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Working From Home: What if You Never Saw Your Colleagues in Person Again? (bbc.com)
Bryan Lufkin, writing for BBC: Throughout my career I've worked with people that I've never met in person. In theory, I could spend an entire day without meeting another human face-to-face. But could this kind of self-imposed isolation become standard working practice in the future?
Studies show that in the US, the number of telecommuters rose 115% between 2005 and 2017. And in early 2015, around 500,000 people used Slack, the real-time chat room programme, daily. By last September, that number soared to over 6 million. In 2017 a Gallup poll revealed that 43% of 15,000 Americans say they spend at least some of their time working remotely, a 4% rise from 2012. And a 2015 YouGov study found that 30% of UK office workers say they feel more productive when they work outside their workplace. How would we feel if we never had to work with another person face-to-face again? Would we care? Have things gone so far that we might not even notice?
Studies show that in the US, the number of telecommuters rose 115% between 2005 and 2017. And in early 2015, around 500,000 people used Slack, the real-time chat room programme, daily. By last September, that number soared to over 6 million. In 2017 a Gallup poll revealed that 43% of 15,000 Americans say they spend at least some of their time working remotely, a 4% rise from 2012. And a 2015 YouGov study found that 30% of UK office workers say they feel more productive when they work outside their workplace. How would we feel if we never had to work with another person face-to-face again? Would we care? Have things gone so far that we might not even notice?
I hope so!
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
The best summary
http://theoatmeal.com/comics/working_home
The one place I was at that allowed work from home saw me being much more productive. No cubicle drive-bys. No distractions. No ruckus from the surroundings.
A pox on those short-sighted employers who insist on chaining us to the stupid desks. Seriously. I hate it.
The "Civilized World" jumped the shark ca. 1973.
Well I think one of the causes for this is the insistence from upper management that open plan offices are a good idea and impose it on every one but themselves.
the result is that people need to find a quiet place from time to time to not be disturb so that they can concentrate on a specific task. And when putting headphones on, not answering email immediately and so on don't work any more because people just come by your desk and stand there until you give up and talk to them, the only solution is to simply not be there!
I think it really depends on the job. There are clearly some where being left the hell alone and not bothered allows a person get much more accomplished, never mind all the time saved from the commute to work.
However, I can't imagine having something like a writers' room that works anywhere near as effectively if everyone is video conferencing in from home. Also anything that requires a lot of specialized and expensive equipment doesn't seem workable in that manner either.
However, if you could have 20% of the current work force working from home it would likely make traffic far more bearable for the other 80%.
But people will still show their ass. I would link goatse but thats a cryptocurrency now.
I have severe degenerative disk disease. My manager used to unofficially accommodate my disability by letting me work from home, but then another manager decided to make an issue of it...
...and I can't, even if I want to, because going in would provide evidence that I no longer need the accommodation.
Long story short, I had medical documentation, I could prove the previous accommodation, and I had a decent lawyer. I never need to set foot in the office again.
sounds like an article from 15-years ago from someone obsessed with Second Life. Makes one wonder how little qualifications are required to advise government officials.
I loved working from home, when I could, but occasional socializing in person is still a must. Neither e-mail, nor IM, nor audio can properly convey all the subtle details of smiling and other body-language. Smilies, emojis and memes are a crutch... Video is better, but it is still not as good as the real thing.
As a result, for example, your rejection of a genuinely bad idea can get easily misconstrued as meanness or vendetta against whoever proposed it. People slowly grow to resent each other — meeting in person, whether for work or just for a "happy hour", is crucial to maintain good relations.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
At some point, whether you like it or not, you will have to be a part of the outside world. Why delay the inevitable?
I develop industrial custom made software for small and medium businesses.
I used to work in an office, and it was a living hell. Trying to keep dozens of variables floating in your head while moving through pages and pages of code and tabs between them for all the files is hard enough on its own. Doing it in a room full of people who are socializing, laughing, touching you etc is intolerable.
If bosses want to do ONE thing so that people don't come into their offices and drop kick them before going crazy, let people who aren't social butterflies just live their lives and do their work peacefully.
Since I started to work at home my stress level has dropped through the floor. I don't work the way I used to, I'll just put my work down for an hour or three here and there, watch some television, go for a walk, spend time with my wife etc. However I also work 7 days per week putting in a few hours each day broken up. The money that I saved from not having to drive an hour to work and an hour back stacks up on top of the money I save in food and little things I'd pick up like coffee. I'm making a dollar less per hour, but with what I'm keeping in pocket I might as well have gotten a nearly 50% raise.
I contrast that to when I was in an office and the transexaul who created our multi media would regail me with stories about their budding business making edible penis' to the point where I slammed my fists down on my desk and screamed at them to shut the fuck up before I put them through a window. It is a night and day difference. I smile contentedly and quietly cook my meals, no bulging veins, no weirdo's, no distractions.
Most of all, there is nothing now between me and my beloved code. I can create with such fluidity, take time when I need to take time, or hammer out work like there is no tomorrow unfettered by distraction. Each day feels so good and happy. Coworkers and office socialization is thought to be good, but the reality is that it is just a giant ball of loud noise and endless naval gazing facebook style sillyness with few people seriously engaged in their work.
My nearest collegue is 100miles away, we all work remote, we get together once every 6 months for a 'company' meeting to recall who everyone is.
Beyond that there is NO reason to be in the same office as everything we work on is scattered globally and we couldn't even PHYSICALLY touch the systems if we want to (READ: CLOUD), if the systems fall offline we call one of the big 3 and they go look at down systems. Other than that we keep the systems running and go on about our day.
Wheel of Time: Book by Book and Sumview (summary review) Bigdady92 style: http://bigdady92.blogspot.com/
...how many of these people that "work from home for some part of the day" also spend between 8-10 hours in the office during that same day?
More likely, for the first time.
When I was Debian project leader - is that around 20 years ago now? Time flies - I had around 200 regular collaborators who were the package maintainers at that time. They were distributed worldwide and we never met. We made a great distribution that worked and got on the Space Shuttle for two flights. I ran into Ian Kluft at a ham radio function, and eventually was invited to Europe to speak and met some other developers. But I have still never met many of those 200.
Bruce Perens.
They cannot escape; I will haunt them forever.
Sounds like a solution to every working man being accused of sexual harassment for looking at a woman. Then if your spouse sues, at least t's community property.
How about a moderation of -1 pedantic.
I've been working from home for about a year now, and honestly I love it. I am a software developer, so it makes sense for me to have quiet and minimize interruptions. As a result, I'm more productive (because I can just turn slack off when I don't want to be interrupted, harder to do in an office environment) and I get to spend more time with my family instead of an hour or more on the road on a daily basis. We use Zoom constantly and we try to make it a point to turn on our camera's so we can actually see each other and interact. That makes a huge difference to me, since it allows me to feel like I get that daily interaction with folks.
We also make twice yearly homages to HQ and I would be ok with it being quarterly honestly. We go to our HQ for a week and get some stuff worked out that's easier to do in person. The team building aspect of those times actually feel like they mean something as well. Previously, team building events didn't mean much because they were with folks I interacted with in person everyday.. Now I feel like they make a larger impact on myself and my colleagues because that time is so much more valuable.
Just my two cents
I feel less productive working from home. Way to many distractions including turning on a tv and to many temptations. Plus i think i would miss the humans.
thatcher was a fucking nazi bitch and I hope her soul is burning in hell
I think many take for granted how important bouncing stuff off people at work helps. Look at Google, they encourage you to stay at work, even if you spend time just having fun. Microsoft has work at home programs, but still requires people to physically attend meetings, and planning sessions. Work at home might be more useful for a single person not involved in a group task. But the distractions at home, and some people's inability to stay focused and fluff off can seriously degrade productivity working from home.
No thanks. I don't want to be a keyboard warrior. Human interaction usually improves your mental state too https://www.nytimes.com/2017/0...
I work from home all the time.
Everyone I work with is in India - all of my local colleagues have been laid off and no doubt I will be soon.
In theory, I could spend an entire day without meeting another human face-to-face
If it were possible i'd gladly never see, speak or hear another person in real life ever again.
Being utterly socially retarded (possibly a bit autistic but never diagnosed) being around people is utterly exhausting to me. I have no natural ability to socialise what-so-ever and if i have to spend a few hours around people, even if i've known them for years, it drains me entirely because i have to process everything, i have to think constantly, i have to word and reword every one of my sentences in my head and likewise analyse every single word they say to desperately grasp the proper meaning.
I love working from home. I don't miss humans face-to-face. I still need contact via phone and IM and that happens daily. I am a programmer, and our people are mostly distributed, so an office generally doesn't make sense any more anyway. But I hate it when the big bosses come up from head office and I have to go to the office. Totally wasted dead unproductive time.
The other thing is, I never need to print anything at home - I can get by with stuff on the screen. When I worked in an office, I was always printing white papers and documents. The trees love me now.
That's exactly what Britain needs right now. An *IRON WOMAN*. Not girlie men. What's going on in Britain?
Thatcher ruined Britain for many generations. It'll take a lot of time to undo her stench she imparted in our political system.
Offices are redundant and counterproductive for information workers. Technology has made obsolete the burden of relocating ourselves geographically every day—at great expense in terms of time, money, and stress—to shuffle data around computers at (nearly) the speed of light. I'll readily concede that in-person collaboration is valuable, but hardly a constant necessity. Let's stop blocking roadways, wasting energy, and building surplus office space. Let's meet face-to-face only when needed, and otherwise work in comfortable, distraction-free environments that're a short walk from our breakfast tables. I've been working from home for almost five years. It's made me happier and more productive, and that should be a norm.
Screw them! I'll focus on debugging Wolfenstein alone in my home just before the release and clicking pi symbols on the screen.
Hello fellow coder.
I have been where you are, poor, living out of my car, I saw winter approaching and knew it would potentially mean my death.
Working for free must end, work for money.
I found work by going around sites like kijiji and looking for key words like javascript etc. This would lead me to small or medium sized businesses who were looking to hire coders so that they could have a GUI for interacting and manipulating their database of clients, warranties, etc.
I hope you do not die.
IRC and Jabber are where the cool people play.
For jobs that are entirely theory based, I can see that happening (like writing software on the web, or accounting, or a number of other jobs). For jobs where you must physically interact with a product or customers, not so much. On the flip side, many employers have countless incompetent managers who only feel comfortable when they can look over your shoulder and see that you are in fact working, regardless of how productive you are, or if you just switched screens from solitaire.
The only way I can see a mass shift of theory based jobs to permanent offsite status is if states and/or the federal government eliminate the gas tax, and instead charge the equivalent amount of taxes to employers based on the number of employees they require to be onsite each day. For example:
100 employees onsite multiplied by the average commute for the state = X number of miles driven round trip = Y number of state and federal taxes incurred to maintain the roads.
The more employees allowed to work from home, the lower that tax liability. This moves the regressive gas tax burden for highways from employees to employers, and gives them an incentive to use the roads less. You may not think it is much, but for example, in California the average commute is 27 minutes one way, assuming an average speed of 60mph, thats a daily round trip of 54 miles. The California gas tax is currently $0.42/gallon, and assuming the average commuter gets 27mpg (because I'm lazy and that's probably close to average for the entire commuter fleet), that's $0.84/day. Factor a premium for using the roads during rush our for an additional 130%.
Multiply that by 260 working days per year and each employee and the business would be paying $568/employee per year to the state and $250 to the federal government. If you have 100 employees, you are looking at about $82,000 in taxes each year that a company could save by letting their employees work from home (to say nothing of other direct overhead like electricity, air conditioning and office space.) Obviously transportation companies (semi shipping, taxi services, etc.) would have to pay based on actual miles driven for the company, including commute and on the job.
This is one tax burden that is legitimately the responsibility of companies and should be paid for by companies, rather than employees.
As more companies let workers telecommute to save money, the added benefit of less congestion, fewer accidens and less road wear are also realized.
If you disagree, please post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like
I have worked my job for the past 5 years.
One trip to the client site, and one video call. Lets me put a face to the voice on the lync call. I save a lot on gasoline costs, and I only see friends, on my schedule. Wave of the future.
Oh Yes, less sick days, not breathing the crap others spew out.
There's a reason Bryan was writing for BBC and not posting this on Slashdot.
Self-imposed exile vs management-imposed open office (and the all the needless interruptions and stress).
Gee, I wonder which one I should pick? Oh wait - I already have.
I think the desire to is also dependent on the person. For myself, its pretty much a yes please. I could go for vast stretches without physical contact, in fact while I work in an office now, I'd said most of my interactions are already digital anyway. I have some overlap in what I work on with the physical people around me, but not a great deal either. Every now and again it is kind of interested to go to some large shared meeting or conference and put a face to a name. I've had working relationships with folks for like 10 years, and then meet them at some seminar which is kind of fun. So I don't think I would be really all that put out if working from home and rarely if ever met anyone. My partner however is more of a social type worker. When facing a prospect of taking a job where she would have little or no physical contact with many people she balked at it, and ultimately rejected the idea, looking elsewhere. For her she would need the constant social contact to stay interested with the job, where her job satisfaction is as much about who she works with than the actual nuts and bolts of what she is actually doing. For her that kind of isolation would be unbearable.
When you never see somebody, then the personalization goes down. I'm all for teleworking, but not 100% telework. If your boss never sees you, its probably a LOT easer to lay you off.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt01...
-- "This world is a comedy to those who think, a tragedy to those who feel."
...then I wouldn't be home sick like I am now because someone came to work sick.
makes it easier to be an fake 1099er and have less control then a real 1099er
I'm a sys admin and a programmer. I can remotely access my servers from anywhere in the world and when coding I don't need the distractions provided by an office full of people. It's only the outdated business practices of my company that make me come into the office Monday to Friday.
but boy do i passionately hate working in openspaces! who the hell thought that putting a bunch of people with different job dynamics in one big room would be a good idea ?
people talk, answer phones, tell stupid personal stories, make jokes....while other ones are trying to think and do problem solving and conception.
Home office increases productivity, makes savings for everybody. i'v been involved in projects with people working from home and everything went smooth. so yeah, i would't bother not viewing my colleagues in person again (for working purpose in the workplace, i mean some of em are cool)
If you're not willing to live in your car, eat out of dumpsters, and still code free software with no monetary incentive, well then, there's no place for you in Richard Matthew Stallman's GNU Utopia.
RMS bless Saint Ignucious the Great.
Never stop coding for free.
In theory I could be almost 100% remote, but I prefer to be in the office and interact more naturally with my colleagues. I do the odd day remotely, and I usually get some project that I've been putting off done then, but I wouldn't want to be remote more than one or two days a week tops.
It helps that I can walk to the office, of course.
You can't threaten me with a good time.
I would never have to listen to them eat with their mouth open again ...
My team comes all across the region. Even if I go to the office, I don't see them.
Sometimes I don't go to the office for weeks. But I usually go like once per week just to keep that "job" feeling going. Office is quite empty, as lots of people are doing the same. And it's a great office. Oh btw, I don't know most of the people in the office, as we work in totally different departments.
So I don't think 100% woking from home is good. But we don't need classic offices either. Just a shared place with some people. The only problem would be industry espionage, which would happen. Other than that, I could easily imagine people from different companies sharing an office. Most of use wouldn't care, either.
Working alone home is great. And if you miss human interaction, you can call prostitutes. One of the few jobs that could not be done remotely
Let me say this, I've seen the worst in Corporate America. I've worked at places that banned black clothing (it is a color of mourning and impacts the mental health of workers), white clothing (a color that is a symbol of oppression of african-americans and minorities) blue and red clothing (political affiliations), forbid male employees from being in a conference room with a female employee without the presence of at least an additional female employee (even if it is your boss), no personal decorations in a cubicle, no plants, no perfume, deodorant, or scented laundry detergent, no outside food (the risk of peanut and seafood allergies is too high to permit outside food), no soda, no coffee or tea (as some religions consider them drugs), a complete ban on non-halal/kosher foods on premise that the cafeteria can prepare (as it is offensive, yes no bacon, and yes nothing that could be an allergy vector, all gluten free, no eggs, nuts, chocolate, pretty much was just tofu shit when it was all said and done), no radio or headphones permitted, no external meals or meetings with any staff member during a work day (prior or after work M-F as it may be considered favoritism towards one employee versus another) and that was just ONE of the employers I've dealt with prior to retiring from technical work. It is sheer madness out there and in my current role is full telecommute I don't have to deal with that shit anymore. After the last few employers and what the 'culture' has become, there is no other option then working from home, the risk is just too high and I am in an at-will state as it is, I don't have the resources to keep a lawyer on speed dial. I wouldn't dare meet a coworker face to face in this current climate. It is just far too risky. When I was a consultant, I spent more of my time and energy dancing around HR policies that were beyond madness, we are talking HP Lovecraft levels of insanity, then actual work. I saw in a decade hundreds of people fired for things like "inviting a coworker to his son's birthday party" because another employee complained they didn't get invited. Talking about his daughter's trip to a girl scout camp. Wearing deodorant that apparently sent a staff member home because of a 'reaction'. Giving her husband (who working in the same building) a hug on the way in from the parking lot (it made the one filing the complaint feel alienated and unloved), wearing leather shoes, having a mowhawk (cultural appropriation apparently), and the fucking list just goes on and on. Hell I remember someone getting fired for soup on their tie after lunch in Minneapolis. I can't even imagine what office life is like now in the SJW era, that was all back in the late 90s and 2000 and it was already out of control in some places. Can't even imagine what it is like now.
-=[Idgarad]=- I Am A Savage In A Brave New World!
I'm an unemployed open source coder ... I can't get paid for working because there are no coding jobs in the tech industry.
Well, how many paid open source coding jobs are there? Have you considered working for pay for a company that keeps its code proprietary?
I'm in the same boat again now as I was about a decade ago. Both times I moved with my family to a place far and yon, but came to an arrangement with my employer to work remotely from a home office. Both times I travel back about 20-25% of the time (roughly once every 4-6 weeks), mostly to maintain social contacts. And that's the key if your larger project time is 25 or so people. After a certain size, and with the general workplace turnover, people in other groups with whom you interact are just cogs. I've worked on-premise at one software firm and never personally met the DBAs, even though they were a floor down. Wouldn't have mattered if I were next door or in Timbuktu.
But with the smaller companies / organizational units, where jobs are primarily "other duties as assigned", the importance of having person-to-person contact & socialization is immense. Especially if you're the odd duck who is primarily remote, and everyone else is in-office. It allows you to stay abreast of relevant business "gossip" that isn't always officially communicated, and to understand both the working style & unofficial responsibilities of your coworkers.
Johann
My goal ist zu slowly move into Tim Ferriss/4HWW territory. I usually like my colleagues, don't stay long with people I don't like that much. But I'd very much prefer a surfing beach right near my working spot. Or some nice powder snow to get into some snowboarding.
My goal is to go digital nomad in the foreseeable future without missing a beat income wise. Could work out.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Been working from home for years. I get so much more work done than being around people. I could care less for human interaction, that's what the neighborhood bar is for.
Fuck Ajit Pai
I have nothing but hate and loathing for my morning and evening commutes (over an hour each way to go 12 miles). but, as the saying goes, "if you can work from home, you can work off shore." so I drive in.
To be fair, there is a component of my job that requires on-site. This is currently distributed across our team. And this part is not very brain intensive. If we do remote work, this will be viewed as, "we can break the on-site off, hire IT just out of college and ship the brain part off-shore." The on-site (layer-1) can be easily handled by 2 competent network engineers, which would leave the layer-2/3 part vulnerable to lower labor rates of off-shore. Even if we do a drive in as needed, it's not as good or quick as getting up from your desk and walking over.
There are lots of reasons to be on-site and they currently ad up to a job for me. As soon as this evaporates, I can retire from IT. Way too grindy again and they aren't hiring old dogs too often. Might switch off between contracting and fishing.
As in going full-on gluttony working in my underpants which would be fun at first but eventually becoming one of those fat slob/shut-ins. What I like about work socialization is that it's totally casual and a secondary objective to getting a paycheck. If socialization is the primary objective then I feel the pressure to be interesting enough or they'll be moving on, not just dates but friendships too and I'm not great at smalltalk. I've hardly ever befriended a total stranger, it's like we've been classmates, studied together, worked together, played at the same sports team or had some other reason to hang out for a while which has warmed up into friendships.
That said, I don't think the socialization has much to do with work or feeling like a team. As in I could totally see myself working in some sort of shared office space where we'd have different jobs for different companies and still do lunches and water cooler talk and goofing around a bit together. A lot of the people I work with do other bits that I don't really know much about and they don't really know that much about what I do anyway. And when we're on a break we don't really want to talk about work anyway. The whole "pulling together" thing is a bit overrated for me, I work because I got pride in what I do. I'm not doing it to save my colleagues' ass or for company deliveries/profits.
An analogy I've used is that if we're a ship then I'm the one setting the sails. I'm not the captain or navigator, though I'd certainly advice or caution them if I think they're making a mistake. But if we're sailing off a cliff that wasn't my decision, my responsibility or my blame and while I'll certainly try to help I'm not putting that burden on my shoulders. We're certainly a team setting the sails and it's not competitive, but I'm not going to cover for the screw-up again and again. Honest mistakes and inexperience yes, but not incompetence, recklessness and slacking. If you're not weeding out the obvious problems but covering for them and collectively punishing us for their failures that's highly demotivating for me.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
With a recent plain-ordinary-development project, I was in the office four days of the week to try and keep an intuitive "handle" for what we were doing, and would save up concentration-dependant tasks for home on Wednesdays. That worked well, for me.
Another engineer worked strictly from home, and had dispropriately more trouble than I.
A third worked from a remote office, and quit our project to work with the people who sat at the next desks.
I suspect this fits one of a family of U-shaped curves, with "bad" at both end of the U and good in the middle, but with quite different shapes for projects with different co-ordoination needs.
davecb@spamcop.net
My wife and I both work from home (for different companies). No more sitting in traffic or getting stuck on a subway (all wasted time). I never cared much for hanging out with co-workers (one reason I decided to work on networking and servers is I rarely have to deal with people). Another upside is a reduced risk of getting sick. If you aren't jammed on a bus or subway train with 100's of other people (some of whom are sick), you stand a much better chance of avoiding catching whatever they're spreading (although my kids do keep me exposed to whatever they catch at school so..). The benefits of working from home outweigh the benefits of working in an office in my opinion and extensive experience.
Working from home does require an amount of discipline in terms of working without supervision.
The dirty secret of capitalism is that it is not meant to work as a stand-alone; it requires some kind of social order. Since the 1960s we have abolished that social order and in its place added regulations and doubled the number of people in the workforce. The result is that most jobs are bullshit and can be done in four hours a week most weeks, but we have to be there looking busy for 40-60.
As a result, people are taking their work home so that they can really jam on actual problems and ignore all the bullshit, meetings, paperwork, silliness, etc. It's just more efficient. And if they did not see their colleagues again? No one would care. Only the really sad and lonely find their jobs important. For the rest of us, it is just what is demanded of us to pay in order to live, and we secretly resent it and the people who try to cheer us up by talking about "having a case of the Mondays." We would never socialize with these people if we were not forced to, which is why such people love jobs.
In the future, everyone will be a contractor who gets a retainer to be on-call and is paid by the hour, will work from home, and probably pay a lot less for work clothes, commuting, insurance, etc. Plus you get to be around your family and possibly, work a small garden so you can get actual food, since the stuff in the stores is mostly overpriced toxic gunk.
Alternative Right.
I've been at it since 1996 and I've met only two of my clients -- and only one of them intentionally. My code works, their credit cards work, that's enough.
AFAIC, commuting unnecessarily is an irresponsible act.
Warning: This signature may offend some viewers.
If people prefer to work away from the office, the office needs to improve.
The news here is not that home working is wildly superior.
The news is that modern offices are terrible. Noisy, crowded, lacking in privacy, environmentally inadequate, poorly located for employees to travel to.
Meanwhile, some people can't handle working at home and develop severe mental problems from the lack of social interaction so it's hardly a panacea.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled"
The guy next to me is a paleo / vegan / crossfit enthusiast. The guy over from me is an evangelical christian who's trying to save me and the guy behind me has a distinct love of curry / chili / who fucking knows...
I'M totally ready to work from home Mon-Fri. I'm even willing to sneak in on Sat. to rack servers.
Yes Francis, the world has gone crazy.
It's really not a panacea. I work from California but 95% of my coworkers are abroad, in India and Australia. 0% are in my local office.
Tools like IM, audio/video conference, email slack are no replacement for being in the same room with another person, and never will be. All those communications have to be scheduled. Communications are slowed down way too much. Things get misunderstood. There is nothing like dropping into somebody's office to discuss an issue and getting it resolved immediately.
-- Julien Pierre http://www.madbrain.com/blog
After I left my last full time job, I worked for 10 years at home
I loved having control of my schedule
I loved being able to work when I felt inspired, even if it was at odd hours
I loved being able to take a few hours to do other stuff that needed to be done
I loved avoiding traffic and parking
I loved avoiding silly meetings, especially the crap required by HR
Most of all.. I loved the absence of distraction. When I closed the door of my home office, I could focus
I got a lot of stuff done, and was paid well
But, I kinda missed the human interaction
I'm an introvert with no social skills, but I still missed being a part of the society of engineering
It can be nice at times. You don't have to deal with anyone on a bad day, nor do they.
The fact that this cuts down on your exposure to illness is a nice bonus too! I've been generally healthier (as in not getting the flu/colds, etc) since starting as a telecommuter.
Not dealing with some crappy, underpowered machine is a nice bonus.
And the amount of money I save on gasoline is PHENOMENAL. I literally put less than 3000 miles a year on my vehicle (and my insurance company has a discount for low-mileage owners).
On the downsides (however).
You have to put REAL effort into enforcing a work/life balance.
It's quite possible to work yourself into the ground in front of your computer.
You have to make an effort to get up and walk away for a couple minutes to simulate breaks at work.
It can be VERY difficult to take lunches as this kind of setup encourages "al desko" dining.
Additionally, the fact that you're primarily interfacing with co-workers via text (we use IM to communicate) can lead to some major aggro. Instant Message does NOT mean "Instant Reply". And some co-workers and bosses have a REALLY hard time grokking this, expecting you to simply drop EVERYTHING and fence with them in IM for an hour.
So, you have to work at establishing and maintaining boundaries. One of the ones I'm working on right now is a co-worker who likes to play "hot potato". If I'm simply not available, they call a client up, get them set up, then simply transfers them to me. Regardless of if I'm working on anything else or not...So *I* have to either drop what I'm doing or broom them, which makes us look like shit.
So, it can be a sweet gig.
But you have to remember it's still "work" and you have to treat it as such.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
An extreme either way seems unnecessary
Twinstiq, game news
I started working from home a few months ago because I moved. I must say, I prefer being in the office. I like the interaction and I like the physical separation of "working" and "not working". At my request my manager installed a big monitor and a camera in my team's work space, so I still get some office interaction. We just keep a constant video connection up during working hours. Others on my team also work remotely but prefer to limit contact to email and Slack. Whatever works for you and whoever you have to interact with.
Chelloveck
I give up on debugging. From now on, SIGSEGV is a feature.
Good, that's amazing to see her have some fun and help someone like you who desperately needs help.
That she's doing that from the grave shows what a good person she was.
What it says about you I'll let the judge decide.
Why working at home is both awesome and horrible - The Oatmeal
I know everyone will be impressed that I know how to make an HTML link. Such technical knowledge!
Hey! TARGET="_blank" works on Slashdot now. Didn't maybe 2 years ago.
This will of course, put to a end office romances. unless you video chat .
This is my work life in a nutshell. I've never met my boss or any of my co-workers -- they are several thousand kilometres away. My employer has offices all around the world, but not in my city, so I have no office to go to even if I wanted to. Even my interview was over the phone (although I should note I was already an employee of the company at the time, and the position was tailor-made for me).
The work gets done, and so my employer is happy. I have time to take care of things at home as needed, such as picking up my daughter from school. I can work from wherever I want, so long as I have online access. I could move across the country, and wouldn't need to find new employment. I can work in my pyjamas and slippers. I have a fully stocked and equipped kitchen at my disposal.
Frankly, I've had to turn down some offers and interest from some pretty big, well known companies, because they simply can't match my current work environment. Every day I can't help but feel like one of the luckiest guys in the world (for a working stiff, at least).
Yaz
6 years ago, I was commuting 70 miles to sit in an office and use a computer that was half as performant as my own. Then I got an offer to work remotely for a different company and didnt look back.
I rarely see other people except my family (and the postman). However, I get to organise my life how I want to and enables me to do the school run and take my son to swimming lessons. Pros definitely outweigh the cons.
I'm there now.
And as a bonus, my daughter is growing up with me quite near and accessible, and is surprisingly good company when working. (she's 3 now, and I've been home for 2 of those years)
Every now and again I miss the social - but I could just start getting out to social gatherings again to handle that.
And yeah, my coworkers are everywhere on the planet. It's pretty awesome sharing weather stories, for instance. The only real downside though is sometimes I'll forget to stop working and work into timezones on the other side of the planet.
I probably put in more hours now than when I commuted, and have a higher quality of work output.
but my home life is happier, my social life's pretty ok and I'm all in all a lot happier.
So yeah, I'm there. No regrets.
Finally, no way to claim that your career problems are due to racism, sexism and homophobia. Everyone is the same online and nobody is grabbing anyone else's body parts. Rise up on your merit and if you don't, you only have yourself to blame.
Yeah, I think there are a few variables at work.
In my experience, working remotely 100% of the time works great when almost everybody in the company works remotely. When it's a small percentage of the workforce working remotely then there are all the typical problems (they forget to invite you to meetings, social stuff excludes you, etc.). And lots of people say that they would miss the social interaction, but as I mention below, in a company where almost everybody is remote you do still do the social thing... But if you're someone who craves the social part, and you work for a company that's mostly not remote, then you probably won't like working remote because nobody that is physically in the office is going to take the steps to include you socially. It's easier to just do that with another physical person. When EVERYBODY is remote, then people who crave the social part make it happen and then it's a much more enjoyable experience.
My current situation is that I worked for a startup that was almost 100% remote and it was great. They forced a handful of people to go into the physical office and those people were by far the least productive.
Then we got acquired by a company that is openly hostile to remote workers. I mean, they told us to our face when we visited them that they don't like remote workers! And they've said it to us a number of times since then. So, okay, I get the hint! Still, the members of my team are spread across the country and NOBODY is willing to move to work for them, so they're sort of stuck with us. They leave us alone and we leave them alone. It's a terrible arrangement, and I give the management team low marks for ignoring how that is handled.
Meanwhile they bought an expensive floor in an expensive building. It's maybe 40% occupied because they sized it thinking they were going to grow. And then suddenly money became an issue. So they're stuck with a white elephant (but won't admit it). I tried once to make the point that remote workers save them money. But from their perspective they're already paying a big lease for all that unused space so in their mind that's not an actual savings.
I feel I'm much more productive working from my home office. It's a dedicated office, so there's no issues with family noise or anything. My commute is 30 seconds and uses no fuel. Our team has daily calls, and after we finish business we often spend some time talking other stuff so there is still the social connection between members of the team. We've given each other tours of our house by walking around with the laptop... But I never get that guy who doesn't feel like working today and drops by and bothers you. Or meetings that are called just because... someone just felt like not working at their desk today (we attend, but you can mute your mic and turn off your camera and get work done in another window while all the people physically there are stuck... I've had co-workers making faces at the camera because they're bored and wish they didn't have to be there, and they know the remote guys are getting stuff done).
I figure I save about $75/week in gasoline compared to the last job where I had to commute. But more importantly not only do I save the hour or two that I would be commuting, but I arrive at work fresh, not having just battled a bunch of other commuters. Self driving cars will fix that problem soon enough, but still... I would prefer working from home even if I owned a self driving car.
There are plenty of jobs that remote doesn't work for - my wife is in medicine and she has to physically be with her patients. But most office work could honestly be done remote and companies could save a huge amount of money on office overhead, and seriously, when almost the entire company is remote, it works great.
I've been working from home for about 15 years, and in concert with US colleagues while living in Europe. As a result I was working night shifts constantly -- meaning I spent much of my time alone and in darkness.
Since that time I've grown increasingly isolated. Some time ago I had a nervous breakdown.
I'm not sure that working from home constantly is very good for your health...
I've worked from home now for 5 years and never want to go back to an office daily. The work I do, though, has been setup such that working from wherever actually "works". We have a central system to plan the work, open communication channels on Slack, Skype for Business, or even phone calls (haven't gotten one in about 4 years, though). There are a few things I've learned:
1. You have to be okay with people just dropping in on you via Slack or something similar. The only time you can't allow it is when you're in a meeting or really working heads down on something complex. When someone pings, you respond. It's the digital analog (oxymoron) to passing in the hallway...
2. You need to be flexible about your time. Getting a ping at 7pm has to be okay with you if you're working with people from other time zones.
3. You do need occasional team get togethers. These are great for everyone, including the folks who actually are in the office. I used to go to the office for a week per quarter, and now it's more like a week every 6 months. 3 days is probably enough, but there has to be some face time. The best for me would probably be 3 days per quarter, but I can live with my current setup.
4. I, personally, have to have people around me, so I work from Starbucks or the library quite a bit. I'm fortunate in that I don't have a lot of critical meetings, so the background noise hasn't hurt me yet. I think a co-work place would be even cooler, but I don't have one around me and I'm afraid they'd be more expensive than my $2.50 cup of coffee a day.
I totally get what you are saying. I work from home right now and have found modern open plan or even cubicle-based office spaces to be very distracting from concentrating on programming. People who do focused intellectual work need an office with a door that closes (one thing Microsoft got right in the early days). Ironically, managers who are always talking to others and are out and about tend to be the ones who get offices these days. And especially the offices with windows (putting workers in office space without windows is illegal in some other countries like Switzerland).
One place I worked an insurance company with cubicles mixes with uncubicled desks), the guy at the desk behind me (we were back-to-back), working in another group, had just had a house built -- and was on the phone constantly with contractors. Very distracting. Though I learned a bit about house building. Then I got moved to a different desk as the group I was in consolidated its office space usage. In that company, having one of your cubicle panels replaced by glass was a sign of promotion to management rank. My new desk was just on the other side of a corridor from the project lead's cubicle -- which had just had a glass panel installed so he was literally staring at my back all day (as well as the backs of a couple other developers). I would have preferred the previous desk over that situation even with the chatter. You try to do your best anyway, but it all takes its toll on concentration and being in the flow.
One lab I worked in, the third lab I was in at IBM Research, a very loud computer with a squealing hard drive got put right next to my work space for a while. I complained about it, but to not much good. That noise made it very hard to concentrate. I've had tinnitus ever since too -- though it is hard to blame tinnitus on one specific event. Possibly that was the last straw in a series of noise exposures from my youth inclduing early work in a Princeton robotics lab where we noisily cut styrofoam with an industrial robot (and should have been wearing ear protection but usually did not).
That said, a diet of whole foods, mostly plants, has lots of health benefits -- although Paleo leaves out healthy grains and has too much meat and fat to be that healthy (see the book "The Whole Foods Diet"). Exercise whether Crossfit or just less extreme going for good walks is also a great health booster. Spirituality and community also has proven health benefits. And lots of studies show that Turmeric in Curry also has great health benefits. So, your coworkers are all tapped into different aspects of health.
I also very much enjoyed having lunch with coworkers and learning from them. For example, that project lead was into gardening and even made his own delicious salsa. Another person sitting near my at the insurance company told me (when this was not common popular knowledge in the mid 1990s) about how real wages had been flat in the USA already for decades. And I learned a lot at lunch listening to stories about IBM Research history from my supervisor working in a different lab there.
I also later "worked from home" for a year for that previously mentioned insurance company. But that seemed only feasible within that organization where essentially no one worked from home because I had been a contractor onsite earlier for a year. And I would go in for meetings once a month or so. That was before cheap good laptops, and while the project went well, I can see how otherwise things might have been even better if I would have gone in once a week or so to work there and have lunch with people. In the meantime we had moved from where I could walk to work in ten minutes to where I had a 45 minute drive plus often-challenging parking to get there, so getting there was a bunch harder -- but not as hard a commute as other places I would work later even as it seemed daunting at the time.
So, while as a programmer, I'd make the same choice you would of working from home, I can see there is also a potential loss there of lea
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
Worked from Canada for an American company, had to travel down for occasional meetings like maybe once a year. Sometimes I had to travel to fix problems but mostly just stayed in my basement fixing software.
I am an introvert and a loner, so it was BLISS.
"What if You Never Saw Your Colleagues in Person Again?"
I'd be okay with that.
I like going into the office once in a while, but I'd be fine working 100% from home. Right now it's about 50~60%, but not having to make the drive a those few days a week when I do go in would be great.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
More than you might think. A lot of Linux code comes from corporations these days - Intel are the major one but RH and IBM are up there.
I will add that it's one too many.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Downside is my family is around all the time....
Mom just called me, she said you forgot your electron microscope at her place. She's worried you won't be able to find your penis if you have to pee.
Great in theory (well, the work bit) but managers favour people they like (eg people like them). Drone #212 is going to have to do an awful lot to get noticed and in the meantime, there might be somebody in the same office, not as good, but happens to sit next to the right people and support the same football team.
Have you stopped raping your neighbor's goats yet?
Shit, can a youtube channel have -1 subscribers?
Well, trying to force people to subscribe when they click on your Slashdot homepage link might not be the most efficient approach.
The YouTube new video notification has been broken for years. Creimer's new video is up. He's staying at the Hyatt during Silicon Valley Comic Con 2018. Spending an extra $500 even though he lives less than five miles away. Probably has VIP tickets. Rich fucker.
Well, trying to force people to subscribe when they click on your Slashdot homepage link might not be the most efficient approach.
Some people would find the Yes/No confirmation prompt daunting.
Is creimer bringing his child bride to the hotel room as well?
He's bringing some old goat to polish his tiny old knob.
Why would people subscribe to your channel then, you dumb fuck?
Why are you trying to force them to subscribe then?
--
Balena!
Using Slack, or similar messaging apps, hardly means the people are working from home. I've worked for quite a few companies where some form of messaging app was used to let developers, BAs, etc. stay in contact without having to look up from their desks.
Darryl L. Pierce "What do you care what people think, Mr. Feynman?"
I've been on both sides of this.
I spent about 5 years working from home on a fairly geographically spread out team. It had its upsides in that you had zero commute, could work in your sweats, and didn't have a lot of distractions. But you also have to motivate yourself and avoid falling into the trap that since nobody can see you that it's OK to vacuum the house or otherwise slack off.
Then about a year or so, on a different team they started making us go into the office, but every 6-7 weeks due to a a late coverage rotation we work from home. On the weeks you're in the office there are some real opportunities to have some spontaneous collaboration with co-workers ... which in many cases allows both of you to build on what the other is doing and build new stuff a little more organically. A co-worker and I have built several cool things like that when we're both in the office.
The collaboration is good, the occasional chance to work from home is good.
My wife has worked from home for most of the last decade. She misses the social interaction sometimes, which is the only real thing she misses from going to the office .. working at home for extended periods can be somewhat isolating.
Her company has flip-flopped several times now and can't make up their mind, and my company is in the middle of drawing in the people who do work from home.
For me, I like a balance of things. Too long of working from home and you can become a bit of a hermit, and the trek to the office forces you to actually own grown-up clothes and shave .. too much in the office can be a bit soul crushing in the cubicle farm when there are no meeting rooms.
Extended periods of working from home also tend to erode some of the bonds you share with your co-workers, as well as making you a little more invisible to management. You simply don't chat about the mundane as much when it's over IM, you just talk about what you need to do whatever you're doing.
I like the option to work from home occasionally -- snow days or days where you have errands or have the late shift -- but on balance, I like the schedule regularity and the human contact of going into the office.
If you never saw your co-workers again, your work would likely suffer, as would your engagement level and your level of interaction with your co-workers. If they become generic to you, you become generic to them .. and that doesn't work out in the long run.
Who is going to hook you up with the new company they're at if they can barely remember who the hell you are don't have good memories of working with you and building stuff? In the long run, if you never see your co-workers again, your job and your career could suffer.
Just my 2 cents.
I sit next to the most beautiful and intelligent girl on our floor of the building.
Why wouldn't I want to go to work?