Productivity: Working, or playing golf?
Has the American worker gone soft? asked Steven Rattner in The New York Times. “Until Covid, most employed Americans had workdays that followed a decades-old pattern: Wake up, shower, breakfast, commute, spend at least eight hours in an office or factory, commute home.” Today’s generation of remote and hybrid workers are rejecting the demands of this routine. “I’ll concede that technology, particularly videoconferencing, has made remote work more feasible.” And yes, eliminating the commute is a great time-saver. Nonetheless, employers are growing skeptical “that their staff members work as hard from home.” America’s prosperity, owed in large part to our collective work ethic, “should allow for more leisure.” However, let’s not kid ourselves: Less output “eventually means a lower standard of living.”
Even tech companies like Meta and Salesforce are running out of patience with their remote employees, said Callum Borchers in The Wall Street Journal. Lonely bosses in the office are pointing to souring output data suggesting “at-home productivity is falling to unaffordable levels.” About 12 percent of the job listings on LinkedIn are for remote positions, down from 20 percent last March. However, “postings for independent-contractor roles are growing four times as fast as full-time openings,” indicating how much workers still value their flexibility. Erstwhile workaholics are embracing “the afternoon-fun economy,” said Emma Goldberg in The New York Times. A new study from Stanford University found that there were 278 percent more people playing golf at 4 p.m. on a Wednesday in August 2022 than in August 2019. According to ClassPass, “the most popular time for people to schedule a salon or spa treatment last year was noon; in 2019, it was 6 p.m.” Workers with laptops and smartphones are fusing business with pleasure or “pushing back their professional responsibilities into the evening.”
At some of the big tech companies, many employees may have no professional responsibilities, said Grace Kay in Business Insider. Because of intense competition for tech workers, companies like Meta and Google made a practice of hiring staffers yet giving them “nothing to do.” At Meta, Britney Levy was hired, told “not to work,” then laid off after a few months. Meta was “hoarding us like Pokémon cards,” said Levy. Levy is far from alone, said Hasan Chowdhury, also in Business Insider. Venture capitalist Keith Rabois alleged recently that “thousands of tech staffers” at Meta and Google were hired to do “fake work.” The tech giants “intentionally overhired engineers and tech talent to stop them from” going to the competition. It meant many employees were brought in to “sit at their desks and do nothing.” No wonder their productivity was low.