经济与社会科学2021nbloom.people.stanford.edu
为什么远程办公将会持续
Why Working from Home Will Stick
入门 · 约 30 分钟读完前置知识：劳动经济学基础、调查统计方法
导读
斯坦福大学 Nicholas Bloom 团队基于约 1.5 万名美国员工的调查，研究疫情后居家办公（WFH）是否会持续。核心结论是：在约一半可远程工作的员工中，雇主计划让员工平均每周居家约 2 天（占总工时约 23%），且雇主、企业和个人三个层面都不是“全远程或全坐班”的二元选择，混合模式将成为主流。
HN 关注点：HN 读者正身处远程办公大讨论之中，这篇论文提供了大规模数据而非个人经验，因此评论焦点集中在“个人见闻能否推翻调查数据”以及“疫情期间的远程经验能否代表未来”。
后来怎么样
该研究成为疫情后混合办公讨论中被引用最多的实证依据之一，'每周约 2 天居家'的混合模式预测被后续调查和企业政策广泛印证。
HN 评论精选
这几条评论里：支持 1 质疑 2 补充 1
质疑基于多年远程管理经验，认为远程办公不会成为社会主流
我从 2014 年起就 100% 远程并管理远程团队，我敢说远程办公不会在更广泛的社会层面持续下去。原因：1) 对大多数员工来说，社交是工作的主要活动，同事来工位“寒暄”正是他们获得社交和人际连接的渠道；2) 管理者喜欢能看着下属，这让他们感觉更有掌控力；3) 通勤惯例即使糟糕，也提供了多数人依赖的“正常感”；4) 对很多美国人而言，工作是逃离家庭琐事的出口。要真正 100% 远程，你必须极擅长自控和抵御分心，而多数人做不到，需要一个框架把自己嵌入其中。
AndrewKemendo查看英文原文
I've been 100% remote and run remote teams since 2014 and I promise that it won't stick for the broader society. Here's why: 1. Socializing is the primary activity that happens at work for the vast majority of workers. The gal or guy coming by your desk to "check in" or "see how your weekend was" etc... is literally where they find their social outlets and personal connections. 2. Managers like to be able to watch their direct reports because it makes them feel more in control than they are 3. The commuting routine, even if it's a nightmare, offers a sense of normalcy that most people have gotten used to and in a weird way rely on for grounding. 4. For a huge swath of Americans at least, work is an escape from the drudgery of the home. To truly work from home 100% of the time you have to be a master at controlling yourself and your ability to be distracted. Most people don't have this control and need a framework to insert themselves into. Add to that the contextual dimension of an "other" place that is a world apart from your home life and you have something that allows for a depressurization for most people.
质疑认为远程无法取代线下的人际连接，纯远程公司留不住年轻人才
来自斯坦福的这篇论文很讽刺，因为斯坦福自己对疫情的处理一塌糊涂。我认为远程不会成为常态：工作会被远程工具增强，但不会被远程取代。人类不是机器人，需要社区，而工作是大学之后最大的社区来源。线上大学就是个笑话，不健康。人在与每周见面的人共事时才能发挥最佳水平，尤其是二十多岁的年轻人。疫情后如果公司纯远程，就吸引不到最优秀的年轻人才。
anonytrary查看英文原文
This is ironic coming from Stanford, who is currently fucking up every single aspect of their handling of covid, as many Stanford students will attest to. Colleges are basically scammers at this point. The whole benefit of going to college is being able to meet like-minded smart, young people like yourself. Remote college isn't a thing and never will be. College is about people, as much as it is about learning. The unfortunate K-12 and college students are learning this the hard way. Personally, I don't think that remote is here to stay. I think working will be augmented by remote tools, but it cannot be replaced by remote. Humans just aren't robots and they need community, and work is the biggest source of community after college. To me, online college is a complete joke and is not what students after high school need. It's just not healthy. Humans need interaction in person, and they do their best work when they are working with people who they see on a weekly basis, especially young 20-somethings. This whole thing is becoming evident as people are starting to really just not care for the lockdowns at this point. Parks in SF are a complete shitshow because people want to be out and about. You will never be able to force them to be purely remote, and after covid, if your company is purely remote, you will not attract the best young talent, period. You might attract older folks, but you know you want young talent. This whole thing makes no sense.
支持批评评论者用个人经验否定数据，强调混合模式（每周约 2 天）才是调查结论
有点失望的是，很多评论把个人见闻外推为社会行为，却不讨论这项研究的数据——哪怕质疑方法论也完全可以（我认为其方法论相当不错）。1.5 万人调查的意义就在于让我们不必都凭自身经验瞎猜。你可以质疑 2020 年 10 月雇主说的计划不等于实际会做的，但这仍比任何个人的推测更可靠。另外调查指出：这不是二选一，在能远程的约 50% 员工中，平均每周远程 2 天（约 23% 工时）就够了——WFH 不需要让所有人全天候远程才能产生巨大影响。
troydavis查看英文原文
I'm a little disappointed at the percentage of comments which extrapolate personal anecdotes into societal behavior, and without addressing the data in this study - even to poke holes in the methodology, which is totally fair game (though IMO quite good, especially for what they had to work with). The whole point of a 15,000-person survey like this is so that we're not all stuck guessing based on our own experiences. Obviously one can argue that what employers were telling employees they would do post-COVID as of October 2020 is not what employers will actually do (and give reasons why!), but it's still likely to be more accurate than any individual's speculation (including mine!). In particular, the survey addressed 2 topics that a lot of comments seem to not incorporate: 1. At population, employer, and individual level, it's not either/or. The paper title doesn't do a good job of conveying this. All 3 entities seem open to everything on the continuum, based on their employees, work type, and so on. Statements like "I promise that it won't stick for the broader society" imply a more binary outcome than the survey results predict (and maybe than anything predicts). The survey concludes that, of the roughly 50% of employees who can work from home, they'll average 2 days per week (or 23% of total hours worked). IOW, WFH doesn't need to move everyone all the time in order to have massive effects. Some people changing some of the time is enough. 2. Employer plans vs. employee desires. Lots of commenters state their preferences and then try to generalize from that, but.. the survey captured that too. To just skim those results, scroll to page 60 for employee-desired vs. employer-planned % of working days. Gist: if WFH is roughly the same productivity, employers plan ~22% of days and employees desire ~45% of days to be WFH. In all productivity cases, employees preferred a higher % of days to be WFH than employers. Page 43 shows answers to the pay raise or cut employees would take in order to work from home 2-3 days per week. It also breaks down the change in perception about WFH by demographic cohort on page 55. For example, those with no children and those with children at home both had significant improvements in their perception of WFH. Those with children had more improvement in perception than those without children. As the study wrote: "This 23 percent figure [post-COVID WFH as a % of full time days] is almost five times larger than in the pre-pandemic time use data, but still half as large as what workers want in a post-pandemic world." Of course, there's a place for speculation and anecdotes. This paper - and hopefully soon, more studies like it - should let us evolve from speculating based on only our personal experience to thinking about its methodology and results.
补充指出疫情期间的隔离办公经验不能代表正常情况下的远程办公
大家似乎忘了这场辩论中最关键的因素：我们进行的不是“大规模居家办公社会实验”，而是“疫情期间大规模隔离办公的社会实验”，两者完全不同。例如：疫情带来的高压力让我们以平时不必要的方式减压；没有其他选择使人们更容易忽略远程的缺点；育儿等照护责任让现在的家庭生活与常态不可比；全员远程反而更包容，因为忽视远程者等于忽视所有人；雇主没有替代方案，所以能接受任何生产力损失。我不是说远程会不会持续，只是说眼下这场辩论基本没有意义。
jo23562查看英文原文
Everyone seems to forget the most important factor in this whole debate: we aren't in a "mass social experiment in working from home", we're in a "mass social experiment in working in isolation during a pandemic". They're very much not the same thing, for a whole host of reasons. Just a few examples of how they differ: * higher stress from living through a pandemic (and everything around it) gives us reason to set ourselves up to reduce stress in ways that normally might be unnecessary. * having no alternative to working from home makes it easier to ignore the downsides, because it's not a downside when there's no alternative without it * childcare / care responsibilities means many of our home lives are totally different right now from normal, so not even comparable to normal * consistent working from home by everyone (on a given team) tends to be more inclusive because ignoring remote people means ignoring everyone so we work hard not to do it. It's much easier to accidentally get lazy about ensuring inclusivity when at least some people are in the office (and I've seen this first-hand pre-COVID, never maliciously). * no alternative for many employers means they accept any (if any) productivity losses of work from home because it is that or else lose all productivity (which is obviously worse for business) To be clear, I'm not arguing remote work will/won't stick in the future. I'm just arguing that nearly all of this debate is moot right now, because most people are basing it on an "experiment" with far too many variables different from the reality of remote work during a normal world.
历次讨论
- 2021Hacker News 讨论帖383 分 · 548 评
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