[anonuser123456]

To be fair, most tech based companies have very long pipelines. Google is making money off software written over the course of two decades. Intel has a 4 year pipeline for chip tape outs. A lot of tech companies were positioned well to increase revenue due to the pandemic.

So just because companies are making more money, doesn't mean productivity hasn't gone down. It could be that it's just lost in the noise at the moment and won't show up in the data for a few years.

[Panzer04]

I feel like this is a really good point - Most people are likely pretty bad at measuring their productivity, and honestly my expectation is that (if present), the productivity impacts of long term WFH are likely to manifest in ways that aren't entirely obvious.

For example, it seems evident to me that there's going to be a lot less "cross pollination" (for lack of a better metaphor) between people in a WFH environment as opposed to an office. For those with plenty of experience, this will have a fairly minimal impact, but for anyone else I'm concerned about missing out on the little things that are seamlessly transferred in face-to-face interactions over time. That thing that takes you 30 minutes that can be resolved with a 5 minute chat with the guy who knows, etc. Things you won't even really think to ask about that don't get brought up.

Even less direct things as well - eg random new product ideas that come from a chat with a coworker, or improvements, anything like that. Those can all add up to improving products and productivity, and are difficult to measure the effect of.

All of this stuff is in the tail though, and we probably won't see the effects for years (and it'll be muddied by people who do genuinely work well in WFH environments too)

[emptyparadise]

>random new product ideas that come from a chat with a coworker, or improvements

I've had this happen plenty of times over text.

I suspect the "cross pollination" might get balanced out by the ability to interact with anyone at the company, rather than just those on your floor or building.

[Panzer04]

That's a good point as well - I suppose you could argue the likelihood of entering a conversation like that over text vs in person. In my experience you're generally a bit less likely to end up off track in text as opposed to talking, simply because it's usually slower - you can't bounce ideas back and forth at the same rate (not to say you can't, though)