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Re:Why Working from Home Will Stick [pdf] by TameAntelope on Saturday January 23, 2021 @06:31PM (#25887132)
Caring about the specific hours an employee is working rather than the quality of their output is something I hope dies along with mandatory physical presence in an office.
Re:Why Working from Home Will Stick [pdf] by cuddlybacon on Saturday January 23, 2021 @07:05PM (#25887396)
The post seemed to state both hours and output have dropped.
Re:Why Working from Home Will Stick [pdf] by varjag on Saturday January 23, 2021 @06:35PM (#25887172)
Quality of work is something people can argue about until they're blue in the face, but hours put are objective.
Re:Why Working from Home Will Stick [pdf] by zabzonk on Saturday January 23, 2021 @06:42PM (#25887229)
Objective in the sense that someone sitting at a desk for 8 hours without moving a muscle has sat at a desk for 8 hours. But useful to the company employing them - not so much.
Re:Why Working from Home Will Stick [pdf] by varjag on Saturday January 23, 2021 @06:54PM (#25887319)
The GP writes:

> Responses that are normally in minutes take hours etc.I have to now probe for updates etc.

I think that's rather objective and affects teamwork/project cohesion.

Re:Why Working from Home Will Stick [pdf] by Viliam1234 on Sunday January 24, 2021 @09:39AM (#25892345)
> someone sitting at a desk for 8 hours without moving a muscle

And this is also what will ruin your health in a few decades.

...which will then reduce your productivity.

...which will then get you fired.

...which will then make you lose your health insurance.

...which will then make you lose your savings to pay for all the healthcare bills.

Luckily, none of this will be your employer's problem, because there is another person with healthy enough spine that can replace you at your desk.

Re:Why Working from Home Will Stick [pdf] by mb7733 on Saturday January 23, 2021 @06:43PM (#25887239)
Just because something is easy to measure doesn't mean it's a valuable metric. You can make the same argument about LOC.
Re:Why Working from Home Will Stick [pdf] by pdimitar on Saturday January 23, 2021 @06:42PM (#25887232)
But the results of the hours put aren't objective, so I don't get your point.

I've known people who became masters at imitating work 8 hours a day.

Re:Why Working from Home Will Stick [pdf] by varjag on Saturday January 23, 2021 @06:50PM (#25887287)
I don't see how them imitating 8 hour work a day in say 2 actual hours is any improvement.
Re:Why Working from Home Will Stick [pdf] by pdimitar on Saturday January 23, 2021 @06:59PM (#25887356)
You immediately assume people don't work which is not what I am seeing. Sure, some absolutely do, but you are making it look like everyone is more lazy in WFH conditions.
Re:Why Working from Home Will Stick [pdf] by varjag on Saturday January 23, 2021 @07:01PM (#25887367)
I don't assume anything, just going by with your hypothetical 8-hour slacker.
Re:Why Working from Home Will Stick [pdf] by pdimitar on Saturday January 23, 2021 @07:04PM (#25887390)
My bad then, but I still disagree that hours put are an objective metric. Yeah, sure, 8h have passed <- this can be measured objectively, but it's basically the only thing that can be measured objectively in a work setting.
Re:Why Working from Home Will Stick [pdf] by Haunted_Cabbage on Saturday January 23, 2021 @06:43PM (#25887243)
Hours of asses in chairs isn't really a measurement of goals being meet. The quality of the time spent is what gets the goals met.
Re:Why Working from Home Will Stick [pdf] by varjag on Saturday January 23, 2021 @06:48PM (#25887276)
Sure, most employers would take 8 hours of quality work over 4 hours of quality work for the same salary.
Re:Why Working from Home Will Stick [pdf] by ameister14 on Saturday January 23, 2021 @06:54PM (#25887322)
Most employers aren't actually operating with efficiency as the main goal.

Look at it this way:

worker A makes 10 widgets an hour. In 8 hours, he makes 80 widets.

worker B makes 20 widgets an hour. In 4 hours, he makes 80 widgets.

Why should the employer care about which one works more hours?

Re:Why Working from Home Will Stick [pdf] by varjag on Saturday January 23, 2021 @07:02PM (#25887375)
How many widgets will worker B make in 8 hours?

Also, how many widgets will worker A make in 4 hours?

Re:Why Working from Home Will Stick [pdf] by crocodiletears on Saturday January 23, 2021 @07:13PM (#25887456)
In my experience:

If worker worker A is not at risk of termination, bar any incentive program rewarding excess production, worker B will likely produce 80 widgets in 8 hours.

Re:Why Working from Home Will Stick [pdf] by ameister14 on Saturday January 23, 2021 @07:04PM (#25887386)
worker B will make 80 widgets in 8 hours and be unhappy because he knows the employer expects 80 and he's not going to work harder for no reward.

Worker A will make 40 widgets in 4 hours.

Re:Why Working from Home Will Stick [pdf] by varjag on Saturday January 23, 2021 @07:06PM (#25887399)
Let's say worker B draws 2x salary of worker A, because he is known to be twice more experienced/skilled/productive.
Re:Why Working from Home Will Stick [pdf] by ameister14 on Saturday January 23, 2021 @07:20PM (#25887486)
Ah, but didn't you say it was impossible to measure quality of work? You could only measure the time spent in the seat, right?

Now you're saying people should be judged on their outputs. Interesting change of pace.

In reality he's unlikely to draw 2x the salary for 2x the output, though, because he's operating from a deficit of information and again, the manager/hr person's main goal isn't actually efficiency.

If they're smart, though, they'll give him a performance bonus based on productivity over a minimum marker, maybe staged as productivity goes up without a quality drop to squeeze out as much as possible. At a certain point, though, money becomes less of a driver for most people so that's not the only thing they'll do. They will also tie his performance to the team as a whole, create opportunities for building 'team unity' and maybe put together artificial competition so he actually cares about team performance. Then his colleagues will push him to perform better.

Re:Why Working from Home Will Stick [pdf] by varjag on Saturday January 23, 2021 @07:41PM (#25887628)
You made a ton of implicit assumptions with your widget factory at home, it's not really like you caught me on anything here. I just brought in a bit of realism into your model.

Point is you expected to do an honest day of work for your pay with a good effort. That's the social contract which may well be changed in the future, but so far it isn't.

Re:Why Working from Home Will Stick [pdf] by ameister14 on Saturday January 23, 2021 @07:54PM (#25887688)
You say time in the seat is the only thing you can measure objectively. I don't agree, then give a simple example that shows you can measure productivity and you immediately switch to measuring productivity. I don't think you introduced any realism at all, you were just wrong at the start.

By the way, I've never seen someone be rewarded 2x the pay for being 2x as productive without a commission model.

And if they are on commission, nobody cares how much time is spent in the office.

>Point is you expected to do an honest day of work for your pay with a good effort. That's the social contract which may well be changed in the future, but so far it isn't.

I don't think that's true. I've worked construction jobs and you're expected to do what you're expected to get done in a day of work, not work hard necessarily. Sometimes you work hard, sometimes you don't. A lot of time is spent uselessly. I found the same thing in corporate environments.

An honest day's work for an honest day's pay would actually be pretty unusual, especially given that for it to be honest the workers would have to understand the labor market implicitly, what they could get at competing companies and what their labor was actually worth to the company employing them. Most of the time none of that happens.

Re:Why Working from Home Will Stick [pdf] by crocodiletears on Saturday January 23, 2021 @07:19PM (#25887482)
Worker A and B not being interchangeable in this context, and understanding the reason for their distinction, worker B will attain the quota they've been given within the alotted time period, up to 80 units as is their capacity.
Re:Why Working from Home Will Stick [pdf] by paulcole on Saturday January 23, 2021 @09:45PM (#25888578)
Because most people aren’t as productive as Worker B.

Having Worker B come in late and leave early sets a bad example for all the Worker As (and breeds resentment among them). Worker B staying all day and screwing around half the time and distracting Worker A so they get 8 widgets done an hour instead of 10 is bad, too.

Give me 10 average people over 5 great ones any day. Average people can get better when they work together. Great people get bored and move on. Average people are just fine for most jobs.

And I assure you that I’m decidedly average and unspectacular in every way.

Re:Why Working from Home Will Stick [pdf] by ptr on Sunday January 24, 2021 @08:46AM (#25891980)
How about 10 average vs 1 great?
Re:Why Working from Home Will Stick [pdf] by paulcole on Sunday January 24, 2021 @09:29AM (#25892268)
For the huge majority of jobs, 10 average people are better, in my opinion.
Re:Why Working from Home Will Stick [pdf] by Haunted_Cabbage on Sunday January 24, 2021 @10:32PM (#25898733)
Sounds like an explanation of why labor costs are a employer's largest expense.
Re:Why Working from Home Will Stick [pdf] by ameister14 on Saturday January 23, 2021 @06:42PM (#25887228)
Are you honestly suggesting your managers are unable to assess minimum levels of quality in the work of your teams?