21–30 of 52 posts
I've been working from home for about 10 years. The only thing that's ever been a problem is maintaining a healthy work-life balance. It took years to realize and resolve all of the various underlying issues before I started feeling comfortable without being complacent with things. My advice for people new to remote work: reserve an hour each morning for exercise, start reading fiction, try out the keto diet, avoid a…
Not just image and audio quality, but Google Hangouts on my phone (so I can carry it around the house and get tea etc during a meeting) slurps up oodles of battery and the phone (OnePlus 5T) gets really really hot too.
No such problem with eg. Netflix and Youtube, guess those video codecs have some HW acceleration while Google Hangouts doesn't?
Further: I only work some 500km from the office, so I travel there (mostly by train) roughly once a month for a few days. Good mix of remote and on-site for me.
Video Conferencing (we're using zoom). The "time to conversation" routinely take minutes of idle time or raging about the miserable state of technology. Simple annoyances such as opening the laptop when using with an external monitor (1 out of 10 times making macos unresponsive for half a minute), to changing your bluetooth noise cancelling headphones for music to airpods, reconfiguring airpods tethered to your iPhon…
The downside to having lots of video chat is that I'm really constrained to working from somewhere with good internet, and somewhere without a lot of ambient noise -- which somewhat ruins the "work from anywhere" appeal. It's definitely a trade-off I can live with, though.
Aside from those things, I'm honestly struggling to really come up with something that sucks about remote work. My experience with being fully remote has been fantastic and has brought so much more joy to my career.
Video Conferencing (we're using zoom). The "time to conversation" routinely take minutes of idle time or raging about the miserable state of technology. Simple annoyances such as opening the laptop when using with an external monitor (1 out of 10 times making macos unresponsive for half a minute), to changing your bluetooth noise cancelling headphones for music to airpods, reconfiguring airpods tethered to your iPhon…
Conferencing, still. You'd think that we had gotten that covered now, but nope. Not just image and audio quality, but Google Hangouts on my phone (so I can carry it around the house and get tea etc during a meeting) slurps up oodles of battery and the phone (OnePlus 5T) gets really really hot too. No such problem with eg. Netflix and Youtube, guess those video codecs have some HW acceleration while Google Hangouts do…
Anyway, I also work remotely but visit an office a few times a month, that is really helpful both from the technical side of things and socially.
Also, having worked in companies using one or the other exclusively, video conferencing is much much better than audio only. Seeing your colleagues' faces makes you feel so much more connected and less like strangers.
1. Technology is still not good enough for conferencing. 2. Some family members/friend thinks your work is easy and not that important. So you should run their errands or take extra responsibilities. 3. As someone already mentioned, it is difficult to build team rapport. This affects badly in situations like sudden change in deadlines. 4. If you don't have active social life outside job, it becomes very difficult to…
Re number 2, my wife just doesn't get that when I'm working from home, I actually need to work
I've noticed that it's hard to build rapport with coworkers when working remotely (especially if they are in an office and you're remote). In my experience, remote communication is mostly transactional and doesn't facilitate building relationships with people. I'm not saying I need my coworkers to be my best friends or anything, but I think that you are more likely to have a well functioning work relationship with pe…
> If any of you have this figured out, I'd love to hear tips. Most of the other aspects of remote work are fantastic. overcommunicate. Share like you do IRL. Kvetch. Cheer. Share interesting finds. Say good morning. Ask team-mates how they're doing. I find I build pretty good rapport with my team mates because I _don't_ limit communications to required transactions. You build relationships by communicating about life…
Personally I think much of the benefits of remote work comes from the ability to close out the noise of the office, which includes thing like someone tapping me on the shoulder or grabbing my attention when Im deep in some mental exercise.
So what I wonder is how you couple the great things about (actively chosen) isolation with the need for social interaction and banter over time?
Perhaps it's a non-issue and remote work will never reach the level of distraction you face in an office. Still would be interested to hear your thoughts.