
Have we just stumbled on the biggest productivity increase of the century? - rwmj
https://theconversation.com/have-we-just-stumbled-on-the-biggest-productivity-increase-of-the-century-145104
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aphextron
I'm definitely more productive working from home. But I'm not as happy. Yes
commuting sucks. Yes waking up early sucks. But my coworkers were also my
friends. I looked forward to having lunch with my team every day. I miss happy
hours and book club meetings. I miss having a back and forth casual discussion
on some open ended problem we're dealing with. I miss feeling like a part of
something larger than myself, rather than just being some guy who wakes up,
types code into a laptop, eats dinner, and goes to bed. Maybe this is
different for people with families. But I, for one, am dreaming of the day
life can go back to normal.

~~~
PeterStuer
Keep in mind that your COVID WFH experience is not the normal WFH. Normally
you would have the opportunity to gain all your commute time and ge to
experience a real social life that is not bound to your office.

Living in one of the most congested areas in the world, with a public transit
system that has been deliberately neglected by successive governments since
the 1970's thanks to the car and concrete lobby, a 1 hour commute is very much
an underestimate for most office workers here.

I notice especially the younger single colleges never had the time to build a
real social life post university, because they spend all their time outside
work commuting. So they have substituted this with an in office social life.
WFH for them now means sitting alone in an apartment, missing their office
social circle, and having more time but nothing to fill it with as all the
bars and restaurants, the cafes and the theaters are closed, as is the gym,
art school, language courses, those have moved online as well.

This is not normal. Normal WFH is gaining not just 2 hours that were lost in
commute, but also gaining massive productivity due to not having the stress
that comes with 2 hours of bumper to bumper stop and go traffic each day.
Those 2 hours open up enormous social possibilities. Things you can do each
evening that you normally only get to enjoy in the weekends.

I do hope the 'new normal' stays, and people will get to experience the 'real'
WFH as well.

~~~
saiya-jin
You realize that not everybody is so desperate to have work that requires
commute taking 2+ hours of life, every single effin day. Its mostly issue with
huge cities or folks desperately wanting to buy a home with garden regardless
of realities of their current location, like it would magically solve whatever
issue they face in their lives.

WFH now might not be representative of WFH of yesterday's days, but its what
many folks face now, and its not going anywhere soon.

Productivity increase - I can't imagine this happening in any big,
multinational corp, only smaller, more agile companies or if you work on your
own. Its simply not the way things are done. Way more conf calls, amount of
emails is roughly 3x higher so finding even a stupid email conversation I
still recall from few weeks ago becomes a challenge. Expectations from
business are the same.

You need serious discipline, no distractions (if you are not constantly pulled
into some decisions/calls then you are probably not important in that company
or a fresh hire).

For me, covid was a blessing, I could spend home with my newborn son and wife
and overall I am clearly one of the winners in very small pool of folks who
can claim similar situation. For now while I still have work. But I am clearly
an outlier, for most its has been pretty bad situation in many aspects.

Companies will save on rent, and probably lower salaries long term but I can't
see employees as winners overall in long term. Apart from few very loud folks,
who either had stupid long commute because of their not-so-bright prior
decisions, or some other outliers.

~~~
perl4ever
>You realize that not everybody is so desperate to have work that requires
commute taking 2+ hours of life

I've always regarded it as pretty much a requirement that my commute be 10-15
minutes, max. I was even able to maintain that a scant few miles from the
center of DC, by working in a suburb in the opposite direction from all the
other commuters. My other jobs have also been in cities; once I lived in an
apartment a 10 minute walk from the middle of Richmond. Part of that is that
I've been happy to live either downtown or right off a highway and not
somewhere more isolated.

However, I still feel like WFH saves time, because after packing up, walking
to the parking lot, driving home, checking the mail, unpacking, etc. it seems
like roughly an hour disappears after work every day before I'm really at
leisure.

------
endymi0n
I don't doubt the main conclusion of the article for certain tasks at least —
what I do think is questionable though is using productivity as the only valid
metric without controlling for others, including happiness, loneliness,
effectiveness and sustainability.

For makers of any kind, I think remote work has mainly been a net benefit.
There's a lot of developers in our teams who say they're more productive than
ever.

For me as a technology manager, I'm more exhausted than ever. Video meetings
are a pain. Because of this, people switch to asynchronous communication
methods, which is definively more effective, but lacks even more personality.
Text has many more layers of ambiguity. People get more aggressive and lonely.
Misunderstandings rise.

My job is to be aware of the emotional undercurrents of arguments and
technology and physical distance just seems to get in the way of that. Any
forms of creativity that happens in a group, like whiteboarding together, just
isn't the same.

So yes, I think I'm more productive, at least in some ways. There are some
bright sides, also in my private life from being able to work from home that
I'm sure to do more of once I'm able to go back to the office. But I haven't
ever been as exhausted, lonely or miserable as right now and I simply can't
wait to actually have the choice of seeing people in person again.

~~~
Inthenameofmine
> For me as a technology manager, I'm more exhausted than ever. Video meetings
> are a pain. Because of this, people switch to asynchronous communication
> methods, which is definively more effective, but lacks even more
> personality. Text has many more layers of ambiguity. People get more
> aggressive and lonely. Misunderstandings rise.

IMO That's a cultural and psychological problem similar to when people moved
from industrial facilities to service industries, or from waterfall
development to agile. People can and have to learn workflows to accomodate
that, and they will be happier.

> My job is to be aware of the emotional undercurrents of arguments and
> technology and physical distance just seems to get in the way of that. Any
> forms of creativity that happens in a group, like whiteboarding together,
> just isn't the same.

In my experience online whiteboaridng on tablets is far superior to in-room
whiteboarding. Recording, replaying, integration of other tools, etc. It's
again a question of consistent workflows.

------
xcambar
It is sad that the article shows the additional time available as
productive/work time.

In my experience, the workforce maintains a similar productivity while working
slower number of effective work hours. This boost of productivity is explained
by the benefits of the loss of stress and commute, the comfort of home, the
additional family time etc.

There are downsides of course, such as lack of direct contact, unavailability
of an actual office, and mostly the inability to disconnect when everything
happens at the same place, aka home.

But I'd like the general discourse to focus more on the fact that the direct
benefits are for the employee, with positive side-effects for the employer. As
in: let's put the employee at the core of the studies.

~~~
Ozzie_osman
I love this. It's not just about productivity (which is employer-focused),
it's about well-being (which is employer-focused). And working from home is
double-edged in that regard, though I believe the positives will generally
outweigh the negatives.

~~~
corpMaverick
Did you mean to say employee-focused the second time ?

~~~
Ozzie_osman
Yes thank you!

------
blakesterz
In case you don't feel like clicking through...

"If working from home eliminated an hour of commuting, without changing time
spent on work or reducing production, the result would be equivalent to a 13%
increase in productivity (assuming a 38-hour working work)."

I have to admit I've wondered about that. I'm not sure this article answers
any questions, but it's a good question.

~~~
AltruisticGapHN
I don’t understand this at all. Where’s the 13% increase coming from? (if i
work the same number of hours)

~~~
Dylan16807
Instead of spending 43 hours to do 38 hours of work, you spend 38 hours to do
38 hours of work.

43 / 38 = 113% productivity

------
Barrin92
Only under a static view of productivity, that is to say taking the economy as
it is and eliminating commute time (and ignoring the problems associated with
working from home).

Much more importantly though is the question if remote work facilitates the
same degree of long term capital formation that traditional work environments
do.

Alexander Pentland's work ( _Social Physics_ )[1] casts doubt on this.
Physical interaction turns out to be quite vital when it comes to cross-
pollination of ideas, starting new business ventures and basically just
transferring knowledge.

It's the casual everyday interactions at the workplace, organic team-building,
long term informal relationships formed and so on that are completely missing
from remote work, and they have a huge impact.

[1][https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/314230/social-
physi...](https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/314230/social-physics-by-
alex-pentland/)

~~~
Olreich
I’ve very successfully transferred watercooler conversations that “just
happen” psychically to a better system of watercooler channels on chat
programs. It’s better than just the 2-3 people you share a office with, as you
can get ten people cross pollinating all at the same time. Have a novel
thought or cool solution to a problem? Post about it and get kudos and
feedback.

I grew up with chat being the primary way to transfer ideas, especially with
peers that weren’t close to me, so it’s more natural to me to do the
conversational knowledge sharing via text. The missing piece from a workplace
is a shared whiteboard that anyone can draw on. Everyone needs to get a
digitizer at the quality of an iPad Pro or Cintiq to really bridge that gap.
Hopefully the prices keep going down and that sort of thing can become as
ubiquitous as chat.

~~~
chrisco255
The missing piece is the 65+% of communication that is nonverbal. Chat is no
replacement for a team of highly focused, highly integrated people doing
innovative work.

It's too easy to give casual criticism or casual kudos on chat.

Could something like the iPhone have been created without engineers and
designers physically in the same space, debating and discussing ideas? I
highly doubt it.

If your job is not all that innovative in the first place, and no
groundbreaking, chat might be ok for iterative innovation.

~~~
paulryanrogers
Is 65% of business communication nonverbal? For all industries? Across all
cultures?

------
karaterobot
> If working from home eliminated an hour of commuting, without changing time
> spent on work or reducing production, the result would be equivalent to a
> 13% increase in productivity (assuming a 38-hour working work).

Maybe I'm just dense, but I've read this sentence 20 times, and it still
doesn't make sense. If you aren't changing the time spent on work, where is
the productivity gain coming from? Surely they aren't including commute time
in calculating worker productivity?

~~~
ksaj
I still remember Dolly Parton singing about how much a drag it was to work 9
to 5. Most offices nowadays require you to work 8:30 to 5:30 and still call it
8 hours.

Remote work at least allows some people to effectively regain some of that
hour, since you can discount the travel time, and associated costs for
parking, gas, etc, or transit.

~~~
briandear
8:30 to 5:30 with an hour lunch is 8 hours.

~~~
ksaj
But when 9-5 was the norm, it was still considered a 40 hour work week.
Presumably lunch was paid back then. The song says 9-5 was "enough to drive
you crazy if you let it," but nowadays those hours do not represent regular
daily office life. I don't recall my parents ever saying "pfft you had such a
short work day, Dolly!" so I can only assume that was the normal grind for
them, too.

If you are working from home, 9-5 is much more feasible. And without going
to/from the office, you have more time for more productivity.

That's really the only point I was making. I definitely didn't mean for the
observation to be thread-worthy on that specific of a detail.

------
ezoe
Unfortunately, most people are not get used to the efficient communication by
text chat. That's why we are using the inefficient time-wasting communication
by video chat. If we were to truly increase the productivity with the remote
work, we must abandon the video chat. But most companies relies heavily on
face-to-face communication so it doesn't happen in our generation.

~~~
esperent
I have worked from home as a freelancer for several years now. A big part of
my communication with clients involves politely deflecting constant requests
to video chat. It usually goes like this:

Client: explains problem that I understand perfectly in two sentences.

Client: "but maybe we can jump on a quick chat so I can explain this"

Then I have to come up with some way to deflect the request because I know the
"quick" chat will take at least an hour (maybe 30 minutes actually chatting,
but one hour productivity cost).

If it's a quick fix, I usually just don't reply for a few hours and then send
them the fix. If they are persistent, I bill them for the time spent chatting.
But I'd rather spend that time being productive.

On the other hand, I feel it's important to have one longish video chat with a
client when I start a new project, because that gives me a connection to the
person.

------
fierarul
This is the best and worst thing that could happen for remote work. Some
discovered something good for them.

But many will forever associate work from home with this pandemic house arrest
and will get back among people as soon as it's safe plus swear off the whole
idea.

~~~
finaliteration
This is my concern, as well. We have some people at my place of work saying,
“Working from home has been great! I’ve never been more effective and happy at
my job.”, and then we have a smaller but more vocal group that says, “I hate
working from home and it’s incredibly stressful. I want to go back ASAP.” I
worry that the second group will “win” and the pendulum will swing the other
way because of the latter group’s experience.

What we should really be aiming for is flexibility. Some people can be in the
office, some can stay remote.

Personally, I dislike being in an office every day, but even more than that I
_hate_ the commute. If my manager forces me back, I’ll probably quit and look
for a job/company that plans to allow remote work permanently. I’m trying to
remain hopeful, however.

~~~
ghaff
>and then we have a smaller but more vocal group that says, “I hate working
from home and it’s incredibly stressful. I want to go back ASAP.”

I hope they can get their way as soon as possible--so long as they understand
that a lot of their teammates won't want to join them and that the new normal
will be less co-located generally.

I have zero problem with people who want work-life separation, so long as they
don't insist on others to do the same based on their preferences.

(I was remote before anyway so it doesn't really affect me. What's missing now
is meeting co-workers on trips.)

------
rspeele
I'm less productive working from home. I'm confident some people are more
productive working from home. There's no one-size-fits-all solution.

------
glofish
what an absurd article.

And if you are wondering and unaware of Betteridge's law, no we have not
stumbled into the biggest productivity increase in a century.

Working from home does not make most people more productive, eliminating
commute does not make you more productive. Productivity has nothing to do with
time spent in a location.

~~~
yjftsjthsd-h
Right, but productivity has everything to do with time spent and work done, so
doing the same work with less time wasted on overhead (commuting) means more
productivity.

~~~
unabst
It's absurd to think "we've stumbled on the biggest productivity increase" by
changing the math to include commute. If you work 10 hours and are productive
for 10 hours, nothing changes regarding workd done whether you commuted 1 hour
or not. It's only when you swap 11 hours for 10 that there is a difference.
Nothing agaist saving time, but to say that's the biggest productivity
increase is stretching it I think.

~~~
bestnameever
True if you are looking at this from the employers view. But as an employee,
They'll be less productive in their lives if they require a hour commute to
produce 10 hours of work compared to if they didn't.

~~~
unabst
No totally. But even from your own perspective, the output of your day is the
same, you're being paid the same, which means to the economy you're also the
same. So the title of the article is a bit ridiculous. Formatting the title of
the article as a question makes it okay?

