Becoming a high performing software developer working from your bedroom
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zephony.com
I absolutely loved working from my bedroom for years. It was great (despite the common down falls like the ones listed here). My family used to make fun of me at parties and seasonal celebration "OH YOU'RE NOT IN YOUR PAJAMAS TODAY", but joke was on them after a couple of years - I was making 5 to 10 times what they were per year, and I was waking up at 8:50am with no commute.
I eventually ended up investing in building my own "detached" office in the back yard - a dedicated space set up for working. This was by far the best thing I ever did. It created a visible boundary between home and work life, and I still didn't have to commute or work in any clothes other than my pajamas the majority of the time.
I couldn't image going back to a bedroom now. But even more so, I can't imagine how painful it is for people to sit in traffic every day, stressing they might be late, burning money on fuel and their car, and waking up earlier than they really should.
It's pretty reasonable to think you might spend $100 a week on a commute straight out of your own pocket. That money is gone forever. Now consider if you invest that money over 30 years in some low to medium risk areas and average 10 - 15% per year. That's a healthy addition to your retirement fund of around $1,500,000, plus a good amount of extra sleep.
EDIT: Okay 15% is maybe a bit hopeful and lucky. But still 7 - 10% will make a difference in your retirement.
Where can I get this return reliably at "low risk"?
... or not. Your situation may call for something else. Any specific suggestions people give you will likely sound unnecessarily specific and perhaps arbitrary, unless you have spent a lot of time learning about the modern investing landscape -- you really need to do that for yourself.
And how to do that? Especially for those of us in Europe?
That's one thing I can't get my head around. The ecosystem seems filled with scammers and financial advise salesmen, and my "scam alert" is running on constant overdrive whenever trying to look for any current and actionable educational material.
It really depends on your goals and starting point. Avoiding management fees is one of my priorities as well as direct visibility of my accounts and numbers (all offered via Vanguard directly). There are a lot of great, free information sources. Some are directed at people who are paycheck t paycheck and need to start setting like $100/month aside while digging out of debt. Others focus on middle class style employer retirement plan+personal savings like for a down payment on a house. Others focus on those willing to toss thousands on what becomes a bet on the market and YOLO it (not recommended).
I started by just looking at Vanguard funds and using open/free tools to understand terminology and get a grasp of the history or background like lessons learned.
- https://www.bogleheads.org/wiki/Getting_started_for_non-US_i...
- (book) The Simple Path to Wealth by J. L. Collins
- (Podcast) ChooseFI
>> an average appreciation of 13% last year, which is not sustainable for this area but still indicative of the overall trend.
not sustainable but indicative of the overall trend? What does that even mean?
I don't recall anyone saying anything about participation @ $100 / week, so don't be flippant. The comment was made about low risk at 10-15%. If you had $100/week to spend, I'd put it in a drip and buy pharma stocks because there are many paying a sizable dividend, but I'm not your broker so get your own advice.
Per your website, you live in Washington state. Rocky Mountains and west are generally very desireable areas to live in, and WA has no income tax.
But you can look all the way from Maine to the Dakotas, down to Oklahoma, and then of course the poor gulf coast states and easily see that real estate is a terrible investment in those areas outside of a few urban areas. Especially in the heavily debt laden rust belt states with undesirable weather and shrinking economic prospects.
The challenge I have is remembering to actually care about it and do the trades, life gets too busy and before I realize it a month has gone by.
But whenever I'm on top of it, 1% gains have been very easy over the past decade, I'm rarely in the market for more than a few hours. But I risk having a pile of cash to trade with I suppose, the dollar could crash.
If you do +1% per month you're already +12%/yr, I consider 12%/yr the minimum acceptable yield for any kind of investment given how easy it seems to be to DIY.
2. Market returns vary greatly from decade to decade, so we shouldn't necessarily expect this 14% rate of return to continue. (Most obviously, there were no recessions in the past decade, which is unusual.)
Secondly, pretty much any reputable ETF (or combination of ETF's) can quite easily achieve this over 30 years.
Vanguard's predictions of 3-4% over the next decade mean that if you do a straight dollar calculation you'd be closer to ~7%, because that 3-4% number includes inflation, once again.
Vangaurd is predicting low growth of 3-4% over the next decade.
I'm sure there's SOME ETF that managed to do 15% returns over a 30 yr period, but that's just selection bias after the fact. It doesn't mean that ETF would do well this year, or next.
Be advised that they are not designed to be held over more than a day, although with the current bull market, they have not actually been hit by the decay factor inherent to all leveraged ETFs.
Other higher-risk ETFs would be things like solar/wind sector ETFs (e.g. TAN, FAN, PBW, IQCLN, QCLN, etc.) or bleeding-edge biotech (e.g. SBIO).
Everyone should get the chance to experience it.
If you're fully remote then you need to behave that way even when you're in an office environment. Sure, have in-person meetings when you can, but make sure remote folks are 100% present and enabled, otherwise those that choose to work from home will be less present - even in a healthy WFH culture.
As for loneliness - a couple things help with that. First, get together in person for a week or so every quarter to link up. Second, you don't have to work from an office when you work remote. Third, working in the office starting out to understand the culture then going remote is helpful for networking / understanding the rhythm of those in the office if you do work with full-time office folks. Being within reach can be helpful but not required. I'm close enough to the office that I can go in for big meetings or in-person things without too much heads-up, but I'm not expected to be there, and I'm probably there once a month, max.
As for addiction - clearly you gotta prioritize to make sure that stuff doesn't destroy your life. If remote work doesn't work for you, definitely don't do it. Doesn't mean it's not magic for many of us.
Full time working from home wasn't great for me -- it felt isolating and I found myself running a lot more just to see other human beings. (Of course, running was good, but the motivation for it was kind of weird.) I'm shy and naturally form relationships with people I bump into regularly, but I still have no clue to how to do it intentionally, and I also feel uncomfortable practically living at coffee shops.
I got into a bullshit mobile game, I didn't think it was a big deal to just leave it open all day while I worked.
Checking in between every email, and every commit, to make sure I was perfectly optimizing my in game economy. Eventually I became one of the top players in the world and was spending 4.5 hours a day just to keep my spot in the top 100.
If I placed in a world tournament in Smash Bros that was streamed, then I went on to bomb the next 5 tournaments, I'd probably still be trying to get that glory again
As I'm not a morning person this has been great for my mental health, and it's a good combo of "WFH" with "real work" without the addiction issues associated with the former.
Sometimes it's just "hey...you seem to pretty consistently miss the early meeting...you good?" or "you know you haven't been hitting it like you used to...but you seem to be killing it in EVE Online". But I've been through an employee where it was performance falling off->odd behavior on calls->slurring incoherently on calls->intervention->short term disability. Fortunately, recovery can work and they're back. In the office.
Most people don't get to experience a six figure job, period; the median income at peak earning agree is around $80k.
It's not only cash spend directly, it's also time spend. I was spending 2h a day in public transit, but when I tried to do it in car, it came down to less than 45 minutes a day. The parking was quite expensive so I doubted, I was paying 150$ a month for my public transit pass, but the closest available parking would be 250$ a month. Lets round it up to 1h a day and say that a month is 4 weeks, I was spending 20 hours a month. For some absurd reasons, I wasn't considering my time stuck in movement as part of my job hours. By refusing to pay for the parking, I was essentially saying that my time was worth 5$ an hour.
This is so weird that we all forget that our time lost while we go to work, is still part of our work time. Spending 2h a day in transit, that's accepting a 20% pay cut from the get go.
That said, the overall amount of time I spend is still my first priority. I don't want to spend any significant portion of my life going to and from work. I live in Chicago so public transit is 100% the way to go since it's faster and many times cheaper than using a car.
How do you do that?
For the last decade, 10-15% average annual return would have required keeping 70-90% of the funds invested in Nasdaq-100[1].
Also, Vanguard 500 Index Fund (VFIAX) currently has a 10-year average of 13.52%[2].
The general advice is not to keep more than (110 - your_age)% of your retirement portfolio in these high risk / high rewards funds.
Therefore, it's entirely possible to receive 10-15% annual returns until you turn 40, but as the period of time until retirement shorters, it becomes too risky.
In other words, what is a "medium-risk" at 35, can be a "high-risk" at 55, because one might not have enough time to recover from an economic crisis at an older age.
[1] https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/when-performance-matters%3A-...
[2] https://investor.vanguard.com/mutual-funds/profile/overview/...
The last 15 years:
2019 35.23% 2018 -3.88% 2017 28.24% 2016 7.50% 2015 5.73% 2014 13.40% 2013 38.32% 2012 15.91% 2011 -1.80% 2010 16.91% 2009 43.89% 2008 -40.54% 2007 9.81% 2006 9.52% 2005 1.37% 2004 8.59%
At no point I called it low risk. It's high risk / high return. The risk of high financial exposure to such funds can only be taken until 40, because one needs to be able to not sell during the entire economic downturn.
There is already enough bullshit and delusion going around in investing advice so let’s not add to it.
Now we live in a lovely but much smaller house where I still have an office, but it is inside the house. We've been here for 9 months so far, and we have still not really figured out the details of how I can still "go to work" the way I used back in Philadelphia. My wife only has to speak here, somewhere in the house, and I can hear her.
This may improve when some specific physical details are addressed, but I think they won't solve the whole problem, which is a psychological/emotional/relationship one: how to be in the same "space" as someone else but also make it clear that you're not available.
We figure out the schedule of the day before I head "in", we communicate via text, and if that fails typically it's a knock at the door just like in an office. I also mention when I have big meetings or other face-time meetings so there's awareness.
That said, after all of that it was really the threshold for things that caused interruptions was what took the most adjusting.
Most of the day I wear headphones and listen to music, which is helpful - you don't feel compelled to shout answers or run down and help unless the person asks. Eventually though we found our rhythm, and it works well. And we both appreciate that when we need each other, we're right there, and that's great.
The big thing I need to improve on is simply getting outside more and going for walks during the day. A significant part of my commute was walking and now that's gone.
This is the thing I want most in work life right now. I have a separate semi-dedicated office room but it splits time as the guest room and has basically no auditory separation the rest of the house including a 3yo and a 1yo.
Edit: OP would you be willing to share pictures of your space? I love seeing how people set up separate office spaces.
Also, consider that many companies now allow employees to work from home for part of every week while still supplying hardware and office supplies. That 250/70 per month commuting cost is down to about 150/40. Just accounting for the expense of building your home office you could already be in the hole compared to people commuting only some of the time for the same job.
Also, none of this accounts for the additional considerations office's typically provide like free lunches and social/professional networking opportunities.
Personally, I'm a software developer so I can pretty much decide for myself if I want a job that allows me to work from home, and after doing the real math, I found you can basically go either way and expect roughly the same financial outcome, so the real choice is about what you actually want. I like the social aspects, so I take jobs where I can come in and expect coworkers to be present. What you want may be different, but neither option is inherently more advantageous.
A quick googling suggests that the average driving commute is 16 miles so $100/week seems like a reasonable estimate (again assuming parking is free and you value your time at $0/hr).
I want to know more about this!
Seriously, I'm in a major metro area and my commute is considered "not bad" by local standards...
Working at an office costs me at least three hours a day: - 30 minutes of "getting ready"
- 60 minutes of commute there, at rush hour
- 30 minutes of lunch (usually just grab a sandwich at home)
- 60 minute return commute at rush hour
Bonus Time Savings:
Popping on a headset and taking a walk around the neighborhood during low-participation conference calls and one-on-one discussions (I'm a manager). I can flip 30 - 60 minutes a day into "dual use" time (work + exercise)...
As a solo dev the biggest productivity booster for me, from a physical and mental aspect, was purchasing a whiteboard. It honestly feels like some sort of hack. Prior to having one I would use pen and paper but that didn't quite scratch my itch - if I made a mistake I would have to scribble it out and that space was now wasted. I can't quite explain why but on a whiteboard my brain juices just flow. Made a mistake? Wipe it off. Need more space? Wipe it off (or purchase additional whiteboards).
My high school maths teacher once said something that has stuck with me since - "When you're stuck on a problem, start fresh on a blank piece of paper." - he must've meant a whiteboard ;)
http://www.frixion.jp/lineup/work.html?pid=product_ball-3-sl...
(pilot frixion, blue, bought in Norway)
But if I were in uni or something and were forced to maintain multiple projects at the same time(modules) I would probably opt for something else.
Ball-point pens don't feel the same, and the colors don't stand out as much to me. I've accepted the fact that water is a dangerous thing to my notes now.
Water based != water soluble when dry
I would suggest you try similar pens with a different ink. Staedtler Pigment Liner and Sakura Pigma Micron pens (both of which come in 0.3 mm) use water based pigments which are waterproof when dry and archival. They both survive rain quite well in my experience and are used for outlining by some artists who then apply water color paints or other water based media without the dried ink bleeding.
There are also waterproof fountain pen inks. Platinum Carbon and Noodler's Bulletproof Black are two good ones.
For a common counter example to a water based substance being water soluble once dry consider water based exterior latex paint.
Unfortunately every pen of this kind I've used suffered from being water soluble after dry, so I just assumed all where.
I think the biggest thing here is the size of the canvas and the speed at which you can make changes. Sure, markers can be messy and smelly, I will give you that. Regarding the imprecision: when I am brainstorming I am not looking to be precise and I would argue that noone should be aiming for that; prototyping should be messy and quick to mutate.
Some FriXion colors do erase less well than others.
But to address your concern about effort to erase I recommend trying a little butane torch lighter. Little puffs (quick clicks) of a lighter on the FriXion ink is very effective as an eraser. A continuous flame strafed across a page will erase large areas without damaging the paper.
While a lighter might seem a bit inconvenient its much less cumbersome than carrying around a white board and eraser.
Not an affiliate link
I don't mind spending money but it's hard to pass up $15 worth of materials at home depot and 20 minutes of work instead of buying a pre-made whiteboard for $200.
If anyone is curious, even ~3 years later with a decent amount of usage it works great.
I’ve tried a bunch of hacks including wiping the board with WD40 and have since moved on to glass write boards when and where I can.
I’ve had times in my career where I didn’t have $200 to spend, and the hardware store option is great, but $200, in the end, is a small price to pay if you use the board for more than a year.
I've had mine for almost 3 years and it's holding up just fine using EXPO markers (also listed in the post). I haven't counted an exact number of times I've used it, but it's a lot. Hundreds of times for sure. I just make sure to clean it semi-regularly which takes about 20 seconds once a month. Maybe yours wore out quickly because you didn't clean it?
But it looks like they've discontinued the larger sheets? That's a shame.
Dunno how useful this is as I have no idea how to identify the actual brand/manufacturer of the "good" ones...
The whiteboard that I've been using for the past six or seven years cost me $15 - $20 depending on whatever the exchange rate was back then. I could go measure it, but it's about 40 cm tall by 60 cm wide.
Google around for 8 foot x 4 foot whiteboards (244cm x 122cm). The pre-made solutions are all in the ~$200 USD range.
Maybe standing up is also key in making your brain juices flow? Or the act of stepping away from your desk. (Assuming that's your setup)
I have a whiteboard that takes me 5 steps to reach and that definitely helps me
For me it's that act that helps, plus gathering stimuli you don't have at your desk which may bump you over a hurdle.
Whiteboards only tend to help me when I get to a problem I can't hold in short-term/working memory.
Additionally, some research results should be stored in an immutable material.
(We called it 'ink killer' in school, you were however not allowed to use it the first few years after switching to ink from pencil.)
addendum: And you can get ballpens with the ink as well.
It's clumsy AF - the Excel part works, the Word part could be better - but it's a working solution of sorts, with everything synced across all my devices so I can make some notes on my Macbook while out and then pick up the thread at my desk later.
I tried all the usual alternatives - Trello, Org Mode, paper notebooks, real white boards, and so on - and so far this is the most productive.
Your post convinced me that it's a good thing to explore, thanks!
I add a new section for each day in bold, and then list todos beneath.
It's the only productivity habit I've ever kept for more than a year.
That is not a good idea.
The thing about clothes is that they're part of a routine. I.e. I wake up, make some tea, put some fresh clothes on, turn on my computer, and now I'm in work mode. Ideally. In practice it doesn't always work like that, but it's still far better than waking up and just sitting down in front of my computer. Having a routine is really important for not getting lost.
They don't have to be business clothes or whatever, but just something fresh for the day. I'm the sort of nerd that wears chinos and a button up shirt even though I work from home and don't have video calls.
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In addition, blurring work and personal life isn't good. You ideally don't want to work in the same room that you sleep, but this can't be avoided sometimes.
Variety is also key. Sometimes I go out and get work done from a local cafe for a change of pace.
I'm male but my legs get cold from time to time, also, so I keep a small blanket near my desk and a space heater during the winter.
I'll invest in bed pajamas, work pajamas, breakfast pajamas and lunch pajamas & dinner pajamas.
I'm not at all being snarky here. I haven't decided if I'm being serious. I would happily wear flannel clothes EVERYWHERE given the chance. Being naked has never really appealed to me but wearing soft, fragranced, soft, woolen clothing every where?
Sign me up!
There's research to indicate that attractive men make more than unattractive men, and the variance is greater than with women:
"Results indicated that more attractive men had higher starting salaries and they continued to earn more over time. For women, there was no effect of attractiveness for starting salaries, but more attractive women earned more later on in their jobs."
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/229657356_Attractiv...
While that doesn't address unpractical clothing, I think it does address the last part.
I think this is a critical item for working at home. You want to be wearing something that you wouldn’t mind answering the door in, or if you had to run an unexpected errand. (and contrary to what the People of Walmart site shows, it is not appropriate to be doing those things in pajamas).
You missed the incessant satire of Trump's appearance then?
I wear office dress code most days (or some comfier version that is "nice-enough-for-video"). I work in a separate room, whose door I can close when the day is over. I've asked my family to text me or call just like they would at an office if they need something or want to talk.
When the day ends, the laptop and door closes, and my commute is short, but those subtle differences make it a change that works, and allows me to relax.
I have found the easiest way to get out of the funk is to start making Todo lists of my life. Get the things out of the way that are bothering me or need to be done as a priority and then slowly chip away at it.
Productivity isn't something you can hack. There is a maximum that you can do without sacrificing the quality of your work, and your goal should be to maximize quality, not to plan your day out in five minute intervals, that's a great way to burn out.
Oh for sure. I've tried planning the day's development into discrete tasks in 15, 30, etc. -minute blocks, and it's chaos. It's essentially micromanaging yourself onto an obstacle course where every 15, 30, etc. minutes you have the pressure of a hurdle to get over or else you're behind and feel demotivated. And development isn't linear - especially not on the scale of a day where you'll be revisiting and revising things - so making the development tasks discrete and completable in 30 minutes is a model that just doesn't match how reality works.
A more successful approach for me has been to set high-level targets on the scale of 5 or 10 hours that I can pace myself toward.
It can also can be very satisfying at the end of a project to take at the long laundry list you’ve conquered (and sent the final invoice ;)
I can attest to the efficacy of scheduling life things with respect to mitigating the ambient cognitive load of life. Otherwise, you can fall prey to what feels like boredom, or the next best thing, which is cleaning the house/doing chores as a form of procrastination.
Beware: getting things out of the way first is a common mindset leading to never achieving long-term goals. There are always important tasks in life that aren't the most important at any given moment (and perhaps never are.)
That said, people often use less important things as a way to avoid dealing with the big ones. I often get to the end of the day and know I got a lot done, but also know I was avoiding something bigger all day.
Switched jobs and I've got a ton of stuff to get on with, mostly self-managed as well. So far (a few months in) it's done wonders for my productivity and I've churned out more code (that I'm actually quite happy with) than I have in the year preceding it.
Not a remote job, but 1-2 days / week are spent working from home and given that my task list is still quite fresh and I'm not bogged down yet with my own poor decisions / tech debt they're usually pretty productive as well.
1. Working from the bedroom is hell. It's fun for the first few months but then you are likely to have severe eye strain and become very sleepy.
2. Working from a real office sets boundaries and forces a schedule. You have to wake up at xx:xx time and drive to office. But traffic for a downtown area is hell, so is finding a parking spot, finding a reasonable place to eat, etc... After a while, I got bored of the fact that there is little human communication since I was alone in the office. Also, I thought about all the time I wasted commuting to the office.
3. Working from a co-working space was a boost for the first 2-3 months then downhill. I need multiple monitors, my own whiteboard, where to put stuff, etc... It's not very sustainable. And everyone seeing what you were working on was not really for me.
4. Working from a dedicated office in my apartment was a good change; but after 1.5 years, I feel like I have become super-lazy to do any going outside and more likely to instead go to the bedroom for a quick nap.
I'm thinking now of renting an office but instead in the residential area I live in (think 2-5 minutes drive, 10 max). That should be the best of both worlds; though my only concern is that the residential area is super sleepy and it might affect my mood.
I have always felt like there is a market here. I work remotely, but want somewhere to work from consistently for a few days a week. I've tried coffee shops, coworking spaces, etc, but none of them replicate the social aspect of working in an office (which is something I somewhat miss). I'd love to find a local company that has some extra space that would rent me a desk, but I'm not really sure how to approach it short of cold calling a bunch of places.
though one thing i began working on was my own map tile rendering. i had a free provider(since google and others are insanely expensive for this specific type of project) but i wanted to make my own, for fun. and recently i quit working on a one of my big projects so with a ton of free time on my hands i am thinking of trying again and relaunching the project.
- Exercise most mornings - Ability to socialize - Comfortable space - Privacy - Work/home boundaries - Fridge to store food in, and ability to leave my laptop there so I don't have to carry anything on my bike ride (I use my desktop at my house).
This would also be workable at the house of a sufficiently close friend, I think.
I also like voice or video conferencing with others, without actually talking to them, just working at the same time. It helps build some of that "coworking space feel" without most of the downsides.
The trade-offs you describe ring true to me, I'm in a similar situation. I'm not sure changing your office will be a permanent solution for you.
I have been on a similar journey and now rent an office in small town centre (10 minutes drive from home). It gives me the discipline to work set hours and also the freedom to walk around where other people are going about their business so I don't feel isolated. It's also useful for shops, cafes, bars (for after work) and such.
No solution is ever going to be ideal but this is the nearest I have come so far.
Perhaps you can just switch your working area every 4-6 months (does not really matter where) and be happy and productive all the time?
Do you mean actually working from bed? If not, I don't understand this. I work from a spare bedroom and it's as good as any office. It is an office, in a way.
Spare bedroom that is an office, is basically your office.
I also vary my work space, but I don't think one is necessarily the best, I think the mind is just made for variety.
The shared office space has been by far my best situation. My main drive is preventing loneliness, working from home can be very isolating for me. My shared co-working space is expensive, but gives me a sense of having colleagues. Given this situation/requirement I don't think I would want to 'upgrade' to renting a private office.
My office is about a 20 minute bike ride away from my home. I think I have used my car maybe twice in the past year.
No, if you are a remote worker who sits at a desk and forces yourself to work at specific times solely because you feel you should be working, you are doing it wrong.
Go the other way. Figure out what times naturally work best for you, and work at those times. If you are sluggish in the afternoon, take breaks. Work early mornings, late nights. Go spend time with kids if you have them. Then sit down and work while they spend an hour at a friends house after dinner.
If you are remote, you should not be spending more time working. You should be working less hours, but more effectively.
As someone with a tendency to procrastinate, this advice would easily turn into an excuse to avoid working at all. The best advice I ever got is that you don't need to feel motivated to do something - waiting to feel motivated is a trap. I think self-discipline is really important for remote work or working on personal projects at home.
I don't feel like I'm being more flexible than when I was working in an office, because I worked in a company with a "get stuff done, butt-in-chair doesn't matter" attitude. Hence I could just go to the dentist in the middle of the day or arrive at 11.30AM if I wanted to.
But now that I work from home, I actually like having a predictable schedule. Plus on top of that, even when you work remotely you still have meetings so that limits the flexibility a bit.
I don't think I'm doing it wrong. But it might not work for everyone.
Nobody at work would mind if I needed to pop out during the day or do something, but equally, I think it's important to have some boundaries where I can turn the computer off after a certain time and not think about work. I certainly wouldn't want to be going back to it at 9pm unless there was a good reason to.
i'm a morning person and am pretty useless later in the day now. it wasn’t like this when i was younger.
I didn't mean that the more time you spend working, the more results you produce. The Parkinson's law states the opposite - if you have more time in your hand, you will most probably be less productive and produce less results compared to the actual time you spent working on it.
Most businesses will also have meetings during regular business hours.
My house is my sanctuary, it's my safe space where I can retreat back to after a day of work. I put a high priority on keeping my work life and my personal life separate. I won't work on weekends unless it's an emergency (I'm also usually not sober enough to work for those 48 hours anyway, even if the called).
Why are you working if you're sick?
This one thing will make you high performing software developer working from anywhere in the world.
Maybe if you wrote the entire codebase yourself just a week ago so everything is still fresh in your memory.
In most real-world situations that is not the case, and refactoring becomes a careful task that leads to regressions even with testing in place.
- I only work from one place in my house, and it's not the bedroom. It's a dedicated desk. I do not work from anywhere else, and I don't do anything other than work at that desk.
- When I need to work on something boring, I set the time on my Apple watch to 1 hour, and get to work. When the timer is done, whether the work is done or not, I take a break.
In rare cases where I need to keep track of a ton of stuff, I haven't found anything better than a spiral bound notebook.
In term of productivity, I'm more productive at home without the distraction of a workplace. I don't have any special setup. Just a laptop really. Not even headphones. I have a nice office space setup in my basement with a whiteboard and an extra monitor but I rarely use it. I'm more often working from the kitchen or living room.
I still love going to the workplace (or another place) from time to time. There's no substitute to interacting with people in real life.
Ah I disagree, as a sample side of one.
I tried pushing through for a while and doing a small amount of work / refactoring, but it didn't really click.
Finally decided to try not working on the days I wasn't in a groove, and have found that if I do, I have much better ideas and crank out a massive amount of work over the next couple days until I wake up feeling out of the zone.
Most people would probably benefit from not having a 2 day block weekend, but rather having downtime on say Sunday and Thursday. In the same way athletes have staggered rest days.
I'm lucky enough to have a job where I can do this, but it was also a semi-requirement during my last job search.
Let's say it's your phone first thing in the morning that is causing this problem. You could put your phone and charger far away from your bed. Then establish a sequence of actions that take you from bed to desk, without getting anywhere near your phone.
This is not an all-or-nothing method, where you fail even if you miss one step in the sequence in your routine. You start by making one or two adjustments and then build on your success.
The idea isn't to work exactly 8 hours per day. It's to get a sense of how much of my time is going towards work-related activities.
You're just doing surface-level work if you're able to watch Youtube videos.
Have the benefits of contextualizing your short-term goals outweighed the cost in time it takes to make the table for small tasks?
Seems optimistic to be able to breakdown a project into 15 minute intervals.
Personally I do keep Todo lists, but it's more like scratch that I append many notes to.
I don't see the advantage in guessing how long each task will take down to the minute and then writing that into a table.
Great trick!
Learning the right tools is an important part of being a high performing dev.
Sometimes for me the KPI is digging deeper than anybody else can and solve a real root cause issue. Sometimes it means simply not being in zombie mode in the evening (i.e. yes, actually working less). Sometimes it means finding something that may be less efficient but everybody can agree and do together.
In each of these cases having the right kind of tea and tea cup at hand is much more important than training the best scheduling techniques. ;-)
I carved about 100sqft out of the corner of my bedroom for an office. And it worked well for a while. But I eventually found that I needed complete separation between home and work. I found myself always kind of at work and not sleeping as well.
So I moved my office into a basement room. The view isn't as nice but there's a concrete concept of leaving the office, shutting the door, and that's that. And now my bedroom is for sleeping (or sometimes building a fort).
I enjoy going into the office more. I simply miss the social aspect and the ability to chat about difficult problems in a break out space.
There’s definitely something to be said about the desire or dream of working from home and the reality of what your personality prefers.
[1] https://www.ergotron.com/en-us/products/product-details/98-4...
> That is why funded startups and companies spend millions of dollars in a really good office environment.
The proliferation of open offices says otherwise.
Here is the non-kidding no. 5 item: a rubber-duck (who knows, knows)
re: snow-white owl: I have a parrot and when he is being a good boy, I let him hang out in my office. Cheerful background presence.
My Engineering job pays too well to jump into software
But sending 1.3MB over the wire for a super simple website :D
And "Faster pages", since it's an SPA. And SPAs usually have the whole website bundled into a single JS file and an optional CSS file - hence bigger than a static website rendered on the server :)
PS: I designed the website.
No? Use what makes you happy as an engineer. If that's react, use react. Sure, you might miss some viewers who haven't enabled JS, but if the above comment is representative then they weren't going to give constructive feedback anyhow.
If we want to try something fancy later, that's hard or hacky to do with WordPress, all I have to do is add a bit of JS and create some new endpoints in our Flask app.
Ultimately, like the other comment said, I enjoy working with React and I wanted to see where it would take me.
I don't disagree. But your assumption is that you would have less social interaction WFH is wrong (at least in my case).
My current commute is 2.5 hours a day. WFH would give me an additional time to do different activities each day (most with other people). Currently I'm limited because my preferred activities, I won't get home till close to midnight.
Having that commute time cut to zero would allow me to pursue my interests and have more social interaction than I currently do going into the office each day.
When I worked from home I lived in a difficult climate which became overly pleasant. The worst snow storm didn't bother me in the slightest, if I didn't feel like going outside I just didn't. When bearing the cold became optional, it was a pleasant luxury going outside instead of a chore.
The human interaction you are talking about is real, but so is losing a large chunk of your life getting to work.
There are other realities to contend with, like how it looks bad to have a six month job on a resume, or leases that are expensive to break, or how moving when your lease ends to somewhere better to commute to a job you've lost confidence in, or waiting for a vesting cliff and promised raise, or moving far enough away that your friends might as well be in another state...
Not to mention if you have a family or partner.
In the long commute case, much of that was true. I tried to stick it through hard times after they moved offices to be significantly further away and burned out. It happens.
Life isn't always so simple and you can't always optimize your life around your job.
On that note, I don't know if there's any research to it, but I feel like commute is an exponentially increasing nuisance. To illustrate: Moving from a 15 minutes commute to a 20 minutes commute will bring me less irritation than moving from a 55 minutes -> 60 minutes commute.
Half a year plus of a remote work now - I'd argue I have a healthier social life now compared to before when working at an office. I actually have energy after work to go out for dinners and meetups and develop/maintain the personal connections I couldn't before.
That's what one has a family and friends for, not necessarily work colleagues.
If you read your contract as a remote worker, they often say that you must work from a dedicated work room in your house, so not working from your bedroom. Not sure if there's some specific legal reason for that.
Where did I claim that? I think you’ve misread.
I said _some_ young people. How have you expanded that to think I was writing _all_ young people?
Not everyone can afford a studio to themselves. This does not imply studios do not exist.
In other words: I don't see why a one-room situation should be restricted to young people.
I would recommend moving to a different country before I’d recommend moving to the rural US, that’s a dead end especially if you need the internet for work.