My old manager through covid required us to log the projects we worked on in a day in an outlook calendar to report our work hours. We had cellphones and were expected to be available during working hours to the public. Work productivity soared, and never had to be managed. Work was already tracked in the database anyway.

New manager barely does shit. Has little mechanism for oversight. You'd think itd be great, but no. My productivity is now ass because work assignments are all over the place with half of the supervisory tasks delegated to junior staff "leads" with no consistency. Most of my time is now wasted with email chains and update meetings so he can figure out what is going on.

I miss working all day from home.

Management is often the cause, not the cure, to low productivity.

I've been remote since 2019. It's great!

Their No. 1 problem with it is how difficult it is to observe and monitor employees

Um, no. Like others here have pointed out, the overwhelming majority of office workers have to turn in countable digital product of some sort for their job production. LOOK AT IT. Was it the quantity and quality required of them? Well, there you go.

Also, what the hell are you on about, hypothetical boss? In today's technical age, so many bosses can just remote view a worker's screens (even when the workers don't know that it's happening in real time).

It's creepy to spy, but if you really suspect someone's away from keyboard extendedly when they aren't supposed to be, you can literally just look in.

"I can't monitor my employees" is such a weird complaint when counting is a thing and tech tools are out there designed to let you overview your workforce.

Is the work getting completed? Then you don't really need to monitor them.

What KPI's could you be measuring by hovering over someone's shoulder while they work? Their APM?

But the biggest disadvantage of remote work that employers cite is how difficult it is to observe and monitor employees

I'm sure these employers hire external contractors. Do they insist on observing and monitoring those contractors? Are they going to insist their contracotr's employees be active on Teams at all times?

I hate the idea that if working from home for an employer is somehow different from working as a freelancer from home.

Pre-pandemic, bosses relied on desk visits and peer monitoring, which occurs when co-workers notice and comment on each other’s work, to keep employees on track in the office, and there is no clear replacement for them in a remote setting, Pollak explains.

Again: If they hired a contractor, would they want to "drop by their desk" to comment on their work? Why do they insist on treating employees like Clients from Hell?

“It’s hard to know which measure these software programs track even matters,” Pollak adds. “A lot of knowledge work is done in video meetings, or offline in phone calls, research and brainstorming, and it’s impossible to quantify all of that.”

Yes, exactly. So stop trying to quantify it. Quantify the results of that knowledge work. A results-focused management style works best for remote work, not hovering over your peons waiting for them to make a mistake.

“If the pandemic and ‘great resignation’ taught us anything, it’s that managers need to be intentional and engaged with employees to be truly effective,”

Holy cow, managers need to talk to their workers! Thank The Invisible Hand this priestly Economist has brought this nugget of wisdom from the Ivory Tower.

Also, I love that the image for this article is a bleak and soulless office. I don't know how people see this and still wonder why nobody wants to be there.

So their own job has no value. Got it.

We can't tell you off for taking a moment to look at your phone or for wearing headphones unless you are in the office; this is how we justify our positions.. so despite the economic, environmental and quality of life improvements we are demanding you return so we can continue to justify our pay and position.

Also fuck you, and get in your cubicle bitch

So glad my boss trusts our team. Quite literally only have a 30 minute meeting with everyone, once a week.

Very rare they ever ask anything from us. If they ever do, I make sure it's a priority and it gets done.

Lool, without having subordinates in shouting distance they're realizing they produce very little themselves, and now the subordinates can organize themselves. God forbid you do some of the work they're doing and help them out a bit eh?

Daily reminder: economists work for banks, not for us.

Finally, some truth. Micromanagers can’t show their worth because they can’t micromanage.

Micromanagement needs to be fired. It’s old school and outdated.

I know it won't be popular, but I don't possibly see how remote work is better for work itself.

I was WFH for about 10 years. I had my first child, needed to parental leave (from a very small company), and they gave it to me. But I offered to "WFH" when the baby was napping and stuff so if they needed me for things I could make it work. Even after the time was up, things were still going well, and my commute was long, so they agreed to allowing me to WFH a few days a week. Eventually we moved because of my wife's job and then the pandemic, and I told them they either had to fire me or allow me to WFH 100%. They agreed to the latter.

It was a god send, without a doubt. The flexibility I had while my wife was busying with medical school/residency/fellowship was amazing. Being able to run out the door in the middle of the day for stuff was fantastic. And not having to commute is a thing of beauty.

However, after a couple of years, I realized how damaging it was to my productivity. No more ad hoc meetings where we grabbed a couple of engineers and sat down and quickly brainstormed something. It's much harder to reach out to someone over the internet than it is to just turn around and ask something. My career also started to stagnate.

When we finally settled down, I decided that I would focus on my career and pursue a new job. The new job is hybrid and, also amazingly, is only about a 15 minutes bike from my house. I don't know how I would have been able to start a new job without being in person. It's so much easier to just ask someone a question than it is. The collaboration we have is also much better than the previous 8 or so years I was fully WFH.

And as this article points out, it's the flexibility that I think is the best thing. No one bats an eye if you say you need an extra day at home that week. Or you need to go home because the plumber is coming. Or you're stepping out for a couple of hours for the doctor. This seems to be a permanent fixture at my new job.

Now, as I said, this is purely from a work perspective. Individually speaking, staying home is way better, especially if you have a shitty commute. I get that and would never say anyone should go back into the office. But I think the number of people who are actually way more productive at home are few and far between, the rest just really like the set up so they'll pretend it is way better for work, or even convince themselves it is way better. But the more and more the numbers come in, the more and more it's clear that generally speaking people are less productive with remote work.

It's going to end for most, and it's probably best to think about what best suits the needs to the individual and the business rather than clinging to the idea that it is superior in all ways.

Sounds like they need retraining or firing then. They need to learn some CRM skills.

I shopped around and recently got a new CRM that works better for what our company is doing, and helps keep tabs on everyone's workload and time tracking and it's so good.

And I'm not even managing anyone, my department is a one-man army. It's just really really nice to be able to hold yourself accountable, take relevant notes for future reference, and see what workload I have every day. I'm still busy and stressed to fuck, but the load off my brain trying to remember every single job I have is phenomenal.

I don't need a meeting or a phone call or an hour standing at anyone's desk, I just open a dashboard and go 'Cool I can see what's coming, whats been done, whos working on it, and all the documentation and logging I need to be informed about how it effects my work' in seconds.

Managers who don't know how to manage are confused by being asked to manage.

Fucking idiot assholes. Even my most type-a micromanager boss in decades managed to keep tabs on me remotely.

Sure there are spyware tools that monitor everything you do on the computer. But it sure seems like a better use of time and money to just hire good people, trust them, and evaluate the quality and timeliness of work.

These idiot companies should spend some time training managers how to do their goddamn jobs effectively.

Breaking: Bosses' number 1 problem with remote work is actually the best part