[bkuehl]

From my experience so far with pandemic WFH that turned into permanent WFH for our company, if the employee was generally good or performed pretty well they are performing even better working remotely. However, if the employee was just average or needed some oversight, productivity is not very good remotely. Fortunately, I have a solid team (at least for now) so I'm seeing the benefits and things are going very well overall. However, a colleague's team's overall productivity is abysmal. Btw, we also don't have long hours. Rarely work over 40.

[KerrAvon]

This might be is an indictment of your colleague’s manager. Not that the team individual contributors don’t have agency, but it’s the managers job to corral them and make sure they’re performing. This can certainly be done even if the manager is remote; it’s been done for decades at multiple companies.

Managers have a strong role in shaping the team’s ability to perform and they need to use it. You’ve got to talk to your IC’s. If they’re really incapable of performing, get them help. You can manage remote workers! It’s a thing that can be done.

[orwin]

True. We tried to eliminate management with scrum and agile which helps with accountability, but in my experience, it doesn't help when the dev is overwhelmed, outside his area of competency (the second causing the first, which was my situation 8 months ago), not engaged (too good/not interested) or simply not good enough for the mission. Those are for me the main reasons why a dev would not be productive.

Yes those situations are easier to detect at the office, but a good manager would detect those at home too.