Meh. Productivity is notoriously difficult to measure and define. Research can be tailored to show just about anything one wants it to. I'm especially skeptical when the guy writing the piece proclaims his excitement about being able to write the piece from home.

I'm sure there is a mixture of truth from both angles, but I've personally witnessed employees gaming metrics and rising to the top without actually being the best at their jobs.

I remember working in a call center and having my metrics hurt by following up with customer emails and phone calls to actually solve their problems. I was assigned an improvement coach (to avoid being fired) who was a top performer. His coaching was that I had to stop doing things that didn't help my metrics, which meant I needed to let customers fall through the cracks. He taught me how to game the metrics, not provide better support. My metrics improved, but I quit anyway due to the stress and guilt of just not actually doing a good job.

I've see this shit in too many jobs. Mouse jigglers and all kinds of bullshit. Most companies equate looking busy to productivity. I just don't trust any of these 'studies' one way or the other.

Output/profit/what is shipped is all that matters in my opinion. But I've never seen productivity measured that way. It's always some bullshit metric (lines of code, hours clocked, mouse movements, length of time on phone, etc)