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I Only Work Remotely

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Re: I Only Work Remotely

#91

Post by SippinLean »

jp555 wrote: post #32
battlebot wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe try not using drugs as a crutch? It reminds me of a perverse version of what athletes use steroids for. Be your own man, not some chemically altered monster.

I guess you don't drink coffee? How many people use caffeine to chemically alter their state? How about using alcohol to ease social interaction anxiety? Nicotine is another very popular tool for altering one's state. We are all essentially bags of chemicals. If someone hacks their diet to optimize nutritional chemical input, are they a chemically altered monster? Where's the line? Even playing sports together, shari…

False equivalency, all chemically altered states are the same? If someone used alcohol (another of your examples) at work, during the work day you'd consider an intervention; you wouldn't shrug and say "eh, bags of chemicals".

Re: I Only Work Remotely

#92

Post by gr3yh47 »

Touche wrote: post #75
Jaruzel wrote: post #21

One of the opening lines resonated with me: "...I cannot trust employers to provide me with an adequate work environment." This is becoming more and more the default position, especially in the contract market. A recent contract I had, had quite poor office space - small old desks, old 17" monitors, no personal storage, chairs in poor repair, and a badly working hot-desk system (I have yet to encounter 'working' hot-…

Just curious, as I'm a morning person, when do you get non-work stuff done? I start work at 8 and stop at 5. From 5 to 8/8:30 I'm doing chores like cleaning up the house, running errands, making dinner, washing dishes. I get an hour or two of relaxation in watching a movie or reading a book and then I go to bed. When do night people fit in the time for that sort of stuff? I would imagine that you could do that sort o…

as a night person, Ive worked in 2 slightly different optimal modes

1 - I wake up at 8 and get repetitive stuff done from 8-9 before I leave for work. this wakes me up and gets my day started. anything remaining gets done after work

2 - a simple couple/few hour shift from your paradigm. at work from 10-whenever. get stuff done for a couple hours after i get home. we're getting up later but we're also going to bed later.

Re: I Only Work Remotely

#93

Post by gr3yh47 »

mi100hael wrote: post #73

> I am a night owl. You can tell me I have to have my butt in a chair within your line of sight at 8 or 9am, but that is very wasteful. This used to be me and I used to believe it was just the way things were. I'd naturally sleep 10+ hours until noon on the weekends, struggle to wake up for work, and then struggle to fall asleep before midnight. I had little energy for exercise and always felt stressed trying to find…

>But the truth is, it's perfectly possible for anyone to adjust their sleep schedule and become a morning person.

You seem to be conflating waking up early and being a morning person. With a rigid schedule night people can adjust to an earlier schedule (i did for several years) but that wont make someone with later rhythms be as productive as they would be on a more natural (for them) schedule

Re: I Only Work Remotely

#94

Post by ccvannorman »

YES.

>when I’m forced to be in a chair in your office at 9am:

> - I force myself to be up early and rush to work, feeling ill prepared

> - I try to focus and be effective in the morning, but struggle and the day is off to a bad start, killing my mood and momentum

> - I’m tired in the afternoon and cannot work effectively at my peak work time. I drink tons of coffee trying to kickstart my productivity

> - I go home when I’m finally starting to get going

> - I am restless in bed and can’t sleep because I drank too much coffee and I’m worried about getting up early

> - By the end of the week I am tired, frustrated, angry, and disappointed with my performance

Re: I Only Work Remotely

#95

Post by chris_7 »

hobarrera wrote: post #84
mi100hael wrote: post #73

> I am a night owl. You can tell me I have to have my butt in a chair within your line of sight at 8 or 9am, but that is very wasteful. This used to be me and I used to believe it was just the way things were. I'd naturally sleep 10+ hours until noon on the weekends, struggle to wake up for work, and then struggle to fall asleep before midnight. I had little energy for exercise and always felt stressed trying to find…

> 3. Put down screens like phone, laptop, and TV after about 8pm. The artificial, bright light throws off off your body's natural instinct to get sleepy when it gets dark. What I am supposed to do during four hours with basically no media? That sound a bit extreme. 90 minutes of that ought to do. Oh, if you DO watch something (eg. movie), try an app like redshift, to reduce make the light blueish, which is what actua…

Books, exercise, instruments, writing, drawing...

Re: I Only Work Remotely

#96

Post by TheRealDunkirk »

AckSyn wrote: post #43
justinlaster wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I strongly disagree. In fact, I'm of the opinion these days that if you can't communicate effectively and proficiently over text, you're in the wrong field; at the very least I'm going to question how much you are "with it." There is nothing stopping a completely remote company from having "jam" sessions between developers. Is there any solid evidence that working in an office together yields a better work product? W…

Only anecdotally. My initial hiring is for three months in the office minimum. That's for acclimation of the kind of workflow/procedural stuff they should learn and general SOP for the company. After that, we offer working from home/remote on a per person consideration. Some make the cut, other's can't handle it.

I agree with this from both sides. As someone who's worked from home for many years for 2 different employers, I want to be in the office for a few-to-six months to get the lay of the land before spending most of the time at home. And I like the weekly meeting with the whole team, and the occasional 5-minute trip to the office for an ad-hoc meeting, to stay connected.

We technical types can presume that technology runs the world, but, as much as it pains me to admit it, myself, it doesn't. People -- personal interactions -- still run the world, and always will. Being face-to-face with the people you work with is a fundamentally-necessary part of doing good with for and with them.

But the amount of face-to-face time required to be effective varies WIDELY for different people and projects and types of work. These discussion always devolve into blanket statements and proclamations, but it's a REALLY subjective subject.

Re: I Only Work Remotely

#97

Post by jp555 »

SippinLean wrote: post #90
jp555 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess you don't drink coffee? How many people use caffeine to chemically alter their state? How about using alcohol to ease social interaction anxiety? Nicotine is another very popular tool for altering one's state. We are all essentially bags of chemicals. If someone hacks their diet to optimize nutritional chemical input, are they a chemically altered monster? Where's the line? Even playing sports together, shari…

False equivalency, all chemically altered states are the same? If someone used alcohol (another of your examples) at work, during the work day you'd consider an intervention; you wouldn't shrug and say "eh, bags of chemicals".

I've experienced work lunches with alcohol a lot and it can help in team bonding. I've also been involved in deal making where if you didn't drink alcohol with the prospect (China), you were not going to get the deal.

I'd say the false equivalency is thinking substance use always = substance abuse.

Re: I Only Work Remotely

#98

Post by [deleted] »

throwaway2016a wrote: post #48

So to provide another point of view... I worked exclusively from home for two years. The cabin fever was so bad I couldn't take it anymore. I may be in the minority for programmers but I need other people around and I need the energy of an office. From a management standpoint. A good whiteboard session goes a long way to kill communication issues on projects that are creative or not 100% straightforward. Although, of…

[deleted]

Re: I Only Work Remotely

#99

Post by eeZah7Ux »

Jaruzel wrote: post #24
bitwize wrote: post #18

Don't you just love it when someone with zero direct reports thinks he can tell managers how to manage? It's a job , it's not a fucking Montessori school, or a correspondence course. If you don't want your employability to dry up once rockstar ninjas become commonplace enough that the demand bubble for them pops, you will cultivate the essential skills of showing up when and where your employer demands and otherwise…

That is an utterly antiquated position. I bet you don't even let poor Bob Cratchit have time off at Christmas. In this day and age, dependability is delivering your tasks accurately and on time. Everything else is just chaff. More managers should get with the program, and understand that skilled workers want to Work to Task, Not To Time.

> That is an utterly antiquated position.

Not antiquated enough: throughout history the large majority of workers have been farmers. Even without being able to read and write, they were/are entirely responsible of their work - and farming wasn't easy at all.

Same for artisans, shopkeepers at al. When people are not bossed around they can manage themselves.

Re: I Only Work Remotely

#100

Post by mstade »

ryanSrich wrote: post #85
throwaway2016a wrote: post #48

So to provide another point of view... I worked exclusively from home for two years. The cabin fever was so bad I couldn't take it anymore. I may be in the minority for programmers but I need other people around and I need the energy of an office. From a management standpoint. A good whiteboard session goes a long way to kill communication issues on projects that are creative or not 100% straightforward. Although, of…

I've been working remotely for more than three years now. I've dealt with cabin fever a number of times. Early on my initial reaction was to find a co-working space. My employer was more than willing to help out. I started looking around the city and eventually found one I thought I liked. After a few days I realized I hated it. I wanted to escape the office scene and here I was, given the freedom to do that, right b…

+1 for options. I've been working 100% remotely for about a year and three months now and while I do most work out of my home office, I tend to venture out at least 3-4 times a week to coffee shops or other venues, just to get a bit of buzz and white noise. I keep to myself and do my work, but don't use headphones or anything like that to drown out my surroundings. When I go out somewhere, I tend to stay there for 2-4 hours, depending on the place. I rarely mix places up in the same day, and generally just rotate between the same few places, maybe venturing outside the box a few times a month.

Sometimes though, I'll go nowhere for weeks. Like you say: options. It's nice to have them.

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