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I've been working remote for about 10 years. I've had "real" offices. I've worked in open-plan offices. I've had a home office. I've worked from bed. There

I've been working remote for about 10 years. I've had "real" offices. I've worked in open-plan offices. I've had a home office. I've worked from bed. There are tons of good ways to do it. Lately I swap between a kitchen table and a chair on my porch. I no longer use multiple screens, I've just gotten really fast at swapping windows on my 15" laptop; I've gotten good at figuring out how wide my terminal window breaks should be and where my browser dev tools should sit. Surely there are more optimal ways of doing stuff. Odds are that there is a Taylorist approach that would pull more productivity out of me. But much like my typing speed (~50WPM) isn't really the limiting factor in my programming skill, screen real estate isn't a big factor in getting stuff done for me. But the big thing for me is that, in the end, it's fine for me to switch stuff up on a monthly or quarterly or yearly basis. I could never have done that when I was in an office. I couldn't take 20 min and play banjo or accordion and come back to my problem with a fresh eye. I couldn't put on my laundry and hang it up while I listen to other folks on the daily stand up. I couldn't start my lunch cooking in the instapot while waiting for a script to finish running. It would take a hard, hard sell to get me back in an office, not matter how much real and legitimate enjoyment and utility other folks get in an office.

neither_color 5y ago
Getting asynchronous chores done like laundry, dishwashing, and cooking/baking are the best part of working from home.
- hippari 5y ago
  Totally agree, I cook more food, learned more recipe, wash my clothes more frequently, my house is more clean and organized. Contrasting to a 9-5 job, I would rather just order takeaways after getting back home from the office.
  - chronogram 5y ago
    It’s great how everyone works so differently. When I am alone, working from home, I can’t find a proper mental break anywhere and everything becomes a mess and I eat worse. Having a physical work/life split makes me cook more food, learn more recipes, and gives me a constant fresh look at my home and items to make sure it’s clean and tidy. In the WFH situation it’s suddenly 20:00 and I’m starving and just look to snack or even go so far as to order food, but when I work away from home I have the train ride back to browse which supermarket I’ll shop at and message with a friend on how and what we’ll each be making.
    - ed_elliott_asc 5y ago
      Have you tried setting alarms on your phone and when you start/stop go for a short walk? One thing I do to separate work from home is to get changed. Wake up in underwear, lounge until work start alarm then get dressed/go for walk/start work - end of work alarm go for walk/get changed - helps me with the mindset of what is work and what is not. I don’t always need to do this, just when it starts to affect me.
    - fouc 5y ago
      Can you create a work/life spilt by having a separate office in a separate part of the house? Or even have an external office on the property. If you knew you can work remotely 100% of the time, that frees you up to consider cheaper locations where you can get a better house for the same rent.
    - asd4232 5y ago
      This. I like WFH as a concept, but I feel like it would require a separate office room to really work, and right now I don't have the space for that. Working from living room just mixes up work and leisure really badly.
      - alanwreath 5y ago
        I’m my case having a “separate office room” is just occupying the space where I might have had the family computer or my gaming station. I have always had that space, at least since the days of my ok’ packard bell and kings quest!
      - slumdev 5y ago
        I intend this with all the charity in the world, but it does need to be blunt because comments like yours are influencing decision makers to force everyone to come back, whether it's full time or in a so-called "hybrid" model. You've had a year and a half to adjust. If you don't want to move, you could easily rent office space near your home. Your lack of planning does not constitute an emergency for everyone who is happier and more productive at home.
    - mark_l_watson 5y ago
- helsinkiandrew 5y ago
  This is the biggest improvement in my ‘quality of life’ from working from home. I’m still not totally convinced I don’t like working with others around me, but the ability to eat well, integrate exercise and chores into the breaks away from the screen i’d take in the office anyway are priceless.
- dartiss 5y ago
  Absolutely, 100%. And I find too that it doesn't even reduce down your working time too - an awful lot of thinking time in an office is when you get up from your desk and walk to the watercooler, bathroom, whatever. I do so much thinking and working out whilst doing these home chores.
- ngngngng 5y ago
  Personally I have a MUCH easier time paying attention if I busy my hands with something mindless like dishes. This has been ruined lately by me becoming the guy that runs the meetings, but hopefully I can change that soon since I really dislike running meetings and would much rather wash dishes.
bpye 5y ago
I have a desk with dual monitors and a laptop dock where I do most of my work, but sometimes that just isn’t where I want to be. The biggest win is the flexibility, I can be in bed, on the sofa or outside and do the same stuff I do sat at my desk.
mojuba 5y ago
That's work from home brilliantly summarized, very true. However, I have my doubts about productivity in smaller teams and startups. Being in the same space physically I think speeds up a lot of things. In small teams and esp. at early stage startups your whole day is a meeting where things are discussed and resolved spontaneously. Sometimes it is important to have an environment where information is exchanged dynamically and in an unordered fashion, as opposed to structured meetings, schedules and planning that become necessary in fully remote teams. Then there's the social part. At least don't forget to do regular meetups in real life if you can. Honestly, I'm very divided over this. Is there a way to have the spontaneity and dynamism of working in small teams in real life, and have the comfort and freedom of working from home?
- thiht 5y ago
  You can have that remotely. In my team we (8 people) spend our whole day on a visio conference room. We’re mainly idle but we use it to ask for help, discuss decisions informally, vent, talk about whatever(games, movies, etc.), all of that exactly the same as in the open space, but better because we can still disconnect if we need to focus. If we need a real meeting or need to talk with a specific subject, we just go to another conference room, in the same way we’d use a meeting room in the office. The thing though is that we have a dedicated device for the visio. For now it’s a Cisco DX but it could work with an iPad for example.
  - iambateman 5y ago
    Are you not self conscious, constantly? The massive difference between what you describe and sitting in person is body noise. A cough in an office is normal while a cough in a video chat gets everyone’s attention. I feel like it would be very draining but it sounds like you’re enjoying it?
    - NortySpock 5y ago
      I usually use Push-To-Talk mode on most video calls when I can. I'm not perfect about it, but I do manage to mute probably 90% of throat-clearing noises or 75% of my typing.
snicker7 5y ago
> I could never have done that when I was in an office. I couldn't take 20 min and play banjo or accordion and come back to my problem with a fresh eye I mean ... you could.
- refactor_master 5y ago
  “Oh that guy over there? He’s our chief architect. Don’t ruin his banjo break.”
- scarecrowbob 5y ago
  I should say, "I wouldn't have felt free to do that in the situations I've been in". And maybe that's just a supposition that I was making. People pay me to play music-- it's not that I'm bad at it. But there are a lot of reasons ranging from not annoying other folks to not looking like I care more about playing scales than fixing a problem which make me think I should not do that kind of thing.
amatecha 5y ago
Right? Imagine having even a minimal amount of agency over your surroundings and immediate environment.
samsonradu 5y ago
This is spot on. The 'bottleneck' in programming is not the screen size or typing speed but the I/O of information in the brain. I too stopped using multiple screens some time ago because it felt like being overwhelmed with information and experiencing fatigue, while not being more productive.
- Aeolun 5y ago
  I stopped using multiple screens, but only because my 4K (at home) and ultrawide (in the office) can fit everything I need. I wouldn’t do the same with 1080p.
robbedpeter 5y ago
>>... play banjo or accordion Being able to noodle on a guitar while stepping away from a problem is a super power for me. If you work from home, get an instrument you can distract yourself with. The music or drills can break you out of ruts, and if you do it half seriously, you can develop real skill. The oh so serious kabuki show we all play out in offices, especially open plans, wastes a lot of mental energy on "professionalism" and decor. People get away with being good at that type of theater, instead of being competent problem solvers, or try to turn those things into leverage for internal politics and career maneuvering. If people are doing knowledge work, then the privacy of their home gets rid of all the unnecessary play acting. Maybe the pandemic will demonstrate once and for all that an employee with a good work ethic can be lots more effective from home than at the office. And if we encourage music and creativity and development of other relaxation and focusing skills in service of optimizing mental acuity, that leads to a better world.
- mark_l_watson 5y ago
  +1 and I like your writing style: “””The oh so serious kabuki show we all play out in offices, especially open plans, wastes a lot of mental energy on "professionalism" and decor.”””
- long_time_gone 5y ago
  ==If people are doing knowledge work, then the privacy of their home gets rid of all the unnecessary play acting. == Except for all the hours you spend on video calls where people are looking directly into your home. If you use some type of background to blur your home, that becomes the same type of "kabuki show" you reference about offices. ==Maybe the pandemic will demonstrate once and for all that an employee with a good work ethic can be lots more effective from home than at the office. == Maybe you have a bias here? I know lots of people with "good work ethics" who feel less productive at home.
zz865 5y ago
> I've just gotten really fast at swapping windows on my 15" laptop; How's your spine? my neck can't handle laptops any more.
- alpaca128 5y ago
  I really don't know much in this area but this seems to be more of a posture thing. A physiotherapist told me he only uses laptops because apparently that's the best combined with the right table and chair due to the tilted, low screen. In my experience he's at least not completely wrong, but in the long term I still aim to try a standing desk to mix it up, sooner or later sitting in general feels wrong when I overdo it. And I just prefer a single large screen. Enough to fit two windows beside each other with enough space for any situation.
  - tonyedgecombe 5y ago
    I suspect the real problem is lack of movement. If you spend long periods of time in the same position no matter how good your posture is it is going to cause a problem.
- scarecrowbob 5y ago
  To be honest, I am in better shape than I have ever been in my life, but that's cause I'm 43 and rock climb regularly. IMO, core strength has been the big change in how my spine feels.
- throwaway675309 5y ago
  Best thing is to get an external keyboard, otherwise the screen will be too low and your neck will be perpetually craned downward (same issue with prolonged smartphone usage), or you set the laptop on a pedestal so it's eye level, but now your typing like a praying mantis.
pawelwentpawel 5y ago
Bringing up an anecdotal edge case, a couple years ago I have attended a viewing in a coworking space (Bricklane, London) where members had to sit on old recycled school chairs because that was the "design". Apparently you need to get a sciatica to look like a hipster coder. Having the right setup is not only about making your brain more productive - it's about keeping your spine pain free. While my home office is set up for this purpose, only one company that I have worked with so far had this aspect in mind. In the past, I had to take days off because of terrible set ups and long work hours. Having a well positioned and large second monitor helps a lot. You have much more control over this while designing your home office. Working from bed is not the way unless you're planning to marry a physiotherapist in the future.
- christophergs 5y ago
  This, this, a thousand times this.
- alanwreath 5y ago
  Yep, plus I’ve already learned that (for me) doing work or study in bed means I’ll be either asleep or uncomfortable soon.
- wccrawford 5y ago
  The chair thing is always amazing to me. I worked at a company that had crappy chairs (because they claimed they couldn't afford better). One of my team decided that they needed a good chair for medical reasons and asked for it. They got a really nice chair. I don't know if anyone complained, but it wasn't long before the whole team had really nice chairs. The cost was negligible compared to the morale boost, IMO. I don't think I ever looked at that chair without thinking, "Man, that's a good chair!" When I got a new job that had crappy chairs, I bought myself a new chair right away without even asking. Whenever I upgraded, I'd give my old one to anyone on my team that wanted it. I don't know if they cared much, but it sure made me feel better.
  - dimitrios1 5y ago
    Now imagine if you got an office with a door!
brainzap 5y ago
Same, moving is key. I once was much in bed and it caused neck and headaches for month.
mech422 5y ago
I've been working from home 20 years now, and I have the opposite setup from you. I've got a much nicer setup then I ever had in offices - from 3 monitors to my favorite keyboards. As I get older and my eyes get worse, I really appreciate the space the monitors give me. I do agree about going back to an office... Its not really something I anticipate doing.
- cmsj 5y ago
  ~10 years WFH here and my approach is similar to yours - my home office has become almost ludicrously well equipped. My approach is that I think about how much commuting would cost me, and consider that a reasonable amount to invest in my working space at home. As a result, I have a very small, but very functional space that I feel good about sitting in for 8 hours a day. I'm comfortable, I'm calm, and when I need to think, I don't feel stressed by my environment. Edit: to give some examples - I have very carefully chosen art for the walls that I can stare at and my mind can drift, when I need to solve problems. I had a desk custom made to give me the most amount of space because this is a very small room (~3m x ~2.5m) that regular desks can't make the best use of. I have great audio gear (mic, headphones and speakers), carefully tuned lighting, etc, etc. In isolation the thousands I've spent on this room seems kind-of ridiculous, but compared to the thousands more I haven't spent on commuting and compared to the satisfaction I get when sitting in here, I think it was absolutely worth it, and I am very grateful that I was privileged enough to be able to make all these choices.
ksec 5y ago
Just reading this got me thinking. Something may be obvious but I have yet to see anyone written or pointing it out. Does Remote Work prevent burn out?
- nix23 5y ago
  That's a mental thing and it's as easy as it gets to prevent it: 1. Your work is not your life. 2. Since it's not your life, don't get too invested in it. 3. Plan your free time ahead and fill it with stuff that makes you happy. 4. Eat good, sleep good, and Sport sport sport (from everything a good amount and not too much) 5. Don't take drugs on regular "recreational" basis (yes alcohol is especially included here) 6. If your away from work, don't think about it.
- dsr_ 5y ago
  No, it's a tool, not a panacea. If you are feeling disconnected from the value of your work, being away from other people doesn't reconnect you. If you are fire-fighting one emergency after another, not seeing other people in vivo doesn't get you downtime.
- nayaketo 5y ago
  Not at all. It might actually cause you to burnout if you begin to feel your work has encroached on your personal life. I went through a rough phase a while back because of this.
  - Ocerge 5y ago
    Not sure why you got downvoted; remote work has been awful for me mental health wise since COVID. Not every dev wants to sit at home all day while they work. The separation and social interaction are important for me.
holoduke 5y ago
Working from home only possible with experienced devs. Once you have lots of juniors, it's very difficult to coach them. Juniors need to be able to contact fellow devs randomly and not via a zoom call.
- llharper 5y ago
  I’ve been mentoring two juniors at work and I prefer zoom actually. It’s a lot easier for me to share my screen with the both of them than it is to all huddle around my desk. If they run into a problem they ping me on slack and we hop on a call together. It’s not any harder than strolling over to my desk.
  - keskival 5y ago
    In Finland there used to be a culture of everyone from high school upwards living in chatrooms or IRC, so it has been extremely natural for people to "idle" on chat channels and interact naturally over those. I would say chat channels feel much more intimate and social environment to me than sitting in an office. Even when we worked in offices we had IRC or Slack or other channels open and interacted over those rather than by actually walking around and talking. It's simply much more effective, asynchronous, and leaves a log of what was said and agreed.
mark_l_watson 5y ago
You have summarized the good experiences I have had working from home (except onsite for a while at Google and Capital One) since my wife and I moved to a small town in the mountains of Central Arizona in 1998. I have two areas of my yard where I can work, one is always shady, I have a dedicated office, but also work in the living room and kitchen table. I have a nice external monitor on my desk, but I don’t really need it for most writing or work tasks.
Cthulhu_ 5y ago
I've done WFH for a year and a half now (and the odd day in the years before that), and I still kinda struggle; it's easy to let the distractions take hold, and it costs me energy to get started on work. Mind you, the work is not the most exciting at the moment either. That said, as other commenters have mentioned, there is value (for me) to work in a team and to have others actually depend on me and my progress; I need a bit of external pressure. At the moment it's mainly self-pressure / self-motivation, which isn't the best. I do think in the future I'll pursue jobs where I'm both independent but also replaceable, because at the moment I'm not replaceable so I don't feel like I can move on yet.
- alanwreath 5y ago
  “ I'll pursue jobs where I'm both independent but also replaceable” I totally get the pressure felt when you’re not yet replaceable. At least from the responsible, not wishing to burn bridges vantage point. It can add stress because it means vacations are only half spent and makes other opportunities seem wrong to take because you know you’d be leaving the company in a bad state. And mind you this is at the same time as trying to spread as much knowledge around as possible. Small teams can make this more common.
AJ007 5y ago
Here is my first hand experience from roughly 15 years of working from home at this point, with a little office time mixed in. This is the right approach from an ergonomic standpoint - cycle through how you sit/stand while working and you’ll minimize a lot of joint issues. If some position is causing you issues, it’s easy to identify and effortless to switch. At minimum it isn’t healthy to sit for hours straight. It’s also easy to mix in a few workouts or use some sort of treadmill or stationary bike. Years ago I went from 3 27” screens down to 1 12” MacBook and had no loss in productivity. I was primarily doing design and data analysis work. DPI and OS window management matters more unless you have vision issues.
mumblemumble 5y ago
> screen real estate isn't a big factor in getting stuff done for me Lately, I've been wondering if less screen real estate actually makes me a better programmer. Being able to simultaneously have 6 files open across two large monitors with a lot of vertical real estate means that messy code doesn't hurt me as much. In fact, I'm pretty sure the only reason I do that is to facilitate dealing with messy code. I no longer have to build a stable mental model of it in my head, because it's reasonably convenient to just keep referring back to the original source code. When I'm just on the laptop screen, though, and I can fit one file full width, or two if I've been good about keeping the line length below 90, I start having to keep things in my short term memory. Which means that, when it's not amenable to that, I'm relatively quick to get annoyed and refactor it for comprehensibility. I'd like to think that, with time, I'd eventually come to just write more comprehensible code in the first place. A couple more data points here, obviously riddled with bias, come from my colleagues. Some have desktop computers with multiple 4K monitors, some have a laptop connected to a single external monitor, and some have that and also a habit of unplugging the computer and working on the front porch whenever the weather is nice. My impression is that the people in the first group tend to write the least comprehensible code. Of course, the 4K monitor jocks also tend to work the fastest. But I think it's maybe a bit like when I used to work for building contractor. Nobody liked to be on the same crew as the person who worked the fastest.
- kevstev 5y ago
  So it seems I accidentally nuked my Macbook pro two nights ago after my dog spilled a glass of water on my nightstand and splashed some onto MBP- I thought it was an indirect hit, but the next morning I plugged it in and appeared to have shorted some stuff out internally, and even worse- it seems to have shorted out my thunderbolt monitor too. So I was forced to just use my Macbook Air, and I was preparing for a massive productivity hit, and tbh- I think it may have actually helped a bit- I don't think we realize how much we get distracted by having email and slack or whatever open all the time, and just being able to focus on one task at a time visually was actually kind of a relief. Long term, I am going to want monitors back and all, but I think there is a real benefit to keeping the things that are not 100% your attention at that moment entirely minimized and out of view.
- 5y ago
EvanAnderson 5y ago
I worked from home for around 15 years and I miss it tremendously. I think my productivity was much better when my "take a moment from work" diversions were exactly the things you described-- doing some laundry, washing some dishes, preparing lunch, etc. I'm back in a traditional office setting. My diversions are mostly the "surf around on the Internet" variety. That's not to say random Internet use didn't happen when I worked at home, but I found I enjoyed random non-computer diversions far more than sitting viewing websites. Now that I'm in an office those non-computer diversions aren't an option. I just end up wasting time on websites when I need a break. I also really, really miss working from my couch with my 15" laptop on my lap. It was vastly more comfortable than any desk setup I've ever had and discouraged me from hoarding physical articles in drawers, corners of a desk, etc.
mgkimsal 5y ago
I've gone the opposite way. I did WFH/remote for ... years, always on a single laptop. I was very mobile - f2f client meetings, work from coffee shop, work from hotels, etc. In the last year, as travel/f2f was essentially taken off the table, I've moved to laptop with 2 external monitors, and just recently to 'desktop' setup. I still have the laptop, and use it to work from home now and then, but I'm slowly getting used to more screen real estate. It's not even so much 2 monitors, just a much larger main one. 32" vs the 15" has been a big difference, mostly for the better. But... I had years of comments from a lot of folks about "no idea how you can get anything done from just one laptop - that screen is so small, etc."
usrusr 5y ago
> I couldn't put on my laundry and hang it up while I listen to other folks on the daily stand up. Yeah, there's a secret value in low level distractions: they prevent higher level distractions. When you go into a deep focus environment for that daily, chances are your mind will focus deeply on something entirely unrelated.
gmadsen 5y ago
I never understand the ability to work on a laptop. For me it would be a significant blow to my productivity. How do people do it? I have 3 full monitors, one for running 10 or so processes that I can glance at stdout, then the other two monitors for having many different editor files open, numerous data plots, and multiple reference guides open, etc.
- Forge36 5y ago
  On windows I alt tab often. I close anything not related to work keeping the list of windows short (maybe 5 at most). Split screen some where appropriate. My home office is 2 monitors. My work office is 3, however I only find myself using 2
- honkdaddy 5y ago
  Different engineers do different work. Not everyone is running 10+ processes and referring to reference guides all day, some, like myself, spend most of our days writing emails or reviewing PRs, neither of which really necessitate lots of screen real estate.
- deeblering4 5y ago
  I have 8 full virtual desktops. I can switch screens without even moving my head.
- aledalgrande 5y ago
  Virtual desktops and 3 finger swipes for me too. I cannot understand how having multiple apps visible helps, because you have to continuously switch your eye focus and if you have distracting apps like Slack in your field it's even worse. So laptop with 1 window maximized is the best for me. And the mobility that it allows: move to the sofa, armchair, cafe, I even deployed from a taxi. I tried to buy and use external keyboard and trackpad on my standup desk during the pandemic, but I returned the same day - the distance between the position of keys and the trackpad was so weird after years of laptop only.
  - gmadsen 5y ago
    thinking about it, I'm probably really biased. I do robotics, so live analysis of sensors, processed data output running on a real platform as well as involved simulations is part of my process. I need to be able to glance at data and plots quickly without changing my current screen
systemvoltage 5y ago
> I couldn't put on my laundry and hang it up while I listen to other folks on the daily stand up. I think stand-ups are useless.
908B64B197 5y ago
> Surely there are more optimal ways of doing stuff. Odds are that there is a Taylorist approach that would pull more productivity out of me. But much like my typing speed (~50WPM) isn't really the limiting factor in my programming skill, screen real estate isn't a big factor in getting stuff done for me. Your work habits suggest the best "Taylorist" improvement might just be to let you roam. Seems to be working best. > I could never have done that when I was in an office. I couldn't take 20 min and play banjo or accordion and come back to my problem with a fresh eye. I've seen music/game rooms at good companies. If a company can't set aside some space for breaks, that's a red flag.

neither_color 5y ago

Getting asynchronous chores done like laundry, dishwashing, and cooking/baking are the best part of working from home.

hippari 5y ago
Totally agree, I cook more food, learned more recipe, wash my clothes more frequently, my house is more clean and organized. Contrasting to a 9-5 job, I would rather just order takeaways after getting back home from the office.
- chronogram 5y ago
  It’s great how everyone works so differently. When I am alone, working from home, I can’t find a proper mental break anywhere and everything becomes a mess and I eat worse. Having a physical work/life split makes me cook more food, learn more recipes, and gives me a constant fresh look at my home and items to make sure it’s clean and tidy. In the WFH situation it’s suddenly 20:00 and I’m starving and just look to snack or even go so far as to order food, but when I work away from home I have the train ride back to browse which supermarket I’ll shop at and message with a friend on how and what we’ll each be making.
  - ed_elliott_asc 5y ago
    Have you tried setting alarms on your phone and when you start/stop go for a short walk? One thing I do to separate work from home is to get changed. Wake up in underwear, lounge until work start alarm then get dressed/go for walk/start work - end of work alarm go for walk/get changed - helps me with the mindset of what is work and what is not. I don’t always need to do this, just when it starts to affect me.
  - fouc 5y ago
    Can you create a work/life spilt by having a separate office in a separate part of the house? Or even have an external office on the property. If you knew you can work remotely 100% of the time, that frees you up to consider cheaper locations where you can get a better house for the same rent.
  - asd4232 5y ago
    This. I like WFH as a concept, but I feel like it would require a separate office room to really work, and right now I don't have the space for that. Working from living room just mixes up work and leisure really badly.
    - alanwreath 5y ago
      I’m my case having a “separate office room” is just occupying the space where I might have had the family computer or my gaming station. I have always had that space, at least since the days of my ok’ packard bell and kings quest!
    - slumdev 5y ago
      I intend this with all the charity in the world, but it does need to be blunt because comments like yours are influencing decision makers to force everyone to come back, whether it's full time or in a so-called "hybrid" model. You've had a year and a half to adjust. If you don't want to move, you could easily rent office space near your home. Your lack of planning does not constitute an emergency for everyone who is happier and more productive at home.
  - mark_l_watson 5y ago
helsinkiandrew 5y ago
This is the biggest improvement in my ‘quality of life’ from working from home. I’m still not totally convinced I don’t like working with others around me, but the ability to eat well, integrate exercise and chores into the breaks away from the screen i’d take in the office anyway are priceless.
dartiss 5y ago
Absolutely, 100%. And I find too that it doesn't even reduce down your working time too - an awful lot of thinking time in an office is when you get up from your desk and walk to the watercooler, bathroom, whatever. I do so much thinking and working out whilst doing these home chores.
ngngngng 5y ago
Personally I have a MUCH easier time paying attention if I busy my hands with something mindless like dishes. This has been ruined lately by me becoming the guy that runs the meetings, but hopefully I can change that soon since I really dislike running meetings and would much rather wash dishes.

bpye 5y ago

I have a desk with dual monitors and a laptop dock where I do most of my work, but sometimes that just isn’t where I want to be. The biggest win is the flexibility, I can be in bed, on the sofa or outside and do the same stuff I do sat at my desk.

mojuba 5y ago

That's work from home brilliantly summarized, very true. However, I have my doubts about productivity in smaller teams and startups. Being in the same space physically I think speeds up a lot of things. In small teams and esp. at early stage startups your whole day is a meeting where things are discussed and resolved spontaneously. Sometimes it is important to have an environment where information is exchanged dynamically and in an unordered fashion, as opposed to structured meetings, schedules and planning that become necessary in fully remote teams. Then there's the social part. At least don't forget to do regular meetups in real life if you can. Honestly, I'm very divided over this. Is there a way to have the spontaneity and dynamism of working in small teams in real life, and have the comfort and freedom of working from home?

thiht 5y ago
You can have that remotely. In my team we (8 people) spend our whole day on a visio conference room. We’re mainly idle but we use it to ask for help, discuss decisions informally, vent, talk about whatever(games, movies, etc.), all of that exactly the same as in the open space, but better because we can still disconnect if we need to focus. If we need a real meeting or need to talk with a specific subject, we just go to another conference room, in the same way we’d use a meeting room in the office. The thing though is that we have a dedicated device for the visio. For now it’s a Cisco DX but it could work with an iPad for example.
- iambateman 5y ago
  Are you not self conscious, constantly? The massive difference between what you describe and sitting in person is body noise. A cough in an office is normal while a cough in a video chat gets everyone’s attention. I feel like it would be very draining but it sounds like you’re enjoying it?
  - NortySpock 5y ago
    I usually use Push-To-Talk mode on most video calls when I can. I'm not perfect about it, but I do manage to mute probably 90% of throat-clearing noises or 75% of my typing.

snicker7 5y ago

> I could never have done that when I was in an office. I couldn't take 20 min and play banjo or accordion and come back to my problem with a fresh eye I mean ... you could.

refactor_master 5y ago
“Oh that guy over there? He’s our chief architect. Don’t ruin his banjo break.”
scarecrowbob 5y ago
I should say, "I wouldn't have felt free to do that in the situations I've been in". And maybe that's just a supposition that I was making. People pay me to play music-- it's not that I'm bad at it. But there are a lot of reasons ranging from not annoying other folks to not looking like I care more about playing scales than fixing a problem which make me think I should not do that kind of thing.

amatecha 5y ago

Right? Imagine having even a minimal amount of agency over your surroundings and immediate environment.

samsonradu 5y ago

This is spot on. The 'bottleneck' in programming is not the screen size or typing speed but the I/O of information in the brain. I too stopped using multiple screens some time ago because it felt like being overwhelmed with information and experiencing fatigue, while not being more productive.

Aeolun 5y ago
I stopped using multiple screens, but only because my 4K (at home) and ultrawide (in the office) can fit everything I need. I wouldn’t do the same with 1080p.

robbedpeter 5y ago

>>... play banjo or accordion Being able to noodle on a guitar while stepping away from a problem is a super power for me. If you work from home, get an instrument you can distract yourself with. The music or drills can break you out of ruts, and if you do it half seriously, you can develop real skill. The oh so serious kabuki show we all play out in offices, especially open plans, wastes a lot of mental energy on "professionalism" and decor. People get away with being good at that type of theater, instead of being competent problem solvers, or try to turn those things into leverage for internal politics and career maneuvering. If people are doing knowledge work, then the privacy of their home gets rid of all the unnecessary play acting. Maybe the pandemic will demonstrate once and for all that an employee with a good work ethic can be lots more effective from home than at the office. And if we encourage music and creativity and development of other relaxation and focusing skills in service of optimizing mental acuity, that leads to a better world.

mark_l_watson 5y ago
+1 and I like your writing style: “””The oh so serious kabuki show we all play out in offices, especially open plans, wastes a lot of mental energy on "professionalism" and decor.”””
long_time_gone 5y ago
==If people are doing knowledge work, then the privacy of their home gets rid of all the unnecessary play acting. == Except for all the hours you spend on video calls where people are looking directly into your home. If you use some type of background to blur your home, that becomes the same type of "kabuki show" you reference about offices. ==Maybe the pandemic will demonstrate once and for all that an employee with a good work ethic can be lots more effective from home than at the office. == Maybe you have a bias here? I know lots of people with "good work ethics" who feel less productive at home.

zz865 5y ago

> I've just gotten really fast at swapping windows on my 15" laptop; How's your spine? my neck can't handle laptops any more.

alpaca128 5y ago
I really don't know much in this area but this seems to be more of a posture thing. A physiotherapist told me he only uses laptops because apparently that's the best combined with the right table and chair due to the tilted, low screen. In my experience he's at least not completely wrong, but in the long term I still aim to try a standing desk to mix it up, sooner or later sitting in general feels wrong when I overdo it. And I just prefer a single large screen. Enough to fit two windows beside each other with enough space for any situation.
- tonyedgecombe 5y ago
  I suspect the real problem is lack of movement. If you spend long periods of time in the same position no matter how good your posture is it is going to cause a problem.
scarecrowbob 5y ago
To be honest, I am in better shape than I have ever been in my life, but that's cause I'm 43 and rock climb regularly. IMO, core strength has been the big change in how my spine feels.
throwaway675309 5y ago
Best thing is to get an external keyboard, otherwise the screen will be too low and your neck will be perpetually craned downward (same issue with prolonged smartphone usage), or you set the laptop on a pedestal so it's eye level, but now your typing like a praying mantis.

pawelwentpawel 5y ago

Bringing up an anecdotal edge case, a couple years ago I have attended a viewing in a coworking space (Bricklane, London) where members had to sit on old recycled school chairs because that was the "design". Apparently you need to get a sciatica to look like a hipster coder. Having the right setup is not only about making your brain more productive - it's about keeping your spine pain free. While my home office is set up for this purpose, only one company that I have worked with so far had this aspect in mind. In the past, I had to take days off because of terrible set ups and long work hours. Having a well positioned and large second monitor helps a lot. You have much more control over this while designing your home office. Working from bed is not the way unless you're planning to marry a physiotherapist in the future.

christophergs 5y ago
This, this, a thousand times this.
alanwreath 5y ago
Yep, plus I’ve already learned that (for me) doing work or study in bed means I’ll be either asleep or uncomfortable soon.
wccrawford 5y ago
The chair thing is always amazing to me. I worked at a company that had crappy chairs (because they claimed they couldn't afford better). One of my team decided that they needed a good chair for medical reasons and asked for it. They got a really nice chair. I don't know if anyone complained, but it wasn't long before the whole team had really nice chairs. The cost was negligible compared to the morale boost, IMO. I don't think I ever looked at that chair without thinking, "Man, that's a good chair!" When I got a new job that had crappy chairs, I bought myself a new chair right away without even asking. Whenever I upgraded, I'd give my old one to anyone on my team that wanted it. I don't know if they cared much, but it sure made me feel better.
- dimitrios1 5y ago
  Now imagine if you got an office with a door!

brainzap 5y ago

Same, moving is key. I once was much in bed and it caused neck and headaches for month.

mech422 5y ago

I've been working from home 20 years now, and I have the opposite setup from you. I've got a much nicer setup then I ever had in offices - from 3 monitors to my favorite keyboards. As I get older and my eyes get worse, I really appreciate the space the monitors give me. I do agree about going back to an office... Its not really something I anticipate doing.

cmsj 5y ago
~10 years WFH here and my approach is similar to yours - my home office has become almost ludicrously well equipped. My approach is that I think about how much commuting would cost me, and consider that a reasonable amount to invest in my working space at home. As a result, I have a very small, but very functional space that I feel good about sitting in for 8 hours a day. I'm comfortable, I'm calm, and when I need to think, I don't feel stressed by my environment. Edit: to give some examples - I have very carefully chosen art for the walls that I can stare at and my mind can drift, when I need to solve problems. I had a desk custom made to give me the most amount of space because this is a very small room (~3m x ~2.5m) that regular desks can't make the best use of. I have great audio gear (mic, headphones and speakers), carefully tuned lighting, etc, etc. In isolation the thousands I've spent on this room seems kind-of ridiculous, but compared to the thousands more I haven't spent on commuting and compared to the satisfaction I get when sitting in here, I think it was absolutely worth it, and I am very grateful that I was privileged enough to be able to make all these choices.

ksec 5y ago

Just reading this got me thinking. Something may be obvious but I have yet to see anyone written or pointing it out. Does Remote Work prevent burn out?

nix23 5y ago
That's a mental thing and it's as easy as it gets to prevent it: 1. Your work is not your life. 2. Since it's not your life, don't get too invested in it. 3. Plan your free time ahead and fill it with stuff that makes you happy. 4. Eat good, sleep good, and Sport sport sport (from everything a good amount and not too much) 5. Don't take drugs on regular "recreational" basis (yes alcohol is especially included here) 6. If your away from work, don't think about it.
dsr_ 5y ago
No, it's a tool, not a panacea. If you are feeling disconnected from the value of your work, being away from other people doesn't reconnect you. If you are fire-fighting one emergency after another, not seeing other people in vivo doesn't get you downtime.
nayaketo 5y ago
Not at all. It might actually cause you to burnout if you begin to feel your work has encroached on your personal life. I went through a rough phase a while back because of this.
- Ocerge 5y ago
  Not sure why you got downvoted; remote work has been awful for me mental health wise since COVID. Not every dev wants to sit at home all day while they work. The separation and social interaction are important for me.

holoduke 5y ago

Working from home only possible with experienced devs. Once you have lots of juniors, it's very difficult to coach them. Juniors need to be able to contact fellow devs randomly and not via a zoom call.

llharper 5y ago
I’ve been mentoring two juniors at work and I prefer zoom actually. It’s a lot easier for me to share my screen with the both of them than it is to all huddle around my desk. If they run into a problem they ping me on slack and we hop on a call together. It’s not any harder than strolling over to my desk.
- keskival 5y ago
  In Finland there used to be a culture of everyone from high school upwards living in chatrooms or IRC, so it has been extremely natural for people to "idle" on chat channels and interact naturally over those. I would say chat channels feel much more intimate and social environment to me than sitting in an office. Even when we worked in offices we had IRC or Slack or other channels open and interacted over those rather than by actually walking around and talking. It's simply much more effective, asynchronous, and leaves a log of what was said and agreed.

mark_l_watson 5y ago

You have summarized the good experiences I have had working from home (except onsite for a while at Google and Capital One) since my wife and I moved to a small town in the mountains of Central Arizona in 1998. I have two areas of my yard where I can work, one is always shady, I have a dedicated office, but also work in the living room and kitchen table. I have a nice external monitor on my desk, but I don’t really need it for most writing or work tasks.

Cthulhu_ 5y ago

I've done WFH for a year and a half now (and the odd day in the years before that), and I still kinda struggle; it's easy to let the distractions take hold, and it costs me energy to get started on work. Mind you, the work is not the most exciting at the moment either. That said, as other commenters have mentioned, there is value (for me) to work in a team and to have others actually depend on me and my progress; I need a bit of external pressure. At the moment it's mainly self-pressure / self-motivation, which isn't the best. I do think in the future I'll pursue jobs where I'm both independent but also replaceable, because at the moment I'm not replaceable so I don't feel like I can move on yet.

alanwreath 5y ago
“ I'll pursue jobs where I'm both independent but also replaceable” I totally get the pressure felt when you’re not yet replaceable. At least from the responsible, not wishing to burn bridges vantage point. It can add stress because it means vacations are only half spent and makes other opportunities seem wrong to take because you know you’d be leaving the company in a bad state. And mind you this is at the same time as trying to spread as much knowledge around as possible. Small teams can make this more common.

AJ007 5y ago

Here is my first hand experience from roughly 15 years of working from home at this point, with a little office time mixed in. This is the right approach from an ergonomic standpoint - cycle through how you sit/stand while working and you’ll minimize a lot of joint issues. If some position is causing you issues, it’s easy to identify and effortless to switch. At minimum it isn’t healthy to sit for hours straight. It’s also easy to mix in a few workouts or use some sort of treadmill or stationary bike. Years ago I went from 3 27” screens down to 1 12” MacBook and had no loss in productivity. I was primarily doing design and data analysis work. DPI and OS window management matters more unless you have vision issues.

mumblemumble 5y ago

> screen real estate isn't a big factor in getting stuff done for me Lately, I've been wondering if less screen real estate actually makes me a better programmer. Being able to simultaneously have 6 files open across two large monitors with a lot of vertical real estate means that messy code doesn't hurt me as much. In fact, I'm pretty sure the only reason I do that is to facilitate dealing with messy code. I no longer have to build a stable mental model of it in my head, because it's reasonably convenient to just keep referring back to the original source code. When I'm just on the laptop screen, though, and I can fit one file full width, or two if I've been good about keeping the line length below 90, I start having to keep things in my short term memory. Which means that, when it's not amenable to that, I'm relatively quick to get annoyed and refactor it for comprehensibility. I'd like to think that, with time, I'd eventually come to just write more comprehensible code in the first place. A couple more data points here, obviously riddled with bias, come from my colleagues. Some have desktop computers with multiple 4K monitors, some have a laptop connected to a single external monitor, and some have that and also a habit of unplugging the computer and working on the front porch whenever the weather is nice. My impression is that the people in the first group tend to write the least comprehensible code. Of course, the 4K monitor jocks also tend to work the fastest. But I think it's maybe a bit like when I used to work for building contractor. Nobody liked to be on the same crew as the person who worked the fastest.

kevstev 5y ago
So it seems I accidentally nuked my Macbook pro two nights ago after my dog spilled a glass of water on my nightstand and splashed some onto MBP- I thought it was an indirect hit, but the next morning I plugged it in and appeared to have shorted some stuff out internally, and even worse- it seems to have shorted out my thunderbolt monitor too. So I was forced to just use my Macbook Air, and I was preparing for a massive productivity hit, and tbh- I think it may have actually helped a bit- I don't think we realize how much we get distracted by having email and slack or whatever open all the time, and just being able to focus on one task at a time visually was actually kind of a relief. Long term, I am going to want monitors back and all, but I think there is a real benefit to keeping the things that are not 100% your attention at that moment entirely minimized and out of view.
5y ago

EvanAnderson 5y ago

I worked from home for around 15 years and I miss it tremendously. I think my productivity was much better when my "take a moment from work" diversions were exactly the things you described-- doing some laundry, washing some dishes, preparing lunch, etc. I'm back in a traditional office setting. My diversions are mostly the "surf around on the Internet" variety. That's not to say random Internet use didn't happen when I worked at home, but I found I enjoyed random non-computer diversions far more than sitting viewing websites. Now that I'm in an office those non-computer diversions aren't an option. I just end up wasting time on websites when I need a break. I also really, really miss working from my couch with my 15" laptop on my lap. It was vastly more comfortable than any desk setup I've ever had and discouraged me from hoarding physical articles in drawers, corners of a desk, etc.

mgkimsal 5y ago

I've gone the opposite way. I did WFH/remote for ... years, always on a single laptop. I was very mobile - f2f client meetings, work from coffee shop, work from hotels, etc. In the last year, as travel/f2f was essentially taken off the table, I've moved to laptop with 2 external monitors, and just recently to 'desktop' setup. I still have the laptop, and use it to work from home now and then, but I'm slowly getting used to more screen real estate. It's not even so much 2 monitors, just a much larger main one. 32" vs the 15" has been a big difference, mostly for the better. But... I had years of comments from a lot of folks about "no idea how you can get anything done from just one laptop - that screen is so small, etc."

usrusr 5y ago

> I couldn't put on my laundry and hang it up while I listen to other folks on the daily stand up. Yeah, there's a secret value in low level distractions: they prevent higher level distractions. When you go into a deep focus environment for that daily, chances are your mind will focus deeply on something entirely unrelated.

gmadsen 5y ago

I never understand the ability to work on a laptop. For me it would be a significant blow to my productivity. How do people do it? I have 3 full monitors, one for running 10 or so processes that I can glance at stdout, then the other two monitors for having many different editor files open, numerous data plots, and multiple reference guides open, etc.

Forge36 5y ago
On windows I alt tab often. I close anything not related to work keeping the list of windows short (maybe 5 at most). Split screen some where appropriate. My home office is 2 monitors. My work office is 3, however I only find myself using 2
honkdaddy 5y ago
Different engineers do different work. Not everyone is running 10+ processes and referring to reference guides all day, some, like myself, spend most of our days writing emails or reviewing PRs, neither of which really necessitate lots of screen real estate.
deeblering4 5y ago
I have 8 full virtual desktops. I can switch screens without even moving my head.
aledalgrande 5y ago
Virtual desktops and 3 finger swipes for me too. I cannot understand how having multiple apps visible helps, because you have to continuously switch your eye focus and if you have distracting apps like Slack in your field it's even worse. So laptop with 1 window maximized is the best for me. And the mobility that it allows: move to the sofa, armchair, cafe, I even deployed from a taxi. I tried to buy and use external keyboard and trackpad on my standup desk during the pandemic, but I returned the same day - the distance between the position of keys and the trackpad was so weird after years of laptop only.
- gmadsen 5y ago
  thinking about it, I'm probably really biased. I do robotics, so live analysis of sensors, processed data output running on a real platform as well as involved simulations is part of my process. I need to be able to glance at data and plots quickly without changing my current screen

systemvoltage 5y ago

> I couldn't put on my laundry and hang it up while I listen to other folks on the daily stand up. I think stand-ups are useless.

908B64B197 5y ago

> Surely there are more optimal ways of doing stuff. Odds are that there is a Taylorist approach that would pull more productivity out of me. But much like my typing speed (~50WPM) isn't really the limiting factor in my programming skill, screen real estate isn't a big factor in getting stuff done for me. Your work habits suggest the best "Taylorist" improvement might just be to let you roam. Seems to be working best. > I could never have done that when I was in an office. I couldn't take 20 min and play banjo or accordion and come back to my problem with a fresh eye. I've seen music/game rooms at good companies. If a company can't set aside some space for breaks, that's a red flag.