
The Stress of Remote Working - madewulf
https://hackernoon.com/the-stress-of-remote-working-38be5bdcf4da
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ilikethiscmnt
I am 100% fully, completely remote. I love it so much. I don't mind the office
but the distractions are brutal and I never get momentum going. Plus the
commute. Oh god, the commute. No, I think working remote is much less
stressful than the office. If someone calls me and I don't want to talk to
them, I don't answer the call. Responding to every ping and call as if your
job is on the line is going to stress you out no matter what the environment.

~~~
ivm
Also most of the "remote stress" can be compensated by home food or lying in
your bed for an hour.

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Clubber
IMO, still much better than the stress of driving in rush hour traffic 2x a
day to go to an office where everyone is looking over your shoulder all the
time and won't hesitate to interrupt you, or the guy right next to you, or
anyone in the room, for a quick, disruptive chat that everyone can hear.

~~~
jackstraw14
My work days and quality of life in general improved dramatically when I
stopped driving and started taking the bus. Two hours total round-trip each
day, plus walking about 2 miles to/from bus stops, but I can't imagine ever
wanting to drive to work again. Let someone getting paid to drive handle the
stress of the road, don't put that shit on yourself. Public transport can be
stressful in its own ways, but at least you have some free time to think about
how to improve your outlook. When you're driving, you might accidentally cause
a pile-up if you do that.

And the lack of ability to "get around" all day is a benefit, let me tell you.
Your mind would be thrilled if you said "no, I can't do that" more often. It
sounds like your workspace is pretty noisy but your rush-hour commute might be
contributing to your bad days more than you think.

~~~
Clubber
Oh I can't wait until self driving cars exist for real (zero interaction
required, I think you have to keep a finger on the wheel now). The commute
definitely aggravates me both to and from work, preventing a good day at work,
and a good wind down after work.

As far as workspace, we have that new fangled open office (read: too cheap for
even cubicles). Granted it's a startup and there are much better things to
spend money on, plus rapid growth, etc. Everyone has to wear headphones and
the biz always comes in to talk.

I'd still rather remote. It solves all problems, and I can walk and socialize
on my own time. Let's be honest, most work chit chat is either about work, or
petty and shallow.

~~~
jackstraw14
If your workspace is inflexible then I would say making some changes to your
commute asap might be important for your well-being.

Chit chat at work wasn't always annoying and disruputive. Well maybe to some
it always was, but the workplace is usually an intersection of some
interesting parts of your personal community, ie the mutual suffering everyone
else goes through for whatever reason, to be here in this office 8+ hours a
day. Sitting around all these people existing in chairs, who in their digital
worlds totally forget about the noises they're making in the real world.

Your work chit chat is what you make it, is what I'm trying to say I guess. If
your office is totally extroverted and won't give anyone any peace, look
around for other people who aren't into the prescribed "work culture" and work
together to make one of your own. At least your work days might be better.

------
basseq
I worked remote for 4-6 months in 2010, and really hated it. My team of 3—I
was the most junior—were all local and met at the office once every couple
weeks.

I felt a pressure to always respond to pings and phone calls instantly, lest
it be thought that I was slacking off. I felt guilty about going to the
bathroom, let alone eating lunch or—god forbid—getting coffee from the
Starbucks right outside my apartment building.

Yet at the same time, I wasn't very productive. If I hit a question or wasn't
sure what to do next, it seemed to take forever to get "unstuck" without being
able to walk over and have a conversation with my boss live. Phone and IM just
didn't cut it. As a result, and beyond the "on-call" pressure, accountability
felt low.

So it was the worst possible combination of a high pressure to be "present"
for long/strange hours (some of our bosses were in Europe) combined with
boredom and low productivity. There were instances where I didn't leave my
apartment for _days_ , and I looked like the guy in the second frame of the
Oatmeal comic in the article. Thankfully, I lived with my girlfriend (now
wife) who probably kept me healthy and sane.

It's only looking back that I realize how unhealthy this was for me, to the
point where I'm typing this comment and thinking, "Holy shit, that's bad."

Years later, as a people leader, I'm a proponent of remote work, though feel
strongly that there's no replacement for sitting physically* next to someone
20%+ of the time. I'm also extremely aware of the need to _enable_ remote
workers with process, technology, and culture to help them be successful.
Without that foundation, people may have the same experience I did, and I
don't want to put others in that position.

(* Video technology has made this better, and I know there are virtual
presence technologies that can replace physical presence, but I still don't
think there's a replacement for in-person human contact.)

~~~
albertgoeswoof
Sounds like you were quite junior and working in an environment that didn't
support remote working well, which obviously wouldn't end well. Great that you
are able to take that experience and use it to help others and your
organization grow remotely though, I can see why you are a people leader.

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49531
I've worked 100% remote for nearly 4 years now and I can definitely say that
I'll never go back to working in an office if I can help it.

Yea there are different challenges. You have to over communicate and be
available, but availability doesn't mean 24/7\. It really only applies to
working hours and the occasional on-call shift. If your boss wants to get
ahold of your on a Saturday night, that sounds like a company culture issue,
not a remote work issue.

------
jclardy
I've worked remotely for a company in another state for the past 5 years, I
can relate to many of these issues.

On socialization, I can understand the feeling there, but for me the solution
was to find social circles beyond work. For me I have my church community and
also meetup groups with other developers in a similar field. If you don't have
those already you will definitely be feeling the loneliness.

Other things I do is have a dedicated office space that I only use for work,
to create at least a semblance of home/work separation. I also have a pretty
disciplined morning routine that involves working out (at the very least,
taking a walk), reading and actually getting dressed. I've found just jumping
out of bed onto a call is a recipe for disaster especially if it becomes
ingrained as a habit.

I also work partial days from coffee shops (I also feel bad if I spend 3+
hours in a seat after just buying a bagel and an americano.) I'll often go
there in the morning to also promote the work/home separation.

The other thing is that I work for a relatively small company and they bring
me up to the office every few months for a few days, so there is a time to
connect with people in the office. If you are 100% remote and never meet
people in person I feel it could be a bit more difficult to make connections
with people.

Overall, I really enjoy it, I do wish I could go into the office more often.
Having a 2 office/3 remote weekly schedule would be my ideal situation - do
meetings and socialization in person then have the distraction free time
provide via remote work. I'm not sure how many companies would be into that
idea.

~~~
zerebubuth
> for me the solution was to find social circles beyond work. For me I have my
> church community and also meetup groups with other developers in a similar
> field.

I think you are exactly right. Additionally, I think having a variety of
social circles beyond work can help broaden one's support network, which can
reduce the disruption of changing jobs or being let go. And it's fun to have a
wider variety of friends with common interests.

------
larrik
I've been 100% remote for almost 6 years. I don't think I can go back.

I have a family and a stay-at-home wife, though, so I'm really not looking for
socialization through work.

My work is very strict about keeping normal work schedules (it's not flex
schedules) to avoid issues like this.

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starbuxman
I work remotely, and it can definitely get lonely. To combat this, I do
martial arts. I get my 'social fix' and am good for the day. I don't need
constant conversation throughout the day with people I may or may not like ;-)

What is most difficult for me, is getting inspiration. I work remotely for
myself which is different than those work work remotely for others, and have a
boss to report to. So...I'm struggling with how to get unstuck right now.

As far as 'never leaving work,' I change up my work locations. Sometimes I'm
at Starbucks, other times Panera's, and sometimes I'm at home.

As far as degradation of social skills, I'm going to assume that was an
attempt at humor, and not really proven lol :) Seriously though, yesterday I
realized that I definitely don't socialize the way I used to. I went to panera
and ordered at the kiosk with my card. Later on in the day I went to Target's
'self check-out.' It's almost as if we don't have to interact with humans as
much these days.

~~~
maxxxxx
My social skills have gone down after I took an office job. When I worked
remotely I would go out in the evening and do things and meet people. Now
after 9 hours of noisy office and 90 minutes commute I am exhausted and do
nothing after work. I feel like a work machine.

------
bitL
If you want to succeed working remotely, this helped me:

1\. Focus - learn how to 100% focus on your work, filter out any distractions

2\. Socialize - find some nice hobbies involving other people with completely
different backgrounds for the time you saved by e.g. not commuting

3\. Pause - don't overwork yourself; having computer in front of you is
enticing to cram more algorithms, experiments etc. into it - just put a firm
boundary on the amount of work you do in a given day or you risk long-term
overworking issues

I was following this for over 5 years and had the best time of my life working
remotely with 0% office time.

~~~
diegoserranoa
#1 is key. I've turned off most of my notifications. It's amazing how we live
surrounded by so much digital noise.

~~~
blackflame7000
For me, #3 was key because when you start deviating from the 9-5 it's easy to
work a few hours later into the night to finish up the task before all the
working memory is lost to sleep. This inevitably causes adverse sleeping
patterns which can cause all sorts of malaise

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megaman22
> To summarize, the main problem for me is to feel like a text processing
> machine, receiving mails, Jira tickets and chat messages as input and
> writing code as output, without the human interactions needed to make it
> more meaningful. I do not like becoming a kind of a remote developer black
> box.

This sounds fantastic, where can I get such a gig? There's really nothing
better than being given a more-or-less defined task, and being free to just go
get shit done, without interruptions, or waffling, or hemming and hawing about
whether it should be done this way or that way, by people who have no
understanding of the technical realities.

Thank god it's a work-from-home Friday. I predict I will get far more
accomplished in four hours today than I did in the 40+ I was in the office
Monday-Thursday.

~~~
badpun
> about whether it should be done this way or that way, by people who have no
> understanding of the technical realities.

This will most likely still happen, just over Jira, chat, and code review
comments, making it more painful (as the bandwidth is lower) than in real
life.

~~~
yoz-y
Those are much easier to ignore though.

~~~
badpun
The non-essential stuff (ex. people asking to "take a quick look" at
something) yes, but for anything that still pertains to your task at hand
you'll still need to respond. You get the benefit of being able to respond
asynchronously, but so does everybody else, which can make a simple
conversation (on which your task depends) take days.

------
diegoserranoa
I've been 100% remote also for the past two years. IMO the most important
thing about remote working is communication. I'm still not perfect at it but I
try to improve everyday. Even though there are issues you can't avoid (e.g.
childhood sickness as OP pointed out), most of the problems can be solved by
communicating clearly with your co-workers.

------
ebbv
Everything has trade offs. I've mostly worked remote for the last ~15 years
(last job was partially remote, this one is all remote except one meeting a
sprint typically.)

This article does a pretty good job bringing up the issues I came across early
on, but there's way to mitigate all of these. Some of them are cultural fixes
for the company; don't hold it against people when they are slow to respond to
chats. It doesn't mean they aren't working hard, it might just mean they
needed to poop. Stuff like that.

Some are things you have to do yourself if you need a change; for me going out
for lunch is a big one that helps avoid fatigue of constantly being at home
and helps me have social contact because I arrange to go to lunch with friends
or family at least once a week.

Another one is that I have dogs; so I have company here at home with me. That
might not work for some people but it's something that helps me.

Lastly, we do pair programming at my company. So I'm on voice chat with people
a lot during the day.

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woliveirajr
In the end, the stress of remote working or working inside a cubicle is caused
by the same group: everybody around you.

You might or might not have co-workers that are cooperative or not, who
interrupt you a lot or not, who make everybody's life easier or not.

You might have or not a good family, a good chair and desk, a good headphone,
a good coffee break, a good lunch.

And everybody that is on the other page will think that you aren't doing as
hard as you can, and if they were in your sittuation (remote or local), you
should do better.

~~~
albertgoeswoof
> In the end, the stress of remote working or working inside a cubicle is
> caused by the same group: everybody around you.

let me rephrase that for you

> In the end, the stress of remote working or working inside a cubicle is
> caused by the same group: you

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settsu
I'm a remote developer (FTE w/large out of state co.) who happens to be a 40
year old single dad of two elementary school-aged kids living in a one bedroom
apartment.

Yet even if I was able to recreate a workplace with my favorite colleagues,
ideal collaborations, and the best on-site perks, I would still prefer to be
remote most of the time /at this stage in my life/.

Reflecting on this led me to boiling it down to 2 key reasons: 1\. I have a
natural drive to want to do my best work. After 24 years of working full time
(about 20 doing roughly what I do now), I have a good idea of what that takes.

2\. Having children changes you fundamentally in so many ways that a
meaningful discussion probably isn't possible without considering what that
means.

Working remotely isn't perfect (especially during long school breaks...), but
it does facilitate most of what I want given the need to trade my time for
money.

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eweise
I worked remotely a lot when my kids were young. Awesome taking them to the
park at lunch, dropping off and picking up from school. Its just not natural
to travel for an hour to sit in a box. Plus I was in the best shape having
time to go bike riding or running at lunch.

