31–40 of 162 posts
- Less distractions (especially when kids are home)
- Can make friends with other coworkers
- I enjoy having a (very short) commute to make a clear separation between work and not-work
No. I enjoy working absolutely alone. I rent a private office now. If I wanted people in my work space, I wouuldn't go full remote in the first place.
But I also enjoy any change in general, even if the environment is objectively worse. I'm more productive in a day working from car service waiting room than on a normal day after a week at home. Or in a cafe. Or on a train/plane. Or other much weirder places. (Even if I'm using my laptop actually on my lap, in a terrible seat) I have a great, comfortable setup at home - but the occasional change really helps.
No. I used to work as a programmer for Nokia and was with 50 people in a co-working space with different groups (administration, developer, service, etc.). I find that exhausting. Someone kept arriving to ask me questions about computer problems. Every few minutes someone comes and wants to have a cup of coffee or go for a smoke. As an Asperger, I don't like open offices and I personally prefer a single small room wi…
Not to mention that all the research indicates this turns out to be cheaper than open plan / cubicle / pod / etc. layouts after factoring in productivity losses from those layouts.
Coworking for me is the worst from both private world (home office or private office) and public world (like coffee shop. In coworking I am easily distracted by people walking around and am not really comfortable just talking myself loud or pacing around. Something I really like to do when designing new systems or trying to debug some complicated case.
Everybody is different, but for me and my line of work I like to work in my dedicated home office and then, maybe once a week, go out to my local coffee shop for a hour where I do planning, reading or some admin work. When I have to do a lot of thinking/planning I usually take a tram to downtown area and just spend day walking and visiting various coffee shops.
I am sure it is not for everybody and there is very little social time during my days, but I have enough social time outside of work.
I initially started to go to a coworking space in order to get more focus than when working form home.
I got the following extra benefits by coworking:
* built a network * made friends * found clients * found providers and partners * found inspiration
I tried about a dozen spaces in different cities and countries. Experience may greatly vary from one space to the other. Find one that fits you.
The biggest issue is that they're all open plan and all of them have music playing all the time, both of which suck. One of them had private offices as well, but they were tiny and window-less and didn't have height-adjustable anything; as 195cm guy that's not going to work.
In general I find that after working from home for two years that I'm really struggling with a "real" office environment. I'm just so used at being able to control my environment now that going back to an office feels terribly constricting.