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What I don’t like about working at a remote job
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Re: What I don’t like about working at a remote job
#162WFH works for some people, but not all people. I'm one of the people it works for, and I've been doing it since 2015.
For me it's great because:
- No more alarm clock
- No more noisy office
- No more beng pulled aside for every little thing
- No more people dropping in
- No more unhealthy lunches at the food trucks or some restaurant.
- I can just pop out quickly to get some task done.
- Tons more free time since I don't commute
- My choice of location. I lived and worked out of a farm for years. At the end of the work day I'd move the irrigation lines and then kick back on the porch with a beer and watch the sun set over the fields. My commute time was spent on farm chores instead.
But it does require some new habits:
- Have a set start and stop time and stick to it religiously. Outside of those hours, do no work related activities.
- Develop good cooking and food habits. Newer gadgets like instant pots, air fryers and sous vide cookers make this MUCH easier.
- Make sure you get at least 10 minutes of some kind of exercise per day. Better yet 20.
- Take breaks and go for walks outside.
- Have a rotation of places to work from.
And there are some people who just don't work well in this kind of environment:
- Maybe they need a communal feel, even if they're not actually talking to people.
- Maybe they need face-to-face contact with at least some regularity.
- Maybe they need to hang out with at least some regular people during the workday.
- Maybe they need a clear, physical distance separation between work and home.
- Maybe they need a regimen where the actions are built-in to the system rather than self-imposed (having to go to an office that has a set start and end time, office rules, etc)
And that's fine. Each to their own. At my workplace, there's an office that people can go to if they want, or work from home. Their choice. And it's cheaper for the company since the office doesn't need to have a spot for every person.
Re: What I don’t like about working at a remote job
#163I've worked at places where I made lifelong friends; working in the office was an absolute blast. Work was probably more fun than it should have been.
I've also worked at places with absolutely forgettable coworkers; working in the office was a drag.
I'm remote now and love most of it. I miss the fun office of the first paragraph, and would love to find something like that again, but I know its unlikely -- filling an office with people that just click with each other is a rare thing.
Short of that scenario I don't think anything could entice me back to the office.
Re: What I don’t like about working at a remote job
#164Remote work has a ton of advantages because you:
1. Get to spend more time with your spouse and pets. 2. Can cook your own meals instead buying outside junk. 3. Spend 1 hour working out or gardening instead of sitting in traffic.
But of course, if you live alone in a tiny shoebox apartment then remote work is the last thing you want.
Re: What I don’t like about working at a remote job
#165Everyone talks about losing focus at home, oversleeping, and doing other activities during the work day. For some reason I've had the opposite problem. I used to get into the office around 8 AM, take a lunch break, go grab dessert or take a walk in the garden later, etc. Then I'd leave around 4:30 PM and forget about work until the next day. Now I wake up at 5:00 AM and basically work non-stop in the same spot (somet…
Now I wake up at 5:00 AM and basically work non-stop in the same spot (sometimes a coffee shop in the morning) until 6:30 PM. I skip breakfast and lunch altogether, because I've found that without walking around the office campus I gain weight too quickly.
It sounds like you filled the extra time gained through WFH mostly with more work. Try filling it up with social activities, exercise, going outside etc. You might start feeling a lot better and not have to worry about weight.
Re: What I don’t like about working at a remote job
#166Earlier quoted context omitted.
>There is also a somewhat of divide between introverts and extroverts between which they prefer, but of course - there are many in either camp leaning the other way too. Yeah, as an introvert, seeing the constant assertion that only extroverts want to work from the office is very frustrating. It is because I am an introvert that I want to work from the office. Sure, I struggle with interacting with people in general…
I'm not sure if there's any study to back this up but aren't introverts generally more sensitive to social cues? As an introvert myself, we have similar frustrations. In-person communication is just more effective in some cases.
Afaik no. Introverts can be both very good at social cues and bad at them. Same goes for extroverts. Introversion vs extrovertion is just one of huge amount of traits we have.
Also, it ia not like there would be two distinct species. It is scale and majority of the people are in the middle between extroversion and introversion. Just slightly biased toward one side.
Re: What I don’t like about working at a remote job
#167A lot of us are in the same boat, and I see some good advice here. But the pattern I see in the OP's observations is the lack of motion . The repetitive motion from home to work, work to home, is like breathing on a different time scale, and as annoying as the travel itself is, you are at least moving through the world . And when you're at work, you are with people who are facing the same mundane challenges of where…
There’s no mention of motion in the post but as someone who did WFH for 2+ years before the pandemic, I can attest that even café hopping falls within the author’s first bulletpoint, which is that everyday is exactly the same. It’s expensive, too, since you can rarely just sit in a café without ordering anything.
Ergonomics is usually crap too
Re: What I don’t like about working at a remote job
#168Everyone talks about losing focus at home, oversleeping, and doing other activities during the work day. For some reason I've had the opposite problem. I used to get into the office around 8 AM, take a lunch break, go grab dessert or take a walk in the garden later, etc. Then I'd leave around 4:30 PM and forget about work until the next day. Now I wake up at 5:00 AM and basically work non-stop in the same spot (somet…
> oversleeping
It is nit overstepping, it is finally having chance to sleep away that sleep debt.
But for the rest, what actually worked for me was to have commitment at end of workday. Ideally something that forces you to finish (a gym class, activity with friend/kids etc). But even if not, something as simple ritual of "I play guitar 17:00 sharp for 15 minutes and then exercise another 15 minutes" did the trick. It takes you mentally away from work and in few weeks creates habit.
Re: What I don’t like about working at a remote job
#169Working from home, or remotely is not for everyone - neither is being in an office. Some folks thrive in an office environment, they value the things it provides - a schedule, a time, a reason to get up and out, socialising with others, being out in the world. It comes at a cost of time and a bit of freedom; you don't really get to choose the hours or where this happens, neither the folks you interact with. Others pr…
Is it wrong that I value both of those things?
I like going in once or twice a week, catching up with my team, writing stuff on a whiteboard, having in person 1:1s, attending an all hands in person, getting a free snack from the kitchen, having a beer after work at the pub.
I also like making my own breakfast, lunch and dinner, not spending over 50 quid travelling to the office, booking out an afternoon to write something, the ability to set my own schedule, having my own screen and desk, going for a quick walk in garden, and kissing my daughter goodnight.
Re: What I don’t like about working at a remote job
#170I've been working remotely on and off for 20 years, and consistently for the last 10 years. A few suggestions: - Choose to not make every day the same. You're free! Once or twice a week, take a train or bus to a different place for the day, somewhere with good cell signal. Work from a national park, or a beach, a café, pub, museum, library, take a river cruise... whatever. There's nowhere in the world that has nothin…
> Choose to not make every day the same. You're free! For us, once we all went remote, the day just started earlier. Whereas we used to start at 10 we begun starting meetings at 8. The assumption being that nobody is commuting, so why not start the day earlier? This also helped accommodate others in non-Pacific Americas timezones. This means you have to jump straight into meetings and each day can't be materially dif…
> But my coworkers and I have so much shared context. We spend 8 hours+ together. It feels like a waste to pretend that we just don't have anything in common despite the time.
I think that what is kind of unsaid and lost here is that long working hours in office were super often about socialization and not work itself. I mean, it was noticeable even before - people who were there long hours tend to chat away a lot of times both in and out of meetings.
But, it looked like work, it was pleasant and rewarded.