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I Only Work Remotely
161–170 of 222 posts
Re: I Only Work Remotely
#162Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can confirm; I have been that morning person who left 2 hours before everyone else and, while I didn't get fired, I was punished for it.
This is problem with flex time. Companies love to advertise flex time, but when you come in at 7am and leave at 3, you get tons of looks and even the odd comment.
This happened to me in my first job. I'm definitely a night-owl, but I was tired of coming in at 10-11 and leaving after dark, after everyone else including my boss had left, so I decided to change my routine and get up early and get to work by ~7-8. This worked great for about a week, until my boss started complaining about me leaving so early. So I switched back to my old routine of coming in really, really late, after everyone else did, and then leaving late after everyone else (but only barely, I'd just wait until everyone else was gone and then take off), but still only working 8 hours (maybe). Suddenly I was seen as a "hard worker" again.
People are stupid.
Re: I Only Work Remotely
#163Earlier quoted context omitted.
In most engineering offices I've been into being a morning person would mean you have less overlap with everyone else, since coming in late and staying late is the norm. In one company I consulted for, a morning person almost got fired when a regional manager noticed he left 2 hours earlier than everyone else. It was hilarious, in the saddest possible way.
Having young children can place constraints on your ability to shift work hours away from conventional 9-5. Childcare/schooling/etc are not as flexible in the schedules they follow, and not everyone has a spouse/partner with sufficient free time to compensate for your unavailability.
Exactly. This is why people with children shouldn't also have jobs. At least one person needs to be at home to take care of the kids. However, with divorce so commonplace, you can't count on having one spouse earning an income any more, it's just too much of a risk, so I don't think anyone should have any kids at all. Having kids simply is not compatible with living in modern society. (No, this is not satire.)
Re: I Only Work Remotely
#164Earlier quoted context omitted.
This. Whenever I tell people to get stuff in writing to cover themselves, they think I'm just being a stickler and that doing so would just set a bad mood in the working relationship. But I've never found this to be true. Just be professional in negotiations and make everything crystal clear, because you can be sure that anything fuzzy or muddy is coming back in your face later, one way or another. Also this: > I als…
then it may well be a smarter deal fiscally even without the pay increase, particularly if your marginal tax is high. How could that possibly be the case?
You're extracting more value by working less, freeing your time up to do other things. Those other things may well end up netting you more money over time (working on your own company, for instance.) As well, depending on where you live and work, you may also end up paying a different tax rate on holiday pay over regular pay. If so you may be able to accrue those holidays and eventually receive a lump sum payout that is in effect "cheaper" than regular pay. The difference can be significant, particularly if your income is in the upper brackets.
Re: I Only Work Remotely
#165Earlier quoted context omitted.
Which three? If they're the ones I think you mean - then you've forgotten about the old tech called "dead tree" and "graphite" (or whatever your preferred medium)...
It was a bit tongue in cheek, but it's not so much that I've forgotten about them, but that I think people giving this advice tend to forget that many folks just don't buy paper books, notepads to sketch or write on, pens and pencils, etc.
Yes, but those folks then can't complain about their sleep problems.
Trust me: For a big chunk of the population (and not just "older" people), spending four hours a day without screen time is not something special. Insisting you need a screen for not just one, but multiple activities listed makes you an inflexible person. And that is the type of person many employers do not want to hire.
For health reasons not related to sleep, I found I had to reduce my screen time. I'm the type of person who likes everything electronic. All my notes are in a text file, etc. But I did step back and looked at the bigger picture: The cost to my health was clear. The gains on insisting everything be electronic was much muddier. I was spending a lot of time on activities with a dubious ROI. Once you start getting older, the urgency with which you want to make your "free" time meaningful really kicks in. If I didn't change, I could easily see myself in my 50's still sticking to habits that do not benefit me too much.
Re: I Only Work Remotely
#166It makes sense that the nature of management work (over-communicating) lends itself to physically connected open office areas. Of course, the other half of their job is getting out of the way of the producers. Could a manager answer a few questions I have?
Can you describe to me the difference between the nature of work that requires group creativity and individual focus (or rather, which employee roles fit more into one or the other)?
How much of each do the various roles of your employees spend their time on?
How much control (or influence) do your employees have over whether or not they are in an environment that suits their need for focus (and when that focus ends)?
Re: I Only Work Remotely
#167> I am a night owl. You can tell me I have to have my butt in a chair within your line of sight at 8 or 9am, but that is very wasteful. This used to be me and I used to believe it was just the way things were. I'd naturally sleep 10+ hours until noon on the weekends, struggle to wake up for work, and then struggle to fall asleep before midnight. I had little energy for exercise and always felt stressed trying to find…
There's a lot of misinformation here, so let's go 1 by 1. For the record, I'm a night owl, and I've been trying to change my schedule to a morning person for about 11 years now (with limited success). 1. Sure, that works, for a time, possibly even a few months. Until you begin subconsciously turning the alarms off or hitting the snooze. That leads to a self-reinforcing loop of "turn alarm off --> pleasure from sleep…
> Until you begin subconsciously turning the alarms off or hitting the snooze.
Your counter-argument here appears to be "it's hard." Sure, it is, but your goal is to make it easier by ensuring a routine, a better nights sleep, etc. Some mornings still suck, but they still suck when it's 9am and the bed is warm and you're already late and don't want to go to work.
> That's simply not true. Coffee takes about 5-7 hours to wear off.
I didn't make any factual assertions regarding caffeine, so it's not something that can be true or false. I suggest avoiding caffeine after noon because it's a crutch. It also ensures there's no chance your body is affected by stimulants when the sun goes down and it's time to wind down. I know from experience that it's far easier to retrain your body to sleep easily and wake early if you minimize chemicals like caffeine and alcohol that interfere with your brain's natural behaviors.
> That is simply not an option for most people. Family members, roommates, gyms, all might have TV screens or people browsing their phones and talking loudly and doing various activities.
People did it for millions of years. In general you shouldn't be working out once you cross that time threshold, either, since you want your body to be preparing to sleep. Spend some time in the kitchen preparing your breakfast and lunch. Do some laundry or house cleaning. Get your things ready for the next day so you wake up without stress. Then grab a physical, paper book and read until you start to feel drowsy.
> many people don't have the luxury of choosing when they go to the gym (if they go at all).
Possibly the number one greatest thing about waking up early is that you all of a sudden have an extra two or three hours all to yourself. You can work out early in the morning, work on side projects, actually sit and eat breakfast, etc. I basically eliminated my afternoon crash since I no longer skip breakfast and overeat at lunch, and I don't hit a major caffeine low.
Re: I Only Work Remotely
#168It's a comfort/environment problem, at its core. Just like was pointed out in the article. Do you know what the most popular type of monitor stand is in a major corporation? Paper reams. In fact recently where I work they came around to people with these and asked they not do it because it screws up their paper ordering/estimation. Why is this a problem? Because offices are super picky about the $100 equipment order…
>and maybe something simple like free coffee/soda so I'm not spending $X/day on it.
That always annoys me, because I don't drink that crap. Soda in particular is extremely unhealthy.
If you're going to offer free food/drinks, then give people an actual choice so people like me aren't feeling left out. Don't just assume that everyone likes Coke(TM), or Starbucks(TM), or nasty Folgers(TM) coffee. Try offering some healthy food or snacks, like yogurts or fresh fruit so employees stay healthy.
>At the office, make sure there are places I can go to escape from noise when I need to.
1000 times this! I once worked at a horrible place like this where there was no place to escape to. They told me I could go sit in the "break room" for a break; except that this stupid room was extremely brightly lit and had a stupid TV blaring CNN all day long. We were explicitly not allowed to go to other parts of the building and use the comfy chairs in the more dimly-lit common areas to relax for a bit, away from the noisy open-plan work area.
>What would even be MORE awesome is if you somehow worked it out if I could get a discount on noise cancelling headphones.
No. First, they should be free, but secondly, they simply don't work. I tried that at the above place. It was even worse than putting up with the open-plan environment, because then I constantly had people walking up behind me and tapping me on the shoulder, which was horribly disturbing and made me flinch badly. Maybe I should have just backhanded someone reflexively so people would have stopped doing it.
The fundamental problem with all this stuff is that employers simply do not give two shits about the happiness or comfort of their employees in the office, and are simply too stupid and shortsighted to see how this translates directly into both increased productivity and retention.
Re: I Only Work Remotely
#169I currently work from home, but before I also worked in an openspace and also in the cubicle with just 4 people. I still can't say openspace is worst... probably depends on one's own preferences. Yes, sometimes it gets noisy and productivity goes down, but if I was stuck on something, and could just immediately get up and walk 10 meters and ask a more knowledgeable colleague made up for that. But if your work is clea…
>but if I was stuck on something, and could just immediately get up and walk 10 meters and ask a more knowledgeable colleague made up for that.
Working in a cubicle environment is no different here. There's nothing preventing you from getting up, leaving your cube, and walking 10 meters to another cube to ask a question.
Re: I Only Work Remotely
#170Earlier quoted context omitted.
Having young children can place constraints on your ability to shift work hours away from conventional 9-5. Childcare/schooling/etc are not as flexible in the schedules they follow, and not everyone has a spouse/partner with sufficient free time to compensate for your unavailability.
Exactly. This is why people with children shouldn't also have jobs. At least one person needs to be at home to take care of the kids. However, with divorce so commonplace, you can't count on having one spouse earning an income any more, it's just too much of a risk, so I don't think anyone should have any kids at all. Having kids simply is not compatible with living in modern society. (No, this is not satire.)
What? Wow. You're kinda off the deep end there.