No I am pointing out that you are ignoring how it is defined and the fact that it needs to be defined within the context of organizational strategy and vision before usefully claiming it is up or down.
Google's problem for example is NOT that they are unable to sell more ads because their programmers are not productive - it's that they lack the vision to take the company from ad based to diversified and profitable in other areas which they have badly failed to do while still hiring ton of people and then laying them off. That's not productivity problem - it's a strategy/vision and bad hiring practices problem. Even if it meant that somehow you could hack the productivity metric to show it was reduced in some light - it doesn't mean jack when you are productive doing things that don't help your revenues.
There's no point in debating the meaning of productivity unless someone claims it's neutral or up. If they're willing to make that claim then it might be worth that debate. Otherwise, it's a pointless side track.
If you're using productivity to justify firing people, but then you proceed to avoid discussing how is calculated, you can't use it as a justification.
There's no clear way to measure employee productivity in a white collar job. So claiming "productivity is down" with no objective evidence, is just groupthink.
Okay, I’ll stand in for the previous commenters. I will argue it went up, simply because the insane stock market valuations, which led these companies to overhire because clearly business demand was up as well, no? Then it is up to you to prove these companies wrong for believing their productivity to be up.
