23 ms·

I have been remote for 11 years now and have two children 9 and 12. I can't imagine what it would have been like if I had spent the week out commuting between t

I have been remote for 11 years now and have two children 9 and 12. I can't imagine what it would have been like if I had spent the week out commuting between the hours of 7am to 7pm, we would have lost out on so much bonding time with their daddy being an integral part of their life. I managed to be highly productive, build a career, yet be there for bath times, tucking into bed, school plays / sports days, nursing when ill, impromptu dancing to toddlers programs on the TV.

Simon_O_Rourke 4y ago
Well said! Did you ever in that time get any pushback from an overzealous boss about going back to the office?
- VBprogrammer 4y ago
  I've been remote since our youngest turned 1 year old due to the pandemic. I honestly can't imagine what life would have been like otherwise. The year I spent before that I was lucky to see her at all during a day. She wasn't awake before I left (except for the inevitable screaming during the night) and we kept her up late so I could feed her a bottle before she went to bed. I think it's a huge win for equality and family life. Any boss will have to wrestle WFH out of my cold dead hands.
  - isoprophlex 4y ago
    I'm kind of sad about missing so much when our first child was born. Why did I commute so much, wasting time stuck in a car? Why didn't I challenge the status quo? Our second kid was born a month before the pandemic hit. I was there for so many beautiful moments. With #3 on the way, you can indeed wrestle WFH from my cold dead hands.
  - brabel 4y ago
    > I think it's a huge win for equality and family life Hm, where I live, both parents take roughly the same amount of parent leave (around 240 working days each in total - minimum 90 days for each) from work regardless of whether they work at home or anything else. That's what I would call equality.
    - VBprogrammer 4y ago
      Sure. That would be a win for both men and woman by eliminating discrimination on the basis of potential for taking parental leave in the future. But even that is less than a year. By contrast WFH changes the rest of a child's experience for their whole life.
    - lotsofpulp 4y ago
      My kids were able to breastfeed until 2 years old and ween at their pace because my wife works from home. The whole concept of women pumping and then someone else feeding their baby defrosted frozen breastmilk because they have to work is crazy. Women should have at least 1 year with their child, and if that means men need to be off for a year too, then so be it.
      - PuppyTailWags 4y ago
        Men should be off an equal time as women, not as a "so be it" measure. It's crazy that we push so much of the parenting to a single parent, effectively isolating her socially and never giving her time to be an adult or speak with other adults. Yes there's breastfeeding, but the best part of formula/pumping is that the mother can go out and actually be a human being while the dad can take over the duties with the child for a full day, night, or weekend! [edited to add: even if the mother takes up the majority of the childrearing (diapers, feeding, swaddling, talking, socializing, etc) the father should be taking up all of her previous chores, housework, social maintenance (e.g. familial obligations)!]
- prmoustache 4y ago
  replace "overzealous boss" with "boss tired of counting his fingers".
- jossclimb 4y ago
  Nope, luckily all my bosses have got it and were remote too (one of them spends a few days a week in the office). I produce what they need, can be relied upon and will travel to customers / tech events / all-hands when needed.
tyoma 4y ago
I’ve also been working from home and very glad to have been there for my kids when they are young, but highly productive are not two words I’d use to describe the experience. I guess my time management and prioritization skill have improved by necessity, but the lack of uninterrupted quiet time is real.
- j45 4y ago
  Add someone navigating this after an overly productive decade of remote work, but not one that is healthy or sustainable to be well rounded to access the next level of growth in all fronts, I’m beginning to wonder if having a separate space on the property might be something to try out. Those pre made work pods look more and more interesting.
  - photonbeam 4y ago
    A lot of them were surprisingly expensive, I really hope someone like Home Depot comes out with something really cheap like their sheds but with some cheap interior
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
- 7sidedmarble 4y ago
  You really need to have your own office space, and treat it like you are "going to work now" and working in your office. That space needs a door you can close. I know it sounds hard to do if your family is used to you 'floating around', but I can tell you with 100% certainty it will just not work out long term any other way.
  - throwaway14356 4y ago
    I notice it depends on the task. For some things 50% work 50% recreation works great for me (specially at the end of my energy)
- 4y ago
rco8786 4y ago
I've been remote for 4 years with a 4 and 2 year old and....same. Generally more productive work-wise and can't imagine going back to commuting 30-40m each way as I did previously (which isn't even a "bad" commute). And the additional time with the family is irreplaceable. My company's local office is open, and I do go in 2-3 times a month for various reasons (which I also enjoy as a change of pace). But every time I do it's a total ghost town. And not just our floors, but every floor. It sure seems to me that commercial office space leases are going to collapse in on themselves over the next 3-8 years as the longterm leases come up for renewal and companies say "no thanks" or "we'll take 10% of the space we currently used".
- ghaff 4y ago
  Judging by rush hour traffic, tech is something of a bubble. As far as I can tell, commuting traffic is back to pre-pandemic levels as far as I can tell.
  - rco8786 4y ago
    ~about half - https://www.mprnews.org/story/2023/01/10/npr-traffic-congestion-got-much-worse-in-2022-but-is-still-below-pre-pandemic-levels https://www.mprnews.org/story/2023/01/10/npr-traffic-congest...
    - ghaff 4y ago
      It's not the case around Boston. I directly experience the 1.5+ hours it takes me to commute into the city when I do. (As the article notes, Boston has some of the worst congestion.)
      - rco8786 4y ago
        Yea I'm not discounting your personal experience, just statistically...
        ghaff 4y ago
alistairSH 4y ago
I can't imagine what it would have been like if I had spent the week out commuting between the hours of 7am to 7pm FWIW, I commuted through most of my son's childhood. I still made it home for those things you list. But, it did take optimizing house location/commute, etc. I certainly wasn't gone 7am-7pm. Even with 60 min of driving and 60 min for lunch, that's an 10 hour day.
- _ktx2 4y ago
  > But, it did take optimizing house location/commute, etc To spell the quiet part out loud here, what you're describing is an extreme privilege in a world where homes near tech campuses often go for $1M+. New fathers aren't going to have a down payment for even $600k+. Tech at this point starts as a rich persons game which is why so many tech workers intermarry with other wealthy people. It takes two or a trust fund to do what you're talking about early on, unless you want to rent in a place where rents are highly inflated. At that point, you're choosing between a family and any shade of financial freedom.
  - swsieber 4y ago
    > what you're describing is an extreme privilege No, it's not. Working for a huge tech company _and_ doing what's described is an extreme privilege. But working for a huge tech company is a huge privilege in and of itself. And you don't have to work for one of those, at which point doing what's described can become a lot easier.
    - WWLink 4y ago
      Yes it is and you're sounding like a condescending asshole by denying it.
      - dahfizz 4y ago
        The majority of Americans commute less than 30 minutes. How is something the majority of people have "extreme privilege"? The idea of a 2 hour commute each way to be gone from 7am to 7pm is a complete fantasy.
A4ET8a8uTh0 4y ago
My remote started with the pandemic, but experience has been very similar. In a sense, it is very sad how much parents are forced to give up, when they are in a non-remote position ( doubly so if it is artificial non-remote designation ). I was always a very detached individual, but the experience changed me and my perspective a lot. The 2 weeks most men get for post birth bonding ( and some don't even have that ) is heartbreaking. I am not suggesting we move to EU level craziness where a person takes a year off to care for a child, but I am sure there is some middle ground.. and from where I sit, WFH allows just that.
fatnoah 4y ago
> I can't imagine what it would have been like if I had spent the week out commuting between the hours of 7am to 7pm I can, because I lived that life. My wife and I moved from 1 bedroom apartment in the city to a house in a suburb ("only" 10 miles away) and the only time during the week I was able to spend much time with my child was 7am-8:30am before school. By the time I got home, he was going to bed. Generally, one weekend day had to be devoted to home/yard maintenance in the summer. Before he started kindergarten, my wife and I decided that's not how we wanted to live our lives, so we sold the house and went back to renting w/a 2 bedroom apartment back in the city. My commute was 30 minutes, if I walked, with my son's school about at the halfway point of the commute. I was able to walk my son to school daily, and leave my office at 5pm and get to the sports fields at 5:15pm to coach sports. As a bonus, no house or yard to take care of meant both weekend days were also free. No regrets.
- fnordpiglet 4y ago
  Now imagine if you had been able to have it all, the only cost being management not being able to see your bag of mostly carbon water physically respirate. I love having a house and yard, and never having to pollute the environment to shift my bag of carbon water to do the same work worse somewhere less adapted to my being. There will come a time when passions die about RTO and companies stop paying for real estate simply to improve profits for those that don’t need to be collocated. “Culture” and other malarkey will matter not at all once passions die, the current management retires, and the bulk of workers went to college and high school online. Then children will have their parents again.
  - bt4u 4y ago
    [dead]
  - munificent 4y ago
    > Then children will have their parents again. In most developed countries, parents already spend more time with their kids than at any point in the past fifty years: https://ourworldindata.org/parents-time-with-kids https://ourworldindata.org/parents-time-with-kids (What they've sacrificed, at least in the US, seems to largely be non-work social connections and group participation.)
awb 4y ago
15 years fully remote for me and 3 kids. The lunchtime breaks were my favorite, getting to see how their day was going and help out or share a quick laugh. It really was and still is priceless for me. For anyone starting out, I highly recommend trying to be home as much as possible in your kid’s 1st 5 years before they make strong friendships and when you’re their mentor and best friend.
sharadov 4y ago
6 years remote now and similar experience as yours - I get to spend time with my kids - play with them, take them to classes, help with homework, at the same time able to eat healthy, work out and have a more focussed and disciplined life. Never going back to the office full time - would like a hybrid role since I feel that is the best of both worlds.
Nux 4y ago
This is the way.

Simon_O_Rourke 4y ago

Well said! Did you ever in that time get any pushback from an overzealous boss about going back to the office?

VBprogrammer 4y ago
I've been remote since our youngest turned 1 year old due to the pandemic. I honestly can't imagine what life would have been like otherwise. The year I spent before that I was lucky to see her at all during a day. She wasn't awake before I left (except for the inevitable screaming during the night) and we kept her up late so I could feed her a bottle before she went to bed. I think it's a huge win for equality and family life. Any boss will have to wrestle WFH out of my cold dead hands.
- isoprophlex 4y ago
  I'm kind of sad about missing so much when our first child was born. Why did I commute so much, wasting time stuck in a car? Why didn't I challenge the status quo? Our second kid was born a month before the pandemic hit. I was there for so many beautiful moments. With #3 on the way, you can indeed wrestle WFH from my cold dead hands.
- brabel 4y ago
  > I think it's a huge win for equality and family life Hm, where I live, both parents take roughly the same amount of parent leave (around 240 working days each in total - minimum 90 days for each) from work regardless of whether they work at home or anything else. That's what I would call equality.
  - VBprogrammer 4y ago
    Sure. That would be a win for both men and woman by eliminating discrimination on the basis of potential for taking parental leave in the future. But even that is less than a year. By contrast WFH changes the rest of a child's experience for their whole life.
  - lotsofpulp 4y ago
    My kids were able to breastfeed until 2 years old and ween at their pace because my wife works from home. The whole concept of women pumping and then someone else feeding their baby defrosted frozen breastmilk because they have to work is crazy. Women should have at least 1 year with their child, and if that means men need to be off for a year too, then so be it.
    - PuppyTailWags 4y ago
      Men should be off an equal time as women, not as a "so be it" measure. It's crazy that we push so much of the parenting to a single parent, effectively isolating her socially and never giving her time to be an adult or speak with other adults. Yes there's breastfeeding, but the best part of formula/pumping is that the mother can go out and actually be a human being while the dad can take over the duties with the child for a full day, night, or weekend! [edited to add: even if the mother takes up the majority of the childrearing (diapers, feeding, swaddling, talking, socializing, etc) the father should be taking up all of her previous chores, housework, social maintenance (e.g. familial obligations)!]
prmoustache 4y ago
replace "overzealous boss" with "boss tired of counting his fingers".
jossclimb 4y ago
Nope, luckily all my bosses have got it and were remote too (one of them spends a few days a week in the office). I produce what they need, can be relied upon and will travel to customers / tech events / all-hands when needed.

tyoma 4y ago

I’ve also been working from home and very glad to have been there for my kids when they are young, but highly productive are not two words I’d use to describe the experience. I guess my time management and prioritization skill have improved by necessity, but the lack of uninterrupted quiet time is real.

j45 4y ago
Add someone navigating this after an overly productive decade of remote work, but not one that is healthy or sustainable to be well rounded to access the next level of growth in all fronts, I’m beginning to wonder if having a separate space on the property might be something to try out. Those pre made work pods look more and more interesting.
- photonbeam 4y ago
  A lot of them were surprisingly expensive, I really hope someone like Home Depot comes out with something really cheap like their sheds but with some cheap interior
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
7sidedmarble 4y ago
You really need to have your own office space, and treat it like you are "going to work now" and working in your office. That space needs a door you can close. I know it sounds hard to do if your family is used to you 'floating around', but I can tell you with 100% certainty it will just not work out long term any other way.
- throwaway14356 4y ago
  I notice it depends on the task. For some things 50% work 50% recreation works great for me (specially at the end of my energy)
4y ago

rco8786 4y ago

I've been remote for 4 years with a 4 and 2 year old and....same. Generally more productive work-wise and can't imagine going back to commuting 30-40m each way as I did previously (which isn't even a "bad" commute). And the additional time with the family is irreplaceable. My company's local office is open, and I do go in 2-3 times a month for various reasons (which I also enjoy as a change of pace). But every time I do it's a total ghost town. And not just our floors, but every floor. It sure seems to me that commercial office space leases are going to collapse in on themselves over the next 3-8 years as the longterm leases come up for renewal and companies say "no thanks" or "we'll take 10% of the space we currently used".

ghaff 4y ago
Judging by rush hour traffic, tech is something of a bubble. As far as I can tell, commuting traffic is back to pre-pandemic levels as far as I can tell.
- rco8786 4y ago
  ~about half - https://www.mprnews.org/story/2023/01/10/npr-traffic-congestion-got-much-worse-in-2022-but-is-still-below-pre-pandemic-levels https://www.mprnews.org/story/2023/01/10/npr-traffic-congest...
  - ghaff 4y ago
    It's not the case around Boston. I directly experience the 1.5+ hours it takes me to commute into the city when I do. (As the article notes, Boston has some of the worst congestion.)
    - rco8786 4y ago
      Yea I'm not discounting your personal experience, just statistically...
      - ghaff 4y ago

alistairSH 4y ago

I can't imagine what it would have been like if I had spent the week out commuting between the hours of 7am to 7pm FWIW, I commuted through most of my son's childhood. I still made it home for those things you list. But, it did take optimizing house location/commute, etc. I certainly wasn't gone 7am-7pm. Even with 60 min of driving and 60 min for lunch, that's an 10 hour day.

_ktx2 4y ago
> But, it did take optimizing house location/commute, etc To spell the quiet part out loud here, what you're describing is an extreme privilege in a world where homes near tech campuses often go for $1M+. New fathers aren't going to have a down payment for even $600k+. Tech at this point starts as a rich persons game which is why so many tech workers intermarry with other wealthy people. It takes two or a trust fund to do what you're talking about early on, unless you want to rent in a place where rents are highly inflated. At that point, you're choosing between a family and any shade of financial freedom.
- swsieber 4y ago
  > what you're describing is an extreme privilege No, it's not. Working for a huge tech company _and_ doing what's described is an extreme privilege. But working for a huge tech company is a huge privilege in and of itself. And you don't have to work for one of those, at which point doing what's described can become a lot easier.
  - WWLink 4y ago
    Yes it is and you're sounding like a condescending asshole by denying it.
    - dahfizz 4y ago
      The majority of Americans commute less than 30 minutes. How is something the majority of people have "extreme privilege"? The idea of a 2 hour commute each way to be gone from 7am to 7pm is a complete fantasy.

A4ET8a8uTh0 4y ago

My remote started with the pandemic, but experience has been very similar. In a sense, it is very sad how much parents are forced to give up, when they are in a non-remote position ( doubly so if it is artificial non-remote designation ). I was always a very detached individual, but the experience changed me and my perspective a lot. The 2 weeks most men get for post birth bonding ( and some don't even have that ) is heartbreaking. I am not suggesting we move to EU level craziness where a person takes a year off to care for a child, but I am sure there is some middle ground.. and from where I sit, WFH allows just that.

fatnoah 4y ago

> I can't imagine what it would have been like if I had spent the week out commuting between the hours of 7am to 7pm I can, because I lived that life. My wife and I moved from 1 bedroom apartment in the city to a house in a suburb ("only" 10 miles away) and the only time during the week I was able to spend much time with my child was 7am-8:30am before school. By the time I got home, he was going to bed. Generally, one weekend day had to be devoted to home/yard maintenance in the summer. Before he started kindergarten, my wife and I decided that's not how we wanted to live our lives, so we sold the house and went back to renting w/a 2 bedroom apartment back in the city. My commute was 30 minutes, if I walked, with my son's school about at the halfway point of the commute. I was able to walk my son to school daily, and leave my office at 5pm and get to the sports fields at 5:15pm to coach sports. As a bonus, no house or yard to take care of meant both weekend days were also free. No regrets.

fnordpiglet 4y ago
Now imagine if you had been able to have it all, the only cost being management not being able to see your bag of mostly carbon water physically respirate. I love having a house and yard, and never having to pollute the environment to shift my bag of carbon water to do the same work worse somewhere less adapted to my being. There will come a time when passions die about RTO and companies stop paying for real estate simply to improve profits for those that don’t need to be collocated. “Culture” and other malarkey will matter not at all once passions die, the current management retires, and the bulk of workers went to college and high school online. Then children will have their parents again.
- bt4u 4y ago
  [dead]
- munificent 4y ago
  > Then children will have their parents again. In most developed countries, parents already spend more time with their kids than at any point in the past fifty years: https://ourworldindata.org/parents-time-with-kids https://ourworldindata.org/parents-time-with-kids (What they've sacrificed, at least in the US, seems to largely be non-work social connections and group participation.)

awb 4y ago

15 years fully remote for me and 3 kids. The lunchtime breaks were my favorite, getting to see how their day was going and help out or share a quick laugh. It really was and still is priceless for me. For anyone starting out, I highly recommend trying to be home as much as possible in your kid’s 1st 5 years before they make strong friendships and when you’re their mentor and best friend.

sharadov 4y ago

6 years remote now and similar experience as yours - I get to spend time with my kids - play with them, take them to classes, help with homework, at the same time able to eat healthy, work out and have a more focussed and disciplined life. Never going back to the office full time - would like a hybrid role since I feel that is the best of both worlds.

Nux 4y ago

This is the way.