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I am full time remote for past 6mo. Never been less productive in my career. I'm looking to switch back to onsite as soon as I can. Edit: I'm not saying remote

I am full time remote for past 6mo. Never been less productive in my career. I'm looking to switch back to onsite as soon as I can. Edit: I'm not saying remote is bad - just that in my experience I'm definitely less productive.

zrail 7y ago
It’s not for everyone. I’ve been remote for the past 6 years and love it, but it definitely had a learning curve. Friends of mine have tried it and went back to the office. One thing that has really helped me I’d having a non-work group of online friends who also all work remote. We can commiserate and trade tips.
- avgDev 7y ago
  I think this is the key to working remote. Having a network of people who also work remote online. I need to try that. I work half of the time remote and sometimes feel very unmotivated due to lack of human contact. Having someone to just chat with would be awesome. Neat idea I wonder if there is a discord chat for that.
SkyPuncher 7y ago
Are you by chance just noticing all of the empty space that was previously filled with non-productive time in an office? I've worked remotely for about 5 years now. Without the water cooler talk, chit chat, and misc distractions, I can easily fit a 8+ hour day into less than 6 hours when I work from home.
- skellera 7y ago
  I think it just depends on the person. I work full time remote for a 100% remote consulting company. Some people come in and do very well. Others don’t seem to be able to make the transition into remote. I’ve worked with new hires that literally take entire days off and give excuses why they were unreachable. Sadly they are just shuffled around the company instead of disciplined but that’s another topic. But I figure in that case, they were probably not so great workers in-office either.
  - ghaff 7y ago
    I work almost entirely remote today and definitely prefer it. (The people I work with are scattered all over the place anyway.) But I can't really imagine how I would have done well working remotely towards the beginning of my career. It was a different time with far fewer communication tools but, even taking that out, it would have been very difficult both socially and in terms of work discipline.
- jb3689 7y ago
  I did remote for about two years. Found it really draining and too easy to go full workaholic and work into the late hours/be constantly stressed out. I'd like to try working remote again but I can totally get how it wouldn't work for some people. I'm way more likely to take a short breather in the office than at home
- domlebo70 7y ago
  What empty space? When I arrived at work, I work intensely, and hard. None of us want to be longer than we need to accomplish our work. Occasional chit chat while making coffee is definitely not slowing us down in any meaningful way. Except for a few places (contracting at government) I've never felt on site had too many distractions
- yitchelle 7y ago
  > fit a 8+ hour day into less than 6 hours. I suppose that could be one measure of productivity. Another view would be an increase in the number of backlog items closed in the 8hour.
  - sithlord 7y ago
    It will be a great accomplishment when we can get the idea that a 'full-day' is 8 hours.
    - drb91 7y ago
      Hell let’s aim for six. I doubt I’d get anything less done.
dudul 7y ago
What metrics do you use to realize that you are less productive?
- domlebo70 7y ago
  I was a lead/senior developer of a team of ~10 (in a startup of 30). I was involved heavily in the direction of the company, as well as the day to day running of my team. I now work remotely with a 15 hr time difference. Nowadays I feel extremely left out of the direction of the company, the direction technically, and what my team is up to day to day. I try to close these gaps during calls with my team every day, but it's just not enough. This leads to intense feelings of anxiety and impostor syndrome. As an example, I'm currently working on a proof of concept using Rust to replace some existing C++ that coordinates some Gstreamer pipelines. This sounds like the perfect task for remote: self contained task, redoing existing code, fairly small scope. But remote (or more specifically the time difference) makes it pretty difficult. I don't know Gstreamer that well, and I don't know the existing code that well. I'll often run into a problem that I KNOW someone on my team could answer in 2minutes, and unblock me. Instead I need to push through wasting valuable time trying to figure it out myself, or wait till they are online. Perhaps this is the time difference not the remote aspect at fault. If they were on the same timezone, it'd be a quick Slack message away Now, I am reduced to writing code that slots in around my team. As for actual empirical metrics, I don't have many. We tend to track achievements as a team (OKR's etc), and my team has been hitting there goals mostly. I do feel we could achieve more though if I was onsite. A probably non valuable one might be Github commit count, which dropped from ~ 3500 for the 2018 year to ~ 300 for the last 6 mo. So at least on code alone, I am churning substantially less of it out. I'm not poo-pooing remote btw. I think my story would be totally different in a 100% remote company, or a company with substantial remote presence. I think for me though, in this situation, I prefer on site.
  - yitchelle 7y ago
    The work package that you are assigned to yourself is not necessary a problem with remote per se. It sounds like that the work package is not matching the skills/knowledge for assigned team. But you are correct, the ramping up of knowledge is much easier when the teams are close together where sharing of know-how is much lower.
parthdesai 7y ago
Yeah i currently WFH one day/week and i actually look forward to going into work the next day. I guess it might be different if you had family and kids, but i'm single and live on my own and I am a bit of a social person so i actually look forward to going into office.

zrail 7y ago

It’s not for everyone. I’ve been remote for the past 6 years and love it, but it definitely had a learning curve. Friends of mine have tried it and went back to the office. One thing that has really helped me I’d having a non-work group of online friends who also all work remote. We can commiserate and trade tips.

avgDev 7y ago
I think this is the key to working remote. Having a network of people who also work remote online. I need to try that. I work half of the time remote and sometimes feel very unmotivated due to lack of human contact. Having someone to just chat with would be awesome. Neat idea I wonder if there is a discord chat for that.

SkyPuncher 7y ago

Are you by chance just noticing all of the empty space that was previously filled with non-productive time in an office? I've worked remotely for about 5 years now. Without the water cooler talk, chit chat, and misc distractions, I can easily fit a 8+ hour day into less than 6 hours when I work from home.

skellera 7y ago
I think it just depends on the person. I work full time remote for a 100% remote consulting company. Some people come in and do very well. Others don’t seem to be able to make the transition into remote. I’ve worked with new hires that literally take entire days off and give excuses why they were unreachable. Sadly they are just shuffled around the company instead of disciplined but that’s another topic. But I figure in that case, they were probably not so great workers in-office either.
- ghaff 7y ago
  I work almost entirely remote today and definitely prefer it. (The people I work with are scattered all over the place anyway.) But I can't really imagine how I would have done well working remotely towards the beginning of my career. It was a different time with far fewer communication tools but, even taking that out, it would have been very difficult both socially and in terms of work discipline.
jb3689 7y ago
I did remote for about two years. Found it really draining and too easy to go full workaholic and work into the late hours/be constantly stressed out. I'd like to try working remote again but I can totally get how it wouldn't work for some people. I'm way more likely to take a short breather in the office than at home
domlebo70 7y ago
What empty space? When I arrived at work, I work intensely, and hard. None of us want to be longer than we need to accomplish our work. Occasional chit chat while making coffee is definitely not slowing us down in any meaningful way. Except for a few places (contracting at government) I've never felt on site had too many distractions
yitchelle 7y ago
> fit a 8+ hour day into less than 6 hours. I suppose that could be one measure of productivity. Another view would be an increase in the number of backlog items closed in the 8hour.
- sithlord 7y ago
  It will be a great accomplishment when we can get the idea that a 'full-day' is 8 hours.
  - drb91 7y ago
    Hell let’s aim for six. I doubt I’d get anything less done.

dudul 7y ago

What metrics do you use to realize that you are less productive?

domlebo70 7y ago
I was a lead/senior developer of a team of ~10 (in a startup of 30). I was involved heavily in the direction of the company, as well as the day to day running of my team. I now work remotely with a 15 hr time difference. Nowadays I feel extremely left out of the direction of the company, the direction technically, and what my team is up to day to day. I try to close these gaps during calls with my team every day, but it's just not enough. This leads to intense feelings of anxiety and impostor syndrome. As an example, I'm currently working on a proof of concept using Rust to replace some existing C++ that coordinates some Gstreamer pipelines. This sounds like the perfect task for remote: self contained task, redoing existing code, fairly small scope. But remote (or more specifically the time difference) makes it pretty difficult. I don't know Gstreamer that well, and I don't know the existing code that well. I'll often run into a problem that I KNOW someone on my team could answer in 2minutes, and unblock me. Instead I need to push through wasting valuable time trying to figure it out myself, or wait till they are online. Perhaps this is the time difference not the remote aspect at fault. If they were on the same timezone, it'd be a quick Slack message away Now, I am reduced to writing code that slots in around my team. As for actual empirical metrics, I don't have many. We tend to track achievements as a team (OKR's etc), and my team has been hitting there goals mostly. I do feel we could achieve more though if I was onsite. A probably non valuable one might be Github commit count, which dropped from ~ 3500 for the 2018 year to ~ 300 for the last 6 mo. So at least on code alone, I am churning substantially less of it out. I'm not poo-pooing remote btw. I think my story would be totally different in a 100% remote company, or a company with substantial remote presence. I think for me though, in this situation, I prefer on site.
- yitchelle 7y ago
  The work package that you are assigned to yourself is not necessary a problem with remote per se. It sounds like that the work package is not matching the skills/knowledge for assigned team. But you are correct, the ramping up of knowledge is much easier when the teams are close together where sharing of know-how is much lower.

parthdesai 7y ago

Yeah i currently WFH one day/week and i actually look forward to going into work the next day. I guess it might be different if you had family and kids, but i'm single and live on my own and I am a bit of a social person so i actually look forward to going into office.