It’s a common thing here on HN to believe that remote is superior for productivity, and I’m always reminded of Richard Hammond’s observations about open door vs closed door coworkers. He noticed over time that the closed door workers were more productive. He also noticed that the closed door workers were less impactful in their fields years later. His were observations in R&D settings, but I suspect they can be extrapolated. People who are interrupted get less done. This seems largely indisputable, but what is the other takeaway? People who don’t interract with peers don’t course correct enough, seems to be solid advice based on what we know about the OODA loop. People who don’t interact with coworkers don’t get enough time saving advice? I know I’ve saved lots of effort by having coworkers who know things I didn’t about related problems.

What complicated things, is return to work will cause all the best to rethink their employment. I’ve seen HBR surveys that suggest the top talent is ending up places that allow them to stay remote. I think this leaves businesses in a tight place. I have every reason to believe that companies with lots of employee interactions have better acceleration/trajetory than fully remote, but it’s a big hit to lose top talent. And remote may have so much velocity from gaining this talent that they don’t care about the acceleration tradeoff.

Further, concentration of talent in a region also cannot be discounted. Certain things can’t happen without the exchange of ideas (partly why I think cities/counties should ban non competes). I don’t know how much a given company can control this concentration of talent, but I know that Seattle wouldn’t be what it is without Boeing, and then Microsoft attracting very smart people.

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izacus 5 days ago | parent | next [-]

It's worth observing that when remoters talk about "productivity", they talk about their personal ability of chugging through tickets and not overall team productivity which includes a lot of teaching, mentoring, conversations and getting on the same page.

So yeah, what's happening is that senior folks "productivity" as they perceive it has risen while the output of whole teams over time suffered.

	▲	johnnyanmac 5 days ago \| parent [-]
		Goodheart's Law strikes again. If churning through 10 more tickets rather than brainstorming with a team on a feature gets them promoted, then you're going to get a "team" of loners and much less productivity for the real features. I do think there is a balance here. In my experience, brainstorming or deep design discussions are horrible over Zoom. Likewise, new grads really do suffer when they start their careers with no direct mentor to talk to at a moments notice. I think even just the first year or 2 for juniors should be at least 3 days in-office a week. Likewise, you should be able to go in office a few times a month just to properly collaborate and plan. It doesn't need to be much in tech, because a lot of time is indeed just heads-down development instead of designing.

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pm90 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Richard Hamming. And the essay is here: https://www.cs.virginia.edu/~robins/YouAndYourResearch.html.

As you point out, Its important to note that Hamming makes this observation specifically in the domain of research which requires a lot of collaboration between people, and is enhanced by interaction with other people doing research. Most standard software engineering jobs don’t require that kind of research activity (although it does require some; product development is a creative process).

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Magmalgebra 5 days ago | parent [-]

> Most standard software engineering jobs don’t require that kind of research activity (although it does require some; product development is a creative process)

This seems to describe what good engineers above the senior level do. Certainly everyone with a PhD I work with who rose through the ranks said that being very senior was a lot like being a good researcher - albeit with much more pressure on execution.

	▲	ryandrake 5 days ago \| parent [-]
		I think it totally depends on the job. It's like a process running on a CPU. I've seen software development roles that are "batch processes," where the developer goes into a cave to crank through his tasks uninterrupted, and then emerges in a week to deliver the results. And others that are "interactive, event-driven processes," where there is a lot of back and forth between product owners, UX, and other stakeholders, and lots of iteration and refinement. And then there is a whole spectrum in between! One size doesn't necessarily fit all development styles.

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themafia 5 days ago | parent | prev [-]

> the closed door workers were less impactful in their fields years later

What evidence is there that the open door is the cause and not the symptom? People are individuals. They're not "interchangeable worker units."

> People who don’t interract with peers don’t course correct enough

I can think of a dozen ways to address that without forcing people to open doors they'd rather leave closed.

	▲	cindyllm 5 days ago \| parent [-]
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