I Work from Home

Your error is to assume it's necessarily by choice. You don't always want to do that. You take a job that pays the bills first. Then you are forced to change jobs, or keep doing the same job remotely (yes, that can happen for a variety of reasons. E.g. farawayfamily emergencies, and you either want to keep that job or they'd rather you work remotely rather than losing you).

I did this for 2.5 years, and it started great. But it went downhill. And I never went as low as the poor soul in there, but it definitely took a toll on me at some point. At some point I was in a small apartment with wife and 1.5kids, where my office was under a bed. It's obviously not a choice. Eventually we could afford to move to a bigger place and I had my own office, which improved things greatly, but we were also more remote, which didn't help. My distractions were grocery shopping for the family, and taking and getting my older kid to school. I also did that while parenting at the same time (1 entire year when my oldest was 3yo, and pretty much during the first 2.5y of my youngest. It's not a choice either.

Sure, I have the choice to quit, and I did, after 2.5y because I had the options I wanted. You do what you have to do before doing what you want to do.

That being said, working from home can be great. But the experience will depend on many things: your own discipline, the discipline of people living with you too (it took a year for my wife to understand that non-important queries could wait until the evening), the company culture (I was the only remote worker in a ~500 people world wide company), your location, etc...

I'll do it again if I get the chance, but only under specific conditions. It needs to be part of the company culture so that you don't feel left out from meetings and other people don't feel like you're slacking. Or that you don't feel like they feel you're slacking... perception goes meta quite easily. Because you're guilt-tripping yourself about being less included or less productive than others, you end up working way more than you should and usually would.

Not that I'd say my employer was at fault: it was extremely nice of them to allow me to work remotely (and in their interest too, granted), and they tried to accommodate for it, but if it doesn't fit it doesn't fit. I quickly lost influence in meetings and projets, my being remote made meetings more complicated for everybody on site, etc...

It's easier if you either live in a very remote place with nobody around (meaning that does not change your way of life at all) or in a very densely populated area (where you can easily go out, work from a different place, meet friends easily without commuting for 2 hours, go grocery shopping, etc...)

I'll add it wasn't my only remote experience: I also worked for other companies where the entire team was remote, but it was not necessarily better. Because, once again and quite strangely, it was NOT part of their culture. While all employees were remote and from several timezones (though not too far apart), expectations were not aligned with the reality.

I'd say company culture and your discipline are paramount. But you can only influence the latter easily. Other aspects also play a role, but these two are what will decide if it's even doable to work remotely for you.