I did read your comments. It’s just pooh-poohing the evidence away. Anyone can do that. And people do it all the time when they don’t like what the evidence tells them.
I’m cracking up that you think a Forbes “journalist”, counts as an expert.
Maybe you should try reading the article with an open mind rather than manufacturing reasons to ignore it.
Maybe you should try reading the article with an open mind rather than manufacturing reasons to ignore it.
I had an open mind, but critical thinking occasionally requires criticism. Maybe you should read an article’s sources rather than accept claims from a business mag at face value.
But if you want to stop squabbling and talk evidence, let’s examine each specific claim on the basis of the evidence supporting it.
The Forbes article makes several specific claims and references:
A recent study from the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) found that remote working might not be as productive as once thought. Workers who were randomly assigned to work from home full time were 18% less productive than in-office employees, either taking longer to complete tasks or getting less done.
Now does a study that takes a fully in office company, and randomly assigns some employees to work from home, say that a fully remote company is less productive than a in-office company? No. It says that when you have random employees work from home in an environment not suited for it it doesn’t go well.
Now let’s look at how the Stanford scientists arrived at that. From page 18 of the linked working paper:
Fully Remote Work. Several studies find that fully remote work yields lower
productivity than on-site work. Emanuel and Harrington (2023) analyze data from
a Fortune 500 firm that, before the pandemic, operated call centers with both
remote and on-site employees in the same jobs. In response to the pandemic,
the firm shifted all employees in these jobs to fully remote work. Productivity
among formerly onsite employees fell 4 percent relative to that of already-remote employees. Emanuel and Harrington also find evidence that the closure of phys-ical call centers reduced call quality, especially among less experienced employees. These findings are noteworthy, in part, because they involve a firm with prior
experience in managing fully remote call-center workers. Presumably then,
the firm had already adapted its systems and practices to manage fully remote
workers.
Gibbs, Mengel, and Siemroth (2023) study productivity outcomes for skilled
professionals at a large Indian technology services company. In March 2020, the
company abruptly shifted all employees to fully remote work in response to the
pandemic. Immediately after the shift, average worktime rose by 1.5 hours per day and output fell slightly according to their primary performance measure. They esti-mate that the shift to remote work lowered average labor productivity (output per hour worked) by 8 to 19 percent. They also provide evidence that greater communication and coordination costs drove much of the measured productivity drop. In particular, time spent on meetings and coordination activities rose, crowding out time devoted to a concentrated focus on work tasks.
Do you think the experience of an Indian Call Center suddenly going remote because of the pandemic, and an Indian IT company suddenly going remote because of the pandemic is somehow indicative and generalizable to every company operating in normal times?
Now go and read trough the section on hybrid work and note that it says upfront that studies have found an increase in productivity or no gains in productivity. Then read through and notice how not a single study compares hybrid or in office companies to fully remote companies. All of them deal with studying the jarring transition of an in office company transitioning to partially remote, and none of the studies anywhere listed come close to broad economy wide or even market wide analyses of real world productivity in the long run.
So you want to talk evidence, that is the entirety of the evidence behind your claims that hybrid work is on a broad basis more productive, and it’s basically a bunch of pandemic studies on Indian and Bangladeshi call centers. It certainly does not support the Forbes articles’ general claim that Fully remote work is associated with about 10% lower productivity than fully in-person work., that is a gross mischaracterization at best, if not an outright lie, and shows you the journalistic standards of somewhere like Forbes.
I get it, you have some criticisms of the studies and they are imperfect. What you’ve offered up is precisely zero. Even even they have very glaring imperfections, they are still infinitely more useful than absolutely nothing.
I had an open mind
No you didn’t, because if you had you would realize that they were quoting experts and scientists throughout the article and wouldn’t have accused me of just believing what some journalist said. It’s not like this was some sneaky part of the piece, it was front and center throughout it.
Even even they have very glaring imperfections, they are still infinitely more useful than absolutely nothing.
No, they’re not, they are literally nothing because they do not say anything about remote work being less productive or hybrid work being more productive.
I can present you a study on the population levels of minks in North America but that doesn’t make it better than nothing because it says nothing about the current topic we’re discussing. The studies at the core of their arguments are not even trying to compare hybrid companies to remote ones or in-office ones, they’re measuring what happens when you disrupt established patterns.
No you didn’t, because if you had you would realize that they were quoting experts and scientists throughout the article and wouldn’t have accused me of just believing what some journalist said. It’s not like this was some sneaky part of the piece, it was front and center throughout it.
I accused you of just blindly accepting what an article said at face value like that’s abnormal because I was annoyed and being unfair, no one is reading through the sources of every article they read, but that doesn’t change the fact that in this case if you look at the evidence the article is based on, it’s flimsy, niche, and not actually saying what the article author is saying (I would argue that even the abstract from the Stanford paper is grossly misleading).
I did read your comments. It’s just pooh-poohing the evidence away. Anyone can do that. And people do it all the time when they don’t like what the evidence tells them.
Maybe you should try reading the article with an open mind rather than manufacturing reasons to ignore it.
I had an open mind, but critical thinking occasionally requires criticism. Maybe you should read an article’s sources rather than accept claims from a business mag at face value.
But if you want to stop squabbling and talk evidence, let’s examine each specific claim on the basis of the evidence supporting it.
The Forbes article makes several specific claims and references:
A recent study from the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) found that remote working might not be as productive as once thought. Workers who were randomly assigned to work from home full time were 18% less productive than in-office employees, either taking longer to complete tasks or getting less done.
In another study, Stanford scientists at the Institute for Economic Policy Research found that remote work productivity depends on the mode of remote work. Fully remote work is associated with about 10% lower productivity than fully in-person work.
Do you think the experience of an Indian Call Center suddenly going remote because of the pandemic, and an Indian IT company suddenly going remote because of the pandemic is somehow indicative and generalizable to every company operating in normal times?
Now go and read trough the section on hybrid work and note that it says upfront that studies have found an increase in productivity or no gains in productivity. Then read through and notice how not a single study compares hybrid or in office companies to fully remote companies. All of them deal with studying the jarring transition of an in office company transitioning to partially remote, and none of the studies anywhere listed come close to broad economy wide or even market wide analyses of real world productivity in the long run.
So you want to talk evidence, that is the entirety of the evidence behind your claims that hybrid work is on a broad basis more productive, and it’s basically a bunch of pandemic studies on Indian and Bangladeshi call centers. It certainly does not support the Forbes articles’ general claim that
Fully remote work is associated with about 10% lower productivity than fully in-person work., that is a gross mischaracterization at best, if not an outright lie, and shows you the journalistic standards of somewhere like Forbes.I get it, you have some criticisms of the studies and they are imperfect. What you’ve offered up is precisely zero. Even even they have very glaring imperfections, they are still infinitely more useful than absolutely nothing.
No you didn’t, because if you had you would realize that they were quoting experts and scientists throughout the article and wouldn’t have accused me of just believing what some journalist said. It’s not like this was some sneaky part of the piece, it was front and center throughout it.
No, they’re not, they are literally nothing because they do not say anything about remote work being less productive or hybrid work being more productive.
I can present you a study on the population levels of minks in North America but that doesn’t make it better than nothing because it says nothing about the current topic we’re discussing. The studies at the core of their arguments are not even trying to compare hybrid companies to remote ones or in-office ones, they’re measuring what happens when you disrupt established patterns.
I accused you of just blindly accepting what an article said at face value like that’s abnormal because I was annoyed and being unfair, no one is reading through the sources of every article they read, but that doesn’t change the fact that in this case if you look at the evidence the article is based on, it’s flimsy, niche, and not actually saying what the article author is saying (I would argue that even the abstract from the Stanford paper is grossly misleading).