
I Work from Home - ereli1
http://www.newyorker.com/humor/daily-shouts/i-work-from-home
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tluyben2
Shame working from home is seen in this light. I tend to believe that a
professional sets up a home office which has a door that can be locked. My
wife and myself, in around 20something years of professional work, worked
solely from home 15 of those. And the others were like 1-2 office days per
week and then home. We always set up an office and work when we are there. We
work 2x2x3 or 2x3x3 hours per day depending on load and the rest we spend with
friends and/or walking and/or shopping. I never saw this lonely, porn
watching, crap eating version of the home office. And people I know who work
from home do not get this stigma either. Maybe if you live in SV, your rent
only pays for one room with the bed in it and you live of ramen (that seems to
be the typical home worker stereotype in the media). But why would one want to
do that? Then working from home is only a pain?

~~~
haylem
I've seen this, and I'd be lying if I couldn't recognize parts of my own story
in there.

Your error is to assume it's necessarily by choice. You don't always want to
do that. You take a job that pays the bills first. Then you are forced to
change jobs, or keep doing the same job remotely (yes, that can happen for a
variety of reasons. E.g. farawayfamily emergencies, and you either want to
keep that job or they'd rather you work remotely rather than losing you).

I did this for 2.5 years, and it started great. But it went downhill. And I
never went as low as the poor soul in there, but it definitely took a toll on
me at some point. At some point I was in a small apartment with wife and
1.5kids, where my office was _under_ a bed. It's obviously _not_ a choice.
Eventually we could afford to move to a bigger place and I had my own office,
which improved things greatly, but we were also more remote, which didn't
help. My distractions were grocery shopping for the family, and taking and
getting my older kid to school. I also did that while parenting at the same
time (1 entire year when my oldest was 3yo, and pretty much during the first
2.5y of my youngest. It's not a choice either.

Sure, I have the choice to quit, and I did, after 2.5y because I had the
options I wanted. You do what you have to do before doing what you want to do.

That being said, working from home can be great. But the experience will
depend on many things: your own discipline, the discipline of people living
with you too (it took a year for my wife to understand that non-important
queries could wait until the evening), the company culture (I was the only
remote worker in a ~500 people world wide company), your location, etc...

I'll do it again if I get the chance, but _only_ under specific conditions. It
needs to be part of the company culture so that you don't feel left out from
meetings and other people don't feel like you're slacking. Or that you don't
feel like they feel you're slacking... perception goes meta quite easily.
Because you're guilt-tripping yourself about being less included or less
productive than others, you end up working way more than you should and
usually would.

Not that I'd say my employer was at fault: it was extremely nice of them to
allow me to work remotely (and in their interest too, granted), and they tried
to accommodate for it, but if it doesn't fit it doesn't fit. I quickly lost
influence in meetings and projets, my being remote made meetings more
complicated for everybody on site, etc...

It's easier if you either live in a very remote place with nobody around
(meaning that does not change your way of life at all) or in a very densely
populated area (where you can easily go out, work from a different place, meet
friends easily without commuting for 2 hours, go grocery shopping, etc...)

I'll add it wasn't my only remote experience: I also worked for other
companies where the entire team was remote, but it was not necessarily better.
Because, once again and quite strangely, it was NOT part of their culture.
While all employees were remote and from several timezones (though not too far
apart), expectations were not aligned with the reality.

I'd say company culture and your discipline are paramount. But you can only
influence the latter easily. Other aspects also play a role, but these two are
what will decide if it's even doable to work remotely for you.

~~~
tluyben2
First off, I do know that I assume some things here, which is my way of
saying, if you have to sacrifice that much maybe working from home is not
(yet) your thing. Realize that if you need people and cannot reach them when
you need them or if you cannot get an office (room) totally away from wife or
kids then this might just not be for you. In most other cases I would
definitely recommend it.

Second, I moved from a city to a remote and very small village. But in that
village I have never had more and more successful social interaction; I can
call most people my friends there and made some good friends there as
well.That was at 36 years old when we moved. Just saying that again with some
meaning; I do not think you know until you try. We never expected to end up
with more friends in this village than we ever managed in cities. Life can be
strange but this made working from home much easier; run/hike at 7 in the
morning, coffee with friends at 8:30-09:00, work 3-4 hours, lunch with friends
(I try to perfect my curries and pizzas so often we invite) and then, around
16:00 3-4 hours of work again.

I agree with most you say though. We worked actively to tweak parameters for
years. And if it would not have worked, we would have gone back to work.
Luckily we do not have to see if that would have actually happened...

Edit: I should mention, and I often forget because it is the only way I have
ever worked; my wife and me are both contractors. I have never seen a pay slip
in my life that had my name on it. I think that matters because companies
generally much faster let you work in your own office if you are a company;
they assume you have an office and such...

------
zubat
There are no norms for working from home. Hence nearly the first thing you
discover is how much you respected the norms you were familiar with before and
how far afield you will go before you decide to rein in your lifestyle.

------
pech0rin
Lot of people are taking this negatively, but I work from home and thought
this was hilarious! Great piece of writing.

------
equine
I work from home and I go days without putting on clothes, I get my groceries
delivered and don't leave the house for weeks. It's become sort of an
adventure but I basically turned the house into a spa so I'm staying relaxed.

~~~
0n34n7
I make a point of getting out once a day to walk, shop or whatever. I still
wear the same three day old clothes though. I probably look like a gold card
wielding bum. But who cares. I get paid piles of money to do what I love
(DevOps). +1 on the spa idea...

------
whgandalf
I started working in my house and I loved it till a lot of distractions
started to be in between, so I made a list and create a little office inside ,
loved the idea and the little office was growing Everytime and some friends
loved to come work with me , after a year I found I was having enough friends
working and some of them living in my place. So I decided to make it more
public and now I have a coliving and coworking space in the same place, I
haven't had to call the police, but some neighbors do it once in a while
because of some of our random noisy nights

