Editor’s Note: This article is part of “Uncharted,” a series about the world we’re leaving behind, and the one being remade by the pandemic.
“Are you still working, Doo-Doo?”
This is the interruption that the Stanford University economist Nick Bloom hears several times a day as his 4-year-old daughter runs into his office and summons him to play by using his nickname. It’s just one of the myriad challenges that Bloom says makes working from home less than ideal at the moment. (Another challenge is his two oldest kids’ in-house bagpipe lessons, spurred by Bloom’s Scottish wife.)
“Working from home is not very productive right now,” Bloom told me. But often, working from home can be very productive. In 2015, Bloom published a study that found that Chinese call-center employees who worked from home were 13 percent more productive than employees in a control group, because they took fewer breaks and made more calls per minute. They were also happier and were less likely to quit their job.
Derek Thompson: The coronavirus is creating a huge, stressful experiment in working from home
The blurring of work and home lives might not be just a temporary side effect of the pandemic. Though children will (hopefully) go back to school in the fall, many white-collar workers will be strongly encouraged to work from home at least some of the time over the next year or so. While working remotely confers some mental-health and other benefits, the “job” as we know it might never be the same. Conferences, in-person meetings, and even handshakes might be deemed not worth the risk of infection. What might emerge is a future in which results-oriented introverts prevail while those who thrive on face-to-face interactions and office politics fumble. In the post-pandemic workplace, nerds may get their revenge.