Hacker News Reader

Comment by delichon | Hacker News Reader

I've worked for an all remote company for over a decade. Dimon is largely correct. There is a huge amount of abuse and we pay a high cost for it. It's not that remote interaction is worse in terms of creativity and productivity, I don't think it is. It's about the discipline to spend the time on task when nobody is watching. It takes a rare character to keep that up over years, and I'm not one of them. (And being free to say that is why I don't put my name on this account.)

View on HN

If anything it's easier for folks to goof off in the office vs. working from home. In the office, you have the appearance of being "at work". When working from home, you tend to be judged much more on your output rather than when you start and end your day.

Managers should be able to know whether people are productive or not. If their only measure is looking if people are in the office or not, their problem isn't remote work.

> It's about the discipline to spend the time on task when nobody is watching.

Again, if you're expected to deliver something, the discipline should come from risk of being fired if you don't deliver.

I have done both over the past 3 decades. in the office the most I worked productively ever is maybe 3.5/4hrs. at home it is not uncommon I hit 9-10hrs of straight up work. just about everyone I know feels the same way. my at-office day is like:

- drive 20 minutes

- get in, hit the breakroom, coffee and chat for 20-30 minutes

- work a bit, maybe a meeting

- IM bunch of people about lunch plans

- go to lunch for 90 minutes

- back at the office, another 15-20 minutes before settling in

- work a bit while keeping an eye on traffic to head home

- head home

At home,

- get up and work for about 90 minutes

- bike to school with my kid.

- work for 6-ish hours

- pick up my kid

- work another 90 minutes while she is doing school work

- parenting fun

- work another 60-90 after her bedtime

the core difference between at-office and at-home is that when I have to go to the office I do not touch my computer at home ever (often won’t even take it home with me) while when I am at home I will frequently work late at night etc

I think it ends up being a sort of an evolved trait. Somebody in a full remote company doesn't show up for work one day, they notice that the next day nobody says anything, nobody noticed, or nobody cared. Over time, this leads to disconnection from work.

When I first did remote working I suffered from motivation problems. I had days when I did nothing at all. It actually made me depressed.

But, that was also a failure of the company. They did not manage me well or even think about my productivity. I strongly suspect that I wouldn't have done anything much even if the role had been office based. The role and the company were simply poor and not a good fit for me.

These days I'm much more productive working from home than an office, but I'm in a place where what I do matters and I like that.

at the least i was super productive during the pandemic, as was my entire team at work. commuting really saps my productivity.

The only formal study that I've seen shows that there is 15% more fraud in remote financial services work. Do you have any studies pointing to this being wrong?

Where is the study? Isn't 15% huge?

You can also waste time in an office. It doesn't make that much difference, ultimately.

What matters are deadlines and productivity. If you can be productive in less time than others then good luck to you. Wages are 'flattened' between people employed at the same level so why shouldn't the more productive workers benefit in some way.

And you kept up the hard work in the office?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com