Working from home – things no one talks about
timo-zimmermann.deThere are so many of these work from home how-to articles because they're trendy, but almost never useful.
I worked from home for ten years, then back to the office for three, now back at home. I can tell you that what works for one person does not work for everyone.
For example, I am most productive in the morning, and wake up motivated and ready to work. For that reason, I don't take a shower until lunch, then use the afternoons to sort of wind-down with less productive things like meetings, reports, and such.
My father worked from home in the 80's. He was the opposite. He was better in the afternoon. Because of that, he had to force himself to take the mornings seriously. He did that by getting up every morning at 6am, doing the full getting-ready-for-the-office thing, and even went down to the corner store for coffee every day as a sort of "commute."
He would end up at 8am sitting in his home office in the laundry room in a full suit and tie ready for for the day, while I'm still in my sweatpants until after noon.
(Equipment-wise, from working home in the 80's was very different than it is today. Think a big desk with three rotary telephones, filing cabinets, a VFD calculator, and a Telex machine.)
What I find strange is all of the people who don't like working from home trying to talk everyone out of it, including the people who do want to work from home. Look at all of the comments on HN with people claiming that it doesn't work generally, rather than just for them specifically. I don't understand the mentality — "it doesn't work for me, therefore I'm going to actively work to make sure you have to come into the office too."
They're afraid that this will become the norm and their office chit-chat times will be over for good.
Or worse: they don't like being at their own home, so the thought of staying there is terrifying.
That's at least what I've gathered from those I talked with.
I mean, if someone is saying that a 40min commute in high traffic still doesn't tip the balance in favour of remote work, then they apparently either really like being in the office, or really dislike staying home. Parents come to mind for the latter, but most of the people I've known who have 4+ children work remotely, so this doesn't add up.
> Parents come to mind for the latter, but most of the people I've known who have 4+ children work remotely, so this doesn't add up.
It's multifaceted. It might be fine if you own a large enough home that you can have a dedicated working space, with a door.
Even without kids, I find it extremely difficult to work from home without a dedicated space. If I try to work from the living room, I end up doing living room things (like playing video games).
For some people, though, the idea of engineering your environment to change your behavior is either impractical or unheard of, which is what I think gives these people the general impression that "working effectively from home is impossible."
This is again very personal.
I love my kid crawling on me while I work, she sits on my lap and watches around or hug me a bit.
I work in the living room, my wife is there, my kid too. The desk is equipped for work, to be clear (good chair, screens etc.), I occasionally play games on it in the evenings (not often, to be fair) and I work in my "home clothes". Been doing this for over 10 years now.
I have my rules: if I don't work enough or I see I lose focus often, I'll work more hours. If I work too much, I'll work less the next day.
The other day I was even shocked realizing how much time people spend chatting at work, my day seemed more intense at home than their at the office.
To everyone its own. My style has been working great and a hug or cuddle from wife/kid is a great boost to my productivity!
When I'm in my house by myself (which is usually during the work week), I'll work in different places around the house. (For much of what I do, a laptop is all I really need.) However, I do have a dedicated office with a door and, if other people are present it makes a huge difference in terms of distraction. I suppose I could adjust to an "open office plan" at home but having a dedicated (though not just dedicated to work) office is very useful.
I would also add that there are those who suffer from "imposter syndrome" and prefer to be in the office, simply to show face/"butts in chairs", give a song and dance, and speak at audible levels to give coworkers/management the perception that they're busting their ass.
For those types, maintaining their position means endlessly manufacturing superficial validation. It's a game of perception.
The other thing that goes on is that some number of people want to live (and get well-compensated for living) in certain expensive coastal cities. And they hate the idea that companies might decide that they're not going to crowd into those places so dogmatically any longer if people can productively mostly work remotely.
I'm currently temporarily in a place where people also crowd and salaries are on par with those expensive coastal cities.
I see where they're coming from because it's still somewhat surreal to me, but I want to go home.
Which brings me to another point: there's something off about this. Most of the cost of living compensation appears to address the cost of real estate, which is artificially inflated in the first place.
Why do companies still do that if all they achieve is pumping the local housing prices even more?
Colleagues working from home affects those in the office...
There are certain types of communication that are vastly superior to do in person that can get quite tedious over text or phone. A 2 minute quick talk can save tons of time.
Now if my colleague is working from home I get the that same disadvantage from working from home - even when I'm still in the office. Many of the downsides people list here with working from home will be shared by those who are still in the office.
In my experience middle level managers are the gate keepers to work from home. Developers are willing to work from home, while managers especially people managers are afraid their work might be perceived by the company as unnecessary. If WFH has to become norm then company should assure managers their job security.
You could have a 2 minute chat remotely
I certainly would hope so. The point is that it wouldn't be nearly enough or as efficient.
Then we work on the technology to make it efficient.
Remote work will have to become much more common in the future. It makes absolutely no sense to waste so much time and energy on commutes.
Always a good idea. But the entire company culture needs to adapt for it to work. The conundrum as to why anyone in office would care isn't that hard to figure out.
Personally I would look for another job.
I love being able to work from home, when I'm recovering from being ill or if it somehow makes life easier on a particular day. Will probably come in handy during this crisis as well - so I'm very thankful of it.
But 363 times out of 365 I much prefer to work in office. And that is with the assumption that I won't be alone...
It seems to me that almost everyone prefers having the ability to work from home at some times and work remotely at other times. Also, there are clearly preferences around this, such that a given person might prefer one of the other more (or most) of the time.
Taking this into account, along with the undeniable time and energy benefits of remote work, I think companies should start preparing for, allowing and offering remote work. It should become normalized, so that people who want to work from home on some days should be able to.
Importantly though, I don't think it makes sense for most companies to try to completely switch to remote work. Eventually, I think this will lead to a stable equilibrium of some significant percentage of people working from home and a significant percentage coming to work, on a given day. Except for companies which deliberately want to be remote-only, I doubt it would ever result in no one coming to the office.
This seems like a win-win. It reduces the burden of commuting for those that do not want it or cannot manage it on a given day, it gives people more free time, it lessens energy expenditure, but there's still an office to come to and socialize, interact directly and do immediate in-person business, just with a bit less people than usual.
In all fairness, unless teams coordinate, what often tends to happen is people come into the office haphazardly based on what they're doing and whether they have a reason to want to stay home that day. And then, once in the office, none of the other people they want to see are there.
I know this has happened with me and others I know. I wouldn't mind going into the office a day or two per week if it were useful but between travel and people working from home and people who aren't in the same office, there won't be a lot of people I work with circulating around if I do. So I don't bother.
But we're a pretty remote friendly company in general--although the degree to which people who have an office come in varies by team.
There are things that technology can't replace
Like talking to a room where people are actually present and to 20 people each from their laptop, with the mic muted and the video turned off
It's much harder to 'read the room' and much is lost
And I certainly love working from home and don't fancy socializing much when at work
But technology made a lot of work-related things harder or worse
I appreciate what you're saying and I agree that it's very hard, but I think it may be too quick to chalk it up as being impossible.
In fact, things like making the room easier to read despite using a camera is exactly what I was talking about. It is definitely the case with today's systems where you simply have a camera on the lid of the laptop and display many individual images of people on the screen. This does look very unnatural.
For instance, one very distracting aspect of this is that it is impossible for two people to be looking into each other's eyes as they are communicating, since the image and the camera are not aligned. Solving this would at least make addressing a single person over a video call much more natural. Perhaps we could somehow place a camera behind the screen? Will volumetric display technology make it easier once it is more widespread?
And this is just one problem that we can identify. I'm sure there are many other subtle cues missing from a video call which could be identified and then hopefully fixed.
How exactly is video call different than face to face in transferring information? I admit being in the same room has different socio-psychological benefits, but in almost 20 years of me working fully remote most of the time, I've never encountered the problem that couldn't be explained by screen-sharing or on a virtual white-board just as good as in person?
I know from marketing that people should be considered different people in person at home, in person at work, in person at their client's, on the phone, on the web cam 1 on 1, on the cam with multiple people, in text messages. Further modification happens depending on who participate in the conversation.
The funniest example I know is a guy who will first call people then when they say NO in no uncertain terms and hang up on him he drives there and asks exactly the same thing. He frequently describes how both him and the prospect pretend the rude phone call never happened.
He one time needed 100 plants for a stage of a theater performance. On the phone the grower refused to rent them to him, he didn't want to name a price, just NO. In person he immediately agreed to do it for free.
I find that my power poses are less intimidating over video.
In every conceivable aspect? Maybe after 20 years one learns to adapt.
Some people are better communicators in person while others are better using written communication.
Working from home changes the relative value of certain skills. It make sense why people would be resistant to their own devaluing.
The work place is competitive and no one likes to see the rules of game change in way that disadvantages themselves.
People who are not good at writing can always use skype, I dont understand why its so difficult to think of. It's a solved problem a long time ago.
Video not the same as in person. If it is for you then maybe you don’t appreciate some aspects of in person communication.
I think it's the social aspect of it. There are people who feel lonely at home and really need some people around them most of the time. I enjoy wfh usually. It just takes overall less energy since no commute, can take a nap if I'm tired and catch up to it later if I'm really tired or take a quick cold shower in the middle of the day, step outside to a nice coffeeshop for an afternoon tea. I'm an engineer, so I usually enjoy the actual quiet in my room when I'm working. For some, having people around them is more important than the freedom, flexibility and relaxation they can get at home. Too bad :)
There is also a human factor: most people don't like living in the same cage where they work 24 hours a day
Family life is mostly about sharing the events of the day
Working home is pretty uneventful and that aspect can be stressful
I worked home for 13 of my 23 years career, loved them and still do it, but my best years have been the 3 years I left all my jobs to go touring around Europe as roadie
Being part of a team that shares a common goal but also solves everyday mundane tasks together like finding a place to eat that's ok for everybody or fixing a flat tire gives a lot more meaning to what one does
People are like this with everything, I think.
For example, a lot of people will be like this or that operating system is trash and you shouldn’t use it. And I am ashamed to admit that years ago I used to be this way too.
While I understand where people are coming from when they act that way, it is still frustrating and I wish it wasn’t like that.
Try telling people you're vegan (doesn't matter if you are or aren't) & leaving it at that. A significant portion will think you're judging them & try to talk you out of it or say why it's a bad thing.
I mean, isn’t a large part of veganism an ethical stance against killing sentient creatures? It’s hard to see how that wouldn’t involve judging others to some degree.
It is possible to have a stance on something, choose to act on it and still not judge others for not behaving in the same way. You do this by acknowledging that you still may be the one with the "wrong" stance (whatever that means) and by having compassion for others that may not have had the same insights you did.
Right, I have a lot of stances that a lot of people don't hold & I manage to "live and let live".
Ultimately I think we're all responsible for our own morals & I generally don't get worked up about people having different ideas (notwithstanding such that deny my right to exist, such as antisemites).
There are also people trying to reduce their environmental impact (so also an ethical stance).
But there are some who have allergies, and it can be easier for them to choose a vegan restaurant to be certain there's no lactose / egg contamination.
Do you feel the same about people who believe in a religion other than yours (or any religion if you're not a believer)?
I think that would depend on the religion, but generally I don't think the comparison is equivalent.
I'd always thought the primary difference between vegetarians and vegans was ethical, rather than dietary. That part of the ethics of veganism is opposition to the mechanised slaughter of individuals that should have the same, or similar, rights to people.
Maybe this is more of a fringe belief as vegan options become mainstream?
Well one thing to consider is that in addition to whether or not working at home works for you, there is also the question of whether your working at home works for everybody else. How does one or more people working from home affect the other people on the team? How does one or more people working from home affect the productivity, culture, communication, and collaboration of the team? The answers to those questions could be in a negative, positive or neutral way for any particular person/team. Some of my colleagues are quite frustrating when they work from home due to their own personal communication style, whereas they may personally find it very rewarding.
I think it is most common for an employee to try to talk their employer to accept remote work. Other way around is more rare and there is not that much talk if the employer decides to decide against it.
>What I find strange is all of the people who don't like working from home trying to talk everyone out of it
Yeah, that makes no sense. I don't like working from home, but I want as many people as possible to work from home. That makes my commute so much better!
I don't like wfh because I don't like being all alone at home all day. But my preference for office hinges upon the presence of other people in office too! That's why I encourage everyone to come to office and work.
Perhaps find a good video chat solution, it's not safe to come to work right now and hopefully you'll find having chat gives you the sense of being with others that you need.
> I don't like being all alone at home all day
Why should other people come in just because you need entertainment?
Maybe make some relationships outside work?
As I said in a sibling comment, these aren't mutually exclusive.
We spend the majority of our lives at work -- spending that alone in my spare room/coffee shop/wherever just sounds like a nightmare long-term.
I think as long as humans are social animals, remote working will stay niche and optional at best.
Social interaction in one's free time is a matter of preference - you can stay home alone, or ring up a friend and go for a coffee.
Maybe eventually people can find a group of friends/acquaintances with which they can also hang out and have a coffee, while each tends to their own work?
The specifics are often not useful but one thing you'll notice is that people who made it work have some kind of a schedule that they stick to. 'Flexible schedule' can be misinterpreted as 'changing all the time'. When I see people trying that, they usually end up moving on.
'Stick to some schedule' is pretty portable advice. It sounds like you and your father both did that.
Mirroring your comment, I have found both through personal experience and through anecdotes of others that forcing yourself into routines has benefits in all kinds of situations. Make your bed every morning, do your full hygiene routine, change out of your sleeping clothes, and so on. Helps with depression and monotony among others. I'm not surprised to see it valid here, it's universal.
I have found the opposite. Having come from managing front line retail and routine office jobs, I know that routines and schedules become a mindless stifling prison. It's remarkably oppressive to mark out every cent of your life, every action you can take for the next year of your life onto an excel spreadsheet, knowing it's your responsibility to adhere to an endless grind and make sure everyone under you adheres to the same grind.
The option to pursue an exciting and highly rewarding goal for a few days without having to think about what the Joneses think about the particularities of my dressing habits or adherence to a schedule can be a great gain.
How does forcing yourself into routines help with monotony?
I would say it depends on the routine, but if it's something you can do every day, it breaks up the day in several pieces, and you get to do different things per any given day instead of just one activity.
In my case, when I was in college, there would be days on end where I wouldn't leave my dorm. I'd hang around in pjs doing pretty much the same thing all day long: get in front of the computer, do whatever, eat in front of the computer, continue doing whatever, get the laptop in bed, fall asleep. Repeat the next day. After a while I really had the impression of "doing nothing" or of "always doing the same thing".
Nowadays, when I work from home, I get up, make the bed, put my workout clothes on, do my workout routine, take a shower, eat a protein shake, get dressed "for work" (ie put on a clean tshirt so as to be presentable on a video call), get in front of the computer, start up Teams and get to work. I try to take a break every hour or so to move around a bit (do some push-ups / pull-ups), drink a glass of water, look out the window, then get back to work. Around 6 PM, when the office hours are done, I finish up whatever I'm doing then quit Teams, quit the mail program, and I'm done for the day.
Now YMMV, but I find that the days when I go straight to work and just do the work part, sometimes still in my pjs as in college, I really get the feeling that I've accomplished less. I find that for me, breaking up the day with some activities helps to not perceive it as being monotonous, just doing one thing all day long. At least for me it's important for whatever breaks I take to not just be in front of the computer, like browsing hn or whatever. That's why I like moving around a bit and looking out the window.
This is something that I'm not as likely to do in the office. There are more distractions, even though I'm not in a proper open space, so it takes me more time to "get in the zone" and I'm also less inclined to break it whenever I'm in it cause I never now when I'll be able to get back. Also, I enjoy calm during my breaks, so people on the phone or talking to each other and other random noises are more likely than not to stop me from walking around outside the office.
For me, they create space and bank emotional energy to better enjoy the non-routine things in life.
YMMV, but my diurnal cycle is >>24hr when I'm working hard. And I take frequent short naps.
In my case, it doesn't need to be a rigid schedule. I might get up at 6. I might get up at 9. I may do a little work in the evening. I may not. I may run some errands scheduled around whatever meetings I have. But, for the most part, I do something that approximates a typical work day.
I thought I'm also much more motivated in the morning.
But since I been WFH for a while (thanks for the COVID-19), surprisingly I found if I took 30 mins nap both at noon and dusk, I would extend the motivated period to the most of the day! It's a game-changer for me, and it's not much a loss because I can sleep less at night because I trade to the day.
I'm a ADD person, it feels like the dopamine would exhaust after hours, and a nap would reset it for a while.
> I can tell you that what works for one person does not work for everyone.
Did you read the article? Because that's one thing he emphasises.
Here's my tips.
1. Use mute, often
2. If it's meeting, it's a meeting. Don't have everyone looking at their screens rather than listening.
3. Get some light-weight headphones that you can wear for a long time. I have the classic Sennheiser px-200. You can't seem to buy similar headphones anymore, particularly not wireless.
4. The "watercooler" always-on vidcon idea is a good one.
My dad had a IBM 5160 XT and later a IBM Model 80 when he was working from home in the 80s. I can still remember we were allowed to play Need for Speed or Flight Simulator on it for a half hour per week.
That were the days. Much later in the 90s this changed to be allowed to be on CompuServe in the evening for a half hour. I can still remember going to GO MAXIS :)
Need for Speed in the 80s?
I was wondering the same... Maybe thinking of a different racing game?
Test Drive?
I do remember a CGA driving game on the PC in all it’s four-color glory. Pink, teal, black and white.
Yeah, probably it was Test Drive instead of Need for Speed.
Test Drive maybe (1987) ?
Having a faux commute is a common sentiment. I know someone who wish leave his front door and come back in through the side door to recontectualize themself.
> He would end up at 8am sitting in his home office in the laundry room in a full suit and tie ready for for the day, while I'm still in my sweatpants until after noon.
Given that changing faces real time in video is doable now, wouldn't it be trivial to fake business dress? Or even (Dog forbid) shaving.
I read it as he was doing it to get himself into “work mode”. Video processing isn’t a substitute for that.
Unless you mess up the webcam’s angle, you don’t really need to wear pants (aka Donald Duck’s outfit).
real-time, not really. but it's pretty easy to be business casual or more from just the waist up.
Did you read the article? It is broadly applicable to everyone. Having a proper chair and communication equipment and distraction free working area are all great points.
You know, last week when we were starting to WFH I thought of it as a blessing in disguise since I always liked staying indoors and often take a day or two to WFH per week to focus on docs etc.
However, once everyone is WFH the experience turned out to be less than ideal to say the least. I found that I worked more, worked more at overtime hours and have been more stressed out than usual.
I think it really had nothing to do with my habits and preparedness. I already had everything set up (multiple displays, standing desk etc which I've had for a long time) and had almost no productivity drop on my side. However, now all my colleagues are pinging me, the video meetings take longer to finish since people are talking over each other and now I'm asked to write much more documentation and communications for rather trivial matters instead of just talking to someone face to face for a couple of minutes. People (management) also have less respect for normal work hours.
In the end I think if your company doesn't have the preparedness and more importantly the systems ready for remote work, you won't be ready for full remote work either.
I just hope people will begin to adjust to the new normal better as time goes on.
> I found that I worked more, worked more at overtime hours and have been more stressed out than usual.
Here's how I deal with this:
The work computer lives in my office, which I close up and leave at the end of the work day. None of my other devices have access to work email, and none of them receive any form of work related notification ever.
If you ping me about something after I've signed off for the evening, you'll get a response in the morning after I've had my coffee.
Everybody else is free to work around the clock if they like. If they need me, they can catch me while I'm at work.
Exactly my situation. I am used to working from home and earlier I did only when I had independent work to focus on and not many meetings scheduled on that day. Now it does not work as it seems (it has always been) the other side is not prepared. I know for some people documentation (even simple MOM or writing description in the story ) is an overhead for them. Even some architect level folk love to just talk for an hour in random topics in meetings without any conclusive decision jotted down in notes for future reference. Later after implementation there is always confusion what had we decided to be the behaviour like. Junior engineers do not respond to email or public chat as they think something as to be serious and escalated to do so else just ignore. Overall it seems my family has ben more supporting and confortable than the team while working from home. I don't have dogs and my kinds are happy to be engaged with their grand parents as schools are closed (One of the advantage of traditional Indian famly)
It seems expected that the whole company, viewed as a system, has to adjust to remote work. This cannot happen instantly. It does sound like the kind of thing that is resolvable, though.
I feel similar. I worked best wfh 1 day a week, whenever I had a sizeable chunk of work that required concentration time, as my open office is impossible for that. I run to work otherwise, so my commute was also my gym time, so I feel like I've lost a lot in moving to complete remote during the pandemic.
I also felt comfortable turning off Slack notifications for a few hours to focus, and so on. Now, we(my manager for the team)'ve established a rule that we have to prioritize responding to pings (leaving Slack on all the time) so I feel like I've lost that quiet concentration time. I'm thoroughly not enjoying WFH for days at a time, but I appreciate that my company is letting me wfh to stay healthy. I also appreciate that I got this data point, so I can seriously think about this if I ever want a remote job.
Wholeheartly agree. Other side not prepared problem is so true. Having less respect for other's time and office work, is one of the reason. What I observed is in case of WFH, it is very necessary to mandate office-timings else people just misuse WFH uncounsiously.
Update: Another problem I faced is lacking awareness in family about your work. People thing you'r sitting idle on laptop and end up doing errands for them.
I read my wife the headline and we both thought of the same thing - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=co_DNpTMKXk - which this article skips over completely. Disappointing.
Such a good sketch program. I love everything Mitchell and Webb do. I thought of this video immediately. Glad to see it was already posted. :)
thanks for the good laugh
And now that both halves of the two income household are working from home, well...
I'm investing in Durex.
Pretty decent list, as someone who's full-time remote let me add one more:
At the end of the day send your manager a quick email of what you did and things that happened. You shouldn't spend more than 5 minutes and there's never an expectation of a reply but it's a great way to fill them in and augment the in-person conversations that happen in the office.
As someone who is a remote manager of remote colleagues, I would ask any employee giving me a daily update to stop. It is one more distraction and I prefer to evaluate people for their long-term productivity rather than daily. I may be an outlier though.
Currently dealing with remote work involving daily manager updates (manager in “stand ups” that are, as is often the case, not really stand ups but just telling your manager what you did) and no real project management/planning. Didn’t realize just how important 1) not having your actual, personal manager in your project stand ups and 2) week or longer planned-out targets for completing things sorted out by a real project manager were to my happiness (and productivity). Stressful as fuck.
Sounds like the problem is with your manager. IMHO a good manager is more than welcome in project management and update meetings and should be a helper to get things done, not a stressor.
I think maybe if project management and “stakeholder” status weren’t also effectively done by the manager it might make it OK. I got spoiled by a few years at a place with outstanding project management and it’s taking some adjustment to go back to so loose a style.
For many years, I used to have a little html file I called "log.html" (just plain html) and at the end of every day before I left, I'd add a section at the top, dated, separated with a horizontal rule <hr>, with notes about what I did that day, and also little things I learned. When it came time to make my weekly status report, I'd refer back to it. I could also search through it and find various bits of information I'd written down. And if other people wondered what I'd been up to, they could look at it too.
Yes. I do this. In Gdocs though, name is productivity, where I add the day in format [dd/mm/yyyy] followed by bullets points on things I thought and did during the day. It also helps me to wrap my mind around in the following weeks, like, what was I thinking? then I go back to the log, and remember the trail of thought leading to my decisions. It is quite worth a while doing this I reckon.
Keeping notes and referencing them as needed in periodic one-on-one meetings is very helpful.
I'm with you on that. If my staff needed to send me a daily summary I'd worry I'd hired the wrong staff.
However it's not a bad idea to keep a worklog for yourself. Just jot down a sentence for new tasks and then a rough time frame. Just so if anyone does ask next week what you did last Monday you've got some idea. (General advice, not just WFH advice).
That's fair enough, it's something that's worked well for me and I find it handy for giving visibility into smaller things that I might not email/im about and would get lost in the mix.
Some may perceive this as weakness.
You are an outlier. There were more managers, that wanted to know how I spent every hour of the day than these with long time goals.
Last time shit like that was required in a job i had i always ended it with "and i spent the last hour of the day writing my daily report".
If your manager can't evaluate your performance based on what you do not what you say, it may be better to change the manager.
daily reports are obviously bullshit. a lot of days I would have nothing to say but "I tried 8 things and none of them worked".
on the flip side, regular reports on a more reasonable schedule can be good for the employee. sometimes I'll spend a whole week hard at work investigating/testing different approaches to fix some bug and end up submitting a one-line change. without the backstory, it might look like I sat on my hands all week and started work friday afternoon.
My main problem with it isn’t so much productivity (if anything I’m possibly a little more productive). It’s more the isolation (not helped by the fact that my country is now closing everything down). The only person I’ve talked to in person since Wednesday was a supermarket cashier. Assuming this goes on for a few months I have serious doubts about my ability to stay sane.
Yeah same here. I work remotely anyway, but usually do so in a coworking space. Now that I'm actually at home, it gets kind of lonely. Not looking forward to the moment the actual lockdown reaches us.
In my case the first crisis came after three months.
It gets better after that.
I'd definitely hope not to be doing this for three months!
what you need is a hangout with friends on the weekends somewhere. Don't just have work in your life.
Edit: obviously, the recent events would be an exception, but i'm just saying in general.
I mean, I do, normally. The current crisis makes that more difficult, though.
TFA is loaded with good advice.
However, there's one thing missing: Track your time, say in 10-15 minute blocks, with short notes about what you're doing. That can be integrated with your calendar.
I consulted for many years, simultaneously for multiple clients with multiple projects, so that was essential for billing. But I can imagine that it'd also be useful if you're dealing with managers with little experience of working remotely.
The idea of videoconferencing from home creeps me some. It's a privacy issue. And I do love working in bathrobes. It's comfortable, and makes for less laundry.
> Track your time, say in 10-15 minute blocks
I've read this advice a lot, but quite frankly I don't believe it. 10-15 minutes block is too short, and it would probably take too much in terms of overhead (at least at the beginning).
Plus, it's known that 10-15 minutes is what it takes for the average person to "get in the zone" as in "focusing on something".
If we're talking pomodoros (25 minutes) that could work. I used to try 45-minutes pomodoros, but always stopped at around 30-35 minutes (focus lost, got tired/distracted, took a break).
Fair enough. It's mainly that 10-15 minutes is the minimum amount of time that gets counted.
Have you heard of Toggl? It's a time tracker that integrates with your browser and let you click click click on Google Agenda meetings, JIRA tasks, GitHub PRs and hopefully most of the tools you use, to track how much time you spent on it. I've used it since 2017 and it was a game changer: helped me reduce multitasking, produce factual invoices when billing hourly, identify what ate all the time in my day...
I'm sure there are also other alternatives out there but Toggl is the only one I have experience with.
I am willing to bet a decent amount of work from home folks don’t wear pants.
I work from home full time now. Have been for about a year. Before I started working from home, jeans, chinos, etc. for 10+ hours a day wasn’t bothersome. But now? They bug me. I do have different kind of sweatpants to wear during work hours. That does help demarcate the work day.
This is only anecdotal evidence, but unlike many other days, today, I am wearing pants.
I thought that was the whole point.
pants, no. sweatpants, joggers, shorts? (almost) always
No devices will help you do your job when you have a few kids and the spouse is also supposed to work from home..
this. When management is no-kids, it's going to be a problem
Working from home for 6 years now.
What worked for me:
Sleep till noon
Checking mail/chats
2-4h creative work (design, coding, writing) interleaved with mail/chats if the flow won't hit
Checking Mail/chat
<30h work weeks
only <4 meetings a month
See that you have to find time for work and not for life.
I really dislike video chat for full-time remote work. Video chat is still too lo-fi to approach the utility of in-person meetings and has the same downsides (grooming, dress, other appearance-based stereotypes). What's wrong with voice?!
What's wrong with voice is that you lose a load of communication nuance. Depending on the tool and how people connect it can be difficult to tell who's even talking.
I work for a company where their policy is that you try for video chat first and degrade to voice then synchronous text then async. It keeps it as close to the feel of being in an office as possible.
I was pretty sceptical at first but the proof for me is when you meet a colleague in real life and don't realise you hadn't actually met them before. That doesn't happen with voice.
10 years on, I'm back in an open plan office at the moment temporarily and finding it painful that you can't just have a one to one chat across the office, that post its suck compared to online tools for certain meetings, that you can't see someone a couple of rows away doesn't want to be disturbed.
And I have to commute for an hour each way for this degraded experience.
> What's wrong with voice?!
What's wrong with text?
Text is one way. You cannot have a fluid conversation via text. Voice and voice+video are faster, plus they carry more information, prevent misunderstandings etc.
Instant messaging is synchronous two-way communication like voice and video. I'm not sure what you mean by "fluid" conversation, though. Voice is good for people who aren't good at typing or expressing themselves via text. However, I don't see what additional conversationally-useful information is conveyed by video of people's faces.
Maybe I just spend too much time listening to the radio and podcasts? Maybe it was growing up in an era where voice phone conversations were more common than texting and facetime?
More MIS information? Text forces you to think before you type.
Perhaps you don't like having a record? :)
Yes, good luck explaining things to people who can't understand basic instructions via text. You might use it for "records" to protect yourself, but getting things done is easier. When I ask someone 'do you understand', in text it might sound very aggressive and sometimes offensive. Via phone or video, it is much more relaxed. If you are concerned about recording, just use screen capture and save it somewhere for a while. Even text cannot be used as a clear evidence, the other person simply says 'I didn't understand that sentence that way'.
Why are you thinking of liability? I'm thinking of not having to take notes...
Sure, but there's a TON of out-of-band data in voice that cannot be easily replicated in text, that's a fact.
Voice tone, pitch, pauses, irony, sarcasm (both easier to misunderstand in text), etc.
And in person or voice chat have the highest signal-to-noise additional data stream that is body language. "The mouth says yes, but the eyes say no."
I vastly prefer text. Sometimes I need to extract information out of someone who doesn't do a great job of communicating via text and voice helps. Sometimes it's clear that there's a tone-based misunderstanding and that the easiest solution is to switch to voice and make it clear that the tone behind comments isn't sarcastic, dismissive, or whatever.
Agreed. I do quite a bit of videoconferencing and I find the "need" of other people to see faces weird. Voicechat should do the job as well.
Maybe it's more difficult for people to focus on the conversation if their eyes have nothing to focus on?
Why isnt it normal to replace your face with a cartoon or a photo. If zoom cant do it, you can use a virtual camera program instead. Really, zoom meeting screens look like a grim collection of criminal mugshots. We should be able to do better than simple face video (which also drains the battery)
Focus on writing down meeting notes (or watch another person do it and pay attention in case you have something to add or they got something wrong).
> But please do not share your enthusiasm for the cat that looks like Garfield with everyone on the call.
This heavily depends on the company culture, tone of the meeting, participants, etc.
Basic savoir vivre still applies, interrupting someone to loudly admire a pet (or whatever) would simply be rude.
But if the discussion stalls and if it’s not a meeting about personnel reduction, I see no harm in saying that Mr Fluffy Paws looks especially nice today.
>Make sure you have a fixed schedule. Get up. Get ready. Do your job. Sign off.
This is the most important one. I sign on at 8:30, I sign off at 5:30, and I turn off my laptop and phone until 8:15 the next morning to give time to hook everything back up. No exceptions.I take a 1 hour lunch where I might continue a slack conversation but also do some yoga / Ring Fit.
> This is the most important one.
Like what everyone already said here; it depends on the person. For me that does not work.
I start work at home when I wake up, which can be 3 am or 1 pm and I work until I do not feel like it anymore, which can be 1 hour or 20 hours. Been doing that for 25+ years (not sure what the average is but I would say around 7 hours), works fine.
I was making the typical hour trek from San Francisco to Mountain View for four years, every day. Decided to move away and started working remotely 100%.
Not having the eight hours back in my week was life changing. Habits, health, relationships have all improved.
It feels like there are always going to be roles, teams and companies that must work together face to face, if we can culturally shift away from going into an office, it could really improve quality of life for lots of people.
For many others it may hurt them as work is a big social outlet. That’ll have to be taken into consideration.
I think we’ll see a big shift culturally over the next year as much more of the public potentially gets used to what it’s like working from home, companies may find it really helps(or hurts) their bottom line.
This could end up hurting as productivity will be terrible if everyone’s distracted with news on covid and employers associate that loss due to being remote.
Ultimately, post-crisis, expectations around how people work will significantly change.
Do you miss SF though?
Food, talent, energy - yes
Traffic, expensive everything, too much focus on work - no
I think working from home is amazing but it does take some adjustment. Good internet, exercise and Slack/Mattermost "visibility" (Participating in non-work related channels) is really important to have a good experience. Just another opinion.
Here's something I haven't seen mentioned and long term it makes a huge difference:
If so far you used public transportation to get to work or just walked and otherwise didn't do any exercise - start. 30 minutes of mild yoga is enough.
Remote work often comes with a double whammy of less exercise and increased snacking - both will make you put on weight.
I've put on 15kg over the four years I've worked remotely and now after two months of office work already lost 4kg, because there's this hill(20m height) I have to descend every day to get to work.
You keeping your balance in the bus every day really adds up over time.
The catchy title part 'no one talks about' is a bit overstated I think, as I could use it in my piece from 2018 as well for example: https://lukaszkups.net/notes/truth-about-remote-work/ - imho I've managed to capture there some details that are often overlooked in recent trendy articles too (and also not mentioned in this thread's blog post as well) ;)
Perhaps an office should become a part of all future houses, just like kitchens and bedrooms, to help with focus, privacy and discipline/scheduling etc.
In the long run, working-from-home will only be a win, in so many aspects of society: reducing daily traffic and the associated stress, reclaiming the space taken up by office towers and parking lots, all of which will improve overall public health and increase leisure time, which would boost local economies and even travel industries and so on.
Working from home is a chance to experience unbridled flow, as a home worker since 96' I would say just do 3 or 4 hours a day for the first 2 weeks and resolve all those personal and home things that are on your mind, clear the runway for some real productivity :) For now the only other tip applies only if you get irritated by distractions learn to be more gracious, I found it was the irritation I brought to the party that broke the flow, not the interruption itself.
As someone who is on my feet all day everyday working with metal, probably inhaling bad fumes, no healthcare no benefits: that font is absolutely gouging my eyes out homie
On the subject of conference cameras I can fully recommend the Logitech BCC 950 (https://www.logitech.com/en-gb/product/conferencecam-bcc950). It's ideal for work from home and you won't usually need to use headphones with it. On the downside it's pretty expensive.
> If you are uncertain how to properly make sure you get a healthy lunch and dinner check “Fitness YouTube”.
Why would you not know that if you're working at home, if you knew it while working at work?
Or, if you didn't know when working at work, why would you start caring when switching to working from home?
I don't really see the need to use headphones. Almost nobody in my team does, and we were already working from home ~50% of the time before the current situation.
Despite all the bad things I want to say about the Macbook Pro provided by my employer, its speakers and mic do a pretty good job during videochat.
The problem is the microphone is too good. I just bought my entire team headsets because I'm sick of the background noise from other rooms or in one case his next door neighbour coming over the macbook microphone. Also it stops people shouting which my experience is most people do when on speakerphone, despite the fact that they have never needed to.
It would be fine if your team is used to this and understands mute buttons and whatnot. Not fine when its an employee who doesn't mute and types at 100wpm on the same macbook.
We understand mute buttons. :)
And there shouldn't be a lot of typing involved unless I'm in a 1:1 pair debugging/troubleshooting session, and even then it's not exactly reaching 100 wpm.
I can't say I've been bothered much by background noise, that's actually more often an issue in the office. In the following weeks there will probably be more of it due to kids being home, but we have no choice here.
I purchased USB speakerphones for my team. It eliminates echo without requiring headphones.
The folks I eat lunch with are doing a daily zoom meeting at our lunchtime, to help with the isolation.
Good camera suggestions there. Nothing else there should be a surprise. Although honestly, a webcam on a laptop should be fine too, or tablet. But headphones are a really good idea for conferences.
The flip side is that when you are stuck in a busy noisy office, the only place you want to be, is at home to concentrate and do your work. Stuck at home too long, and need the office. Balance.
Don't pretend that WFH makes it OK to have your dog barking in the background all meeting. Yes, we had a ton of WFH newbies this past week, and this in particular is driving me nuts.
I wonder how many people need to start popping vitamin D when switching to the shut-in lifestyle—especially if living father north. And how many of them will know that they do.
And I'd buy things sooner than later.
I doubt stores have appropriate stocks for the change over.
I've been working from home for a decade. I've worked at many companies and been part of the hiring process for remote developers.
Most people just don't have the discipline to work remotely. I think productivity will be reduced overall and it might prevent remote working in the future.
I really believe that working remotely or from home is a skill that needs to be developed over time in most cases. There may be some people who are just naturally better at it, but the first time I had a remote job we went from five days in the office to five days at home abruptly and I was horrible at it and inefficient at my job.
With my current job we started doing 1-2 days of working from home a week over the last year or so. Doing it part time has given me a chance to develop the skills and space needed to be successful and now that we are being pushed into it full time I feel a lot more prepared for it.
I do agree, though, that for most people who aren’t used to it or haven’t had a chance to develop the skills needed it’s going to be a rough transition and productivity is likely to decline, at least temporarily. Some of that may be due to working remotely, but I’m sure at least a part of it is just due to the general circumstances and anxiety surrounding it.
But like didn’t you go to high school or college? Did you never have to study at home? How does one get into the modern office workforce without ever learning how to be productive when left to their own devices? I don’t get it
For me working from an office or working from home is literally the same thing. I’m on computer with headphones on and talking through slack.
> But like didn’t you go to high school or college? Did you never have to study at home?
My (admittedly limited) experience with education is that no, you don't have to study that much. Pay attention during classes/lectures, do your exercises during the breaks and that covers most of the stuff. Maybe do an hour here or there at home.
Then there's the one off course that has you do more work than you can pull within these limits; dread the deadline and slack on. Pull an all-nighter before the deadline. That's how it goes.
I'm watching a close relative attend university and I feel like they're studying even less than I did.. they attend lectures maybe 1-3 times a week, sometimes watch a video lecture... mostly just stay at home, play games and slack on. Jeez! Seems to translate to something like 10-15 hours of work a week? And not particularly demanding work. In for a shock when they need to be at work 8 hours a day and actually try get some stuff done every day (every hour even).
> But like didn’t you go to high school or college?
I was home schooled for K-12 but I did go to college and I was actually pretty effective at working on my own. But I think the nature of the work you’re assigned in college is different from that of the workplace, at least in most situations. For example, college won’t necessarily teach you how to communicate effectively with a remote team, how to stick to a schedule even at home, how to set up a space so you can take calls, etc.
I also think I sort of unlearned the skills needed after being forced to come into the office between X and Y time of the day for several years after college, so when I was suddenly left to my own devices again it was a difficult shift. Had I jumped straight from college to a fully remote job I may have done a bit better.
Now that I’ve relearned those skills I much prefer a mix of working from home and being in the office, that way I get a good balance of focused time at home and social time at the office.
> For example, college won’t necessarily teach you how to [..] stick to a schedule even at home
If anything, I'd say it's especially good at teaching the opposite if you dormed on-campus - how to fit work in between randomly-timed socializing.
Unless things have changed a lot since I was in college, a student who can't easily study at home could always go to the library or the computer lab.
Personally I had no problem working at home on things I was finding interesting - but if I was studying something I was less passionate about I was liable to get distracted unless I distanced myself from distractions like browsing the internet.
I'm one of those people who lacks the discipline. I live with someone who works remote full time, and they have that discipline, and are in fact way more productive working from home. But me? I have no problem doing well in the office, but all the full work from home jobs I've had? I've been a miserable failure. I'm worried 'cause my performance is going to drop a lot right as we head into the third recession of my career.
It really varies by personality. Some people do a lot better by themselves. But if you hire me? It's worth paying for the office space.
I agree being remote is not for everyone. And not everyone wants to be remote. I also agree that productivity will likely drop, but the remote aspect will only be one of the many reasons considering what's going on right now. I assume any productivity drop during this time will be brought up when discussing remote, ignoring the circumstances and that it was basically enforced without any preparation.
I find I lack the discipline not to -over-work. When you don’t have clear boundaries between the home and workplace life, and you love what you do, it’s far easier to let work consume you, which isn’t generally a good thing.
The two most important things for me so far have been:
- Keep a morning routine and a regular schedule
- Regularly check in with my colleagues, and post progress updates.
For my own personal anxiety, I'll not allow myself to feel guilty if I'm being slow or unproductive, (even in the office, sometimes the energy's just not there today) but I will allow myself to feel guilty if I'm failing to keep regular contact with my teammates. Without doing this, it's far too easy to slip into a rabbit hole researching something interesting, but ultimately not work related. Or, y'know, refresh the HN homepage for an hour and get nothing done.
> Most people just don't have the discipline to work remotely.
I'd phrase it differently: most people don't start with the discipline. However, it's something you can learn. I don't know if everyone learns. I don't know if everyone learns in the same circumstances. I don't think nearly as many people will learn under exceptional circumstances (virus pandemic) as they would if they were starting to do full time remote permanently. And yes I'm concerned that a lot of people/companies will draw the conclusion that remote can't work because that one time we had to do it, there were problems...
The virus will associate working from home with a disease pandemic. It already is killing the work from home culture. It's okay if the majority go to an office, the problems arise when the indifferent demonize working from home.
Working remotely benefits greatly from creating the right environment to reduce distractions. That can be the difference between enough discipline and failure.
//Most people just don't have the discipline to work remotely
What works for people without that discipline ?
Why can't the boss just tell at them over Skype ?
>What works for people without that discipline ?
Amphetamines. Seriously. Prescription, of course. Coffee is a distant second. Thiobromine can be better for some people - you can get supplements it you can buy brewing cacao if you want to experiment with a potentially tasty drink.
Yeah, sure, there are behavioral interventions but for a guy like me, if I can just do it with a reasonably pill I'm willing to take the risk. Your risk tolerance may vary. Meditation is a good alternative but it takes time and, ironically, discipline.
Incidentally it may be the reverse, that people who are good at meditating are those predisposed to having good discipline!
My number one tip for employees is a simple one: above all else, be responsive. If your company has an instant messenger app, your response time should be in seconds, not minutes. If you're going on a small errand or putting together a snack in the kitchen, it is to your benefit as much as everyone else's to update your status. A simple 'be right back' goes a long ways. When managers can't get ahold of people working from home is when they start to ask questions, run VPN reports, and reign things in.
In reading the comments below, this seems to be wildly unpopular. I can understand where they're coming from. Being available may be very appreciated by others, but it really hurts when you're deeply involved in something. I manage this by marking myself as busy when I know I'm about to dive deep into something, but you can't always see it coming, and I can understand the resistance to this approach.
This destroys deep work. If you are paid for deep work you have to balance responsiveness with getting your work done. Don’t be unavailable, use status messages wisely, and set up an SLA that makes sense for deep work. “Seconds” is not reasonable IMO. Depends on your role, I suppose.
> This destroys deep work
yes, but not everybody has to do deep work all the time.
for example, part of my job is to be available to colleagues for consultation. it might be something to which i can quickly respond "ticket or gtfo" or "busy right now, could you ask me again in 10-15 minutes?". But it could also require me immediate action (some production environment is failing).
As a company culture it is important to empower people to tell "not now", to educate people to only tell "not now" if you actually can't right now, and to train yourself to write "not now" without losing focus.
I disagree. Respond when you have time not when the micro-manager ask about trivia.
Managers should be looking on results of someone work not what you type or when. This is one of the things that piss me in the tech industry, Incompetent managers using tools like the end of year feedback, number of hours spent in office or culture fit to decide if someone is perfoming well.
I manage a remote team and the first training session I give is on the importance of asynchronous communication. Synchronous communication should be scheduled in advance or for dire emergencies (at least for projects/roles that required extended periods of focus).
>reign things in
managers who think they are kings are kind of the problem
On the contrary. Don't be distracted all the time starring at the IM icon. When working, ignore the icon until you are done. Talk it through with managers in case they don't know how focused work works. If there is really something super urgent, they can call you.
If your managers mistrust you so much that they feel the need to check up on you like a child, switch company quickly.
You couldn't be more wrong if you tried. Use the right tool (sync vs async) communication for the right job. Establishing timelines and check-in points, communicating if and when things get off track, and delivering autonomously is how you mitigate this. Much like in real life. How lost do you have to be to conflate results with responsiveness?
This is a learning experience for those neurotic control freaks too.
I keep my mobile phone on me (and smartwatch) while in the house so I can do other things as a break (wash dishes) but still be responsive if necessary.
I don't send anyone "be right back" messages -- I will set my IM status to unavailable if I intend to be unavailable.
This shouldn’t be done even in the office. Can’t tell you how many times I get interrupted by any member of my team in the office for trivialities or even useful things that can also wait. We have some fires but that’s only about 10% of my interruptions.
The medium of in-person communication is very different from the tools of remote communication. You're trying to force in-person protocols and expectations in a situation that isn't well suited to this medium. This just adds to stress and friction in your team.
Have a look at Gitlab's remote working guide for lots more insight on how they address this situation: https://about.gitlab.com/company/culture/all-remote/guide/
I'm glad my manager doesn't expect a response in seconds. Some colleagues do initially, but they learn eventually. If he did, I'd tactfully explain why it's a bad thing
Yeah, not going to do this.
As if everyone isn’t anxious enough.
Counter to this, I would suggest scheduling in focus time in your calendar and block incoming calendar requests/IMs etc.
That way you can be responsive in scheduled times, and unresponsive in focus time.
I am not sure how this is supposed to work. Should your team members check the calendar before they ping you? and if they get annoyed by your lack of responsiveness you point them to the calendar?
Blocking time in your calendar will stop incoming meeting invites, and then at those times my IM status is set to DND.
This idea that people at work should always be available is not a good standard that we've set ourselves up in. If you're in support or some job then yeah, this model won't work for you. If you're coding then it makes a big difference.
You change your status. Others would then know (or should know) your status before reaching out to you.
If you need micromanagement, you have other problems.
Perhaps you are reinforcing poor behaviors that make people feel dependent on micromanagement.
I figured it was only a matter of time before all the WFH "advice" articles would start. This guys's been doing it for 2 weeks and he's already an expert dispensing advice. I've been WFH for 8 years, so reading this is a bunch of LOL.
Regarding headphones, this is not an issue once you move into a dedicated office space in your house. One thing I use to hate is taking headphones on/off every time there's a call. Regarding set hours, that's totally a preference. I work late at night sometimes because I feel like it. WFH means flexibility and not commuting means sometimes I get a jolt of inspiration to work off hours. I don't mind because the trade-off is I get to take time off during the day to attend school events for my kids.
Remote work is a lifestyle change for sure. More loneliness, more discipline, less water-cooler gossip. It requires the right mindset and personality that some of you don't have, and I'm sure you're itching to get back to the office.
2 weeks? He writes he hasn't worked in an office for 20 years.
And yeah, not everyone might have a dedicated to office area in there apartment, and this still would not prevent any typing noise.