Ask HN: Do you have a home office (if you work from home)? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Do you have a home office (if you work from home)?

12 pointsTharkun27 comments

Am considering taking on a new job which would involve 2 days/week of remote work. My apartment is pretty small, I don't really have room for a home office. Most of my out of office coding is done on the couch, but I don't think that scales to 16+hours/week.

Do you have a home office? Why (not)? Any tips?

Thanks!

View on HN

I’m in Ireland and made a shed office in my garden. I’m aware being in an apartment probably means you are gardenless but I’ll throw my hat into the ring anyway.

My shed is 10x8 and insulated. It has double glazed windows I got from gumtree. I have power running from my house and an ethernet cable. Both above ground for most of their run.

I have a raspberry pi turning a 500w heater on/off using a relay and temperature probe. I have conquered the winter months but I have not been able to handle the recent heatwave. I’m working on this at the moment.

Being out of the way is important for both myself and my family. I don’t want to be disturbed by them or spoil the general atmosphere for them either.

We are blessed in Ireland with much green. Apologies if my answer is out of reach for you. I just like talking about my shed.

Sounds like a great set up. I have something similar (a bit bigger at 12’ x 14’) here in Southern California. No heat and in the summer it does get stuffy but I have a standing fan and a ceiling fan and that helps. When we built it, I had the electrician vastly over-wire the place with outlets and circuit breakers.

I agree 100% about separating work from home. Feels wonderful to shut the door on work and go home at the end of the day, even if it’s only a few steps away.

As a favour I made a one page website for an electrician I knew eight years ago when he started out on his own. He returned the favour by wiring my shed office years later.

The webpage is terrible but it has brought him a lot of business :-)

I've worked at home for decades. In the beginning when I had small apartments, I used to put a table with my computer on it inside a closet. I'd open up the closet door, pull up a chair, and voila, office.

In those days, monitors were thick, and the web didn't exist. Now that monitors are thinner and computers have become many people's de facto TVs, there would be less advantage in doing this.

I've been working from home for almost six years.

Last year I finally setup a desk area in a finished room in the basement. It's my main office space, has windows so I can see the backyard.

Tables and office chair is from IKEA they have some good ones that look nice and are priced reasonably and comfortable to sit in.

I have a desktop (pc) setup with dual monitors and a laptop (mac) stand/external monitor both setup. Check out the rain laptop stand on amazon. Definitely work with dual monitors or laptop screen and an external.

And get an external laptop keyboard and mouse (I use apple keyboard and mouse).

Before that I had a computer enclosure cabinet where I would setup my laptop and external monitor. We just happened to have that though.

Before that I worked mainly on my laptop at the kitchen table, breakfast bar, recliner, sofa, coffee shop or sports bar.

I still move around quite a bit and work out of the house if I need a change of scenery. Although I do less of that now that I have a nice desk area.

In the beginning I would just use what you have. Then add an office chair, then a desk. Till you see how you like working. You definitely don't need a dedicated room.

When you are working around the house with your laptop I would get an inexpensive plastic laptop stand that you can use if you do work from a sofa or recliner at first. They prevent the laptop from getting overheated, if you just have it on your lap or pillow it can prevent air flow around it.

Working from home is one of the greatest things out there. When I think back to commuting, spending time going in to the office every day I wish I'd done it sooner.

Good Luck.

In my home office, I use a Poang chair from Ikea. Been doing it for about 2.5 years. I don't have a lot of paper in my workflow. A couch would work for me about as well...

...anyway, to me there's no reason not to use a couch first and figure out if it does or does not work. If after a few weeks or months it doesn't work, you'll have a better idea what will and won't work for you. Before spending money.

Good luck.

I've been working from home remotely 100% of the time for five years now. I'd say a dedicated space for the majority of the work is a good plan, although it's also nice to grab the laptop and go out to a cafe, or work on the porch on a good day.

My set up:

300 square foot room, dual 24" monitors on an 4'x6' drafting table + stool for sitting/standing. Desktop, plus battery back-ups (desktop is set up to automatically boot back up if there's power loss), two internet providers for fallback, static IP from the primary ISP to the desktop so I can easily remote in while on the road. Synced laptop so I can just grab it and go with my current work-state already saved.

How do you sync your laptops ? I've tried that a few times but I always missed something.

I use Resilio Sync:

https://www.resilio.com/individuals/

Although, I've also been hearing some good things about Sync-Thing.

For a while I used a set of rsync and unison scripts but they required too much manual intervention resulting in a lot of collisions.

I have a home office in San Francisco. With a remote team including direct reports nine hours ahead of me, it’s important to me that it’s a specific room that’s mostly dedicated for work. When I’ve had guests in town who take the room, I work from the living room but it’s not the same. I can work from anywhere—but day-to-day, I like to have - a decent sized desk - pen and paper handy - screen real estate (e.g., home office, I have two 27” monitors in addition to my MBPR; setup isn’t as polished at corporate office where I have one 21” external display. Still, better than one.)

Prior to being in a position where I pretty much _had_ to work from home certain days, I found it unnatural. I couldn’t imagine not going into the office... Getting the workspace right helped. Leveraging communication tools helped replicate the hallway conversations I missed a lot initially. (Quick video calls > chat > email).

The best tip I can give is to set up your desk, chair, screen and input devices at the best heights.

This means, roughly:

0) Make sure you have an external keyboard, mouse and monitor so you don't have to put up with laptop ergonomics for extended periods of time.

1) Set the height of your seat as high as you can whilst keeping your feet firmly on the ground.

2) Set the height of the keyboard and mouse so that, when you sit on the chair with your shoulders relaxed, and your fingers on the keyboard, your forearms are parallel to the ground. If you cannot adjust raise your desk, stack pieces of wood on the table. If you are short, like I am, add a wooden slide-out keyboard tray under the desk surface.

3) Set the height of the monitor so that your eyes are level with the vertical centre of the display.

4) (Optional) Get a folding laptop support stand, to elevate your laptop such that its screen in the same way as the monitor.

I've worked remotely since around 2008, both as a founder with employees and as an employee.

Yes, having dedicated workspace is the best way to go, but it doesn't have to be a dedicated office though. Personally, I do have a dedicated office, but I also have equipment to support the hardware development lifecycle, so I need that extra and dedicated space. However, I work some days from the kitchen table, the couch, the patio or wherever I might be. Personally, I find by mixing it up makes me way more productive than if I just sit in my office everyday.

So if I was you I wouldn't rush for dedicated space. Try different places and just mix it up some for awhile and figure out what works for you. 2 days a week isn't hard to do from the couch/table if you personally are productive from there.

You may find this arstechnica home office exposed article useful. It's kinda dated now, but you can see pictures plus a short blurb from folks who work at home in a remote office set up. It's part of a bigger series they run, including a "chairstechnica" in the article as a link.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2014/11/where-and-how-do-ars...

I work from home 3-4 days a week, and absolutely have a home office setup. As it falls into the "two or more days per week" category, my home office is considered a "remote office" by my employer for workplace health-and-safety purposes. This means I needed to take photos, and fill out a declaration that the setup was ergonomically sound (chair, desk/keyboard/mouse/monitor height, lighting, etc), that there werent any dangers/risks around, etc. Certainly no way I could get away with sitting on a couch or at the kitchen table (well I can, I just have to say that I'm not...). Welcome to big corporate CYA!

Home office bureaucracy? That's a new one. Is this because your employer mandates it, or is it some kind of government regulation?

Employer. The paperwork pretty much covered a lot of what would be required if it were a company operated office, stuff like there being smoke detectors, fire extinguisher, a basic first aid kit, that the work area was adequately sized and in an ergonomic configuration, that all exits from the work area are clear and unobstructed, no slip/trip hazards, that the lighting is appropriate, proper ventilation and adequate heating/cooling, that all electrical cords and appliances are in good order (didn't need to go to the level of 'test & tag' thankfully) and safely secured, etc.

It also stated that the company is entitled to send someone to randomly inspect my work area if they choose to... I wouldn't expect this to ever actually occur, it certainly hasn't happened for me in the last 5 years I've been working in this arrangement.

I know a number of years back there was a legal case where a big Australian company was ordered to pay the legal and medical costs of an employee who injured herself after slipping down the stairs twice in two months while working from home... so I guess it's not that crazy.

I work at home and have for a long time.

Right now I'm in our basement in a room that used to be a bedroom for our sons who've now moved out. It's a pretty big room, about 12' x 20' but I don't take up near all that space for work.

My desk is just a cheap 30" x 6' table with fold up legs. I have a Mac connected to two monitors on it (18" and 24") and a Raspberry Pi connected to another 16" monitor, and a USB switch for the keyboard/mouse to switch between the Mac and Pi.

You do really want a good chair. I don't have any recommendations for that except to say you need to find one that's comfortable for you.

Personally, I love working from home. I'm way more productive at home. When I'm coding I really don't like distractions so I don't want anyone popping in on me.

After a long session of coding, or when I hit a wall, I need to take a break. I generally go to Facebook or come here to give my head a rest. I imagine that would be really hard to do working in an office, especially if breaks were scheduled.

Having to stop coding based on a scheduled time would be tough for me. Once I dive into it several hours can go by in what feels like no time at all and I get a lot of work done when I immerse myself in it like that.

I can imagine that some people might not do well working like this. They'd miss the routine of going to an office and working with others and even not having anyone looking over their shoulder making sure they're working.

For me, learning to code was motivated by the concept of "telecommuting to work". I think that's a phrase from the mid-80s that was trending in Los Angeles where I lived and other big urban areas at the time. It took me about 10 years to make the transition but I've been doing it since the mid-90s and working solely on web base projects since `99.

Other than getting some face to face time, which is a good thing, I don't see a real need for coders to drive someplace to work. If I were you I'd be thinking about how I could get them to let me work from home more, or entirely.

Get ear plugs if you have noisy neighbors (read: loud music all day).

Working from the couch will hurt your back. Get a chair and a big desk.

Don't tell anyone you're home, they might disturb you while working.

I've worked in an office where I was doing most of my coding sitting in a sofa. If you are used to this work style (single screen, trackpad) then you can be fine for however long you work like that. Might need to get up sooner rather than later but I don't see any other problems with it.

If you have people around you and you are easily distracted then you probably need a dedicated office, mostly for the isolation and not for the office itself.

I find that long sofa coding sessions leave me with poor posture and neck pain, but maybe there's a way to improve my sofa posture.

I have bad posture but it's a lifelong condition. I also have lifted weights for years nd my back laughs at the notion of hurting from sitting on a surface that's too soft.

Yes you should have it for any kind of serious coding.

Aside from thr other advantages just having a dual monitor setup with a mechanical keyboard can boost your productivity by quite a lot!

Have been working from home for four years. After moving into a larger apartment, I learned that a dedicated room for work is a must (at least for me). My office is very minimalistic and only used for work. I hardly work outside of it - mainly because of my two screens, but also so that I have a mental separation.

I work remote 4 days a week and have a home office. Having an ergonomic setup is important to me. If you're strapped for space, I would suggest a small desk and a nice chair as a bare minimum.

I worked from my couch for a year, now I have a bigger place with an office. I expected a productivity boost but it's honestly been no different.

I use a John Boos table, large monitor, external keyboard and mouse, headphones etc. I keep it pretty minimal.

No, because I find it too constraining and would rather setup someplace new (inside or out) for each new task.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com