This Hidden Brain episode about working from home contains interesting research findings. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/hidden-brain/id1028908...
What I don’t like about working at a remote job
111–120 of 228 posts
Re: What I don’t like about working at a remote job
#112They should get a dog - it forces you to wake up at a certain time - you get some exercise in - you go outside and have micro social interactions - if you take them out at a certain time after work, it’ll come let you know that it’s time, so you won’t overwork - they’re great antidepressants - great for company when your partner is gone 4AM to 7PM
Counterpoint: they require a lot of care and attention, and expense. You can't easily just pick up and go, you now need someone to look after the animal, every time. You can get exercise and social contact besides (although on the latter point, animals can provide some comfort, but they don't sub for a social life). I think the valid reason for wanting a dog is wanting a dog, and tolerating if not enjoying the lifest…
This is all true. I moved to SF and really enjoy the fact that I can walk out my door, hop on BART, get out 40 minutes later in an international airport, and go anywhere I want. Except… it’s going to cost a few hundred dollars extra every couple of days for dog and cat boarding, and I need to get that boarding reserved far in advance, then arrange transportation for my pets to get to the boarding center, and then plan my return so I arrive at a very specific time so I can pick them up. I love my animals, but they come with a real cost of time, money, and freedom.
Re: What I don’t like about working at a remote job
#113I'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…
> Remote work is freedom to choose your environment. Choose it.
Sort of. First your employer needs to approve of where you’re going to live assuming it is out of state or country. There are a variety of legal and tax implications.
The first remote company I worked for had a list of approved states, for instance. I assume this is common.
Re: What I don’t like about working at a remote job
#114Was this written by expensive midtown office real estate
Re: What I don’t like about working at a remote job
#115For many of these reasons which I also experience, I was hoping there'd be more of a blend of home/in-office emerge. Instead in both programming jobs Ive had post pandemic, it is all remote. I've met my workmates in person perhaps thrice despite working at the company for a year. It is surreal. > it feels like I’m living in Groundhog Day everyday. Every single day looks exactly the same This in particular, and it is…
I have been remote since 2018 and feel the same way. Prior to that I worked from the office 3 days a week and it was perfect.
I think the effects of everyone pushing all of their lives onto the internet are going to be negative, and probably will affect millennials and gen z for decades. I feel most sad for the kids who didn’t get to socialize in person for two years :/
Re: What I don’t like about working at a remote job
#116I'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…
> Be deliberate about arranging calls with coworkers, friends, family. Just hang out on a call. Go for a walk while you take these calls, or do something other than sit in a chair.
I'll second this. I started a new remote job recently where we're encouraged to regularly schedule virtual coffee time with coworkers where we don't talk about work. It goes a long way towards fostering relationships.
Re: What I don’t like about working at a remote job
#117I feel what is always left out of these discussions is that my “office” time before the pandemic was already spent collaborating with people in other locations over Teams/Zoom/Slack. I was just wasting an hour at the beginning and end of each day to commute for the privilege of doing the remote work in an open office environment with everyone else on conference calls as well
That literally comes up every time there is this discussion.
Re: What I don’t like about working at a remote job
#118They should get a dog - it forces you to wake up at a certain time - you get some exercise in - you go outside and have micro social interactions - if you take them out at a certain time after work, it’ll come let you know that it’s time, so you won’t overwork - they’re great antidepressants - great for company when your partner is gone 4AM to 7PM
I think this is good advice. Sadly in some places it's hard to have dog. Example, went to an apartment site, ~2000 listings available. Checked "allows dog", dropped to ~280
Don't tell your landlord. If your dog is registered as service you don't have to declare it.
Re: What I don’t like about working at a remote job
#119I've been working remotely for 5 years. This post is making me realize things I didn't before about how my life has changed since working remotely, i hadn't thought about some of the stuff going on as about working remotely, but I think it is.
Re: What I don’t like about working at a remote job
#120We are a team of 150 with half of us in engineering. Half the engineers work on the product and they are split into a handful of teams. Half of the remainder of engineers are SRE, IT and dev tools. We don’t know what we are doing and that’s ok because we have a core product that is the best in the world and the periphery to that is “so, what now?”. We have short and long term goals, and an extremely viable business w…
> How do you feel out a controversial idea on zoom when the call just ends and you have no soft touch ways of winding back from professional conflict?
You do the same thing you'd do in person? Go snag a person (or people) for a conversation and talk? Or send an email or whatever, if you wouldn't ordinarily speak directly to them?
If -after more than two years of remote work- the folks you're working with haven't yet learned to respond to "Hey, do you have a minute?" in text chat in the same way that they'd respond to a face-to-face request, then I'm not sure what to say.
Though, if you spend most or all of your day managing people, rather than building things, I guess I can understand the point of view. From what I've seen, managers seem to be _far_, _faaaar_ less likely to be able to cope with not being in meatspace with their coworkers than ordinary line workers.