It’s worth keeping at in mind that people are currently unable to use the advantages of working from home to replace lost camaraderie because of the virus. At the very least, it’s much harder to do so. This is important for the broader effects on human happiness, if not on the effects on work itself. Once socializing in person isn’t dangerous, people can use the hours of the day they save from not commuting, plus all the time they spend in neutral social interactions in the office (which are net negative because they take energy and time without providing joy), and use that on positive social interactions with people they actually like. I suspect this will be a strong net positive for human happiness, because (white collar professional) offices are a lot more about controlling workers than efficiency and there are a lot of jobs that don’t lose or even gain efficiency from not being in an office.
Plus, people are taking care of their school-age children, trying to arrange grocery delivery, working without organizations that might not have had a WFH plan ahead of time, trying to not die of COVID, and dealing with an unusually tumultuous political scene at the same time. I’d urge caution attributing any particular effect solely to working from home. Two years from now we’ll have better data.
(I can say anecdotally (I know, I know) that working from home has improved my performance and cut the time I need to actually do my work down to a few hours a day, and my direct manager agrees with me on the first part (I have not shared the first part but I’m pretty sure this applies to everyone on my team and we’re tacitly not talking about it lest someone feel obligated to ruin it). I’d be going insane if I didn’t have several good friends as roommates who are now home and able to hang out during the work day, but that won’t be an issue once I could go hang out at a coffee shop, park, or other person who’s WFH’s house without risking the plague. And I get to spend two extra hours a day, five days a week, at leisure due to not commuting—an excellent boost to both my health and happiness!)
It’s worth keeping at in mind that people are currently unable to use the advantages of working from home to replace lost camaraderie because of the virus. At the very least, it’s much harder to do so. This is important for the broader effects on human happiness, if not on the effects on work itself. Once socializing in person isn’t dangerous, people can use the hours of the day they save from not commuting, plus all the time they spend in neutral social interactions in the office (which are net negative because they take energy and time without providing joy), and use that on positive social interactions with people they actually like. I suspect this will be a strong net positive for human happiness, because (white collar professional) offices are a lot more about controlling workers than efficiency and there are a lot of jobs that don’t lose or even gain efficiency from not being in an office.
Plus, people are taking care of their school-age children, trying to arrange grocery delivery, working without organizations that might not have had a WFH plan ahead of time, trying to not die of COVID, and dealing with an unusually tumultuous political scene at the same time. I’d urge caution attributing any particular effect solely to working from home. Two years from now we’ll have better data.
(I can say anecdotally (I know, I know) that working from home has improved my performance and cut the time I need to actually do my work down to a few hours a day, and my direct manager agrees with me on the first part (I have not shared the first part but I’m pretty sure this applies to everyone on my team and we’re tacitly not talking about it lest someone feel obligated to ruin it). I’d be going insane if I didn’t have several good friends as roommates who are now home and able to hang out during the work day, but that won’t be an issue once I could go hang out at a coffee shop, park, or other person who’s WFH’s house without risking the plague. And I get to spend two extra hours a day, five days a week, at leisure due to not commuting—an excellent boost to both my health and happiness!)