Costs, which can very easily be measured, probably went down.
A company like Fujitsu already has offices in nearly every time zone. The average meeting there already has people who are joining remotely. Teams already have to coordinate and managers already have to manage on the other side of the world. Letting people join their daily standup WebEx from home instead of whatever office they usually go to doesn't really have much impact on that workflow (especially since ~20% of the company already does that on any given Friday).
What WFH it does have is an immediate and direct impact on is cost.
If you're in management and you see that cost reduction in the numbers, productivity appears unaffected, morale appears unaffected (and some people even say it's improved) can you justify to your superiors not continuing to give people the option to WFH where possible?
I think it depends on the company and on the team.
In my company, my productivity skyrocketed, while that of my work colleagues crashed. It largely correlated with things like tech literacy and being open to change. Where I work, there are a few people with who invested in nice WFH setups, work-life integration, and all the things needed to make this work, who found productivity going up. And then there is the majority of people who stubbornly still refuse to even use a headset or learn to use tech, and are just waiting for the office to reopen.
Outside my company, it's not quite the same split, but most people are dipping their toes in rather than diving headfirst.
> It largely correlated with things like tech literacy and being open to change
Honestly, this is a very patronising view. I understand that a lot of people here are strong permanent WFH advocates, but it doesn't fit everyone.
My home setup is pretty good and I'll still be first in line for getting back to the office for a variety of reasons - and there's many others like me.
If you think that means I'm less "tech literate" and not as "open to change" then that's your perogative.
I agree. I fundamentally don't enjoy working in my home. Making the best of it while I can, and my productivity is fine, but it's taxing. I worked for a year and a half remotely a few years prior to the pandemic, and decided I did not enjoy it.
I don't think that makes me resistant to change - I just consider it a change for the worse.
I wonder how much of the pain of today’s impromptu WFH is that there literally isn’t much else available to bring joy and distraction. Am I working more because there isn’t a good separation between work and home or because everything fun is closed?
Even with working more and having a fairly short commute (20-25min ea way), I find I have a lot more time for (solo) hobbies and tinkering. Losing 4 hours a week to commuting and probably another extra 3 to lunch (over quick lunches at home whenever I want) adds up pretty quickly.
I expected to hate WFH, but I like it a surprisingly large amount.
It's totally reasonable that some people prefer a hard separation between home and work, as well as the social aspect of an office. Although, at many work places, I expect the latter is going to be much diminished for a very long time if not forever at many company offices as many employees shift to remote either entirely or for a significant portion of the time.
I would have thought a big part would be people like me who like a good separation between work and home life. When I'm at work I work, when I'm home I don't want to think about work.
My wife's company is kind of curious, and also typical, I think. She works in production planning and SCM, so obviously the early phase of the Covid-19 crisis was the one with the highest workload. It was also the first time they were allowed to WFH. One would have expected that it would be very difficult. It was, for a week or so until people got to understand Teams.
Now, that things calmed down and they started "Kurzarbeit", basically reducing working hours where the state offsets salaries, the company insists that everyone returns to the office. Old ways die hard it seems.
I'm curious, what all do you include when you think about a "nice WFH setup"? For me it's largely a defined space, a nice desk, a nice chair, and a nice monitor. Anything else on your list?
High quality microphone and headphones so you dont echo. I already bought a Blue Yeti microphone ages ago but it works wonders when I have to hop on a call.
As for nice chair depending on your employer I would ask for the one from your job if its sufficient. I was able to take mine home. Its just gonna collect dust otherwise.
That is awful, my employer actually gave out some of our "old" desk chairs, so I took one with an arm missing, I don't use the arm rest, so I took out the spare arm, otherwise if I had asked for my actual desk chair I'm sure they would of given it to me to use. We're technically allowed in the office due to the type of work we do (defense contracts) but mostly work remote, I have only heard of a few people going to the office for anything they need. It's sad when companies don't treat you like adults.
A defined ergonomically equipped workspace that isn't in the way of other day-to-day living (with or without a door depending upon who else is regularly in the space day-to-day) and a good audio-video setup for video calls and other video recording. Even though in practice I often work elsewhere in my house on a laptop for various reasons, it's important to me to have an office.
And, as others have said, childcare and other arrangements to allow you to work without distraction.
It is going to be hard to get good data on this, since so many people are not just working from home but are also caring for children or stress out of their minds due to a pandemic.
From talking to people, it seems that senior engineers are doing well and junior engineers have lower output. I think this is reasonable. People who need more hand holding will have more friction separating them from help. People who already have a strong background have fewer distractions and can focus deeply on code. Whether this sums to an overall positive or negative change in productivity, I have no idea.
