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I've always preferred working from home (couch, bed, or floor - I don't do tables and chairs) simply because programming was my hobby before it was my job, and I always associated peak productivity with being able to be relaxed and enjoy my surroundings rather than feel like I need to put on a physical performance of working.

My take on it is that people will adjust, and that the most productive environment is the one you're most familiar with. Many professions like sales, legal, and investment banking rely on putting on a professional "front" to make a good first impression. This is much harder to do when you're sitting on a couch at home and have a couple kids screaming in the background. IMHO this is a good thing, because the constant impression-management needed in these professions is a huge distraction from the actual substance of these jobs, and anything that punctures the impression-management bubble and forces people to deal with real human realities is an improvement. Already I'm seeing a big normalization of things like childcare, screaming toddlers, two-parent schedules, breastfeeding, and so on - this can't be shunted off as "woman's work" and relegated to the home anymore, when the home becomes the workplace and both parents generally need to trade off to make it work.

Basically I think our society before coronavirus was broken and coronavirus lockdowns are simply forcing us to deal with the ways in which it was broken. The old society isn't going to last much longer, and it's better to deal with that and build a more resilient, more honest one than to try to preserve the rituals that many industries had developed in 75 years of peace.

I'm very happy for you that you can work like that, but if I work in a bad posture like on a couch for an hour I will have back pain the rest of the day. Do it for a full working days and I will have pain for a week. I have always been prone to it but many more of my colleagues are developing similar problems after working from home for a few weeks without good setups.

Funny thing, working from home finally let me get a standing desk where it felt too conspicuous at the office. I don't have as much space in my living room any more, but I feel much better when that afternoon slump usually hits.

I'll admit to hoarding before the lockdown started.... i rushed down and got the second to last standing desk from ikea

I move a lot. My posture in general is terrible. I'm slouched in the corner of a couch right now, with my laptop on a half-lap, and when I worked in an office I would usually drape myself over the back of a high-backed chair and kneel on it. However, I don't stay in any one position for longer than about 15 minutes - after that I stand up, or shift to a different position, or swivel the chair around, or go lie down. Never had back pain or other joint problems other than tendonitis in my fingers. I've found that moving around and standing up every 15 minutes or so outweighs all the other shitty stuff I do to my body. Humans weren't made to sit still.

I'm still young (35) and same - my posture is terrible, but it's different kind of terrible every 10 minutes. Also haven't had problems yet.

The one thing I can't stand for even 2 minutes is the recommended "proper sitting" posture. 90 degrees here and 90 degrees there - impossible!

That is impressive; I could not possibly work like that though :<

1. Never mind posturing, it's the posture - I get back and neck pain just thinking of working from a couch or floor :(

2. I like my multiple 27" monitors. Going back to just a single 14" feels like a huge productivity hit.

3. Same thing with proper keyboard + mouse, vs just a touchpad or even the trackpoint.

So I'll agree that there's a lot of posturing and professional front in this and many professions; but even without that, I've always far far preferred my home office to either proper office, or working from living areas.

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The other aspects are more age dependent (though I believe so is the posture / back pain;). It helps to distinguish "working area" and "non-working area", triply so once you have family. There's a million things that I do better at when I'm "in the zone" - ingested the background, focused on the problem at hand. Distractions reset that counter - I love my kid, I love my wife, but there are aspects of my work that don't benefit from their presence :-). This is probably part of why my personal most productive times tended to be late at night when the world has settled down and distractions are at a minimum...

This is a problem I have too. I don’t have a home office so I have to work from the couch hunched over my laptop. It hurts. I’ve been doing it for a month. I get tingles in my pinkie after a couple hours they last for the day (ulnar nerve compression I think)

I don’t know how to cope. I can’t take the time off and not work for another month, but I also don’t want to wear my body down and have pain all day every day. I hated working in my office because it’s open space and noisy but I’d love to go now that it’s deserted. I have two large displays there, a mouse, a keyboard.

Unless you are super cash strapped you can get a second monitor, mouse and keyboard + some basic chair and desk for I'm guessing 300$ if you are resourceful. Buying used is risky now otherwise you could probably get even cheaper

Even if you can't afford to buy those, I'm sure you could talk to your manager/company and ask to borrow the ones you use in the office till you are able to go back to work. In a situation like this, I think they'll understand.

It sounds like you have trigger points building up. Stretch your arms, shoulders, and back everyday. I recommend arm stretches for doing handstands. Also, make sure your arms and upper body are warm, borderline hot. I wear winter cycling sleeves because they are thin and don’t get in the way. Also wear a thin smartwool sweater, and the heat is on 76. Completely reversed the pain and discomfort I had been experiencing for years by doing the above daily.

I’m sweating just thinking about wearing a wool sweater with the heat on 76!

do you have something you can put your feet up on? because that can help you to stop hunching over slightly

Most people have a completely incorrect angle between keyboard, wrist and arm. Working from couch typically increases this angle even further. You should see a significant improvement if you reduce that angle. Basically, you don't want your hand to be going "up" at the wrist. Inasmuch as possible strive to have your hand flat through the wrist, or even fall down slightly.

If you don't have room for a mouse, get a trackball. They're relatively cheap and not having expensive health issues is worth it.

Be inventive in changing up the posture. If you genuinely don't have any other surface (dining room table, kitchen counter etc), switch it up - put laptop on couch and sit on the floor. Sit on couch with laptop on your knees, lie down with laptop on your lap or chest, put the laptop on window sill or fridge or counter or shelf and work standing, etc. NONE of these are ideal, but changing is important.

> 2. I like my multiple 27" monitors. Going back to just a single 14" feels like huge productivity hit.

> 3. Same thing with proper keyboard + mouse, vs just a touchpad or even the trackpoint.

Just curious. Does your company not allow you to bring your work equipment at home?

Mine do, and it doesn't help. I only have 1 desk in my apartment where 2 27" monitors can be placed and it's my personal desk. So now I'm working from my wife's desk that she doesn't use right now (and I can restore it easily), it has space for 1 monitor + laptop. It's not perfect, but I'm not complaining. And I am indeed lucky to even have 2 desks in 70m2 apartment and a dedicated office. (No kids).

Hi - I was in fact talking about my home office. I don't have ANY of this in the office proper.

My point is that I've been remote 50% for years, and remote 100% now, and in either scenario cannot imagine working from couch.

Well I mean, I can, I've done it... it sucked :S

But laptop keyboards suck. D:

And no multiple monitors?!

How do you track the logic of an async call that sends shit across five different files in this n-tier architecture webapp and see the app update in real time and see what your coworkers are saying???

Also,

>The old society isn't going to last much longer,

I seriously hope you're right. I'm cynical to how sweeping or durable the changes that corona catalyzed will be, but I can hope.

I'm surprised so many people here don't have a desk/keyboard/mouse/multi monitor at home as well. I thought that was a pretty common setup.

Because most office workers outside of hardcore techies have no need for full-on computers at home since they can have most of their on-line needs met on mobile devices which can be used one handed on the couch, bed, kitchen, etc. so it makes no sense for them in investing in furniture and peripherals that will stay unused.

But surely some of those equipment(monitor, mouse, keyboard) can be brought home from the office.

This is actually a bad example, in that "cloud, bed, floor" aren't really productive environments for most people.

That said, I also disagree with the parent poster. Yes, there are things we take for granted , but with a little thought we can replicate the surroundings at home too.

Of course, if you are productive only when surrounded when people who are always talking, that's a different story. In my office, everyone around me in open cubicles is always on a call with someone. Some personal, some team mates in a different geo. The only time I do real work is when I take WFH

>Basically I think our society before coronavirus was broken and coronavirus lockdowns are simply forcing us to deal with the ways in which it was broken. The old society isn't going to last much longer, and it's better to deal with that and build a more resilient, more honest one than to try to preserve the [old] rituals

I think this point is much broader and meatier than the rest of the discussion, and will be the defining cultural consensus coming out of this whole mess. The virus seems to have a peculiar way of highlighting our sins in a grimly ironic, almost poetic way.

> Software engineers are kinda spoiled in this regard because we make the big bucks.

But that's true of offices as well. Do you think the average administrative assistant is working on Aeron chairs? No, they're working on cheap chairs and cheap desks. In fact, so did I, despite being a developer - I just didn't work at a fancy company. At least at home we have the option of spending a bit more, even if it comes out of our paycheck.

> homes aren't and never were designed for WFH conditions.

They were, in the past. Houses built for the gentry used to have a room called "the study", a quiet space equipped with bookshelves and a desk. This went out of fashion as most men, and later women, began to go to this newfangled place called "the office" that was outside of their homes.

IMO most American detached homes are large enough for a dedicated working room to be retrofitted in. This may not be possible for small homes and apartments in urban areas, though, as they were designed long after the study became obsolete.

> But a lot of professions like sales/legal/etc rely very heavily on close social interaction.

That culture will be seriously disrupted if Coronavirus isn't under control soon, or if similar outbreaks occur regularly in the future. There's already huge selection pressure against companies that can't be productive in WFH mode. Sooner or later, the ability to switch to WFH on a moment's notice and maintain productivity might be considered a great strength in the eyes of investors and customers alike.

Sure you're having a not so great time, and your using your furniture more, but you can still do your job. So this is an orthogonal issue.

I live in a small place and we're going to buy a folding desk and a chair, it takes almost no space and you can fold it when you're done. It's less than 100 bucks. It's up to you to creat these conditions.

Also not all offices have nice desks, chairs, environment, etc. I use to work in a place without windows.

You got space limitations because you moved to a smaller flat. Office furniture is never a problem. You can make a table from IKEA (4 legs and the tabletop) can cost as low as £50 and if you pick them special legs you can make it a standing desk with the same cost. The only thing you can't cut corners on is the chair, a bad chair will ruin your health.

Seconding that table-as-desk.

My SO used an IKEA table for the past four years as a desk for drawing.

Thirding! It cost me like €30 (used, but as-new) and it has so much more space than my office desks ever had, it's great.

And for all of us who appreciate the things we can do with IKEA stuff (without spending 5 salaries on it), I believe it's worth mentioning the IKEA Hackers (https://www.ikeahackers.net/). Those folks are doing some crazy/interesting stuff.

Agreed, my wife and I rent a nice but small 1bdrm apartment in the East Bay, we are both scientists/engineers (not software) and were not primarily working from home so having office space for both of us wasn't a prioirty when apartment hunting. Now that we are both full time WFH its pretty busy. I've got a desk in the living room and my wife is on a folding table in the bedroom or the dining room table. Its been nice out so I'll have meetings from the back patio as well. Making due but I miss my desk in the office and my bike commute.

You need 1. Dedicated room 2. Good setup - monitor, standing desk, ergonomic chair

I wfh and yeah there are times when I will work from the backyard in the summer, or by the pool, or from the living room with the TV on when am super bored. But the majority of the work is done from the home office.

Congrats, you're priviledged. Most of the world population doesn't have a pool.

Learn how to spell.

Thank you for the helpful suggestion - I must've been making this mistake for years.

We are looking to buy a new house soon and have made room for a home office a priority due to the current virus. Both my wife and I are working in our small apartment now while our 3 year old yells outside our second bedroom with grandma chasing after him. Ya...no, this isn't working.

Homes can be designed for working from home: Don't forget that you can have a comfortable climate controlled detached garage.