I have this nice job over summer working for the University on a research project - which by the way is fantastic and makes me really happy - but one thing that doesn’t make me happy is that in this era of flexible work and remote logins, they’ve figured out that they no longer have to provide actual working spaces for their RAs. Their vision, I think, is that everyone sits in their little home offices beavering away, solitary and independent. I hate that! First because it means never leaving the house (blech) and secondly because it’s a terrible working space. My house is full of people! Especially now, in the school holidays. And housework that I’m avoiding. It’s very distracting!
There are spaces about the University that you can take a laptop into, but I’m not mad keen on that either - laptops are terribly unergonomic to be pecking away at all day and I grudge spending the money on a good one when … well, where I really want to be is in front of a nice big desktop, at a proper desk.
I’ve been sneaking into the Statistics Lab, which fulfils my requirements, but strictly speaking I should bugger off out of it whenever there’s a lab class (not many going on right now, since it’s summer). People who notice have been nice about not booting me out so far - but am I the only one who pines for the days of real working spaces that you went in to to do work, AND (important point) stopped doing work once you went away from them?
I’ve never had to work from home, which is a good thing because I’d get absolutely nothing done. My home is chock full of toys and entertainments - I couldn’t possibly get away from them. And my brain interprets my home as home, dammit - I don’t think about work there!
If I had a room specifically dedicated to being a work-at-home office or something it might be different, but I don’t have such a room and even if I had the space I’d feel ill-inclined to set one up just for the privilege of sparing my workplace rent expenses.
I could work from home, but the office is 4.6 miles away. I did do a late night skype conference call from home, but normally I come into work to work.
home = home
work = work (and SDMB )
I know some people like work at home because it is quiet and no in person interuptions and I can see that but I prefere it my way
I knew a self-employed guy who did computer-related work from home. (He had one room dedicated to be his office.) I did a little bit of that myself, part-time, for several years.
One thing I noticed is that you’re never NOT at the office! At least, that’s how it feels.
I like working at home. I have better facilities (and a better kitchen with a full fridge) than at the office. If something breaks at the office, I have to go home to get the job done, so why leave?
I hate it and rent an office space even though I am a 100% remote worker for my company. When I do have to work from home for whatever reason, it just seems like my day never really starts and ends, it just kind of blends into my free time with no real boundary.
Plus neither my wife nor my dog really ‘get’ that I am not around for other purposes. I feel like if it came down to it, I could set some rules that I could get my wife to buy off on, but my dog thinks that he should be on camera for all video calls.
My usual work is as a traveling consultant. On a project, I usually fly to the client and work in their offices 4 days a week for the duration of the project. My work is very partnership client focused, so being physically together is optimal for knowledge transfer, etc.
But, this current client project didn’t really “get” the partnership aspects of what I do. So they designed the project for me to work from home. Not good for the success of the project. Yes, we all have technology to share and communicate. But it’s just not the same as, “Hey, can you pull up a chair and show me this?” Or, “We need to sit together today to work through this whole thing.”
And, as others have mentioned, when I’m home, I’m home. The office area is not isolated from other people, there are all of the distractions of being home. When I’m in the client office, it’s very easy to focus on the work.
For me, another big part is that work satisfies a need for social interaction. I really really need to be around people. Working from home, I am not. This type of work is isolating enough with not having a regular set of work buddies to spend time with over years and years. At clients at least I have some individuals I can click with sometimes for brief periods.
My job doesn’t require any phone work, except to dial in to a meeting from time to time. I can do it from home, an office, or Mars for that matter.
WORKING FROM A LAPTOP: I have a couple monitors a keyboard, and a mouse that plug into a dock, so it’s not an issue–that’s all I have on my desk.
WORKING FROM HOME: took some getting used to because cats, chores, toys, etc. But that worked out as well because I just have to keep current with the work. That can take 8 hours or 4 or 16. Some days I only have 6 hours in me, other days I have 12. If I wake at 2:AM I can just get to it and maybe have an afternoon nap.
I recently got moved back to the office because evidently someone thought I was going a little funny from not, like, speaking for 12 hours a day. And they were right–making mouth words had become a bit tiresome. So that’s been good, even though I still pretty much keep myself to myself. Having to go to an office also makes me keep normal wake/sleep times. But I really hate wearing pants (it’s a sensory thing and I’ve griped here about it before).
So I guess: Home vs office each have their good and bad points. It’s all a wash, really. Ideally I could do neither and just be rich.
I like a 3/2 split of working at home. Home for 2-3 days, office for 2-3 days. Sometimes I need quiet focus time, sometimes I need to be around humans.
The best company I ever worked at did a 4/1 split, but it was clearly defined as everyone worked at home on Wednesdays. That was cool because everyone was on the same cadence. And if you actually came to work on Wednesday because the kids were too noisy or whatever, it was dead silent except for other people who came in to get things done. You could have some really great interactions, or not. Man I miss that place.
I like the fact that I can work from home if I really need to – like this Monday I could be home when the plumber came to replace the water heater without needing to actually take time off work. But I don’t like working from home and generally only do it if I absolutely need to be home. Like Chronos said, I like having a clear division between home and work.
I love working from home and have done it now for 11 years and 1 day.
The company I work for is an outsourcing call-centre and all the employees work from home. And as such, I can live anywhere in the country and still log into work with a LL phone and an internet connection. In the last 5 months I’ve lived in 3 different states and managed to keep working pretty much continuously during that time.
Makes life so much easier, and especially as I hated commuting when I worked in a bricks-and-mortar call centre.
I love working from home one day a week. But I usually go to the office the other days. I think I would be less happy working from home every day.
I did apply for such a job (didn’t get it) and I think it would have been okay, but I’m not certain. It would have required me to show up at the office from time to time, though.
Is there any particular hour quota that you need to hit, or can you just work as many hours as you need to? I could use a job like that. (I happen to know a lot of things that could be told to people over the phone).
I work from home 100% after my manager discovered that my commute to “the office” took nearly two hours each way. I’m the only person in my group in CA, so the corporate properties people stuck me at a desk in a sort of DMZ between other groups that I had nothing to do with.
I have a dedicated room in my house with two monitors, etc. and I couldn’t be happier (well, more money would be nice!) with the arrangement. My group is global, with the US people in six locations, and no more than two people per location, so we’re already tuned into collaborating via Skype. Also doesn’t hurt that I was in a pilot program to try telecommuting 12-ish years ago where they’d let us work from home on Fridays, so I’m used to the whole “It’s work hours, so I’m working / It’s not work hours so I’m not working” concept.
I don’t often “work from home” but really I just take my work to the public library and work there. As mentioned working at home as far as I’m concerned is open to distraction and procrastination. To an extent the library is too but I don’t pick up a book to read until I’ve completed my main tasks and because I’m in public space, I’m conscious of others around me as they are to me. It’s respectable and motivating to get things done.
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