Work from home and productivity: evidence from personnel and analytics data [pdf]
My company started doing a serious WFH &#x27;experiment&#x27; about 18 months before COVID hit. The team I oversee consists of a dozen or so teams of about 40-50 developers each, with a manager that reports directly to me. I don&#x27;t manage the devs directly, but deal with dev productivity and budgets for (amongst other things) staffing. So our N is not small, but not huge either.<p>50% of our devs - randomly selected - were offered the chance to WFH, and about 95% of them wound up doing WFH at least 3 days a week, rising to 5 days a week after a few months. The other 50% stayed in the office. The teams that went WFH and the other 50% don&#x27;t work on the same projects or in the same location.<p>After about 6 months, we started looking at productivity metrics using a couple Pinpoint-like tools that we built. Simple metrics like: backlog change time, on-time delivery, workload balance, LOC&#x2F;Checkins ratio, etc. We also tracked things like non-code calendar hours, time logging delays, and other non-development related activity.<p>Neither group knew what we were tracking or how often. The results were pretty clear as soon as 6 - 9 months in: WFH numbers sucked pretty hard. Everything was down across the board, and it seemed like WFH devs were spending 15-30% more time in non-development tasks, their PR reject rate was as much as 40% higher than office-based devs.<p>Things were so bad that if COVID had not hit, we were going to abandon the idea of letting people WFH altogether outside of extreme circumstances.<p>We aren&#x27;t a unique shop. We&#x27;re not doing anything out of the ordinary - we&#x27;re developing on a variety of web and RT device platforms, but doing the same stuff in similar ways as other companies. We have a pretty flat team structure, and teams have a lot of flexibility and decision-making power, which has always worked well for us.<p>However, it&#x27;s clear to me and the other execs that WFH absolutely does not work for us.