Hacker News Reader

Comment by samsonradu | Hacker News Reader

This 100 times. There’s a big fallacy in tech circles in which everyone takes their work so seriously that they’ll be working from home just as effective as they’d have from the office.

In reality though things are quite different. Having seen it first hand I can say that there are many employees I’d rather have in the office.

I’m willing to bet on a productivity drop caused by the work-from-home policies that are happening now.

View on HN

I’m an employee I’d rather have in the office. At home, my productivity is either 20-30% lower or 20-50% higher than in the office. The problem is I can never predict which one it will be on any given day. My productivity in the office is much less variable than that. There are, of course, better and worse days, but I like to keep things as predictable as possible. This, coincidentally, probably makes me easier to manage than if my performance were more variable.

So overall your productivity is about the same, with the benefit to you of no commute time and the benefit to the orginisation of not having to provide you with a desk.

That seems to assume a 50% split between the two day types. I'm the same as pmiller2, and I know my unproductive days at home far outnumber by highly productive days. Furthermore I find my commute beneficial as I'm able to swap from "home head" to "work head" mode much easier than, say, going out for a walk - my local area keeps my "home head" on.

My impression is that I’m about the same way, except I could really do without about half the commute time. I do like being able to (mostly) not work when I’m at home (on call rotation being the main reason I open the work laptop outside the office). Overall, I think I’m less productive on a WFH day than when I’m in the office. I’m not sure if doing more WFH would improve the situation due to more practice or not.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com