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.
Love it! Clients have better accessibility; lose less of their days in commute, they are now able to see a niche professional state / nation wide, and I can charge 40% less in not having an office.
At the moment it seems like market forces are pushing me back to an office. I will pass the increased costs to consumers.
Single father with two school aged kids, mom lives in another state. I’ve turned down a couple higher paying executive roles that have been offered to me the last few years because I don’t know how I could make it work. I get my kids up at 7 and the latest one can’t be to school until 9. I have to start getting them from school at 3:30. I’m sure I could figure it out, plenty of people less fortunate than I am but I guess that I’ve decided that I’m incredibly fortunate that I can always be around and available for my kids and I don’t think I would disrupt that for any amount of money as long as I can provide for them this way. I do miss the social aspects of my colleagues sometimes though which really surprised me.
I used to get overstimulated a lot at office jobs. Turns out I can prevent it just fine from home. For my own mental and physical health I’ll pick working from home any day of the week. Some meetings are more useful in person though, so I do go to the office for those.
I love it. No commute, optional shower, no pants. I’m not a very big pants guy, and that’s a huge seller.
I’m liking it, in moderation. Just rolling out of bed, turning on my computer and making coffee on company time right away is very time efficient. It’s also nice that I can work in peace and ignore coworkers whenever I need to.
The downside is that it’s pretty annoying to collaborate on things, especially if it’s with more than one person at a time. Gotta schedule a meeting, even if in person it would just be a thing of walking over and talking to them for 5mins.
My ideal mix is 4 days wfh : 1 day in-office. I get all the talking out of the way on that one day (plus it’s enough socialization for the whole week) and the rest I just exist in peace.
On ocassion yes.
But as you said it feela kinda lonely.
And I get really easily distracted. Last time I had a major side quest I did instead of doing my actual job.Edit: And I habe no office. I value my mental sanity by segregating my home/living space from my working place.
I was working from home for a couple of years and had a mixed appreciation for it. While I was still driving my wife to her job in the morning, it was nice to come home and start my day. Less gas and all that. But not having coworkers around, and not enough separation from the home space sent me stir-crazy often. My wife had a ride home from work since my schedule went past hers, and I would be trying to go places or something after work and she just wanted to chill after her retail management day. But since I was laid off and had to re-enter retail management myself, I wouldn’t mind a hybrid situation if I had the choice.
Working from home, no commute, no clothes, no travel time, no car, easy food.
It’s so efficient, it’s crazy.
There is real value to working not-at-home, but working from home outweighs it in 99% of situations.
The reality is, and has been, and should be:
LISTEN TO AND TRUST PEOPLE WHEN THEY TELL YOU THEY LIKE OR DON’T LIKE SOMETHING.
Depends on how busy I am. If I’m just sitting around waiting to hear from people or deal with shit as it occurs. Yea WFH is nice because I have more shit to occupy my downtime. If I’m busy and need to focus it sucks ass. Also it’s nice to interact with the coworkers I actually like in person and I think it makes us get along a lot better and work more effectively. I don’t know how many of my coworkers would agree though. All of them except one barely come into the office. It’s just my opinion though I wouldn’t try to force them in more.
Yes. Cat.
Really one day I realized I rather eat lunch with my cats than any of my coworkers and have never looked back
I do a lot of telework and very little on-site work. Like 80% teleworking. I love the telework. I get to sleep 45 minutes later, don’t have to get frustrated during my commute, save money on gas, have a discounted auto insurance rate, save on car maintenance, socialize with my coworkers over Teams (which is as much as I need to socialize with them), eat most of my meals with my wife who I enjoy spending time with. All the downtime at my job is now spent doing things like washing dishes, doing laundry, watching TV and movies, and reading, instead of listening to coworkers talk about inane stuff or having admin hover around micro- managing.
I need the home-work separation, or both suffer. I constantly get distracted from work with home stuff, and can’t be fully present with family at home because I’m thinking about work.
I thought I’d hate working from home, it wasn’t too bad. Then they made us hybrid, I thought oh no, worst of both worlds, it wasn’t that bad either. I went back to the office full time because I don’t have a home office and wanted to reclaim that space.
It’s pretty much the same job but teams meetings suck even more than in person meetings, and training new people too, worse.
What I do not like is a commute. I live about one mile from work so don’t even have to drive most days, if it was farther the calculation would be different.
My family loved me working from home because I did more of the cooking and housework, it kind of intensifies that inequality I think.
So I think personally I didn’t get much benefit from working from home but it was not nearly as bad as I thought it might be, if I had to I would.
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.
