My experiences of working remote for a year
modess.io
modess.io
- I've had the opportunity to see my kids grow up (they're 6 and 9 now).
- I get to see my wife for lunch and a coffee break every single day (she also works from home)
- As a developer, the amount of focus I'm able to achieve in my home office is incredible.
It isn't for everyone, though. Here's some things I've learned:
- If you're any sort of extrovert, you're going to need to find outlets to recharge your social batteries (I'm an introvert, so not much of a problem for me).
- It is MUCH easier working for a 100% distributed company. I've had friend work in both fully distributed organizations, and semi-distributed, and it is much tougher in the semi-distributed environment.
- You absolutely need to set yourself up for success. I have a home office in the basement, and it is _the_ office, not another room. You need something more than your kitchen table if you really want to do it long-term.
- You need to find a system to keep your focus up. I use the pomodoro technique and GTD.
- If you work with a team, it is critical you jump on the phone a few times a week to touch base, and a few times per year face-to-face. It is as much for human interaction as it is for the work itself.
Like I said, it isn't for everyone, but I think more companies should give it a go.
This is the most important piece of advice. You need to have a space that is for work and for work only. When you enter that space, it puts you in a work mindset.
If you work wherever, you will never be able to focus.
> it is critical you jump on the phone a few times a week to touch base
In my experience, it is critical for you to jump on the phone every day, once a day. Like clockwork. The meeting shouldn't last more than 5 minutes.
Go over what you did the previous day and discuss what you're planning to do today. Discuss anything that's blocking your progress. Then start your day.
Yes and no for my part, I have different places for different kind of work I do like I wrote in my post. Desk = coding, dining table = writing. It works for me but will probably not work for everyone.
> In my experience, it is critical for you to jump on the phone every day, once a day. Like clockwork. The meeting shouldn't last more than 5 minutes.
When working with a team or simply more people than yourself, then yes!
Pretty soon (in less than a month) I'm going to have the following working conditions: I'm gonna have a room to myself and a powerful tower pc. I need it both to work and to do non-work related stuff like videogames. Of course I can drag it to kitchen every day to work and move it back to my room afterwards but that seems absurd to me.
I don't find concentration is at all hard to come by, however switching off can be difficult.
Ultimately, the beauty of the GP's quote "set yourself up for success" is that you must do absolutely whatever works for you. If it's working in a bar at 2 in the afternoon, do it. With no "office" to go to, it's an ideal situation to experiment.
On my laptop, I keep separate browser instances for work and play:
google-chrome --user-data-dir=/home/workuser/.config/google-chrome-workuser
google-chrome --user-data-dir=/home/playuser/.config/google-chrome-playuser
Some people are able to switch contexts easily. If you're one of these people, advice given here may not apply to you. If you do find yourself having trouble keeping yourself focused at work, try doing things to keep your environments separated. It doesn't have to mean physically lugging your tower PC to a different room (but don't rule it out). Try creating different user logins, or at least different backgrounds and color schemes.
The only consistent success I have had is by using my laptop from a different location than one I normally use for another purpose, such as the coffee table while not using the couch.
I worked remote for 2 years and was paying for a separate office space about 20 minutes walk away. You have to have that separation - otherwise you will take two hours to make lunch and just get that lawn mown instead of doing the emails.
Take a laptop to the library or to Starbucks, go find a friend I a similar shape and swap rooms, knock on local company doors and do website maintenance in return for a desk.
Do not work in your one room in a flat share. Get out. Have physical distance
We're on IM almost constantly for a few hours, but we then mostly go into our caves to get stuff done.
I've found the phone (and video calls) are critical for feeling connected to your teammates.
Phone is better than text because phone gives you more information in the discussion. You can judge the other person's mood to some extent, get a feel for their energy level, their enthusiasm. Also quite often when someone says something in text, it can be interpreted multiple ways, and emotion in voice gives cues which way is intended. If they have mixed feelings on a topic, you're more likely to sense that. It's also easier to talk, so it's easier to quickly relate a funny story and generally bond.
It's also worth nothing that a Skype call is generally higher sound quality, so it conveys this additional information much better than a phone call these days, since phonecalls tend to be way over-compressed and muddy. It's also worth noting that a video call does all of the above better as well, because video offers an additional channel of information for reading people's emotions.
When it comes to business discussions, I find text a better format because then I have time to compose and re-read my messages, and re-read other participants messages to clarify the details.
[1] Consider reading a book like Influence by Robert Cialdini, Ph.D. which has all kinds of fascinating studies about how people act in surprisingly illogical ways based on what they write. The book cites a number of studies on this issue of irrational consistency, and how it is routinely exploited in situations ranging from sales to indoctrination.
Something like daily phone calls will help you build those relationships. It's not as good as face time, but it's a lot better than text.
Bingo.
If you just communicate in text, you don't have a relationship. You're just another fish in a sea of a ton of other emails/texts/IMs/etc. And trust me, everybody gets so many of them, they don't differentiate based on who sent it ... it's all just one massive blob of text.
Break through that. Be one of the few people who make voice contact and if possible, face to face. You then get upgraded to being an actual human being. Build a relationship.
Then when the shit hits the fan, and it always does, you won't get the axe. Also, it's not all negative ... when there's a windfall or a new project, you'll be remembered and they'll call you.
Always push for the most intimate form of communication available.
>> This is the most important piece of advice. You need to have a space that is for work and for work only. When you enter that space, it puts you in a work mindset.
I will parrot this a 2nd time.
When I was at University, I worked for a very small company that allowed me to set whatever hours I wanted as long as the work was completed. There were stretches where I didn't show my face in the office for 3 weeks at a time, because the building's physical location was a 45 minutes one-way drive. I worked from the computer lab, coffee shops, empty classrooms, the park, the cafeteria - basically everywhere on campus.
Then my son was born.
For the first month or two, I only went into the office when there were meetings. I didn't set up a place at home to be my office. "Who needs a home office; I have this sweet-ass gaming rig with 50 monitors! I'm gonna be the most productive guy in the world." As you can guess, that productivity lasted all of one day.
HN, Reddit, Facebook, Skype, sites like CodeEval, the StackExchange network - I had never been so distracted. I don't even regularly use Facebook, but because I had no one to answer to, it became a distraction. I started doing these short work sprints that last an hour. As retribution, I'd spend 2 hours screwing around. I'd fudge numbers on progress reports. I'd write code and do a rollback citing that a different method would be better suited to extend the application further down the road.
I used the Podomoro technique to reign myself in. 20-25 minute work stretches with 5 minutes of do whatever. That got me through roughly 10 days before the train was off the rails. I settled on working from a clean Linux partition in my wife's studio space. The need to have a true workspace when working remotely simply _cannot_ be understated.
In the end, it all worked out. I got plenty done at work, managed to graduate and the kid didn't starve.
Yes, there were some days I had to take a break, beg someone to come watch the kid for a few hours so I could run down to the pizza place down the street (with WiFi) and work in peace. But honestly, I get the same feeling working in an office.
My point is not to refute the need for a dedicated work environment. It's just to say that you may be perfectly fine in complete chaos. Just pay attention and you'll figure it out.
It's a popular book [1] discussing a system of how to be more productive.
This is still the biggest hurdle I’ve had to get over after freelancing for a year.
I lived alone when I started but it was easy enough to meet friends for lunch or after work and go to meetups to recharge, in the summer. Once Canadian winter hit the meetups happen less frequently and people are less likely to brave the winter for a cup of coffee.
Depending on where you live you may be able to keep a year-long routine of getting your social needs in order after work. But for me I’ve also had to change my mindset and appreciate times when I have no choice but to embrace solitude.
But with 2 kids in home, Can you say to them that you're working? they respect you? I spoke with some people that had success working from home, but when kids born they couldn't follow working from home.
I may add make any sport when you working from home. Sport help me a lot to get fresh air and ideas.
Cheers
My 3 year old understands perfectly well that "daddy's at work... we can't disturb him."
Oddly enough, it was the teenagers at home during the summer that had a hard time grasping that.
A nice set of headphones is mandatory though ;)
My kids grew up with it, so it was relatively easy to handle it: they always understood that when dad was in the office he was working and wasn't to be disturbed.
And there are consequences for them if they come into the office just to chat. Nothing major, but it is enough to create a difference between "the house is on fire" (good to know) and "I want to show you this awesome new lego creation I made (also good, but now is not the time).
I'd flip it though, no matter how introverted you are, you probably need some social interaction. At the very least get outside, walk, exercise, etc... Working from can let you fall into some bad habits if you arent careful. In addition to an office, I shower, get dressed and have some "work" house shoes I put on and then go to work.
As a worker, you have to be proactive too, you have to work to forge friendships and a strong team feeling; that can be harder than you think and it does take work. It's great when you figure it all out, it can be lonely and miserable you you don't or can't.
I also will assert that if you have a couple of very effective remotes, it lifts the whole company. More people will feel free to do personal stuff when they need to and generally they'll do stuff in evenings and weekends when needed. I've seen a few places where "work at home" means work at night, weekends and when you're sick. Remotes sort of force that issue and they help promote the use of tools to facilitate it.
Ever since I have converted to my own set schedule (5:30 am and finished by early afternoon), I've never been more productive. Long story short, find a way to be productive that works for YOU. This may mean working early, working late, or working in chunks from morning until you go to bed. The author's experience didn't parallel mine, and it may or may not parallel yours.
Exactly. I am so tired of all these "Open offices are great", "Open offices suck", "Remote work is great", "Remote work sucks", posts. If it works, keep it, if it doesn't work, change it.
They will say that they are getting the work done so those 5 hour days are justified. I don't always agree and as a working manager I'm working 10-12 hour days cleaning up the rest and need more help and that attitude doesn't help me.
If you finish early, there is usually nothing stopping you from helping out with other miscellaneous things than just the big projects.
If neither of these are possible, then it probably is okay for that employee to work shorter days in the meantime, and leadership resources should spend time solving the bottle neck issues to prevent the situation in the future.
From an employees perspective: Then what is the motivation to perform better than my peers? More work than my colleagues and the hope to get a bigger bonus?
If someone is performing better and helping out in the remaining 3h, do you also pay extra for these 3h? If not, ain't it wiser for the employee to finish the work in 7h and help out for 1h? Less overall work, same money and one still stands out as a performer.
Keep in mind that for about the first quarter-century of our lives, we are trained in everything that we do that someone else will tell us what to do and set the expectations, and if we meet them then we're doing good, if we exceed them then we're doing better and deserve a reward. First our parents, then our teachers, then our entry-level bosses. They know what needs to be done and how long it should take; if we finish early, they tell us what to do next (or that we've done a good job and can relax).
It's only later, if we happen to get into a creative career, that our bosses can only give us a vague idea of what needs to be done and it's up to us to work out the details, set expectations, and seek out other work to do if we finish early. That goes against the grain of everything we've ever been taught.
We also have to unlearn the bad habits that hourly wage jobs train into us. If you want more free time, get your work done quicker (or that if you work efficiently, you get paid less).
It may be that you are working with people who are still trying their best at doing exactly what they've been taught their entire lives, and expecting what they've always been taught to expect, not yet consciously realizing that the dynamics are completely different and 20+ years of trained behavior and expectations should be thrown out the window.
>If you finish early, there is usually nothing stopping you from helping out with other miscellaneous things than just the big projects.
Sure, if somebody's falling behind, help them out if you can. Or go for the hidden victories. Maybe devs are spending time every week dealing with the results of a recurring bug - find a way to track down the source so they won't have to spend that time every week. Maybe somebody in marketing is tediously copy-pasting things that could easily be scripted so they could spend more time on creative stuff. Or the business people could really use some data that they never even knew you could easily pull for them. Ask the IT team about their frustrations and you might find something that could easily be changed on the dev side to save them hassle and reduce friction. Time spent helping your coworkers is time well spent in more ways than one. Unfortunately, we're trained from birth to be competitive and passive rather than cooperative and active about things like that.
If possible, try to encourage them to understand that extra time gives them the power to be creative and really excel, possibly in ways that you haven't even thought of. If you must give them tedious or unpleasant tasks, try making it an opportunity for them to find a way to remove the tedium (or even the need for the task) in the future. If they still aren't interested, then maybe it is a difference of opinion on work/life balance (they're trying to maximize their free time while also doing a good enough job).
> They will say that they are getting the work done so those 5 hour days are justified. I don't always agree and as a working manager I'm working 10-12 hour days cleaning up the rest and need more help and that attitude doesn't help me.
...which is the point you bring up, which clearly demonstrates the 5 hour days not working for you. When I say "you", it's the collective: the whole team. Not individuals on the team.
I'm the kind of person who lives his work, I treat it casually (or try to) but when I'm in an office I feel the pressure to "look busy" and when I go home I (now) lose motivation to continue working (even when I get a surge of inspiration)
I've looked for remote work for a long time, but being a systems administrator this is hard.. employers want you to be in a bullpen full of other people, random noises, distractions, people looking at your screen nonchalantly. I just can't get used to it.. although over the last 8 years I've become a little harder to it.
Working from home 4 out of 5 days makes the most sense, you meet people when needed but "get things done" the rest of the week, communication is crucial but face to face communication, while important, is not the most important thing at the sacrifice of comfort and quality work.
I've found it's good for coming up with arguments and point/counterpoints. And trying to appeal to the manager's personality -- what makes them tick.
I'm in my mid 20s, I do contract work and has several personal projects that I have high hopes for. But there are moments when I'm bored/stuck when I think having a coworker nearby whom you could instantly talk to would be better.
My remote working friends and I have a slack group where we hangout and chat about stuff, it is great you never feel alone.
I find on-site has high-bandwidth communications but limited productivity because of distractions.
Remote is the opposite.
However - it's usually easier to find ways to increase bandwidth than to remove distractions in a shared space.
That said, I still don't consider going to a regular office. Should try a coworking space.
Remote workers must have some sense for privacy and security, this is more important than anything else.
All for the sake of convenience. For me the important thing is to keep a work machine which is solely dedicated to work, which is only connected to the necessary services.
VMs do wonders for this. A work VM with only work things makes it easy to keep work and life separate, but at the same time way more convenient than two computers.
Our code, which is probably the most critical part, is on Github and that is definitely the case for many, many companies.
Not saying that you should store private keys in not-so-private places, but if you need to access any non-critical accounts as a team, what you propose is simply not reasonable.