It's VERY problematic that studies like this analyze *forced* working from home in a *pandemic* and their conclusions are written ignoring both the forced and pandemic bits.

Maybe, just maybe, a reason for the productivity drop was the pandemic? Come on people. https://twitter.com/emollick/status/1391063059662184450

I work in a company, Automattic, that has always been fully distributed and the impact has been felt by everyone.

I even run a limited data analysis in April 2020, it showed a 25% drop. The report states a 20% impact in productivity. Close enough? https://twitter.com/Folletto/status/1247110996512198657

The conclusions in that paper also seem to not recognize the flexibility of remote work (which includes working from anywhere, not just home, and flexible hours), and creates a false dichotomy between home and office. That doesn't exist outside a pandemic.

Note: the conclusions cite Covid-19, but in a very twisted way:

"One possibility is that employees work more because lockdown [...]. Under this explanation we would expect Output to increase and Productivity to remain approximately constant, which is not what we observe."

They mention Covid-19 and they analyze it only in terms of "oh you had more free time, your extra work should have matched productivity" which is such an easily falsifiable assumption by anyone that experienced the forced WFH directly. Absurd.

Funnily enough, even with such a negative and superficial stance, the paper closes with:

"WFH is likely to be used much more in the future, with positive net effects if implemented well"

But this doesn't get a mention in the abstract.

Huh. So it works?