[moises_silva]

> People keep on saying this but it's just not obviously true.

How is it obviously not true? I mean. I love remote work. I started working remotely way before it was mainstream and I'm advocate for it. I've managed remote teams for many years too. Even so, I can't claim there's no performance hit. I just think the performance hit is small enough that in most cases the benefits for people and businesses outweigh it.

[mullingitover]

How do you balance that against the performance hit of working on-prem?

You can't just hand-wave away the unpaid labor and risk to your life that you undertake with every trip to and from the office. You can't ignore the drive-by conversations you get roped into when you're trying to do head-down work or the overall noise in an office. Yes, in ideal conditions your office might approach what you get working at home, but I've never experienced it, especially given that open plan offices are now an unquestioned default setting.

[bryanrasmussen]

>Yes, in ideal conditions your office might approach what you get working at home,

In my experience I am more productive in office, lots of other people seem to feel the same. I guess I'm just lucky to have worked in lots of more than ideal offices, or, as seems more likely people's home conditions vary to such an extent that you can't make a blanket statement.

[missedthecue]

It's interesting to me how everyone seems to agree that remote school and college are huge failures and students are falling behind, but when it comes to their remote jobs, they'll go to great lengths to deny any reduction in efficiency, collaboration, or productivity.

[noelherrick]

The thing about schools and universities is that took the same thing they do in person and tried to do that online. Remote work requires rethinking what work means, and remote education requires you to do the same thing. I can say that Duolingo is a fantastic way to learn a language because they spent the time and money to make excellent software. Throw in some one-on-one Zoom time with a native speaker and you would far outdo all the language classes I have taken. Imagine an art history class that actually has excellent VR.

Let's separate kids (say younger than 14) from older teens and young adults here. I would agree that remote learning just feels like a disaster for the younger ones because kids just don't sit quietly for extended periods of time to learn. Older teens and young adults probably have developed the skills to sit down for long stretches. I can honestly say classroom instruction is the worst way to learn for me. By myself, I can read, re-read, take notes, watch a video and rewind, do additional searches for more background info, etc.

This does come to another point: some work and some study is physical and some people do not do well by themselves at home. I am not arguing that everyone has to work remotely, but think of the quality of life improvements if most folks get 2 hours back every day, if they have access to their kitchens to make lunch, if they're not burning gas or clogging metros, if they're sick, there's no way to catch their cold, and if housing gets expensive, they have the flexibility to move to a cheaper area.

[jzoch]

perhaps if you are driven and understand what you are supposed to be working on remote work is not a tall order. School, on the other hand, is not intrinsically as interesting as whatever career you chose. You don't get paid. You are younger (and thus may be less able to concentrate on boring tasks).

They are different. In some contexts more than others but still different. I love going into the office but pretending its magically more efficient is a bit silly. I like getting distracted at work but don't think it makes me more valuable to the company. I certainly don't write better code at work - if anything my home office allows me to shut out distractions more easily (a luxury not everyone has). This entire argument is silly - not allowing remote work is denying a large portion of a workforce. That workforce may or may not be better or worse but its certainly cheaper for the employer. Why deny yourself a large talent pool?

[toyg]

> School, on the other hand, is not intrinsically as interesting as whatever career you chose

Also, modern mass-schooling was built largely on the model of, and to prepare to, industrial production processes.

People get taught at early age that they have to go somewhere to listen to some authority, who will assign them tasks they may or may not care about, and they will be rewarded if such tasks are successfully executed. Tasks will become increasingly complex with time, but such progression is largely not managed by pupils. They are controlled very strictly at every step, and there is little or no flexibility or power for them to control their day: they must congregate in specific buildings at specific times, and then act as requested.

Is it surprising, then, that most of them might need such structure reproduced later in life...? Maybe if we taught them more self-direction earlier on, there would be a smaller risk of "loss of productivity when unchecked".

[jokethrowaway]

Online meetings are worse than in-person meetings.

Meetings are not the core work activity, they're a tool to achieve the real job of building a product.

I can build a product even better if I don't have idiots setting up 200 meetings and I don't need more than a few short meetings with my reports to get things done. And there is an argument to be made that the better the tech is for online meeting, the worse everyone's productivity is. I wasn't bogged down by all these meetings 15 years ago and I was building products remote just fine. Also the more non-agile agile coaches poison companies with their crap which goes against the agile manifesto (like scrum) and impose more and more meetings (standups, retrospectives, backlog grooming), the lower everyone's productivity is.

In education, the current model is that the educator is filling the "empty vases" that students are with knowledge. I find it completely stupid and I think it doesn't work for most people (especially boys, no wonder they fall behind in education compared to girls). That model doesn't work in the online world because online meetings are sub-par.

Besides, the only valuable thing I send my kids to school is so they can socialise with kids their age. The crap teachers are teaching is mostly useless and they can learn it by themselves even better and without having to wake up at 7am.

[chii]

remote learning and colleges remove the element of physical social interaction between students (and to a degree, teachers). This element is important for learning imho.

remote working removes this very same element, but because nobody cares that an employee doesn't learn, it is irrelevant.

But certainly remote working affects on-boarding new people, and not just knowledge wise, but also team cohesion and ability to align together. However, i am willing to give all that up, because i do prefer remote working myself - purely selfishly, because those problems it causes aren't mine.

[ycombobreaker]

> nobody cares that an employee doesn't learn, it is irrelevant.

I have learned shitloads as an employee, and that's why I get paid more now than ten years ago. If you aren't learning at work, something is wrong.

[jacobmischka]

The employee cares, but most employers do not. That's why changing jobs every couple years gets people 20% pay increases these days but they're lucky to get an inflationary raise at their yearly review.

[AlchemistCamp]

I don't think remote college is a failure at all. Remote school for 6 year-olds is, though.

[nostrebored]

Drive by conversations are a feature not a bug, assuming a high functioning environment.

[mulmen]

So I am low functioning because I have a human brain? Task switching is not free.

I have never been a member of an organization with more than three people who didn't have at least one member incapable of understanding headphones mean "don't talk to me".

Informal conversations happen in team chat now so it can be asynchronous, I never miss overhearing something relevant in the team room because I am away at a meeting, I can sync up at my convenience.

[moises_silva]

I suppose I can only speak from my experience. I can see definitely how many corp onsite environments are awful. There are productivity killers both onsite and remote and there are no absolutes. If we assume a 'good' remote vs 'good' onsite environment, collaboration is easier and faster onsite. Yes, you need to be very careful, and in my case we are super conscious of 'maker's time' and respect it with discipline.

[voakbasda]

If there is a performance hit for your remote teams, then I suggest you look to your own teams and employees for the root cause.

I have been in plenty of organizations that actively cripple their remote workers' performance, and others where I have been my most productive. Remote work productivity depends directly on the culture surrounding it.

If you believe a remote team will be less productive, then it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Instead, set clear expectations that your team can excel, and then ensure the culture enables them to realize that potential.

Sure, this philosophy can go only so far, but -- without that foundation -- the results will only fall short of your expectations.

[moises_silva]

The 'you are doing it wrong' argument cuts both ways. Having an office does not magically make you more productive. You also need to cultivate an adequate environment to allow makers enough focus time and not randomly interrupted any time.

[scott_w]

OP did not say “it’s obviously not true,” they said “it’s not obviously true.”

They’re saying the statement requires more evidence to back it up.

[adgjlsfhk1]

Not obviously true != obviously not true.

[snicker7]

English isn’t abelian.

[dllthomas]

It's Albionian, though.

[lbriner]

There are lots of reasons why you might suffer a performance hit when working remotely. Sure, most are probably solveable with enough cash but there are plenty of things that are not:

* One of your prized developers lives by themself and suffers bad anxiety from being alone all the time instead of in the office

* Your 10 year old production systems are designed from the ground-up to be secure from inside a single network. Sure you could add VPNs but then you get a load of other issues

* There are people who will only focus when in the office, too many distractions at home and they are less productive. There is no objective way to measure productivity and also what drop would be acceptable so how do you fairly appraise people when you can't see how they interact?

* Juniors trying to learn on the job is 100x easier in-person.

* All manner of issues with onboarding, hardware, network problems, unannounced disappearances from people that you need to speak to (as opposed to them being in the office and they tell you they need to go to the doctors).

Not saying that I don't want to fix these since we need to use remote working to survive probably but you can't pretend these are just things that can be fixed.

[pawelmurias]

Being alone all the time sucks hard.

[tikhonj]

I do not think that it is obviously false, I think it is not obvious that it is true.

[raverbashing]

"Performance hit", sure, you know what else is a performance hit?

- Commuting

- Office noise and distractions

- Need to fit office hours

Might I even argue those are even bigger hits than just the remote hit

[jokethrowaway]

I can't disagree more.

The story is always the same. If you're in the office you don't need to prove you're working: you obviously put in your 8 hours, even if you had 3 coffees breaks, played ping pong, smoked a pack of cigarettes watched a few youtube videos with your friend, checked social media.

If you are home, you may do a subset of the above non-work activities - but you're either producing some amount that is reasonable for your manager or you're not.

A lot of the employees in my team were working longer hours than when they were in-office.

In my experience performance reviews are a joke and based more on luck than anything else (was the project a success or was it cancelled?), so your manager's perception is more important than anything else to you keeping your job.

Being remote you miss out on a lot of socialisation and employees may leave your company more quickly (and don't get nearly as attached as they would with a in-office workplace), but they'll definitely produce more.

[tcmart14]

I am curious. I guess it also depends on the company, but endless meaningless meetings is pretty popular. With online teams, do you feel like there is the performance advantage?

[moises_silva]

I'm not sure I follow. Endless meaningless meetings is an orthogonal problem. Regardless of remote vs on-site, I try to avoid meetings without a clear agenda, purpose and inviting only relevant parties. Not inviting people just to 'keep them in the loop', we have meeting summary/notes for that. I encourage team members to decline meetings they do not feel will be valuable, exercising their own judgement and with an explanation to the organizer.

[jhardy54]

Obviously not true != not obviously true.

I think you’ve misunderstood the comment you’re replying to.

[moises_silva]

Yes I did not parse that correctly. Thanks.