

Working from Home: Why It Rocks - leftnode
http://artisansystem.com/blog/entry/26

======
icey
Slight tangent: For some reason, it seems like everyone I know who has worked
from home ends up making Maury part of their schedule. What is it with geeks
and baby daddy drama?

For whatever it's worth, my working from home schedule was almost _exactly_
the same as yours - Maury included.

I also feel like I am far more productive when working from home. Partially
due to the lack of interruptions as well as the fact that my home office has
been built specifically for the the exercise of writing software.

~~~
pj
Because it is an entire life's drama in one episode and sometimes there are
three. It's always the same scenario, but they're always different people. So
you get to know them very well by how they react to the news.

They are real life stories, no one knows what is inside the envelope and we
are all in it together wondering what it will say.

It allows us to experiment with our human reading skills. Do the individuals
know themselves as well as we know them. Is she honest when she says it could
/only/ be him? Is he honest when he says he knows it isn't him.

The amount of shock at the result is illustrative of the idea that the world
around us can be exactly the opposite of what we believe it to be -- or want
it to be.

------
diN0bot
get lonely and need more interaction: join a sports team (the fun leagues, eg
indoor soccer or intramural ice hockey), join a pickup game, go to weekly yoga
or art classes, form a trivia group, hang out with friends, live in a coop.

there are many hobbies i wouldn't necessarily roll into a career. friendship
and human contact is one of them. work for me is about loading my weekly
design ideas and code changes into the "RAM" of my brain and getting into the
flow. there is plenty of time around that to schedule meaningful human
interaction, which is usually meaningful precisely because it isn't
professional work interactions. i never try to code while interacting with
others, though i do like to work in RAM while doing solitary things like
swimming or falling asleep.

------
matthewking
I work from home and I find everything around me to be a constant distraction.
I can't wait for the day when I can afford an office, wake up in the morning
and actually go to work, as opposed to the 2ft commute, or better yet, not
have to work at all :)

------
TooMuchNick
Writing freelance from San Francisco is pretty satisfying for me when I have
clients in New York. I can at least get a lot of the busywork of answering
email out of the way by 9 AM.

------
TweedHeads
Discipline. All you need.

~~~
Andys
I have a theory that there's two types of programmers: The ones who interrupt
others, and the ones who get interrupted.

The interrupters have a more social-oriented personality hate working at home.

The ones like me who always seem to be getting interrupted, prefer working at
home because we find all our solutions the hard way, Googling and
experimenting, and would only ask someone else as a last resort. So we get
much more done from home.

Where the discipline comes in is in working a full day, since often you can
get done in 3 hours what would take you a full day in the office.

~~~
johnm
Re: Two types of programmers

I totally agree that people are generally more on one side of that spectrum or
the other. That said, the problem with way too many organizations and
methodologies is that they don't take into account that it's not a static
thing -- i.e., to be productive as a team requires a balance of both. Periods
where there's little to no interruptions and periods of high-interactions.

Alas, one very key facet is that the majority of managers tend towards the
extreme of the interrupter end of the spectrum.

As a segue, I've always found it interesting that a lot of the best CEO's
actually get up really early in the morning so that they can get a few hours
of "real" work done before jumping into the over-scheduled, interrupting rest
of the day.

Re: Full days work

This is another area where the Taylor-istic mindset has completely corrupted
notions of "work".

Reminds me of the study of taxi drivers. A lot of them worked backwards from
what they wanted/needed to make each month to come up with the number that
they needed to make day. Then, they'd usually work until they hit that number
and then go home. But, that completely misses the burstiness of the business
-- some days you're in the zone and cranking while other days it's a waste
because things are dead. They could make more money by working long days when
the pickings are good.

