
Working remotely, coworking spaces, and mental health - jrheard
https://bitquabit.com/post/working-remotely-coworking-and-mental-health/
======
AYBABTME
For the last 2.5 years I've been working at DigitalOcean as a remote employee.
DO has more than 50% of the staff remote. I think it's important that a large
chunk of a company & team be remote, to be successful in the exercise, so that
there be a forcing function to use asynchronous communications. It's been
really life changing for me.

We have a bunch of style of remotees; work from home, work from coffeeshop,
work from coworking spaces and work from a new place every day.

I've tried all of these styles, starting with work from home, then getting
super depressive from loneliness and getting a coworking space (DO pays for
it), then realizing I didn't use it and instead working from a mix of home,
coffeeshop, and random visits I pay to my friends. And now I've been switching
to mostly working from the crazyest settings I can think of. I worked from
camping spots, from a sailboat, in a national park, on a beach in Asia, and it
all works out once you're used to "travelling from anywhere".

I'm having the best time of my life by experimenting with what it really means
when your ability to feed is now decoupled from your physical location. I feel
like I'm living in a future that maybe more of the people will have the chance
to live soon, and that it's my duty to find a "Theory of Working In The
Future". My first theorem is "Don't stay home everyday else you shall go
crazy".

Also, think about the implications of OneWeb and the constellation that SpaceX
has been working on; I'm thinking "what if I could get low latency/high
bandwidth internet from the middle of any ocean"? The future looks bright.

[edit]: just realized I'm kind of praising my employer a lot here. My comment
isn't meant as recruiting spam, tho I think DO's great to remote folks. Also
we're building massive distributed systems everyday and it's fun. So uh...
check this out? [http://grnh.se/wv3fgo](http://grnh.se/wv3fgo)

~~~
k__
> then getting super depressive from loneliness

I read this so often and can't understand it. It's like most people never get
friends outside of work. Like they never grew up and are still in the 'I can
only get friends at my school/class'-mindset from when they were young.

The best people I know I met at places of my choosing, not at work, not at
school.

I work remote because my private life is so demanding and I couldn't get it
work with 40h in an office.

~~~
johnward
> like most people never get friends outside of work.

60 hour weeks and a young family will do that. I literally don't have a single
friend outside of family members. I'm also suffering from bipolar depression
but it's either support my family or be happy. I'd rather they be happy. I
guess.

~~~
driverdan
> 60 hour weeks

There's your first problem. Stop overworking.

~~~
ayamgaga
Maybe. But then it's not that simple for everyone to break out of such a
vicious cycle and find friends when you don't have friends to help already.

------
iguanayou
As a remote worker, I would really enjoy a coworking space at least 1-2 times
per week, but the hour commute and the expense just are not worth it for me.
I've been working remotely for two years and absolutely go stir crazy, and
even into fits of depression, when I'm not really pro-active about getting
out.

I've been volunteering with a community theatre this year, which gets me out
of the house after work most week days. My mood goes up about 10x when I do
this. During the month or so downtime between plays though, things start going
bad again.

I'm also involved with some other meetups/clubs and do piano lessons. Putting
together a deliberate schedule of "outside activities", at least for me, is
absolutely necessary to make it work.

And I would still never go back to working in an office!

~~~
dexwiz
I am in the same situation. People tell me all the time how lucky I am to work
remotely, and I was excited when it started. But it definitely has some
drawbacks that I didn't expect, especially in the mental health department.

Webex/Hangouts/GTM is fine for 90% of the banal, communication meetings. But
it really fails for any design meetings that need a whiteboard. I have tried
getting my team to use some alternatives, but there is always some eye
rolling, and it never sticks around. It doesn't help that the majority of our
team is onsite, so any alternative is 100% for my benefit. Also I haven't
found an app that can compete with the tactile feeling of a physical board.

Also I feel like I miss out on the "water cooler" talk. Any sort of
communication I have is very formal. My team doesn't like using chat casually,
so it really hampers my ability to form relationships with them.

Finally, time management is an issue. When you have an office, its much easier
to turn on and off. When I am at home too many mornings start late, and too
many evenings run long.

~~~
IshKebab
I think the surface hubs may change that - the experience is _almost_ better
than a real whiteboard. They are hilariously expensive though.

~~~
tonyedgecombe
I don't think it's a problem that can be solved by more technology.

------
shanemhansen
Overall a well written article with some valid criticisms. After 2 years
working remotely I observed roughly the same facts, but have a slightly
different spin on the whole thing.

Like everything in life, working remotely has tradeoffs. One person's pro is
someone else's con.

Pro: I potentially gained hours of my life back every day. I know many people
who work for similar companies who spend more than an hour commuting every
day. They take less-desirable jobs and leave behind their coworkers just so
they can get an hour of their life back and reduce their commute from 2+ hrs
to 30 minutes.

Pro: I can disassociate my COL from the company's choice of office location.

Pro: I can cook food in the crock pot on a regular basis without worrying
about my house burning down.

Pro: I can walk my dogs during my lunch break (or pick up food from the
grocery store or run some other errand).

Pro: (subjective) My coworkers competence is higher than what I typically
observe from companies that limit their hiring pool to people who live within
a few minutes (or hours) of one office building.

Pro: I can and have worked from a hammock, a camper van in a state park, a car
on a road trip, and a cafe in Paris.

Pro: No requirement to waste literally hours of my day in bullshit pre-lunch
planning, post-lunch coffee, etc. When I'm onsite I'm happy to spend lots of
time on watercooler talk, but I'm not obligated to do it every work day.

Pro: I can go hiking on my lunch break.

Con: I don't see anyone but my spouse. I have to go to additional meetups in
order to make up for this.

Con: Not as much face time with execs. This can matter politically and for
your career.

~~~
geerlingguy
My list is pretty much the same—for an introvert who values deeper
relationships with fewer people, the cons aren't too bad. And being a meetup
organizer for two different meetup groups means I'm forced (a good thing for
an introvert) to see other people in the area who work in the same area.

I've been working 100% remote for 5 of the past 10 years, and part-time remote
the other 5, and in none of this time have I gone stir-crazy or felt depressed
about my work... some people are able to thrive in a remote/isolated
environment (I still do video calls 2-4x a day for different projects, so it's
not like total isolation), while others really need a group of people working
with/around them to thrive.

It also helps to have a family or more than one other person living in your
residence if you choose to remote work from home—it forces you to have face-
to-face human interaction (to the extent you choose to put down smartphones,
laptops, etc. outside of work hours).

~~~
shanemhansen
> And being a meetup organizer for two different meetup groups means I'm
> forced (a good thing for an introvert) to see other people in the area who
> work in the same area.

Funny you should mention that. I'm a co-organizer of a pretty active meetup.
The first tuesday of the month is the highlight of my social calendar.

------
onetwotree
Working remotely killed my mental health. Even with Slack, Hangouts, and all
the rest, I became lonely, had difficulty focusing on work, and generally
became significantly less happy and productive. I tried a coworking space, and
while I made some great friends there, it still wasn't doing it for me.

I've been back at an office job for about 3 months now and it's been a huge
improvement. I love being in an office with a team of people all working on
the same thing, solving problems together, and socializing.

Obviously, different things work for different people, but I wish I hadn't
bought into the remote work idea as wholeheartedly as I did. It's important to
be aware of what you get out of onsite work in addition to the drawbacks.

------
scottlegrand2
As someone who spent the better part of the last decade working remotely, and
having read tens of rants about open office floor plans with which I agree
100%, I think that the problem here is that there is no Silver Bullet. Those
of us who prefer a results only work environment will never thrive in an open
office, and those of us who need human contact will not thrive in a results
only work environment.

More likely if you're reading this, you're somewhere between those two
extremes. I'm an introvert when I need to get things done, but I'm an
extrovert everywhere else. I have seen just as many people crash and burn
trying to motivate themselves while working remotely as I have seen people go
quietly nuts in an open office.

I am going to be working from a co-working space in the near future, but I
suspect that I will still need to spend significant amounts of time on my own
in my home office if I want to stay productive. I don't expect that solution
to work for anyone else, but after nearly two decades in the software
industry, I know what works for me.

~~~
innocentoldguy
I like traveling, so working remotely from Australia for a couple of months,
then switching things up in Japan for a while works well for me. I haven't
been able to do that for a few years though, since my current employer likes
to see everyone in the office at least once a week.

------
socialist_coder
I wouldn't consider myself an extreme introvert but I am 100% satisfied
working from home (been doing it for 4.5 years now).

The author mentions socialization only in real life. What about online
socialization? I still talk to 2 of my best friends in a chat room (used to be
IRC, now we use Slack). I keep up with old friends on Facebook. I have
discussions and arguments on HN and Reddit.

And probably most importantly, my remote company has a VOIP chat that everyone
is on and we routinely have "water cooler" type convos, in addition to serious
stuff.

So yeah, I think you can solve this problem without needing real life
interactions. Embrace your digital life to the extreme! And, companies hiring
remote workers need to support them better, with VOIP and text chat rooms that
they can be in (with other employees) and feel like they're part of the team
and not just a worker.

~~~
kayoone
i'd consider myself pretty introvert and have been working remotely for 5-6
years and only realised on how much i missed out socially after getting a
regular job at a startup again. I just enjoy working in a team of motivated
people, talking to them randomly about non-work/non-tech stuff. I still feel
more productive even though there are more interruptions, but at home i tended
to create these interruptions myself and was never really satisfied with my
productivity either.

Online socialization interactions/chats (even video) with friends/team members
never gave me the same kind of feelings, and i still felt more lonely. I guess
there is something about face to face that I like.

~~~
socialist_coder
Yeah, I'm curious how I would feel if I went back to a normal job. Before
working remotely I worked in the game industry for 10 years and I mostly loved
it. But, I also really like my current remote setup.

I think a big part of it is that I started working remotely at the same time
as I had kids, so now I can take off any time I want to spend time with them.
I normally take a 2 hour break for eating dinner and helping with bedtime,
then I'm back to work. I remember people from my office job who would say that
they only see their kids for 10 minutes a day or something like that. I didn't
think anything of it at the time, but now that I have kids of my own with my
current setup, I can't imagine only seeing them for 10 minutes a day. That
just doesn't seem right.

~~~
abalashov
> I didn't think anything of it at the time, but now that I have kids of my
> own with my current setup, I can't imagine only seeing them for 10 minutes a
> day. That just doesn't seem right.

This may be viewed as a benefit rather than a downside by a surprisingly large
number of people.

I'm not passing judgment here, just speaking empirically. For men especially,
the office and work are the default place to hide from unhappy marriages, dull
domestic life, housework, and [perceived as] perfunctory obligations that they
want to avoid (due to lack of interest) but which it is not socially
acceptable, or perhaps politically correct, to reject. Not everyone is in a
happy marriage, and not everyone actually enjoys spending time with their
wife. Furthermore, not all fathers have the right combination of personality,
emotional constitution and intellectual disposition to have fruitful
interactions with all kids, at all ages, and all times. "I love spending time
with my kids more than anything else in the world!" is an obligatory refrain
nowadays, so few people will admit otherwise—even to themselves—because it's
very non-comme il faut. But the truth is that 2 1/2 year-olds can be pretty
unstimulating company. For a lot of busy, career-minded, highly accomplished,
worldly people, ten minutes before bedtime sounds about right. That sounds
cruel and terrible now to a lot of people now, but would have been quite
uncontroversial half a century ago.

That has been one of the most important functions of the organisation office
in the 20th century. It's a cover that gets many men—often fairly
inscrutably—out of having to deal with things they don't really want to deal
with. Feminism picked up on this a long time ago, and that's what's behind a
lot of the "second shift" double standard critique. The charge is that men
still have an easier time cloaking themselves in inscrutability when they
attend to their careers. In this version of events, nobody really has a right
to question why they're at the office so much, what they do there, or why
they're working so hard.

I'm not talking about men that lie that they are "at the office" when they're
in fact at the hotel with their mistress. I'm talking about men that are
legitimately ambitious and interested enough in their work that they take on
more of it—a lot more of it—than they absolutely have to willingly, because
they are secretly not so interested in achieving "work-life balance", as other
aspects of their life are not fulfilling to them. There's a lot you can get
out of if you have to stay late at the office all the time due to meet a
legitimately ambitious shipping schedule. Hard to argue with.

Another, related problem is that most non-digiratti don't really understand
computer-based self employment. I'm sure we have all dealt with the problem of
older relatives, more traditionally-minded people, or unenlightened spouses
perceiving that we are simply sitting on the couch "playing on the computer",
much as many of us have always done since childhood. In the mind of such
people—a vast segment of American society—work is a place one goes, with a
briefcase, and which keeps defined business hours. Intellectually, they
understand that the money comes from somewhere, and that you are not actually
paid to "play on the computer". But instinctively, they can't process that.
The appearance of "playing on the computer" means you don't really do much of
anything and are always available to chat, run errands, walk the dog, feed the
baby, etc.

Some will say, "But that's why I have a house, with a door that closes, and
everyone around me knows not to ever bother me when I'm in there!" Yeah, okay.
My experience hasn't been that this works. The first time your wife walks in
there anyway and sees you browsing Reddit instead of feverishly parrying phone
calls and struggling to right critical infrastructure to prevent impending
apocalypse, that's done. From that point onward, you're just hiding in there
to play on your computer and are preemptible by processes with nominally high
priority. :-)

That's another class of problem that going to an office solves.

------
greenspot
Coworking spaces are a mixed bag. I went there for few months but stopped
again.

Good is that you face more serendipity than when working from home. But
really, it is not that much more. After only few weeks, the novelty wore off
and I got bored and saw more the downsides. Like super small tables, no dual
monitor setup, always too cold, the commute, less free fruit, and the people.
Some are quite nice and you realize that you need random social encounters but
there are also the typical odd people to whom you cannot relate at all (like
everywhere). Those people don't hurt but I remember one who reserved the best
flexdesk the night before by leaving tons of her post-its and other papers
there. No big deal but nobody who makes you happy either.

I knew most people I met there before. Bonding with new people without having
a common mission was not easy, it just didn't feel natural (and I am rather
the extrovert sales type of guy). So, you can still feel 'alone' in a
coworking space.

I think a coworking space makes more sense if you need a space as a team and
want or need to see each other f2f on a regular base.

For business meetings or doing interviews, I prefer lobbies of top hotels,
they are even more representative than the best coworking spaces and at the
end of the month also cheaper with full service included and no extra fee when
booking some meeting room. And for two hours working away from home, I am a
fan of Starbucks or any coffee ahop with good wifi.

~~~
kilroy123
I've worked in a number of co-working spaces and what I've seen is a huge
inconsistency in spaces. (which is to be expected.)

Some have internet that is flakey or slows down on crowded days. Some are just
too loud. Some are just too hot or cold. Some have bad locations. Or have
horrible chairs and desks. The list goes on and on. Seems like you have to
find the one that is just right. Even still, don't go there every day. Mix it
up by working from there, home, cafe's, etc.

I've realized I'm very picky about my work environment...

------
tmm
> If you’re thinking of working remote, then think about what kind of working
> environment you’re happiest with before you take the job, and make sure
> you’ll have that environment available to you.

Seems to me that the best part of remote working is the ability to figure out
what the best environment is for you. Don't be a theorist, be an
experimentalist: try a bunch of different situations and see what you like
best. It sounds like the author started down this path, but stopped too soon
(at first).

> Are you sad when a lot of your office is out sick, or are you relieved?

Usually relieved, then I wonder why I bothered with an hour of driving to sit
in the office by myself, when I could have done that from home.

> Do you get uncomfortable when you’re in quiet environments for too long, or
> do you revel in them?

Love quiet! My office at work has no windows (not even internal ones); being
able to close the door and cut off the outside world is the best!

> Do you feel weirdly lonely when you’re in a noisy coffee shop, or do you
> feel energized?

Annoyed by the noise mostly. Coffee shops are for getting coffee and getting
out. Libraries are way better for actual work, IMO.

~~~
marcosdumay
> Usually relieved

I think almost everybody will have the same answer here. I don't think it's a
good question, because most people have too much interaction every day and is
tired of it. That does not mean they will be happy standing most of their days
alone.

------
minipci1321
5 years remote. Personal bottom line:

\-- negative: lost interest in having friends (and generally the patience
needed to talk to people), no social life, no career, work-life balance
completely broken

\-- positive: sleeping 8 hours a night! (and more if I need to), making walks
in the park/training at noon, never really sick, comfortable home office, can
be efficient again (only my job doesn't require that). Started having ideas
again and thinking about side projects.

Before going remote, during 15 years I was commuting 2+ hours in the morning
(so 2 hours again in the evening), sleeping 4 hours a night by the end of the
week, dozing off the entire weekend and generally feeling extremely exhausted,
mentally and physically, easily catching flu etc.

Would I move back to office employment? I really hope I won't have to.

~~~
socialist_coder
Hmm, I also have an extreme lack of patience for other adults (I say adults
because I have plenty of patience for my kids). I've been working remotely for
4 years now, I wonder if that is why? I don't think I used to be so impatient
with other people. Interesting...

------
mattlondon
It is not just remote work either - I've noticed a trend in my work where
although I work in an open plan office surrounded by people, my teams are
increasingly "global" which means that usually there is 1 team member on their
own in each office.

Although I am surrounded by people, since you're not working with these other
people, and/or there are desk moves every 3 months or so as teams are growing,
you only ever end up with very superficial "friendships"/social interactions.
"Hello" "How was your weekend" "Which team are you on?" "I am on this team"
etc etc. You're just doing it out of politeness really, then in a month or two
they'll move on to another team/office or there will be another desk move and
you're back to square one, surrounded by strangers.

It is not unusual for me to go a whole day in an office surrounded by hundreds
of coworkers without physically saying anything to anyone apart from "thanks"
for holding open the door.

It is extremely isolating.

------
ENTP
This echoes my current gig to a tee: worked at home for a couple of months,
went stir crazy, found an office. For me, the first office space was a hipster
cafe type place that was just too freaking noisy. I moved to a Regus office
which was ok but Regus were awful so a few of us clubbed together and got a
truly shared office with both closed and open spaces for different type of
work. I can highly recommend this setup as some days you just need to hole
yourself up in a private enclosed office to do brain work. However the open
space promotes social interaction and feeds the soul.

~~~
SyneRyder
+1 to the comments about Regus. While some of the spaces are really well
designed & in perfect locations, their billing systems were so broken that I
got out of my contract as fast as I could. They couldn't even charge credit
cards automatically each month, and they accidentally leaked their entire
Australian client list in the To line of an email (then tried to fix it by
using the Outlook "Recall This Message" feature).

[Since then I've opted to work from cafes, shopping malls that have started
encouraging laptop workers, and a 'coworking' space I found that was mostly
empty.]

~~~
ENTP
I was on that email list. I was absolutrly livid. They also double charged me
$2k+ twice. Will never work there again. What's your tips on Cafe's (if you
are in Sydney)?

~~~
SyneRyder
Alas I'm in Perth, and I have terrible taste in coffee... I mostly work at
Starbucks whenever I can. (Or Gloria Jeans, since we don't have Starbucks in
Perth.) It's a while since I was last in Sydney.

If you're ever in Singapore I can recommend the 100th Starbucks in the
financial district (at The Fullerton Waterboat House). Large space with lots
of windows, a great view and not very busy. Terrible WiFi though, so tether to
a cheap Singaporean 15GB SIM.

~~~
ENTP
Thanks for the tips! Appreciate your time.

------
vxxzy
I've been working remote now for 5 years. All from home (sometimes from a car
or a cabin). It takes discipline and limits. In my case - limiting my urges to
finish out a project or get a bit further at 2am. It can be a blessing and a
curse. I'm getting ready to 'venture out' \- spend time at coffee shop or
coworking. For the record, I've been 'remote' in many roles; employee and
consultant. Overall, for me, I find routine an absolute necessecity to get
work done. By routine, I mean 'get dressed as if going into the office' \-
it's about mindset.

------
innocentoldguy
I love working at home. Not going out of my house for weeks on end doesn't
bother me at all, and I'm much more productive when I'm working on my own. I
think I could be quite happy as a shut-in. I can see how the lack of a social
life would bother some people though. I guess the success of working remotely
depends a lot on your emotional needs and personality.

On another note, I do have to disagree with the author with regards to making
the most money in either New York or the Bay Area. Perhaps the salary looks
bigger on its own, but when you consider housing costs, food, gas, taxes, and
other costs of living, you actually end up making a lot less than you do in
other locations. I've received multiple offers from the Bay Area, and one or
two from New York, but they just can't compete, all things considered. Plus, I
don't have any desire to cram my family into a 1,000 square-foot cubbyhole,
when we can enjoy seven times the space elsewhere for half the price.

------
xiphias
Getting a girlfriend who also works at home may be hard, but it can fix most
of this problem. I liked working while my girlfriend was working at the same
time...with some fun interruptions.

~~~
AndyNemmity
The funny part is, I have this, and it's fun to joke about, but we never
actually do anything. I'm too busy in my world of meetings/development etc to
even desire sexy times. I just want to get the next bug fixed.

~~~
user5994461
Well. It's fine as far as you're both on the same page all the time.

Being 24/7 with the same person can get really tough.

------
codingdave
My company is 100% remote. And I recall very clearly in the interview process
one of the most important traits to succeed - Be self-aware.

Everyone is different. Every new remote worker figures out what they need to
do to make it work for themselves. And we do not all do the same things. But
we all know ourselves well enough to try things, see how it works for
ourselves, and figure out what changes we need to make it work. Of course, we
also talk to each other, give suggestions, etc. But ultimately, to succeed on
your own, you have to proactively care for your own mental health. And self-
awareness is vital to doing so.

~~~
narendraj9
What company is it? I am making a list of remote jobs that I can apply to.

~~~
gnicholasgreen
I'm not OP, but check out workremotely.io

------
gnfisher
Living abroad I've gone the remote road since 2009. I went through a lot of
this same stuff but never associated it with my being remote/working from
home, though now looking back I can see it most likely did. My health and mood
increased once I started to force myself out to socialize more and once we had
our children - the household is always busy and full of noise and life now,
versus before when my wife went off to work and I sat alone in a quiet
apartment all day long. Since the birth of our second I've been doing my first
sprint in any nearby coffee shop each morning and that has improved my mood
and productivity even further. I've been toying with the idea of a co-working
space and this article has convinced me to give it a go.

We are social creatures, to varying degrees, and if we limit out interaction
with others too severely, I think it makes it too easy to look exclusively and
excessively inward. I'm all about self-analysis and looking inward but there
comes a point when you go too far and it's no longer about reflection but a
feedback loop of anxiety/fear/self-doubt... at least that has been the case in
my experience! Also, regular exercise (running, lifting) has always helped me
out of these emotional funks.

------
dkarapetyan
Great post. The spectrum stuff is very important and it's important to be
honest to yourself and during the interview process about what you expect. I
now tell every place I interview being on-site all week is not gonna work for
me. I need to be remote at least 2 days out of the week to recharge. Otherwise
I will burn out in less than 6 months. Most places seem to be ok with that and
make concessions to letting me do that.

------
AndyNemmity
I have a similar issue at the moment. I have tried co-working spaces, but I
work with people globally and my day tends to start at 5am. So to get to a co-
working space, I'd have to leave at 4:30am, and that's provided they were open
(they aren't.)

I've spoke to one about potentially giving me a key to the space, and perhaps
that would work, but it's often easier just to roll out of bed, throw on
coffee, and start my meetings.

I tend to repeat, and stop going outside much at all, just staying indoors.
That then perpetuates my desire to not go outdoors.

It's solvable though, it takes effort on my part to continue experimenting,
and trying new things. It only becomes an issue when I just keep repeating the
same situation. Definition of insanity, repeating same things, expecting
different results.

~~~
jrheard
FWIW, the coworking space I like best in my city has 24/7 access for members.
This seems to be pretty unusual, though.

------
eeeeeeeeeeeee
I joined a co-working space this summer and it was...meh. The people were nice
and the facility was great, but I don't really see the point unless your
employer is going to pickup the tab and/or you have a small apartment with no
office or an insufficient one.

I found myself missing my widescreen monitor, standing desk, and chair. The
amount of money I've sunk into my home office felt wasted when I used the co-
working space.

And the co-working space would swing between eerily quiet or way too much
noise. It seemed weird to go (and pay) for a co-working space where everyone
is primarily staring at their laptops.

On the other hand, I would maybe consider going from a two bedroom to a one
bedroom apartment if I had a full-time 24/7 use of a co-working space and then
the cost would more than even out.

~~~
jrheard
I spent my last two years at Yelp working from home in Portland, OR, where I'd
moved by myself. I started to go completely insane toward the end of my first
winter. Being in the same room all day and having nothing ever change around
me was much, much worse for my mental health than I had expected - prior to
this, I'd never even thought about the concept of my own mental health, but
this experience really brought it to the fore.

I tried a couple of coworking spaces, found one that I liked, and have been
going there regularly since - my employer paid for my membership at the time,
but I quit my job a year ago and it's still worth it to me to have a space
where I can go every day to get out of the house and be _around_ humans, even
if I don't socialize with them as much as I could.

I've always identified as an introvert, and used to fantasize about the idea
of e.g. working in the top room of a lighthouse for a month - assuming you had
a good Internet connection, you could get so much coding done there! - but it
seems that being around people is much more important than I'd given it credit
for, particularly in the winter when it's pitch black outside at 4pm and
you're already kind of depressed by default.

~~~
pm
Working at the top of a lighthouse for a month would be awesome (assuming good
Internet) if you were motivated to get something in particular done. I think
if you went there with a generalised notion of getting something done, I don't
think it would work nearly as well.

_starts looking for lighthouses_

------
mccolin
Excellent personal story on finding the right workspace in a remote situation.
Home office vs. Coworking space is a conversation I have with other remote
works quite a bit, and the answer is different for everyone.

~~~
DoodleBuggy
>>> Home office vs. Coworking space

I'd recommend a mixture of both, plus visits to coffee shops and libraries,
depending on what type of work you need done.

Learning what is effective and finding the right balance can be one of the
trickiest elements of WFH.

~~~
ginko
I never understood how anyone can get any productive work done at a coffee
shop. The amount of distractions is just too big.

------
Zelmor
Working remotely for 7 months now. Three things I do not miss are \- neon
lights which used to trigger my migraine on a regular basis, \- 45-60 minutes
of public transport commute in the heat/cold, \- the need to look busy when
the work is already done.

While I did experience a bit of a breakdown at one point, it is something to
overcome. I like the "lazy days" of regular work in coffee shops, libraries
and sometimes even pubs (no alcohol during work hours though, that's bad on so
many levels). When there is heavy need of cognitive abilities, I tend to stay
in, start the day with a cold shower, breakfast and coffee, then work at my
standing desk.

I find standing desks really something all offices should support for their
workforce. It keeps you active during the day and allows for greater focus.
Start small, go for what fits your physique. Use a rubber mat. I would suppose
it also helps with what the author calls "off-days", since I do not encounter
them. There is always something to improve upon. If no hard-work is available,
I just work on documentation and learning new skills that advance my
work/life/career. This allows me a good night's sleep.

------
abalashov
I relate closely to this post, especially the position that working remotely
is for a certain kind of introvert only.

To such an extent do I relate to it that I wrote a blog post about it a year
ago:

[https://likewise.am/2015/12/18/why-i-love-industrious-and-
ab...](https://likewise.am/2015/12/18/why-i-love-industrious-and-about-
coworking-and-offices-more-generally/)

This post struck a similar note:

Working from home might genuinely be the ideal environment for those closest
to the introvert end of the spectrum, and _I think those are the people who
form angelic choirs of blog posts asking if you have met their lord and
savior, the Fortress of Infinite Solitude, Home Office Edition. For them, the
quiet work environment makes their jobs dramatically more enjoyable. But for
me, it was the opposite: I’d gone from management (high social interaction) to
software development (lower social interaction), and from working in an office
(hundreds of people) to working from home (two cats), and expected that this
would all be fine._

~~~
kLeeIsDead
Am I missing something here? Paying $1000/mo rent for a remote space seems
insane. At best, that's 15% of your take-home salary. You're basically forcing
yourself to work 15% more than you would without an office.

I'd take the extra 15% of free time over the hit in the "socialness" of my
office space. I can get that social fix during that time instead.

~~~
abalashov
> Industrious seems nice. It would be a good option if you're a Lawyer or CPA
> or something where you need to keep up appearances; i.e. clients physically
> coming in and talking to you.

I don't know that Industrious is the right place for a lawyer or CPA. Maybe a
rather nontraditional one. But I would expect someone like that to prefer
traditional "Class A" office space a la Regus.

> However, as a software engineer, it seems like the only benefit is social.
> And with that, from a financial standpoint, it doesn't make much sense to
> me. You're basically paying to work.

Well, if you buy the premise of the articles—both the parent and mine—then
that benefit has value. It has a lot of value to certain kinds of people. By
the sound of it, you do not have such high psychological needs. :-)

I didn't talk about it in my article, but the OP did in his: getting one's
social fix outside of work isn't that easy, particularly if it's work-related
socialisation that is the deficiency you're trying to address.

Having said that, even Industrious doesn't magically fix certain existential
problems. For instance, I'm in VoIP, so I have relatively little to discuss or
collaborate on with the usual array of people who commonly inhabit such
places: SEO/web marketing firms, web developers, miscellaneous ad and
marketing agencies, etc.

Industrious had less of these than the typical coworking space, and the
tenants of that nature who were there were less obnoxious, but still: being in
an exotic and highly technical niche removes a lot of the benefits of shared
work culture and water cooler talk, the ability to bounce ideas off
officemates or answer their questions, etc.

edit: $1000/mo is pretty steep for a one-person office. Industrious didn't
charge me quite that much. But it was pretty up there.

~~~
kLeeIsDead
Whoops. I probably should have proofread my comment before submitting. Your
response seems almost nonsensical now that I've butchered my original post D:
Sorry about that.

------
jschwartzi
This mirrors my experience going from product support to software engineering.
I moved roles in a company that was primarily a sales organization, so I still
had a lot of responsibilities to other people that required social
interaction. When I switched companies to join a product development team all
the social interaction went away. In fact, earlier this year I went for
several months without any real interaction with my co-workers, and I work in
a cubicle farm. This had a severe impact on my mental health, to the extent
that I'm in therapy now. I've since started seeking more interaction with co-
workers during the day because I actually need it to work effectively.

People often write about software development as if it's a solitary activity,
but I can only do my best work for other people. Having personal relationships
with my co-workers makes me a stronger developer, and I can't do it remotely.

------
amyfransz
As a remote worker myself, I can definitely resonate with the dark sides of
working remotely as described in this article. The lifestyle is mostly
portrayed as living the dream, however the lack of social interaction and
finding a proper work-life balance where you also set time aside for friends,
exercise, or meditation for example, is pretty difficult. That's actually what
gave me the idea to bring together a community of remote workers to work,
live, and travel the world together where the hassle of accommodation,
flights, work spaces, gym passes, and social activities are taken care of so
remote workers can enjoy the remote lifestyle to the fullest. If anyone's
interested you can find more info here
[http://www.theremotetrip.com](http://www.theremotetrip.com)

------
agumonkey
How many found new project ideas and partners in coworking spaces ?

------
opticalflow
For my job(s) the last 8 years or so, I've had a mix of on-site (10%), travel
(40%) and work-from-home (the remainder). There have been very long stretches
when I'm neither in the office, nor travelling to meet with customers, however
-- sometimes, months. From my standpoint, I can commiserate with the author
here. I live out in the hinterlands with my wife and 6 kids, so there's no
shortage of social interaction -- however if I've been stuck here for 6 weeks,
I begin to get a little stir crazy. I "recharge" by going to trade
shows/events/meetups in NYC (which is about an hour and a half away) -- the
energy of the city is refreshing, but I wouldn't want to put up with it every
day. Just once in a while...

------
alkonaut
I have tried coworking in both co-rented offices and "office hotels" as well
as work from home. For a long while I had a (pretty expensive) seat at a
coworking space that I _didn 't_ use, but just knowing that I could leave my
isolation at home and go there meant it felt less isolated.

I wish I could work in cafes, at friends etc, but I just _can not_ bring
myself to work without a proper big screen and keyboard, which means most
nomadic coffee shop setups are off limits. One day working off my laoptop and
my neck, eyes and and back hurts. I need a proper desk, which makes it a lot
harder to move around.

------
coldtea
> _But for me, it was the opposite: I’d gone from management (high social
> interaction) to software development (lower social interaction), and from
> working in an office (hundreds of people) to working from home (two cats),
> and expected that this would all be fine._

Could be the change from bossing people around (being a manager) to being
bossed around (being a dev)? Because all the rest (interaction with friends,
walks, going to the gym etc) one could still have from working remotely --
like the author says they did for the first months anyway.

------
intrasight
What I like about working from home with regards to socializing is that I get
to choose when, where and with whom I socialize. I didn't have that control in
an office setting. While most of my clients and colleagues are in other
cities, I make sure that I have several local if for no other reason than to
have some professional socialization opportunities. And of course there are a
dozen groups that I could choose to participate in - actually more than I'd
ever have time to do.

------
edblarney
It's great to see a lot of agreement on this.

I agree with most of it.

Short commutes + some privacy at work would probably entice most people in.

Having 1-2 days a week at the office would be grand.

Being able to focus for long periods without interruption is quite important,
frankly, I have no idea how software gets written in those cramped open
workspaces with all the noise etc..

Granted, different types of software for different types of things.

I can imagine a deeply technical problem requiring more thought than say a lot
of dev-ops, scripting, code reviews, bug fixing, etc. etc..

------
Mister_Y
feeling isolated is not a good thing most of the people, that's why libraries,
coworking spaces and meetups exist. After all, the human being is a social
animal. But what we can do to prevent this is planning where to work from,
where to go, analyzing if working remotely is good or not for us. I found this
piece of content really helpful as I'm tired to read how nice is to be a
digital nomad, well... it is if you're an outgoing person, or if you're the
type of guy who likes to feel pushed to always go the extra mile. But we have
to prevent people from just going to the middle of nowhere expecting amazing
things will happen as you have to be the one who moves first. Loved this!

------
Zigurd
Does anyone know of a valid study of how workgroup size, the ratio of meetings
to individual working time, etc. compared to well-organized remote work? By
well organized, I mean designed to mitigate the problems cited in this article
and otherwise.

------
d13
What's an "off day"?

~~~
gecko
A day when you don't feel like you're being productive, even though you're
trying to get something done. One of my coworkers wrote a good article
([https://medium.com/@jdan/quantifying-my-off-
days-27e85f5bc15...](https://medium.com/@jdan/quantifying-my-off-
days-27e85f5bc157#.r59f6hnrd)) about that, linking it to pomodoro techniques.

------
Kiro
I feel like an alien for my lack of social needs.

------
techdebtland
"Off days"

[https://youtu.be/co_DNpTMKXk](https://youtu.be/co_DNpTMKXk)

------
WhatIsThisIm12
I like my coworking spaces like I like my haircuts; effective with nobody
talking to me.

------
flamedoge
site is down

~~~
gecko
Fixed. New server and I forgot to run the playbook to up the ulimit to prod
levels once I swapped it into the pool.

~~~
cmdrfred
Very responsive. Instant load times on my machine. Well done.

