When working from home is toxic
morgan.zoemp.be
morgan.zoemp.be
I wish every person arguing for or against home office would open their comment detailing what their home setup looks like. As someone living in an apartment with no backyard and a small desk placed in the intersection of my kitchen and living room (aka "the one room that is not the bedroom"), losing my office has more cons that pros.
At the same time, I am fully aware that the "my office" part of my previous sentence is doing a lot of heavy lifting. Those cursed with an open office plan are probably enjoying now those benefits I've been missing for a year now.
If only there was an accepted "working environment checklist" that we could all use...
Even if the room is functionally shared (these days the room in question also houses a tv so it doubles as our TV room after hours) we are disciplined and use the room for the proper purpose at the proper time, so the work-life distinction is well-kept and that helps a lot with the “it’s easy to drift back to work” thing.
As it happens I have a whole load of choices about where to sit, and I often change it up.
In contrast to a lot of folks, I have a dedicated office with a door on the second floor of my (small) home whose purpose is to be a work space. The noise levels are decent. The ergonomics are better than what I have at the office. I have a window that lets in lots of natural light. In every way it's superior to my office work space.
And while I use it on the weekends for personal stuff, during the week it's work only.
When I'm working, the door is typically shut and folks in the house know not to interrupt, which eliminates distractions.
As a result, the separation between work and home life is easy: I shut everything down and leave the room.
When it comes to avoiding mental fatigue and overwork, for me that's just a matter of discipline: I have hard cutoffs for number of hours works, and there are no exceptions.
Ironically, for some of the complaints in this article, things are actually better for me.
I'm far less sedentary as, without the commute, I have far more time to go for walks, go touring on my bike, etc. In fact, I've never felt more connected to nature and my local community since I'm experiencing so much more of the outdoors and the amenities nearby. My wife and I have even started getting into casual birding together.
I'm also less likely to suffer from distractions since I don't have random people coming by to talk to me.
Really, the only thing I can empathize with is the lack of face time and socializing, but if I went back to the office part time (say, 1-2 days a week), I think that'd fill that need.
So, as always, it really depends. The problem with the pandemic, as so many have pointed out, is that it forced people to start working from home, often in far from ideal circumstances. So it's no great surprise that many people found the experience inferior to their corporate workplace.
My work from home life, with my beautiful wife and child at arms reach, is a miracle.
Honestly, for me I think I just need to move my body through space and talk to people to be happy. I'm probably more gregarious than your average developer, but definitely still an introvert and talking to people all day would be exhausting. Still, I need some social interaction. I feel like WFH was in some sense easier (could sleep in later, for example) but I just felt like I was withering away. I was craving some sort of variety, some stimulation, seeing different things and people. Being surprised by things! I missed all of that. Video calls are a poor facsimile of human interaction and the whole pandemic period felt dehumanizing.
Video calls are as pointless as the requirement for face time. If your team members require constant vigilance to be effective, you need to get a new team. If your manager requires face time, your manager needs to reconsider what their purpose is.
This week was my first trip to town for errands where I was not mandated to wear a mask. In less than a week, social distancing has become a thing of the past. Life looks completely normal again, and I hate everything about it.
I still wear my mask and keep my distance, but I got the distinct impression that this will not be tolerated by the majority for much longer. When most people stop doing something that was “normal”, it is longer viewed as normal; our abrupt population-wide shift seems to emphasize this perceived deviance in the eyes of many. Consequently, I felt even more like an outsider than usual, even though there were a handful of others wearing masks.
Even before the pandemic, I needed the extra bubble of space. I actively avoided crowds. The pandemic created a world that I enjoyed greatly, and I feel a tragic loss that it is now past and may never be seen again.
You may feel liberated and whole again, but I feel like I am back to living in Hell. I face existential dread at the very prospect of going to town. One man’s pleasure is another man’s poison.
I really empathize from the other angle too, where people who are used to a normal environment don't want to WFH. But a lot of their hatred may be due to their awful environment they put up with. (A lot of it might not be, either! Different people like different things.)
As I said elsewhere, a lot of people seem to feel they can't change it, or they put up with distractions, or they don't worry about setting boundaries, or the equipment is subpar compared to the office.
One day my wife and I set a trap for my father in law. I nudged her to keep working, since she had unconsciously started fooling around online because of the inevitable story that FIL was going to walk in and tell, like clockwork. The moment he came in to tell his story without asking, I said "Heyo! So, I didn't understand until a few days ago, but it's best that, before you do this, mentally teleport yourself into her office and imagine you're standing next to her coworkers."
It made all the difference, and I haven't seen him do it since. He was super understanding too. I'd been guilty of the same thing; it's easy to forget that WFH means "you need office boundaries at home."
Yeah.
Our solution was to install a lock. Are you in a situation where you can do the same thing?
The lock happened to be to our basement, which isn't exactly a nice place to work in. But it was effective. A lockable side room might make all the difference.
WFH is win win I unless your income depends on being a landlord/real estate investor.
I love working from home. However it is a constant battle to ensure that others understand that it really is working. That I don't have flex time to do anything at any time. I might have the agency to be able to, but I also have goals and inertia and focus that I want to feed and that are very important to me.
As to interruptions, that really is case by case. I completely shut out peers when I want to (to be frank, fuck your noisy, useless, attention sucking slack chat/discord/IRC and anything else where anyone has expectations of synchronous responses), and have been lucky to be in a position to do so. I also just shut my phone off when I don't want calls. If I couldn't do that, work interruptions would be a disaster. However it's a bit more tough on the family front where my wife, for instance, feels pretty slighted if I can't engage in a conversation whenever something comes to her. However many calm explanations have occurred, if you're in the same house it's tough for people to perceive you as unavailable.
I imagine it'll dry up in a year or so. Till then, it's probably important to let people express what's on their mind. If people hate WFH, addressing the concerns is the only way forward.
Really enjoyed the opportunity to wfh before the pandemic and am really excited about the office now. I guess I just like the change of the scenery.
A transition like this takes time. That consideration seems to be absent from arguments one way or the other, but I'm happy to hear them so we can smooth out the transition to _whatever_.
Small cubicle with no window near by is a common office situation. Lack of exposure to sun disrupts the circadian rhythm. Vs Sitting next to a window at home.
Many Office AC systems don't filter the air from pollutants adequately. Cheap office carpets tend to have all kinds of chemicals that off gas. No way to open a window to get fresh air. Vs the typical home office with a window to the side you can open anytime.
I was in an office where the secretaries farts would rise and accumulate in a dead zone at the second story stair well. No more smelling other peoples farts or getting their flue.
Sitting prolonged times in a chair, and not being to take a bathroom break for long times. Not only uncomfortable, also unhealthy. Vs a chair I pick, and a standing desk, and short breaks anytime I want.
Listening to music on headphones vs a radio playing in the background at home. Headphones damage hearing.
Your office doesn’t let you use the restroom?
Working from home I can just move my desk, I'm not sure what I'll do when I go back.
At least with a home office I can attempt to make my environment better instead of just accepting whatever my employer provides.
Whatever your preference, it's ok and you don't have to justify that preference.
These articles and comments are people figuring out their true feelings. Justification of preference is currently vital.
I am holding out hope that the ratio of WFH jobs will remain permanently increased after this, even if it isn’t a tectonic shift.
Some others are due to an improper setup: no door/ private space can also be an issue in an open-plan office and at home, if faced with the prospect of long-term wfh, one can and should condition a proper, closeable space to work in. This mitigates most of the distraction-oriented complaints.
As to “i’m always working” - what’s needed here is the discipline of closing your computer at X time. Having a separate space really helps with that, otherwise just close the computer and chuck it in a drawer.
I fully understand wfh is not for everyone. However, one must realize when the main benefit of an office is imposing on you the discipline you’d need to have on your own if working at home.
Once you are living in a place with enough space, working from home is much healthier experience than going to an office, provided that you invest in your home office and keep your home clean.
If you take all the money that you spent yearly on transportation to the office and invest it in a home setup, you'll have a pretty neat home office in no time. There are many YouTube videos with ideas for home office decorations.
Working in the same physical space as management will aways have an edge on remote workers. That's why it won't be going anywhere.
I can only speak for myself, but I feel that for many of us this is a once in a lifetime chance to establish working for home as a completely viable, respected choice. I don't want to move up, I just want to do my job in peace.
To me that isn't a big deal, but a lot of people are reluctant to switch jobs.
Probably not universally, but in general.
Though they may have to deal with a lot of their co-workers not being present, the norm for meetings being Zoom rather than conference rooms, and hoteling.
Finally it adds to signal, without pro-office articles one would think that everybody hates working from the office.
Better to work from home then entertain a myriad of diversions and mirages of working in an office.
From a macro view, a lot of things that have been postponed for 18-24 months will likely happen all at once. Given the trajectory to normal, whatever that was, it will have been almost 2 years of artificially suppressed volatility in a lot of places, and a lot of stuff is going to roar back.
An office space, desk, power, AC, coffee provided by your employer is nice if you can’t get a decent one yourself. It’s all trade offs between travel, free time, quiet space, social.
The check mark would mean that this worker has a home office setup that meets or exceeds standards for remote work. The certification process can be handled by a neutral third party.
The standards would be stringent, a laptop on on some corner desk wouldn’t quality. You must have a room with a door that can be closed IMO. Maybe there can be tiers though.
Edit: I don’t get the downvotes, does this comment really lower the level of discourse, or do people just hate this idea so much?
I've observed that they either feel they can't change it, or they put up with distractions, or they don't worry about setting boundaries, or the equipment is subpar compared to the office.
Having a checklist would at least get people to think for a moment.
Do we really want SWE interviews/applications to get more toxic than they already are? On top of quizzing for largely non-pertinent academic knowledge, wasting people's weekends with no-pay projects to "judge their work", and other arbitrary BS do we also want to tack on a qualification for getting hired being that your home is structured in an employer approved way?
Even if you have this WFH certification like you talk about, that isn't going to tell your employer much. Some people will have great WFH setups and not be very productive, some people will have bad setups and do great work. The only way to see which is which is to observe their productivity. Certification won't help.
If you are serious, what's stopping me from renting a space for 1 hour, getting the check mark and going back home to my slum?
Or fixing up my place, getting rid of kids toys, getting the check mark, then letting things go back to before?
Seriously though, if you can't do your job, your manager should be able to figure it out.
As an aside - funny how in the pandemic these requirements were massively relaxed and as a remote worker I currently have a PS5 devkit on my desk like it's a not big thing.
The standards would be stringent, an open office hoteling arrangement wouldn’t qualify. You must have an office with a door that can be closed IMO.
* The working area is maintained between 68°-76°
* The working area is free of tripping obstructions
* The working area has a adjustable chair
* The working area has handholds on any staircase of more than two steps
Etc...
And yes, I am working on improving the area that I work in. It currently meets the requirements, I'm just looking to go another step for a more comfortable area now that I know that long term WFH is possible and reasonable.
Sounds like a great YC startup idea. They can use machine learning and AI to calculate the times that the employee is sitting at their workstation, have eye tracking to make sure that they are looking at the screen, and analyze the network traffic and keystrokes to make sure that people aren’t goofing off on HN or Reddit.
Having a "spare" room or a rented coworking space to use as a remote office is a luxury of the middle/upper class.
I can see your logic, and I can see how it would be more profitable for companies when hiring remote, but at the end of the day, there are many profitable things a company can do that they are not (technically, see: "legally") allowed to do, for example not hiring disabled workers, firing pregnant female workers, and so on.
We choose to not maximise productivity to create a more accepting and equal society.
That is of course all in theory.
"filter for applicants with a remote office" is virtually 1-to-1 with "filter for middle/upper class applicants", which of course is unacceptable according to our modern view on social mobility and egalitarianism.
And open up your wallet for relocation, since it's unlikely they'll find housing in SF.
I have a bathroom door. Does that count for the blue checkmark?
If you want to control my work space and dictate what that looks like, then assign me an office and make what you want on your dime. Don't try to turn wfh into some perfect slave labor scenario where employers control it and employees pay for it and it's this highly invasive process.