Did anyone say it was?
> I think a lot of people are abusing WFH. Some make it obvious like doing meal prep during refinement...
What does "it" refer to in that sentence, if not the immediately preceding "abusing WFH?"
The fact that this has to be explained to people is why there's a push to return to the office.
Your refinements work a little different than mine. In mine, the SME or the person who opened the issue (often the same person) reads the story, gives any extra context, answers questions, etc., we assign a point value, and move on. Refinement can be a discussion -- it doesn't always have to be a research session.
That's a load of context that wasn't clear from your original comment. The jargon "refinement" is not used where I work.
> The fact that this has to be explained to people is why there's a push to return to the office.
That you then need to backfill assumed context is not going to be solved by returning to office. That it's now been clarified in text, in a work situation, could be turned into a resource to be referenced in a future conversation. In the office, the explanation would be ephemeral, and may need frequent repetition until somebody overcomes the hurdle of committing it to text.
This is why return to office is an attractive option. People are definitely not bringing veggies to chop or laundry to fold to a conference room. And most of them are going to pay attention to a person in their presence talking to them because of basic social niceties. It solves the problem with much less hassle than actually having to identify and cull people who can't handle WFH.
That seems odd to me. I can give my full attention to something I am reading, or to listening to what a person is saying in the meeting, but not both at the same time. If I start looking up documentation, I'm going to miss what is being said.
Can... can most people split their attention this way? Am I weird?
I can do a completely mindless manual task while listening to someone speaking (though I struggle to do something manual while reading) - but this doesn't seem to be what is expected here.
If the results are there, and in accordance with the employment contract, time shouldn't matter.
And "results are there" is just hand waving away the problem. Nobody can measure developer results in any sort of systematic fashion. If you've got a way then by all means share with the world.
Time does matter because the agreement between companies and workers is money for time/effort. I'm not giving back salary if my project flops and they're not giving me (much) more money if it makes the company millions.
If you're signed into Teams but playing a game or watching a movie, it could probably be challenged in court whether you're performing a service for your employer.
Over at Google, there’s an internal study that shows raw code checkins have dropped dramatically since WFH. I’m pretty sure Sundar’s 20% more productivity comment came directly from the numbers in those slides.
It does not surprise me that Zuckerberg and Benioff have gone the length of calling out their employees’ productivity directly. I’m really surprised this comment is this far down, when it’s been painfully obvious at the couple companies I’ve worked at through the pandemic that productivity is the elephant in the room. Some CEOs dress it in corpspeak about collaboration, but if Google, Meta, and Salesforce are all complaining of worker productivity, I think that’s the true reason. I think we’re too afraid to take an honest look at how productive we are, which will ultimately be the demise of WFH we want to defend so badly.
This person also routinely ignores/mutes as many meetings as possible and frequently multi-tasks in the gym, house chores, etc. Had that person been in the office they'd have had their time wasted on useless all-hands meetings, etc., so now everybody's happy (because that person hasn't had to quit, because life's too short).
Working based on hours doesn't work remote. It should be based on deliverables.
I'm not sure if people are even doing that. And really if you tack on a couple hours of pointless meetings we're pretty close to 40 hours a week. They're within spitting distance of an expected work week and if they're responsive and hitting targets then who cares. I'm talking about people I think work more like 3-4 hours a week.
In a rare occasion I get a desk anywhere near a coworker when we are in the office, I also find it hard to know how much they are working.
The physical presence in the same city, building, or even sat right next to each other, goes not give me any information.