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38% of remote workers work from bed

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Re: 38% of remote workers work from bed

#251

Post by shapefrog »

ygouzerh wrote: post #218
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.

My home office in hong kong was litterally the wardrobe, great view out the window but not a lot of room to pace around in.

Re: 38% of remote workers work from bed

#252

Post by ecshafer »

csomar wrote: post #196
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…

Is $7k really expensive even for non-programming jobs? Assuming a 5-year lifespan, that comes at around $120/month which should be affordable to most of the developed world. I have another theory: The reason we didn't adopt such ergonomic setups is because they look "weird". We are quite used to sitting in chairs and it's not quite far from sitting on a rock. A customized ergonomic setup will pay itself in quite a sh…

This is the most out of touch comment I have seen in a long time, even for hackernews. A lot of people with office jobs are making $35k-$40k a year. You're talking about 1/4th of their take home salary, and $120 a month is an expense that at least 50% of America couldn't afford and most don't have $7k on hand to blow.

Re: 38% of remote workers work from bed

#253

Post by IshKebab »

jt2190 wrote: post #248
pnut wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After 2 whole weeks, I don't think you should be offering "in the long run" advice about things.

I’ve had a walking treadmill desk for over ten years. Whether it’s for you is quite personal: See if you can find somewhere to try it out for a few minutes, in particular try typing and using the mouse/trackpad while walking. My treadmill tops out at 4 mph (6.4 km/h), which is really too fast to do anything but walk. I can watch videos at 3mph, code routine easy stuff at ~2mph, code hard stuff at ~1mph, and to read h…

I tried watching videos on an iPad while walking on a treadmill and found that head movement made it annoying to watch. The obvious solution is a bigger screen further away. Did you find anything like that?

Re: 38% of remote workers work from bed

#254

Post by bluGill »

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.

Scrum isn't bad, but there are better agile processes. Most people doing scrum don't really do retrospectives and make changes to the process. In a large company this isn't really reasonable as there needs to be some process in common with each team, and the processes you most need to change in scrum are the ones that can only be changed if every team does it at once.

I favor kanban processes - it locks in less at an organizational level and thus allows more freedom to make changes for the team. Though in my experience there is less change needed in the first place because the only processes specified are the ones that are locked in and everything else is whatever it takes to make it work.

Re: 38% of remote workers work from bed

#255

Post by bluGill »

vladvasiliu wrote: post #214
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…

> 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 wh…

> "you can overhear the spontaneous decisions during the day"

This is a good thing if the spontaneous decisions are always and only the ones that are important to you. This is a bad thing if there is any other decision. In a shared multiple companies space the only decision that matters to you is "where should we go for lunch" (they might not work with you, but you can still eat lunch with them). In a company only space it is better, but there are still a lot that don't matter to you. If it is a team only shared space most of the decisions matter to you.

Re: 38% of remote workers work from bed

#256

Post by goodpoint »

ImaCake wrote: post #133
vasco wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The options here are sitting while working or walking while working. The options aren't sititng while working or disregarding society and returning to the forest.

>returning to the forest Which is basically a myth at this point. For most of the last 5000 years most people have had a much lower quality of life than people do today. It's not like things were nice before we sat infront of computers all day.

> It's not like things were nice before we sat in front of computers all day.

This might be true, technically, but often HN uses this point to dismiss any criticism of modern society and it use of technology.

Re: 38% of remote workers work from bed

#257

Post by exo762 »

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…

I've tried setup like this. I fall asleep immediately. It seems that I require some amount of discomfort to stay focused.

Re: 38% of remote workers work from bed

#258

Post by mumblemumble »

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…

> screen real estate isn't a big factor in getting stuff done for me

Lately, I've been wondering if less screen real estate actually makes me a better programmer.

Being able to simultaneously have 6 files open across two large monitors with a lot of vertical real estate means that messy code doesn't hurt me as much. In fact, I'm pretty sure the only reason I do that is to facilitate dealing with messy code. I no longer have to build a stable mental model of it in my head, because it's reasonably convenient to just keep referring back to the original source code.

When I'm just on the laptop screen, though, and I can fit one file full width, or two if I've been good about keeping the line length below 90, I start having to keep things in my short term memory. Which means that, when it's not amenable to that, I'm relatively quick to get annoyed and refactor it for comprehensibility. I'd like to think that, with time, I'd eventually come to just write more comprehensible code in the first place.

A couple more data points here, obviously riddled with bias, come from my colleagues. Some have desktop computers with multiple 4K monitors, some have a laptop connected to a single external monitor, and some have that and also a habit of unplugging the computer and working on the front porch whenever the weather is nice. My impression is that the people in the first group tend to write the least comprehensible code.

Of course, the 4K monitor jocks also tend to work the fastest. But I think it's maybe a bit like when I used to work for building contractor. Nobody liked to be on the same crew as the person who worked the fastest.

Re: 38% of remote workers work from bed

#259

Post by EvanAnderson »

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 worked from home for around 15 years and I miss it tremendously. I think my productivity was much better when my "take a moment from work" diversions were exactly the things you described-- doing some laundry, washing some dishes, preparing lunch, etc.

I'm back in a traditional office setting. My diversions are mostly the "surf around on the Internet" variety. That's not to say random Internet use didn't happen when I worked at home, but I found I enjoyed random non-computer diversions far more than sitting viewing websites. Now that I'm in an office those non-computer diversions aren't an option. I just end up wasting time on websites when I need a break.

I also really, really miss working from my couch with my 15" laptop on my lap. It was vastly more comfortable than any desk setup I've ever had and discouraged me from hoarding physical articles in drawers, corners of a desk, etc.

Re: 38% of remote workers work from bed

#260

Post by lumost »

Personally, I’m going a bit batty with work from home. I get my stuff done - but it feels like pulling teeth against my procrastination and desire to relax in the spaces I’ve used for relaxation.

After a year and a half I’ve run out of rooms that aren’t already spoiled for productivity. This used to happen in the office but I’d simply migrate desks or work from the kitchen for a few weeks.

If I was single wfh would be a godsend to simply travel where I wanted to travel and work where I wanted to work. But my house has a 10 month old a nanny and a working spouse inside of 1500 sq ft.

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