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My first experience at working from home

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Re: My first experience at working from home

#71

Post by tribaal »

puranjay wrote: post #44
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…

Get out while you still can. Seriously. I worked from home for 2.5 years and it has had a profoundly negative impact on my social life and even my personality. I'm good with people, but sitting alone all day for such a long-time has turned me into the kind of person who thinks of calling an old friend, then thinks 'eh, why bother. Let's see what's new on Reddit instead'. Then there's the problem with setting a routin…

Well, the good thing is that "wokring from home" lets you choose to go to a coworking space or not... while people who actually enjoy working from home (like me for example) don't get to choose if the job is "office-only".

Re: My first experience at working from home

#72

Post by kleer001 »

ht_th wrote: post #66
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.

Exactly.

A girlfriend way back when introduced me to the term "People Batteries." As in it takes energy to be around people. Some people get energy from being around other people and some from being alone. If you're the alone type those batteries still fill up. I think that's a much better model than people being extraverts OR(and only or) introverts. We're more complicated than that.

Re: My first experience at working from home

#73

Post by junto »

I've been working remote for 10 years. For the first 6 years I worked from home and I lived in various countries as a bonus (since the location wasn't tied to the work).

For the last 4 years I've been based in a coworking space. I can highly recommend it. The biggest benefit to me was that it forced me to have set times to finish work. When I worked from home I would always work a little bit longer.

Now I switch my computer off, leave the coworking space in the evening, go home and relax. There is no temptation to start working again.

Re: My first experience at working from home

#74

Post by shawn-butler »

>>> When you have a bad day at work you still have the sensation of accomplishment. You drove to work, attended meetings, take care of some stuff… you actually did some tasks. >>>

Probably not a very original thought but this strikes me as very similar to the same game mechanics / psychology involved in grinding ladder-type MMOs.

Is it possible the mundane office environment is created to be somewhat addicting?

Re: My first experience at working from home

#75

Post by tribaal »

tribaal wrote: post #68
puranjay wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. ED…

From another thread, it seems automatic (300+ employees) is pretty big on remote workers as well:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9232565

Re: My first experience at working from home

#76

Post by ngoel36 »

ht_th wrote: post #66
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.

That means you might naturally be an extrovert. Extroversion, by definition, means you gain energy from other people. I'm a Myers-Briggs "E", and this can be the equivalent of a powerful drug. I can forget to eat, even defer sleep if I'm around people who are interesting enough. Sometimes, though, this does stop me from getting any work done...

Re: My first experience at working from home

#77

Post by drewg123 »

Raphmedia wrote: post #59
drewg123 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed, I had a separate room for my office, and tried to work a strict 8am->5pm schedule Mon-Fri. However, that all fell apart during a major crunch time where we were trying to ship a chronically late product, and for that period of time, my work life balance was essentially destroyed.

While crunch time are necessary sometime, you should do your best to balance things out. Worked extra hard all week? Take half the next week off and go camping.

It was more like a 14 month death march of 100+ hour weeks, so there really was no "next week", as there was no end in sight for most of it. That's what it is like with hardware, especially late hardware that the entire company is riding on.

After the thing finally shipped, most of the team effectively took off the next 4 months, working ~4 hours or fewer hours a day, etc. But those 14 months were hell.

Re: My first experience at working from home

#78

Post by aareet »

bswen wrote: post #55

I've been working from home for almost eight years now. At first, it was just me and my dogs while my wife went to work. That was definitely hard at first, to stay focused and productive. Every day Alicia would come home and I'd be desperate to get out of the house, she'd usually want to stay in and chill, though, having just had a full day interacting with people at work. I eventually learned that walking down to th…

This is cool!

I've wanted something like this for a while now, especially because the usual coffee-shop routine is to pack everything up and take it all with you to the bathroom, and bring it right back and it can get tedious after a while. It's too bad you don't have any spaces in Toronto right now.

Re: My first experience at working from home

#80

Post by icebraining »

drewg123 wrote: post #77
Raphmedia wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While crunch time are necessary sometime, you should do your best to balance things out. Worked extra hard all week? Take half the next week off and go camping.

It was more like a 14 month death march of 100+ hour weeks, so there really was no "next week", as there was no end in sight for most of it. That's what it is like with hardware, especially late hardware that the entire company is riding on. After the thing finally shipped, most of the team effectively took off the next 4 months, working ~4 hours or fewer hours a day, etc. But those 14 months were hell.

14 months working 100+ hours a week... Why would people in this field subject themselves to that? I frankly don't understand. What kept them on?
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