). It's
also not driving (which I'd dread.) It might just be how I'm wired and
approach things; the cycle, if ypu will, might just sync well with my brain.

------
graeme
I worked on my business from home for years. It was very productive.

Then a year and a half ago, I got an office two minutes away from my
apartment.

I would say I'm less productive, but significantly more relaxed.

I _think_ this is an improvement. (I say _think_ because there's defintely a
tradeoff to growing slower. I'm trading relaxation now for less relaxation
later)

I'm not sure exactly why this is. Part of it is just being able to walk to the
computer and quickly solve a task when it comes to mind. Or, conversely, to
leave work and cook food/shower etc with no friction and then get back to
work.

------
bsvalley
Working from home is the product of only one person, the CEO. If the CEO
approves working from home then the rest is history. Switch your CEO and the
whole working from home policy in your company is in danger.

------
dmcgill50
This study was several years ago with a company that does call center work.
This sort of productivity is easy to measure compared to other forms of team
work. I don't think that it would be beneficial to extrapolate that finding to
all kinds of work. Co-location is a huge benefit when working with small,
focused teams. There have been volumes written on the benefit of being in
close proximity to members with a shared goal.

------
potatote
I've been working from home once a week in the past couple of months, and
noticed that I spend more time working at home than I do in the office. For
example, if I work from home, I'd be working from 8am to 6pm (with a few short
breaks for lunch and etc.). If I go to work, I clock in at 8:30am (commute)
and checks out at 5:30pm sharp.

In a way, my employer is getting an extra 30-60 mins out of me for the days I
work from home (assuming that I'm as productive working from home as I am at
the office, which I believe is to be the case).

------
notadoc
Ultimately most tech / knowledge workers need to work somewhere that allows
them to focus and be uninterrupted.

Whether that is home, a dedicated office, coffee shop, or you're one of the
rare individuals that can pull it off in a cube farm or the worst of the open
office designs, do whatever works for you. This is where employers must be
flexible, not everyone is going to be productive in the same environment.

And speaking of focus, disabling virtually all notifications on your phone and
computer will increase productivity too.

------
Angostura
I worked for a very good company which let me work from home when my first
child was born (I tried to resign, they said - wouldn't you prefer to work
part time from home).

The only problem I had was that the whole watercooler thing was real, and you
tended not to find out about the interesting little projects or chip in with
bits of insight.

After 3 years, I ended up resigning and going freelance because they were
paying me quite a lot of money, but I didn't really feel that I was
contributing. Yes, I know - middle-class first world problems.

------
Promarged
> Enter Bloom, who helped design a test whereby 500 employees were divided
> into two groups--a control group (who continued working at HQ) and volunteer
> work-from-homers (who had to have a private room at home, at least six-month
> tenure with Ctrip, and decent broadband access as conditions).

Did it say _volunteer_? That already stains the results as control group and
the test group are not similar. Maybe volunteers are already more productive
than people that don't want to experiment?

~~~
gowld
The journalist made a mistake. The paper says:

> After a lottery draw, those employees with even-numbered birthdays were
> selected to work from home, and those with odd-numbered birthdates stayed in
> the office to act as the control group.

------
fuscy
Is the population data specified anywhere for the 500 participants?

I shared this article to some colleagues which are married and have small
children and they seem to disagree with these findings.

I tend to agree because home disturbances can be major in a household unless
you isolate yourself totally.

On the other hand this could be great for single workers in the short term,
unless we ignore the fact that most relationships occur due to high frequency
meetings (aka work, study etc.).

------
lawlorino
> 500 employees were divided into two groups--a control group (who continued
> working at HQ) and volunteer work-from-homers (who had to have a private
> room at home, at least six-month tenure with Ctrip, and decent broadband
> access as conditions).

That's a huge selection bias - if the 'treatment' group are self-selecting
volunteers from your pool of all employees then that causes a whole host of
issues.

~~~
gowld
The journalist made a mistake. The paper says:

> After a lottery draw, those employees with even-numbered birthdays were
> selected to work from home, and those with odd-numbered birthdates stayed in
> the office to act as the control group.

------
terenceng2010
I prefer to work in office in the morning and at home for afternoon. Seems to
get the most benefits ( communication in office, focus time at home)

~~~
kuriho
While I agree with your sentiment, this is probably the worst solution for
people with long commutes.

~~~
loco5niner
Agreed. Part of my desire to work from home is to reclaim an hour to an hour
and a half of my life back every day.

------
gravis7777
I don't work in IT, so I can see some differences from that field to mine. But
being a functional manager in a business, I can't tell you how invaluable it
is to walk outside my office to 20-30 cubicles and being able to get a quick
answer or have a quick discussion on something, and how often people
overhearing conversations in the office saves useless work.

------
kuriho
With the population exploding and space to build new houses growing ever so
scarcely I can not imagine a long-term future in which working from home would
be profitable. Instead of working from home, living at work seems to be the
more logical step forward.

Personally I'd prefer living at a shared-workspace or company campus as long
as work and living facilities are clearly separate.

~~~
dvt
> Personally I'd prefer living at a shared-workspace or company campus as long
> as work and living facilities are clearly separate.

May I ask why? I'd prefer living close to my family and friends, many of which
may not work for the same company as I work for. I'm trying to see what your
motivating factors are because I, for one, could not disagree more.

~~~
kuriho
A shared-workspace campus for you and your friends would work out then? You
can picture it as a shared-workspace town if that is more appealing to you.
Living quarters, parks, etc. on one side of the highway. A shared-workspace
campus hosting multiple companies/teams on the other. Living and working stays
strictly separate, everyone has a short commute and you still have all project
members available on-site at the same time to reliably work together and
_gasp_ actually meet up when required.

To answer your question, I do not want to bring work into my home. BYOD
resolves most of the factors that would make me want to provide my own office
at home.

May I ask how you currently manage to live close to your family and friends
and (because I have to assume you are surrounded by like-minded individuals)
their families and their friends and so on? Frankly, I find this very
unrealistic, but maybe that's because my friends and family are spread out
across the globe.

~~~
dvt
> Frankly, I find this very unrealistic, but maybe that's because my friends
> and family are spread out across the globe.

I make very conscious decisions to work and live close to my family (Southern
California). It's not unrealistic at all. In fact, having a solid social
support system is by far more important (for mental as well as physical
health) than making (slightly more) money in the Bay.

------
madrox
This is a study of a large travel agency, not creative/knowledge workers. This
would explain why the study's results don't map to my experiences.

If you're doing creative work or work that requires frequent communication
with peers, you need an environment that encourages diversity and
collaboration. Working from home is not collaborative.

------
mtw
Take this study with a grain of salt. Shanghai is an extremely competitive and
expensive city. There is a lot of social pressure to work hard, or at least
pay for overpriced rent. If the employees were authorized to work from home,
they can't afford to watch TV or hang around in coffee shops or coworking
spaces.

------
JepZ
What I find most interesting about this is the productivity boost coming not
just from people working more, but also from fewer sick days.

> Additionally (and incredibly), employee attrition decreased by 50 percent
> among the telecommuters, they took shorter breaks, had fewer sick days, and
> took less time off.

------
gowld
This study was about call-center agents, not professionals working on complex
team projects.

------
cletus
There are several topics that I must admit to tiring of on HN, not because of
any issue with the topic itself but the inevitable response it engenders.

Any topic about tech company hiring and interviewing invokes regurgitation of
the same tired responses (probably by the same people) on both sides of
whiteboard coding (as just one example).

Remote working (as a topic) is the same. You get the same responses ("it works
fine for me", "Being in an office is completely pointless", etc). The problem
is a significant chunk of particularly the pro-remote work crowd has an axe to
grind. Some just want to work remotely (which is fine) but then will often use
anecdata and often dismiss any of the valid issues brought up by remote
working (communication, culture, isolation, etc).

It's interesting because this inability to separate one's personal desires
with what's good for the whole is exactly how NIMBYism exists. This approach
of deciding on a given outcome and thenc onstructing "reality" to support that
view taken to extremes is incredibly dangerous. You don't have to look that
far to see some frightening examples. Just this week we had Trump withdraw
from the Iranian deal for pretty much no other reason than "Obama = bad" with
basically zero evidence to support it. Hell the US started a war in Iraq
because of this same construct-reality-to-match-your-beliefs view (then about
WMDs).

These obviously are extreme examples.

I find the inability to have reasoned discourse to be disappointing with well-
reasoned comments on this thread lambasted as "bullshit". Likewise you see the
downvote-because-I-disagree-with-you attitude that I personally can't stand.

------
jankotek
There is also gender equality. Women find it much easier to work from home!

------
hprotagonist
whenever I work from home i spend more time with my family and alphabetize my
socks and disinfect the lightbulbs.

that is a productivity boost, but perhaps not what the study had in mind.

------
sytse
I think that working full-time from home is hard in a firm where the
leadership is at the HQ. If everyone is remote you no longer miss out by
working from home.

------
camdenreslink
Working from home definitely allows for more “heads down” time. When you are
in the office there are more distractions to break your focus.

------
_Codemonkeyism
Didn't watch the Tedx talk, sadly the article doesn't mention what
"productivity" is and how it was measured.

------
chrisper
I despise working from home (but I welcome the option of choosing). I just
keep getting distracted by other stuff.

------
kp10
Well, I can testify that. Also, If you follow Pomodoro technique, it further
boost your productivity

------
n_t
For me, it didn't work out due to multiple reasons. But if you have any input
for others as to how to make it work, add your insights here -
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17047340](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17047340)

------
shadowtree
But I like whiteboarding with a few people in a physical room. :(

------
iovrthoughtthis
Confirms my bias!

------
Aissen
Looks like this is summary of a 2014 paper:
[https://academic.oup.com/qje/article-
abstract/130/1/165/2337...](https://academic.oup.com/qje/article-
abstract/130/1/165/2337855?redirectedFrom=fulltext) (paywalled :-/ )

I wonder how many years of rediscovery of basic knowledge about productivity
it will take before these ideas are widly accepted: open plans offices are
bad, remote work can be done, etc.

------
anentropic
anecdotally for myself I find the reverse is true

