

People who work from home are more satisfied with their jobs - jimsteinhart
http://gigaom.com/collaboration/why-are-web-workers-happier/

======
gexla
I have gone full circle. At first I loved the idea of working from the house.
Years later, I love the office. The best mix is a combination of freedom of
being able to pick your hours and working from home but still having that work
place to go to.

~~~
rglover
I like this idea. There _should_ be some sort of "base" that you go to,
though, it shouldn't be a requirement that you be there all the time. I feel
like humans respond better to changing environments and being able to jump
between the home, office, or wherever influences a much better mood and
willingness to be productive.

~~~
bluekeybox
>I feel like humans respond better to changing environments and being able to
jump between the home, office, or wherever

At my apartment, I've been moving from one room to another until I get bored
of working in each, then the circle repeats. Same with coffee shops. I do have
a desk/office space at work, and I actually enjoy going there as well on
occasion (well I have to be there a bit more often than on occasion), because
it means an environment change.

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Duff
Note what it actually said:

"Spending less than 50 percent of the week in the collocated office affords
more flexibility and aids in the balance of work and personal roles, which
teleworkers find satisfying."

Less than 50%. When I was a more of a contributor versus my current manager
role, coming into work 2 days a week and getting my stuff done at home would
have rocked.

There are also many things that weren't said. I have a 10x16 office with a
door and windows. The folks on my teams are in 4-person semi-private pods with
plenty of room with attractive color schemes, reasonably high quality
furniture and natural light. It's work, but everyone is pretty happy.

In other roles, I've been in 4x4 high-wall cubes in windowless pens with 40
people where the brightest colors in the room were the red nubs on IBM
thinkpads. That was a miserable working environment.

Personally, I'd rather work in my current environment than home. On the other
hand, I'd rather work in my basement sitting on a stool and using my furnace
as a desk than previous, crappy office environments/cattle pens.

~~~
gexla
Right, there are lots of factors.

I prefer working from the office, but I imagine I would have a different
opinion if working from the office requires a long commute or scraping ice off
my windshield in the morning. I also work for myself, so it's MY office. ;)

I also somewhat enjoy the feeling of being among the hustle of downtown. There
is energy there. So many people doing their thing to carve out their slice of
the pie and I'm among the relatively happy and successful. That's motivation
and energy that I don't feel at home.

~~~
Duff
Another factor I forgot about is career goals. If you love programming and
that's your chosen profession that you intend to practice, it's great.

If you career goal is to move up through the organization though, missing the
chance encounters with people in the hallway or not being seen is a liability
that may negatively affect you. I've noticed in my career that being in the
right place at the right time means something.

~~~
thirdstation
The "out of sight, out of mind" treatment is hard to get away from if you work
in a office where telecommuting isn't the predominant mode.

You have to work harder during your in-office time to create facetime
opportunities. That may mean doing the rounds, spending time in common areas,
talking to someone face-to-face instead of emailing and, unfortunately, going
to meetings.

Making your schedule of in-office/at-home days public knowledge helps
colleagues from scheduling important events on your at-home days (but not all
the time).

It's also vitally important to follow-up on your phone and email
conversations. It's too easy for people to ignore your VM's and emails so, you
have to make them accountable digitally as well as in-person.

It's more work to make sure you're not forgotten but, for me, giving up the
commute is worth it.

------
mgkimsal
I think personal autonomy is underrated in most facets of life - we're just
seeing the effects of it in this article on this particular study.

I really really really disliked growing up in my family. It's not that I hated
them, but I hated having to be around them all the time. Forced vacations on
someone else's schedule, forced meal times, etc. I just _really_ hated it.
That was taken (even by my family) as rejecting _them_ , which wasn't the
case, but hard to articulate when you're 9.

I _really_ enjoy having time with my brothers now (and my parents) but it's
because it's on _my_ time and my schedule.

I am pretty sensitive to sound, and having to sit around people who chew with
their mouth open is torture. Same thing with gum chewing. I left a job once
partially because I was forced to sit in the same room with someone who'd
taken up gum chewing. Growing up with the family, meal times were really bad.
Now, as an adult, I can politely leave the room for a few minutes if I need to
(to destress) but as a kid, I couldn't.

Being able to control where you work is great, but just reaffirms that as
humans, we are happier when we are in control all aspects of our own lives.

~~~
rada
As someone also rather sensitive to sound, I highly recommend Bose noise
canceling headphones. It is the perfect socially frictionless solution to loud
office environments.

~~~
r00fus
Dunno about you, but as someone who's highly sensitive to sound as well, I
found my Sony noise cancelling headphones made everyone elses sounds crystal
clear - with the HVAC and desktop whirring cancelled, I could eavesdrop up to
4 cubes away.

I think noise-isolating earbuds or headphones are what you want. Just
completely block out external sound, listen to nature/bird chirps or your
favorite music.

~~~
mgkimsal
Exactly - it was odd, but most of the noise cancelling headphones I've used do
just that - they cancel _some_ noise, which makes other stuff all the more
noticeable. Blasting whitenoise in to my ears does the opposite, but muffles
most minor noises.

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serichsen
I think that this study fails to address that they may confuse cause and
effect. What is the reason for a telecommuting arrangement? Why doesn't that
person just move closer to the job location? The answer is often that he has
family ties. I would suspect that telecommuters are significantly more likely
to have families, and that may have a pronounced effect on their views of
their work life.

~~~
jasonkester
I don't know, my reasons for working remotely have never had anything to do
with family. Even now that I've got the wife & kid, they're not the reason I'm
remote.

To put it bluntly, nobody has an office at the beach. Certainly not the beach
in the tropics where I want to be. If there was a Google campus on a remote
reef pass in the Mentawais, I might consider taking a seat in a cubicle. But
there's not.

We're living in the future, where laptops weigh two pounds and good wifi is
everywhere. That means my office can be anywhere I want it to be. As it turns
out, I don't want it to be in an office park in the suburbs. Fortunately, it's
2011, so that's not an issue.

~~~
CodeMage
I'll add my own bit of anecdata. I love my family fiercely, but trying to work
while they're around is very distracting for me (often this is through no
fault of theirs at all) and is likely to have an adverse impact on my
productivity. That doesn't mean I never choose to work from home based on
family-related reasons. It just means that, everything else being equal, I
wouldn't choose to work from home in order to be closer to my family; in that
case, I'd rather simply spend less time at the office.

Here's what _does_ make me choose to work from home, usually one day a week,
in no particular order of importance:

# Avoid driving. Santiago is a jungle on wheels and even one day of not having
to deal with it helps immensely.

# Wake up later than usual and/or have a short nap after lunch. It might make
me spend less time doing my work, but I'll be a _lot_ more focused on it.

# Listen to the music I want, on my speakers, as loud as I want (within
reason, of course). At the office I use headphones, to avoid bothering my co-
workers, but it's really not the same thing.

# My coffee might suck compared to Starbucks, but it's a lot cheaper than it.
And it's infinitely better than the free coffee at the office.

# My home computer has no annoying web filters. I can hook up my company
laptop to its VPN and use my home computer for browsing in those idle moments.

# Hot water! Believe it or not, Chileans don't have a habit of washing hands
with hot water. It probably has to do with the fact that they use mainly gas
to heat water. Whatever the reason, being able to say "and now I'm going to
wash my hands with hot water" is a really pleasant change ;)

In short, it's creature comforts that drive my decision to work from home.
Most of that stuff could be improved by living closer to the office or the
company providing better "stuff" on their premises, but those solutions seem
rather inefficient compared to giving employees freedom to choose to work from
home.

~~~
ams6110
I'm not following the logic on the hot water issue. What does heating it with
gas have to do with it?

~~~
CodeMage
It's just my theory, but after 12 years here I haven't found anything to
replace it.

You see, the vast majority of homes use tankless gas water heaters. I'm not
sure why, maybe it's the most efficient or most economic solution when your
primary source of heating is gas.

Whatever the reason for, it's the reality and one consequence is that nobody
likes to keep it turned on for longer than it's absolutely necessary, both for
safety reasons and to avoid racking up the gas bill. So everyone is simply
used to washing their hands with cold water at home. Since that's what they're
used to at home, they don't expect anything different anywhere else.

------
davidw
I'm going a bit bonkers working from home, to tell the truth. The biggest
problem is the fuzzy line between work and home.

~~~
thirdstation
"The biggest problem is the fuzzy line between work and home."

This is something you learn to manage. The fuzzy line is there whether or not
you work from home. If you are a programmer or other IT type you probably
already have the ability to do _some_ work from home and possibly have to be
on-call sometimes (or all the time -- which I've done before).

~~~
agj
There are ways you can manage this line while working from home, but having
worked on-call, in both remote and non-remote settings, separating yourself is
far more difficult when working from home.

Even when working on call, or doing some work from home, you can still
maintain the mindset, "This is my home. I'm at home now. Work can't touch me
here." I have tried to maintain that separation while working mostly from home
-- by even physically removing myself from my office outside work hours --
but, over a long period of time, I can't help but feel my personal life _is_
my work. I can never fully separate myself from where I normally work.

However, it's not fair to say that everyone will have the same experience,
there are a lot of factors: work load, expected duties, office communication,
and even your office layout -- I was worn down the most when I didn't have a
dedicated office. Personally, I can't wait to get back to an office setting.

------
gapanalysis
I've been a teleworker since 1989. Then, I had a phone, micro-Vax and a UUCP
connection. Sounds primitive, but I and a few others were the proving grounds
for today's remote and mobile work force. Not everyone can work well at home.
It's hard to separate home from work; especially because my company has a
global presence, my work "day" begins when I rise and ends when I retire. Make
certain that you take breaks, make time for family and personal interests. Get
a dog! My dog and office mate is actually a big help. His bio and exercise
_needs_ keep me from working inappropriately or harmfully long stretches
without breaks; in fact, he brags that he's the reason I don't have repetitive
motion, back or neck injuries.

------
junto
I worked from home for years until our first child came along. Now I've
started renting office space and I am happy to have a natural separation
between work and home. When I switch the computer off and go home, I switch
off and relax.

I now realise that this separation is important for your long term health and
relationships.

~~~
ams6110
Yeah I'm working at home a lot right now and it's not everything I hoped it
would be. There's the nagging feeling all the time that "I could be working on
X right now, the computer is right over there..."

It helps to have a real home office, a place you use for work and nothing
else, in a separate room if you have the space. It also helps to set "work
hours" otherwise you feel sort of like you're always (at least potentially) at
work.

------
nosequel
Having worked many jobs from an office, both cubes and private offices, and
now working from home, I can say I LOVE working from home. I get interaction
like I did before, phone, IM, email, etc. We have meetups all the time, and I
still go out to lunch with folks so I can be around others once in a while.

I'm more productive, I'm happier, and I really think it shows in my work.

Of all the job changes I've had, this has been by far the most pleasant
change.

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talkingquickly
The article mentions "Spending less than 50% of the time in the office," I
think the key there is choice. As soon as going to the office every day isn't
compulsory, you feel that you have more freedom; very few people respond well
to a situation where they're told they "have" to do something (or is it just
me?!).

You can also pick your working environment to suit your mood, I find sometimes
I want minimal distractions and no commute so I work from home for a bit;
after a few days of that it's refreshing to be in the office and around people
for a while and then the cycle repeats.

What I'm getting at is I think people who have the option to work from home
are likely to be more satisfied rather than people who exclusively do.

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jamesu
I love telecommuting. I have yet to find an office environment which feels
right. Really, what do i end up doing? Sitting down and writing code? That can
be done almost anywhere. Meetings? Chat and Skype.

Of course there are problems but i dont see them as a reason not to
telecommute. If anything they present great challenges to overcome.

------
ggruschow
People have to be more satisfied with their jobs to work from home.

~~~
trustfundbaby
I'm not sure that's a given ..., I've known quite a few people who didn't like
their gigs and would 'work from home' a lot ... they eventually got canned for
poor performance

would like to know why you think that though.

------
wladimir
Not having to keep a seat occupied in the office 5 days a week 8 hours a day
also makes me happy.

Also, I suppose people that work from home are satisfied with their job
exactly because the job allows working from home. It's not that common yet, so
if you want it and find a job that allows it, it's double fun.

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chopsueyar
Well, if you have the yard space, and need the separation between work and
family, I recommend something like this:

<http://modern-shed.com/home.aspx>

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Hominem
I used to have a rigidly self-enforced work/home schedule, when I was out of
the office I was really out of the office.

Right now I am working from home, and I find I work from the moment I get up
until the moment I go to sleep. I was considering going back to working at the
office but I realized that back when I refused to work from home, I spent most
of my time worrying about work. At least now I can get up in the middle of the
night to check email.

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dfran02
Being able to control the HVAC of your home is also a plus. Take my office as
an example: In the midwestern US, we are in the middle of a heatwave, and the
A/C has malfunctioned in our part of the building. With temps pushing 85 it's
impossible to be productive. If I were at home, I would be comfortable. Even
if my A/C were out at home, I could always take my work to the coffee shop.

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jivejones
I work from home and its depressing sometimes, but it could be my job, its
pretty boring.

Maybe I have weak self-control but it takes more then 8 hours to get 7 hours
of work done from home at least.

