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Working remotely, coworking spaces, and mental health

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Re: Working remotely, coworking spaces, and mental health

#51

Post by AYBABTME »

edem wrote: post #50
AYBABTME wrote: post #36

For the last 2.5 years I've been working at DigitalOcean as a remote employee. DO has more than 50% of the staff remote. I think it's important that a large chunk of a company & team be remote, to be successful in the exercise, so that there be a forcing function to use asynchronous communications. It's been really life changing for me. We have a bunch of style of remotees; work from home, work from coffeeshop, work…

Is this REAL remote (I can apply from any country) or "just within the US" remote? I checked the link you provided but this was not detailed.

I'm from Canada but in Argentina right now. We have lots of folks in Europe and some in Asia! We have folks doing the round the world dance too. We had folks in Australia.

Re: Working remotely, coworking spaces, and mental health

#52

Post by Godel_unicode »

IshKebab wrote: post #33
dexwiz wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am in the same situation. People tell me all the time how lucky I am to work remotely, and I was excited when it started. But it definitely has some drawbacks that I didn't expect, especially in the mental health department. Webex/Hangouts/GTM is fine for 90% of the banal, communication meetings. But it really fails for any design meetings that need a whiteboard. I have tried getting my team to use some alternative…

I think the surface hubs may change that - the experience is almost better than a real whiteboard. They are hilariously expensive though.

Microsoft is in a really interesting place as far as workplace collaboration goes. Between the Surface {Hub,Book,Pro} lines and their enterprise messaging technology, it really seems like they just need to fix SharePoint.

I do wish that Microsoft would have standardized on thunderbolt 3 as opposed to the surface connector, but between power and all the compatability problems I suppose I get it.

Re: Working remotely, coworking spaces, and mental health

#53

Post by traverseda »

AYBABTME wrote: post #36

For the last 2.5 years I've been working at DigitalOcean as a remote employee. DO has more than 50% of the staff remote. I think it's important that a large chunk of a company & team be remote, to be successful in the exercise, so that there be a forcing function to use asynchronous communications. It's been really life changing for me. We have a bunch of style of remotees; work from home, work from coffeeshop, work…

I'm working on getting some support from the marine engineering department of my local uni to assess the idea of a ferrocement boat with basalt rebar reinforcement instead of steal.

I think this has a bunch of advantages over other techniques for this kind of lifestyle.

I would love to receive some emails (myusername@gmail.com) or comments talking about oneweb, and the freedom it could provide for people who like this kind of lifestyle. Some testimonials that there are actually people considering this.

Re: Working remotely, coworking spaces, and mental health

#54

Post by calchris42 »

AYBABTME wrote: post #36

For the last 2.5 years I've been working at DigitalOcean as a remote employee. DO has more than 50% of the staff remote. I think it's important that a large chunk of a company & team be remote, to be successful in the exercise, so that there be a forcing function to use asynchronous communications. It's been really life changing for me. We have a bunch of style of remotees; work from home, work from coffeeshop, work…

Agreed asynchronous communications can have a ton of benefit as mentioned in the article (fewer meetings, schedule flexibility). But on the other hand, taken to the extreme, this also can lead to just the isolation the article mentions.

I spent ~5 years remote at a larger company where the vast majority of employees were on site. Needless to say, the culture didn't adopt any "remote best practices". I worked from home during this time, and am probably somewhere similar on the social spectrum as the author: some aspects of introversion and extroversion. I think the frequent meetings and synchronous communication with colleagues is exactly what kept the job from feeling too isolating during that time. (However, meetings were TOO frequent for productivity).

Re: Working remotely, coworking spaces, and mental health

#55

Post by jschwartzi »

This mirrors my experience going from product support to software engineering. I moved roles in a company that was primarily a sales organization, so I still had a lot of responsibilities to other people that required social interaction. When I switched companies to join a product development team all the social interaction went away. In fact, earlier this year I went for several months without any real interaction with my co-workers, and I work in a cubicle farm. This had a severe impact on my mental health, to the extent that I'm in therapy now. I've since started seeking more interaction with co-workers during the day because I actually need it to work effectively.

People often write about software development as if it's a solitary activity, but I can only do my best work for other people. Having personal relationships with my co-workers makes me a stronger developer, and I can't do it remotely.

Re: Working remotely, coworking spaces, and mental health

#56

Post by jaegerx »

AYBABTME wrote: post #36

For the last 2.5 years I've been working at DigitalOcean as a remote employee. DO has more than 50% of the staff remote. I think it's important that a large chunk of a company & team be remote, to be successful in the exercise, so that there be a forcing function to use asynchronous communications. It's been really life changing for me. We have a bunch of style of remotees; work from home, work from coffeeshop, work…

You forgot shark week. It's nice putting faces to handles. I can't be mad at you if I've drank beers with you.

Re: Working remotely, coworking spaces, and mental health

#57

Post by AYBABTME »

traverseda wrote: post #53
AYBABTME wrote: post #36

For the last 2.5 years I've been working at DigitalOcean as a remote employee. DO has more than 50% of the staff remote. I think it's important that a large chunk of a company & team be remote, to be successful in the exercise, so that there be a forcing function to use asynchronous communications. It's been really life changing for me. We have a bunch of style of remotees; work from home, work from coffeeshop, work…

I'm working on getting some support from the marine engineering department of my local uni to assess the idea of a ferrocement boat with basalt rebar reinforcement instead of steal. I think this has a bunch of advantages over other techniques for this kind of lifestyle. I would love to receive some emails (myusername@gmail.com) or comments talking about oneweb, and the freedom it could provide for people who like thi…

I'm not exactly sure I understand what you're saying but my plan is 100% to, when I become an adult that needs to settle down, buy a catamaran instead of a condo and live and work from there!

Re: Working remotely, coworking spaces, and mental health

#58

Post by intrasight »

What I like about working from home with regards to socializing is that I get to choose when, where and with whom I socialize. I didn't have that control in an office setting. While most of my clients and colleagues are in other cities, I make sure that I have several local if for no other reason than to have some professional socialization opportunities. And of course there are a dozen groups that I could choose to participate in - actually more than I'd ever have time to do.

Re: Working remotely, coworking spaces, and mental health

#59

Post by abalashov »

I relate closely to this post, especially the position that working remotely is for a certain kind of introvert only.

To such an extent do I relate to it that I wrote a blog post about it a year ago:

https://likewise.am/2015/12/18/why-i-love-industrious-and-ab...

This post struck a similar note:

Working from home might genuinely be the ideal environment for those closest to the introvert end of the spectrum, and I think those are the people who form angelic choirs of blog posts asking if you have met their lord and savior, the Fortress of Infinite Solitude, Home Office Edition. For them, the quiet work environment makes their jobs dramatically more enjoyable. But for me, it was the opposite: I’d gone from management (high social interaction) to software development (lower social interaction), and from working in an office (hundreds of people) to working from home (two cats), and expected that this would all be fine.

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