I’ve never had a WFH job and I generally don’t think I’d personally want/be successful with one. My sister is fully remote and she actually hates it, but I think its more the job she doesn’t like than the WFH aspect. She says its lonely and isolating on top of disliking her daily tasks. I’m not anti WFH for others at all, to absolutely clear.
No. For a good part if my job I need my lab. While I’ve got some equipment on my own at home, it does not even come close to what I’ve got there to work with.
I love it because I bought everything I need to feel good in my office : a dock to switch easily between work and personal computers, a standup desk, many things to reduce back, neck and shoulder pain too. I have a wall painted that I can look at when I need to have a break. I don’t have transport, so I wake up 15mn before work starts. There is no noise. When I feel I can work less without feeling tracked : as long as I get my work done in time, there’s no issue. I can take breaks to do some house-related tasks (tho I don’t take breaks lately, but I could do it).
I could not go back to any job requiring me to go to the office.
I’ve been fully remote for 12 years. I’ve had two jobs during that time and moved five times over three countries.
I’m glad I got into my industry on-site. But I’ve come to realize that I hate cities. I hate commutes. I’d rather take a pay cut and live somewhere cheap.
My wife works from home, too. We have two dogs. We do our meetings, have time for focused work and grab lunch together.
My previous job was definitely not lonely or isolating. I was the go-to-guy for everything, so people video calling all day long. My current job gives me space to get shit done. I’ve got two days a week blocked off for just deep code mode. No meetings.
If you don’t like the job on-site, then you’re not going to like it remote. You’ve got to do something that feels rewarding.
I like it. I would not go back.
But I have a nice home office, don’t live alone, and found office culture and colleagues to be disruptive.
I have ADHD. My job tends to be wide but not necessarily deep. A “quick question” can cause me to lose my train of thought, cause me to get disordered while trying to figure what the hell I was doing, get shut down by the frustration, and lose hours in ‘wait mode’ for the next interruption because it took me so long to enter a flow state that I’m fearful I’ll get interrupted again.Being able to shut my office door, silence notifications, and focus with music playing in the background has been incredible for me.
I WFH 2 days a week and commute to three different offices according to where they need me. WFH is for concentration, office time is for collaboration.
I have a sick setup at home. Plus all the conveniences others mentioned already.
But really, it’s being with the family, seeing your kids during the day. I don’t want to just come home when they’re already asleep.
Yes, been 100% WFH since 2015. I do miss the random chats in hallways, lunch room, etc, but definitely not worth going back to an office. I am far more effective at home.
Unquestionably yes. My coffee doesn’t taste like shit, and my PJs are far more comfortable than any office attire imaginable.
Yes WFH was the best thing to ever happen to me. Saves 2 hours of commute time per day, I can focus without overhearing four simultaneous conversations in my immediate area, my dogs are with me, I can do chores around the house when there’s downtime. The only downside is there’s no access to my lab so I still have to go in once in a while. Now that my job is forcing RTO I’m desperately searching for a new WFH position but they’re starting to get a little scarce and often don’t contact me back after applying.
No. I have ADHD and need external pressure to be productive.
Working from home in my job doesn’t signal that pressure.
Most of the tasks that are assigned to me can always wait for another day.
So at home, I mostly just browse Feddit.
At work, I have people around me who can see my screen, and I can hear the issues my colleagues are having.
And since a day of fucking around makes me feel more exhausted at the end than a day working productively, I prefer going to the office.
The bicycle commute that wakes me up in the morning, releases stress in the evening, and keeps me fit, is a bonus.This sounds like my experience before I burned out. And while I was in the process of burning out, I still would have preferred to work from the office because home was, and is, my safe space. I don’t want work intruding there.
This does not mean that I haven’t worked from home - I was the on-call tech more than once, nor does it mean that I think WFH is a bad idea. In fact I’m all for it for those who can handle it.
I like the idea of unnecessary layers of manglement sweating because they can’t justify their existence through pointless micromanagement.
I really like meeting up with coworkers and clients every few months, but almost exclusively because wfh makes me so much more productive that going to talk with people AFTER getting stuff done is very valuable.
I never thought I would be able to wfh before honestly I just thought I’d spend my career finding places to hide to work.
Yes. Im way more efficient at home. Less offfice bullshit.
No commute or shitty weather.
Roll out of bed and online in seconds, just open the laptop lid, leave it in suspend.
My food and can cook a proper meal.
Also can throw on a wash or whatever during the day.
Being home when my packages get delivered is also a nice bonus too! And where I live, I have to deal with a lot of snow. Normally this would be a pain in the ass, but when you work from home, you get to it when you feel like it.
Through the comments so far the lack of commute would be the biggest plus for me personally. I work in a power plant about 35 mins from my house. So, no matter the weather I absolutely need to be in, sometimes that has meant sleeping there.
People who socialize in the office hate wfh
People who socialize outside of the office love wfh
People who don’t socialise at all also love wfh
Thats pretty fair.
I socialize quite a lot at both but work is a non-issue for me as long as I perform on my half assed level of half assed halfassery.
Yeah it more applies to people who actually get their primary socialization time at work
A lot of people have social lives that are dominated by work relationships from being regular friends to hanging out after work and such
So wfh for them is basically just isolation because they never had to socialize for themselves, school and then work provided it by necessity and proximity
Despite socializing a lot when I was working at the office, I pretty much immediately loved working from home after the initial 3 months. I’d gone back in temporarily a couple of times for a few reasons, and the whole environment was… Bad.
I run really hot in general, so being able to control my AC was great, since I swear the office was on 74 with about a thousand bodies worth of heat in a comparatively small space. To emphasize: I tend to open a window when it’s anywhere between 0-50F (-17 to 10C) outside.
Everyone had on different kinds of perfume, which just blended into this awful smell on top of whatever cleaning chemicals they used. Having 30+ people talking within earshot made it hard to focus on anything. I could go on. I didn’t realize how much I hated it until I started working from home, and it was so much better.
It is lonely and isolating. Especially after my divorce.
Idk. I really don’t.
