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Comment by durgiston | Hacker News Reader

I personally don't get the love for working at home/remote. I HATE working at home. To me, home is home and work is work. I don't want to mix them, and I feel awful when I have to stay home all day, or don't get to interact casually with my coworkers. Its just so depressing to be alone all the time.

That being said, a bad office environment is definitely a turn off, and at this point in my career free lunch and the ilk isn't that much of a perk anymore. I want reasonable hours, decent vacation and health-insurance, and a big income.

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I work with a guy just like you, and I think that's great. Some people are natural extroverts, and love the interactions and water cooler conversations that come with that personality type.

Just don't drag me into the office just because that's your personal preference. I will be miserable and looking for a new job.

It's not necessarily about introversion and extroversion. I'm a natural introvert, and I also have working at home. I want a strong, clear boundary between work and personal activities. It's not so much about being in an office; it's about being a place that isn't home.

You need a home office for your own sanity, this much is true. I found this out the first year when the kids were out of school. Many others I've talked to also found satisfaction in co-working centers.

I'm exactly like you. Home is strictly for non-work stuff: no work, no reading emails (not that I carry my work phone anyway), no nothing and I despise working from home.

Yet I work remotely. I work remotely because I felt like moving to a sunny, cheap place where I get to live like a king and I just rent a desk at a co-working office where a couple of my friends work too. It's lovely, all the nice things about being in an office and all the nice things about working remotely.

Then don't work from home?

I've got a flexible work schedule, "working from home" can mean many things for me:

-Work from home in the morning, then stop in the office in the afternoon (my commute is short).

-Work from a coffee shop, beach, etc.

-Meet up friends for the day while we do parallel-work.

-Head out of town for a 3-4 day weekend and work remotely for a couple days without having to use any vacation.

Also worth noting, my co-workers with kids get even more value out of this flexibility than me!

What is parallel-work? Would that be hanging out with friends while you all work remote jobs? That sounds like a very interesting setup.

Go to any co-working space outside the US/Canada and it's basically exactly this. Pretty fun.

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