ICYMI, Microsoft recently published a study in Nature claiming to show that "firm-wide remote work caused the collaboration network of workers to become more static and siloed, with fewer bridges between disparate parts." Lots of coverage on Twitter, etc. Link to study: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-021-01196-4.pdf I am really frustrated that companies are likely to weaponize this study against remote workers. Although it looks reputable, the study has fundamental flaws that are immediately obvious to anyone who reads it carefully (which unfortunately NO exec will ever do). The first and most egregious problem is with the data. The main conclusion of the study is that remote work caused collaboration networks to become more isolated and workers to spend relatively less time with “bridging ties.” In English, that means workers are spending more time working in smaller groups, and therefore less time collaborating with people from other groups. Here's the problem: the authors are using DIGITAL communication records (emails and IMs) to measure collaboration. Obviously, if everyone is in the office, digital communication data will miss the vast amount of communication and collaboration that happens offline, meaning the authors don't have a fair measure of in-office collaboration networks. In other words, authors aren't comparing apples to apples, because they don't have any data on how much time people were physically communicating and collaborating before the pandemic. In fact, Microsoft employees could have had exactly the same collaboration networks before and after the pandemic, but because the authors are using emails and IMs to measure collaboration, they would spuriously conclude that collaboration is becoming more isolated. The second problem is with the research method. The authors claim that they measure the "causal effects" of shifting to remote work on office collaboration. In the ideal research method, we would randomly take some office workers and make them WFH, then compare them to workers who weren’t made to WFH. Obviously, we can't do this because all Microsoft employees had to WFH, so there's no real "control group." Instead, the authors decided to use workers who were always WFH as the control group!!! This is just immensely stupid, since you are now comparing workers who are forced to adapt to a completely new work environment (i.e., office -> home switchers) with workers who were already WFH before the pandemic. Obviously, this isn't a fair comparison: the "control" group is going to have a natural advantage because they are much more used to WFH and are suddenly on an even playing field with their colleagues who used to be in the office. You would expect them to have adapt more quickly! In fact, the authors' own data show that both groups gained more "bridging ties" after WFH (Figure 1); it's just that the workers who were always remote gained relatively more, so the authors conclude that the shift to remote work actually REDUCED bridging ties. This is just a completely stupid conclusion that is driven by the authors' spurious assumptions. This is a long rant but I am really frustrated that a bunch of idiots at a third-tier tech company can publish such a damaging “study” to remote workers. TC 450 YOE PhD + 3, all at FANG (which excludes idiotic Microsoft with its incompetent “researchers”) #microsoft #wfh #remote
I’d say the biggest problem with this study is that they only looked at the first six months of the pandemic
Screw the study , billion dollar companies are built entirely remote . So how do they do it ?
Curious from a company building lots of products to make remote work more productive
Triggered 🤡
It's hard to take social science research seriously nowadays.
Your are free to submit a paper to the same journal.
I don’t care, they still approve and let me work remotely 😅
Let's have Blind do a twitch-style research paper to try and counteract this. Ah never mind the abstract would just be "TC OR GTFO".
wow you just wasted lots of breath! it’s not as if any study matters. the study is just (if we believe you) to support a forgone decision they will have already made. even with no study nothing would be different. wfh is going away sadly
And what contribution will Facebook have to add to society?
Ray-ban spy glasses!
Tali-ban spy glasses sounds more dope