I've been working at home for about a year and can sympathize with the author. I've really been surprised at what an effect its had on me socially. I'm not the most outgoing person to begin with so the forced in-person interactions (both appreciated and unappreciated) that I got in my previous office settings were probably a lot more beneficial to me than I previously believed.
I feel like I have the additional challenge of being a web developer so when I do get the chance to talk to people, I don't have the "oh you won't believe this crazy guy I work with" stories. Everything is "oh you won't believe this wacky stacktrace I was getting." Cue glazed over eyes.
I love sitting here in my sweats, making fresh lunches, taking a short nap almost every afternoon to refresh, and being able to travel literally wherever I want as long as there's wifi. I miss people more than I thought I would. I think I'll probably join a coworking space before long even if it's only to go for a part of the week.
> I've really been surprised at what an effect its had on me socially.
One of the odd things that happened is that I've become more extrovert when I do meet people. To off-set working alone at home, I volunteer two days a week at the local hackerspace to socialize. That has been a blast.
A girlfriend way back when introduced me to the term "People Batteries." As in it takes energy to be around people. Some people get energy from being around other people and some from being alone. If you're the alone type those batteries still fill up. I think that's a much better model than people being extraverts OR(and only or) introverts. We're more complicated than that.
That is a very interesting idea, one that I can relate to.
On the one hand, I do enjoy being around other people most of the time. When I spend too much time by myself, I feel like I am loosing proportion of my own life, like what is good or bad about my life at the moment. Sharing other people's lives helps me keep perspective. Also, a good deal of the time, it's just damn interesting.
On the other hand after a certain amount of time, I also need some alone-time to unwind. And when I've had my share of social interaction, I am happy to spend more time on my own than many people I meet at work.
That means you might naturally be an extrovert. Extroversion, by definition, means you gain energy from other people. I'm a Myers-Briggs "E", and this can be the equivalent of a powerful drug. I can forget to eat, even defer sleep if I'm around people who are interesting enough. Sometimes, though, this does stop me from getting any work done...
I worked from home for 2.5 years and it has had a profoundly negative impact on my social life and even my personality. I'm good with people, but sitting alone all day for such a long-time has turned me into the kind of person who thinks of calling an old friend, then thinks 'eh, why bother. Let's see what's new on Reddit instead'.
Then there's the problem with setting a routine. I can wake up whenever I want to, sleep whenever I want to. And that's what I usually end up doing. Sure, it's fun for the first few weeks, but soon you realize why human beings need structure and organization.
It's corrosive. I moved to a co-working space and I've never been happier.
This will really depend on you and your home life to be honest.
I've been working from home for more than a year (with some half year stints before) and I can't imagine going back to an office. I have my kid to play with and my wife to talk with if I need to. I also chat with co-workers online but if I really want to talk to people, I can always pick my laptop and go to a cafe, gym, mall even. I wake up at around the same time everyday (well, kid is my alarm clock), do the normal morning chores with the family, then start working. I can (and do) stop every so often and do some exercise or sometimes just stop and read a bit of a book if the weather is nice outside. I'm always on time for dinner since I'm the one that cooks it, and I put my kid to bed everyday. The fact I work from home could have been an excuse to not care about schedules, slack of on the personal hygiene/appearance, but I didn't and as I said, I would probably take a large payout over going to an office again.
I think, and to be fully honest, whenever I worked in an office, I would say I actually enjoyed the company of 2-3 people and the rest were a bother (to me) and I couldn't really go: "John, no you can't come for coffee because people don't like talking to you" so having my family, some friends (have a few that also work from home living nearby) and ability to talk to random strangers gives me all the socialising I need.
What's the turnover rate at your co-working space? If people aren't working there for any significant period of time, you might not be able to develop the same type of meaningful interactions you'd hope for in an office.
is a trade-off, I worked from home for a year, and although I missed the casual interactions you get in the office, I was able at any moment to take a 5 minute break to play with my kids, go pick them up from school, help them with homework, and that's priceless
It's definitely not for everyone. In my work 90% of the people I interact with are working remotely, so working from home half of the week doesn't really affect me. Not having to commute in the morning has a profound effect on my mood. I've also learned that rolling out of bed and just plunking down to work makes me less productive than getting up and showering and putting on at least some casual clothes. However I also have a wife and kids that come home after I'm done with work, so I'm not fully isolated all day.
Well, the good thing is that "wokring from home" lets you choose to go to a coworking space or not... while people who actually enjoy working from home (like me for example) don't get to choose if the job is "office-only".
I've been working remotely for a few years. The first few months, if you've never done it before and don't know how to cope, definitely feel as the author described. It's your first time. You're just doing it wrong.
Best way I've over come the social needs is to work out of a local cafe once or twice a week. Get to know the people there. Learn their names. Make friends. Work on a crossword together.
Get a whiteboard. Plenty of notebooks. Take time to journal your day. Thoughts, frustrations, tasks. Explain things to yourself out loud.
Reward yourself. Take a walk to the park. Catch up on the New Yorker Poetry podcast.
I don't find motivation to be a problem so long as the team is good at planning and there's always something to do that I can take action on without bothering folks. Use a system and stick to it: pomodoro, GTD, whatever. Be systematic and work with intent. If you're stuck wondering what you should be doing you need to re-evaluate your process and plug the leaks: you should always know what needs to be done next.
Things that make working remote suck for your remote workers:
1. Hallway planning. Making decisions face-to-face in meat-space and not documenting them anywhere. Everything needs to go into an email list or task tracking system.
2. Poor communication. If you're never available online, refuse too many requests for chats, ignore emails... it can be really frustrating. The great thing about working remotely is that communication can be intermediated by scripts. Set auto-replies, status updates, reminders, alerts.
3. Never enough information. When you're working closely in a group face-to-face it can be easy to draw consensus on an issue and document it with a single, innocuous task in the task manager and not bother filling in the description, properly rating it, tagging it, etc. Always add enough information so that anyone can come along and take care of it without having to hunt you down.
I really connected with your first half there. Self Enrichment!
It's funny, that's a lot of what it takes to keep a dog happy and healthy too. They need a job and friends and play time and special snacks. We just need to take the same care and consideration for ourselves when it's not provided by an employer.
I've been working from home for almost eight years now. At first, it was just me and my dogs while my wife went to work. That was definitely hard at first, to stay focused and productive. Every day Alicia would come home and I'd be desperate to get out of the house, she'd usually want to stay in and chill, though, having just had a full day interacting with people at work. I eventually learned that walking down to the library or coffee shop a couple times a week helped some. But coffee shops aren't ideal workspaces in that they don't provide reliable internet, space, often too noisy and sometimes feel like you're not welcome to stay for a long time.
The past few years my wife started staying home and we have two kiddos now. Being able to work from home while raising a young family is a huge advantage logistically speaking and I am thankful every time I get to have lunch with my kids or take a 15 minute break to play in the backyard. But there's also a lot of distractions that are sometimes hard to ignore and the problems of professional isolation and like and reduced networking opportunities.
To this end I started working with a couple friends on a project last year called SpareChair (https://sparechair.me) to build a community of people who work remotely and so we can get connected and provide easy access to a lot of places to work together. We're mostly active in Brooklyn/Manhattan right now to gather feedback and learn how to make this work. Would definitely love to hear any thoughts you all might have on SpareChair, too.
I've wanted something like this for a while now, especially because the usual coffee-shop routine is to pack everything up and take it all with you to the bathroom, and bring it right back and it can get tedious after a while. It's too bad you don't have any spaces in Toronto right now.
Cool! We're hearing the same thing from a lot of folks. They want a lot of choices when it comes to spaces and they want to also find people to work with. I'll get in touch when we launch in Canada!
I worked full time remote for 12 years doing driver / kernel / firmware work for an IHV.
What I missed most about working in an office (and what I liked most about going to work at an office again 2 years ago) is the sense of separation and decompression that a commute gives you. If you're not careful, you can easily wind up always working all the time since your "office" is right in your living space.
I've read about people who intentionally exercise before and after work to get the same effect. Essentially running on a treadmill for twenty minutes instead of sitting in a car.
Maybe something to consider? You could also physically drive to a gym if that would help. Or just have one office/computer for work that you don't touch when not "working."
I've been working at home for the last 5. Doing iOS, android, desktop apps and firmware. I find the firmware the most frustrating, probably because I'm the least experienced at it. Trying to debug things by sharing screenshot of a USB scope is a pain. Having to drive in every time I need a mod done. Even worse is driving in and whatever piece of equipment I wanted is at somebody else's house (or forgotten at mine).
I've had a better experience when doing firmware upgrades for mature products, but has anybody had a good experience developing hardware products with a work from home team?
The IHV that I worked for had most of the hardware team local in California, and most of the software team remote. We had a great lab team that could install bits, move cables, etc. All machines had serial consoles & power controllers (or IPMI). One source of frustration was that most of the locals did not arrive until 10am Pacific, and I was on the Eastern time zone. So if I needed a cable moved, I had to wait until after lunch. Though I sometimes asked one of the secretaries to do it (she arrived at 6am Pacific).
By the time I had hardware access, we always had jtag or more advanced access methods working.
A big frustration was using tools like PCIe logic analyzers remotely. Luckily, these were mostly controlled by PCs, and we could access them via an IP KVM solution (but again, we had to wait for on-site labstaff to hook up physical connections).
Humans are creatures of habits and compartmentalization.
- Get a different computer (use a mac if you are a windows guy for extra separation).
- Work in a different room (DO NOT work from the room you sleep or play in!).
- Wear different clothes (business casual is great, and if you have to do a quick errant outside, you feel like a professional instead of a lazy guy working from home in his underpants).
- Do not visit NSFW websites (you are working, and we both know that porn and/or reddit can eat up your time).
Indeed, I had a separate room for my office, and tried to work a strict 8am->5pm schedule Mon-Fri.
However, that all fell apart during a major crunch time where we were trying to ship a chronically late product, and for that period of time, my work life balance was essentially destroyed.
While crunch time are necessary sometime, you should do your best to balance things out. Worked extra hard all week? Take half the next week off and go camping.
It was more like a 14 month death march of 100+ hour weeks, so there really was no "next week", as there was no end in sight for most of it. That's what it is like with hardware, especially late hardware that the entire company is riding on.
After the thing finally shipped, most of the team effectively took off the next 4 months, working ~4 hours or fewer hours a day, etc. But those 14 months were hell.
I found this article really interesting. I've really enjoyed my recent experiences telecommuting. The main difference in my life, though, is that I'm close to the office. This allows me to go in part of the week and work from home another part.
I love being able to talk to my coworkers and go in for meetings, but when it comes down to it, it's really nice to be able to sit in the silence and comfort of my house and work when I need to get stuff done.
Both working in the office and at home have their pros/cons. It's all about preference.
I've been working from home for almost a year now. I agree with most of the article. My checklist of things I do for sanity goes something like this:
1. Set up regular lunch get togethers with friends.
2. Use Video Conferencing liberally. Don't keep trying to hash something out via email or chat for too long. At some point the higher bandwidth of face to face communication even over a VC will be much more efficient.
3. Keep a persistent group chat for you team open. IRC, Slack, Anything that is always on and provides a sense of presence for you. Don't be afraid to joke around and make small talk there. Out team even plays the occasional verbal logic puzzle there.
4. Stock some variety in your kitchen. You get bored of Bologne and PB&J after a while. You are going to want to provide some variety for lunches.
5. Be responsive but only during regular working hours. It helps your team to know when they can contact you and get a response. After 5pm I don't respond to txts or emails unless they are emergencies. But before then I make sure people get a quick response from me even if it's just that I'll have to get back to them later.
6. And lastly join a Gym. I swim regularly but you might run or play some basketball or lift weights. When your place of work is your home it can be hard to disengage. A gym is a good way to leave the work behind and reset the mental clock as well as meet other people.
Since I work in sales, I am stuck to the typical 9-5 availability schedule.
If I feel like I'm in a rut, I go to a coffee shop to change it up. I have one 40 feet from my front door, or I take a longer walk on a nicer day to the coffee shop I frequented from my last apartment.
It forces you to shower, dress like a real human being and can sometimes substitute for that human interaction.
The worst was a week ago on Monday. I wasn't feeling well and realized that the deadbolt on my front door hadn't been opened in over 36 hours. Tuesday was definitely a coffee shop day at that point.
I think what people in general tend to forget is that you can work from home but you don't have to. Renting a spot in a coworking space is very fun and helps with the loneliness.
Honest question: what is your home situation like? Are you married? Kids?
In my experience, older folks with kids and a spouse tend to love the work from home thing. Younger people tend to get bogged down by the lack of social interaction.
Not OP but, I have been at home for the last year. Married with a kid and another on the way. ~30 years old.
I love it.
I do at times feel the loneliness, but we have worked hard as a team to make it possible for me to be "in the office" as much as possible. We set up a persistent Google Hangout on a 60" TV that I can jump in at any time and be a part of the rest of the non-remote team.
I love being able to rush in to my kid's room when he wakes up in the morning, saying goodnight when he takes his nap. I love eating from my own kitchen. I love working outside of home.
Well, just like the other user who answered you (hi, lifestyle clone!) I'm married, One kid, one on the way.
Like I said, I love the choice it brings me - I don't have to work form home (I can use a coworking space for instance), but I get to decide every morning. I tend to go to a coworking space or to friends/friendly startups/friendly companies to hang out about one day a week, but it can be much more.
One tidbit: almost the whole company is remote (600 people!), so we're all organized around that, and it probably makes it easier.
So my personal take away: it's about the choice it gives you :)
> One tidbit: almost the whole company is remote (600 people!)
I'm intrigued. I was under the impression remote work was only feasible for smaller startups. The only fully distributed companies I know have < 30 employees.
We have some offices and legal presence in some countries that require it, but most of the engineers are work-from-home only. My team is completely work-from-home, including manager, product manager, and QA engineers. We're 12 in 7 different countries and 3 continents (used to be 4 :) )
Only designers and some sales people have a hard requirement to be in the office, AFAIK.
EDIT: for the sake of my personal pride I updated the numbers of countries my team is distributed to. it was WRONG. I hate wrong! :)
I've noticed this if I spend too much time without meaningful face to face conversations. Translating my thoughts into coherent sentences becomes a little more challenging.
Agree with many of these points. I've worked from home for the last 3 years and I love it, but it definitely has it's downsides.
I think the worst for me is not being able to switch off at 5pm. Without the journey home to empty my mind a little, I do find myself thinking about work for the rest of the night.
Cannot plus one this enough. I use to have all email accounts in the one client. Now for work (which is gmail) I use a notifier (plus often just leaving the browser page open in Chromium).
If I find the notifier starting to bug me on the non-work days, I just switch it off. I have a cron job that starts it 9am every work day if it is not already running.
I've been working from home for going on 6 years. I have the same problem. It doesn't help that I also have a young child at home as well. He's only known me to work from home, so every few hours I get forced breaks, which is sometimes very nice to have.
I am with the other commenter that having some sort of activity to transition yourself from work to home is important. Sometimes a jog, or walk is enough. Most days I don't have anything to transition with beyond cooking the family dinner.
It sounds silly, but try changing clothes. Most people have uniforms for activities, like gym clothes. Pick something to wear for work, and then change out of that at the end of the day.
One thing that helps me (other than.my wife and kids asking when I'm done) is to go for a short walk. My wife knows that its part of my routine and is usually pretty supportive.
I've also been working from home for the last 10 months, and while I love the freedom, I do also miss the times when you can cheer with your co-workers over an accomplishment and the general chit-chat over small breaks and lunch break.
I also agree with the author that a bad day working from home is worse than at a job. Since I'm a solo-founder it means I'll not get paid on a bad day, but at a job you typically get at least something done – and get paid.
Really agree with the point of pressure, that having a bad day whilst working from home feels way more terrible than having one while at the office (production-wise)
How do you guys communicate while working remotely?
At my current job we have daily two daily meetings (in the morning and in the evening) where everyone tells what he's done or we discuss something with a whole team. These meetings lock us to particular schedule and make traveling hard. I'd like to suggest my boss to get rid of these daily meetings but I don't know with what to replace them.
My team is entirely remote and we do written standups/sitdowns. This adds some flexibility to your day which helps given that we are spread across many timezones. At the end of the week we have a demo day via google hangout where we can show off work that we have done or something cool we learned.
I've been working remotely about 5 or so of my 10+ professional years. Working remotely can be a very different experience depending upon job roles. Most of the articles linked on HN are for already-isolating back office jobs like development, but for roles like customer support, sales, an outsourced front desk receptionist, or other highly communication-heavy roles you will not really feel as lonely probably. For coders and asset-producers with pretty clear expected (and more importantly, asynchronous) output, solutions typically focus upon forcing your job duties to include more actual human interaction even if it might not be in-person. However, higher value consultants typically will be communicating a lot more with their clients and spending half your day at Starbucks is going to be few and far between.
Secondly, the "freedom" people tend to talk about is pretty minimal in some roles and being remote tends to reinforce the need for your role to be available as much as possible. If you're the on-call contact in operations where it's arguably more important that you're available immediately rather than that you just make some deadlines (transactional work), you really can't just take off very often like you can oftentimes with very asynchronous, start-stop workflows like development. You're not about to work at Starbucks much unless you can be guaranteed that you won't have a really important call come in. I would have lost precious availability time if I was working at Starbucks a few days ago when I had to manage a production outage and get on the phone and start talking authoritatively quickly. It's one thing to have a kid or pet in the background, it's another when you're obviously sitting at a coffee shop.
For work-life separation, I recommend separate devices from your personal belongings for starters. It's oftentimes substantially cheaper than getting a separate room or larger residence. I have a company-provided laptop that I do my work on as well as a company-provided phone, and that helps keep things separate from the rest of my life. If I have to reach for that phone or RDP / ssh into that machine, that's time I've spent for the company, not for me.
After ~13 years of working mostly from a home office I decided to rent a small office "downtown" in the little village I live in a couple of years ago. It is nice sized room (19'x11') in a building right on a river with two windows looking out at the river and the hills beyond (seen in the top image here: http://zoopdoop.com/)
I now love walking to work as much as I used to love working from home and I don't see myself going back to a home office anytime soon.
If you are a software developer and your aggressive manager is not a developer, don't work remotely. I worked for several months in this condition. The experience was very bad. The manager couldn't understand the difficulty and complexity of programming. He was just pushing and pushing to make sure I was working. I worked 10-12 hours per day, but he was still not satisfied. Finally, I worked on-site. The communication became much better and he could see I am working. And I did not need to work too long every day.
Coming up on my 3rd year now working from home and running my own company. I agree with most of this article. The lack of social interaction is probably what I miss the most. Overall it has been a positive change for me though. I had serious issues concentrating while coding at my last job. Working from home has mostly solved that. I've found in the last year it is easy to stop working at 4:30-5 since we have had our first child, before that I was doing 10-12 hour days because I could.
+1. I am working at home. My child is young and my wife cannot handle completely. I can't concentrate on programming. Sometimes I have to take my laptop to the public library to work.
Personally, I think it's great to just have 1 or 2 remote days per week. Really helps with overall time spent commuting and breaks up the monotony of the daily routine.
I've been working from home for the last 4 mos. For the most part it has been very positive. I've enjoyed the looser schedule and have spent quite a bit less on food and gas. The biggest benefit has been that I have not had a single insomniac episode. I have slept very well. I'm reminded of this as I am transitioning back to working in the office. Over the last two weeks I have been setting up an office for two coworkers and myself. Yesterday was the first that I moved my PC in and worked at the office although still alone till the rest of the furniture arrives. Last night I slept maybe a total of 3 hours before my first full day at the office. Not sure why, I am only accountable to myself at this point for when I come and go yet here I am up and going on 3 hours sleep again...
Simple solution to the loneliness thing: get a webcam. You can see the office, they can see you. I saw a business that ran like that. Seemed okay. It wasn't a dev who was remote though, and that may matter.
Also some people don't like the feeling of being watched.
I would really like to work from home one day per week. But all in all, I enjoy the interaction with my coworkers. I have a strong reclusive streak, and being forced to interact with other all day has a positive effect on me.
Also, I live in the city, but my workplace is in a pretty rural area, next to a field. On my way to work, and from my office, I get to see rabbits, roe deer, horses, cows, a kestrel hunting... I would not get to see any of that if I worked from home. I do feel a little guilty at times for staring out the window so much, but having grown up in the city, I totally love that awesome view.
I've been working remote for 10 years. For the first 6 years I worked from home and I lived in various countries as a bonus (since the location wasn't tied to the work).
For the last 4 years I've been based in a coworking space. I can highly recommend it. The biggest benefit to me was that it forced me to have set times to finish work. When I worked from home I would always work a little bit longer.
Now I switch my computer off, leave the coworking space in the evening, go home and relax. There is no temptation to start working again.
I work from home two days a week and the issue I have is actually switching off so I typically start early and then keep going with less breaks than in the office. Maybe this feels easier because it is more comfortable at home and not an abrasive environment like an office. Pros vs cons also depends on both the home and office environment e.g. if you have dedicated working space at home vs a very noisy office or vice versa.
Also, just to say I love Lagos and the western Algarve - it's such a beautiful place
This is why I work from cafes whenever possible. If I actually work from a quiet room by myself I start to slip into sadness. My brain craves the presence of other humans.
That said, I prefer cafes to offices. It's nice to be around people with no real ties to your source of income. It eliminates the stress of needing to manage all of your actions more carefully.
Also, I find that over time I make actual friends coffee shops. Co-workers rarely make good long-term friends.
I am on my first month working from home. While I am not a huge fan of it, either I work from home, or I lose my job.
My biggest gripes about telecommuting is that I have a hard drive focusing. Something about the process of getting up and getting ready and LEAVING the house, puts my brain into this mode of "time to work!" While telecommuting I can get up and get ready, but there's nothing there that convinces my brain I'm going to work.
I'd recommend, get up and go to the gym before work. As others mentioned, having that daily routine where you transition to work mode is really helpful.
The worst thing is the feeling that you are always at work. In this situation I discovered going to the gym is helping me to switch the mode (it could be running, swimming...just any physical activity). If I keep working remotely this year I would like to:
- Keep two computers, one for work and other for my spare time.
- Keep a room of my house as my private study or, if it is not possible, work somedays from a coworking space.
I've been working from home for 7+ years now and wouldn't trade it for the world. I get to have breaks and lunch with my wife and 7 kids and my flexible schedule means I can do the 'bus driving' and other errands whenever I'm needed. I keep in constant contact with my co-worker via hangouts and the occasional phone call.
I have less distractions and am more productive on my worse day at home than my best in any office.
>>>
When you have a bad day at work you still have the sensation of accomplishment. You drove to work, attended meetings, take care of some stuff… you actually did some tasks.
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Probably not a very original thought but this strikes me as very similar to the same game mechanics / psychology involved in grinding ladder-type MMOs.
Is it possible the mundane office environment is created to be somewhat addicting?
Even though I haven't worked from home for longer than a week, I completely understand what the author means, My first 2 days were ok ok.. but then rest of the day were very bad... you don't realize or feel the break from work and off-work.
When you drive back home you feel the sensation of work is "finished" but at home you are always in the feeling of "work"
Now I just need a cafe that isn't closed in the middle of the day, actually has heat in the winter, has chairs that support those of us that weigh over 98 lbs, and that attracts people/encourages them to hang out. Man this town needs another coffee shop...
Thankfully, I have my own office at my parents' office, so I do get some interaction. I've actually talked with a friend about starting a co-working space in our town, but I don't think it's ready for one yet. Maybe in 5-10 years. That's what we get for being a commuter-city to Nashville.
I actually find an office environment to be more distracting than working from home. At the office you have noise and people wanting to chat, at home I can work for a six hour stretch, uninterrupted.
When I was a grad student I spent most of my time working in the labs. I too experienced deterioratingn social skills. Got a retail job at the mall on weekends to interact with more people.
I feel like I have the additional challenge of being a web developer so when I do get the chance to talk to people, I don't have the "oh you won't believe this crazy guy I work with" stories. Everything is "oh you won't believe this wacky stacktrace I was getting." Cue glazed over eyes.
I love sitting here in my sweats, making fresh lunches, taking a short nap almost every afternoon to refresh, and being able to travel literally wherever I want as long as there's wifi. I miss people more than I thought I would. I think I'll probably join a coworking space before long even if it's only to go for a part of the week.