Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

My first experience at working from home

blog.jobbox.io

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 87 posts

Re: My first experience at working from home

#61

Post by drewg123 »

FigBug wrote: post #34
drewg123 wrote: post #25

I worked full time remote for 12 years doing driver / kernel / firmware work for an IHV. What I missed most about working in an office (and what I liked most about going to work at an office again 2 years ago) is the sense of separation and decompression that a commute gives you. If you're not careful, you can easily wind up always working all the time since your "office" is right in your living space.

I've been working at home for the last 5. Doing iOS, android, desktop apps and firmware. I find the firmware the most frustrating, probably because I'm the least experienced at it. Trying to debug things by sharing screenshot of a USB scope is a pain. Having to drive in every time I need a mod done. Even worse is driving in and whatever piece of equipment I wanted is at somebody else's house (or forgotten at mine). I…

The IHV that I worked for had most of the hardware team local in California, and most of the software team remote. We had a great lab team that could install bits, move cables, etc. All machines had serial consoles & power controllers (or IPMI). One source of frustration was that most of the locals did not arrive until 10am Pacific, and I was on the Eastern time zone. So if I needed a cable moved, I had to wait until after lunch. Though I sometimes asked one of the secretaries to do it (she arrived at 6am Pacific).

By the time I had hardware access, we always had jtag or more advanced access methods working.

A big frustration was using tools like PCIe logic analyzers remotely. Luckily, these were mostly controlled by PCs, and we could access them via an IP KVM solution (but again, we had to wait for on-site labstaff to hook up physical connections).

Re: My first experience at working from home

#62

Post by lucaspiller »

jscheel wrote: post #51

Now I just need a cafe that isn't closed in the middle of the day, actually has heat in the winter, has chairs that support those of us that weigh over 98 lbs, and that attracts people/encourages them to hang out. Man this town needs another coffee shop...

Ever thought of starting a co-working space with some friends?

Re: My first experience at working from home

#63

Post by devonkim »

I've been working remotely about 5 or so of my 10+ professional years. Working remotely can be a very different experience depending upon job roles. Most of the articles linked on HN are for already-isolating back office jobs like development, but for roles like customer support, sales, an outsourced front desk receptionist, or other highly communication-heavy roles you will not really feel as lonely probably. For coders and asset-producers with pretty clear expected (and more importantly, asynchronous) output, solutions typically focus upon forcing your job duties to include more actual human interaction even if it might not be in-person. However, higher value consultants typically will be communicating a lot more with their clients and spending half your day at Starbucks is going to be few and far between.

Secondly, the "freedom" people tend to talk about is pretty minimal in some roles and being remote tends to reinforce the need for your role to be available as much as possible. If you're the on-call contact in operations where it's arguably more important that you're available immediately rather than that you just make some deadlines (transactional work), you really can't just take off very often like you can oftentimes with very asynchronous, start-stop workflows like development. You're not about to work at Starbucks much unless you can be guaranteed that you won't have a really important call come in. I would have lost precious availability time if I was working at Starbucks a few days ago when I had to manage a production outage and get on the phone and start talking authoritatively quickly. It's one thing to have a kid or pet in the background, it's another when you're obviously sitting at a coffee shop.

For work-life separation, I recommend separate devices from your personal belongings for starters. It's oftentimes substantially cheaper than getting a separate room or larger residence. I have a company-provided laptop that I do my work on as well as a company-provided phone, and that helps keep things separate from the rest of my life. If I have to reach for that phone or RDP / ssh into that machine, that's time I've spent for the company, not for me.

Re: My first experience at working from home

#64

Post by tribaal »

puranjay wrote: post #45
tribaal wrote: post #29

Working from home for 3 years now, and I love it. I think what people in general tend to forget is that you can work from home but you don't have to . Renting a spot in a coworking space is very fun and helps with the loneliness.

Honest question: what is your home situation like? Are you married? Kids? In my experience, older folks with kids and a spouse tend to love the work from home thing. Younger people tend to get bogged down by the lack of social interaction.

Well, just like the other user who answered you (hi, lifestyle clone!) I'm married, One kid, one on the way.

Like I said, I love the choice it brings me - I don't have to work form home (I can use a coworking space for instance), but I get to decide every morning. I tend to go to a coworking space or to friends/friendly startups/friendly companies to hang out about one day a week, but it can be much more.

One tidbit: almost the whole company is remote (600 people!), so we're all organized around that, and it probably makes it easier.

So my personal take away: it's about the choice it gives you :)

Re: My first experience at working from home

#65

Post by jscheel »

lucaspiller wrote: post #62
jscheel wrote: post #51

Now I just need a cafe that isn't closed in the middle of the day, actually has heat in the winter, has chairs that support those of us that weigh over 98 lbs, and that attracts people/encourages them to hang out. Man this town needs another coffee shop...

Ever thought of starting a co-working space with some friends?

Thankfully, I have my own office at my parents' office, so I do get some interaction. I've actually talked with a friend about starting a co-working space in our town, but I don't think it's ready for one yet. Maybe in 5-10 years. That's what we get for being a commuter-city to Nashville.

Re: My first experience at working from home

#66

Post by ht_th »

imjared wrote: post #24

I've been working at home for about a year and can sympathize with the author. I've really been surprised at what an effect its had on me socially. I'm not the most outgoing person to begin with so the forced in-person interactions (both appreciated and unappreciated) that I got in my previous office settings were probably a lot more beneficial to me than I previously believed. I feel like I have the additional chall…

> I've really been surprised at what an effect its had on me socially.

One of the odd things that happened is that I've become more extrovert when I do meet people. To off-set working alone at home, I volunteer two days a week at the local hackerspace to socialize. That has been a blast.

Re: My first experience at working from home

#67

Post by puranjay »

tribaal wrote: post #64
puranjay wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honest question: what is your home situation like? Are you married? Kids? In my experience, older folks with kids and a spouse tend to love the work from home thing. Younger people tend to get bogged down by the lack of social interaction.

Well, just like the other user who answered you (hi, lifestyle clone!) I'm married, One kid, one on the way. Like I said, I love the choice it brings me - I don't have to work form home (I can use a coworking space for instance), but I get to decide every morning. I tend to go to a coworking space or to friends/friendly startups/friendly companies to hang out about one day a week, but it can be much more. One tidbit:…

> One tidbit: almost the whole company is remote (600 people!)

I'm intrigued. I was under the impression remote work was only feasible for smaller startups. The only fully distributed companies I know have < 30 employees.

Re: My first experience at working from home

#68

Post by tribaal »

puranjay wrote: post #67
tribaal wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, just like the other user who answered you (hi, lifestyle clone!) I'm married, One kid, one on the way. Like I said, I love the choice it brings me - I don't have to work form home (I can use a coworking space for instance), but I get to decide every morning. I tend to go to a coworking space or to friends/friendly startups/friendly companies to hang out about one day a week, but it can be much more. One tidbit:…

> One tidbit: almost the whole company is remote (600 people!) I'm intrigued. I was under the impression remote work was only feasible for smaller startups. The only fully distributed companies I know have < 30 employees.

I work for Canonical (www.canonical.com)

We have some offices and legal presence in some countries that require it, but most of the engineers are work-from-home only. My team is completely work-from-home, including manager, product manager, and QA engineers. We're 12 in 7 different countries and 3 continents (used to be 4 :) )

Only designers and some sales people have a hard requirement to be in the office, AFAIK.

EDIT: for the sake of my personal pride I updated the numbers of countries my team is distributed to. it was WRONG. I hate wrong! :)

Re: My first experience at working from home

#70

Post by kleer001 »

agentultra wrote: post #36

I've been working remotely for a few years. The first few months, if you've never done it before and don't know how to cope, definitely feel as the author described. It's your first time. You're just doing it wrong. Best way I've over come the social needs is to work out of a local cafe once or twice a week. Get to know the people there. Learn their names. Make friends. Work on a crossword together. Get a whiteboard.…

I really connected with your first half there. Self Enrichment!

It's funny, that's a lot of what it takes to keep a dog happy and healthy too. They need a job and friends and play time and special snacks. We just need to take the same care and consideration for ourselves when it's not provided by an employer.

Post reply on HN