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Comment by cfontes | Hacker News Reader

I've worked from home for 3 years, than office for 2 and now back to home because of COVID and I moved to another continent.

I have some points on the not good column

- If you have kids, it is hard to focus sometimes, specially small ones.

- Sometimes your SO forgets you are not "Home" and this also can be bad, as it can create stress between you 2.

- I miss software design sessions with my team, we would go thru issues 2x faster being together.

- Onboarding new team members is a lot harder and they feel less part of the "team"

Last one is building culture remotely is a skill a handful of people have, until now at least. So this also becomes a mess...

For me the perfect balance is to be at the office once a week.

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As a kid who grew up with a father who worked from home, I will say I loved it, though. I knew I shouldn't bother him much while he's working... but I could if I really needed to, and he was around if something important happened. His flexible working conditions also meant he could be a part of everything and take you places and then you'd want to do something he'd find boring and he'd just say "I'll sit on this bench, come get me when you're done" and he'd put in a half hour of work in the middle of nowhere as he could (his job also was for a company half a world away, and so he didn't really need to be in contact with them constantly--pre-Internet--or work very specific hours). So like... it might be a bit harder on you--particularly when the kid is young enough to not understand "work"--but I feel incredibly lucky that my father did that (and like, he actually was gone three months of the year to work for that company "in the office"... but I still feel like I got much more of a father than anyone else I knew).

Yes, familywise it's great, I just came back from a 1h lunch break on the beach digging sand castles for a good 30 minutes of it with them all, something impossible with any other setup.

Not impossible at all. I know two companies near the beach where people surf during lunch.

With their kids?

Shit are you the "saurik"? Oh man, thanks for all the work you put into Cydia and all that. Seriously you are awesome.

This is why HN is special!

Yes, their kids and spouse come to that beach

Sorry, I'm too young, I have a feeling this question will seem very dumb to older folks—what work can you do remotely without the internet?

I guess a lot of stuff happened over the phone? If you write a document, how do you send it to others? Did he use a fax machine, maybe?

The answer to your direct question is, in fact, "fax". The digital fax machines that started to come out were able to send documents without much loss and then print multiple copies of them (rather than essentially attaching a modem directly to a glorified receipt printer like earlier ones had).

He had a Palm Pilot he would scribble on a lot to work out of the house when those became a thing, and he had one of the first actually-portable laptop computers. We (he involved me in a lot of his process of learning tech) tested out early tablet computing devices (running Windows 3.0 "for Handwriting" ;P).

Any intellectual work that typically traded on paper.

-Design jobs like architecture and drafting

-Small device repairs (where the device is high value and can be mailed)

-Creative labor like copy writing, editing, etc

Also, where I grew up in rural Montana, a lot of jobs that are considered to require an office but which can be done over the phone were worked remotely up until recently. Sales in many industries was done over the phone with people stationed throughout the Western U.S. states, each managing about a 100,000-300,000 sq mi area.

I didn't technically ever work without internet access, but since it required an expensive long distance phone call (10 to 25c per minute) over a 2400bps modem, most work time was offline.

I'd typically do a short dialup call in the morning and one in the evening to upload emails I queued up to send, download any emails I received and sync up code repositories.

Honestly I often wish for similar conditions today (except the 2400bps part!). The productivity and mental peace of zero distractions all day long was so much better.

As to how to work? No different from today really. Sync up the code repositories and do all development locally for the day. Or work on architecture/design documents.

I sometimes seek that peaceful working condition by working remote at locations with no signal. Wish I could do it more often.

There are different answers to this, depending on what "without the internet" means. Pre-internet it was phone or fax, but early internet it was intermittent/dial-up internet, meaning you could do offline work that you upload later. Even during ADSL neither I or any service on the internet relied on always-online assumptions. Think git (but before actual git).

> Sometimes your SO forgets you are not "Home" and this also can be bad, as it can create stress between you 2.

Simple solution, put a sign on the door that indicates you are working and only to interrupt if it's important. You can still set boundaries here without it being an issue. Be creative, talk it out with your SO.

This can help when kids get old enough to understand as well, but admittedly won't work with small children.

> miss software design sessions with my team, we would go thru issues 2x faster being together.

I think this is something that can be solved with software but it'll take some time to develop workflows that work for everyone. Talk to your team to try to find ways you can optimize.

> - Onboarding new team members is a lot harder and they feel less part of the "team"

This comes down to the culture, which is your last part.

You can help new members feel included in simple ways. Or simply include them in decisions and discussions is helpful. Really it's the same as when you're working in the same location. You just have to be proactive about including someone that you're not seeing. This is more on you and less on the new person.

> Simple solution, put a sign on the door

Who said anything about a door? We dont have two spare rooms really.

I suspect anyone that enjoys living in a high cost of living city (SF, NYC, etc) and isn’t obscenely wealthy is working from their living or bedroom. If you’re not living alone, WFH becomes a lot harder.

I would prefer to live in SF and go to the office (because my house/apt is too small) than live elsewhere but be able to afford a house with a dedicated room for an office.

How about a middleground solution: Live close to SF (say San Mateo, ~30 mins to SF)? That way you can get dedicated room for office and be in proximity to the city.

Isn't that worst of both worlds?

Still EXPENSIVE as hell, and no big open spaces to yourself, but also still not a quick stroll to all the world-class amenities of SF.

Maybe it varies for other people, but when i think of "live in to enjoy the city" i think 2 blocks from enough food to never cook again, new bars every friday, a quick transit ride to almost any activity i could want - and no car ownership needed. Its a lifestyle of living out of the city as a communal space, not a destination to visit on weekends.

Well it comes down to personal preferences. For me, SF is unhabitable due to crime, shit + syringes, homelessness, and the fact that it's a ghost-town on weekends.

Combining that with the fact that we don't do bars, we cook and need car ownership so we can do hike-trips...

I work from my living room, my girlfriend works from the bedroom. Sure she sometimes comes out to get water or something and walks past me and into the kitchen and I can see her and hear the sink running but it isn't exactly a huge distraction

My partner works on a voice assistant so theres CONSTANT talking with a smart speaker all day :(

Oooof, that sounds painful but also a pretty atypical experience for people not living alone. My girlfriend has a job where she's on the phone a lot, but in the other room with the door shut that isn't really a problem at all. I can barely hear it, and if I have my headphones on I can't hear it at all

That's another thing that a permanent WFH mindset can solve - move. I've been WFH for ~20 years, and can't imagine giving up the freedom I have in selecting a home.

I still live in the Bay Area, but it's a 45min (no traffic) to ~1:45hr (typical) commute to the South Bay. It'd be hard to do this every day, but I don't have to.

As a result, I get to live on huge chunk of land, with an office to call my own, for the same $$ I'd spend on a 4br/3ba 'normal' house in San Jose.

I don't know that someone who can afford a multimillion dollar home is working the same kind of job that 99% of the rest of the world works.

A) It’s not a multimillion dollar home, and B) that’s not really relevant - the point is that WFH frees you from having to live in high cost areas, which means you can also afford an office in your house.

Yeah, I’ve been working out of the living room all pandemic.

We are actually moving soon primarily so that I can have an office.

I've onboarded a few people over the pandemic and that's really the only downside. I can't really gauge their mood while pair coding over zoom. So its harder to pick up on where they are struggling to keep up.

All that has meant is that ramp up time is a little slower. And I can come into the office for 2 weeks for the two times a year we onboard people. Hell, if we did an office rental then neither of us would have to commute into town. It may be shocking to hear, but new people typically live in the outskirts where housing is cheap. Right next to where I live...

Great commentary. Regarding 'I miss software design sessions with my team, we would go thru issues 2x faster being together.' My team struggled with this at first, mainly because we had a massive markerboarding wall in the office. We tried setting up whiteboards in our home offices and doing some whiteboard sharing. There was just something about marker on markerboard paint we missed. Then we found Miro which allowed us to virtually markerboard remotely and asynchronously with ease. It doesn't hurt that our video conferencing app Whereby has Miro share feature so we do it directly within Whereby and not have to context-switch so much.

Please check out https://sharetheboard.com -- we too didn't want to give up markers (on paint or boards or anywhere else). We're working on a number of integrations at the moment. Hadn't considered Whereby yet (Miro is on the short list) but open to suggestions.

> If you have kids, it is hard to focus sometimes, specially small ones.

This is what can happen when you WFH with small children:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mh4f9AYRCZY

Every freaking day.

This is true, the thing is kids grow up and then that stage is gone. With my oldest and second I missed so much, not something I would want to repeat again with my current 18 month old. Kids settle down as they get older, and I'd much rather have a quick play distraction than the annoying conversations that you get sucked into around the water cooler. And I'd also rather get locked into WFH roles now and put up with the young kid noises now with the long-term payoff of less distractions. How many of us are newscasters anyway? I've given up even instructing my wife to take the kids out unless it's a really important presentation, because so many of my co-workers are in the same boat.

> This is what can happen when you WFH with small children:

Very early in the pandemic our CEO was doing all hands sessions with the company and these things happened on and off.

I still don't know if it just happened naturally or if it was staged, but either way it was brilliant. It set the tone for the company that if even big shot billionaire CEO was having kids wander into meetings, it was certainly ok for everyone else.

Those are all good points. Which is why I think we need to distinguish between different actual situations when we talk about this stuff.

The fact that you are not going to the office is too broad of a category. I mean just look at the name, work from home, and it is misleading right there.

You may need to look into a co-working space or other option to get out of the house with so many distractions.

It's also going to be totally different for people who have no kids or who are employing nannies or day care to occupy the children.

The software design sessions thing, I absolutely do not buy the idea that this cannot be done remotely. Use a Zoom meeting, one of the many collaborative whiteboarding sites/programs and get people Wacom tablets if desired. But just a chat room, phone call, Discord voice channel, etc. should actually be adequate most of the time.

For onboarding and culture, just because people are not coming into the office does not mean that it has to turn into a free for all. You can still have rules about being around at a certain time or using certain software or video calls or whatever you feel you need to keep people integrated or whatever. The only thing that needs to be different is the literal physical presence of the person. Virtual presence can still be facilitated and required if you feel it is necessary.

> Onboarding new team members is a lot harder and they feel less part of the "team"

On the other hand, we onboarded someone who lives in Vermont (the rest of the team is in the same town on the west coast) and since we are all working remotely, other than changing his working hours to align with our own, you can’t tell the difference between him and us.

> For me the perfect balance is to be at the office once a week.

Out of necessity I've been WFH for the past 2 years. While overall I have enjoyed working from home, the issues you describe are real. Once it is no longer necessary for me to be WFH full time, I think one day a week in the office would be ideal.

Alternatively, what about work from "home" where you work at a nearby cafe or co-working space or even the library or a university?

My company would very much not want others to see my unannounced work.

You need to get one of those screen protectors that prevents people from seeing your screen form different angles, and make sure you get that corner seat.

Yeah, companies with strict security measures dutifully provide them for free.

I'd go further and say, make both optional. Come to the office space when you need it, stay at home when you don't. Once a week? Twice a week? Every day? Once a month or never? Doesn't matter.

Maybe some things would need to change in terms of what office space is leased, and the capacity, in order to manage the cost.

I think there's value in consistency in terms of setting expectations (both for my family and for my colleagues) the the flexibility to determine what that consistency looks like is key.

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