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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)
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%.
The jury is still out. Working at home allows you to complete tasks on your own time and in your own environment where you are presumably less distracted.
But you also lose the ability to have face-to-face collaboration, which is very important in certain industries. Scheduling a skype meeting is different than chatting with someone in the hall about what might be needed or expected for an upcoming project. There's a reason a lot of deals and agreements get made in person, and people have had the ability to meet via "video-conference" for decades now; yet face-to-face contact is stil preferred in certain situations.
I think it's often best to have it both ways...to come in for meetings sometimes, but to work at home for projects that require intensive 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/
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.
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 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.
Most of the people I know that work from home are more productive but they eventually get shit on because of office politics. The employees that are physically at the office every day have social opportunities and form relationships that, unfortunately, make a huge difference when it comes to career advancement.
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 don't think the jury is still out. I have worked from home off and on for decades. In my current job, I was going into the office every 6 weeks until recently (haven't been in the office in probably 6 months). Since that also involves flying there and back, one week in the office is about as productive as one day at home. I'm not being facetious about that - I'm just considering burn down and tickets that actually get closed out.
While I do understand the desire to have face-2-face whiteboarding sessions, that's rarely what we are doing.
We use conferencing (Hangouts and unfortunately also WebEx at the moment) daily for an international team. While it may take a minute or two to start a chat online, when onsite it usually takes much longer to find each other AND an available room. Half the time, we crowd around one monitor anyway.
However, the less distracted assumption is also not really all that true. Even ignoring things going on at your own house (deliveries, pets wanting fed, etc), you still get constant distractions from meeting invites and slack conversations. The only real difference is you are less likely to be pulled into a meeting or an off-site lunch.
You'll probably find that how you manage your project has a bigger impact than a lot of that. How many administrative meetings are you having? How many scrums and retrospectives and grooming sessions and artificial deadlines etc?
All that being said, I do tend to turn down onsite jobs anymore because I don't want to waste 2 hours a day of unpaid time commuting.
http://www.google.com/profiles/malachid
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.
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.
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.
I was more productive working from home when the kids weren't around. Now they (and the wife) are too much of a distraction. In the case of the Mrs. she used to be understanding that I was working when working from home. Now she isn't and doesn't treat me as if I'm at work not to be bothered. My family is also far too messy, and I can't work in a dirty environment. At home, there are no wife and kids to junk up my desk or leave plates and mugs everywhere and empty packets of crisps all over the place. I'm sure there is something psychological there- but if I'm in a cluttered messy room I just can't work.
Family aside. Back in the old days when family wouldn't bother me if working from home, I found that if I were working from home just a few days, my productivity would skyrocket (partially because I was really driven to get extra work done when home so people wouldn't think I was goofing off). One time when our office flooded and I had to work from home for a few months that began to change, in a long stretch it became harder to concentrate and be as focused.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
If you're a sysadmin, your physical presence at the office is a comfort for all who work there. If any system goes down or has a problem, it's reassuring for them to know that you can look into it at a moment's notice. Employees often wonder if offsite admins are even available, or are working.
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.
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
Wow. You're either trolling or have an awfully limited acquaintance. I have no distractions at home (just me and my wife and she leaves me alone, no TV no radio in my home office). I get in at least 3-4 more good hours per day than I can at an office. I've worked from home for going on 20 years now and I guarantee nobody questions my productivity. I'm a lot more tempted to goof off when I'm visiting one of the offices.
I don't pretend to say that working from home is for everyone, or every job, but when it works it's a HUGE win. And in my company it works a lot.
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.