Neither.
I am most productive working at a cafe or an outdoor sitting area (in a campus).
Poll: Do you prefer the office or work from home?
231–240 of 371 posts
Re: Poll: Do you prefer the office or work from home?
#232I like a mix of both, but since my office is in a completely different state, I am fully remote. Social interaction has been terrible for me, so I am working on finding a cycling club in my city. Also, since pretty much all of my friends are gone (all of them are in different cities), so this is all I really have (I don't count my office calls as social interaction)
So if someone is a situation like I am in, I really really recommend cycling (or some outdoor sport). It really helps with the mood.
Re: Poll: Do you prefer the office or work from home?
#233At the start of the pandemic, I knew I would miss working with people in person, but thought I would be totally great with WFH. Now, I know that I badly need some amount of in-person time with my coworkers on a weekly basis, or I go crazy. It's a motivational thing for me. I thrive on solving problems for and with other people, and there's an "out of sight, out of mind" effect for me over zoom. It's just harder for m…
I think the biggest issue is that people are lonely due to the pandemic, and are conflating that with working from home. You can have a strong social life and working from home. For others, unfortunately the only socialization they can get is forced interaction with coworkers at the office.
I can see what you're getting at, and I thought it was the issue for me, but I've come to realize that it's not a loneliness/lack of socialization thing. It's just that I really treasure in-person interactions with the people I am working on something with.
I got into software engineering because I like solving problems, but also because I love solving problems with really smart people. Turns out that it feels really good to do that in person!
Coffee breaks, lunch outings, being able to stop by someone's desk and shoot the shit or see what they're working on -- I've realized that these things are not only enjoyable for me, but critical for both the actual quality of my work and my motivation to do it. Not to mention any kind of whiteboarding / collaborative discussion, which I think is pretty obviously nicer in person.
So far, nothing I have tried remotely gives me the same kind of satisfaction that just physically being with my work partners does. I do think there's something very deeply ingrained in me that's responsible for that, and I know it's definitely not something everyone wants or needs.
Re: Poll: Do you prefer the office or work from home?
#234Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It also means that I get to choose when I will allow myself to be interrupted, rather than sitting in an open concept office and being _continually_ interrupted. This is extremely situational. When I was in a larger house and had no kids, WFH was an easy way to avoid interruptions. Moving to a smaller house (more expensive city) and having kids flipped the situation around. Avoiding interruptions at home was extrem…
Once Slack becomes the default I’m pinged from every angle all day long. I recently began work on a team that has a brief "culture FAQ" regarding things like Slack messaging norms and expectations. We have an agreement that @'ing/DM'ing is expected to be asynchronous unless you explicitly let the recipient know otherwise - "hey, the server's down" or "hey, I'm blocked on this" etc. (above paragraph edited for clarity…
Doing this reduces efficiency. You are potentially blocking someone for half of a day when you might just need to send a simple message back.
Re: Poll: Do you prefer the office or work from home?
#235Work from home. I can't describe how much better my life is doing remote work full time.
I actually have the ability to exercise, cook wholesome meals, spend time with my girlfriend and invest the time spent travelling into hobbies / businesses /
Never again will I be in an office. It's a hard limit for me now.
Re: Poll: Do you prefer the office or work from home?
#236At the start of the pandemic, I knew I would miss working with people in person, but thought I would be totally great with WFH. Now, I know that I badly need some amount of in-person time with my coworkers on a weekly basis, or I go crazy. It's a motivational thing for me. I thrive on solving problems for and with other people, and there's an "out of sight, out of mind" effect for me over zoom. It's just harder for m…
> It's a motivational thing for me. I've always loved working from home (and was doing it for almost a year before the pandemic started), I'm quite self-driven, but I do recognize that it can be difficult to get back into the groove once you've been out of it for a while - meeting colleagues in person would help with that aspect. Ideally, if my colleagues weren't some 3000 km away, I wouldn't mind going to the office…
That's my situation, we have a very globally diverse workforce from the UK, France, North America. I can only see this happening more and more over time now. Companies no longer need to restrict hiring to the small pool who are able to physically travel to a single location everyday.
Re: Poll: Do you prefer the office or work from home?
#237Going to an office to write software is absolutely insane. I like going on fridays and leaving early to drink beer with coworkers.
> Going to an office to write software is absolutely insane. Why? Writing software, especially in a large organization, is often an inherently social job, just like many others. You often need heads down time to actually get into flow and produce code, but that doesn't mean interaction with others isn't a significant part of it as well.
I think the overwhelming majority of software that's written does not need that much attention.
Re: Poll: Do you prefer the office or work from home?
#238We went to temporary work from home at the beginning of the pandemic. Well it's been 2 years now. I have hated every minute of it. I used to have a 15 minute commute which was a nice bit of time to get my thoughts in order. Now I roll out of bed when my alarm goes off and do daily stand-up on zoom in my home office literally 5 minutes later. My brain is literally still asleep. I miss people, I miss spontaneous intera…
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Re: Poll: Do you prefer the office or work from home?
#239At the start of the pandemic, I knew I would miss working with people in person, but thought I would be totally great with WFH. Now, I know that I badly need some amount of in-person time with my coworkers on a weekly basis, or I go crazy. It's a motivational thing for me. I thrive on solving problems for and with other people, and there's an "out of sight, out of mind" effect for me over zoom. It's just harder for m…
What if you WFH and others work from your home too and vice versa?
We actually did this a few times and it was really nice! Current living situations make it a little impractical, but we should try doing it again some time soon, that's a great idea.
Re: Poll: Do you prefer the office or work from home?
#240I struggle with ADHD, and I know I work much more effectively from the office. I learned during the pandemic that I really need and missed the social interactions that occur in the office, both for my mental health and for my job (there's nothing wfh that beats a five minute hallway conversation to meet new people, learn about projects, brainstorm, problem solve, etc etc). I also need the commute to help force me to…
It’s interesting, I’m severely ADHD and I can focus much better at home. I find offices horribly distracting. I used to come to the office 1 or 2 days a week before the pandemic, and they were my least productive days by an order of magnitude.