Question

How is Covid-19 and work from home orders impacting productivity?

In this chapter of The New Geography of Jobs one question kept coming to my mind is what will become of these brain hub cities if the majority of the workers will now be doing their jobs from their homes. One aspect that makes places like the Bay Area so attractive is the ability for employees to collaborate with each other and work in person. A Harvard study even mentioned that the quality of research improved when the authors were less than one kilometer apart, and even better if they used the same elevator. Having good quality research is something these authors strive for, and they would not want it to decrease. The quality is not based off how close the co-authors are to each other, but according to this study it did have an impact. Another typical reason for these startups to move out west is to be close to their investors. Many venture capitalists are less likely to do deals if the office is more than a 20-minute drive away according to our reading.

This is where the question comes in, how will these cities handle this global pandemic of Covid-19 that has forced everyone to stay home? Now venture capitalists shouldn’t be turning down companies that aren't on the West Coast, because it's not likely they will meet in person anyway. The cost of employing people in these hub cities is very high compared to other places in the world and now companies may not think the price is worth it if their employees are not benefiting from human interaction. It also makes me wonder if we as people will become less productive the more we stay home. Working with other intelligent people spark the ideas to create products that help to improve the world. In our readings it stated that people are more creative and productive when surrounded by others so what will happen to the United States productivity rates as companies move to work from home for extended periods of time.

Answer 1

It has been lot of time since the pandemic and work from home had been the considerable option for countries all around the world.america is one of the countries who is among the top manufacturing countries of the world and has been impacted by the pandemic.

Now when we talk about bay area,it is the area where companies employees can work collaboratively and achieve great targets for their company.now that cannot be done as many companies have opted for work from home due to pandemic.

Many venture capitalists prefer their clients to be 20 minutes drive away in america.now the situation has changed and because of pandemic investment has decreased,venture capitalists are investing less.

Americas productivity will be impacted because of decrease in investment,work from home policy etc.there are other factors also,for example workers are working in limited capacity in many sectors of the economy and in some sectors,there is no production going at all.now these are the productive,manufacturing sectors.if there is no productionor minimum production,then how can productivity increase?

Thereforw if the work from home policy continues for several more months then the american productivity will decline unless some proper planning is done.