
Working from Home: Why It Sucks - shimon
http://geeksinboston.com/2009/01/26/working-from-home-why-it-sucks/
======
bdfh42
Not my experience - I love working from home. Going to work is just a matter
of crossing the yard to get to my office. Almost no meetings, no office
politics - bliss.

My only real complaint is that no-one ever reads past the first paragraph of
any email. Sometimes emails have to be longer than that, so every now and
again, I have to hop on a plane and go and explain to someone what all those
second paragraphs said.

~~~
tptacek
Most important "business" lesson I ever learned: never write a "document" in
an email message; write it in Word and attach it instead, to activate the
pointy-haired neurotransmitters.

~~~
ojbyrne
Much as it's probably true, I absolutely hate that. Somebody once showed me a
diagram demonstrating the increased efficiency gained by using a wiki instead
of email - but the entire gain would have been nullified if they assumed that
rather than entering stuff directly into the wiki, people would upload word
documents to the wiki (which the pointy-hairs invariably do).

~~~
Xichekolas
Just need to write something that automatically converts word docs into new
wiki pages. Then the pointy-hairs can upload all they want and everyone else
gets some sanity.

Don't even try to make the conversion full featured, just rip it plain text.
When the boss asks why his charts and headers don't convert over, show him how
easy it is to fix that in the wiki. By getting his feet wet this way,
eventually he might not even bother uploading word docs at all.

Or maybe I have too much faith in pointy-haired bosses.

~~~
giles_bowkett
no, just fire the pointy-hairs. if somebody is uploading word docs to a wiki
then they're not qualified to work with you. don't waste your time.

~~~
ojbyrne
I wish it actually worked that way in the real world, but it doesn't. Yes, you
can quit and do a startup, but then you end up with pointy-haired VCs instead
of pointy-haired bosses.

~~~
helveticaman
It may be difficult to believe this while in US, but in other countries
industries are dominated by engineers...I know of one bank in Chile where all
the business guys were being replaced with civil engineers (in Chile, that
means a guy with an extensive math + science background).

------
chez17
I hate articles like this. All the statements in the last couple paragraphs
that start with "You start to fell..." or "You don't get..." should have the
"You" replaced with an "I". I totally understand that someone why someone who
works from home gets lonely, but that doesn't mean everybody who does gets
lonely. It takes the right kind of person. This is my qualm with articles like
this. People present their opinion as a sweeping generalization and fact. If
you want to tell me why _you_ think working at home sucks, please do. It
sounds silly when you try to speak for everybody.

~~~
Chocobean
agreed. I wonder why some people write that way. It's very difficult to write
in second person successfully, because as soon as one presents information
that is inconsistent with how the actual reader feels, the rest of the
argument is nullified. Yes, it sounded silly when the writer tried to speak
for me, in particular, when he knows nothing about me.

~~~
kragen
The pronoun "one" has mostly fallen out of use ("One starts to feel...") and
the usual substitute in modern English is "you". It doesn't literally mean
that the writer is talking about the reader.

~~~
Silentio
I think in spoken English this is the case. However, using the more formal
"one" in writing, even on a blog, is a good way to clear up any
misunderstanding a reader might have. Though the use of "you" is more and more
accepted in everyday situations, clearly the use of "you" instead of "one"
caused some readers of this post some problems. In writing, one should try to
be as clear as possible to get one's point across to the widest variety of
readers, unless one is trying to obfuscate one's point on purpose.

~~~
holygoat
kragen's point is that most people don't know how or when to do so. I think
most of us would agree that it would be best for everyone to suddenly get much
better at written English, but it's unlikely to occur.

~~~
Silentio
Ah, okay. Thanks for clearing that up.

------
jawngee
The other problem with working at home is that you are always at work. It's
easy to keep it separated at first, but after a year, it becomes an indistinct
blur.

I don't know how many times I had people over, only to be thinking in the back
of my mind that I should be working.

~~~
dowski
I had this problem too. On the advice of a fiend I started shutting down the
work computer before dinner. That puts up a barrier to "just checking in" when
you should instead be devoting some time to yourself, your family or friends.

If you don't have a separate computer for work then maybe a separate login
would help in a similar fashion. Since the physical (distance) separation
isn't there you have to find a way to create something similar.

~~~
bmj
I've had this issue in the past, but with my current employer, I have less of
an issue.

I'm on the east coast. Most of my direct co-workers are on the west coast. I
typically work from 06:00 to 09:00, then perhaps do other stuff for a few
hours, then work again for a few hours in the afternoon. Then, depending on
work load, I may get back at it for a few hours once my kids are asleep, which
still allows me to interact with people on the west coast.

~~~
mtoledo
Its better to sometimes get paged at home for work than to hearing that "I'll
need you to work till late today" or "We need you to come in the weekend" when
working on an office.

And depending on your work, you'd probably get paged at home even if you work
at an office anyway.

------
metatronscube
I would LOVE to work from home, I could do so much more with my day If I was
working from home (more productive stuff) and leave my work knowing I was
actually able to get something finished for a change even lunch with my dog is
a better prospect that lunch with some of the people I work with at the
moment.

Not to mention that my home office is better equipped, quieter and I cant tell
you how much better I would feel without someone watching over my shoulder all
the time or my boss practising his micro management techniques on me.

I would even take a slight cut in pay for the privilege of working at home.

~~~
BigZaphod
If you're married, working from home suddenly means you apparently have time
to do the dishes, laundry, take care of the kid(s), let the dog out, run
"quick" errands, etc. One of the tougher things about working from home is
dealing with all the other people who don't. :)

~~~
stern
At first I had that problem, people stopping by in the middle of the day
because they thought 'working from home'/'self employed' was a pseudonym for
early retirement. I have since created solid work hours (9:30-6:30ish) that I
treat just like working for an employer. My family knows that within those
hours I am as available/unavailable as I was when I worked for a corporation.
I find that this puts me back on the same page as the rest of the world so
during the evenings I am no longer running off to check up on something and
whoever I am with has my full attention.

------
alexk
I do agree, I'm working from home for 6 months, and being lonely is the
hardest part. My dream for now is to work in a small office as a part of a
small, talented and concentrated team.

~~~
jcromartie
The idea of "co-working" is gaining steam in many cities. You could certainly
start up a group in your area if there isn't one. Basically you just get
together with other people who work remotely, but perhaps in somewhat the same
vein (web apps, a certain language, whatever), and you can form a team that
you can bounce ideas off of and get support from. It could even just be
occasional or for lunch every day or something like that, but it helps.

~~~
BigZaphod
"Co-working" has kept me sane over the years. :) There's not too many locally
who do this, but the ones I know drop by the same coffee shops on occasion and
we run into each other. It's a welcome break from the loneliness of being
alone all day. (Although I have a newborn at home now and have essentially
become a stay-at-home dad in addition to working from home. You want stress,
give that a try. :))

------
BinaryPie
I've worked from home in the past. The last stint was for about 8 months. I
really enjoyed the freedom. But towards the end even with a live in girlfriend
I still got a little depressed.

The problem is mostly assuredly the lack of human contact. Not physically
seeing people every day got to be a little rough. I'd force myself to go out
on weekends and be social but it still felt fake.

The other big problem was that since I lived in the PNW and winter was setting
in. It would be dark when I got up, and dark when I shut down for the day.
This mean I never really saw the sunshine. I wouldn't really leave my house
for days at a time. This got to be an issue. I felt trapped, even worse than
that corp job I took while in college.

Now I live in San Francisco. The startup I work for has an office. I see sun
almost every day. Hell I walk 2 miles to and then 2 miles from work every day.
Its great! I think the human contact combined with the daily walk has
increased both my energy level and my moral.

As a caveat to this. I still prefer to work from home at least one day a week.
As the break from the daily in office distractions (meetings, troubleshooting,
lunch, etc..) is nice.

So I think proper life balance is in order when working from home. If almost a
daily regiment that forces one to go stop working and go have meaningful human
interaction.

------
tdavis
If you work from home and feel lonely, which is apparently this guy's entire
argument against working from home, _get a hobby_.

I go to the gym every day right after I wake up. It's a great way to start the
day and there are other human beings there, although I don't actually talk to
them as I am not there to socialize.

I have a hard time rolling out of bed and working all day after a while, so
it's helpful to have a way to "work into" the day.

------
matt1
_"check company IRC, say good morning, make sure nothing’s on fire yet"_ etc
etc

The thing I get from this whole post is that the author lacks passion for his
work. His tone makes his work sound like some terrible chore that he's forced
to do. Don't get me wrong: a "good job" every now and then is always nice, but
not receiving it shouldn't be the primary reason you shouldn't work from home.

If you're the type of person that gets bored easily or needs lots of external
feedback in order to motivate yourself, working from home/starting your own
business is going to be very difficult.

~~~
jimbokun
"If you're the type of person that gets bored easily or needs lots of external
feedback in order to motivate yourself, working from home/starting your own
business is going to be very difficult."

If you are the kind of person who is NOT motivated by external feedback, how
are you going to be successful in business when so much of succeeding in
business is responding to the external feedback you receive from customers?
Not all of this comes from face to face interaction, true, but it would
probably help to have such interaction with customers on occasion. Probably
much of how your customers perceive and interact with your product, and how
they perceive your company, will only be apparent from body language cues.

This is not to argue against working from home, but to argue that external
feedback is almost always important.

~~~
matt1
Yes yes, you're right. What I meant was that you have to be internally
_motivated_. You can't be the type of person who has to have people tell you
to do things in order to get them done.

Feedback from your customers is very important and is one of the best ways to
determine if you're on the right course (though as many have pointed out, you
should often correctly ignore it.)

------
PStamatiou
That article essentially says it sucks to work from home because you don't get
out and get social interaction. Um, does it assume people work from 8am to
midnight or something.

I work from home. I get lunch with friends. I get dinner with colleagues. I go
outside. I'd trade a 6 figure salary for just barely scraping by/starting-up
and working from home any day <% unless @married = 1 -%>.

~~~
tptacek
I think your code marries anyone who executes it.

~~~
PStamatiou
;-P

~~~
tptacek
Try the veal!

------
jcromartie
I'm currently working from home more and more with a small company, too, but I
am being proactive to prevent these problems (which I clearly see are coming
down the line if I don't do something).

Cultivating that rich feedback that he seems to be missing is hard. I think
that IRC is a good start. Video chat is better. It may not work for this guy's
company because they still have their "professional" personas active while
chatting. You have to let your hair down and be comfortable with a flamewar
once in a while. If the personalities of those involved aren't compatible with
this, then maybe they shouldn't be in startup/small companies.

I hate to use so many cliches in one sentance, but you really have to be able
to be agile and iterate quickly. The development infrastructure helps to
address this. If you have good source control and a good project structure
that lets you check out a branch to a new directory and just GO then you have
a good thing going. If your product requires lots of setup and back-end things
that take time and careful configuration, it's going to suck a lot.

------
nolanbrown23
Like everything, working from home needs balance. Not just work/non-work time
balance, but physical balance with a private office in your home and regular
contact with the outside world. If you don't have a second bedroom for an
office and you live alone, working from home is going to blow.

When I started working from home, the first thing I did was go out looking for
a co-working studio in my city. I knew that I was going to do my best work
from home at night, but I go to the "office" so I can still get coding done
during the day. I have a full office setup in my apartment that I use from 6am
until 11am almost everyday, I go to my "office" from 11am to 4pm and then come
home, working from 9pm until midnight. It's a crazy work schedule and the
thing that keeps me sane is splitting my time between my home office and co-
working "office", so I'm not wasting so much time during the day with
boredom/loneliness/the internet.

I understand that this may not be suitable for everyone, but it works great
for me and I've worked out of almost every space you can imagine. To me, it is
100% worth it to get yourself a decent home office and/or a co-working office
to be the most effective.

~~~
nir
(Off topic :)) Do you find you're truly productive working so many hours a
day? (I assume it's coding work?)

------
ilamont
This person doesn't seem motivated, and doesn't seem to have enough work to
do.

I've worked from home for one year and have been more productive, thanks in
large part to dropping my commute and avoiding non-work-related office chat
sessions that can suck up 30 minutes in a typical day. I also work longer,
because I don't feel guilty about staying at work late and neglecting my
family (being able to have lunch and dinner with them is huge). I typically
work right up until dinner starts at 6:30, and often go back for another 30
minutes to an hour afterwards.

On the other hand, having face time with co-workers is very valuable. Many
office chat sessions do involve projects or turn into idea-sharing discussions
that are very important to the health of an organization and can't be easily
duplicated using IM or email. For this reason, I try to visit HQ about once
every two months.

------
briancooley
I worked from home for a little over 2 years. I have a lot of positive things
to say about it. While my experience was generally positive, there were a few
drawbacks.

The most bothersome drawback to me was that I felt judged by a different
standard than those in the office. If I had an unproductive week, it was
assumed that I was goofing off, while the same standard wasn't held for those
that worked in the office, presumably because their butts were in chairs.

For the last four months of those two years, my wife was at home raising a
newborn. It was nearly impossible for me to concentrate. I won't work from
home again until my child is out of the house or until I build a detached
office.

------
tptacek
My friend/ex-boss Mike had a permanent videoconference running during the day,
so that everyone in the office had a "presence". And you can mitigate some of
these problems with IRC.

But if you possibly can, get everyone on your team together every day in a
shared space; <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=251884>.

------
quellhorst
Easy solution... Don't work at home, go to a library, book store, coffee shop,
anywhere with other people but not too noisy. Take headphones to block out
times when you need more concentration.

Don't get an office if it will only be you working there. Do consider working
at a hacker space/coworking place.

------
petercooper
Why it sucks for the writer of the blog post? He's an extrovert, and he didn't
realize it.

------
enra
I usually work every Sunday on a sideproject with a team that lives in another
city. Rest of the team(3people) gather together at same space and I just join
them with Skype video.

I found using videochat very useful, since you can discuss about things and
overhead other people discussing, get feedback in live, feel that you're
working(since somebody might be watching you). You also need to take shower,
dress up a little that you look somewhat sharp. It feels almost like going to
work, except you don't need to commute.

(I have worked from home quite a lot as a freelancer and also had a job with
regular telecommute, but never felt like I was actually "working".)

------
ChristinaT
Personally I love working from home though I will admit there are days when
the kids won't stop screaming and the dog is trying to hump anything it can
get it's paws on and THOSE days I would give anything to just hide lol... But
as frustrating as those days are... I still love working from home esp since
it allows both me & my husband to be home with our children...

Christina...

p.s. I would really appreciate if anyone would be willing to look at my site I
just finished designing last night and would love to hear any thoughts,
opinions or suggestions...

------
bayareaguy
I did most of my work from home for much of 2008 and there were times when I
felt the way this guy did. It took me a while but eventually I realized how
much I missed taking a lunch break with my coworkers and getting little
comments and suggestions here and there (which occasionally made a big
difference or saved me a lot of time). This year I'm making more of an effort
to work outside my home even when that's not strictly necessary.

------
Eliezer
I can get away with working from home, but either I don't need much human
interaction, or I do need it but I've never had it so I don't know what I'm
missing.

------
fallentimes
Almost all of these are negative attributes & inefficiencies of the writer,
not working from home.

------
modoc
It depends 100% on the person. For some people working from home has
significant downsides and/or isn't an effective way for them to work. For
others, like me, it's almost all upside and allows me to be much more
productive than being in an office.

------
glow
Depends what I'm working on. Often I enter the flow and become engrossed in
what I'm doing and at that point, the surroundings become totally unimportant.

Then, of course, there's the other times when I play a flash-game 2 hours
straight..

------
bbuffone
It's called human interaction - most people need this to survive. When
sheltered from the world like a person with Agoraphobia, it becomes hard to
relate to people no matter how much email or twittering you do.

------
Danmatt
Office is better in my view - you can talk to real humans and get honest
feedback + there's still a connection (wrongly) between working at home and
slacking.

Once a week + the weekend is definitely enough for me.

------
bandris
I work from home and found that going out and do some sport (jogging) for an
hour that makes me sweat helps a _lot_ fighting loneliness, depression, etc.
and makes me more productive.

------
ChristinaT
p.s. to those of you complaining about the lack of human interaction... why
not take your work to the streets? or fleamarkets? or the park? thats what I
do when I need human interaction other than 3 boys under the age of 7 and a
hubby who acts like a 4th kid lol

------
gravitycop
_You don’t get rich feedback when communicating over a phone, email, or text
chat._

Then don't use those. Use immersive telepresence, instead.
<http://www.hp.com/halo/introducing.html>

~~~
brk
Nice suggestion, but hardly practical.

~~~
ggruschow
How different is it than people just using iMacs with iChat video?

~~~
gravitycop
A major factor in telepresence immersion is eye-contact.
<http://www.google.com/search?q=telepresence+eye+contact> Perhaps someday a YC
company will figure out how to inexpensively enable eye-contact over ordinary
video chat (teleconferencing).

~~~
samlittlewood
[http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2009/01/hack_lets_you_look_...](http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2009/01/hack_lets_you_look_someone_directly.html)

~~~
gravitycop
That's the half-silvered mirror solution (for full eye-contact
teleconferencing). I was thinking of the _other_ solution: the software-based
one that corrects the images in terms of pupil-direction.

~~~
jjs
That could get really creepy, really fast..

~~~
gravitycop
It seems to be what HP and Cisco are using for their immersive telepresence
systems. I have seen plenty of rave reviews of Halo, and never any complaints.

------
giles_bowkett
I work from home and it's awesome. It fucks with your sleep schedule but other
than that it's great. I do go into the client office a lot more than I thought
I would, though. And when I say working from home I mean working from cafes.
Working from home in the literal sense sometimes gets annoying because my
neighbors have noisy kids. I've learned how to say "Grandma, look at me!" in
Spanish. And about a thousand ways to say "shut up" or "don't do that" in
Spanish as well.

The kids make me wish I had a flamethrower, but so do people who talk in the
office, and the kids are at least cuter than the office people. Except some of
the chicks. I sure hope they don't read that. Anyway, working from home is
basically awesome, but yeah, you do need human contact, and context for
conversation.

------
point
I hate working from home now also, after doing it from near to 8 years. It
sucks, it's lonely and it's difficult to get motivated. Also, you are in an
insular bubble, you are not exposed to different ideas, and the years tend to
repeat themselves.

That's why I'm giving up this life and going to work in a lab.

------
Ardit20
Change is hard, but to change we must.

Hmm isn't intellectual ability the ability to adapt to your environment? If
you think working from home is nice and you find out it's crap then use your
fucking mind.

