I hate articles like this. All the statements in the last couple paragraphs that start with "You start to fell..." or "You don't get..." should have the "You" replaced with an "I". I totally understand that someone why someone who works from home gets lonely, but that doesn't mean everybody who does gets lonely. It takes the right kind of person. This is my qualm with articles like this. People present their opinion as a sweeping generalization and fact. If you want to tell me why you think working at home sucks, please do. It sounds silly when you try to speak for everybody.
Working from Home: Why It Sucks
31–40 of 105 posts
Re: Working from Home: Why It Sucks
#32Earlier quoted context omitted.
"People who list complaints about working from home don't know how good they have it" I work from home, but I put in my years in soulless cube farms - as did everyone I know (besides farmers) that work from home now and I know how nice it can be by comparison. That said, working from home is not a holy grail. It has it's downsides - like everything else. It's unfair to say that those of us who work from home somehow…
Fair enough. Sometimes it's hard to see the forest for the trees. Did you buy a nice (Polycom) speaker phone or headset for call-in meetings?
Not yet - but I'm thinking about it. :) We don't do many voice calls, though, so I haven't felt a strong enough need. Mostly we use IM/Email since that is less disruptive while working and more conducive to our mobile lifestyles. (Not all of us work from home, there's a small core group of friends who started the company that work together in an office in person, but they do so by choice and it sounds pretty fun. Sorta wish I could drop in now and then without having to board a plane to do it.)
Re: Working from Home: Why It Sucks
#33Like everything, working from home needs balance. Not just work/non-work time balance, but physical balance with a private office in your home and regular contact with the outside world. If you don't have a second bedroom for an office and you live alone, working from home is going to blow.
When I started working from home, the first thing I did was go out looking for a co-working studio in my city. I knew that I was going to do my best work from home at night, but I go to the "office" so I can still get coding done during the day. I have a full office setup in my apartment that I use from 6am until 11am almost everyday, I go to my "office" from 11am to 4pm and then come home, working from 9pm until midnight. It's a crazy work schedule and the thing that keeps me sane is splitting my time between my home office and co-working "office", so I'm not wasting so much time during the day with boredom/loneliness/the internet.
I understand that this may not be suitable for everyone, but it works great for me and I've worked out of almost every space you can imagine. To me, it is 100% worth it to get yourself a decent home office and/or a co-working office to be the most effective.
Re: Working from Home: Why It Sucks
#34I 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,…
We try to have work from home friday each week in the winter and move it to work from home thursday for the rest of the year (for after work drinks on friday).
More than 3 days a week at home and you start to lose the benefits.
Re: Working from Home: Why It Sucks
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Much as it's probably true, I absolutely hate that. Somebody once showed me a diagram demonstrating the increased efficiency gained by using a wiki instead of email - but the entire gain would have been nullified if they assumed that rather than entering stuff directly into the wiki, people would upload word documents to the wiki (which the pointy-hairs invariably do).
Just need to write something that automatically converts word docs into new wiki pages. Then the pointy-hairs can upload all they want and everyone else gets some sanity.
Don't even try to make the conversion full featured, just rip it plain text. When the boss asks why his charts and headers don't convert over, show him how easy it is to fix that in the wiki. By getting his feet wet this way, eventually he might not even bother uploading word docs at all.
Or maybe I have too much faith in pointy-haired bosses.
Re: Working from Home: Why It Sucks
#36I hate working from home now also, after doing it from near to 8 years. It sucks, it's lonely and it's difficult to get motivated. Also, you are in an insular bubble, you are not exposed to different ideas, and the years tend to repeat themselves.
That's why I'm giving up this life and going to work in a lab.
Re: Working from Home: Why It Sucks
#37I 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.
Same happened to me. Whenever I felt lonely I would go to a small coffee shop near my house. I found out that I like seeing people coming and going, I met some interesting people and made some friends.
Re: Working from Home: Why It Sucks
#38"check company IRC, say good morning, make sure nothing’s on fire yet" etc etc The thing I get from this whole post is that the author lacks passion for his work. His tone makes his work sound like some terrible chore that he's forced to do. Don't get me wrong: a "good job" every now and then is always nice, but not receiving it shouldn't be the primary reason you shouldn't work from home. If you're the type of perso…
"If you're the type of person that gets bored easily or needs lots of external feedback in order to motivate yourself, working from home/starting your own business is going to be very difficult." If you are the kind of person who is NOT motivated by external feedback, how are you going to be successful in business when so much of succeeding in business is responding to the external feedback you receive from customers…
Yes yes, you're right. What I meant was that you have to be internally motivated. You can't be the type of person who has to have people tell you to do things in order to get them done.
Feedback from your customers is very important and is one of the best ways to determine if you're on the right course (though as many have pointed out, you should often correctly ignore it.)
Re: Working from Home: Why It Sucks
#39I 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…
If you're married, working from home suddenly means you apparently have time to do the dishes, laundry, take care of the kid(s), let the dog out, run "quick" errands, etc. One of the tougher things about working from home is dealing with all the other people who don't. :)
At first I had that problem, people stopping by in the middle of the day because they thought 'working from home'/'self employed' was a pseudonym for early retirement. I have since created solid work hours (9:30-6:30ish) that I treat just like working for an employer. My family knows that within those hours I am as available/unavailable as I was when I worked for a corporation. I find that this puts me back on the same page as the rest of the world so during the evenings I am no longer running off to check up on something and whoever I am with has my full attention.
Re: Working from Home: Why It Sucks
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
I had this problem too. On the advice of a fiend I started shutting down the work computer before dinner. That puts up a barrier to "just checking in" when you should instead be devoting some time to yourself, your family or friends. If you don't have a separate computer for work then maybe a separate login would help in a similar fashion. Since the physical (distance) separation isn't there you have to find a way to…
I've had this issue in the past, but with my current employer, I have less of an issue. I'm on the east coast. Most of my direct co-workers are on the west coast. I typically work from 06:00 to 09:00, then perhaps do other stuff for a few hours, then work again for a few hours in the afternoon. Then, depending on work load, I may get back at it for a few hours once my kids are asleep, which still allows me to interac…
Its better to sometimes get paged at home for work than to hearing that "I'll need you to work till late today" or "We need you to come in the weekend" when working on an office.
And depending on your work, you'd probably get paged at home even if you work at an office anyway.