Comment by warpeggio | Hacker News Reader

Comment by warpeggio | Hacker News Reader

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Ah yes, the cargo cult of productivity - if i'm in the office, i'm producing value.

I think about this quote from Bezos in 2017 a lot, which is quoted in Mik Kersten's Project to Product:

"As companies get larger and more complex, there’s a tendency to manage to proxies. This comes in many shapes and sizes, and it’s dangerous, subtle, and very Day 2. A common example is process as proxy. Good process serves you so you can serve customers. But if you’re not watchful, the process can become the thing. This can happen very easily in large organizations. The process becomes the proxy for the result you want. You stop looking at outcomes and just make sure you’re doing the process right."

I'd say "being in the office" is a proxy here.

> I'd say "being in the office" is a proxy here.

Recently I've been reading some docs on productivity, inspired by a comment on HN. There are some solid findings - don't work too many hours, put your team in a single office so they can directly chat to each other as and when needed, avoid external interruptions from outside that office, etc.

It seems that a lot of the findings of improving productivity in-person may also imply that remote work drops productivity. For example, being at home with a bunch of other people in your house might dramatically increase the possibility of external interruption to the team.

A discussion between two people in an office might be lower-friction and also instantly bring in other team mates to help if relevant - whilst that might lower individual productivity, the team as a whole is more productive. And this is not just speculation rather looking at existing studies and applying their conclusions to remote.

Speculation from me: there's also the matter of lost communication through coffee and lunch breaks. Building that mutual understanding between individuals and about the system surely increases productivity.

I think there's a big assumption on HN that individual productivity correlates with team and company productivity, and so if you get more "stuff" done wfh then it must be best. But that clearly isn't true from the experiments we've already done.

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