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38% of remote workers work from bed

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Re: 38% of remote workers work from bed

#211

Post by mojuba »

DougBTX wrote: post #204
mojuba wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Who's going to write the fine-detail code if they whole day is a meeting? From my experience, in good teams people understand when it's time leave each other alone. I hate the word "sprint" which comes from the much hated "agile" culture, but it's what it is: there are these small sprints when everyone signals DND by taking on their headphones. Which also means only disturb me if it's very, very important or urgent…

> the much hated "agile" culture I never got on well with Scrum, especially with the way it has become synonymous with “agile”. Really a shame that “agile” which focused on people has been swamped as a term by Scrum which is process process process.

Right, thanks for the correction, I meant Scrum of course.

Re: 38% of remote workers work from bed

#212

Post by sokoloff »

dartiss wrote: post #170

The headline appears to just be to pull people in, as I'm guessing the original survey didn't differentiate between those that have spent a whole day working from bed, those who regular work from bed or those that have once, for an hour, done so. However, the meat of the article is more interesting and it asks questions which, sadly, it doesn't even attempt to answer. At the remote company that I work for, as well as…

At some point, the answer is probably “find an employer who has chosen to return to a ‘normal’ office”.

Re: 38% of remote workers work from bed

#213

Post by roel_v »

abdullahkhalids wrote: post #175
babesh wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Picture tech people walking on their treadmills for compensation and then picture gerbils running on wheels for food. Picture tech people drinking Soylent and then picture gerbils eating pellets. The world is whack. People are substituting artificial things for the natural things that made us happy in earlier times. Walking on a treadmill vs walking outside in the sun and shade amidst plants, trees, and other living…

Stephen Wolfram has a contraption for hanging his laptop in front of him so he can walk outside and work at the same time. https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2019/02/seeking-the-prod...

Let's not give people arguments for being more like Stephen Wolfram here...

Re: 38% of remote workers work from bed

#214

Post by vladvasiliu »

mojuba wrote: post #168
dsign wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Being in the same space physically I think speeds up a lot of things. In small teams and esp. at early stage startups your whole day is a meeting where things are discussed and resolved spontaneously. Who's going to write the fine-detail code if they whole day is a meeting? It may change from case to case, but for some small teams the biggest challenge is to produce something so good that it out-competes the produc…

> Who's going to write the fine-detail code if they whole day is a meeting? From my experience, in good teams people understand when it's time leave each other alone. I hate the word "sprint" which comes from the much hated "agile" culture, but it's what it is: there are these small sprints when everyone signals DND by taking on their headphones. Which also means only disturb me if it's very, very important or urgent…

> From my experience, in good teams people understand when it's time leave each other alone. I hate the word "sprint" which comes from the much hated "agile" culture, but it's what it is: there are these small sprints when everyone signals DND by taking on their headphones. Which also means only disturb me if it's very, very important or urgent.

When I was working in a startup, we did a "hybrid wfh" thing: we knew when we were about to have something requiring our full attention and would work one (or multiple) days from home. We had Google chat (or whatever it was called at the time) for anything that could handle a delay in response and the phone for anything that needed a chat right away.

At the time, the office was in a kind of co-working space, so it was a particularly hellish combination of open-space and multiple companies, complete with people unaware of their phones' silent mode. The upside was that even for regular work, productivity skyrocketed when we were home, so the founder, who initially was against this, started warming up to the arrangement.

More broadly, I think that different jobs have different requirements. I hate it when people talk around me and find it harder to focus. I never got used to this even after multiple years. And while I love listening to music, even while working, I don't enjoy wearing headphones all day long. I'm wearing glasses, so bigger headphones start to hurt after a while and in-ears are pain to put back in after every interruption.

Also, headphones cut you off from the surrounding discussion (that's the point, right?) so the whole "you can overhear the spontaneous decisions during the day" kinda falls flat, doesn't it?

Re: 38% of remote workers work from bed

#215

Post by Tade0 »

KronisLV wrote: post #146

I'm still amazed at how we lack both ergonomic and comfortable ways to use computers, it's usually just either one or the other, never both. Imagine a large pillow that's shaped vaguely like human back should be when resting, which you could put on your bed to support your entire back, neck and head, at a slight incline. Then, add a keyboard support that can be moved around, alongside with one for mouse (or just a tr…

For the pillows I recommend pregnancy pillows - they're filled with some kind of small grains and adjust to your body perfectly, providing an amazing level of comfort.

Re: 38% of remote workers work from bed

#216

Post by cmsj »

mech422 wrote: post #173
scarecrowbob wrote: post #77

I've been working remote for about 10 years. I've had "real" offices. I've worked in open-plan offices. I've had a home office. I've worked from bed. There are tons of good ways to do it. Lately I swap between a kitchen table and a chair on my porch. I no longer use multiple screens, I've just gotten really fast at swapping windows on my 15" laptop; I've gotten good at figuring out how wide my terminal window breaks…

I've been working from home 20 years now, and I have the opposite setup from you. I've got a much nicer setup then I ever had in offices - from 3 monitors to my favorite keyboards. As I get older and my eyes get worse, I really appreciate the space the monitors give me. I do agree about going back to an office... Its not really something I anticipate doing.

~10 years WFH here and my approach is similar to yours - my home office has become almost ludicrously well equipped.

My approach is that I think about how much commuting would cost me, and consider that a reasonable amount to invest in my working space at home. As a result, I have a very small, but very functional space that I feel good about sitting in for 8 hours a day. I'm comfortable, I'm calm, and when I need to think, I don't feel stressed by my environment.

Edit: to give some examples - I have very carefully chosen art for the walls that I can stare at and my mind can drift, when I need to solve problems. I had a desk custom made to give me the most amount of space because this is a very small room (~3m x ~2.5m) that regular desks can't make the best use of. I have great audio gear (mic, headphones and speakers), carefully tuned lighting, etc, etc. In isolation the thousands I've spent on this room seems kind-of ridiculous, but compared to the thousands more I haven't spent on commuting and compared to the satisfaction I get when sitting in here, I think it was absolutely worth it, and I am very grateful that I was privileged enough to be able to make all these choices.

Re: 38% of remote workers work from bed

#217

Post by roel_v »

sethc2 wrote: post #138

The article brings up that for most a home office is a luxury. And i thought how is that possible, just use some extra room in your house. Then I remembered having a house and an extra room might be an easy thing to attain as a software developer, but that is only true because I don’t live in the Bay Area or Seattle. Yet in those areas you might have more fun on weekends. Just to see, I looked at prices for a round t…

I knew some people who did something like that 20 years ago, "living" (having a family) in the south of France and working in Frankfurt. They only did it to give their families the chance to live near their extended families or for the jobs of their partners, nobody did it because it improved their quality of life. It's probably different when you're 25 and single vs when you're 40 with a family, but I don't know anyone who works away from home several days a week and enjoys it, and it's not an uncommon pattern for consulting people around these parts of Europe (apart from the status symbol that this sort of lifestyle is, despite it objectively sucking - weird how people are that way).

Re: 38% of remote workers work from bed

#218

Post by ygouzerh »

KingMachiavelli wrote: post #107

Survey seems pretty flawed and potentially biased. The survey was done by a contractor/home improvement company so maybe they used customer's as their population? While SWEs might need/want a good desk setup, many office jobs just don't need it. I'm not sure people are really improvising but rather find sitting with a laptop is how they normally work anyway. And working in the bedroom can be misleading... it's often…

It depends of the country. In my country-side town in Europe, I would have no issue.

Now I am in Hong-Kong, and it's really hard to find a place that have enough place for a desk in a bedroom / place in the living room, without breaking your bank account. I heard that it's the same for Singapore.

Re: 38% of remote workers work from bed

#219

Post by christophilus »

metb wrote: post #156
dsign wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Being in the same space physically I think speeds up a lot of things. In small teams and esp. at early stage startups your whole day is a meeting where things are discussed and resolved spontaneously. Who's going to write the fine-detail code if they whole day is a meeting? It may change from case to case, but for some small teams the biggest challenge is to produce something so good that it out-competes the produc…

> Who's going to write the fine-detail code if they whole day is a meeting? Reminds me of the time I worked at an early stage startup. I used to take official vacation time, and disappear from company collaboration tools to get real work done.

I used to take sick days for that reason when I worked in an open office space. Then, I realized how dumb that was and quit that job.

Re: 38% of remote workers work from bed

#220

Post by dyadic »

mojuba wrote: post #125
scarecrowbob wrote: post #77

I've been working remote for about 10 years. I've had "real" offices. I've worked in open-plan offices. I've had a home office. I've worked from bed. There are tons of good ways to do it. Lately I swap between a kitchen table and a chair on my porch. I no longer use multiple screens, I've just gotten really fast at swapping windows on my 15" laptop; I've gotten good at figuring out how wide my terminal window breaks…

That's work from home brilliantly summarized, very true. However, I have my doubts about productivity in smaller teams and startups. Being in the same space physically I think speeds up a lot of things. In small teams and esp. at early stage startups your whole day is a meeting where things are discussed and resolved spontaneously. Sometimes it is important to have an environment where information is exchanged dynami…

I think that small teams with high throughput communication can work in place and remote. In place the high communication is there by default where the default remote position would probably be lower communication / more isolation. It doesn't have to be this way of course, but it would require the remote high communication model to be put into action intentionally.

It's worth remembering that this high communication method isn't really scalable too, and that larger teams trying to follow it will find themselves dedicating a larger % of their time to noise. It would take some intentional actions to move away from it as the team grows.

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