Do You Work From Home?

[goDel]

Currently at Defcon level 3, I see. No sweats.

54 minutes ago, Centurix said:

Software Developer, work from home. Lots of projects on. Main gig has an office in Brisbane and was like 50/50 home/office but now more like 95/5 home/office.

 It's OK, I've had lots of times in the past with long stints working from home. The main issues are noise and fridges.

Also, do a fair bit of electronics, here's half my office.

 

[markedone]

 

On 5/5/2020 at 3:57 AM, goDel said:

I think WFH has changed with this crisis though. The way I read your post, the old WFH was a lonely thing. Which was also my experience. The Corona-WFH is much more collaborative though. Video conferencing has become the norm. Much more than before. And in my experience this can work even better, compared to sitting together in a room.

For one thing, it's way more easier (or physically possible even) to look at all people in a meeting at the same time. Non-verbal communication in this sense can be way better. You can clearly see whether people are paying attention and whether they agree or not. And the structure of meetings is more clear. It depends a lot on everyone involved though, in terms of discipline. But when done right, a video conference can be way more effective.

Also, it has brought people closer together, strangely. As you can literally see people in their personal, private space. Without all the nonsense of suits and all that. Physical distance might be bigger, but emotionally I'd argue contact is closer. Another example of this is that I've noticed a lot of women stopped putting on make-up after a while. Don't want to turn this into some sexist rant. Just an observation. I consider this another example of a "professional" shield being dropped, which improves intimacy in an unexpected way, imo. You're looking at a real human being instead of a wall of facial paint.

Before Corona, when working with people who worked from home, video-conferencing was never an option. We didn't even think about it. We just tried to plan around people being unavailable. Nowadays, people are available. And yes, that makes collaborating an entirely different thing.

This new WFH though, is basically people trying to reinvent how to keep on collaborating. And it's way more effective than I would have thought before. It's different. But def not worse.

To your last point, for certain types of work its definitely worse.  In architecture/design, we have lots of small and mid size team meetings over paper to hash things out, and attempting to do this via video calls, photos of sketches, and poorly-annotated zoom arrows is pretty shitty.  And you cant clearly see that people are paying attention because they are a thumbnail size floating head.. video calls are still a facsimile of all that is communicated with in-person interactions.

The professional shields point, I get that it has some upsides, but also a ton is lost..  At least in a mid size office in my field, its important to get a sense of what other people are working on, and to actually feel like a team.  Because sometimes you have to move between projects to help them on a deadline, and doing that when everyone is working from home just makes you feel like a random temp contractor.  And in general WFH makes me feel more like just a cog than before..

WFH surely has upsides, I dont miss commuting and lunches at home have been a joy.  But from my experience, we're not reinventing collaboration, its been worse in all aspects of collaboration

[Centurix]

6 hours ago, goDel said:

Currently at Defcon level 3, I see. No sweats.

 

haha, it takes the level from https://www.nationalsecurity.gov.au/ which was showing level 3, but is for some weird reason showing the default IIS installation page... I think things have gone tits-up somewhere in Canberra.

[sidewinder]

I ordered an electric standing desk. Good investment.

[Silent Member]

Still working from home. life is good.

[IDEM]

9 hours ago, sidewinder said:

I ordered an electric standing desk. Good investment.

This. Unfortunately, I only bought mine after it was too late, i. e. I had the mother of all spinal disc herniations after literally working my ass off for a couple of years. That was some freaky shit, I was already starting to lose all feeling from the waist down. Creepy as fuck. Hadn't known you could end up in a wheelchair just from sitting, even though it's kind of consequential, I guess. So anyway, should have gotten it years earlier. Buy one today, kids.

[doublename]

I’ve been teaching from home via Zoom since April. It’s trash, and I feel bad for the kids. It’s nice not having to be in the building before 8AM, but teaching online basically just leaves you with only the worst parts of the job (grading, meetings, ridiculous parent emails) and none of the good ones.

[Hoodie]

i've been working from home mostly full time for the past couple of years with some office visits. if your job primarily involves being at a computer, there's really no reason to have to commute into work.

how many remote workers here also have a flexible schedule? that's really the icing on the cake for remote work. no reason to have to maintain a strict 8-5 imo

[ambermonk]

I wish I could work from home, especially lately. But idk if I have any particular skill set which would allow me to do so.

I should've selected a different major in college.

[QBLA]

Working at home was cool while it lasted. Boss lady wanted us back in the office since she can't figure out how to do things remotely.

 

[Kennylogg Bubblebath]

been working from home since mid-march, and other than transferring files to/from the company server slightly slowing the process down, we've been managing very well. in all honesty I prefer it, especially with the time and fuel costs saved from 3 months of not commuting.

despite this, it sounds like we're going back in next week or the week after. boss seems keen on having us all back at the office. shiter.

[Braintree]

I think my company basically just accepts that we work remotely now. Most of the company is remote, so Zoom meetings were a regular thing anyway. Spaced out in SF, NYC, Montreal, Vancouver, Sydney, and some other random places. The head of engineering used to work here in SF but he moved to San Diego a couple weeks ago. Makes me want to move somewhere else cheaper and try to keep the same salary.

[sidewinder]

18 hours ago, Braintree said:

I think my company basically just accepts that we work remotely now. Most of the company is remote, so Zoom meetings were a regular thing anyway. Spaced out in SF, NYC, Montreal, Vancouver, Sydney, and some other random places. The head of engineering used to work here in SF but he moved to San Diego a couple weeks ago. Makes me want to move somewhere else cheaper and try to keep the same salary.

I'm getting that feeling too, except for some departments that need to be on site. I still look forward to the opportunity for in-person collaboration a few times a month or even 1-2 times per week, but have started to think about whether I really need to be here. I was surprised to hear "moving" brought up on an organization meeting today, in fact. Apparently some folks have already brought up that they'd like to move, and leads advised talking to HR first mainly for tax implications. I've thought about moving to another nearby town, mostly for more affordable homes and a slight change of scenery but now also because I don't need to be as close to the office. But maybe it's worth expanding my options even more. Kinda tired of Seattle tbh and this autumn I'll have lived here 14 years, which was the limit I told myself I had to live here, in order to surpass my previous longest city of residence, Houston, since I never liked it and really wanted it stripped of that crown.

I think in general we're likely to see a shift back to suburbia and more sprawl as people want more space for their money, don't need to be as close to the city for remote work, and want to be away from dense populations. That's not for everyone, of course, but certain age groups as well as families.