4 ms·

I’m not the parent poster, but I agree with their preference. It’s psychological. I focus better with a clear delineation of work in a work setting and persona

I’m not the parent poster, but I agree with their preference. It’s psychological. I focus better with a clear delineation of work in a work setting and personal life in a home setting. Even the physical transition of the commute helps me switch over. This is something that has eroded in the last six months even though I’ve tried to substitute it with practices like an “office” room. Additionally, I am definitely a person who prefers in person meetings and conversations. It’s not that I can’t do remote conversations - I’ve even managed remote employees for years - but I value water cooler conversations as a place for spontaneous idea generation or just relationship building, which is just harder remotely. You have to go out of your way to send ideas into the ether, without the physical signs that someone might be receptive to random, possibly stupid musings, or non-sequiter stuff about personal life. Count me among the people who are fine with others choosing to stay remote, but once it’s feasible and safe to go into the office I would want to do it.

garrickvanburen 6y ago
I get the want for distinct physical spaces to change contexts, though considering we're 20+ years into a world of employer issued laptop and mobile phones, making the delineation between work and non-work is very much up to each of us as individuals. This is as a small as not checking work email outside of work hours and as large as finding a space that you yourself work best in even if that means not home or your employer's office.
- gravitas 6y ago
  The issue is while you're on the clock; I don't take those longer breaks to get a coffee, it's right behind me. I take shorter lunches, it's right there behind me. (etc.) People who are not tenured remote employees are still struggling to find a healthy life balance as they've spent 20 years working in an office. My company (~10k, global, mix of hourly and salaried) has multiple times sent out pandemic guidance asking people to take more time off and stop working so much, they see the extra hours in their time tracking tooling upstream (and it's not a financial play, they're targeting the salaried).
sbuk 6y ago
The office I work in is open plan, which I would imagine is the case for the significant proportion of individual that do their work in an office. There are constant interuptions and it's way too loud. In order to focus, I have to shut off the background noise with headphones, and even they don't deter most people from interupting my flow. As my customer base is wide spread, I'm in vidoe calls anyway. This means that it really doesn't matter where I work. I do miss some of my collegues, I do miss some of the interactions and technical discussions that go on, as much as a little bit of the banter. Slack/Teams can be very impersonal and nuance is totally lost with text based media. With that said, I'm definately more productive at home. I can definately get more done and I definately do not miss the commute. I see much more of my kids and my wife, which to me at least, is the most important thing. Work-life harmony seems to me to be easier to atain if the choice of working from home is available.

garrickvanburen 6y ago

I get the want for distinct physical spaces to change contexts, though considering we're 20+ years into a world of employer issued laptop and mobile phones, making the delineation between work and non-work is very much up to each of us as individuals. This is as a small as not checking work email outside of work hours and as large as finding a space that you yourself work best in even if that means not home or your employer's office.

gravitas 6y ago
The issue is while you're on the clock; I don't take those longer breaks to get a coffee, it's right behind me. I take shorter lunches, it's right there behind me. (etc.) People who are not tenured remote employees are still struggling to find a healthy life balance as they've spent 20 years working in an office. My company (~10k, global, mix of hourly and salaried) has multiple times sent out pandemic guidance asking people to take more time off and stop working so much, they see the extra hours in their time tracking tooling upstream (and it's not a financial play, they're targeting the salaried).

sbuk 6y ago

The office I work in is open plan, which I would imagine is the case for the significant proportion of individual that do their work in an office. There are constant interuptions and it's way too loud. In order to focus, I have to shut off the background noise with headphones, and even they don't deter most people from interupting my flow. As my customer base is wide spread, I'm in vidoe calls anyway. This means that it really doesn't matter where I work. I do miss some of my collegues, I do miss some of the interactions and technical discussions that go on, as much as a little bit of the banter. Slack/Teams can be very impersonal and nuance is totally lost with text based media. With that said, I'm definately more productive at home. I can definately get more done and I definately do not miss the commute. I see much more of my kids and my wife, which to me at least, is the most important thing. Work-life harmony seems to me to be easier to atain if the choice of working from home is available.