The shift towards remote work has indeed proven a mixed bag regarding productivity. As someone who's been working from home for a while now, I agree that it's a blessing not to commute or dress formally every day. But I also admit that the distractions are real. I've found it necessary to have tools that help me stay accountable and be productive. One that I've personally found useful is this employee monitoring software. It's a suite of employee productivity measurement tools that help me gauge my productivity while working remotely. It's been incredibly beneficial in keeping me on track.

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I have noticed a major change in my commute in the mornings. Where it used to be an absolute miserable bumper-to-bumper slog starting at 6:30 am and not letting up until 8:30 or 9, it's noticeably lighter traffic. It's still pretty heavy during that 6:30-8:30 timeframe but nothing like prior to early 2020. Same thing going home. Must be way more people are doing the WFH thing and also different schedules than 9-5 because if I do go in later because I had an appointment or something, the traffic at 9:30-10 am is now heavier than I ever recall at that time.

There's definitely a big shift happening.

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Originally posted by Jimineer:

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Originally posted by pedropcola:

There are like 6 jobs that legitimately are a good fit for remote work.

What are those 6?

Pilot
Cop (SWAT guys)
Fire Fighter
Walmart Cashier (all three of them)
Surgeon
House Painter

I worked from home in 2007-2008. I showered, shaved and dressed for work every weekday. I put 9 hours of actual work in each day. My office was separate from the living area and was off limits. Getting called into the field required zero preparation as I was already ready to go. I think that’s what you have to do when working from home. No pajamas, no errands, no kids.

I'm seeing bosses and department heads working from home as well and I'm not sure it's good. It feels like some departmental energy is lost when the bosses and supervisors aren't in. Empty offices aren't particularly inspiring. I'm productive at home, but prefer the office, but some commutes are a real pita depending on the particular random highway karma. The motivation to slog though heavy traffic to go to an office that is largely empty, then meet with everyone virtually from their homes or attempting to raise important people virtually but aren't answering, things sure seem unstable these days.

This is a very complex issue with no easy answer.

My former company, largest in it's industry, found that during COVID when everyone was remote, productivity increased. They also found that those that returned to the office had a drop in productivity when back in the office.

The workaholic executive or business owner has always been a problem. They are wired differently than the average employee. They are also motivated differently and quite often valued much more than the average worker.

Herein lies the issue in my opinion... it's two fold.

Employees are increasing their value by job hopping. Most stay at a location 2 years or less. It used to be a bad thing to have that sort of work history on a resume, now it is good if you see upward movement. Newer employees have zero loyalty to anything but a paycheck.

Employers at large have less dedication to employees as many executives viewed them as replaceable assets vs. valued members of the company/family. This was further enhanced by the employees showing no loyalty or dedication to companies, even if they are treated as valued.

Remote or not remote seems to have less to do with the issue than anything, but is an easy scape goat as its very visible. Yes, it's very easy to get accustomed to working remote, and once you have an agreement in place, it is very upsetting to have a executive tell you that all bets are off and get your butt back in the office because I can't micromanage you remotely.

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Originally posted by pedropcola:
There are like 6 jobs that legitimately are a good fit for remote work. We just pretend the others are too. How many times do you have to go to voicemail or listen to their kids in the background or witness any school related class to realize remote is just a bad idea. Good for workers bad for anything else. If you are one of the 6 good for you.

Remote work is OK. The problem you are raising isn't about the remoteness of work--it's about the allowable distractions the company will put up with.

Nobody cares if you aren't in a cubicle in an office. It makes no difference to most people to get on a call versus getting in a room. There isn't some magic sauce in getting productivity out of people when we're all in the same room, wasting time at the same time.

The issue is some people think they can skimp on child care because they are at home. Or that they get distracted by their xbox or whatever. That's a personal responsibility and professionalism issue.

Myself, I have an actual office at home. We have a live-in nanny for the little, and the older one is at daycare. I am 100% as productive at home as I am "at work" because I treat my WFH space like an actual workspace. I fuckaround on Sigforum from my phone at work as I do at home (i.e., whenever I need a break).

WFH allows me to save on commute time. That's the perk.

News flash you can afford a fucking nanny. Most remote workers are doing all the above and there isn’t a boss out there that has the cajones to tell them to hire a nanny. They can say come into the office though which solves a large chunk of remote issues.

We can pretend all these jobs are more productive. We can even say the company says they are more productive. I would love to see what metrics they used to show this.

Remote work has also changed the employee pool. Before, one was limited by commute distances to a relatively small set of employers. Those employers shared lists of employees, had quiet agreements to not poach each other's employees, and even had blacklists.

With remote work, any employer in the USA is a possible employer. Competition is harder for jobs, as instead of 20 applications from a 50 mile area there's now 600 from across the country. For the employee, places to work isn't limited to a 50 mile commute radius.

After doing remote work for 12+ years, I look back at the days I spent two hours commuting in bad weather and all the missed family events. It no longer makes sense to do that.

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5/ Global Hiring: almost every company will begin expanding where they hire. Remote work will democratize access to the best opportunity even more rapidly over the next 6-12 months

7/ Access talent: The reason they are going remote-first is simple – it lets them hire more talented people. Rather than hiring the best person in a 30-mile radius of the office, they hire the best person in the world for every role.

My wife is a health care executive who was recently "restructured" out of her job. 2 years ago healthcare was awash in all the fake-printed "Covid money" which has all suddenly dried up. There are a lot of layoffs.

She has applied for around 100 jobs in the last month or so and finds herself not just in local competition but in national competition. She can often see that there are 1000's of applicants for a single job.

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Originally posted by pedropcola:
News flash you can afford a fucking nanny. Most remote workers are doing all the above and there isn’t a boss out there that has the cajones to tell them to hire a nanny. They can say come into the office though which solves a large chunk of remote issues.

We can pretend all these jobs are more productive. We can even say the company says they are more productive. I would love to see what metrics they used to show this.

The point isn't that I have a nanny. The point is that I carry the same childcare load as if I was in the office full time.

Like I said. It's not the "remote" component. It's that companies were flexible back at the start of COVID to help families cope. In 2020, it was "OK" to keep a kid at home and keep an eye on them--childcare was weird, daycares were closed, and people couldn't cope with the perceived infection risk of close contact. So, now nobody wants to give up that flexibility/savings. That's a people problem. It's a professionalism problem. But it's not a "remote work" problem.

Half my team is in Europe. I've never even met most of them in person. "Where" they are located does not make a whit of difference to what I can expect from them. Not being in the same room, let alone not being in the same time zone doesn't hinder productivity.

Any manager/leader worth their salt will have metrics on productivity for their team. I can tell you with certainty that my team has been more productive in the past 3-4 years than they were in 2018. I can tell you this because I have metrics like the number of contracts that have been drafted and negotiated, the lead times and response times to projects getting finished, and the number of times a contract is touched before it is executed (indicating accuracy/quality), or the number of contracts that become litigated. I'm an attorney responsible for contracts at a large company, so my metrics revolve around contract output. I don't care about the number of minutes logged, I don't care about the number of keystrokes per hour, I don't care about the number of phone calls made, or emails sent--those metrics don't have value to me.

I can tell you that the return to work is certainly not helping my team's productivity. By the time people arrive at work, they've already spent a considerable amount of their social energy navigating their morning routine. Things like makeup, clothes, sorting out your pets, packing meals, commutes, car troubles, fuel expense, figuring out dinner for later, and being pleasant to a dozen different people as you make your way to your cubicle is not part of the "Up and at 'em energy" you want people to have. Also, my employees lose the flexibility of logging out a little early and logging back in later to catch a call with a different time zone. If they're coming into the office and having to fight a commute home, they're not logging back in later.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Aeteocles,

All good points and valid for your situation and team. But there's lots of white collar employees who are not truly professionals with little quantitative tracking of productivity. That situation is a shared fault of sorts, with blame on both the employer and employee. This is esp. more common in govt jobs, where depending on the situation, everyone including the boss may be royal slackers. I saw this while contracting in DoD. Lots of overpaid, dishonest, lazy asses, mixed in with other excellent civil service professionals, and outstanding military personnel and general officers.

Like most things in life it boils down to professionalism in all types of work at all levels.

I suppose it will be topsy turvy for a while, esp. for older workers who spent their careers in offices. It's a different world. Maybe this will be some parallel to a major shift, like the shift from agricultural to factory work, something along those lines. But maybe not as drastic since tons of work in the trades and such aren't at home or in offices.