6 ms·

As someone who's worked from a lot and also worked from an office, I feel like there's an important component missing when discussing WFH for professions outsid

As someone who's worked from a lot and also worked from an office, I feel like there's an important component missing when discussing WFH for professions outside of tech. One important issue IMO is just having a workspace. Software engineers are kinda spoiled in this regard because we make the big bucks. We can afford to retrofit areas of our homes to create good working conditions. We can take our laptops to coffee shops in a pinch. I recently upgraded my living situation by moving into a much nicer place, but it's smaller so I ditched the "home office" setup I had before. Now with COVID I'm working in my dining room and on my couch. It's so much worse. It might sound silly but I'm putting a lot more wear/tear on my furniture by being around all day. My take on this is that homes aren't and never were designed for WFH conditions. There are so many details about offices that we take for granted. I found myself having to clean way more often and do way more dishes now that the entire family is stuck in the house together. Then there's a socialization aspect. Tech has a culture of "as long as you can do the job, it doesn't matter how you behave/dress/interact" -- this thinking is applied along a spectrum, some companies are more extreme than others about it. But a lot of professions like sales/legal/etc rely very heavily on close social interaction. Tech is also unique in this regard IMO.

seanmcdirmid 7y ago
We are looking to buy a new house soon and have made room for a home office a priority due to the current virus. Both my wife and I are working in our small apartment now while our 3 year old yells outside our second bedroom with grandma chasing after him. Ya...no, this isn't working.
odysseus 7y ago
Homes can be designed for working from home: Don't forget that you can have a comfortable climate controlled detached garage.
HenryBemis 7y ago
You got space limitations because you moved to a smaller flat. Office furniture is never a problem. You can make a table from IKEA (4 legs and the tabletop) can cost as low as £50 and if you pick them special legs you can make it a standing desk with the same cost. The only thing you can't cut corners on is the chair, a bad chair will ruin your health.
- Tade0 7y ago
  Seconding that table-as-desk. My SO used an IKEA table for the past four years as a desk for drawing.
  - icebraining 7y ago
    Thirding! It cost me like €30 (used, but as-new) and it has so much more space than my office desks ever had, it's great.
    - HenryBemis 7y ago
      And for all of us who appreciate the things we can do with IKEA stuff (without spending 5 salaries on it), I believe it's worth mentioning the IKEA Hackers (https://www.ikeahackers.net/ https://www.ikeahackers.net/). Those folks are doing some crazy/interesting stuff.
nostrademons 7y ago
I've always preferred working from home (couch, bed, or floor - I don't do tables and chairs) simply because programming was my hobby before it was my job, and I always associated peak productivity with being able to be relaxed and enjoy my surroundings rather than feel like I need to put on a physical performance of working. My take on it is that people will adjust, and that the most productive environment is the one you're most familiar with. Many professions like sales, legal, and investment banking rely on putting on a professional "front" to make a good first impression. This is much harder to do when you're sitting on a couch at home and have a couple kids screaming in the background. IMHO this is a good thing, because the constant impression-management needed in these professions is a huge distraction from the actual substance of these jobs, and anything that punctures the impression-management bubble and forces people to deal with real human realities is an improvement. Already I'm seeing a big normalization of things like childcare, screaming toddlers, two-parent schedules, breastfeeding, and so on - this can't be shunted off as "woman's work" and relegated to the home anymore, when the home becomes the workplace and both parents generally need to trade off to make it work. Basically I think our society before coronavirus was broken and coronavirus lockdowns are simply forcing us to deal with the ways in which it was broken. The old society isn't going to last much longer, and it's better to deal with that and build a more resilient, more honest one than to try to preserve the rituals that many industries had developed in 75 years of peace.
- dtech 7y ago
  I'm very happy for you that you can work like that, but if I work in a bad posture like on a couch for an hour I will have back pain the rest of the day. Do it for a full working days and I will have pain for a week. I have always been prone to it but many more of my colleagues are developing similar problems after working from home for a few weeks without good setups.
  - SuoDuanDao 7y ago
    Funny thing, working from home finally let me get a standing desk where it felt too conspicuous at the office. I don't have as much space in my living room any more, but I feel much better when that afternoon slump usually hits.
icebraining 7y ago
> Software engineers are kinda spoiled in this regard because we make the big bucks. But that's true of offices as well. Do you think the average administrative assistant is working on Aeron chairs? No, they're working on cheap chairs and cheap desks. In fact, so did I, despite being a developer - I just didn't work at a fancy company. At least at home we have the option of spending a bit more, even if it comes out of our paycheck.
ccktlmazeltov 7y ago
Sure you're having a not so great time, and your using your furniture more, but you can still do your job. So this is an orthogonal issue. I live in a small place and we're going to buy a folding desk and a chair, it takes almost no space and you can fold it when you're done. It's less than 100 bucks. It's up to you to creat these conditions. Also not all offices have nice desks, chairs, environment, etc. I use to work in a place without windows.
s0rce 7y ago
Agreed, my wife and I rent a nice but small 1bdrm apartment in the East Bay, we are both scientists/engineers (not software) and were not primarily working from home so having office space for both of us wasn't a prioirty when apartment hunting. Now that we are both full time WFH its pretty busy. I've got a desk in the living room and my wife is on a folding table in the bedroom or the dining room table. Its been nice out so I'll have meetings from the back patio as well. Making due but I miss my desk in the office and my bike commute.
sharadov 7y ago
You need 1. Dedicated room 2. Good setup - monitor, standing desk, ergonomic chair I wfh and yeah there are times when I will work from the backyard in the summer, or by the pool, or from the living room with the TV on when am super bored. But the majority of the work is done from the home office.
- tasuki 7y ago
  Congrats, you're priviledged. Most of the world population doesn't have a pool.
  - sharadov 7y ago
    Learn how to spell.
    - tasuki 7y ago
      Thank you for the helpful suggestion - I must've been making this mistake for years.
kijin 7y ago
> homes aren't and never were designed for WFH conditions. They were, in the past. Houses built for the gentry used to have a room called "the study", a quiet space equipped with bookshelves and a desk. This went out of fashion as most men, and later women, began to go to this newfangled place called "the office" that was outside of their homes. IMO most American detached homes are large enough for a dedicated working room to be retrofitted in. This may not be possible for small homes and apartments in urban areas, though, as they were designed long after the study became obsolete. > But a lot of professions like sales/legal/etc rely very heavily on close social interaction. That culture will be seriously disrupted if Coronavirus isn't under control soon, or if similar outbreaks occur regularly in the future. There's already huge selection pressure against companies that can't be productive in WFH mode. Sooner or later, the ability to switch to WFH on a moment's notice and maintain productivity might be considered a great strength in the eyes of investors and customers alike.

seanmcdirmid 7y ago

We are looking to buy a new house soon and have made room for a home office a priority due to the current virus. Both my wife and I are working in our small apartment now while our 3 year old yells outside our second bedroom with grandma chasing after him. Ya...no, this isn't working.

odysseus 7y ago

Homes can be designed for working from home: Don't forget that you can have a comfortable climate controlled detached garage.

HenryBemis 7y ago

You got space limitations because you moved to a smaller flat. Office furniture is never a problem. You can make a table from IKEA (4 legs and the tabletop) can cost as low as £50 and if you pick them special legs you can make it a standing desk with the same cost. The only thing you can't cut corners on is the chair, a bad chair will ruin your health.

Tade0 7y ago
Seconding that table-as-desk. My SO used an IKEA table for the past four years as a desk for drawing.
- icebraining 7y ago
  Thirding! It cost me like €30 (used, but as-new) and it has so much more space than my office desks ever had, it's great.
  - HenryBemis 7y ago
    And for all of us who appreciate the things we can do with IKEA stuff (without spending 5 salaries on it), I believe it's worth mentioning the IKEA Hackers (https://www.ikeahackers.net/ https://www.ikeahackers.net/). Those folks are doing some crazy/interesting stuff.

nostrademons 7y ago

I've always preferred working from home (couch, bed, or floor - I don't do tables and chairs) simply because programming was my hobby before it was my job, and I always associated peak productivity with being able to be relaxed and enjoy my surroundings rather than feel like I need to put on a physical performance of working. My take on it is that people will adjust, and that the most productive environment is the one you're most familiar with. Many professions like sales, legal, and investment banking rely on putting on a professional "front" to make a good first impression. This is much harder to do when you're sitting on a couch at home and have a couple kids screaming in the background. IMHO this is a good thing, because the constant impression-management needed in these professions is a huge distraction from the actual substance of these jobs, and anything that punctures the impression-management bubble and forces people to deal with real human realities is an improvement. Already I'm seeing a big normalization of things like childcare, screaming toddlers, two-parent schedules, breastfeeding, and so on - this can't be shunted off as "woman's work" and relegated to the home anymore, when the home becomes the workplace and both parents generally need to trade off to make it work. Basically I think our society before coronavirus was broken and coronavirus lockdowns are simply forcing us to deal with the ways in which it was broken. The old society isn't going to last much longer, and it's better to deal with that and build a more resilient, more honest one than to try to preserve the rituals that many industries had developed in 75 years of peace.

dtech 7y ago
I'm very happy for you that you can work like that, but if I work in a bad posture like on a couch for an hour I will have back pain the rest of the day. Do it for a full working days and I will have pain for a week. I have always been prone to it but many more of my colleagues are developing similar problems after working from home for a few weeks without good setups.
- SuoDuanDao 7y ago
  Funny thing, working from home finally let me get a standing desk where it felt too conspicuous at the office. I don't have as much space in my living room any more, but I feel much better when that afternoon slump usually hits.

icebraining 7y ago

> Software engineers are kinda spoiled in this regard because we make the big bucks. But that's true of offices as well. Do you think the average administrative assistant is working on Aeron chairs? No, they're working on cheap chairs and cheap desks. In fact, so did I, despite being a developer - I just didn't work at a fancy company. At least at home we have the option of spending a bit more, even if it comes out of our paycheck.

ccktlmazeltov 7y ago

Sure you're having a not so great time, and your using your furniture more, but you can still do your job. So this is an orthogonal issue. I live in a small place and we're going to buy a folding desk and a chair, it takes almost no space and you can fold it when you're done. It's less than 100 bucks. It's up to you to creat these conditions. Also not all offices have nice desks, chairs, environment, etc. I use to work in a place without windows.

s0rce 7y ago

Agreed, my wife and I rent a nice but small 1bdrm apartment in the East Bay, we are both scientists/engineers (not software) and were not primarily working from home so having office space for both of us wasn't a prioirty when apartment hunting. Now that we are both full time WFH its pretty busy. I've got a desk in the living room and my wife is on a folding table in the bedroom or the dining room table. Its been nice out so I'll have meetings from the back patio as well. Making due but I miss my desk in the office and my bike commute.

sharadov 7y ago

You need 1. Dedicated room 2. Good setup - monitor, standing desk, ergonomic chair I wfh and yeah there are times when I will work from the backyard in the summer, or by the pool, or from the living room with the TV on when am super bored. But the majority of the work is done from the home office.

tasuki 7y ago
Congrats, you're priviledged. Most of the world population doesn't have a pool.
- sharadov 7y ago
  Learn how to spell.
  - tasuki 7y ago
    Thank you for the helpful suggestion - I must've been making this mistake for years.

kijin 7y ago

> homes aren't and never were designed for WFH conditions. They were, in the past. Houses built for the gentry used to have a room called "the study", a quiet space equipped with bookshelves and a desk. This went out of fashion as most men, and later women, began to go to this newfangled place called "the office" that was outside of their homes. IMO most American detached homes are large enough for a dedicated working room to be retrofitted in. This may not be possible for small homes and apartments in urban areas, though, as they were designed long after the study became obsolete. > But a lot of professions like sales/legal/etc rely very heavily on close social interaction. That culture will be seriously disrupted if Coronavirus isn't under control soon, or if similar outbreaks occur regularly in the future. There's already huge selection pressure against companies that can't be productive in WFH mode. Sooner or later, the ability to switch to WFH on a moment's notice and maintain productivity might be considered a great strength in the eyes of investors and customers alike.