Nicholas Bloom: belief

Transcript context

…We’re speaking in July 2020. Given that there’s so much working at home going on right now, how long will it take before a tech company productivity declines as people grow frustrated or disconnected, or they become too restless? It’s too hard to bring on board new hires. How much time do we have before things really start to fray? Great question. Just to be clear, my thoughts on work environment in the short run, working from home for those of us that can — only something like 40 percent of Americans can work from home, but that accounts for something like 50, 60 percent of GDP, because they tend to be higher-earning individuals. For those of us that can work from home, the evidence looks like, in the short run, that increases productivity, as long as you’ve got reasonable conditions, like proper internet and a room, your own exclusive room to work in. I had an old paper looking at China, and it showed very large increases in workers’ short-run productivity from people working in call centers. The big unknown I’m working in — I know other people are looking at this too — which is, what’s the impact on longer-run productivity, which is the concept — coming back to the beginning of the podcast — about creation and innovation. Lots of claims, including Steve Jobs, before he passed away, made several comments about he wanted people to be in the office. You have to be there for the new ideas that come up from water-cooler discussions and meetings and one-on-one stuff. Obviously, under COVID, that’s all stalled. None of that we’re really sharp right now. You can get away with three to six, maybe even nine months, probably, of not radically creating new things. But in the long run, I fear there’d be a drop in, say, patenting in 2021, 2022 because of this. The question is how firms just run. My guess, from talking to a lot of US companies, is they will return partly to the office. I think in the long run, working from home will be fine because we’ll be in the office three days a week and two days a week at home. That’s the best of both worlds. I don’t think you need to be in the office five days a week to be creative, but you do need some time each week with colleagues. I’m not too worried now. What I think will be problematic is, if in late 2021, we’re still all 100 percent working from home. Then I would really worry about impacts and productivity. Your long-term coauthors should be those who are at Stanford or Berkeley, but your short-term coauthors can be anywhere.…

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