Originally posted as a Twitter thread on May 21, 2020

Two ways of thinking about WFH productivity:

”It’s temporary”: there is NOTHING else to do, people stuck in homes, kids cannot be shipped off to school or daycare, therefore MORE work gets done + people always accessible…but upon opening, people will start playing hooky

“It’s permanent”: the tools for WFH are great (think Slack/Zoom), meeting length gets collapsed to the core substance (1 hr -> 30 mins etc), less travel/commute, accountability via more trackability…

For small companies, “it’s permanent” could have a seismic change on their financials given real estate costs as a % of revenues. But IMHO jury still out on productivity gains/losses given unique nature of this forcible SAH (stay at home!), not just WFH, experiment

And clarifying the first point, parents whose kids are stuck at home cannot go to the beach / play hooky because they need to watch the kids 🙂 Versus normal times when they could.