I don't know, but . . .

AVI has a useful post up on work. What's it good for?

There's a little paradox in life. Most of our greatest joys come from using our gifts to serve people we care about. And nobody likes being treated as a servant.

As a Christian, I suspect that the first part of that--the joys--come from being made in the image of God who is love. The second part I think we understand: we want to see love too.

A discussion at AVI's turned towards Work At Home and its effects.

I don't have statistics or analysis, but I do have some anecdotes and a few thoughts.

Obviously a lot of things just can't be done from home. A computer systems manager may have everything monitored and automated, such that he can keep track of things while traveling, and fix 98% of all problems remotely, but when a disk goes sour somebody has to walk into the server room to replace it. And that's a white-collar job.

I was able to do almost every bit of my job from home. The plus side included saving 90 minutes of my day that would have been commuting, and being available for emergencies. I got more sleep and ate better, and I think I was more focussed as a result. The down side was that I was also available for non-emergencies, which militates against staying "in the zone." I'll get the the "growth" downside in a bit.

I knew another manager, working for a company instead of the University. He could easily do all his work from home, and did. However, others in the same group also could, and didn't--or at least not as well. Since the job involved monitoring a lot of equipment, if somebody slacked off problems didn't get noticed as fast. Not earth-shattering, but it degraded performance.

I heard tales of K-12 students nominally doing "remote learning", who found ways of hacking the system (still images instead of videos, etc) to hide the fact that they weren't paying attention, or indeed sometimes even present at all. You might wonder if they'd have learned much more if they'd been physically present; that's a fair point. Some, though, I'd guess.

Some managers can trust the people they manage, and I'd guess that WorkFromHome works pretty well for them. But if their management philosophy tries to measure everything--not so much.

If what the kids see you doing teaches them about how work works (and how to do it well), then being at home where your kids can see what you do might help them. (Assumes, of course, that they are at home when you are, and that they don't interfere too much.)

WorkFromHome can interfere with growth, though. In person you get a wider understanding of someone's abilities and personality. For the jobs you have right now, the people you have right now may be just fine, but when the job broadens, or somebody retires, or you need a new manager: Zoom/Teams/whatever meetings may not tell you enough to predict who the best person to promote will be.

Meetings for lunch could be revelatory: "I hadn't heard about that; tell me more." Sometimes the topic might be options for problem solving, and another the Packers game.

In a tech field this matters a lot. We've solved problem X, what do we do next? You have quick talks in the hall, or around the table in the CERN cafeteria, to start the seeds long before you know to organize a workshop or symposium. The research projects of the future start with "Did you see this?" in the hall, or "What if?" at the table. That doesn't happen from home.

Our group tried using a Discord feature: turning on the camera so we were as visible at home as we were in our offices at work. Why? At work I could look in the window beside the door and tell if a colleague was concentrating hard, and couldn't be bothered with a question. At home, who knows? Well, in practice that didn't work. Probably the camera and mike were too close and intimate.

AVI has been thinking along similar lines.

There's an apparent paradox here. Most of the greatest joys in life come from being able to use the gifts you've been give to serve people you care about.

Nobody likes being treated as a servant.

Email is a little formal, and even a video talk is more formal than a water-cooler meeting.

You miss a lot of cues remotely--even not-so-remotely. The other night my wife and I were writing in different rooms. Neither of us noticed that the other was slowing down, stretching more, changing breathing patterns a little--so neither noticed that the other was tired and ready for bed.

In the comments to a Chicago Boyz post Gavin wrote "There is probably an element of “eating the seedcorn” in today’s remote work — guys doing certain types of activities who have worked together effectively for a while may be able to continue to work effectively for some time. But as new projects come along and people leave the organization and new people try to find their feet on the job, the lack of face-to-face contact will probably degrade both performance and individual satisfaction."

And... probably new ideas won't congeal as quickly either, if you lose the body-language cues for how David ranks alternatives.

Has your boss actually been looking out for your health all along?

I want to see this verified. I'll bet it assumes no on-the-job injuries. (From another source "The greatest risks of job-related injury were among 1) construction workers in evening shifts, 2) professional, technical, and managerial personnel working overtime schedules, and 3) employees working overtime shifts in the business and repair services sectors.")

Hmm. There's been a link change--I'll have to find the right off-campus link page tomorrow to look at the paper itself.

This time I'm trying to resuscitate a VTrak E610f. Half the time our problems are common as dirt, and half the time they're unique.

"I love work. I can sit and watch it all day."

That came to mind while we watched a 1000-foot ship slowly slide into the Poe lock(*). The giant machine needs only a crew of 25 or so, according to the boat watcher and former ship engineer beside me (and the captain's job isn't all that well paid these days). Hard work, and dully unromantic for those who have to do it; but amazing to the rest of us. Watching it is even rather peaceful to those of us who don't have to worry about 2 1/2 foot clearances.
(*)

I heard the obvious joke a half a dozen times

I've been racing hard to get some alignment results before the processing deadline. I made it, but in one of my presentations I included this as backup material

"I've been working for five days without any sleep to finish this report. At first I had a mental block. But on the fourth day I was visited by an Incan Monkey God who told me what to write. Now I just have to find somebody who can translate his simple but beautiful language."