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Working remotely, coworking spaces, and mental health

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Re: Working remotely, coworking spaces, and mental health

#81

Post by coldtea »

>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.

Could be the change from bossing people around (being a manager) to being bossed around (being a dev)? Because all the rest (interaction with friends, walks, going to the gym etc) one could still have from working remotely -- like the author says they did for the first months anyway.

Re: Working remotely, coworking spaces, and mental health

#82

Post by coldtea »

jaegerx wrote: post #56
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.

You'd be surprised. The worse office politics and hostility still happen to people who meet every day.

Re: Working remotely, coworking spaces, and mental health

#83

Post by coldtea »

alltakendamned wrote: post #65
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…

What's your setup like that enables you to work from those crazy settings ?

As long as you have internet and a laptop, what's crazy about ANY setting?

Re: Working remotely, coworking spaces, and mental health

#84

Post by minipci1321 »

5 years remote. Personal bottom line:

-- negative: lost interest in having friends (and generally the patience needed to talk to people), no social life, no career, work-life balance completely broken

-- positive: sleeping 8 hours a night! (and more if I need to), making walks in the park/training at noon, never really sick, comfortable home office, can be efficient again (only my job doesn't require that). Started having ideas again and thinking about side projects.

Before going remote, during 15 years I was commuting 2+ hours in the morning (so 2 hours again in the evening), sleeping 4 hours a night by the end of the week, dozing off the entire weekend and generally feeling extremely exhausted, mentally and physically, easily catching flu etc.

Would I move back to office employment? I really hope I won't have to.

Re: Working remotely, coworking spaces, and mental health

#85

Post by gnfisher »

Living abroad I've gone the remote road since 2009. I went through a lot of this same stuff but never associated it with my being remote/working from home, though now looking back I can see it most likely did. My health and mood increased once I started to force myself out to socialize more and once we had our children - the household is always busy and full of noise and life now, versus before when my wife went off to work and I sat alone in a quiet apartment all day long. Since the birth of our second I've been doing my first sprint in any nearby coffee shop each morning and that has improved my mood and productivity even further. I've been toying with the idea of a co-working space and this article has convinced me to give it a go.

We are social creatures, to varying degrees, and if we limit out interaction with others too severely, I think it makes it too easy to look exclusively and excessively inward. I'm all about self-analysis and looking inward but there comes a point when you go too far and it's no longer about reflection but a feedback loop of anxiety/fear/self-doubt... at least that has been the case in my experience! Also, regular exercise (running, lifting) has always helped me out of these emotional funks.

Re: Working remotely, coworking spaces, and mental health

#86

Post by ivrrimum »

innocentoldguy wrote: post #38

I love working at home. Not going out of my house for weeks on end doesn't bother me at all, and I'm much more productive when I'm working on my own. I think I could be quite happy as a shut-in. I can see how the lack of a social life would bother some people though. I guess the success of working remotely depends a lot on your emotional needs and personality. On another note, I do have to disagree with the author wi…

Pretty much the same. I work on interesting things. And i am ALWAYS in a flow. Regarding "off days", if you have complex job, you have those very rarely. You just want to work a lot.

Re: Working remotely, coworking spaces, and mental health

#87

Post by ivrrimum »

minipci1321 wrote: post #84

5 years remote. Personal bottom line: -- negative: lost interest in having friends (and generally the patience needed to talk to people), no social life, no career, work-life balance completely broken -- positive: sleeping 8 hours a night! (and more if I need to), making walks in the park/training at noon, never really sick, comfortable home office, can be efficient again (only my job doesn't require that). Started h…

no career? Then what do you do? Start freelancing, you will be A LOT more happy, motivated, etc.

Re: Working remotely, coworking spaces, and mental health

#88

Post by farslan »

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.

It's REAL remote. I'm working a Software Engineer working for DigitalOcean from Turkey :)

Re: Working remotely, coworking spaces, and mental health

#89

Post by socialist_coder »

mwcampbell wrote: post #25
socialist_coder wrote: post #16

I wouldn't consider myself an extreme introvert but I am 100% satisfied working from home (been doing it for 4.5 years now). The author mentions socialization only in real life. What about online socialization? I still talk to 2 of my best friends in a chat room (used to be IRC, now we use Slack). I keep up with old friends on Facebook. I have discussions and arguments on HN and Reddit. And probably most importantly,…

Are you in the VOIP chat all day, or only when you want to talk? And if all day, is your mic open all the time, transmitting whatever sounds you make as you're working?

We are in the VOIP chat all day, but no one uses voice activation. It's all PTT (push to talk).

For some meetings we use skype or google hangouts and then it is always on. Most meetings, including our daily standup, just take place over teamspeak though.

Part of getting a good remote team is making sure everyone has all this communication software setup right and knows how to use it effectively: advice on what keys to use for PTT, what settings to use, etc.

Re: Working remotely, coworking spaces, and mental health

#90

Post by socialist_coder »

kayoone wrote: post #79
socialist_coder wrote: post #16

I wouldn't consider myself an extreme introvert but I am 100% satisfied working from home (been doing it for 4.5 years now). The author mentions socialization only in real life. What about online socialization? I still talk to 2 of my best friends in a chat room (used to be IRC, now we use Slack). I keep up with old friends on Facebook. I have discussions and arguments on HN and Reddit. And probably most importantly,…

i'd consider myself pretty introvert and have been working remotely for 5-6 years and only realised on how much i missed out socially after getting a regular job at a startup again. I just enjoy working in a team of motivated people, talking to them randomly about non-work/non-tech stuff. I still feel more productive even though there are more interruptions, but at home i tended to create these interruptions myself a…

Yeah, I'm curious how I would feel if I went back to a normal job. Before working remotely I worked in the game industry for 10 years and I mostly loved it. But, I also really like my current remote setup.

I think a big part of it is that I started working remotely at the same time as I had kids, so now I can take off any time I want to spend time with them. I normally take a 2 hour break for eating dinner and helping with bedtime, then I'm back to work. I remember people from my office job who would say that they only see their kids for 10 minutes a day or something like that. I didn't think anything of it at the time, but now that I have kids of my own with my current setup, I can't imagine only seeing them for 10 minutes a day. That just doesn't seem right.

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