
Working remotely is hard - slyall
http://www.moishelettvin.com/2015/10/16/remotes/
======
dplgk
Working remotely is excellent. 1.5 hours less commuting - that's more time to
get work done or go to the gym or read the news. No one can come to my desk to
socialize or ask a quick question to fuck up my flow. No one requiring me to
arrive at an office at an arbitrarily early time. No dress code. No ad hoc
meetings in the conference room. Listening to music I like aloud. All conf
calls done on speaker. I'm home to receive any deliveries. I could go on.

~~~
usaphp
Eating home cooked food fresh instead of microwaving it

~~~
tootie
And using your own private bathroom.

~~~
workitout
Forgot about that, it's wonderful to be able to use my own bathroom instead of
thinking about which co-workers sat on the toilet before me or did they have a
contagious disease, etc.

------
buf
I'm the CTO of 17hats. The entire engineering team works remotely. It's not as
challenging as you seem to suggest. Right now is the best time ever to be
remote.

Excellent tools like Slack and Speak really help comms. We pair program very
often by sshing into a tmux session which makes any lag close to nil. We use
Trello for sprints. And Invision for product work. It's extremely efficient.

We have our usual retrospectives and watercooler talk and it feels natural.

Every 6 months we get together for fun.

\------

The advantages of being remote far outweigh the disadvantages. Rather than
listing all the advantages. What are the disadvantages?

..I'm thinking.

~~~
ygjb
Here are some: communication, loneliness, isolation, timezones, discipline

It's really great that working remotely (anecdotally) works well for your
team. It also doesn't work well for some folks. Like any other approach to
business, YMMV, but discounting the disadvantages that have been enumerated
for you is explicitly ignoring the fact that some people, including those who
are top performing employees in their fields, prefer _not_ to work remotely.

It's best to make the decision and your own recommendations acknowledging
there are trade offs, no?

~~~
buf
You have a point. If someone does not enjoy remote work, then they should not
get a remote job.

I'm not a very good country music singer. When I sing country music, I feel
shame, discomfort, and general depression. Therefore, I don't sing country
music.

~~~
gkop
Ok, so your company only hires country singers? You are missing out on
amazing, qualified candidates that don't sing country music.

Even if you are having a successful time hiring great people that are happy
remote, how are you going to retain them? A remote software job is much closer
to a commodity than a traditional software job. (I read the 37signals book and
built a remote team over 5 years; in the end the difficulty finding people
that are truly happy remote meant retention was difficult and, overall
recruiting and cost of living considered, a remote team was, for me, a net
wash).

Edit: after thinking more, it's even worse; you don't know if most applicants
can really be happy singing country music for a year, 2 years, or longer...
Even those that seem to really value and are excited about the prospect of
singing country music may learn before too long that it's not for them.

~~~
Swizec
> A remote software job is much closer to a commodity than a traditional
> software job

In the current climate all software [engineering] jobs are commodities from an
employee viewpoint.

~~~
gkop
True. But until we start to see the proportion of remote jobs to all jobs
decline, remote is just as easily available as traditional, but lacking the
physical and social stickiness that distinguishes traditional jobs and
facilitates retention; remote is "closer to a commodity".

~~~
Swizec
I guess that's true. But my inner cynic thinks that (ab)using people's herd
instincts like that to "facilitate retention" cheapens traditional jobs. I
would rather work remotely and have a meaningful social life, than work in an
office and have a social life that my employer engineers to make me less
likely to leave for a better job.

As an introvert, there is only so much social interaction I can take in a day.
The office burns through most of it.

~~~
gkop
I agree with you. I need to be more nuanced and less cold in my language. The
reality is, _I_ prefer going to an office and seeing my coworkers; fortunately
this is well-aligned with the retention interests of my company.

~~~
Swizec
As I said, I'm probably just too cynical, and seeing things through the fact
that _I_ don't like going to an office.

I agree that when it comes to _team_ productivity rather than personal
productivity, offices do work better. Especially when people of varying skill
levels are involved.

------
vinceguidry
I wouldn't work remotely even if you gave me 25% more salary to do it. My
ideal work context would be a six hour day at an office in the city that I can
walk to from my condo. Sit-stand desks, balance-ball chairs, decent coffee,
but no catered lunch / dinner. I want to take coworkers or dates out.
Preferably with a nearby park that I can take walks in.

Sit at home with a computer all day? Sounds too much like solitary confinement
for my taste.

~~~
imaginenore
I'm the opposite, I turned down $300K in LA to keep my remote job at a lot
less. I move around the world freely, I don't need to commute, i can work in
my underwear or while sitting on a beach, and I generally don't even have to
be available during the office hours as long as I do my job and respond to
emails reasonably quickly.

~~~
err4nt
Living the dream! I have also telecommuted from the tropics, though on a
fraction of your less-than-300k I bet.

What has your favorite work location been so far?

~~~
imaginenore
I really like Hawaiʻi. It's expensive though. Like more than Manhattan
expensive. But you can't beat clean air, clean water, mild temperatures, all
kinds of water sports, beautiful nature, lack of trash everywhere (unlike many
Asian tropical destinations). And if you want to stay away from the tourists,
there's a bunch of islands to choose from.

------
blisterpeanuts
I respect the blogger's choices, but he didn't mention family. Once you have
little ones, working from home becomes an incredible benefit. Obviously for
females it's advantageous, but for males as well.

For example, I work full time from home and am able to drop my elementary
school daughter to school and pick her up at arbitrary times of day (15 mins.
round trip) while my spouse is off at her day job which is in a classroom and
thus has rigid scheduling.

It makes it possible for my wife to work. It also means I can skip the shower
and "business casual" dress-up ritual every morning. I typically work all
morning in my pajamas/sweats, throw on running shorts and head out at lunch
time for a quick noon time run, knock off around 5 or 6pm and throw some
dinner together.

I'm in nearly constant contact with my teammates and management using skype
chat and email. Occasionally, Webex conference calls with customers. Once in a
while we screen share. (pro tip: You should disable Chrome browser's Gmail
popup notifications if you are screen-sharing with your boss _and_ you tend to
get a lot of email from recruiters....)

Then there is the quiet, the ability to step outside for 3 minutes and breath
the fresh air, make your own coffee or drink of choice and not have to settle
for the office Keurig or institutional drip brewer. My preference has long
been a French press and freshly ground beans -- though lately it's been chai
tea -- easy at home, a pain to set up at an office.

The work-from-home option is truly a great advancement if you have a
complicated home life, such as children. You can also take the laptop and
pretty much work from anywhere; I frequently take the family on vacation and
just work 9-5, saving my real time off for other occasions.

Certainly, it's "not for everyone" \-- especially, I would think, for
20-somethings who are recent grads and still socializing into the work
environment, or for people in some kind of tight work loop where the shoulder-
to-shoulder approach is necessary, and the 5-minutes-in-the-hallway is
critical for random idea vetting and brainstorming.

------
tomcam
It turns out that most work is hard,period. Try being a single mom working at
Wal-Mart and tell me how tough it is to do PowerPoints in a noisy Starbucks.

~~~
dvanduzer
Indeed. The biggest challenge to remote work is when there's a local core.

The groups that are serious about it enforce rules about collocated humans
preferring the remote collaboration tools anyway. It's tough to bake this into
a culture that didn't start there.

~~~
richardwhiuk
I'd guess it's hard even if you start with that. Local equivalents are often
much better (e.g sharing a screen with someone is much better than all screen
sharing apps, meeting someone is much better than all of the video
conferencing apps etc).

~~~
dvanduzer
I mean, I'm pretty sympathetic to the somewhat political statement that
started this subthread. Having meaningful work for all humans that want it,
and meaningful existence for any humans left out? (A bit off topic, granted.)

------
err4nt
I have been working remotely since 2011, and it wasnt until I had the
flexibility to experiment with when I worked that I finally hit my stride. I
tend to work best in two, concentrated sprints, rather than one endurance run.
This means I have a siesta during the middle of the day most days where I do
evening errands and have lunch, and then I usually work from the late
afternoon into the early evening.

The results? 400% output, and when youre self-employed that means 400% more
potential for revenue. For me, I dont mind working on any project with any
psrson or team - but anybody asking me to operate in a way that knocks me down
to 25% output is NOT worth my time or money, or theirs! It just doesnt make
sense at this point.

After 2-3 years working at home, even an introvert gets a little stir-crazy.
Thats normal! I would go out and hit up Starbucks, or local coffee shops that
were friendly to me buying a couple drinks over 2-3 hours. But after a while
even that isnt enough.

The single, biggest change I made to my work lifestyle as far as my emotional
health is concerned has been joining a shared office space. The rent is a
little more than my Starbucks budget was each month, but I can go to an office
24/7 with free flowing coffee and hack on anything I want. Even though none of
the folks there work with me, I have found work through other members.

For me, having the option of going i to a shared office space any time I want
has removed all those awkward days for me. And on any day I dont feel like
going in, literally nobody will notice or expect me to be there. Its perfect.

In the future I believe companies will realize that they dont have to house
their employees, and so many business simply wont! I envision a new style of
employment where you choose and rent the office space you want, you surround
yourself with the atmosphere and people you work best with, and even if you
dont work for the same company, or during the time you have the office you
change work - only your paycheck changes.

I cant wait to rent a private shared office with friends someday in the future
:)

------
ytjohn
I spent 7 years working 2.5 hours away from home, spending half of every week
at work or in an apartment near work. I went to lunch quite often with
coworkers, or we would go for a few drinks after work. I didn't realize it,
but my circle of friends were all in Virginia, while my family was in PA
(including my fiancee, now wife, and later my son when he was born).

Two years ago, I took a job that let me work from home. And it's pretty
awesome. I have my office in a detached building from the house, all my
colleagues are also remote, so I don't have that disconnect where everyone
else is planning things in person and I'm catching up later. I get to spend
more time with my family.

The downside is that I've been realizing that I don't have much in the way of
friends locally. None of my coworker friends, past or present live near me. I
have some friends in my radio club, but most of them are over twice my age and
retired. I don't know how to make new friends. The way I made friends when I
was younger was through people I worked with, people at college, and then
people they knew. I don't think I ever hung out at a bar and made a friend
that way, I don't think that would work today.

My situation may be atypical, but I could imagine others in such situations.
Lots of people commute to work and would jump at an opportunity to work
remotely. Some people will move "out of the city" when they get a remote job.

~~~
peteretep

        > I don't know how to make new friends
    

Meetup groups, Facebook, take up frisbee golf, etc.

It's hard if you're an introvert, but the reliable way to make new friends is
to keep meeting new people until some stick.

------
abraae
I'd like to see some analysis of this from the employer's side. By which I
mean, how does it affect you as a manager when you have reports that work
remotely?

Personally I have observed that some people who work remotely suffer from
delusions as to what happens in the office when they're not there. They'll
scoff at the lack of progress of the office workers, compared to their own
majestic productivity - ignoring the fact that someone needs to be back at
base coordinating all of this stuff, dealing with customer situations, walk-
ins from product managers and execs, etc. etc.

A further elaboration of this is when remote workers expect to impose some
kind of extreme rigour on their unfortunate office-bound colleagues. They
might insist on 24 hours advance notice of important design discussions, which
could otherwise take place at the water cooler, just to be sure they can be
included.

When told thats not the way the world of work works, they may play down the
effectiveness of the water cooler discussions, when most people have observed
first hand just how beneficial those serendipitous hallway meetings can be,
and how detrimental it can be to have to delay important discussions until the
remote people can be involved.

~~~
carboncopy
This sounds like something that has happened in your experience, but I've
never heard of this phenomenon before. Do you have any articles or studies
that talk about this as a trend or normal occurance?

Counterpoint: the remote workers I've worked with don't do any of the things
you mentioned.

I personally think that colocation is the preferred way to perform work.
Remote development environments require a conscious attention to the tools,
practices, and culture. It is far simpler from a management perspective to be
colocated.

~~~
err4nt
Colocation assumes talent is centralized. I work on a team with a southerner,
a hawaiian, and a guy in australia, and the client is located in Florida!

3 citizenships, 2 continents, and still a small team. If they wanted us all
in-office they probably couldn't have hired us

------
AaronBBrown
By now, I have spent more than half of my 15+ year professional career as a
remote employee. My first job, back in 2000 was as a developer working for a
Boston-based company from my apartment in upstate NY. We exchanged source code
via CD in the mail, used a telephone and screen shared with Microsoft
Netmeeting. That... was hard.

Several companies later, I find it actually difficult to work in an office
environment. I'm not a hermit or even a strong introvert. I enjoy the company
of other people from all walks of life, but there are so many distractions in
an office environment that prevents me from doing my best work. As a Technical
Operations engineer (SysEng, DevOps, SRE, or buzzword-dujour), most of my work
is contemplative and best performed away from a keyboard. At home, I am free
to work while running, walking, or sitting in the bathtub (TMI) with no fear
of judgement from my peers. When I do need access to someone, I have a variety
of tools at my disposal to suit the required latency and interactivity of the
conversation.

Plus, pants are optional and slippers are the prescribed footware.

There are always challenges, though. For me, strict enforcement of work hours
is a must. Sometimes I still get in the zone, lose track of time and work
late, but usually I sit down around 9AM and take off around 5-6PM. Otherwise,
work takes over my life and I end up neglecting my responsibilities as a
husband, father, and homeowner. I am lucky to have a wife who understands my
work boundaries and children who have never known a father who leaves the
house for work each day. "Daddy is working" is enough for them to get them out
of my office. Oddly, I grew up in a similar environment, as my father worked
from a home office when I was a kid.

The biggest challenge for me has been while working for a medium-sized (1000+
employee) company in a Director role for a mostly colocated company. As an
individual contributor, communication with my team and boss is relatively
easy, but as a leader it is incredibly difficult to inject myself into
important conversations via chat and email when those people are literally
sitting next to each other. Having trusted "spies" within the organization
that will keep their ears open and report back is a must or else you end up
completely out of the loop.

Having worked primarily at colocated companies where I'm in the minority as a
remote employee, I'm very excited to be joining an established remote first
company next year and seeing how they do it in the "big leagues."

------
resca79
I lived a situation like yours, after I left from big consulting company,
where you are in continuous contact with your your customer and other many
people. I'm not introverts, I like to meet and chat with people and I've
played many sports also as pro.

But after I decided to change my job, I went back to live with my parents in
my city. I started to work at home. I'm honest I've made many mistakes, just
for I had not experience. The results were just immediate:

* Do not discern work place and house

* Have no desire to go out. I remind that going out for me had become very hard, maybe for laziness, I don't know.

* Personal relationships very bad. Having relationships with friends or girl friend is not simple. If you stay all day at home with only your pc, you degrade your ability on cultivate relationships.

I've made similar choice to yours, I've took an office with my friend and many
things are changed, I back to gym I start to meet many people each day. But I
continue to work as remote position :)

Indeed the problem is not the remote work , the problem is your job location.
In my experience, take an small desk in an open office or a room with a friend
is a good choice, and it solved many problems for me.

------
manicdee
I work in an office. The rest of my team works across the other side of the
country (nothing but 2000km of desert between us), and it is far more isolated
here at the office than working from home.

Working from home I at least have the opportunity to customise my environment
to my taste instead of the bland white-and-cigarette-stain-brown of the
current interior decorating of the office.

Working alone in an office is really really hard.

------
potomak
I totally agree with you. When I started to work as a freelancer I felt the
same for the first year. That's why I dediced to start, with a former coworker
of mine, a coworking place with accessible rates near the city where I lived.
Now that I'm not a freelancer anymore, and I don't run actively Meme
coworking[0] anymore, I'm proud because it's still active and full of
interesting people!

[0] [http://memecoworking.com](http://memecoworking.com)

------
thetmkay
For me, and what I took away from this article (confirmation bias), it is that
a huge barrier to working remotely is the social and personal identity we
implicitly associate with work.

The loosening of tribalism from your job (which between 20-40 could be your
main "tribe") may be the root cause of the sense of isolation/loneliness.

I wonder if it's as much the emergence of meetups & co-working spaces rather
than the online tools (Slack, Speak, Trello etc) which will grow the remote
workforce.

~~~
c23gooey
I agree that co-working can do as much as the online tools. Not to discount
the importance of being able to effectively communicate with the people you
are working with, however I have found that being around others who are
getting their own thing done is inspiring and motivational. Working remotely
in a co-working space has given me the best of both worlds - I get the social
aspects of being around others and the motivation of being around others
working, but no one bother me about my work cause they are not involved.

------
port6667
Love remote work. With so many companies online now it should be a lot easier
to get jobs like this.

Save money by not commuting daily. No suit dry cleaning each week. Eat tasty
home made food and leftovers. Way way way way wayyyyy less stress than
dressing up looking brighteyed and having to sit at a desk all day so your
slave owners can stare at you not working for 8 hours plus two 15 minute
breaks plus 30 minutes "lunch"

------
elliotec
I believe remote work is one of the greatest advances of modern labor.

~~~
staticint
Wouldn't it be more accurate to say that on-site work was just a temporary
regression? Back in the time where almost everyone worked on a farm, the farm
was also your home, and mirrors a lot of what remote workers experience again
now.

~~~
ddebernardy
Not really. Peasants who owned their farm during the pre-industrial era were
rare. The bulk of "work from home" then were household chores - which meant
e.g. house-wifes spinning wool into yarn or sewing clothes.

------
qq66
There are two components to successful remote work: it has to work for the
employee, and for the company. Obviously, how well it works depends not only
on the particulars of the arrangement, but on the specific employee
(introvert, extrovert, etc.) and the specific company (type of product, type
of role, other employees, etc.)

"Remote work is terrible" and "Remote work is The Way" are gross
oversimplifications that are guaranteed to be wrong.

~~~
swsieber
Well, additionally I have to wonder if have-a-family vs not is a big
influence.

------
mattzito
I think obviously it depends a lot on your living situation, your personality,
and the composition of your team. For me, working remotely was awesome, but
there were significant challenges. I had to dedicate a room to being an office
and treat it accordingly, I had to get dressed to at least a base level (no
sweats!), and I had to be reasonably diligent about my working hours.

But for me it worked great. I think one of the things that make remote work a
lot harder are when most of the team is in one place, and you are in the
other. In those situations, I find that remote workers are often the "odd man
out", since it's easy for everyone else to get together in a conference room
to talk something out without the remote worker.

Another issue is timezones - it's one thing if you're an hour off from
everyone, that's manageable. Much harder if you're spread across multiple
timezones, or a long distance from everyone. Even NY->california can be
challenging. I manage a team in Europe and the timezone challenges are
downright exhausting.

------
tmlee
I've been working remotely for a while now, and i would say in terms of
productivity it has been excellent.

No commuting which means time can be spent on reading up materials, doing
actual work, or going to the gym.

Meals is also an important matter. Working remotely, I feel I have more
control on what I eat. Typically i tend to pick up food at a cafe/restaurant,
which depending on my pick diminishes my productivity. Working at home means
having access to full fledge kitchen like stove, oven; I could do weekly/daily
groceries to prepare healthy food like salad, yoghurt, etc.

There are still some setbacks though when it comes to communicating and
working in a team. We tried to solve that with Slack and project management
tools (ie. Basecamp, Asana); it works for most projects, while some I supposed
we are still looking for the right way to get everyone on the same page mainly
because there are a few stakeholders involved.

------
jcadam
I would like to find out how hard working remotely can be. Unfortunately,
finding a FT remote software dev position is _really_ hard.

Most want you to already have experience working remotely :|

~~~
toomuchtodo
[https://github.com/lukasz-madon/awesome-remote-
job](https://github.com/lukasz-madon/awesome-remote-job)

------
calebm
I've been working remotely for the last 7 months, and I find it awesome! The
biggest downside for me is less socialization with coworkers. But what helps a
lot, is that my team meets one week each quarter, which helps build/maintain
good rapport in the team.

------
workitout
For me:

    
    
      communication - This is really hard and sometimes harder in person.
      loneliness - I'm married, wife is a homemaker so I get to see her all the time, this isn't an issue for me but i can see it could be for some.
      isolation - Exactly, that is the point, sweet quiet.
      timezones - This is only not an issue when it isn't. Otherwise the problem with timezones makes no difference whether the people are remote or in an office, the problem is the timezone difference itself.
      discipline, After several years in the military early on, this isn't an issue either.

------
MAGZine
I'm working remotely while I go to school, and I have to say it's been pretty
great. Not to say it doesn't have it's moments--but school helps with
isolation/socialization (plenty to people to chat/have lunch with), with work
clocking in at a few hours a day, it's pretty manageable.

Slack has been an invaluable tool to help with socialization, and keeping up
with what's going on in the office. Also helps with visibility issues.

I could happily sustain this pace of work for a long time, I think--though,
when school is over, it might be a bit more challenging.

------
melted
I've found that it's not "working remotely" that's hard per se, it's working
remotely when the rest of the team works in the office somewhere. In that set
up, you basically aren't a part of all those hallway conversations, which in
turn means you're out of the loop most of the time. If you're a junior
engineer, that might be OK, but for someone senior: stay the fuck away from
this set up, no matter how appealing it seems at first.

------
runejuhl
How timely. Right now I'm sitting in a house on the beach in Tolú, Colombia. I
work remote 32 hours/week for my employer in Denmark doing development,
sysadmin and consulting.

I'm here with my wife and my two kids (4 and <1 years) and we've been on the
road for almost a month.

So far it's been great. It took a few days to get started with remote work;
tooling, getting the computer set up for low bandwidth work etc. I don't have
fixed working hours, although I try to work a few hours in the morning and
then 3-4 hours at night after the kids are sleeping. That might change soon,
though, as I think we'll have to incorporate a proper siesta after lunch for
my wife and the kids' sake; I'll probably use that to work. It's just too hot
in the middle of the day here to do anything if you're not used to the heat
(and even then -- the locals have siesta as well).

We're staying in this place for three more weeks (been here one week), and
then we're off to another place. Currently it looks like we'll buy a used car
to avoid some of the hassle of traveling with kids and to be able to see
places off the beaten path. We're talking about heading North to Santa Marta,
but nothing is planned yet.

I've been working from home in Denmark for some months before we left, so my
family is somewhat used to me shutting them out when I'm working (or trying
to). Re: work ethics: I guess it helps loving what you do -- although the
beach is really inviting when it's pushing 35 degrees outside... Realizing
that the reason why we're even here in the first place is due to the trust of
my employer helps as well!

------
Sami_Lehtinen
We have plenty of engineers at the office, only word which you might hear from
them over several weeks could be 'good morning' when they arrive. After that
they're completely isolated, disconnected, alone and answer emails lazily with
delay of days. Won't answer phone or IM.

I wonder if working remotely vs at office does any difference at all, except
you can just drop out the commute time which might be a huge win depending
from situation.

------
darrmit
I work from home most of the time since I'm about an hour from the office best
case and usually double that with traffic. I'm much more efficient at home
because it's more comfortable and far less distracting.

I think if people have a hard time getting motivated at home that's a symptom
of a larger or unrelated problem.

------
j_s
If work is your primary social outlet, then yes... remote work is going to be
a hard time. Find another group!

------
nav2u
Sometimes people don't have any choice and must work remotely like my startup.
It was frustrating in the beginning but once we got used to it, it was very
rewarding.

My cofounders and I are in this situation. We don't have a choice and have to
work remotely as we have been in different countries for over a year now. We
have been dogfooding our product (a real time collaborative whiteboard) to
work together because as a startup we are always exploring new ideas,
discussing strategies and designing solutions. Can't say that it beats meeting
or working in person, but it definitely has worked well for us by making it
easy to communicate and focus on ideas.

------
iamsohungry
I just don't understand why the responses to this post are all defending
working remotely. Working remotely can be hard and still be the right thing
for you. Getting defensive and downplaying all the problems with working
remotely just means that we can't have a real discussion about how to solve
those problems.

And what's more, it's creating a false dichotomy: there's no universal right
answer to whether remote or in-person is better. Remote work is the best way
for some teams. But it's certainly not the best way for any team I've been on,
mostly because I'm far too extroverted to work on such a team.

------
earino
I believe I have a very good setup for working remotely. I have a house with a
yard, and I can work indoors, or I can work outdoors (and regularly do.) The
key, however, is that I work at a coworking space 2-3 days a week for part of
my work day. It provides the perfect amount of social interaction, which I get
to gatekeep. If I'm doing something particularly detail oriented, I stay home.
If I can stand some interruptions, I head to the coworking space.

I don't know if all coworking spaces are as awesome as the one I have found
myself at, but it fundamentally competes the "work at home" model for me.

------
sarciszewski
At the risk of sounding totally ridiculous or trolly, the toughest challenge
I've faced when adjusting to working remotely is answering the question, "When
should I shower?"

It's easy when you're working in an office job: Shave and shower before you go
into work in the morning.

When no one will see your face, you're suddenly left with the curse of too
many options.

In the morning? But what if your roommate needs the hot water before he goes
to work?

During your lunch break? What if you're hungry?

After work? What about your other roommate who usually works night shift?

Maybe that's totally silly to some folks. Communication came easy for me, but
I grew up on IRC.

~~~
DrScump
_That_ part is easy. Shower after you work out, whenever that is.

~~~
sarciszewski
I don't work out.

------
hamami
I'd also call myself an introvert, and the best productivity I get is when I
dedicate a couple of days working from home with the rest in office. This
allows me to get the bulk load of work done when I'm home and allow some
social interaction with my colleagues the rest of the week, while still
getting a decent amount of work done. It's consistently the same days every
week that I work from home, so people I work with can have their expectations
set on when I'll be around. Choosing random days does not really work well for
this, as people get confused when I'm not there.

------
91pavan
I agree with the consensus in the article. I work for a team which is spread
out all over the world and i'm one of the two people working from India. I
feel isolated and lonely. My other team-mate from India works from home most
of the time is planning on quitting soon so it makes it even worse.

The work is great but just feel like having someone to talk about your
problems and getting quick help is no where near pinging them on IM tools and
asking if they are free or whatever. I envy most of my co-workers here who
always have someone to walk the hallway, have lunch together etc.

------
joeax
I love working remote, and wouldn't consider working any other way. That being
said it's still difficult to find work at home jobs, even for software
engineers. I have recruiters hitting me up on LinkedIn all the time about open
positions, but when I tell them I'd rather work remote, they sort of just
shrug and go away.

Any other engineers out there that feel the same way? How would you approach
finding a work at home job should you be looking?

------
brahmwg
For me, working long hard hours from home can begin to make me feel an
association between being at home and doing hard work (as opposed to coming
home from work, where home is a place of rest). I think being able to have
work separate from home is important, especially for the family. The stress of
work should stay at the office, and being able to compartmentalize that stress
while working from home is a skill I have yet to fully master.

~~~
elementalest
I agree. One way to address that is to define a space at home that is your
work office/space. So a study, or corner of a room. If a corner of a room, you
could even get some dividers to separate yourself from the rest of the room.
It also helps hide work if you also use the room for something else.

Then doing something like going to the gym, or going for a jog etc when you
finished work for the day can help you make the mental disconnect. A routine
can really help develop that mindset.

------
cnp
Similar to the poster, I started renting a coworking space and riding my bike
to work each day and it really makes all the difference. I've met friends, go
out to lunch each week (and then take a little nap afterwards at my desk), and
drinks on Friday. Discovering coworking has been really great, and now working
remote doesn't even phase me

------
narrator
I find that I need people around doing stuff to look at occasionally to fend
off the loneliness. I prefer to work from a Starbucks or a local open plan co-
working space because of this. If there are people around, even if I don't
talk to them, it helps me get work done.

------
voltagex_
I'm in a wheelchair, I have limited access to telework with my current
organisation. I'm trying very hard to find somewhere that'll let me work from
home as it'd be a huge benefit for my health and wellbeing. Travelling is
hard.

------
hashberry
Working in an office is hard. Especially when you complete work early and have
to pretend to be busy. With remote working, when you finish your tasks you are
DONE. I've had many relaxing 4 hour days.

------
jld89
How did you guys start working remotely? Or did you work remotely from the
beginning?

I would like to try but I see it difficult for a company to hire someone
remotely who has never worked remotely. Catch-22 anyone?

------
peteretep
Sure it's hard, but the alternative of being back in a physical office for
long stretches is unthinkable for those of us who've been doing it for a
while.

------
marknutter
Funny. I work at a company that has two work-from-home days. Those two days
are, hands down, _the_ most productive days my team has all week.

~~~
matwood
Have you thought it might be because of the planning and preparation done on
the other 3 days?

It is like the person who skips a meeting to be 'more productive' and then has
to go around bothering everyone to understand the decisions made in said
meeting.

~~~
marknutter
No, it's because we can code for long periods of time without getting
interrupted.

------
chrischen
I forgot which company it was or where I heard of this, but they would be
remote and do a group video chat together the whole time while working.

------
pheroden
The only issue I ever had working remotely was when my (now ex) wife thought I
was talking to her while in a conference call.

"I know it's going to be tight, but we'll make it fit".

------
codemod
Is the link down? I get a blank page.

