
Why I work remotely has nothing to do with productivity - ingve
https://m.signalvnoise.com/why-i-work-remotely-hint-it-has-nothing-to-do-with-productivity-34ace30f74fc
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gerbilly
Life is short, and I agree with the author, you won't remember most of the
hours you spend working.

If I had 10 dollars for every set of stock options that I've been granted I'd
be a hundred-aire by now.

I've lost count of the number of times I've been told, that if I just work
really hard right now, I'll be able to retire soon.

Every time I read an article about some employees making big bucks off their
stock options or six figures off an iPhone app, I see that for what it is:
propaganda designed to make sure we keep feeding our young bodies into the
machine.

That machine will grind you up and spit you out like hamburger on the other
side.

Life is short as I said, and it seems to go faster the further along you are.

Work as little as you can, and if you must work, try to work for yourself.

~~~
rconti
Have you honestly been told that if you were really hard right now, you'll be
able to retire soon? What was the context? A manager trying to sell you on
putting in extra hours, because the IPO is going to make you rich?

I nodded to a lot of your points (although I have personally done well by 1 of
the 3 companies to offer me options), but I've _never_ had a boss actively try
to push me like that. It's always been encouragement or constructive
criticism, but never (potentially) false promises. That just strikes me as so
wrong.

~~~
gerbilly
>Have you honestly been told that if you were really hard right now, you'll be
able to retire soon?

I _have_ been told this, multiple times at startups, from people who probably
sincerely believed it.

Luckily, I never agreed to a pay cut in favour of options.

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assocguilt
Being forced to work from an office is the biggest scandal in the western
world.

I can see the highway coming from the Sydney harbour bridge from my office
window - it's alway congested, it takes a huge amount of time to get to and
from work.

I guarantee most of the people burning fuel, creating congestion and stopping
themselves (and everyone else) from getting home to their families on time
have jobs that could easily be done from home.

The argument that unexpected collaboration happens when people are forced to
go to the office is a joke and certainly not worth protecting when you
consider all the other negative effects of commuting and working in a central
location:

\- Rising house prices

\- Sprawling high density housing resulting in more people living in smaller
areas creating a massive strain on infrastructure and massive reduced living
standards

\- Commuting for hours per day which affects family life

\- Creating pollution hot spots

\- Burning large amounts of oil and petrol

A truck spilt several tons of dirt onto the Sydney harbour bridge last week,
this caused hours of delays for thousands of people trying to get home. Why
should one truck accident hold thousands of people to ransom? How many people
missed their kids bed time because of that?

Most companies even being amenable to change based on me bumping into someone
from a different department is a laughable idea. We need a massive culture
shift in the way we approach most office work. It's an absolute scandal.

~~~
randomacct44
Speaking of Sydney, are there many tech companies that allow remote work in
Australia? (I'm a software developer, primarily .NET but also C++ and embedded
firmware FWIW).

Are there any job sites / directories specifically for finding remote-work
jobs?

As a fellow Aussie I'd love to work remotely, but I don't necessarily want to
work for an overseas company, for example.

~~~
siquick
If theres one country in the world that needs to embrace remote work its
Australia.

We seriously need to move away from tech companies only setting up base in
Sydney and Melbourne and in turn, killing other cities and making us all live
in ridiculously overpriced apartments so we don't have to commute for hours
per day.

I would love to live in a more rural area one day but this is just never going
to happen while I work in tech.

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RankingMember
"Enjoy lunch with your spouse instead of in the break room with Connie from
accounts payable!"

I'm fully in favor of the freedom for everyone to work from home, but I think
there are unique upsides to being in the office, too. Incidental contact with
people from other departments (e.g. "Connie from accounts payable") is one of
them, as this can give you a unique perspective on your organization and can
spur new ideas/reveal new avenues for improvement you would've never
encountered had you been sequestered away in "deliberate contact only" mode at
home.

~~~
mhurron
I make sure not to talk about work when I'm at lunch.

I step away from my desk to eat lunch when I'm in the office to explicitly
take a breather from work.

~~~
smhg
Why this forced line between work and non-work?

Haven't you ever had a moment that your work was so interesting that you
wanted to share it with someone else in your 'non-work' time?

I would say: talk about what interests you. Don't focus too much on
'appropriate' timing.

~~~
bobwaycott
As someone who does the same, it's not a _forced_ line. In fact, _not_ talking
about work feels far _less_ forced to me. Sure, there could be moments where
something is so interesting you want to share it—but that requires talking to
someone who won't just stare blankly at you because they lack the requisite
knowledge and background to have the conversation.

More often than not, there's nothing so interesting happening with work that I
want to talk about it. Before I was self-employed, I frequently hated how
going to lunch with work mates meant having to spend time talking about work.
It felt like lunch was just another meeting, instead of a break from work. I'd
much rather have more _meaningful and personal_ conversation—like, about
books, art, traveling, relationships, whatever. Something that elevates us out
of our role as workers and focused on our non-working selves. Conversation
that helps increase our knowledge and understanding of each other. To be sure,
that could mean work-related topics come up. But it gets seriously boring to
talk with people who only want to talk shop.

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athenot
As a dad, the family argument is the most important one but has already been
well stated here.

I'd like to add that we now have the tools to make remote working not only on
par but better than in-office work:

\- Chat systems (Spark, Slack, HipChat…) provide the kind of informal
communication that offices are good for, but with major improvements:
asynchronous by default (though the conversation can easily escalate to become
synchronous) and topic-oriented. Even when I was in-office, our team actually
preferred chat-based conversation in many cases.

\- Tele-presence (video call) provide the face-to-face communication complete
with visual emotional cues that one would get in the office. Use it for
structured meetings, or use it as an informal background video feed.

\- Location independence helps the team be geographically dispered. You can
then build a team that is spread out and takes advantage of time differences
(useful in devops).

Just last week, my wife had a work-related conference out of town and instead
of being apart for a whole week, I just worked from the hotel with no change
of routine. After the work was done, we got to enjoy the area. Bonus: our
child came along.

The one caveat is all this is predicated on reliable network connections,
epecially for the telepresence part. However, homes have the option of
reliable network access, and for crappy wifi at hotels or coffee shops, it's
always possible to tether or fallback to text-only chat.

~~~
new_hackers
"As a dad" is the reason many men choose to work at the office... ;-)

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cwbrandsma
* no commute/transportation costs (include extra gas, car maintenance, etc)

* more time with family

* smaller food costs (don't eat out as much)

* smaller clothing budget -- not dressing up

* complete control over my environment (lighting, wall color, music, etc)

* fewer interruptions (even with 5 kids in the house)

* almost no sick days...like I'm not going to work when I have a bad cold? I go stir crazy.

* 1 am eureka moments happen more naturally.

* I can justify my increased home internet bandwidth

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lukasm
To play devil's advocate:

\- no routine that gets you going

\- less time with your friends and colleagues

\- less team lunches/nice dinners

\- getting dressed can help you mentally make the switch to start your workday
and can translate into higher productivity

\- you have to spent money for office equipment

\- more interruptions (you are at home, surely you can do x)

\- you have more sick days, since kids are bags of disease

\- no eureka moments after water cooler chats

\- extra cost

PS I'm a fan of remote work

~~~
true_religion
I'm a fan of remote work too, and your devil's advocates list is pretty much
an example of remote-work gone wrong.

It's happened to me, and I found that I needed to:

\- Have a routine, or else one day blends too seamlessly into the other \-
Always go out with my friends on the weekend \- Make good food (Blue Apron was
a huge help in this respect) \- Get dressed & do it well to make the context
switch to being at work \- Set it you up so if i'm at work, I only do work
things and not other chores

As for the rest, happily I don't yet have to worry about kids and my only
office equipment has always been my computer.

~~~
StavrosK
I agree with you, but you surely agree that the two main disadvantages are
lack of time with your coworkers (many of whom have become friends).

I would say "more interruptions" too, but the office has its own interruptions
(someone walks by your desk and starts chatting), which may be even more than
home.

~~~
tonyarkles
Maybe this is because I'm in my 30s, or because I'm an introvert, but I don't
particularly want to spend a bunch of time with work people; I want to get
work done at work, and whether we're in the same room or on Slack or whatever,
I still feel like I'm accomplishing a shared goal with other people.

And after work, I have plenty of friends that I don't spend all day working
with. I'd rather get supper with a friend I haven't seen in a while, rather
than spending more time with the people I already spent the day with. Lunch?
It's really great to break up the work day by taking my dogs for a walk.

And I do totally agree about coworkers becoming friends. Most of the people I
consider my closest friends are either old classmates or old coworkers.

I generally do remote contract work, but currently have a local gig for 1-2
days/week. There are undoubtedly more interruptions at the office, but fewer
temptations (e.g. turning off the clock and having a nap). I dramatically
prefer the home office environment though, most of all the fact that I can
work with my own flow. If I'm feeling foggy after lunch, I'll totally have a
nap and work a little in the evening to make it up. Or work a 16 hour day and
sleep in tomorrow. Or whatever works best that day.

~~~
kayoone
If you are post college and move to another city, naturally people at work you
connect well with will eventually become friends. I am kind of an introvert
too and since i spend most of my freetime with my girlfriend it is hard to
meet new people outside of work and spend so much time with them so they
become real friends. But isn't it the same as in college or school ? Most of
your friends are people you spend considerable time with and that is often
work/school/studying.

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chriswrites
The comments here are super interesting. I think the point of the piece has
nothing to do with interruptions, eureka moments, or productivity—it’s not
really about work at all. It’s about identity, and the fact that our
collective identities are so wrapped up in our work selves that we don’t
really know what we’re working for. Are we working for our families? For
retirement? For self worth?

He, and I guess “I” by extension, would argue that you’re working to enjoy
those little moments in life you’ll never get back—the ones you’re supposed to
savor. If you’re in that headspace, working from home is one of modern
society’s greatest advances.

~~~
equalarrow
Your spot on here. I work with some great people, but I also have 2 young kids
now and I frequently miss dinners at home. Getting everyone out of the house
is probably more stressful than it needs to be because I'm 40 mins door to
door and that feels more important than being present with family in the
morning.

I've been thinking quite a bit over the years that this isn't how raising a
family should be. I remember growing up and when my dad got home, work was
over. Fat chance now with sms, slack, email, etc - you're never off work
anymore.

One one hand, I love tech and it's how our family survives. On the other hand,
we're completely disconnected from our planet and appreciation of generations
before. We are modern and life is fast paced, but for what reason?

I keep the discussions going in my head and let the glaring issue just kinda
dissolve as we go thru another day. That issue is (for me) that this probably
isn't how - as a society - we should be living nor should we be valuing the
things we do. :-/

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fmavituna
I've been working from home for the last 7 years.

Interruptions suck and you don't need to embrace them. You can perfectly have
a dedicated time for your family as well as dedicated time for your job. It's
all about planning and ensuring that people around you understand your
schedule.

You can still have 1 hour allocated time with your son during the day and you
can be present, that doesn't mean your son needs to interrupt you 5 random
times within 3 hours. If you know when he comes home from school, by all means
allocate that fixed 30 minutes or whatever to him, perfect.

There is pretty much no difference between allocating random time frames to
people you love vs. allocating fixed times to people you love.

We all know from experiments, various sources and for many from personal
experiences interruptions do hurt productivity, induce stress and generally
bad.

Also, you can turn this around. Instead of being interrupted between your
tasks (out of zone moments) just make rounds at the house, talk to your wife,
enjoy a snack, take 15 minutes break. Then go back to hacking with a clear,
recharged head.

So why sacrifice your focus/productivity when you don't have to?

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mmanfrin
For me, it's that I get to save an hour and an half of not commuting (and my
commute is not bad at all, just walking to/from BART), that hour and half is
an hour and a half more of sleep or reading or anything else. It also means I
dont have to be in an obnoxiously loud open office plan with people some from
other department whiteboarding 3ft behind me.

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pixelmonkey
I run a 20-person fully distributed product / engineering team at Parse.ly,
and this post is a great summary of why we do it. It's not about hating on
offices, it's about loving on quality of life.

Work-life balance and harmony is enabled by remote work. I don't have kids,
but many of my colleagues do, and they really appreciate the flexibility.

I don't think all roles can work perfectly remotely, but software engineering
certainly can. Github (any day but today :)), Trello, Flowdock/Slack/IRC, AWS,
GHangout, GDocs -- these are the tools you would use anyway in a good company.
And you can trade the money spent on offices for plane tickets to do team
retreats and hackathons from time to time.

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ninjakeyboard
I go to work to eat the free food. THEY SMOKE THEIR OWN BACON. I think
companies try to be competitive with the perks (eg google - massages, food
within a few steps, a nice space to be.) There is definitely a benefit in that
and the social interactions for a young professional to work in a team with
smart people can be pretty rewarding too. With modern tooling you can still do
that remote - I've seen code review processes work very will with teams that
aren't co-located and that has been very rewarding and brought a lot of growth
for me personally.

But I understand as a family man what you're saying. If I could do remote work
I'd probably be in Tamarindo or similar (which I'd like to do one day.) Until
then, bacon is pretty awesome.

~~~
desdiv
>THEY SMOKE THEIR OWN BACON.

Where do you work, if you don't mind me asking?

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anotherevan
Like many, the ability to be present with your family resonates a lot for me.
I’ve been working remotely (at least 3/5 of my time) for most of the past
decade, but in the last two years it has been an absolute godsend.

Without going into detail, we ended up in a high-needs situation with one of
our teenage kids a couple of years ago. Fortunately I have a very good
relationship with the company I work with, so was able to switch from
partially remote to 100% remote, and as things shook out, ended up part-time
(3 days a week).

Some days I’ve been unable to start work until 10 or 11, or I’ve had to go
down to the school three times, or quite frankly I’ve had days of just being
too emotionally drained and upset to be able to work as well as I would like.
So have certainly had some late working nights to compensate. Measure based on
what I expect to have completed more so than total hours worked, and carefully
curate the todo list with my manager regularly.

My wife works in customer service, so she has nowhere near the flexibility in
scheduling that I have, so it has worked out the best for the situation we’ve
been in.

Never could have happened if we were both office-bound. One of us would have
had to stop working for a couple of years.

(Addendum: Some of the above sounds quite dire, and it has been at times, but
we are well into recovering and approaching a more “normal-needs” situation.)

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jjd1103
I love working remotely for all the usual reasons, plus this more recent one:
my 2yo daughter had ever-more-terrible eczema which we eventually learned was
caused by molds ubiquitous to the region in which we lived. So we moved.
Across the country. The very next day. She's light years better, and the whole
family is so much happier. No job hunt, no asking for a transfer; we just
moved.

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hydandata
I work remotely for past four years, and I totally agree with this. I still go
to the office for occasional meetings and events but there is not that much
pressure for it since most of my team is remote.

I worked for a lot of companies for the past 15 years, but this is the first
time I find it hard to change my job - because working remotely is amazing.

I wish more companies were open to letting people telecommute. I had office
based position offers that paid twice what I make but I am never trading that
for the ability to get out of the room and hug my daughter. And the
productivity argument is still there, it is just not the sole reason why
remote rocks.

One of my other favorites: Work is very stressful sometimes, so I go out to a
different room and punch my training bag a few times. Instant stress relief -
try doing that in the office!

P.S. If you are reading this and are considering hiring for a remote position,
drop me a line, I am a sysadmin with a fair bit of coding and extensive
networking (Cisco) and teaching/mentoring background, living in central
Europe, and I grok programming and web development.

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lincolnq
Hell yes.

I may be biased since I'm a founder of a 100% distributed company, but I feel
the value of working from home every.single.day and I know my employees do
too. Midday naps and gym visits, not feeling bad wandering out of the office
for a break, getting to be just as productive when at home. No commute.

The modern office is a scam and a relic from the fifties and we are only now
able to break free from its chains.

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turlingdrome
It's about quality of life for me. The higher my quality of life, the happier
I am, the happier I am, the more productive I am. I'm happier not dealing with
a commute, having my own space and seeing my daughter throughout the day. If
you're truly happy then the rest follows, i.e. establishing a routine,
work/life balance, etc...

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BuckRogers
I've worked from home for years and its worked out well (in my opinion and my
employer's). In my 3rd year WFH I just received an "exceeds expectations" in
our standard corporate review and was told I carry all the values of the
corporation (yikes), trust, respect and all that hand wavey stuff. One thing
that has dramatically improved is my general morale and attitude, because I'm
not involved with specific "office types".

People in the office that don't seem to really work, but seem to think their
only job is trying to find things they can make you work on, so they look like
they're managing someone. I already have a boss, tasks and get everything done
with stalwart dedication and personal pride. That type of middle-manager
intervention is much harder when you're not in a cube. Or just annoyances like
spending time looking at your screen when walking by.

I get just as much done as I used to in the office, save the environment, less
stressed (just as much over my work but less with those office lice), and now
never really want to work another office job again.

Driving stress is real and avoiding that is a health benefit, not to mention
my sweet standing desk with treadmill underneath where I've lost 40lbs using
while working during the day. I'm less likely to get horribly sick and drain
the company's insurance plan. I spent years on a 24/7 pager that went off all
the time, and worked from 9AM-3:30AM in offices in downtown Chicago many
days/nights. I've done some harm to my health sticking out bad jobs and
situations to build a resume. I'm very thankful for my current situation.

While someday I'd like to land a Django gig, I hope when my wife and I have
children I'm still working from home. I don't want to die having missed out on
the things this author mentioned. And definitely not my wife, I'll go back
into an office if it means a big enough pay raise so she can quit her job as a
teacher not miss those moments.

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ilaksh
Not commuting saves a ton of time and energy, not only in gas but also
calories for me.

I have found a lot of people don't communicate enough when working remotely
though. So you have to remind people to get in Slack/Skype/Hangouts/phone.
Also a video or voice chat is higher bandwidth so it is good to do that at
least once a week or more often depending on tight the collaboration is.

But considering that most office jobs can actually be done over the internet
now, the highway congestion, the logistical/military implications of
maintaining the massive imbalance of fossil fuel distribution largely to
support the commuting in oversize vehicles, global warming, etc., it surprises
me that we even allow so much commuting to continue. Seems unethical.

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melted
Where do people find these jobs? Every time I look for one I only see complete
bullshit jobs from companies that don't really pay all that well.

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seanwilson
I enjoy remote work and dislike the stigma it has with some people. I hear a
lot of "everyone else deals with it!" when you mention the (significant) time
you save on getting ready and commuting each morning, and some people are
suspicious that remote workers slack off because they're not in an office.

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wsha
Maybe raw productivity is not increased, but all of these reasons have the
effect of increasing morale and thus productivity.

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ksec
I just want to emphasize, it really do depends on the industry. Software, yes.
for some nope.

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joeevans1000
The only thing better than working remotely is not working remotely.

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tuananh
i just knew that Medium supports custom domain now.

