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Working from Home: Why It Sucks

geeksinboston.com

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Re: Working from Home: Why It Sucks

#61

Post by mmmurf »

PStamatiou wrote: post #10

That article essentially says it sucks to work from home because you don't get out and get social interaction. Um, does it assume people work from 8am to midnight or something. I work from home. I get lunch with friends. I get dinner with colleagues. I go outside. I'd trade a 6 figure salary for just barely scraping by/starting-up and working from home any day .

Well said -- I work from the home office much of the time. If I want to be around people I go to a coffee shop. Meanwhile, my schedule is flexible and my commute takes 3 seconds.

Also, I'm fortunate that I'm excited about what I'm working on and don't feel the need to sneak in scrabble and mute phone calls while screwing around on youtube.

Re: Working from Home: Why It Sucks

#62

Post by mmmurf »

bdfh42 wrote: post #3

Not 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.

I've found that "business" email is usually best expressed in a few sentences: Issue, suggestion, next step. Usually the next step is a formal discussion and decision.

In business you can't expect most people to read a multi-paragraph email, realize what their role in the decision is, and act on it.

Also, some of us have much higher mental bandwidth for email communications than average. So it's a good idea to start the "handshake" with a very simple communication and take it from there, regardless of how intelligent the recipient may be in other areas.

Re: Working from Home: Why It Sucks

#63

Post by quellhorst »

Easy solution... Don't work at home, go to a library, book store, coffee shop, anywhere with other people but not too noisy. Take headphones to block out times when you need more concentration.

Don't get an office if it will only be you working there. Do consider working at a hacker space/coworking place.

Re: Working from Home: Why It Sucks

#64

Post by BigZaphod »

_b8r0 wrote: post #34
wallflower wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

"More than 3 days a week at home and you start to lose the benefits."

As someone who has been exclusively working remotely for several years, I'm not so sure about that. I guess it depends what you consider the benefits to be and from which side of the employee/employer fence you're on. Are the benefits that you have a more relaxed and free adult life - in both work and play? Or are you looking for a hack to try to forcibly increase worker productivity beyond that which is attainable with a full time in-office approach?

When working just a couple days a week or month remotely, it can feel like a nice break from the distraction-filled office life and so it's natural to treat it as such - maybe you work harder/longer to get the most out of it so as to not squander the special time and privilege. When you're home all day every day, you have to pace yourself or else you'll burn out in a matter of weeks - same as if you worked sun up to sun down in the office everyday. That self-pacing could feel/look like suddenly it becomes less useful to work remote all the time, but I think the reality is that people can only work so hard for so long no matter where they physically locate themselves. (And each person has a different threshold.) If the "work from home 3 days a week" thing is really nothing more than a piece of "aren't we an awesome place to work" cheese dangling in front of the employees noses, I think eventually that backfires and people burn out more completely (and cynically) - so they begin to slack off on those days at home and think of them as a good time to take a "much deserved" break by "sneaking" out to have fun during the day. Inevitably the company responds by requiring phone checkins during regular office hours, demanding you be online/IM/email/webcam at certain hours, snidely pointing out how long it takes you to reply to a message, etc. At which point, you might as well go into the office everyday because, frankly, you are getting none of the true benefits of working from home anyway.

Re: Working from Home: Why It Sucks

#65

Post by BigZaphod »

Chocobean wrote: post #50
chez17 wrote: post #31

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…

agreed. I wonder why some people write that way. It's very difficult to write in second person successfully, because as soon as one presents information that is inconsistent with how the actual reader feels, the rest of the argument is nullified. Yes, it sounded silly when the writer tried to speak for me, in particular, when he knows nothing about me.

I end up writing in second person a lot. In fact, some of my comments in this very thread ended up in second person by the end. I really need to watch for this! I'm not the original blog author, but thanks for pointing this out - it's something I'm going to be watching for in my own writing from now on. (I'm kind of surprised I never noticed how bad it can sound.)

I think I fall into this trap when I want to generalize about my experience with others. For instance, if I observe some common behavior in virtually everyone I know, I might start saying "when you're such-and-such-ing...." because it seems easier than constantly reminding the reader that I'm simply generalizing based on my experience. However, I can see your point - that this really could be messing with the people who read it who maybe aren't directly my target audience. This might change my writing style significantly. :)

Re: Working from Home: Why It Sucks

#66

Post by tptacek »

PStamatiou wrote: post #10

That article essentially says it sucks to work from home because you don't get out and get social interaction. Um, does it assume people work from 8am to midnight or something. I work from home. I get lunch with friends. I get dinner with colleagues. I go outside. I'd trade a 6 figure salary for just barely scraping by/starting-up and working from home any day .

I think your code marries anyone who executes it.

Re: Working from Home: Why It Sucks

#68

Post by PStamatiou »

PStamatiou wrote: post #10

That article essentially says it sucks to work from home because you don't get out and get social interaction. Um, does it assume people work from 8am to midnight or something. I work from home. I get lunch with friends. I get dinner with colleagues. I go outside. I'd trade a 6 figure salary for just barely scraping by/starting-up and working from home any day .

damn i forgot == somehow. i hadn't had my coffee for the day..

Re: Working from Home: Why It Sucks

#69

Post by PStamatiou »

tptacek wrote: post #66
PStamatiou wrote: post #10

That article essentially says it sucks to work from home because you don't get out and get social interaction. Um, does it assume people work from 8am to midnight or something. I work from home. I get lunch with friends. I get dinner with colleagues. I go outside. I'd trade a 6 figure salary for just barely scraping by/starting-up and working from home any day .

I think your code marries anyone who executes it.

;-P

Re: Working from Home: Why It Sucks

#70

Post by jcromartie »

ojbyrne wrote: post #24
tptacek wrote: post #17

Earlier 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).

> rather than entering stuff directly into the wiki, people would upload word documents

This is precisely why both of my last two employers actively forbade real Wikis in favor of dumbed-down Word document repositories.

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