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38% of remote workers work from bed

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Re: 38% of remote workers work from bed

#231

Post by mark_l_watson »

chronogram wrote: post #106
hippari wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Totally agree, I cook more food, learned more recipe, wash my clothes more frequently, my house is more clean and organized. Contrasting to a 9-5 job, I would rather just order takeaways after getting back home from the office.

It’s great how everyone works so differently. When I am alone, working from home, I can’t find a proper mental break anywhere and everything becomes a mess and I eat worse. Having a physical work/life split makes me cook more food, learn more recipes, and gives me a constant fresh look at my home and items to make sure it’s clean and tidy. In the WFH situation it’s suddenly 20:00 and I’m starving and just look to sna…

That is a real problem. When I WFH, I do better when my customer supplies a secure laptop to access their systems. I use that laptop only for work, and simply turn it off at the end of work. During the day, I can grab my iPad if I have personal e-mail, etc.

Re: 38% of remote workers work from bed

#232

Post by jhgb »

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...

This seems impractical with conventional screens. Maybe with e-ink this would work better.

Re: 38% of remote workers work from bed

#233

Post by keskival »

llharper wrote: post #221
holoduke wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Working from home only possible with experienced devs. Once you have lots of juniors, it's very difficult to coach them. Juniors need to be able to contact fellow devs randomly and not via a zoom call.

I’ve been mentoring two juniors at work and I prefer zoom actually. It’s a lot easier for me to share my screen with the both of them than it is to all huddle around my desk. If they run into a problem they ping me on slack and we hop on a call together. It’s not any harder than strolling over to my desk.

In Finland there used to be a culture of everyone from high school upwards living in chatrooms or IRC, so it has been extremely natural for people to "idle" on chat channels and interact naturally over those. I would say chat channels feel much more intimate and social environment to me than sitting in an office. Even when we worked in offices we had IRC or Slack or other channels open and interacted over those rather than by actually walking around and talking. It's simply much more effective, asynchronous, and leaves a log of what was said and agreed.

Re: 38% of remote workers work from bed

#234

Post by ashtonkem »

lazyresearcher wrote: post #129
osigurdson wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree. WFH a couple of days a week is largely nonsensical. Employers still need to pay for office space. Employees need dedicated work space in their homes and additional equipment while still needing to be located relatively close to the office.

You can have a full office everyday if half of the company WFH part of the week and the other half the other part.

At the cost of drastically lowered productivity per person due to hot desking, and not having the space for an all hands.

Re: 38% of remote workers work from bed

#235

Post by goodpoint »

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…

> Being in the same space physically I think speeds up a lot of things

...and also makes a lot of people unable to focus.

Re: 38% of remote workers work from bed

#236

Post by mark_l_watson »

babesh wrote: post #101
daenz wrote: post #40

For the past 2 weeks, I've been working from a treadmill. It has been incredible. I got a small under-the-desk treadmill for my standing desk and I walk at about 2.5km/hour and get around 20,000 steps in per day. It has improved my mood, my clarity, and also has improved my sleep (because I'm tired of walking). I also find it easier to focus on tasks for some reason. If you can make a setup like this work for you, I…

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…

For what it’s worth, I made a similar decision. My dedicated home office is large enough to reengineer for a treadmill (I used one at Google every day for a short while), but I decided it was better for me to go on frequent mini 5 minute walks outside, with long walks before work and sometimes during lunch break. Being outside is healthy, which is why I like to find a shady spot outside to work for short periods.

Also, short walks are great times to think about work. Or, sometimes having a pad of paper to think away from a computer.

Re: 38% of remote workers work from bed

#237

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

I have a standing desk, in the corner of my living room. I've tried other locations, and that hasn't worked. Being here, I don't get the feeling of being "disconnected" from the household.

Most importantly, of course, is that it increases my availability to my cats. They are quite efficient at expressing their needs, and I have to be ready to drop everything, in order to attend to said needs.

I have a nice chair (a Herman-Miller Embody -overrated). I never sit in it. I stand at my desk whenever I work.

I have a desk that can go up or down, and have it set up, so that I can lower it, quite easily. I never do. It stays at one level (42.5").

I have a monster LG[0] that stretches across the entire desk. It is exactly as wide as the desk. I have another 4K monitor, above it (wall-mounted), for the AppleTV, or if I am giving a Zoom class (screen share).

I have a laptop (a 2019 15-inch MBP), but it stays plugged in. I insist on a laptop, so I can take it on the road, if necessary, but the LG has spoiled me rotten. Using the laptop screen is painful. My next laptop will be the smaller pro version M2 that comes out, later this year.

When I work, I generally "dress for work" (button-down shirt and jeans), but a lot more casually than I did, for over 30 years in the office. I feel as if it is important to have that silly little bit of self-discipline. On weekends, I allow myself shorts, and, occasionally, a T-shirt.

My hours are whatever I want, whenever I want. I tend to get started early (I wake up at 5AM), and often code, right up to bed time. I sometimes stay up, in bed, testing my work on my iPad and/or iPhone.

I take breaks whenever I want, and they can be long breaks, but I don't let myself have more than about 3-4 during a day.

I tend to work 7 days a week; sometimes, I allow myself a "half day" (maybe 6 hours). My GH Activity Graph is solid green.

I personally feel as if my productivity knocks anything I ever did in the office, into a cocked hat.

I also don't make a dime at it.

I've never been happier.

[0] https://www.lg.com/us/monitors/lg-49WL95C-W-ultrawide-monito...

Re: 38% of remote workers work from bed

#238

Post by yesenadam »

taejavu wrote: post #183
bamboozled wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I sit on the floor on a Zafu and Zabuton, as if I'm doing Zen meditation. Good setup costs about $200USD, you will be feeling enlightened in no time.

You work like this? Like with a laptop on a coffee table?

I've done this for decades[0], sitting on cushions on the floor, used to have keyboard + monitor on coffee table, but now it's lower, keyboard + mouse on a large square cushion from a sofa, monitor on a small woofer speaker. Working on Mac minis the last 10 years. I don't know, I just like being low down, it feels grounded or something. I find it very comfortable.

[0] Well, no idea what a zafu or zabuton are. My setup cost $0.

Re: 38% of remote workers work from bed

#239

Post by tpxl »

tester34 wrote: post #164
DoingIsLearning wrote: post #157

I will throw in my 5 cents anecdata (I have a history of trauma/back injuries and pain). I spent about 100 euros on a kneeling chair, that had enough adjustment settings for my liking. I have been increasing my time on it steadily for the past few months, to the point that I now confortably work the whole day from it. It is a complete mind shift, I actively have to sustain my posture (and actively shift it), I don't…

Wow, nice. I bought kneeling chair and sitting ball, but prefered ball, but I don't know whether it helps me at all

The ball exercises your lower back muscles for sure, but you can still have bad posture on it. I used to sit on one cross legged with bad upper back posture.

Re: 38% of remote workers work from bed

#240

Post by goodpoint »

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.

That's the biggest red flag I've seen in a long time.
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