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I am _ridiculously_ more productive at home. When I hear folks complain about the pains of working from home, what I often hear are their stories about how the

I am _ridiculously_ more productive at home. When I hear folks complain about the pains of working from home, what I often hear are their stories about how they were needlessly disruptive to their coworkers. Having impromptu hallway meetings mean that your peers, and subordinates, must keep an ear open for such events should they risk being left out of important decision making processes. Having watercooler conversations means that your office-mates must take effort to overcome their human desire for social communication in order to focus on their task at hand. And so on. Generally, I find having a team that works wholly remote means that we schedule communications clearly and are able to maintain the focus on our work before us.

Guest42 6y ago
I think WFH works well because it takes extra effort to reach out to someone and therefore is used more as a necessity. For me, the office has lent itself to a number of one-off tasks that didn't end up being important that distracted working on the recurring production items that make a larger impact. Removing the starting and stopping lends itself to more productivity and being able to answer the phone as opposed to having to step out of the office after going down the elevator has been great.
- dleslie 6y ago
  I agree! Having a _minimal_ barrier to communication acts as a filter, in a similar way that requiring registration acts as a quality filter for a forum. Folks must gather interest in the meeting, rather than interrupt and demand focus; this, at minimum, gives them some time to reconsider the concepts that they want to raise with their coworkers.
  - biomcgary 6y ago
    Not just any minimal barrier. Extroverts wired to speak spontaneously (i.e., have high Foxp2 gene expression) are the most likely to disrupt others for non-functional reasons. Requiring verbal communication to be initiated through written means is a great way to increase the signal-to-noise threshold for communication. Meanwhile, those who are not spontaneously verbal have a relatively low barrier (a sentence in chat).
    - Guest42 6y ago
      Thank you, I have never seen that explanation and it certainly maps to behaviors that I've seen.
    - dleslie 6y ago
      Interesting! Do you have further reading I might be able to consume?
darksaints 6y ago
That seems pretty dismissive of the people who have trouble working from home because they have more distractions at home. Not everybody can be child free, single, and live in a quiet place.
- dleslie 6y ago
  I have a wife and two children six and under. Working from home has far less distractions than any office I've ever been in.
  - cortesoft 6y ago
    Do you have an office? My working space at home is a small corner of the living room, a few feet from the kitchen and dining room. There is no better space. Also, does your wife also work? I just can’t fathom how it isn’t distracting. My kids are two and five, so someone pretty much always has to be watching the two year old. You can’t fully focus on something while watching them. Even my daughter, who is five and can play by herself, is going to need something multiple times an hour; food, a different toy, to go to the bathroom, help getting something, etc.
    - solosoyokaze 6y ago
      If you work remotely, you can relocate to a much lower cost of living area. This way you can get much more space, including a dedicated office. This also can lower costs enough that only one parent has to work, making the other available to watch the kids.
      - cortesoft 6y ago
        Well, two parents working means the kids would be in daycare normally, that wouldn’t change with WFH or not. This is more of a pandemic issue than a WFH issue. Also, the choice of whether one or both parents work is about more than just money. For one thing, it is basically choosing to end your career; we might not wish it to be so, but getting back in the workforce after being out for years is very difficult, and will require moving down the career growth ladder quite a bit.
thelean12 6y ago
Your description of ideal working conditions sounds so robotic to me. Schedule everything! No off the cuff conversations! Screw the human desire for socializing, we've got shit to do! Right now my team is comprised of no one that I've met in person. I feel absolutely no connection to them and feel so incredibly disconnected from my work. Like I've been playing the same video game for 8 hours a day for a year and nothing I'm doing is real. I'm quite scared of hybrid or full remote solutions for my company. I don't want to switch companies right now but if they go full or hybrid WFH I might have to, just to keep my sanity.
- gregmac 6y ago
  Curious: Do you do regular video calls? Do you ever discuss anything aside from work? Even during a "work" discussion, do people make jokes, laugh, etc? Do you have chat (slack) channels, and are they active? Does anyone ever spontaneously post something like "hey, anyone feel like talking about x that I'm trying to sort out?" Is chat pure business or do people ever discuss anything else? These are all kind of leading questions, but the things that I think are key to making it work.
  - thelean12 6y ago
    Sure, we have all that. And maybe I'm just wired differently. I haven't made any real connections or friendships with my virtual coworkers over the past year. In the past when I joined a new IRL team, I'd have some budding friendships after a few team lunches. Maybe it's because there are hardly any actual real personal bonding moments. For example, lunch with 10 talking heads on a VC is insane to me since you can't have more than one conversation at once, and any conversation you have has to be with the entire group. You can't pick up on something someone said, realize someone else has the same interest as you and go sit next to them and talk it out. You have to have the 1:1 conversation in front of the whole group, or leave the group. That's just one example of why it seems so difficult to make real, genuine friendships at work now.
- dleslie 6y ago
  We actively talk over slack. There's a #random channel, a #stonks channel, et al. There's plenty of banter. But _anyone_ can mute those and focus. I _cannot_ mute a coworker talking loudly next to my desk.
heavyset_go 6y ago
> When I hear folks complain about the pains of working from home, what I often hear are their stories about how they were needlessly disruptive to their coworkers. What I hear are complaints about the consequences of the pandemic. That people have to work and babysit their kids during school. That both they and their partner are forced to share a workspace. That they miss changes of scenery, or that their home workspace isn't adequate enough to get work done. Before the pandemic, I would regularly rotate venues for where I got my work done. I'd go to different coffee shops and libraries. If I got bored of those places, I'd make it a point to go into different venues in different neighborhoods. When it was nice and warm out, I'd get work done in beach towns and enjoy the sea breeze. Several times a year, I'd book a hotel or short-term rental and work from a completely different city. At one point I rented a co-working space. During the pandemic, most of those places are closed. I can't travel, and I don't want to. If I want to enjoy the sea breeze, I better have enough battery life and reception to get my work done in a park. Yet I'm lucky in that I'm not forced to share my personal work space at home with others, and I'm not forced to be a babysitter on top of the job I'm paid to do.
- 908B64B197 6y ago
  Quarantine work from home isn't work from home. https://www.hanselman.com/blog/quarantine-work-is-not-remote-work https://www.hanselman.com/blog/quarantine-work-is-not-remote...
  - heavyset_go 6y ago
    I agree.
- HWR_14 6y ago
  >What I hear are complaints about the consequences of the pandemic How so (rhetorically asked)? > That both they and their partner are forced to share a workspace. That they miss changes of scenery, or that their home workspace isn't adequate enough to get work done. These all seem like problems that arise from WFH. Especially two people working from home. Inadequate workspace and isolation at home. > Before the pandemic, I would regularly rotate venues for where I got my work done. I'd go to different coffee shops and libraries. Yeah, if you can work from a coworking space (either formal or informal) that solves quite a few of those problems. That's different. Although I don't want to subsidize my employer's office rent, but I'm happy to direct their funds to a location I prefer. The other point I note is that you work on a laptop. You talk about taking it with you and other clues. How do you work on a small screen, touchpad, and a laptop keyboard. I'm honestly curious, because I've tried it many times and there must be some tricks I need to start employing. The lack of dual screens alone seems like it would kill productivity. (And sea air seems like it would kill your electronics.)
c3534l 6y ago
There are a lot of people who don't have nice home situations. Screaming babies, cramped spaces, constant interruptions - that sort of thing. For a programmer/tech worker that has a decent place to live, I'm not surprised you think it's easy.
- dleslie 6y ago
  During the ~6y I've worked at home, in my <900 sqft space, I've had two children and have had my whole family at home for months at a time due to the pandemic. Even so, it has never been nearly as disruptive and distracting as any office I have previously worked in.
pmarreck 6y ago
It may depend on the person and the job. Pre-pandemic I lasted only 4 months at a remote job. I kept asking to meet them (they were in Atlanta, me in Long Island, but most of them were scattered), meeting stakeholders in person gives me a charge which aids my focus and overall productivity. Anyway they kept deferring, and then one day sort of out of the blue and without warning (literally... the day prior the supervisor's supervisor did a call with me and it went well), the supervisor and a longstanding coworker both just started grilling me hard and when they didn't like my answers (note that I was still learning the very complex application codebase at this point) the supervisor basically decided it's not working out. This past year has terrified me with the idea that all tech work will now be done remotely. Fortunately I'm working on my own projects directly for clients but unfortunately it's not paying very well at the rate I'm being productive (which is "not very"). I am FAR more productive when working physically with other people (who also know intuitively when to not interrupt because they're also programmers).
- exotree 6y ago
  Why did you take a job that you knew was remote but insist on meeting the stakeholders in person? You shouldn’t have taken that job with that expectation.
  - pmarreck 6y ago
    They agreed to meet before I was hired, after I started, so they set up the expectation and then stalled on follow-through
- dleslie 6y ago
  I'm roughly 6 years into working from home; the pandemic isn't really a new experience for me. The first year was concerning because it was different and weird, but it rapidly became normal. Now, I reflect on how _slow_ office work was and find myself frustrated for my past self.
  - pmarreck 6y ago
    That’s great for you, but I don’t like feeling like a pariah or digital monk
newusr415 6y ago
I advocated for remote work pretty aggressively. I've been doing it now for about a year due to the pandemic, with the option of doing it permanently at my current employer. I'm not sure I'm that enthusiastic about it anymore. Life just seems a lot more boring to me. Every day is the same and it's become incredibly repetitive. I've been getting somewhat depressed about having this repetitive lifestyle for the next N years. I hadn't really felt this way before. It could be unrelated to remote work of course.
- toxik 6y ago
  Let it be said: The pandemic is a poor facsimile of remote work. Iow, working from home to quarantine is fundamentally not the same as remote work. In remote work, you can grab lunch with a friend, have a beer after work, or meet your grandparents. These things matter.

Guest42 6y ago

I think WFH works well because it takes extra effort to reach out to someone and therefore is used more as a necessity. For me, the office has lent itself to a number of one-off tasks that didn't end up being important that distracted working on the recurring production items that make a larger impact. Removing the starting and stopping lends itself to more productivity and being able to answer the phone as opposed to having to step out of the office after going down the elevator has been great.

dleslie 6y ago
I agree! Having a _minimal_ barrier to communication acts as a filter, in a similar way that requiring registration acts as a quality filter for a forum. Folks must gather interest in the meeting, rather than interrupt and demand focus; this, at minimum, gives them some time to reconsider the concepts that they want to raise with their coworkers.
- biomcgary 6y ago
  Not just any minimal barrier. Extroverts wired to speak spontaneously (i.e., have high Foxp2 gene expression) are the most likely to disrupt others for non-functional reasons. Requiring verbal communication to be initiated through written means is a great way to increase the signal-to-noise threshold for communication. Meanwhile, those who are not spontaneously verbal have a relatively low barrier (a sentence in chat).
  - Guest42 6y ago
    Thank you, I have never seen that explanation and it certainly maps to behaviors that I've seen.
  - dleslie 6y ago
    Interesting! Do you have further reading I might be able to consume?

darksaints 6y ago

That seems pretty dismissive of the people who have trouble working from home because they have more distractions at home. Not everybody can be child free, single, and live in a quiet place.

dleslie 6y ago
I have a wife and two children six and under. Working from home has far less distractions than any office I've ever been in.
- cortesoft 6y ago
  Do you have an office? My working space at home is a small corner of the living room, a few feet from the kitchen and dining room. There is no better space. Also, does your wife also work? I just can’t fathom how it isn’t distracting. My kids are two and five, so someone pretty much always has to be watching the two year old. You can’t fully focus on something while watching them. Even my daughter, who is five and can play by herself, is going to need something multiple times an hour; food, a different toy, to go to the bathroom, help getting something, etc.
  - solosoyokaze 6y ago
    If you work remotely, you can relocate to a much lower cost of living area. This way you can get much more space, including a dedicated office. This also can lower costs enough that only one parent has to work, making the other available to watch the kids.
    - cortesoft 6y ago
      Well, two parents working means the kids would be in daycare normally, that wouldn’t change with WFH or not. This is more of a pandemic issue than a WFH issue. Also, the choice of whether one or both parents work is about more than just money. For one thing, it is basically choosing to end your career; we might not wish it to be so, but getting back in the workforce after being out for years is very difficult, and will require moving down the career growth ladder quite a bit.

thelean12 6y ago

Your description of ideal working conditions sounds so robotic to me. Schedule everything! No off the cuff conversations! Screw the human desire for socializing, we've got shit to do! Right now my team is comprised of no one that I've met in person. I feel absolutely no connection to them and feel so incredibly disconnected from my work. Like I've been playing the same video game for 8 hours a day for a year and nothing I'm doing is real. I'm quite scared of hybrid or full remote solutions for my company. I don't want to switch companies right now but if they go full or hybrid WFH I might have to, just to keep my sanity.

gregmac 6y ago
Curious: Do you do regular video calls? Do you ever discuss anything aside from work? Even during a "work" discussion, do people make jokes, laugh, etc? Do you have chat (slack) channels, and are they active? Does anyone ever spontaneously post something like "hey, anyone feel like talking about x that I'm trying to sort out?" Is chat pure business or do people ever discuss anything else? These are all kind of leading questions, but the things that I think are key to making it work.
- thelean12 6y ago
  Sure, we have all that. And maybe I'm just wired differently. I haven't made any real connections or friendships with my virtual coworkers over the past year. In the past when I joined a new IRL team, I'd have some budding friendships after a few team lunches. Maybe it's because there are hardly any actual real personal bonding moments. For example, lunch with 10 talking heads on a VC is insane to me since you can't have more than one conversation at once, and any conversation you have has to be with the entire group. You can't pick up on something someone said, realize someone else has the same interest as you and go sit next to them and talk it out. You have to have the 1:1 conversation in front of the whole group, or leave the group. That's just one example of why it seems so difficult to make real, genuine friendships at work now.
dleslie 6y ago
We actively talk over slack. There's a #random channel, a #stonks channel, et al. There's plenty of banter. But _anyone_ can mute those and focus. I _cannot_ mute a coworker talking loudly next to my desk.

heavyset_go 6y ago

> When I hear folks complain about the pains of working from home, what I often hear are their stories about how they were needlessly disruptive to their coworkers. What I hear are complaints about the consequences of the pandemic. That people have to work and babysit their kids during school. That both they and their partner are forced to share a workspace. That they miss changes of scenery, or that their home workspace isn't adequate enough to get work done. Before the pandemic, I would regularly rotate venues for where I got my work done. I'd go to different coffee shops and libraries. If I got bored of those places, I'd make it a point to go into different venues in different neighborhoods. When it was nice and warm out, I'd get work done in beach towns and enjoy the sea breeze. Several times a year, I'd book a hotel or short-term rental and work from a completely different city. At one point I rented a co-working space. During the pandemic, most of those places are closed. I can't travel, and I don't want to. If I want to enjoy the sea breeze, I better have enough battery life and reception to get my work done in a park. Yet I'm lucky in that I'm not forced to share my personal work space at home with others, and I'm not forced to be a babysitter on top of the job I'm paid to do.

908B64B197 6y ago
Quarantine work from home isn't work from home. https://www.hanselman.com/blog/quarantine-work-is-not-remote-work https://www.hanselman.com/blog/quarantine-work-is-not-remote...
- heavyset_go 6y ago
  I agree.
HWR_14 6y ago
>What I hear are complaints about the consequences of the pandemic How so (rhetorically asked)? > That both they and their partner are forced to share a workspace. That they miss changes of scenery, or that their home workspace isn't adequate enough to get work done. These all seem like problems that arise from WFH. Especially two people working from home. Inadequate workspace and isolation at home. > Before the pandemic, I would regularly rotate venues for where I got my work done. I'd go to different coffee shops and libraries. Yeah, if you can work from a coworking space (either formal or informal) that solves quite a few of those problems. That's different. Although I don't want to subsidize my employer's office rent, but I'm happy to direct their funds to a location I prefer. The other point I note is that you work on a laptop. You talk about taking it with you and other clues. How do you work on a small screen, touchpad, and a laptop keyboard. I'm honestly curious, because I've tried it many times and there must be some tricks I need to start employing. The lack of dual screens alone seems like it would kill productivity. (And sea air seems like it would kill your electronics.)

c3534l 6y ago

There are a lot of people who don't have nice home situations. Screaming babies, cramped spaces, constant interruptions - that sort of thing. For a programmer/tech worker that has a decent place to live, I'm not surprised you think it's easy.

dleslie 6y ago
During the ~6y I've worked at home, in my <900 sqft space, I've had two children and have had my whole family at home for months at a time due to the pandemic. Even so, it has never been nearly as disruptive and distracting as any office I have previously worked in.

pmarreck 6y ago

It may depend on the person and the job. Pre-pandemic I lasted only 4 months at a remote job. I kept asking to meet them (they were in Atlanta, me in Long Island, but most of them were scattered), meeting stakeholders in person gives me a charge which aids my focus and overall productivity. Anyway they kept deferring, and then one day sort of out of the blue and without warning (literally... the day prior the supervisor's supervisor did a call with me and it went well), the supervisor and a longstanding coworker both just started grilling me hard and when they didn't like my answers (note that I was still learning the very complex application codebase at this point) the supervisor basically decided it's not working out. This past year has terrified me with the idea that all tech work will now be done remotely. Fortunately I'm working on my own projects directly for clients but unfortunately it's not paying very well at the rate I'm being productive (which is "not very"). I am FAR more productive when working physically with other people (who also know intuitively when to not interrupt because they're also programmers).

exotree 6y ago
Why did you take a job that you knew was remote but insist on meeting the stakeholders in person? You shouldn’t have taken that job with that expectation.
- pmarreck 6y ago
  They agreed to meet before I was hired, after I started, so they set up the expectation and then stalled on follow-through
dleslie 6y ago
I'm roughly 6 years into working from home; the pandemic isn't really a new experience for me. The first year was concerning because it was different and weird, but it rapidly became normal. Now, I reflect on how _slow_ office work was and find myself frustrated for my past self.
- pmarreck 6y ago
  That’s great for you, but I don’t like feeling like a pariah or digital monk

newusr415 6y ago

I advocated for remote work pretty aggressively. I've been doing it now for about a year due to the pandemic, with the option of doing it permanently at my current employer. I'm not sure I'm that enthusiastic about it anymore. Life just seems a lot more boring to me. Every day is the same and it's become incredibly repetitive. I've been getting somewhat depressed about having this repetitive lifestyle for the next N years. I hadn't really felt this way before. It could be unrelated to remote work of course.

toxik 6y ago
Let it be said: The pandemic is a poor facsimile of remote work. Iow, working from home to quarantine is fundamentally not the same as remote work. In remote work, you can grab lunch with a friend, have a beer after work, or meet your grandparents. These things matter.