[lindenksv85]

I think it’s unfortunate that people are taking statistics (or anecdotes) from this period to support or not support WFH. At this point in time, it would be rather audacious for anyone to claim that productivity is more tied to the location of your desk than to the fact that people are working through the apocalypse, and some people are working through more than one “once in a lifetime” disaster. If productivity is down, maybe it’s because we expect people to keep adding to billionaire bottom lines when their entire lives are falling apart, in many cases irreparably??

[oh-4-fucks-sake]

Chiming in here. I moved across the country to SoCal and returned to the company I left, (re)-starting in Sept. 2019 as full-time WFH. I worked 4-5 days in the office before the move.

I'm a good control here because I've worked for the same company:

1. In the office

2. WFH pre-Covid

3. WFH during-Covid

What's more, all of my favorite activities: golf, hiking, cooking--are largely unaffected by the pandemic. My income's been the same and the work activities have been roughly similar.

I felt relatively productive WFH pre-Covid but something has changed that's affected my productivity/motivation--and I can't put my finger on it. I think it's the general, subconscious, back-of-my-mind feeling that things are profoundly going to shit that's dragging me down. It's been a struggle now when it's not been before.

This is all purely anecdotal, but I think I'm a good case-in-point example of your position: that WFH is a convenient strawman to hand-wave away the effects of people living in the final pages of a Vonnegut novel.

I love WFH; I want to be productive; but I don't think that shoe-horning people back into offices (wearing a mask all day, nonetheless) is going to magically turn everyone back into creative, chipper good-time-charlies.

[mepiethree]

if we're doing anecdotes, the apocalypse makes me more productive since good work allows me to hide from everything else in the world being terrible