
Working from home may hurt your career - screentime
http://www.bbc.com/capital/story/20170418-how-working-from-home-ruins-everything
======
eludwig
My take on this is that everyone has their own take on it. Some people like it
and want to do it all the time, some hate the idea and could never imagine it
as a lifestyle. This makes senses to me. It's a personal preference thing.
Different personality styles like different things -- and, as mentioned here
already, it can have a lot to do with your personal circumstances and the
stage you are in your life and your "career."

What's real nice is to have the ability to find the right balance for
yourself, if you have the luxury of a company that's relaxed about such
things.

I live in the New Jersey suburbs and have an approximately 2 hour (one way)
door-to-door train (includes a 20 minute walk from Penn station) commute to
get to my office in Manhattan. For me, I like to be able to work at home 2-3
days a week. I do like to go into the office and see my co-workers and
friends. I would feel out of it and lonely if I didn't have that. I just don't
want to do it 5 days a week. Thankfully I have that luxury now. Situations
change all the time and nothing is forever, but it's great at the moment.

~~~
greenhatman
I've been working from home for the last 3 years. I much prefer this to
sitting in traffic, even if it's just 30 minutes a day.

I wouldn't recommend this for junior devs though. You need to be around
experienced people to fast track your learning.

~~~
yazan94
I'm a junior developer work at a __BigCo __in NYC. I don 't feel like I am
fast-tracking my learning by being in the office. I don't have a mentor or
anyone in my office that I can learn about enterprise app dev from. There is a
dev in a different office that I ping occasionally with questions, but I
really do not think that I need to be in my office 5 days a week. I wonder if
my situation is the rule or the exception, and if I am getting shafted by not
having a professional mentor...

~~~
hummerbliss
Eventually you would meet people and discuss technical stuff and unofficial
mentor/mentee relationships may develop. Most places won't have an assigned
mentor. Your boss (if he/she is technical) may become a mentor but it doesn't
always happen.

Coffee/Break room chats and other social gatherings would help in building
rapport with other devs and eventually you would be learning from each other.
Unless the place you work is extremely toxic, I would say just give it time.
My 2c.

~~~
lj3
You need to take advantage of the proximity and network! Preferably upwards.
Befriending the QA guy may make your life easier now, but he's not going to be
the one who can offer you a job in 5 years time.

------
NDizzle
The only thing that working from home hurts is your ability to put up with the
general "office bullshit" that you put up with in order to have a career prior
to technical remote work becoming a possibility.

I know that, at least for me, I would have to get paid a lot more to come into
the office. I don't miss the commutes, business lunches, and the general
overcrowding of the city.

~~~
sshagent
exactly this. I've been working from home for about 8 years now, and even
those days when i don't have 100% concentration I'm still a lot more
productive than in an office environment.

I've been offered and approached about multiple roles which have had a variety
of nice bits about them, but having to commute for them ...costing me 4 hours
of my time per day just doesn't make it make any sense.

I've turned down roles for twice my wage. Don't get me wrong i want a new
challenge but i also love my free time. Getting to bed my 22:00 each night and
setting my alarm for 06:00 is something i don't think i can tolerate.

~~~
jlebrech
if those extra 4 hours means you can work those extra 4 hours for someone
online in emergencies you can be a lot more valuable.

~~~
sshagent
Well I am primarily a NetBackup guy, so those emergencies happen a lot more
frequently than you'd think :) And yes, I'm fine with working late when
needed.

~~~
jlebrech
so you're making the most of your available time.

when i'm stuck with a commute i'll cycle, as it replaces gym time.

------
dasmoth
I found the first part, about the difficulties of attaining flow at home,
pretty interesting.

I have much the same problems while at the office (and while avoiding open-
plan areas helps, all offices seem to be distraction factories to some
extent).

Different environments for different people, I guess. Although that doesn't
fit well with a culture that says management is about fitting people into
standardised processes.

~~~
jaymzcampbell
>Different environments for different people, I guess

Absolutely! I seem to get the most work done and the best "flow" when I'm sat
on a train (the Metropolitan underground line in particular). I believe this
is partly down to the complete lack of distractions and inability to do much
else but sit and work.

Alan Shreve summed it up perfectly for me:
[https://inconshreveable.com/10-17-2013/code-
at-30000-feet/](https://inconshreveable.com/10-17-2013/code-at-30000-feet/)

If it was feasible I would spend the entire working day going back and forward
along the length of the line.

~~~
usrusr
Switching from a beefy i7 desktop to an ancient core2 laptop occasionally did
that for me. I'm pretty sure however, that if I tried to use that as a
permanent productivity trick my ability for distraction would quickly adapt.

------
Boothroid
One angle I didn't see covered - if home working works for you it becomes much
more difficult for another company to poach you if they don't also offer home
working, and so I can see that it might harm your career in terms of inertia.
I work from home and I'd say I'd need to increase my salary by around 30% to
justify a move taking into account commuting costs, 2.5 hours spent on the
crappy train each day and the usual tax robbery..

~~~
ryandrake
> I'd need to increase my salary by around 30% to justify a move taking into
> account commuting costs, 2.5 hours spent on the crappy train each day

Interesting. I'm wondering if that's true in reverse for people. Did you
accept a 23% pay cut to work from home? For people who currently work in an
office, would you accept that? It seems pretty steep--I don't think I could
afford to do that.

> and the usual tax robbery..

You don't pay taxes working from home?

~~~
zaphos
This kind of thinking works out if you personally value your time at an hourly
rate, and consider the whole commute time as lost and unpaid.

For example, say you value your time at ~$50/hr, and the train costs $8/day,
and there are 20 work days in a month. If your daily commute takes 2.5 hrs,
that's $2660/month in value to you. If your marginal income tax rate is 28%,
then to actually get that amount of additional spending money you'd need to
make $2660/.72 = $3695/month. This would be a 30% raise if you currently make
about 12k/month (144k/yr).

~~~
ryandrake
Interesting way to look at it, thanks. My commute costs roughly $10/day (100
miles x $0.12 or so a mile), so that's $2400/yr to commute.

It's hard to justify assigning a dollar value to your time though, unless
you'd otherwise be making that ~$50/hr. If I were not commuting for 4 hours
per day, it's not like I'd be consulting for those hours, so there's no
opportunity cost. Is the time I'd otherwise spend lying on the couch worth
~$50/hr? Hard to say.

~~~
Nadya
_> Is the time I'd otherwise spend lying on the couch worth ~$50/hr? Hard to
say._

Assign an hourly value to your free time. If you wanted to relax at home on a
Saturday playing video games, how much money would I need to pay you to do
something for me instead?

I'll work for no less than $20/hr. I'll give up my free time for no less than
$100/hr.

My rates differ because, at least for me, I'm _required_ to work to pay bills
and pay to do things I enjoy doing with my free time. Since I'm required to do
it and I need to be realistic with what I ask for, I charge less. My free time
is time I'm not _required_ to work - so there needs to be enough monetary
incentive for me to be willing to give up my free time. Idealistically my
"work rate" would match my "free time rate".

~~~
ryandrake
This is a way to think about free time that I've never considered before.
Thank you. Curious as to how you arrived at that $100/hr figure. Is it based
on any measurable aspect of your life? If I were to adopt your way of
thinking, I would have a hard time putting a dollar value to my own because I
have nothing but my current job to measure it against.

Would I give up another hour with my family for $100? How often would that
opportunity come along? If I had the opportunity to make $100/hr whenever I
wanted, I'd first quit my job and fill up that time with this new $100/hr
activity, before eating into my free time. But that's a lot of money--it would
be very tempting to let it eat into my free time and I'd probably just apply
it to as much time as possible in order to maximize the opportunity. That's
probably true for any dollar value over what I currently make.

But reality is, whether or not I would give up an hour of free time for $100
is a pointless question to ask because I'm not aware of a way to convert free
hours into $100 bills. If I had the opportunity to do such a thing, I'd simply
be doing it instead of what I'm currently doing.

~~~
Nadya
The figure is simply how much I feel is motivating enough to give up my free
time. That's the _minimum_ amount and often times it can be quite higher (see
my other post). The opportunities largely don't exist and mostly because
people don't want to pay that much for my time. Cash is not a priority for me
and I'm not really needing of more of it. [0, tangent]

For some people it could be $5 because they need some money to buy some food
to eat. For others it might be $30 to spend at the bar on Friday night. Others
charge more - I know a contractor who won't settle for any less than $10,000
for 40 hours of their time (comes out to $250/hr). Some people value their
time above all else, refusing any monetary incentive. You simply can't _buy_
their time.

If you think $40/hr is worth your time, do it. If you think $2/hr is worth
your time, do it. The value is yours to set - it can fluctuate and change. But
learning to value your time is worthwhile. You only get so much of it, so be
sure you're happy with how you're spending it.

[0] I've been told that's terrible future planning, because I may need more
cash in the future. I prefer to live in the now and worry about possible
futures when it becomes the now. There are just so many futures to worry about
and plan for. What if I worked harder to store away more money just to die of
a heart attack without ever being able to enjoy my life? To avoid stress and
simplify my life I don't worry about possible futures.

------
peterkelly
Mitchell & Webb have a classic take on this:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IW3lhfVpLL4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IW3lhfVpLL4)

------
zelos
I worked from home (UK for a US company) for 5 years. The first 2 were great;
I realise now that the last three I was close to suffering from depression.
Difficulty concentrating, hiding from problems, lack of energy etc.

Less social interaction, no clear home/work time split, lack of the background
encouragement and feedback you get constantly from working face to face with
people, even the simple lack of exercise and time outside - these are all
things you have to be really careful about.

~~~
senorjazz
Totally agree, almost to the word and the timings. Am not a remote worker
though, but my own online programming business, so is always that nag "there
is something I should be doing instead to progress the business"

------
return0
This has been brought up here before: WFH doesnt work for companies that don't
have a culture for it. When a large number of employees work remotely, people
seem to like it. Someone should do a poll on it.

~~~
Pigo
Most of what they were citing were issues you'd have working for a company
that doesn't have that culture, and a guy who was at home all day with a two
month old. I love my son, but when he was born I quickly found out why older
guys were happy to be at work.

~~~
joshmanders
But at the same time, I am having zero issues working from home with a 2 year
old and a 7 year old. Everyone knows when daddy's office door is shut, he's
working and is not to be bothered.

You can't expect to work from home and still interact with everyone who is
home.

~~~
Arizhel
I have a friend with a ADHD 7-year-old. There's no way this would ever work
with that kid: you can tell him over and over to stop bouncing a ball around
and he'll just do it again in a couple of minutes. Expecting him to not bother
you for hours at a time is a pipe dream.

~~~
joshmanders
I'd assume that if you were to not be disturbed for 8 hours for work, someone
else would be there to take care of the children, so ummmm, lock the door?

~~~
Arizhel
>I'd assume that if you were to not be disturbed for 8 hours for work, someone
else would be there to take care of the children, so ummmm, lock the door?

And where is this "someone else" supposed to come from? You have enough money
to hire a full-time nanny? For many professionals, both parents work (and the
mother taking significant time off to raise kids is a career-killer).

~~~
joshmanders
Well, if you're not working from home, but instead an office, where do your
kids go?

I think you're just grasping for excuses for why working from home can't work
with kids.

~~~
Arizhel
Day care, I suppose. But doesn't having to drive your kids to day care remove
a big positive in favor of working at home (eliminating the commute)?

I don't think I'm "grasping for excuses" at all. The kids that I've seen and
met would be completely impossible for me to work at home and maintain any
concentration. I'm honestly befuddled how parents of kids under the age of 10
get any rest at all. I guess some of them are lucky and get kids like me when
I was young (I was quiet and liked to sit in my room on my computer, or doing
puzzles, etc.), but the kids my friends have aren't like this at all, and from
my observation are the norm these days (I was an odd, quiet kid even back in
those days).

~~~
joshmanders
My wife works, she leaves at 8AM to take our 7 year old to school and our 2
year old to daycare.

At 3:15PM my father-in-law picks up our 7 year old from school and hangs out
with her.

At 5PM my wife gets off work and goes and picks up our 7 year old. I go and
pick up our 2 year old.

We come home, make dinner, have family time, and put the kids to bed.

My only distraction during the day is my 4 month old lab puppy who needs a
little play time and bathroom breaks.

It's not tough. It's about having a consistent schedule.

I did however get lucky as my 2 year old has slept through the night all but 4
nights since she was 2 days old.

My wife goes to bed around 9PM, I go to bed around 11:30PM, she gets up at
6:30AM and I get up at 7:45AM.

------
bitL
It's the usual inability to focus for undisciplined people. I am working
almost 5 years from home, created some unique algorithms nobody did before me
and recently being headhunted by companies like Google, Facebook, Apple SPG
etc.

I always think about the study of pianists in Berlin - the excellent ones and
mediocre ones put the same amount of time into practice, but the excellent
ones did it in two 100% focused blocks while the mediocre ones did it
interleaved with other things.

If you need an office, a man-cave, a vacation house on Hawaii, a one-man
island, New York during rush hour, noise of Barcelona center, ... to get into
the flow, by all means do it!

~~~
Arizhel
>If you need an office, a man-cave, a vacation house on Hawaii, a one-man
island, New York during rush hour, noise of Barcelona center, ... to get into
the flow, by all means do it!

The problem is, many people can't afford to set up an ideal working
environment for themselves if they need one of the quieter venues. A one-man
island obviously is unattainable for almost anyone, a vacation house on Hawaii
is unaffordable to all but multi-millionaires, and even a decent house with a
separate, quiet room is unattainable for many because of family or roommates.

~~~
dasmoth
How much do you think an island costs?

Small ones are on the market for less than a modest family home in popular
urban areas, e.g.
[http://www.orkneyproperty.co.uk/content/b7a2dd97-8b71-4b09-9...](http://www.orkneyproperty.co.uk/content/b7a2dd97-8b71-4b09-9129-4f2e8a1b2c8c.pdf)

Much of the issue with housing costs and difficulty getting the property you
want are down to people piling into a few hotspots. More remote work seems
like the answer to this.

~~~
Arizhel
300k pounds is roughly USD$600k I think; not exactly a "modest family home" in
most of the US outside of a few overpriced metro areas like SV.

~~~
dasmoth
_300k pounds is roughly USD$600k I think;_

Oh, if _only_ that were true! (It's less that $400k at current exchange rates,
and arguably even that overstates the purchasing power).

 _not exactly a "modest family home" in most of the US outside of a few
overpriced metro areas like SV._

It'll go a long way in the housing market of much of the UK, too. Just not the
"overpriced metro areas" (where, sadly, a lot of the software jobs seem to end
up...)

------
d--b
This article can be read the other way around. The article talks about
'interruptions' but what they describe are NECESSARY stuffs like having the
plumber over, or going to the post office, or taking care of your child.

When you start working from home you realize that while you were in the
office, none of the stuffs that actually matters to you (besides your career)
get priority:

\- send that mail to ask for a refund: it's been on the dining table for
months.

\- fix that sink: meh... the plumber would not come on Saturdays

\- buy a new bbq to have friends over: I'll go next week.

\- doing your taxes: I'll hire some accountant to do it.

\- wanna buy an apt: I'll do the visits after 7pm please.

Yeah, doing all these stuffs is annoying, but going to the office just to get
away from chores seem like a terrible advice to me.

~~~
throwanem
FYI: 'stuff' and 'advice' aren't countable nouns in English - you sometimes
see a countable 'stuff' as part of a compound noun like 'dyestuff', but it's
never countable in the common sense of "a collection of things".

Out of curiosity, are you a native speaker of German or a closely related
language? I'm not intimately familiar with the language, but it seems like
both these nouns' German equivalents are countable, and I'm wondering whether
that is the origin of your unusual usage here.

(ObTopic: In prior positions, I avoided working from home, because there are
many more distractions there. In my current role, it's about even, which is
regrettable, and working from home is off the menu here in any case.)

~~~
d--b
thanks for the info. I knew about advice (despite my mistake!), but didn't
know about stuff. I'm French, and yes, in French: stuff, advice and news are
countable.

~~~
cr0sh
Another OT FYI - where you wrote "stuffs", a better word to use would be
"things" (because I imagine "thing" is countable in English). It would make
the sentence more fluid to most other English speakers.

/for what it's worth, your English is already better than my French, which is
virtually non-existent! Also - it's already way better than a lot of adults
here in the United States, which isn't saying much...

------
intrasight
Work from home and don't have a "career" \- works for me.

~~~
jventura
True, some people just have other goals in life than being defined by what
they do to make a living (aka "career")..

------
seanhandley
I found "Deep Work" by Cal Newport was very useful reading when I made the
switch to working from home. Also, "Remote" by Jason Fried and DHH.

If you have a dedicated home office where you can put your headphones on and
shut the door it's an utterly ideal programming environment.

~~~
dasmoth
_If you have a dedicated home office where you can put your headphones_

Better yet (if you're one who like background music while working): a home
office with _speakers_. Even nice headphones get uncomfortable after a while.

------
kemiller2002
So, let me sum up. If you don't actually do work while working from home and
if you work for a company that doesn't know how/want to actually manage remote
workers, then you might have a problem.

------
rb808
Its interesting to hear about WFH for different people in different locations
& situations.

This example working in a small London house, on the dining room table with a
baby around is very different to the American guy in a quiet suburb with a few
spare rooms for an office, with kids at school or perhaps no kids at all.

Its one of the reasons I dont like working from home - I dont have an office
at home and I prefer a short commute to the office where I have some space.

~~~
Arizhel
>Its one of the reasons I dont like working from home - I dont have an office
at home and I prefer a short commute to the office where I have some space.

And this is exactly why I wish I could work from home: at home I have some
space and peace & quiet. At work, I don't, because every company in America
now has embraced the open-plan work environment, and thinks we need to be
surrounded by chattering coworkers to be productive.

------
lohengramm
One thing that gets me in the zone is time. I really begin to focus at night.
When I spend the night programming, it is extremely productive, but during the
morning or evening, I can't really wrap my head around sitting in front of a
computer.

------
snowpanda
> Caseiro quickly realised that interruptions, like a visit from the plumber
> or cooking lunch, added up to too many distractions.

This really comes down to discipline and prioritizing. I'm not saying it's
easy, but if you are at an office the plumber will think you're not home and
leave. Not answering the door because you're working has the same effect. It's
a choice.

For me personally, an office has more distractions than home.

~~~
sotojuan
I don't get the quote. Isn't a visit from the plumber scheduled? You know he's
coming at 2 pm, so maybe plan to not be in the hardest problem then.

In fact, the quote gives an example of why remote working is awesome. The
author can get basic house chores and repairs done without doing a scheduling
dance with people who also work 9-5.

------
ericbarton
Hi, this is Eric Barton, the author of this piece. Thanks for all your
comments and thoughts about this. So many of you are right that working from
home depends, on the person, on the company, on the culture.

In fact, I'm a great example of this. I tried to work from home in my mid 20s,
and it just didn't work. I was too distracted by repairs to the old home we
were rehabbing, to the dog, to video games. Fast forward a few years later,
and my editor let me work remotely. That time, I had a nice office setup
separate from the rest of the house, and I found it far more productive for a
lot of the reasons commenters have suggested. Now, I've worked for home for
more than a decade, and as long as the conditions are right (no inlaws
visiting, the dog isn't sick, home repairs aren't calling my name), it's
absolutely lovely.

Now, I also rent a co-working desk and go in to the office a couple times a
week. It's a way to get the things you miss at home -- coworkers to talk to,
especially -- while also having the freedom to stay home when you want.

Anyway, thanks again for the feedback, and stay tuned for a follow-up soon.

------
diebir
I have worked from home for about 9 months last year. It did not go
particularly well, but now I miss it. I think for a software engineer to be
able to work from home and not be impaired by it, most of the team has to be
remote. If you are the only remote worker in the group you are going to be
shut out of discussions, communication, decision making, etc. If you possess a
unique skill and do bite sized pieces of work in agile setting it may work to
be the only remote person on the team. Otherwise I found it difficult.

Personally I did not find distractions to be a problem and problem worked more
hours from home than when in the office.

Another problem with working from home is lack of human interaction. After a
few months you start to want to talk to people (other than your family).

------
tehabe
Always when I read "may hurt your career" I think: what career? Do I even have
one? Do I even want one?

But I guess I might misunderstand the term anyway.

~~~
ravenstine
I don't really view what I do as a career anymore. Then again, maybe my
definition of career is not the norm. I don't identify myself by my job, and
perhaps I'm one of those lucky people who actually enjoys what they do in
exchange for money. Still, I am not beholden to my career, and I couldn't be
paid all the money in the world to do something that I don't believe in doing.
If I feel it's best to work from home, I'm going to do so and if my employer
doesn't like it, well, there are plenty of other places that value employee
happiness and product over process. Beyond the fact that most people don't
understand the work that I do, I hesitate to talk about a "career" as if it's
something I have to cling to and have to be careful of hurting.

Life may be short, but we often lose perspective of how easy modern life is,
in general. Some people have the short end of the stick, and I've had it a few
times in my life. But rather than obtaining a career, I'd much rather obtain
the ability to give my occupation the middle-finger and just do something else
without batting an eye.

As far as working from home vs the office, to me it's not about one or the
other. With the amount of isolation we have in the modern world, the office
can be a more positive force for healthy social interaction than it once was.
But sometimes I want to work in the solitude of my home while being able to do
a few chores, eat ice cream, etc., while my Docker image gets built. I usually
choose to work at home when I especially enjoy what I am working on but am
just sick of the office atmosphere. Other times, I have something I'm less
interested in but need a "serious" environment for so I can better
concentrate. For that, I choose the office.

I really hope employers don't read more articles like this and take them the
wrong way.

------
anotheryou
I have far less distractions at home and see many benefits:

no chewing, no talking, good food, no noisy coffe machine, breaks when I need
them (even a bed) and a good sound system (I'm slightly audiophile).

I still never dilute work too much. Sometimes 45min of table-tennis or
something, but in general never more than 1h of break time during the work
chunk of the day (I do quite strictly 8h plus break-time and finishing some
smaller task or short communications with the team).

I do make sure to tell the others what I accomplished or when I'm stuck a bit
so they know what I'm up to, even when not following the tickets closely.

------
kbashby
As a stay at home mom I recommend "Medical Coding" as a wonderful work from
home option. Yes, you will need training. You can't just code medical records
without having proper training. However, this is a real and promising career.
I used to work for "Career Step" and they have an awesome Medical Coding
course.

[http://www.referral.careerstep.com/mc?ref=43233](http://www.referral.careerstep.com/mc?ref=43233)

Their training is done online and is self-paced. You could finish the program
in 4 months but 6 months is probably more realistic. They do however give you
up to a year to get it all done. Their program is approved by the American
Health Information Management Association and the American Academy of
Professional Coders. They work with companies such as CIOX Health, Lexicode,
OS2-HCS, TrustHCS, Inovalon, Mckesson that hire their grads to work from home
right out of the program.

The average salary for this career is about $40,000. Their entire program
including books, instructors and job assistance is around $3,000 and they
offer sweet payment plans.

If you want more info, reference links or have questions let me know @
katherine.b.ashby@gmail.com

------
chaostheory
It depends on your goals and it depends on you (do you have discipline?) and
the company you work for. If you're trying to climb the corporate ladder, then
yes this will slow you down if you're working from home 3-5 days a week. If
you want something else like work life balance or more time to work on your
side projects by saving time (no more commute, less time spent socializing
with coworkers, ...), then it's a no brainer. IANAL but I would advise against
working on your side projects during work hours.

------
LVB
One thing I've realized over 20 years is that while development is what I
like, am reasonably good at, and do fine from home, people skills and general
smoothing out of things in the office is what the companies have valued me
for. I notice when things are going off the rails or nowhere via email and
chat, miscommunications, bickering, silly politics, etc. I can't stand that
stuff and usually a little face-to-face time helps immensely to straighten it
out. All of my bosses have commented on this as a thing they see as a
strength.

For various life reasons I've strongly considered fully remote positions
recently but am concerned that I'd neutralize my most valued job skill in the
process. To that end I've managed to swing at least a partial WFH arrangement.

~~~
anigbrowl
Why not demand more money for putting up with an aspect of the job that you
hate and which they need? You have leverage, apply it.

------
rpmcmurphy
I have a lot of experience with remote teams, from both sides of the table.
100% remote work is not a good fit for most people, though some can be highly
effective (thinking of a mobile dev whose office is an RV that has been
roaming north america for a couple years).

For most people, what does work well is a split office/remote schedule. Some
do a couple days a week from offsite. Some will work onsite 3 weeks, offsite 1
week. This sort of arrangement yields the benefits of being in a common
location (face time, boss time, etc), while giving workers the option to work
offsite part-time so they are not chained to the same desk all of the time.

~~~
brianwawok
But then I am chained to your office location. What if I WANT to live in the
woods in the middle of Alaska, but still work for your company ;)

------
hasenj
It's not the distractions per se, it's the mental state.

Distractions exist at work too, but when everyone around you is working, you
can't help but work as well.

When you're home, your mental state it's "I'm home, I should not be doing
work". At least that's how it was for me.

I can be productive working on a personal project when I'm home, but that's
because I can work on it whenever and however I want. I can work in bursts of
energy. But that's not how professional work is done.

~~~
adjwilli
It definitely requires a change in your mental state at home. It goes from "my
place of relaxation" to constant anxiety about whether you should be working.
Unless you start with the mindset that you will now always be working, you
won't be as productive from home. Maybe once you get some experience you can
lighten up a bit, and you should always keep some off-time scheduled for the
weekend, but as they say, you can't go home again. And good for some people
for not wanting to trade that (along with typically a lower salary and
opportunity) for having to show up 8~6.

~~~
benji-york
This is not a universal truth: I have worked remotely for nearly a decade and
have no issues separating work from personal. When I type "/me → EOD" into IRC
or slack, that's it. My focus shifts to personal tasks.

------
bezouret
No one else works on my code. I am not even sure that someone else would even
understand it. It is critical code. So, it is not a good idea to fire me
either, which would be "hurting my career", but which also seems quite
impossible to achieve. All you need to do, in order to be in a position to
ignore office politics, is to be the sole maintainer of a pile of mission-
critical code. I've seen people come and go, but I don't and I work from home!

------
sarah2079
It really bugs me how often these work-from-home articles have a photo of the
working person trying to work with a young child around, implying that they
are also taking care of their kids while working from home.

Obviously doubling up like this does not work, and I don't know anyone who
tries to do it. Implying that it's common gives working from home a bad name.
At least in this article it is the father home with his child though, usually
it's the mother.

------
pc86
Perhaps if he hadn't tried working at the _dining room table_ with an infant
it would have worked.

I work in an office now but have worked from home both as an employee and a
full-time freelancer. With the exception of children and sick pets,
distractions at home during the work day are a choice. Someone knocking on the
door is no different than a phone call at your office desk. If you have the
time, answer it. If you don't, don't.

------
bchjam
working from home entails a personal responsibility for effectively scheduling
your time. having a separate space from "normal" household activities can
really help staying focused and avoiding overwork / burnout.

over time, the worst part of working from home is lack of eye contact.
engaging with others outside of home can help, but there's still an awkward
quality to getting to know people without seeing their reactions

------
MontagFTB
I have been a full-time remote software engineer for a large (> 15,000
employees) company since 2001, before they even had a formal telcommuting
policy. I have seen a lot of things change over the years, much of it in favor
of the remote employee. That said, there are still limitations that come from
working from home.

The distractions issue mentioned at the beginning of the article falls on the
employee: you simply cannot do two things at once. When I first started out I
would take a shower, get dressed, etc., then move into a room that I have
dedicated to work. That physical "commute" served as a mental delineation
between the home and the office, and served me well. Over the years I've been
able to change gears more easily, but that break between home and work is
still essential.

The larger issue that I feel affects my career is the lack of "water cooler"
connectedness that comes from being out of the office. I lose track of
company/team strategies, decisions, projects, code names, and the like - all
things that are usually handled by walking down the hallway. Mitigating these
issues requires a change to the way the company operates. It needs to have
managers that are aware of and accommodating remote employees in ways that
would be automatic for an office of employees. When I travel to HQ for work,
one of my primary jobs is reminding folks that there's a person attached to
the voice on the other side of so many phone calls.

After more than 15 years outside of the office, has my decision to work
remotely impacted my career? Almost certainly. Have there been days when I've
wondered if it was the right way to go? Sure. At the end of those musings,
though, there are benefits far outweigh the drawbacks. I get to have lunch
with my family daily, I have the shortest commute in Los Angeles, and I get to
set my own hours (within reason.) Professionally, too, there a benefits. I can
crawl into my programmer-cave more easily than someone who is part of an
office environment. In some ways I am easier to contact than my colleagues,
because I never leave my chair.

To address another comment made elsewhere, I have been contacted by other
companies, and been given offers that are very competitive to my current
compensation. However, the ability to work remotely full-time has usually been
the reason I turn them down. Maybe in another stage of life the answer may
change, but for this season, I don't think I'd have it any other way.

------
scottlegrand2
Correction? Working from home with kids and no control over distractions
considered harmful?

I've done the best work of my life working the better part of the last decade
and a half from a junior fortress of solitude.

But since TANSTAAFL holds, it did nothing good for my social life so I try to
blend office time with solitude now.

And your experience will vary. I'm just another data point after all.

------
jondubois
I think it depends on the person. For me, it worked great during the first 6
months and then gradually got worse after that.

I think it's related to the level of autonomy that you have within a company
and how passionate you are about the work.

------
notyourloops
I like having 1-2 days per week available to me to work from home. I don't
think I'd take a job offer without this as an option anymore. My quality of
life has improved significantly with it.

------
rrggrr
Results, impact, relationships. If you can create all three working from home
great. The first can be done from home easily, the second with some
difficulty, and the third is exceedingly difficult.

~~~
benji-york
Relationship building is harder on a distributed team, but I haven't found it
to be "exceedingly difficult". I suppose it would be if the team isn't "remote
first" or totally distributed.

------
delias_
I've been thinking a lot about this lately, and it might be prudent to take a
'human factors' (Woods, Cook, Dekker, et al) approach to this.

When talking about how it's perhaps more important to investigate the
conditions of success over failure, and how the situations contain multiple
contributing factors to the way a complex system behaves, one thing that gets
highlighted is common ground breakdown between practitioners.

With regard to communication, we are worried about assumptions made,
communication fidelity, and the repair process. When we talk about IRC or
Slack or Conference calls or email or whatever, those are really just adding
another channel of communication and are not necessarily making communication
more resilient. Repair processes to communication are a paradigmatic function
of good teams.

What makes humans really good at succeeding in high tempo emergency situations
is the ability of adaptive capacity.

I think the distinction with regard to remote working can fit into this,
albeit with a little bit of corruption and maneuvering of the language.

To speak to this article, the takeaway should be that it's about organizations
commiting to a remote-first approach. This goes so far beyond the dicussions
we usually think about when wondering wtf people are doing while working from
home. It actually also includes the resiliency of working with remote offices
globally -- which makes it a culture problem. And the more a change tries to
change the culture, the more likely it is that change is going to fail. So
remote-first has to be taken by companies on principle or they're just making
accomodations and the people who are working remotely are going to suffer. "A
bad system will beat a good person every time" for the obligatory Deming
quotation. The worst thing a bad process can do is tarnish the repuation of
individuals.

Folks whose HQ is in another state/country: do you feel like part of the team
or is your influence diminished among the outer rim?

If a team is only simply making accommodations for people to work from home
ocasionally or whatever (not truly "remote-first"), then hallway conversations
are inexorably changed from a convenience into a liability where people get
left out of the loop to develop their own misconceptions about the way things
work, the "why's" of what we're doing, and what sort of goals are important.

A remote-first approach can force the organizational infrastructure necessary
to make work visible and provide feedback on milestones with distributed,
empowered decision making. It is one of the ways (just like TDD, pair
programming, etc all attempt to address) to help distribute knowledge across
all teams wherever they are to help decrease the heroics needed daily and add
ways to address changing demands. Increasing adaptive capacity has to be a
fundamental ideal of an organization (aside: the trick here is avoiding
building on human misery/heroics, and resulting in burnout).

It also helps improve the onboading process. If it takes 6-12 months for a new
teammate to significantly contribute, then that is a risk. An organization
with a remote-first approach who can cope with asynchronous workers will have
the right kind of documentation, tooling, and relationships between teams to
make this robust.

I would highly recommend watching this talk about 'common ground':
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KgC_N9glqMs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KgC_N9glqMs)

edit:

Let me clarify by that 'remote first' i don't mean force/recommend that
everyone work remotely. By remote first, I mean taking the approach that all
things should be considering the remote workers in the organization as first
class citizens and creating processes that are unable to ignore the aspect of
remote working. Pretend that all work could not be done if it wasn't
addressing remote working.

In this way, remote working is actually a value add to an organization, not an
accommodation.

edit 2:

I've been told my stump speech on this is too much of a millennial idea, which
is funny because none of this is my original thoughts. A lot of these ideas
come from people who are today aged 50+ or dead.

~~~
benji-york
After years of working on 100% remote teams, I agree with your thinking. I am
excited about where distributed working is heading in the years to come. I
anticipate that it will be a strong cultural force in a couple of decades.

