• Semi-Hemi-Demigod@kbin.social
    172·
    11 months ago

    Here is a link to the actual study (PDF via GDrive)

    One of the authors of this paper is from the Chicago School and the Hoover Institution. Both are pro-business, anti-worker think-tanks that have been this way for decades. They also don’t do any research of their own, but cite other papers that show the 5-20% reduction.

    However, the methodology mentioned in the papers is suspect. First, they show that remote workers have the same productivity, but work longer hours. So the net output doesn’t go down, they just spend more time working. Which raises the question: How many more breaks were they taking throughout the day? Being remote means a much more flexible schedule, so it’s not uncommon to take longer breaks if you’re a salaried worker.

    Another study was IT professionals shifting to remote work at one company at the start of the pandemic. This one showed an 18% reduction in productivity. But considering the timing of this and that company culture and procedures can contribute to this, it doesn’t seem to be a valid data point.

    Then they bring up some common criticisms of WFH, which I’ve seen and refuted since I started working from home 2009: People can’t communicate, working in groups is harder, and people can’t control themselves. Yawn.

    Honestly, the fact that they cherry picked hybrid work as being equally productive shows me this isn’t about productivity, it’s about keeping offices open. Which makes sense considering one of the authors is affiliated with groups that want to prop up the commercial rental business.

    • scytale@lemmy.worldEnglish
      541·
      11 months ago

      Then they bring up some common criticisms of WFH, which I’ve seen and refuted since I started working from home 2009: People can’t communicate, working in groups is harder, and people can’t control themselves. Yawn.

      Exactly. I work for a global company, so the way I communicate with the people I work with everyday is via zoom. What’s the point of commuting to an office just to get on zoom anyway to talk to people?

      • Semi-Hemi-Demigod@kbin.social
        38·
        11 months ago

        Don’t forget that Forbes and The Economist were all in favor of outsourcing jobs, which leads to me having meetings with people all over the world even when I’m in an office.

        So if working remotely hurts group work, a lot of it is their fault for sending jobs overseas. Unless they also want those jobs to eventually move back here so we can have happy group work fun time.

        • R0cket_M00se@lemmy.worldEnglish
          6·
          11 months ago

          They want whatever keeps their property value highest and overhead lowest, they’ll claim they want onsite workers and then turn around and hire remote people in India because it saves money.

          Everything that falls out of their mouths is a piece of shit intended to save some 7 figure earner enough money to buy another vacation home.

    • JollyG@lemmy.world
      8·
      11 months ago

      This really isn’t a study, so much as a lit review. Sort of. Anyway, in the fully remote section they cite three studies that argue show a fall in productivity. The first (Emmanuel and Harrington (2023)) found an 8% drop in call volume as a call center shifted to fully remote work at the onset of the pandemic. But their comparison group was a group of call center employees who were always remote. So even if you buy the argument that the change call volume is solely attributable to a drop in productivity, you cannot conclude that the productivity shift was caused by working from home, the group that shifted from on-location to remote work did 8% worse than the group than the always remote work!

      The second study (Gibbs, Mengel and Siemroth (2022)) is, again, an analysis of call-center employees (this time in India) who shifted to remote work at the onset of the pandemic. They find no change in productivity, but that employees are working longer hours at home, which they argue means a real 8-19% drop in productivity.

      The final study (Atkin, Schoar, and Shinde (2023)) is another firm from India which involved a randomized controlled study which finds an 18% drop in productivity for data entry work.

      So, just taking their lit review at face value, one of their studies directly contradicts their argument, yet they somehow present it as if it is evidence of a causal relationship between working from home and productivity. Another study shows no effect, so they break out some razamataz math to try to turn no effect into a negative effect. Only one of the three studies shows a plausible effect.

      Since these are the only three papers they cite to support their argument that fully remote work causes a drop in firm productivity, let’s look at them in more depth.

      If you go to their references section, you find that there is not a Emmanuel and Harrington (2023) cited. Hey, that a bad sign. There is an Emmanuel and Harrington 2021, but its an unpublished paper. Maybe it got published and they just forgot to update the cite? I plugged the title into google scholar, and find one result, with no copy of the working paper, and no evidence of any sort of publication record from any journal. Plugging the title into regular google returns a “Staff Report” of the federal reserve bank of NY. So not a peer reviewed article. They employ whats known as a difference-in-difference design to compare employees who shifted from fully in person to fully remote. They report a 4% reduction in productivity for these workers, not the 8% reported in the original article. I just skimmed the article, so maybe they get their 8% figure someplace else. What is interesting to me though is that their DID models seem to show there is not any difference between the different groups for most of the periods of observation. IDK. I’d have to read more in-depth to make up my mind.

      It seems like these conclusions, whatever you make of them should really only be applied to call-center work during the pandemic.

    • EhList@lemmy.worldEnglish
      215·
      11 months ago

      You can criticize the study without engaging in ad hominem attacks. The University of Chicago’s economics department is one of the best schools for economics in the world. You might not like the fact that they are not advocating your political bias but that does not change the overall quality of that program.

      • Semi-Hemi-Demigod@kbin.social
        20·
        11 months ago

        Saying that a conservative economic school is pro-business and anti-labor is not what I’d call an ad hominem, but a statement of fact. Saying they want to prop up the commercial real estate business isn’t ad hominem either.

        • EhList@lemmy.worldEnglish
          119·
          11 months ago

          It is not a conservative school. The clearest sign someone has never studied or understood academic economics is when they attempt to assign a partisan bias to the institution.

          It is an ad hominem attack

            • ElegantBiscuit@lemmy.world
              41·
              11 months ago

              This. Economics is a social science where every theory or opinion aims to achieve different varying desired outcomes for different people and in achieved in different ways, with spectrums for every step along the process. The entire field is on a spectrum, that also generally aligns with the political spectrum because politics, like economics, strives to achieve a certain outcome for a certain group of people, in a certain way. Trying to disentangle the field of economics from people. and the politics that people create, is a red flag for not actually knowing what economics is.

              • Semi-Hemi-Demigod@kbin.social
                61·
                11 months ago

                Ah, so it’s not that they’re conservative, it’s that they desire the same things conservatives want. But they’re totally apolitical, and it’s just a happy coincidence.

                • EhList@lemmy.worldEnglish
                  16·
                  11 months ago

                  The overwhelming majority are liberals. There aren’t many progressives but that’s different than there being a conservative bent.

            • EhList@lemmy.worldEnglish
              14·
              11 months ago

              That doesn’t state that the school holds an ideological bent. Did you read what you posted?