I think the most people who are saying remote increased efficiency is hiding the fact their total job output has dropped. They can hide when they are not working and not everydev job is stimulating, so you can bullshit your way with increased efficiency. Some, like web dev, is brain damaging for example.
Tldr: for most of the people, job output drops because of lack of oversight. A few examples of better remote worker won’t change the fact.

Most dev jobs are NOT that demanding anyway. I prefer to finish my work and do something else instead of sitting in an office and pretend like I'm doing something.

Also, do you want to talk about efficiency? Then cut all the bullshit meetings just to "talk" or update the "staatus". Fuck employers!

In my experience from the last 2 years it can work IF you have a good team

A manager can rarely really measure the productivity anyway even when in office, but coworkers can especially if you have code reviews as a regular routine.

And since few people can stay 100% focused for a whole day, working remotely I have found that many take one or more longer breaks but also work an hour or two later in the evening and even if the actual hours might sometimes be slightly less, they are more productive, and with 1-2 hours saved in traveling, many feel they can spend part of that and still have a net gain of free time :)

So we actually experienced an overall increase in productivity.

If some work less hours (technically sitting by the computer) is not really a problem.

Personally I have found that the perfect solution to solve a complex problem is a long quite bath :P and I have not even tried to pitch that as working hours :P

@rantsauce fuck employees who act like wozniak during hiring, then underdelivering after it.

Well it depends on the workplace for sure, but when at the office I get constantly bothered when I need to focus for hours on complex problems. Losing my focus + too many meetings destroys my productivity

If the work gets done, what’s your problem? I do not understand this obsession with how the work is done.

@Voxera @aviophile

There are many sides to the coin...

New studies show that e.g. the creativity might be negatively influenced by virtual meetings (e.g. https://nature.com/articles/... )

Other than that....

In our company it's a mixed bag, though objectively it it more pro than contra.

We saw an tremendous fall in sick days - double digit to < 5 % .

We had trouble to find new employees - which is, as we lack manpower, an explanation why the last 2 years had an decrease in "job output".

Many companies suffered from this - it's hard recruiting during e.g. a lockdown.

Note that this has in a lot of companies to do with HR and management being "anachronistic"... In our company we had very funky discussions on this, ending with the resolution that they'll either do an remote job interview or - if they insist on meeting irl - management and HR has to cover travel costs and hotel for the applicants (an idea which they absolutely hated for the obvious reason of money).

No fresh blood means less creativity and less productivity too - after all, maintenance and keeping shit running comes first.

"Job output" can be measured objectively.

A single daily meeting with fixed time < than 15 min is sufficient.

The key part is: single, daily, < 15 min.

We had no trouble at all getting people up to running with remote environments and basically did the same as before, just over different tools.

As we already had VPN and in house development machines, people just worked the same way than before.

I know from a lot of friends were this was a major obstacle where the companies took weeks to month to provide a proper working environment - which hampers any job output ;)

TLDR : Job output isn't equal to the employees worktime at home. Rather the way management / HR works and if the company was prepared for a remote working environment shift, which many weren't at all. Let the people work the way they want to work with a sane management and remote is good.

... one additional thing: psychological influence.

Media, panic and the worst governmenting in a lot of countries played a tremendous role, too.

@IntrusionCM we do all interviews within the dev team, HR is not involved with that, at least not for devs.

But I do agree on the creative part, virtual meeting cannot so far compare to gathering around a whiteboard or a single computer for brainstorming.

There are some promising alternatives but nothing reaches all the way.

@Voxera Be happy regarding recruiting.

*rolls eyes*

But all in all, I think working from remote isn't as bad as some people / media / management wants to make it.

Maybe the age of working from remote leads to cool new shit - e.g. "holo" conferencing -/ light virtual reality without necessity of additional hardware etc.

My point is... Don't condemn everything.

There are always pro and contra for everything, but I'm really tired of the typical "It's new, I don't like it, it's shit" attitude.

Especially when the "it's shit" comes from press -/ media -/ persons who absolutely have no philanthropic interest, rather the interest of keeping up the status quo - especially for their own interests and power.

E.g. the usual argument of "they won't work as they have no reason -/ supervision".

It's an argument I have heard in the last 2 years so often that I get tachycardia thinking about it...

... this form of mistrust is exactly the number one problem in companies.

You must have in management a certain level of trust. Laws and contracts form a mutual, legally binding relationship, which is the basis of trust.

Micromanagement, too many meetings, paranoid supervision utilizing dubious methods (commits per day / clocking in-/ out for breaks, fixed number of breaks per day, ...) are all things born from mistrust.

They all lead in one and only one direction: High turnover rate, unsuccessful projects, high number of sick days, burnout -/ depression, etc.

@IntrusionCM totally agree, its all about being motivated, because motivated devs will set higher standards for them self and bring their own ideas and improvements which I thing is necessary, especially if you want fast paced development where not everything needs three levels if decision making.

And it solves the problem of control since motivated people does not need as much control, more guidelines.

@jeeper work doesn’t get done as fast as office times.

@aviophile what kind of scheduling are you doing? If the work gets done in a sprint, it’s done. If they work gets done when the due date is set, if you aren’t using sprints. It got done. You just have an issue with object permanence.