I do like working from home, but I will admit that my hygiene has suffered. I don't shower daily and that bothers me. Obviously not enough to actually do anything about it.
Half of American workers would rather work from home forever: poll
121–130 of 295 posts
Re: Half of American workers would rather work from home forever: poll
#122I'm anticipating that most HNers prompted to comment here will be those thinking this unlikely or wrong or whatever. Every time something positive about remote working is on HN, only those opposing it seem to comment... So, anyway, here's my vote in favour of remote working! I've worked from home for the last 10 years straight, and two years in the decade before that. Working from home has always been best for me. Hi…
We are programmers we can work anywhere. The majority of working people the world over cannot. Hacker News readers are not the majority of people.
It's nice to be able to work from home as an option but don't assume it's a panacea for everyone either.
Re: Half of American workers would rather work from home forever: poll
#123I think alot of people will want to go back because they've now associated working remotely with being in an isolated jail cell. Also I'm sure couples and people with kids are ready to jump out their windows. I wont be going back to the office for a number of reasons, however, and I think everyone should boycott the office as well. Weather you want to work in the office or not should ultimately be the employees choic…
> Ideally that extra cash goes to wages or hiring. That is adorable!
Basic corporate finance should be required in high school. People need to understand their employers’ motivations.
Re: Half of American workers would rather work from home forever: poll
#124I've worked from home since 2001, except for a brief 2 year stint at Google. I think I'm far more productive at home because I have: - An office, with a door I can close This was going to be a big list, but I actually think that just about sums it up. The cube environment at Google was utterly intolerable, and made it hard to concentrate. It didn't help that the guys in another group next to us had a game where they…
I have an office with a door, and I generally prefer to go into the office, but the company is converting to cubicles, one floor at a time. When my floor gets the ax, I will probably transition to 100% WFH. This experience has shown me that I can do it.
Re: Half of American workers would rather work from home forever: poll
#125I stopped reading when I hit "baby boomers"
Re: Half of American workers would rather work from home forever: poll
#126This article (like most discussion of these work styles) conflates remote work and work-from-home. I feel it would _greatly_ help clarify discussion to keep in mind that these aren’t the same thing: the latter (WFH) is _mostly_ a subset of the former (work from a location of your choice), and of the two, “remote” is _much more enabling._
WFH is okay. It beats an office. But it blurs the lines between work and not-work life further than they already are unless you’re highly skilled in setting boundaries, and if you have kids or other dependents it’s a fresh challenge to stay focused every day.
Working remotely, in non-pandemic times, opens up real possibilities. The young and the restless can try the nomadic worker thing; that looks like it’s be fun for a while. Coworking (in the small community sense, not WeWork) gets you the separation of work and home on your own terms and can be a fabulous balance for the extroverts (and also introverts) among us. And WFH gets rolled in there as well.
At present moment, as the world suddenly is all doing this at once, while confined at home—of course these concepts will be conflated. But let’s be deliberate to ensure we aren’t setting ourselves up for a world where managers get suspicious of you for leaving the house during work hours. That sounds worse than the situation we started with.
Re: Half of American workers would rather work from home forever: poll
#127I wonder if this is related to the long commutes Americans have gotten used to. I'm not in the US, and while I would say I definitely appreciate the flexibility of being able to work from home (or from "not the office") every now and then, and I do like the present drop in meetings, I cannot fathom how people stay sane without a variety of other people around. My productivity has definitely dropped, and it feels like…
> Does anyone feel the same? The study headline is that half of Americans prefer work from home. The other half either prefer working from an office or haven't made their minds up yet. In my experience managing remote teams, including some people who are new to WFH, many people struggle with the isolation of WFH. For others, the honeymoon phase is short-lived as cabin fever sets in. During normal times, the solution…
> Now would be a great time to try a new morning exercise routine. Getting out of the house for even a 10-minute morning walk can make all the difference in the trajectory of your day. You can build up to a 30-minute run over time, but it's easier to engrain the habit if you start with a very low bar. Just get dressed, prepare a to-go coffee if you like, and go for a walk around your block. You might be surprised at how this sets a different tone for your day.
It sounds like I'm about to quibble with you; that is not my intention, but: I have tried. I know how incredibly effective exercise can be to kick me out of a ditch in normal situations, but it's having next to no effect currently. It still makes me feel better, but it doesn't turn my brain on. I strongly suspect I need the human interaction :-/
Re: Half of American workers would rather work from home forever: poll
#128I wonder if this is related to the long commutes Americans have gotten used to. I'm not in the US, and while I would say I definitely appreciate the flexibility of being able to work from home (or from "not the office") every now and then, and I do like the present drop in meetings, I cannot fathom how people stay sane without a variety of other people around. My productivity has definitely dropped, and it feels like…
I did when I started working from home. I was lucky to have a manager who knew about habits and patterns to fix that. A lot of this isn't about going to work but about our habits and patterns. For example, I have a room I go into and close the door. When I am in there I am working. When I am out of there I'm not. It's like a mental switch. I also use some tricks to keep be from being distracted like a pomodoro timer.…
100% agreed. Important patterns for me are having the same breakfast, lunch and dinner times with dedicated time to eat without work. Shutting down work at a fixed time at night. Waking up at a fixed time.
If it stick to those I tend to automatically start making other patterns to make those times work.
Re: Half of American workers would rather work from home forever: poll
#129Earlier quoted context omitted.
I feel the same. I've found that having a dedicated work environment can help, e.g. a separate office room with a proper desk, chair and monitor, although realistically that's not possible for a lot of people including myself currently.
I currently don't have that, but I did in the past, and it sadly didn't help for me. It seems to be people related: I've noticed the same tends to happen in the office if others are not around (if, say, I swap a holiday for a work day or something and am alone when I go in).
I have a staff member that sounds similar to you. It's not that she's unaccountable for her own actions, she just has a hard time 'turning on' her work brain without some kind of incentive or external motivator.
I worked with her to come up with regular (weekly) check-ins, monthly goals, and changed the annual review process to include those items. I would never have that amount of micromanagement for anyone, except her, because it's what she wanted/needed for productivity. Maybe look into that with your direct supervisor? It helped her immensely. She has an external motivator that she needs.
For me, it helped, because measuring remote worker productivity is hard as hell, unless you have sales, you make something, or you decide to measure by number of lines of code or some other arbitrary measure. It was a god-send in a very 'grey' work area.
Re: Half of American workers would rather work from home forever: poll
#130Earlier quoted context omitted.
Make sure you account for the value of time saved. Time is precious and there's never enough, if I can find a way to add 40 more minutes to my day I'm going to value that immensely.
Don't use it for additional time spent working uncompensated! Your commute wasn't paid for (typically), so don't give that time away to someone else for free now that you're saving it.
Depends a bit on how you are accounting.
Your employer doesn't directly pay for you to go to school, but most people would still see that work eventually pays for education.
Commuting is similar.
But I agree with the gist: if you figure out how to be more productive, eg by doing some task faster or by eliminating your commute, there's no moral obligation to hand over all the gains to someone else.