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Adding to that: a lot of people had to start WFH with little or no preparation. For many of us techy types that's no problem, we already have desks and monitors and keyboards coming out of our ears. But for a lot of people, none of that is a given at all. There's a huge difference between reading your emails on your laptop at the breakfast table in the morning, and working from home 8 hours a day for months. Especially if you live in a tiny flat and have to share it with other people. If I were to apply for a 100% remote job, I'd make different accomodation choices than when getting a 100% on site job.

Yes, I think the lack of prep problem is underrated.

As a freelancer, I almost don't notice lock-down other than the cabin fever effects, because my home office is well-established. But, wow, that would have been different if I had been put in the position of building up that office infrastructure over-night, as things were shutting down.

And certainly the place-without-interruptions can be a challenge. I have lived in a home with a toddler and a cat -- well, that isn't exactly conducive to getting into "coding flow". Pre-lockdown, I had a chat with a startup CEO who likes to work from his home office when he needs a block of deep-work time. It is a big source of irritation with his wife that "door closed means I am unavailable" -- so yeah, just a place to hide is nice once in a while.

Same. I've got a purpose built office in the garden I built for my wife and I five years ago.

We've got wired internet, power, whiteboards, sofas, variable desks, multiple monitors, it's great.

But we built our business fully remote back in 2014, we've been doing this forever now. While our work colleagues are in their kitchens or on their sofas. It's not sustainable.

I work on the cheapest 14'' laptop I could find.

I bought it last year and thought I do not need a good computer, since I thought I would spend most on my time on the PC in the office anyways.

We gave a few PCs to some of our colleagues to work from home because they either didn't have a laptop or it was complete crap to work on.

Exactly. My spouse and I like spending time in the same room, even if we are not directly interacting with each other. Therefore, when arranging furniture, we deliberately had the computer desk go in the living room, so that video games would not require isolation. Now that same computer desk is also the work desk 8 hours every day, but it is still the living room.

My toddler and baby are less bothersome than my in office colleagues. I'm more productive than ever.

I feel you on your other points though,

Spending my days trying to figure out Asp.net core identity while Peppa Pig is on full blast in the same room.

Yeah, I just got a colleague a laptop because their kids are using theirs all day. I think most people do not have a computer per person at home... especially with younger kids.

> everything from cleaning to child care

You cannot overstate the difficulty of putting in eight, or even six, solid hours of work in a day where you also have to coordinate your children's schooling, prepare meals, arbitrate disagreements, apply band-aids, do dishes, do laundry, supply technical support, and a thousand other non-work-related tasks. I was surprised that the article didn't mention this.

> putting in eight, or even six, solid hours

Especially considering that _nobody_ puts in eight or even six hours of "solid work" when at the office. That's something I intuitively knew for a while, but it came into stark contrast once I started consulting and tracking my time. I only bill for the time I _actually_ work. And doing 8 hours of mentally demanding, focused work per day is difficult AF. That's why people slack off in the office, have water cooler conversations, interrupt each other all the time, have meetings they don't really need to have, 1.5 hour lunch breaks, etc. If you had to actually work 8 hours a day, full throttle, few people would stick with it.

The flip side is the productivity of doing 8 hours of focused work per day is truly staggering when you tally it up at the end of the week (which I also do, and you should do, too, if you work remote - otherwise you'll be "invisible" no matter how much you contribute). And WFH plus mostly async communication is very amenable to being able to focus.

Eh, people in support work probably six solid hours very often. If there’s an outage or a problem, people in support can easily work 7 or 7 and a half hours of taking calls practically non stop.

And like you said, few people stick with it. Every place I’ve worked at, the Support department has extremely high turnover and people constantly trying to leave for a different department in the company, or a different role in a different company. Being constantly monitored, poor pay, not being able to go to company sponsored events (oh, at 2 PM we’re having a Zoom workout/meditation meeting, everyone is invited *except support they gotta stay on the phone), having to be above certain metrics, and having to talk to people that are generally neutral at best and extremely pissed at worst, is the perfect recipe for people to hate their job and to quit/leave the company/go to a different department ASAP.

There is difference between "downtime is when you want it and is spent socializing, reading, wasting time" versus "supposed downtime is when alarm buzzes and yet another work",

> _nobody_ puts in eight or even six hours of "solid work" when at the office

I think this varies by industry. It may not be possible to do intensive coding for 8 hours a day, but lawyers definitely bill 8, 10, or even more hours per day. For lawyers, this could mean a mix of reading briefs, consulting with colleagues, and writing memos. While you do have to be disciplined to bill nearly all of your hours at work, I definitely had months where I billed 10 hours per day every weekday and some weekends (and honestly — I do recognize that some lawyer pad their hours, but I wasn't one of them)

Yeah, lawyers will bill 15 minutes for reading one line email, that is well known. :-) On a related note, I remember reading an article about Marissa Mayer where she bragged about "working" 14 hours a day. It turned out that "eating dinner" constituted "work" for her. I should start billing my clients for posting on HN, I'm sure they won't mind.

I'm surprised that people see going to an office as a solution to this difficulty though. I'd 100% rather be around family than in an office.

I've been managing fine by being available during the day, not stressing and just living in the moment. I get the heavy lifting done early in the morning or late at night. Just like in the office... my most productive hours have always been either before everyone else gets in or after everyone else goes home.

I don’t think people view going to an office as an answer. They view daycares and schools reopening as an answer.

Wish I could upvote this 1000 times.

I've gotten used to WFH but agree that the ideal remote work location is actually a "third-place" -- non-home non-office location -- like a library or a Starbucks or a shared workspace close to home.

The psychological separation between home and work is so important.

I keep an office and a gym in my finished basement and it works perfectly for that separation. Not feasible for everyone but if you have the space it’s totally worth creating the division.

>The psychological separation between home and work is so important.

Honestly, It varies by person. I've gone into an office increasingly intermittently for the most part over the past 15 years or so and don't even have an assigned desk any longer.

I have a dedicated office at home (which I also use for video/photo editing, screwing around with electronics, etc.) but I don't feel it has to be just a work-work room. I do videocalls from this room because it's where my good webcam is attached to my desktop system and where I've fiddled with lighting and background.

TBH though, half the time I work somewhere else in the house on a laptop.

But I've absolutely worked with a lot of people who pretty much came into the office every day even though they had no particular need to.

My overall conclusion is that most of the "rules" for working remote or WFH only apply to some people.

That's a matter of habit. The trigger before was space. "I am in the office - work mode on".

In WFH the trigger has to be time. We have a hard 9AM start policy, with 12 to 1PM lunch. That puts everyone on the same page and gets rid of the ambiguous "I wonder if anyone else is looking for me right now, and should I be working". You should absolutely know. If people don't respect it, it's their problem, but you should not be responding to people at 7AM or 9PM unless the sky is falling. No different from how it was before. This lack of boundaries is what really exhausts people.

Also, create a separate account on your computer for work. You should do that anyway to avoid screen share mishaps (no one wants to see your personal bookmarks and history).

At end of day, log out, killing slack notifications and email, and log into your work-free personal account. You are done for the day.

I don't have a home _office_, an actual area dedicated to doing just work stuff, with hardware dedicated only for work stuff.

Working remotely probably should include that.

I have a personal desk with two monitors and a laptop arm... I set up my desk with a KVM (just a USB switcher) for the keyboard and mouse and two HDMI switchers.

Three clicks and all of my IO is routed to the work laptop and that allows me to separate cleanly from work. Before work-mode is engaged, I put my Windows workstation to sleep and I bring it out of sleep right after switching all of my IO back.

One strategy I've found is to work in a different room from where I "hang out". I think it helps your brain realize that this is work time.

One thing that helped me with this is routine. So I wake up, take a shower, get dressed, etc. just like I would if I were going into the office. It has to be a different routine than what you do on weekends. This allows me to be in that different "work" mental space. Hopefully you are able to find something that helps you.

I used to be more consistent about this. I definitely don't dress like I'm going into the office any longer. But it's like anything else. Having some formal steps can help you establish a routine and once you've internalized that routine sufficiently (some people) can start dropping some of the formalities that aren't strictly necessary.

My favorite remote work spot in Denver has been Denver Union Station (I'm weird, having people around helps me concentrate).

I miss Union Station (I moved away)! It's such a cool place to hang out but never tried working there. Where do you post up, the cafe? I don't remember there being a ton of seats in there.

Have you been there since 2014? It was fully renovated and there are a TON of tables and chairs in the main hall now. Including desks with power.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number