
Working from Home a Guide to Successfully Working from Home as a Engineer - boyter
https://engineering.kablamo.com.au/posts/2019/successful-remote-work
======
AdieuToLogic
I've worked from home on a few gigs and largely agree with this article.

A couple things I would and/or modify are:

\- Merge "HAVE A DEDICATED OFFICE" with "CLOSE THE DOORS TO THE ROOMS YOU'RE
NOT USING". Once you are done with the workday, "close the door" to your work
area just as you would by leaving an on-site office at the end of the day.

\- "WEAR WORK CLOTHES" might be better described as "maintain the same morning
routine you would have if going into an office." IMHO, "wearing work clothes"
is much less important than the benefit of getting into the mindset of "going
to work."

\+ Take the same lunch break you would if at an office.

\+ If you need to do an errand, let your coworkers know just as if you were in
an office. Prefer to schedule it if possible.

\+ Establish contact protocols as you would if on-site. For example, just
because you might leave your laptop running should not imply 24x7
accessibility. If you need to be available (such as for production support),
it should be no different than if you went into the office each day.

\+ Keep a record of your start time, "leaving" for lunch, PTO (such as for
errands), and "when you leave." This can be as simple as written notes or by
way of a corporate time accounting system. I recommend keeping your own hand-
written logs in addition to the latter.

\+ Record work performed outside of the normal office hours as you would if
called into the office.

~~~
nkrisc
I did a brief stint as fully remote (~3 months) so I never got fully into it,
but these are all fantastic points, many of which I did to great effect.

One additional routine I found most helpful was to have a "going to the
office" routine. After my normal at-home morning routine, I would leave the
house and go to a nearby coffee shop for some coffee, then return home to
work. That was my "commute". Before it I was at home, after it I was working.
When I was done working for the day, I'd leave the house, take a short walk,
and go back home. It really sounds silly, but having those "commutes" really
helped separate work time from home time, even if they were in the same space.
It helped that it was over the summer so the weather was beautiful.

------
kemayo
Something I find useful, related to the "have a home office" point, is to
shuffle up my working location occasionally even though I _have_ that
dedicated office -- work at a coffee shop for a week, or at the dining room
table, or rearrange my office so the desk is in a different orientation, or
whatever.

I find that this breaks up any accumulated association of a given work-space
being a place where I've gotten distracted or procrastinated.

I pretty much agree with the rest of the points, though I'm sure some are a
matter of taste.

~~~
munmaek
I've been working remotely for almost ~2 years now —amen for the coffeeshop.

There's a really good one by my place that I've been going to for years. I
very rarely go there and don't become productive. There's something about just
changing things up and working from a more limited setup (just my laptop).

~~~
rapnie
Are you never afraid your laptop gets stolen when you go the toilet, or do you
take it with you then?

~~~
munmaek
Depends on the cafe. For the one that I always go to, I generally leave my
laptop out.

------
joeframbach
Add a point about your company culture and team communication. This may not
apply if you are working by yourself as a contractor or sole developer. But if
there's a "home office" (poor choice of words sorry) where all of your other
coworkers are face to face, then you need to develop a culture of writing
everything down. Build internal documentation of decisions and meetings. If
your company is mostly remote or has several locations then it should have
this culture anyway (if they're any good).

~~~
ojkelly
Author here. I'm planning a follow up post on company and team culture that
enables remote work. It's a big enough topic to be tackled on its own.

I'm still talking to people with different experiences to me, to understand
their perspective on what makes it successful. Thanks for your insight here, I
agree with what you're saying.

------
lucasvr_br
I've always worked from home a few days a week and my productivity has always
been above the average. Fast forward 2 years, and I am surrounded by 2 little
babies and a cute toddler that likes to have her dad around. Unless I go to
the office or work on night shifts, it's quite difficult to concentrate for
too long. I felt that I needed to change habits to keep things on track.

I've got an intern to help me conduct some experiments that would demand too
much time from me otherwise, and started to go to the office more often than
before.

The nice side effect of going to the office is that I get to workout more
(commuting by bike) and to conduct more side projects with colleagues. I keep
choosing at least one day in the week to work from home, though.

Interestingly enough, there is a coffee shop right next door and yet I never
worked from there. Sipping a coffee without bringing work with me has been
pleasant so far, but maybe it is worth trying to find for how many hours I
will be able to stay there focused on business related activities.

~~~
AdieuToLogic
Working from home is not for everyone, and that's not a judgement.

In fact, I would submit you have a clear separation between work and home
life. And that's A Good Thing.

~~~
ojkelly
In talking to people about this, I found a number of people who just can’t
work from home. Whether its not being as productive as they’d like, or
something else.

If you’re working from home in a team, you definitely need to be aware of
those who don’t operate the same as you. With good communication and respect
this is an easy hurdle to get over.

~~~
AdieuToLogic
> In talking to people about this, I found a number of people who just can’t
> work from home. Whether its not being as productive as they’d like, or
> something else.

Quite true. I worked with a friend of mine for years who almost never worked
from home. The only time he did was during critical production failures
experienced late at night.

He had two children and normally would be in the office in the pre-dawn hours.

I asked him why he got into work so early and he told me, "if I leave before
my kids wake up, it's easier on them."

Hard to argue with that logic, IMHO.

------
mattsanders
I've been working remote exclusively for 5 years now with several years prior
working remote on occasion. I live half way across the country from my job and
I remotely operate a consulting business that my day job is fully aware. I
also have two kiddos which is the primary reason I work remote and a good
motivation for healthy work/life balance.

I definitely find that routine helps, but over time, with discipline, you can
adapt to different environments. The most important thing for me is my work
system... not so much my work space.

I work on everything from full stack web, low level hardware and electronics,
VR/AR, cloud infrastructure and database administration, video games,
iOS/Android native, etc. I need something that is portable, powerful, and
easily cross platform.

My latest system is a macbook pro with 32GB Ram and an external eGPU graphics
card for VR development. I run Parallels as my primary VM allowing me to run a
Bootcamp Windows partition as a VM. It is also the only solution that
currently supports Metal for graphics intensive applications. I rarely need to
hookup the headset, but when I do I can boot to Windows natively for that. I
can do native iOS and Android easily from the mac OSX partition. I even run
Ubuntu on the VM for testing server setups locally.

When I am home I work from just about any room with my laptop stand, however,
in order to ZONE I do need to find a quite spot while the kids are around (or
use headphones). I also often work in coffee shops, book stores, libraries,
and grocery stores (those with a food court).

I typically spend the day on my day job and evenings when the kids are down I
work on contract work, but for me it just seems like a hobby most of the time
anyway.

I have slack and google meet installed on my phone and have my calendar and
emails synced with my work accounts.

I LOVE GIT! I use git for all of my consulting and side projects and even when
a client or day job uses perforce I can use git-p4 to create a much better
offline flow.

I know this isn't for everyone and I have deviated in many cases from the
points in the article, but it definitely has been working well for my life
style thus far.

------
toyg
I’m in my 8th year wfh. I like it, but I think my mental health needs more
human interaction at this point. I’m looking into coworking spaces, although
I’m still scared about committing to monthly expenses (it’s only my second
year of self-employment and my income fluctuates wildly).

I’m not going to lie though: there are days when rolling out of bed and
picking up right away the problem left open the night before, without having
to worry about anything else, feels super-productive.

------
RickJWagner
As a 9-year home worker, to this I'd add:

\- I don't wear work clothes. I much prefer to be super casual.

\- Have a daily exercise routine, and stay out of the refrigerator.

~~~
5555624
> I don't wear work clothes. I much prefer to be super casual.

His second paragraph on "work clothes" makes what I think is the real point,
which is not to wear what you slept in. I go pretty casual, too, except I wear
gray shirts with a pocket for my phone. I put it on when I start working and
take it off when I am done. I find it does help define when I am working.

(Every point in his article is something I've picekd up from HN over the
years.)

------
msadowski
Very well written article! I'm in a position where I can work from home if I
want to but I found out that it's not for me.

Firstly I'm way more productive in the office and no matter how much I tried I
couldn't reach the same level of productivity at home.

When I worked from home many days in a row I realized I was missing a human
contact. Even though I was with my girlfriend every evening, was around people
in the shop and in the gym I felt quite depressed.

Strangely I had some weeks when I was the only one working in the coworking
space and I didn't feel like this.

------
panorama
Hate to admit it, but I'm a massive proponent of remote work (and other
work/life balance-friendly initiatives), but my productivity on average is a
lot lower than if I'm in an office.

I still wfh every day, but days where I work out of a coffee shop or anywhere
public, I'm a LOT more productive. I think it's just the idea that at any time
someone can see my screen, making me less likely to pull up Netflix or a game
or something equally distracting.

------
dmrg
I've been working remotely as a contractor (low-level mobile and platform
embedded development) for over two years now. I find that engaging in sports
activities regularly in a group setting helps with mental well-being.
Diversifying work locations also helps. My preferred places are the public
library, and a local coffee shop.

------
rcarmo
I regularly work remotely (whenever I’m not at a client) and have occasionally
had stints where I would be 3-4 full days in a row fully remote (usually
around Summer or other holidays when clients take breaks), and every single
one of the points in the article ring true:

\- My home office is, by far, the most productive place I’ve ever worked in
(large monitors, relative quiet, decent natural light, a desk and chair that
suit me, etc.)

\- Investing in a decent conferencing setup is a must (my iMac has excellent
speakers and mics, but I added a 4K webcam because the one that ships with it
is atrocious in low light). I also have a headset and a Plantronics portable
speaker for when I decide to do a little work elsewhere.

\- Time management and sticking to a schedule are critical. When I finish
dressing for the day I switch on my machines, brew a cup and am at my desk and
available at 9AM sharp (often earlier). I make it a point of taking proper
lunch breaks (most of the time) and often leave the house to have lunch near
(or with) my clients, which minimizes the hassles of dealing with traffic or
the risk of being late.

\- I always dress for leaving the house even if I don’t have scheduled
appointments or do actual VC (most of my business conferences are actually
audio and screen sharing). It’s both about setting the mood and also because I
might have to leave and go to a client at a moment’s notice.

\- Finishing work has to be a physical action. I shut down everything at the
end of a working day, sit with the kids, have dinner and _then_ I might noodle
about in the evenings (usually on my laptop and not the office).

\- Even though I have a lot of hobbies and use my office for those as well,
that only happens on weekends (unless I really need a bigger screen). Again,
work, “play work” and pure play need to happen in different settings/contexts.

Big benefits for me:

\- I have a very stable, ergonomic work setup (I need a higher desk than
usual, love my dual monitors, have a decent keyboard and mouse, etc.)

\- I am insanely more productive because interrupting me (via Teams, call,
etc.) requires a lot more effort and requires forethought from other people.

\- Meetings tend to be very focused (company culture in some parts is
completely aligned in this point - great respect between teams since we all
coordinate this way at some point)

(I’m at Microsoft, by the way, and work as an Azure Architect)

\- I get to work and listen to music (a HUGE mood booster, especially Bach)
without headphones (which give me headaches) whenever I want.

\- When I’m really lucky, I am home when the kids return from school
(disciplining them is also a big part of being able to work remotely after
mid-afternoon, but entirely feasible).

Caveats:

\- Some people (clients or your own peers) still think “being on-site” is the
only way to show commitment or deliver quality work (especially old-school
consulting and sales folk who prioritize “face time” and “touching the
flesh”), and often there is no real way around that kind of charade.

\- If you work remote in any capacity, you’re off a number of social loops. I
minimize that by visiting the office regularly, having lunch or dinner with
friends/colleagues and being available for questions (which invariably turn
into chit chat) every now and then.

