I have not met anybody who likes open office outside of accounting departments. Hopefully the fad won’t last. I’m OK with a cube.
I work from home a couple days a week, and I’m less than keen on it.
Why I do it: because the Firebug is really too old for before/aftercare now that he’s in middle school, but still really needs an adult at home most of the time he’s home.
Our flexible schedule plan, plus telework, means I can work short days 3 days a week at the office, and be home from work by the time his bus arrives, and work long days at home 2 days a week, to put in my 40 hours a week.
But I really miss the days when before/aftercare meant that my wife and I could drop him off in the morning, drive to work, work 8 hours, then pick him up on the way home.
Why I like the office: I’ve got a good work space here. My cube has counters on three sides, with plenty of room for double monitors, phone, piles of files and various other desktop clutter, and I’ve still got a fair amount of clear desk space. Plus I’ve got plenty of space for files and general stuff other than my desk, since I’ve got a couple of big file drawers and a storage cabinet in my cube. Plus I have a big window behind me with a view of the Washington Monument in the distance. 
Also, I like being around my co-workers. Some conversations work well by email, but some are a hell of a lot easier to have a face-to-face conversation, because you don’t know what info the other person really needs until you’re into a conversation. Being able to walk down the hall and just talk with the person you need to figure something out with - that just works well for me.
Also, with rare exceptions, I like them as people. Being around them is a feature, not a bug.
Why I dislike working at home: I’m not bothered much by the distractions. In fact, given that I’m going to waste a certain amount of the work day no matter where I am, being able to run the dishwasher or move the laundry along during the work day is a plus, not a minus.
But my workspace at home is really crappy. I’ve got a computer desk in a corner of the guest room, and it was good enough for doing the taxes and paying the bills. It’s NOT big enough for doing the taxes, paying the bills, and having a ton of work-related stuff there as well. I have to use the guest bed as counter space if I need to spread out papers, which is less than ideal, especially with a pair of 9 month old kittens in the house! If I want room for double monitors, let alone more desk/file space, I really need to have a desk custom-built for the space.
I’d been thinking about building a desk myself to fit the space, because I can do that sort of stuff, but I just don’t have the time and energy right now. This is actually the first time it’s crossed my mind that I might should pay someone else to do it. And yes, dammit, that’s what I ought to do!
Certainly I’d be happier with it if I had a decent place to work at home. And even though I’m probably only four years away from retirement, it would be worth it. Not to mention, the bills and taxes will still be there after I retire, and having a better space for dealing with them would continue to be a plus. So I think I may have a conversation with my wife about this over the weekend. Maybe she’d like a custom-built workspace at home as well.
I’ve been working from home for 22 years, and I love it. Of course, I’ve always had my own quiet space, and now I live alone. My “real” office is an hour away, but I don’t maintain a workspace there and probably go in 2-3 times a year. If I had people in my house all the time I’d totally rethink my work habits, so I see where a lot of people are coming from. But being by myself, I can just don a headset for meetings and pace about the house, sit on the back porch, whatever, as long as nobody is screen sharing at the moment. That beats the hell of being chained to a desk or stuck in a conference room for multiple meetings a day.
It wasn’t from a laptop but I HATED IT!!! I had a small sporting goods manufacturing business and worked from home, and had various employees and others working from their homes and I never could quite get through to people that it was still work and had to be done; not even our parents sometimes. “Well I really need a ride and since you are home all the time …” :smack: I went so far as working basically midnight to 10am and setting the phone to go right to the message machine just so I could actually get things done and the last couple years added the cost of rental space for the operation just to get left alone. I sold off and bailed mostly because I didn’t like being an employer but the “from home” aspect was at least 45% of the problem.
Here’s one viewpoint on the subject:
I personally couldn’t do without the open-plan office eavesdropping; I’m good at it, if somewhat pathologically drawn to butting into every conversation in earshot.
It’s true that having a better setup at home (at minimum, a room that I could close the door on,which nobody but me has an excuse to go into, and which I have no non-work reason to be in) would move the needle from ‘lousy’ to ‘mediocre’. But it would still leave me with two big problems (which I totally understand not everyone experiences as problems, but I do)
a) Commute.
A lot of people hate their commute, but I LIKE leaving the house in the morning and *going *somewhere. It really gets my day going in a non-sucky productive way. I’ve never had one of those “drive 90 minutes in stop-start traffic” kind of deals. I probably never would, because I simply don’t apply for jobs where that would be the deal - my work skills are non-niche enough that I’ve never had to. My commute right now, if I go in to the University to work, is a half-hour bike ride. That’s niiiice.
b) People.
When I hang out at the University I often bump into former-fellow-students, former-lecturers, friends-I-didn’t-know-also-work-in-this-joint and so on and so forth. This is nice. It would be even nicer if I was in a dedicated work space with other people also doing (different) science, who I could get to know and occasionally randomly chat with. Even the fact that I know the dudes in the coffee shop is pleasantly social, though conversations don’t get much beyond 'gonna be stinking hot today/how ‘bout those bushfires’. I don’t mind open-plan - in fact, having a bunch of random people about makes me slightly more productive, I believe. Too much solitude and silence makes me antsy - music is too distracting. A bunch of random people randomly doing their own individual things is just right.
Anyway, I totally support the right of other people to like work-from-home if that’s your bag, and I promise not to try to take it away from yez. But I want a Real Office™!
I work as a music arranger. I usually work at home, on my computer.
No need to get out and go somewhere in all kinds of weather and put up with having to take the bus and metro. No noisy people around. No having to hear other people’s damn phones. No having to put up with random annoyances I’d encounter in public. Plus, I have fatigue and illness issues, and I don’t usually know how tired or sick I’ll feel on any given day, so I can set my own schedule.
Not much for me to complain about.
When I was a consultant I could work from home and sometimes did but tried to do that work elsewhere. About half of the work was done at a client site and the second half was a report that can be done elsewhere. I was sometimes about to do that second half on my travel to/from the job site if I took the train, especially Amtrak. Actually I chose Amtrak over the cheaper commuter rail when I had such work to do as the train provided a work environment with limited distractions and I really got a lot done that way.
Later I got a job that involved staying at hiking shelters for 4 nights per week, a report was due each week. At first I did that at home , but soon learned to do that while at those shelters and had that time at home to myself. In that job I worked closely with different groups including a hiking club which actually indirectly paid for my salary. When the club president found out I was doing the report while at the shelter she almost blew her stack. It appears like she actually enjoyed us having no life outside of 5 days on trail, 1+ day of reports, 1 day to turn around the gear, wash, resupply and was noticeably upset that I freed up that extra day that I was able to spend for myself.
Yes, this exactly. It comes in handy when the local weather is a lot snowier so the university stays open. But I only do it two or three days a year because it’s terrible trying to get anything done on a laptop and without dual monitors. Somehow, working from home for 8 hours always feels like 12 or 14.
Without wanting to sound trollishly contrarian, I have worked (mostly) from home for the last year or so and really rather liked it. That said, I can see why it doesn’t suit some people.
Firstly, I save the time and cost of commuting - my commute isn’t bad, but the return journey is 1.5 hours which adds up over the course of a week/month/year.
Secondly, I can wear whatever the hell I like (unless I’m teleconferencing, in which case it’s formal top-half and informal bottom-half).
Thirdly, while I’m tucked up away on the top floor of my house it is quiet and I can wholly devote myself to what I am doing - not so when I am at the office (where it is noisy and interruptions are frequent).
Fourth - while I am at home I can volunteer for impromptu childcare tasks (pick up my daughter from school, etc.) as and when they arise.
All this is soon due to end, though, as I am starting a new job in which I will need to be more regularly 9-5…
I worked from home nearly 100% for 14-15 years, and now I’m trying to adjust to 20% at home, 80% cube. It’s going ok, but I resent the dress code, the boredom when I don’t have enough work, and the lack of quiet. Sigh.
I also am required to take an hour unpaid lunch every day. So annoying.
I have two part time jobs, one where I work from home and the other where I go into an office. I actually like it this way because there are benefits to each.
When I work from home, I don’t have to dress nice or bother with the traffic and weather. I do have a dedicated office where I can have privacy and listen to my music while I work.
I also enjoy going into an office twice a week as well. It’s much more social, which is important for me. And collaboration is far easier.
When I worked at a corporate job, I was able to work from home one day a week and go in two days a week. That was about perfect for me.
I used to work from home a lot although for the most part it was “in addition to” not “instead of” working from the office. However my kids are long since grown & on their own so my wife was exceptionally cooperative. However the work I do know is in a call centre so working from home is not an option.
My daughter in law, however, works from home quite a bit and the youngest grandchild isn’t school age so that presents her some challenges.
I completely forgot there was a poster with this name, and I was thinking “I just re-watched that movie, and I don’t remember that line in it!” 
I started telecommuting a day a week way back when dial-up was the only connection. And that was to a mainframe. No PCs yet. I would take a Compaq portable home (I couldn’t leave it home because it was shared) – we called it the sewing machine because it looked exactly like a portable sewing machine.
I mostly liked it. There was an old mainframe messaging system I could use to talk to folks at work (started with a P – the system Ollie North used that got him in trouble). Once I was “talking” to a work friend and mentioned my sister (who he also knew) was home and watching the Westminster Dog Show on TV. It was a rebroadcast from the night before, and he’d seen it. He asked what part she was watching, and I said the hound group. He told me the basset had won, so I had the idea to make a bet with her, so I wandered into the living room and watched for a little bit. I said I really like the look of the basset hound, and she said it was o.k. but it’d never win. So, I bet her dinner. When it won, she got so mad – that blankety-blank basset hound! How did it win??? When I finally confessed she got mad… at me. Ha, since I cheated I didn’t make her pay up, but it was fun!
I work from home exclusively. I probably could talk them into doing my one way hour and half commute to work among people that aren’t even on my team (we’re spread out among different states and internationally), and that would probably make me feel a little more connected to humanity, but nah. I keep to myself mostly so it’s all good.