I do agree, I'm working from home for 6 months, and being lonely is the hardest part. My dream for now is to work in a small office as a part of a small, talented and concentrated team.
Working from Home: Why It Sucks
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Re: Working from Home: Why It Sucks
#12I'm currently working from home more and more with a small company, too, but I am being proactive to prevent these problems (which I clearly see are coming down the line if I don't do something).
Cultivating that rich feedback that he seems to be missing is hard. I think that IRC is a good start. Video chat is better. It may not work for this guy's company because they still have their "professional" personas active while chatting. You have to let your hair down and be comfortable with a flamewar once in a while. If the personalities of those involved aren't compatible with this, then maybe they shouldn't be in startup/small companies.
I hate to use so many cliches in one sentance, but you really have to be able to be agile and iterate quickly. The development infrastructure helps to address this. If you have good source control and a good project structure that lets you check out a branch to a new directory and just GO then you have a good thing going. If your product requires lots of setup and back-end things that take time and careful configuration, it's going to suck a lot.
Re: Working from Home: Why It Sucks
#13I do agree, I'm working from home for 6 months, and being lonely is the hardest part. My dream for now is to work in a small office as a part of a small, talented and concentrated team.
The idea of "co-working" is gaining steam in many cities. You could certainly start up a group in your area if there isn't one. Basically you just get together with other people who work remotely, but perhaps in somewhat the same vein (web apps, a certain language, whatever), and you can form a team that you can bounce ideas off of and get support from. It could even just be occasional or for lunch every day or something like that, but it helps.
Re: Working from Home: Why It Sucks
#14I would LOVE to work from home, I could do so much more with my day If I was working from home (more productive stuff) and leave my work knowing I was actually able to get something finished for a change even lunch with my dog is a better prospect that lunch with some of the people I work with at the moment. Not to mention that my home office is better equipped, quieter and I cant tell you how much better I would fee…
I agree. I've asked several times over the years to be allowed to work from home one day a week. Always denied.
People who list complaints about working from home don't know how good they have it - they have freedom to work the way they want. Working from home takes discipline and should be seen as a privilege, not as an entitlement.
A big drawback I can see of working from home is that, regardless of where you are, you have to call in for a daily 9:30 (Eastern) scrum call. On the West coast, that means 6:30 call-in.
Re: Working from Home: Why It Sucks
#15You don’t get rich feedback when communicating over a phone, email, or text chat. Then don't use those. Use immersive telepresence, instead. http://www.hp.com/halo/introducing.html
Nice suggestion, but hardly practical.
How different is it than people just using iMacs with iChat video?
Re: Working from Home: Why It Sucks
#16I do agree, I'm working from home for 6 months, and being lonely is the hardest part. My dream for now is to work in a small office as a part of a small, talented and concentrated team.
The idea of "co-working" is gaining steam in many cities. You could certainly start up a group in your area if there isn't one. Basically you just get together with other people who work remotely, but perhaps in somewhat the same vein (web apps, a certain language, whatever), and you can form a team that you can bounce ideas off of and get support from. It could even just be occasional or for lunch every day or somet…
Good suggestion.
I even live in a lost city as far as technology is concerned and have found at least a couple of others who also work from home doing software development. We try to get together and work from a coffee shop every now and then.
Look around for local Linux user groups or programming language interest groups - you'll probably find some other kindred spirits.
Re: Working from Home: Why It Sucks
#17Not my experience - I love working from home. Going to work is just a matter of crossing the yard to get to my office. Almost no meetings, no office politics - bliss. My only real complaint is that no-one ever reads past the first paragraph of any email. Sometimes emails have to be longer than that, so every now and again, I have to hop on a plane and go and explain to someone what all those second paragraphs said.
Most important "business" lesson I ever learned: never write a "document" in an email message; write it in Word and attach it instead, to activate the pointy-haired neurotransmitters.
Re: Working from Home: Why It Sucks
#18My friend/ex-boss Mike had a permanent videoconference running during the day, so that everyone in the office had a "presence". And you can mitigate some of these problems with IRC.
But if you possibly can, get everyone on your team together every day in a shared space; http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=251884.
Re: Working from Home: Why It Sucks
#19Earlier quoted context omitted.
Nice suggestion, but hardly practical.
How different is it than people just using iMacs with iChat video?
Much higher quality. There is something in our animal selves that demands a certain threshold of realism, which these new systems have. Technically, it's just higher resolution, faster connections, better screens, better cameras, etc., but the total effect is greater than the sum of parts, as in the system replaces plane tickets instead of phone calls.
This article in the economist was good, but now behind a pay-wall: http://www.economist.com/business/displaystory.cfm?story_id=...
Re: Working from Home: Why It Sucks
#20Earlier quoted context omitted.
Nice suggestion, but hardly practical.
How different is it than people just using iMacs with iChat video?
A major factor in telepresence immersion is eye-contact. http://www.google.com/search?q=telepresence+eye+contact Perhaps someday a YC company will figure out how to inexpensively enable eye-contact over ordinary video chat (teleconferencing).