How did all you people find jobs that allow you to work from home? I would love to try it, I just don't see many programmer jobs that allow this.
How to work from home without going insane (purple monkey dishwasher)
61–70 of 104 posts
Re: How to work from home without going insane (purple monkey dishwasher)
#62I've personally found that I do not enjoy working from home. I think he hits the nail on the head with the "Crippling Depression" part. As a software engineer, I do my best work alone, in my head, but I need real-life interaction with my team for my work to feel meaningful.
Same here. I worked from home for a year and was going to go insane! It was a great feeling yet still very depressing. It doesn't help that I am single and live alone either though.
Re: How to work from home without going insane (purple monkey dishwasher)
#63I've been working from hotels in Europe and Asia for almost a year now. The freedom is exhilarating and terrifying at the same time. The best days are those when I somehow manage to write something in a day that would have taken me weeks of wading through office politics. The worst days are those when I feel like I haven't accomplished anything and can't stop thinking that nobody's holding a paycheck out for me at th…
working from hotels for a year? wow, i'm impressed. I did travel/work for 5 months this year (Southeast Asia), and welcomed very much to stay at an apartment for 1 month (in Vietnam).
Don't you feel lonely/unmotivated to do it that way? IMO hotels are not very conducive for creativity, and the quest to find a connection every day was a bit tiring at times. Something I missed was not getting to know other people doing the same thing. I could not imagine doing it on the long term.
On the other hand, it's great to just be able to do that and work from a totally different country for some time, and doing a bit of travelling :-) I just imagined it could be a sustainable lifestyle for me, but it was not.
Re: How to work from home without going insane (purple monkey dishwasher)
#64I have been doing this for almost 3 years now and I surely agree that work from home is at the same time the best and worst in the world. Its very nice because, as you said, you control everything. However it is also very bad because you do not have enough contact with other humans. And I'm not saying this because there no one to chit-chat, but because there is no one to talk about work. As a developer, getting input…
I completely agree with the human aspect. That's why I'm going to go to a coworking space not to work every day at home/the coffee shop :-)
Re: How to work from home without going insane (purple monkey dishwasher)
#65How did all you people find jobs that allow you to work from home? I would love to try it, I just don't see many programmer jobs that allow this.
It doesn't seem that uncommon, if you're very good at what you do. There's a monthly HN thread for telecommute jobs and quite a few hiring ads from YC companies say they're open to it.
When I was in high school I got my first contract programming job building a CRM app for sales from the ground up. The guy I built it for was building a business around that app, selling access to businesses with small to medium sales teams...
When I finished that, I immediately thought "why did I just build all that for him, so that he can make the real money selling the app I just built, when I could have done it for myself?"... and that was the end of contract programming for me. I started building web apps of my own and work from home running them.
Re: How to work from home without going insane (purple monkey dishwasher)
#66How did all you people find jobs that allow you to work from home? I would love to try it, I just don't see many programmer jobs that allow this.
You just identified the problem. Create your own job and market your services -or- create your own product and sell it online.
Re: How to work from home without going insane (purple monkey dishwasher)
#67I've personally found that I do not enjoy working from home. I think he hits the nail on the head with the "Crippling Depression" part. As a software engineer, I do my best work alone, in my head, but I need real-life interaction with my team for my work to feel meaningful.
I notice that most of the people in this thread talking about how they do successfully work from home talk about their wives and children. Living alone and working alone sounds like a recipe for insanity. You've gotta have some time with other people, regardless of how much of an introvert you may be.
I've worked at home and lived alone for the past 5 years or so. I was still in college until a year and a half ago, so the lectures provided some socialization back then.
I don't think I've gone insane quite yet ;) Lots of IM and regularly making excuses to go be around people (meetup groups, running errands, working somewhere with people for a while) seems to be working for now.
Re: How to work from home without going insane (purple monkey dishwasher)
#68It is interesting...I had never heard of the Pomodoro technique but independently developed a method in which each "work unit" is: 25 minutes. I wonder how many others have also concluded that 25 minutes is short enough not to be scary (if you have to force yourself to do it) but long enough to get something done.
For me 25 minutes are too short - you just get into something and it's time for the pause - especially for programming I think you need longer time periods.
When doing the pomodoro technique I usually go for 45 minutes work units + 10 minutes break. That way you get longer focus and when you take a break it's a real break (so you can get out and walk for a bit for example).
Re: How to work from home without going insane (purple monkey dishwasher)
#69I have been doing this for almost 3 years now and I surely agree that work from home is at the same time the best and worst in the world. Its very nice because, as you said, you control everything. However it is also very bad because you do not have enough contact with other humans. And I'm not saying this because there no one to chit-chat, but because there is no one to talk about work. As a developer, getting input…
Well stated. I tend to look at it in a similar way, but phrased differently: When you decide to work from home vs. in an office, neither is better or worse, you're simply trading one set of problems for another.
For example, you brought up lack of human contact, and I sympathize. Team interaction was huge for me when I worked in an office, and I didn't realize how much I took it for granted until I started working from home. When you trade that for the solitude and separation that comes with working from home, things get lonely fast. However, when I really need to get work done, the solitude is a huge net positive.
I've experienced many other this-for-that trade offs, but the social loss is one that I identify with the most. I think software developers have a stereotype of sitting in front of a computer and writing code all day, mostly in isolation. That may be true to a varying degree, but I think the social aspects of software development are underrated, and working from home has helped me realize that.
Re: How to work from home without going insane (purple monkey dishwasher)
#70I work from home mainly and the freedom is a big plus as well as the saved money on commutes.
If anyone else is thinking of doing this though I would recommend making sure you have a room somewhere that you can use almost exclusively for work.
I live in a small house and share with people who are unemployed and since my bedroom is not big enough to fit a desk and a computer I end up having to work in what is basically a communal area of the house and also on the path to the kitchen.
We have a sort of agreement that they will try and give me some space but having people walking to and fro behind me whenever they need to get to the kitchen or coming through 'just to quickly ask me something' is cancer to productivity since they will always interrupt you when your in 'the zone', they don't really understand that 10 seconds of disturbance probably costs me 20 minutes of work on average.
This can also put stresses on your personal relationships since it's easy to be pretty short with people when they disturb you.