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My employer, a fortune 100, has had a 100% work from home since late February or early March, and it has been a diverse experience for the thousands of us repor

My employer, a fortune 100, has had a 100% work from home since late February or early March, and it has been a diverse experience for the thousands of us reporting in each day, week, and month. I consider myself very lucky that my wife, also in IT at another large company, had the same work from home requirement and so although we have been a social island, we haven't been isolated because of each other's company. We share a spare bedroom, already equipped with comfortable tanker desks and large monitors, and as such had already superior workstations than those back at our corporate offices. We do have timing collisions for stand up, retros, et cetera but in general it's less than 5% of the time so we just try to be quiet when the other is doing a demo. For work-home balance, I would say the balance is largely lost, but that as an overall, the experience is still improved. I find it is much easier to work earlier, and later, hours, but to take larger spans of downtime during what was previously our core hours. So I might find myself writing code at 10pm, but because that tends to happen only when it is a good fit, it's still an improvement. But 9 or 10 months is not enough time to really know that it's going to last long-term. If I allow the work-home imbalance to solidify, what longer term effects will I come to regret?

ghaff 6y ago
For work-home balance, I would say the balance is largely lost, but that as an overall, the experience is still improved. I find it is much easier to work earlier, and later, hours, but to take larger spans of downtime during what was previously our core hours. Yeah, you need some degree of discipline and that discipline may be to establish fairly fixed working hours. I do up to a point. On the other hand, I don't have any trouble running out to do errands for an hour on the one hand. And checking email or something else relatively quick in the evening on the other.
- maccard 6y ago
  I know it sounds silly, but I've started setting timers for 2 hour blocks in the day, and I try to just hit 4-ish of them per day. If I hit 3, that's ok. if I hit 3 3 or 4 days in a row, I need to look into it!
  - ghaff 6y ago
    Whatever works for you! Some people absolutely benefit by having more structure. Others are fine without it.
- nucleardog 6y ago
  > For work-home balance, I would say the balance is largely lost, but that as an overall, the experience is still improved You say the balance is lost, but then go on to describe what I'd consider a great work-life balance. There's never going to be complete equilibrium, but when work and life can both push and pull, then I'd describe that as balance. Moving away from "this chunk of hours is for work" and "this chunk of hours is for not-work" to "hit a general target of X hours of work over the course of a week" but allowing that time to ebb and flow as work and life demand it seems much more balanced to me.
  - ghaff 6y ago
    Separation would probably be a better term in my case. "Balance" as I used it doesn't really make sense :-)
alisonkisk 6y ago
2 well-paying jobs with no kids and no commute, you are living the dream of personal comfort.
at-fates-hands 6y ago
>> My employer, a fortune 100, has had a 100% work from home since late February or early March The experience with my current employer (fortune 500) has been all over the map: First it was: "Stay home if you don't feel safe, otherwise, you should be at the office." Then it was: "Yeah, we're going full WFH for a few months." Then it was: "We going to start transitioning back to the office - we're going to have 2 week shifts. 2 weeks in the office, then 2 weeks out." nobody showed up anyways, which apparently raised the ire of the executive teams since they were doing badge reports and they reports were really bad Then it was: "Yeah, you know that 2 two week shift idea? Forget it, we need everybody back in the office, effective immediately." This came down from the CEO. The middle management and executive teams were not cool with that idea, so they told their team members only come in if you want to, otherwise, stay at home - regardless of what the CEO says. Right now, with this new surge, there hasn't been any new mandate(s) coming down. People are out of the office full time and nobody I've spoken to has any desire to go back into the office to work or wear a mask the entire time they're working. The company recently sold two of their buildings to an out of state real estate company. I'm assuming it was a cost cutting decision since the company has about a dozen buildings they own in the city. I would think a lot of companies would start doing this as well. Having a huge overhead for real estate you're not using isn't good for the bottom line.
gwbas1c 6y ago
> But 9 or 10 months is not enough time to really know that it's going to last long-term. If I allow the work-home imbalance to solidify, what longer term effects will I come to regret? Look at what happened to Yahoo and Intel. After allowing very liberal work for home policies for decades, some people caught on and figured out how to slack off and milk the nice paycheck and benefits. Then Intel and Yahoo cracked down.
- fartcannon 6y ago
  And now they're better than ever, right? ... Wait.
  - gwbas1c 6y ago
    HA! I should have mentioned that in my post where someone was asking why Intel was going downhill. Worth reading the full thread at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25187136 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25187136 > I worked for Intel for a few years, 2005-2007. It's hard to put into words what happened to Intel...

ghaff 6y ago

For work-home balance, I would say the balance is largely lost, but that as an overall, the experience is still improved. I find it is much easier to work earlier, and later, hours, but to take larger spans of downtime during what was previously our core hours. Yeah, you need some degree of discipline and that discipline may be to establish fairly fixed working hours. I do up to a point. On the other hand, I don't have any trouble running out to do errands for an hour on the one hand. And checking email or something else relatively quick in the evening on the other.

maccard 6y ago
I know it sounds silly, but I've started setting timers for 2 hour blocks in the day, and I try to just hit 4-ish of them per day. If I hit 3, that's ok. if I hit 3 3 or 4 days in a row, I need to look into it!
- ghaff 6y ago
  Whatever works for you! Some people absolutely benefit by having more structure. Others are fine without it.
nucleardog 6y ago
> For work-home balance, I would say the balance is largely lost, but that as an overall, the experience is still improved You say the balance is lost, but then go on to describe what I'd consider a great work-life balance. There's never going to be complete equilibrium, but when work and life can both push and pull, then I'd describe that as balance. Moving away from "this chunk of hours is for work" and "this chunk of hours is for not-work" to "hit a general target of X hours of work over the course of a week" but allowing that time to ebb and flow as work and life demand it seems much more balanced to me.
- ghaff 6y ago
  Separation would probably be a better term in my case. "Balance" as I used it doesn't really make sense :-)

alisonkisk 6y ago

2 well-paying jobs with no kids and no commute, you are living the dream of personal comfort.

at-fates-hands 6y ago

>> My employer, a fortune 100, has had a 100% work from home since late February or early March The experience with my current employer (fortune 500) has been all over the map: First it was: "Stay home if you don't feel safe, otherwise, you should be at the office." Then it was: "Yeah, we're going full WFH for a few months." Then it was: "We going to start transitioning back to the office - we're going to have 2 week shifts. 2 weeks in the office, then 2 weeks out." nobody showed up anyways, which apparently raised the ire of the executive teams since they were doing badge reports and they reports were really bad Then it was: "Yeah, you know that 2 two week shift idea? Forget it, we need everybody back in the office, effective immediately." This came down from the CEO. The middle management and executive teams were not cool with that idea, so they told their team members only come in if you want to, otherwise, stay at home - regardless of what the CEO says. Right now, with this new surge, there hasn't been any new mandate(s) coming down. People are out of the office full time and nobody I've spoken to has any desire to go back into the office to work or wear a mask the entire time they're working. The company recently sold two of their buildings to an out of state real estate company. I'm assuming it was a cost cutting decision since the company has about a dozen buildings they own in the city. I would think a lot of companies would start doing this as well. Having a huge overhead for real estate you're not using isn't good for the bottom line.

gwbas1c 6y ago

> But 9 or 10 months is not enough time to really know that it's going to last long-term. If I allow the work-home imbalance to solidify, what longer term effects will I come to regret? Look at what happened to Yahoo and Intel. After allowing very liberal work for home policies for decades, some people caught on and figured out how to slack off and milk the nice paycheck and benefits. Then Intel and Yahoo cracked down.

fartcannon 6y ago
And now they're better than ever, right? ... Wait.
- gwbas1c 6y ago
  HA! I should have mentioned that in my post where someone was asking why Intel was going downhill. Worth reading the full thread at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25187136 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25187136 > I worked for Intel for a few years, 2005-2007. It's hard to put into words what happened to Intel...