I’d probably go in one or two days a week, which is all it needs, in my view. For some time I’ve been wondering if I really need to burn 42 miles-worth of gasoline five days a week and put up with the rush hour traffic.
At on time many people in the office worked from home, and some you hardly ever saw, but in recent years the wheel has swung the other way and “I want you lot in here every day where I can keep an eye on you, because I don’t trust you lot.”
I was traveling the country teaching two-day classes once a week. Now I’m doing virtual classes from a spare bedroom. My feelings so far are mixed. It’s nice not to travel, but I kind of liked getting to Chicago, Phoenix, Nashville, Denver, and other locations regularly.
My “studio” at home is fairly complex and I think we provide good interactive training. Being “live” for eight hours a day and getting very little direct feedback from the students is actually quite draining. I think that good instructors are natural entertainers and we want to be there in the classroom, reading the class and altering our presentations as required.
Overall, I think I prefer traveling and teaching. Whether I’ll have the option to go back to it is up in the air.
I’ve been working from home for 4 weeks as of today, and will be until May. I’ve been wondering how I’m going to readjust when I have to get up at 5:30 to drive in to work again after not doing it for so long.
In normal times, I would only work at home Mondays and Thursdays, with the occasional snow day or days when I had plumbers or other service guys coming in or I wasn’t feeling well enough to come in but not so bad that I needed a sick day. That was fine. At work, I had a better ergonomic chair and desk, the option of going down to the cafeteria if I didn’t want to bring in breakfast or lunch, and never had cats trying to get into my lap or sit on the keyboard when I’m trying to do something important.
This sums up my position. I prefer going into the office. I even miss my bus or bike commute where I get a nice uninterrupted podcast session in.
I live 8 minutes from work so commute isn’t an issue. I dislike working from home and find face-to-face teaching more enjoyable and effective.
I’m saving £250 a month on gasoline.
I generally feel more productive in the office, and I like being where the action is happening. It’s hard to stay engaged long term if you don’t spend time at the operation. I worked from home for 10 years and it was ok, there were a lot of personal benefits to it but my professional life suffered.
As much as I consider my work life less important than my personal life, I can’t have it be a mess where I’m unhappy for much of the day.
What I REALLY want is for a bunch of other people to start working from home and ease up a bit on my commute traffic.
I was gradually going into the office less and less before all this happened. I was down to one day a week, maybe two. The exception was group work sessions, 1:1s and team meetings, all of which are rare - I would go in when those occurred. But, I hated the environment where my desk is. There is a thread around here discussing those “open concept” office spaces and I described it there. If I never had to go back to that I would not mind it at all.
My projects involve people all over the place, so there really is no need for any face-time anyway. In prior years I always wanted 3 or so days in the office, but when I changed teams 1.5 years ago everyone is remote, so the need became less. Since I was trending to less time in the office already, I may make this current situation permanent, if possible.
This. I also have a better desk setup and a more comfortable chair at the office. I also miss the ice machine at work. We have good ice… little crunchy cubes.
I preferred going into the office until they went to this shitawful open-plan office. If that’s my choice, then I prefer to work at home in my pajamas.
I’m in New York City. I’m working from home for the duration of the current crisis.
I really, really don’t like it. I will be happy to return to the office.
In any event, once the crisis is over, I won’t be able to work from home. My wife and three small children are riding this out in the remote rural area where she grew up. Once they’re back, no way.
This is my first time working from home. What I didn’t expect is the feeling that I have to be in front of my computer 9:00 to 5:00. When I’m in the office, I’m obviously “at work,” regardless of what I’m actually doing. But when I’m at home, if I’m not at the computer I feel like I’m not at work and feel guilty because of that.
Perhaps this feeling will fade over time, but this is one of the reasons that I’d currently say I prefer working in my office over working from home. Also, the physical distance of work from home and the act of commuting help to maintain a psychological difference. I almost don’t want to be in front of my computer outside of 9:00-5:00 now because I don’t want to feel like I’m back at work.
This summer I’m supposed to step down from my administrative job and return to teaching, which will change my situation significantly. But it’s starting to look like effects of the pandemic may conspire to keep me in the job a bit longer. At least it’s a nice office…
I have always not done school or work from home. During school, I studied in the libraries. I minimized taking study home. At work, I like to go in to the office. It keeps distance from home. Plus, it’s so much easier to go have a 2 minute conversation face to face and get to a resolution. People can be very passive aggessive over IM, email, even phone or video calls. Go in person, and it’s a lot tougher to say no.
Plus, this work from home stuff, it starts early in the morning and I’m still answering emails and shit at close to midnight. Plus the kids are home and doing school. And while my wife and I are also divorcing, we have called a cease fire and she has been instrumental in helping our youngest on the autism spectrum do remote learning whilst I bulldog a new job.
And I have a big ass house, an unused sunny playroom for my new home office, room for the other kids to do their remote school work, and a decent yard to avoid going competely cabin crazy. And my youngest on the spectrum needs me to jump on the trampoline with her every day. We’ve used the tramp more in the past month or so than in the past 8 years we have had it…
We were allowed to bring our equipment home from our desks, so I have my docking station and dual monitor setup, and after a few days we got equipment that extends the company LAN so we no longer have to worry about VPNs (I work in healthcare IT, so they were especially motivated to keeping us working at an optimal level),. I’m set up in the spare bedroom, and other than not being able to see my coworkers in person, it’s actually better than being in the office…particularly the commute 
That said, I like working from the office, There’s no substitute for actually being in the same room as the people you’re working with. And unless they buy me a whole new set of hardware for my desk at work, so I can keep everything I have now at home, I’ll be happy to go back.
I’ve been working from home for three and a half weeks now and this is my first time doing so. I’d have to say I’ve probably become a convert to it. I was always dead-set against the idea of WFH as I don’t like working in general and I didn’t want to defile my home environment by working in it. Home is supposed to be my refuge from all the bullshit. There was also the practical considerations.
Cons:
- I live in a studio apartment so I can’t have a separate office that I can shut the door on and forget about. It also means I don’t have a great deal of space to work with and in addition to sleeping, eating and relaxing in the same room, I’m now also working in it.
- WFH actually costs me more than working in the office because it means higher electricity bills, especially come summer and the need to run the air conditioning a lot more than I would be otherwise if I wasn’t home most of the week. The cost to me of going to the office is nothing as I only live a few blocks away so I walked all the time and obviously the commute time is negligible as well.
On the other hand, I’ve learned to enjoy the benefits.
Pros:
- My home is a much, much more comfortable working environment than my office. I can control the temperature and lighting to suit myself, I have a way better desk set up now than I had at the office, the kitchen is just a few steps away and I don’t have to bother getting dressed if I don’t want to.
- So much quieter and easier to concentrate without all the noise of people talking and typing and walking past all the time.
- Absolute privacy to make/take personal calls as needed and no management looking over my shoulder constantly.
- More efficient domestic management during the working day. I can easily throw a load of laundry in and put it away during my lunch break. Also easier to arrange deliveries when I’m actually home to accept them.
So overall I’d have to say I kind of prefer WFH now. I’ve done my best to carve out a separate office space in my apartment so I can get a bit of a mental separation from it even though I can still see it 24/7 (it does help that it’s an awesome looking desk though!). Long term, it would still be better to have a bigger apartment. So I guess the only real drawback for me is the extra costs of WFH. I would happily do it every day but as I live alone it’s probably unhealthy to do that all the time long-term. Once the lock-down is over, I certainly wouldn’t mind 2 or 3 days at home and a couple in the office.
On the other hand, we’ll have to see how I feel about it after months of this! 
Fuck yeah. I miss the office like crazy. I miss my ergonomic furniture. I miss my cool office stuff. I miss my colleagues. I miss the stuff near the office.
I don’t like working at home. At all.
I like socializing with people at work. Also I find its easier to concentrate.
Honestly, I think my ideal situation is do ~3 hours of work at work, where I can do 80-90% of my daily tasks. Then go home and relax and finish the rest of my work.
For five years I primarily worked from home. I would go in office for 4 hours / week, and those four hours were very productive as I would store up “Must Be Done In Office Tasks” and slam them out in my limited hours.
Starting this past fall, my in office hours began increasing to the required 50/50, and I hated it. I felt there was no reason to have to be in office half time. I accomplish so much more from home, it’s much quieter, and I can be physically comfortable in my own space versus the miserable desk set up.
I’ve been working from home FT for a month now and love it. Unfortunately, the pandemic has removed 25% of my job, but other tasks have filled that space. Management has finally allowed me the tools to do my whole job from my home office (read: couch). I love it.
Do I miss seeing people? Sometimes. But that’s more of a missing humanity as a whole rather than seeing co-workers. I don’t have to listen to my coworkers talking loudly, deal with the scent-monsters, listen to a particular manager’s extremely loud and annoying laugh.
Meetings and conversations are held through Skype, although we’re switching to Teams next week. If I have a question that is technical, we can share screens, etc.
If I had my druthers, I’d never be in office again.
Dear god yes. As of this week, I’m laid off, but I had been working from home before. I miss my co-workers, I miss my animals, there are parts of my job that I need to be at the shelter to do and I miss those parts, I miss the routine, I miss seeing people, I miss being in the loop and knowing what’s going on there, and I’m desperate for a change of scenery.
Before this, I had been told a few months ago that I could work from home two days a week. I did it the first couple weeks, but kind of hated it (although I know I’m lucky to have the option) and so almost always went to work after that. I would work from home if I really wasn’t feeling well or had a reason to (like someone coming to do repairs or something), but I definitely preferred going to work.
I know I’m lucky- only really three of us at my job have (or had) the option of working from home at all and the rest have to either be there or not work because their job has to be hands-on. So it feels a little gross to complain about it- definitely a first world problem. But still… I would never go to a restaurant or movie theater or concert again if I could just… go to work.
I mostly worked from home before this anyway. My office is an easy commute into Manhattan, but my job entails simultaneously managing multiple disparate teams of people (many who are also remote). So there is usually no central “place” I could go do that anyway. Plus I’m not a big fan of just showing up at a desk to put in “face time” anyway.
That said, I do miss being able to go into the office to socialize or travel to my clients for the day just to say “hi” and build relationships.
And truth be told, as much as I enjoy the flexibility of not having to go to the office. I hate that my entire interaction with my company and clients is through a laptop screen. I find it very difficult to manage people or build client relationships if I have no physical proximity to them. But that seems to be the way things are now. Even when I go to a client’s office, 90% of the people there are remote as well.