经济与社会科学2021nature.com
远程工作对信息工作者协作的影响
The effects of remote work on collaboration among information workers
入门 · 约 45 分钟读完前置知识：社会网络分析基础、组织行为学常识
导读
这篇发表于 Nature Human Behaviour 的论文利用微软约 6 万名员工的通信数据，研究了 2020 年上半年远程办公对信息工作者协作网络的影响。研究发现转向远程后，员工之间的正式协作网络变得更加僵化和孤岛化，跨团队的异步沟通增加，而自发的跨群体信息交流减少，可能不利于新信息在公司网络中的获取与传播。
HN 关注点：HN 读者多为远程工作者，讨论焦点是研究结论是否适用于真正的远程办公，以及其方法论缺陷（单一公司、无对照组、疫情初期数据）。
HN 评论精选
这几条评论里：质疑 3 补充 1
质疑数据仅来自疫情初期最混乱的六个月，结论未必代表成熟的远程办公状态
关键在于数据只覆盖 2020 年上半年。那段时间很艰难：大多数人几乎没有远程办公经验，家庭办公环境差，也不确定这只是临时安排还是长期状态。很多组织还没建立好的远程实践，工具也不成熟（微软 Teams 在疫情后期改进巨大）。我期待有针对 2021 年同期数据的后续研究。
phillipcarter查看英文原文
The key thing is here: > over the first six months of 2020 Those first six months were pretty rough. The large majority of people had little to no experience working remotely, so many folks didn't have a good home office environment, and there was a general sense of being unsure if this would just be temporary or if employees should settle in for the long haul. Many orgs didn't have good practices set up for remote work yet, and people were still struggling a lot with the tools (say what you want about MS Teams, but they improved their product by leaps and bounds over the pandemic, much of which after the first 6 months). I'd be interested in a follow-up that analyzes the same time period but for 2021.
补充远程工具让沟通过度正式化，抑制了非正式表达和真实意见的交流
基于 Slack 和 Zoom 的远程工作让人难以展现“非正式的一面”。会议需要更多协调，一次只能一人发言，非语言线索更少；会后也无法继续小范围交流，一切都更正式化。会外交流只能走 Slack，临时约 Zoom 又显得太“重”。现实中人们更容易当面吐槽工作、老板和同事，这种偶尔发泄很有价值，而且不会被“记录在案”（Slack 消息不删、会议有录像）。总之沟通渠道更正式化，对表达对办公室文化的真实看法有寒蝉效应。
allenu查看英文原文
One thing about slack- and zoom-based remote working I've noticed is that there's less room to be your "informal self". Meetings require more coordination since only one person can speak at a time and there are fewer non-verbal cues to communicate which topics are resonating with you. You also can't continue smaller conversations with people after a meeting. Everything is more formalized. Likewise, conversations outside of meetings go on in Slack, generally. You could set up a zoom meeting with someone informally, but it feels too "heavy" an operation compared to a in-person hallway chat. In person, I feel like people are more likely to be critical of their work, workplace, bosses, and coworkers. Now I don't think people should go overboard and whine all the time, but I think it's valuable to get stuff off your chest once in a while, and doing that in person, to me, feels natural, and it's not "recorded" anywhere (Slack messages aren't deleted and a lot of our meetings are recorded for others to view later). Anyway, what I'm getting at is the channels for communication are more "formalized" and it has a sort of chilling effect on our expressiveness in conversations about our work's office culture.
质疑分析过于粗糙：员工同质化假设、忽略远程团队可优化流程、低价值会议本就该被淘汰
研究的数据收集和分类方法看起来扎实，但分析结论未必成立：1) 把知识工作者视为同质群体，但软件工程师、工程 VP 和商务拓展从面对面会议中获得的收益显然不同；2) 远程团队不是“线下团队+视频通话”的简单叠加，最优流程和文化截然不同，随着远程团队采用更好的流程，很多负面影响可能随时间消失；3) 缺乏细致区分。我曾在一位前高管身上花掉 200 多小时开毫无价值的会，远程化后最先被砍掉的正是这类低价值会议和网络连接。
spanktheuser查看英文原文
Interesting study. The data collection & classification methods seem strong as does the underlying data set. However I’m unconvinced their analysis necessarily follows from the established facts. - Knowledge workers are treated as a homogeneous population. But it seems unlikely a software engineer, a VP of software engineering, and a business development associate obtain the same benefit from frequent in person meetings. - Remote teams aren’t merely in-person teams + Video/VOIP stack. Optimal process and culture is drastically different for each case. It seems possible that some/most of detrimental effects would disappear over time as new remote teams adopt better processes and discard legacy methods optimized for proximity. - There is a lack of nuance. While I may be persuaded that on average in-person collaboration adds value I strongly suspect there is tremendous variability between individual meetings. I once worked for a very senior Ballmer-era product executive who jumped ship to an alluring startup. In the year before they were fired I easily spent over 200 hours meeting and collaborating with them. To say that each hour was merely empty and valueless would do a disservice to this individual’s talent for value deletion. The abrupt conversion to WFH was accompanied by a substantial increase in communication friction. In such cases I would expect lower value, less focused, and more vacuous meetings and network connections to be the first that are jettisoned. It seems dangerous to assume the collaboration dynamics associated with success pre- WFH will remain so post-WFH. This is a novel, potentially pattern breaking change.
质疑研究存在单一公司、无对照组、沟通分类错误等重大方法缺陷
这项研究不值得太多关注，方法论有明显缺陷，作者自己在文末也承认：1) 只研究了一家公司；2) 没有对照组；3) 没有与疫情前就完全远程的公司做比较；4) 把即时通讯归为异步沟通，但我的经验是一半时间它是同步的，少量来回沟通时完全可以替代电话/视频；5) 微软疫情前就有远程员工和跨园区协作，本可作对照。惊讶 Nature 会收录漏洞这么大的研究。
Houston808查看英文原文
Seems to me this study doesn't warrant a lot of attention. Its basic methodology is flawed, and the author's identify this towards the end. Couple things I noticed: 1) They only look at one company. 2) There is no control group. 3) There is no comparison to companies that were full remote prior. 4) IM is listed as asynchronous communication. In my experience it can be async or sync with my split being ~50% of the time. It is an easy replacement for Phone/Video when only a small amount of back and forth are needed. 5) Microsoft has not just remote employees but also cross collaboration across remote campuses prior to pandemic. This could have also been a good control. Surprised Nature picked this up with such big holes.
历次讨论
- 2021Hacker News 讨论帖239 分 · 204 评
- 2021Hacker News 讨论帖105 分 · 40 评
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