Working from home



  • Potato chips for breakfast. Conference call in my underwear. THIS IS THE LIFE.

    Yeah, I'm bored. Random topic. Sorry.



  • @blakeyrat said:

    Potato chips for breakfast. Conference call in my underwear. THIS IS THE LIFE.

    Yeah, I'm bored. Random topic. Sorry.

    Working from home is total failure. Nobody really works. Some pepole are not even home, when they claim they working from home.
    My manager, who was "working from home", caught with his pants down by now ex-wife. That's another story

    I hope you stay safe.



  • @Nagesh said:

    @blakeyrat said:
    Potato chips for breakfast. Conference call in my underwear. THIS IS THE LIFE.

    Yeah, I'm bored. Random topic. Sorry.

    Working from home is total failure. Nobody really works. Some pepole are not even home, when they claim they working from home.
    My manager, who was "working from home", caught with his pants down by now ex-wife. That's another story

    I hope you stay safe.

     

    To work from home you need to be disciplined and have the proper mindset. I'd say most people aren't capable of that. Those who can make very good remote workers.

     



  • @mott555 said:

    @Nagesh said:

    @blakeyrat said:
    Potato chips for breakfast. Conference call in my underwear. THIS IS THE LIFE.

    Yeah, I'm bored. Random topic. Sorry.

    Working from home is total failure. Nobody really works. Some pepole are not even home, when they claim they working from home.
    My manager, who was "working from home", caught with his pants down by now ex-wife. That's another story

    I hope you stay safe.

     

    To work from home you need to be disciplined and have the proper mindset. I'd say most people aren't capable of that. Those who can make very good remote workers.

     

    Well, I've done 4 hours worth so far, so I guess I'm in the clear.

    Actually, our company has a ton of people who work at home once a week or more (including me, most weeks), and a lot of "virtual employees" who don't have any home office at all. It seems to work out pretty well.



  • I would say there are two types of "working at home"; "the perk" and "the culture". 

    Most common would be "the perk".  Hurray your boss likes you or is just a nice guy and lets you work from home, however you are still supposed to sit in your seat from morning till whenever you get off your job, have to be available in those hours and it is basically like being in the office at home.
    Not everyone is cut out for this one, because the only real change next to the scenery is the increase in temptation.

    Now "the culture" changes everything around, Instead of your boss being a nice guy and saying you get the perk of working at home, he simply expects you to get shit done before a deadlines and does not care how you get it done just as long as it is before the deadline. Sure you should be available during the day, but he understand that you sometimes have more important things to do then watching the cursor blink, so if you don't reply to a e-mail within 5 minutes that's fine, however if it is important he will also not shy away from calling you on your mobile phone.
    Also not everyone is cut out for this, but next to temptation you are given actual responsibility to manage yourself, which in my experience is easier for people.

    Now there is of course some grey area between these two extremes, but it is important to realise that remote working or working from home or whatever it is called is not one cookie cutter system and many variants exists. Personally i think the first one is a insult to the employee, but then again i also realise there are spinless people out there who just want to sit in a chair 8 hours a day at predefined times and have to be threatend with a bullwhip to get work done. But i try to avoid such people.

    The people who thrive at the other end of the spectrum should probably think about quiting their job and becoming a freelancer ^.^



  • @Nagesh said:

    Working from home is total failure. Nobody really works. Some pepole are not even home, when they claim they working from home.
     

    I don't think it's quite that bad.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @dhromed said:

    @Nagesh said:
    Working from home is total failure. Nobody really works. Some pepole are not even home, when they claim they working from home.

    I don't think it's quite that bad.

    Obviously, it depends on the person, and maybe the company / job. Some people never really "work," even from the office, or their output is a net negative anyways. Hence this site.

    Ultimately, I've found that I get more done at home. For one thing, I work longer hours, which I suppose is good and bad. But it's also easier to take quick breaks. You'd be amazed at how much stress you can relieve by yelling at the kids. I save a lot of money on gas and food, plus all the wear and tear on the car.

    I'm frankly somewhat worried that some day I'll be working on another project that will force me to go back to the office.



  •  Done quite a bit of that since the fuckwit public employees are on strike every other day round here and there's no public transportion available. Anyway from personal experience I can say that you easily get a lot more done when you have control of your enviroment. A memmorable occasion was when I figured out in a couple of hours a design I had been working on for a week at work. Turns out that if people stfu you can actually get work done. Who knew! Still it depends on what you're working on. If it's the seriously menial stuff, it's extraordinarily difficult to stay honest.

     I suspect the best way would be to have your own sound insulated office. I don't mind going to work. If nothing else it gets you out of the house. But when I work I really need my own quiet space.


  • 🚽 Regular

    @boomzilla said:

    Ultimately, I've found that I get more done at home. For one thing, I work longer hours, which I suppose is good and bad. But it's also easier to take quick breaks. You'd be amazed at how much stress you can relieve by yelling at the kids. I save a lot of money on gas and food, plus all the wear and tear on the car.
     

    Ditto. I've been working from home and I've found it suits me well. I still have a social life and everyone I work with are similarly hard-workers and the environments suits them well, as well. Office work has its own perks, and there are elements I miss from that, but I think if I went back to an office environment, I'd get those perks back but then miss some of the perks of working from home. It's a trade-off, really.

    I never understood the argument that working from home invites a lot of distractions. I'd say that working in an office has just as many distractions as working from home. You have the water cooler, the colleague who is giving you a play-by-play description of his one night stand last night, not to mention the commute itself, which takes a bit of time out of your day unless you work next door to your house. Yes, nobody's looking over your shoulder at home, but guess what? If, at the end of the day, you routinely give your project manager an empty progress report, you're in even more trouble than if someone caught you watching YouTube in your cubicle. At least you can plead your case that you're on a 15 minute break in the latter case (unless they *keep* catching you).

    The greatest motivation I have to be productive when I'm working from home is the simple reward you get from a job well done anyways. That's a reward one gets whether they're working from home or at the office. If you need someone breathing down your neck to be motivated, then yes, working from home is not for you, and there's nothing inherently wrong with that. But for those that it does work for, it's a nice privilege.



  • @RHuckster said:

    The greatest motivation I have to be productive when I'm working from home is the simple reward you get from a job well done anyways. That's a reward one gets whether they're working from home or at the office.

    That's a big problem for me. I don't have that, for whatever reason... genetics, education... I just don't feel the "rush of satisfaction" (or whatever) when I finish a job. One of the reasons I could never leave this place and work for myself... I'm sure I'm smart enough to pull it off, but without external motivation I'd never get anything done.

    But, you people are kind of talking about it like it was an all-or-nothing thing. In our company, people WFH once or twice a week and come into the office the rest... so it's kind of the best of both worlds.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @blakeyrat said:

    But, you people are kind of talking about it like it was an all-or-nothing thing. In our company, people WFH once or twice a week and come into the office the rest... so it's kind of the best of both worlds.

    I started with a day or so a week. Then the blizzards hit last year, so I was doing it more and more. Then I started getting lazy, and realized how much better it was to just work at home. Of course, the people on the project I work with are spread out all over the place across multiple states, and I would rarely see even the people at the same location as me.

    I'm working on a project that's "Owned" by another organization, so my project manager isn't my actual supervisor. So my actual supervisor doesn't really care where I am, as long as the $s keep coming, and my project manager as long as I keep productive.



  • @DOA said:

    Done quite a bit of that since the fuckwit public employees are on strike every other day round here .
     

    You're in France?


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @stratos said:

    I would say there are two types of "working at home"; "the perk" and "the
    culture". 

    3rd, albeit minor, type - office worker who 'can do stuff from home.'



    I live 2 miles from the office. I work (normally) 9-5, M-F. Going to(/coming from) work involves either cadging a lift or walking the 1/2hr it takes to walk it.



    We have offices up to UTC-8 and UTC+5. While not expected to answer emails/SMS from them, they happen, and I reply. I could do (most of) my job from my sofa. I do all of my (in/ex country, ex curricular) work from my sofa.



    While I'm not explicitly paid for this 'out-of-service hours' support, it doesn't go un-noticed. Sadly it doesn't get as far as my pay-packet.



  • @dhromed said:

    @DOA said:
    Done quite a bit of that since the fuckwit public employees are on strike every other day round here .
    You're in France?
    What? No.

    Just googled that by the way. Nice to see we're not the only ones in the crapper. 

    Maybe I should start looking for a job in the US. Not only would I earn more but I'd also taketheirjobs!



  • @PJH said:

    @stratos said:

    I would say there are two types of "working at home"; "the perk" and "the
    culture". 

    3rd, albeit minor, type - office worker who 'can do stuff from home.'



    I live 2 miles from the office. I work (normally) 9-5, M-F. Going to(/coming from) work involves either cadging a lift or walking the 1/2hr it takes to walk it.



    We have offices up to UTC-8 and UTC+5. While not expected to answer emails/SMS from them, they happen, and I reply. I could do (most of) my job from my sofa. I do all of my (in/ex country, ex curricular) work from my sofa.



    While I'm not explicitly paid for this 'out-of-service hours' support, it doesn't go un-noticed. Sadly it doesn't get as far as my pay-packet.

     
    very much true, as probably multiple other distinct forms. I just took two extremes to show that there is more then one 'remote working', because i often see these kinds of discussions fail misrably because people think all companies are the same and as such everyone will have the same type of remote working.


  • Garbage Person

    @stratos said:

    i often see these kinds of discussions fail misrably because people think all companies are the same and as such everyone will have the same type of remote working.
    For instance I once worked for a company where my boss 'worked from home' - which involved collecting a salary for nothing.



  • @Weng said:

     For instance I once worked for a company where my boss 'worked from home' - which involved collecting a salary for nothing.

    As opposed to?


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