I guess my time management and prioritization skill have improved by necessity, but the lack of uninterrupted quiet time is real.
Phone calls, people talking around you, movement everywhere, unwanted taps on your shoulder and a lot more.
Unless your job provides you with a closed office where you can actually focus on, it's pretty much the same as having kids around.
When I worked in an office I remember the most productive hour I had was right after I got there, because I arrived ~1h early (due to commuting BS) and was basically alone.
Once teammates arrive, it's chaos. No matter how good your headphones are, something will interrupt you at random times just like your kids. Except if you do have an office in your house, you can actually close the door and have uninterrupted time, even if it's in small chunks.
There’s screaming and crying, if your help is needed, it needs to be right now, kids wont take no for an answer, etc.
When I was in an open office, people generally kept a reasonable background volume my brain could tune out. As adults, they respected my answers the first time, and certainly no one screamed at me.
Of course everyone's experience will vary, which kind of invalidates the idea that all of this is because of WFH. It depends on your kids, your home/office, your work office, teammates, commute time and so on.
My point is that blanket statements like "WFH with kids ruins productivity" don't accurately portray the reality and helps bad managers justify unjustifiable RTO policies with anecdotes.
I know you didn't use a blanket statement though. But when I read your comment I could almost feel a bad manager reading it and using it to ruin more people's lives. Sorry about the rant.
In-person interaction can be fun and is important for team bonding and meta work communication but it would be so much better to facilitate that explicitly, outside of the work space.
Optimally this would mean 95% remote plus cool getaways together (at minimum, actually fun evenings out).
It’s like with conferences, the most important learning usually happens outside of the premises.
Why not be smart about that fact?
But the one most-of-a-floor-of-a-highrise open office I worked in, for a "more mature" company than the little startups I usually work for... that was a whole lot worse then even at-home-with-kids (and, not coincidentally, was the least "mature"/professional place I've ever worked, despite on-paper looking far more serious than other places I've worked).
I don't know how anyone got any work done there. I suspect their handful of fully-remote senior devs were doing most of the actual work. WFH with small kids would have been a big improvement.
I know it sounds hard to do if your family is used to you 'floating around', but I can tell you with 100% certainty it will just not work out long term any other way.
Do you have dedicated office space in your home? This is crucial.
Additionally, once the kids go to school the house gets very, very quiet for most of the day.
And yes, I am sure once everyone is at school for a big chunk of the day it all gets much easier.
Locking myself in my home office during work hours isn't a solution to this problem. I have to use the bathroom, get water, coffee, eat lunch, take walks, etc. The kids see me and want to play, want to hang out, want to tell me about everything that happened since the last time they saw me. They might come to the office door and start pounding on it, yelling out for Mom or Dad, depending on who's in the office working. At that point one of us has to physically respond to the situation. There's also the simple fact that sometimes only Mom or Dad can truly manage the situation at hand. I've had to go break up fights outside in the back yard after I realized the background noise I was hearing was an exasperated grandparent who couldn't get them to stop.
We have 3 kids, a set of twins and a singleton, whose average age is still under 3 years. It's a very challenging situation and work generally takes a back seat when the kids are in the house.
Sounds exactly like issues at our open offices too?
This week I've just given up on sleep completely, and accepted that I have already gone insane. I got 2 hours last night. After managing to pass out from exhaustion between coughing fits at 3AM, I was called back from the Ethereal Realm to this land of the damned by a mysteriously sweet voice in the dark, asking me for "a piece of cheese", and "bread, the round kind like for feeding a duck". To aid in my quest, I was hastily thrown the plastic base of a holy cheese grater from the land of Ikea; no more questions. Since then I've fed a baby about 5 oz of formula and coughed up about 2 oz of mucus. Like my daughter, it's been sort of fun to observe the change in consistency, color and flavor from day to day.
Overall things have been going well, though. No complaints. There's some clear benefits to operating at my physical and mental limit. I've lost some weight from all the involuntary vomiting and appetite loss. I abandoned my futile attempt to be delicate dealing with our difficult and jaded next door neighbors, and am instead stomping on egg shells calling them out on their unintentional but very rude behavior. I also feel like I've had a lot of really creative and productive, impactful breakthroughs at work lately. My only real disappointment is that I have absolutely no energy left to pick up my Steam Deck, and when I force myself to anyway, I get simulation sickness after 5 minutes.
The noro/rota/adeno/entero viruses are terrible, they tear through the whole class and family leaving a trail of vomit and diarrhea…and usually hit once or twice per year. Majority are just corona/rhino/influenza which are not as bad since they just usually just cause congestion and the kids can play through it.
I notice that my daughter stopped getting sick between 3 and 4 though, so I guess that is how long it takes to build up immunity to most.
I don't think this is actually a good anecdote in support of your stereotype? Let me tell you more about my recent personal work experiences. After taking 3 months of paid paternity leave, I eased back in by working a few 10-20 hour weeks, then my wife broke her leg while we were out of town helping her mother who herself had broken her shoulder. The CTO of my company immediately called just to say not to worry at all about the company, and to focus 100% on taking care of my wife and daughters. I worked a few 5 hour weeks, mainly just asynchronously answering people's technical questions to keep the cogs of progress turning. There was a re-org while I was on paternity leave, and my new manager who was also a new hire was getting worried that maybe I should take some sort of formal leave. To be honest it sounded pretty good at the time, since I was stressed out to the point of having abdominal pain; 3 month old, post-partum wife bedridden in extreme agony, unable to breastfeed, young daughter bouncing off the walls. I called the CTO just to mull over with, then called my former manager who himself had just gotten back from a several month leave that he spent doing yoga on an island off Portugal. He had me fully convinced to just take the next 4 months off, abandon my family and zip off to Portugal; just kidding. The CTO called me back to say that he talked to the head of engineering and the HR rep, and they all agreed that it seemed silly to take leave. They all agreed that I should continue not worrying at all about the company and focus 100% on my family, at least for another month or two. "You've always gone the extra mile for the company, so let the company do the same for you." He suggested that I should only consider taking leave once my wife's leg is better, if I felt burnt out and I thought it would make be happier. He also offered to go check in with my new manager, just to make sure he himself wasn't stressing out about the situation. Then the HR rep called, and clarified that there's no company policy or legal reason why I would need to take leave. She preferred the zero paperwork option of just calling it paid-time-off (the company has an unlimited vacation policy.) I've been gradually ramping up my hours since then, and I would describe my current situation as a positive feedback loop between productivity and sleep deprived euphoria. My work is a lot of fun and very rewarding, and it's easy for me to get sucked into it. https://youtu.be/DOWDNBu9DkU
I've had so many viruses since the older one started preschool 8 months ago, I can't remember what feeling good feels like.
The lack of sleep from trying to help my wife feed the newborn on top of keeping a norovirus-infected toddler away from said newborn in-between my own trips to the bathroom has been.....not fun.
I honestly cannot describe how much better I suddenly feel knowing I'm not the only one in that boat. I was totally unable to remember that this is temporary, we will stop getting sick, and I will feel good again until I read this.
I just smiled at the toddler for the first time in a week.
Our older daughter got hit with the norovirus a couple days before we did, so by the time it took us down she was over it. We didn't take any special precautions to isolate the baby, given that she most definitely got exposed the same time we did. Luckily the baby never developed any major symptoms. My wife was totally screwed with her broken leg. New lifetime achievement personal low. I had a 60 minute window between when she became violently ill and I did, which I used to build her an elevated makeshift bed close enough to the toilet that she could stand up and pivot on one leg. It was luxuriously memory foam padded. Our older daughter had the opportunity of her lifetime: camped out in the living room with the TV remote, Disney + button, no bed time. She's was so sweet and concerned though, that she kept checking in on her mom every half an hour until she passed out from exhaustion. I myself had a relatively tame night; all of my indignities could be kept between me and the washing machine.
A couple weeks ago our dog started vomiting on the mat by the back door of our kitchen. My wife started urgently shouting at me to do something. I kept doing whatever I was doing at a snails pace, probably staring at the hot water kettle or something. She got progressively more frustrated with me, "what are you doing?! Vomit! Hurry!" I turned to her and said, why are you shouting at me? Do you want me to feel stressed out about it? My sole purpose in life right now is to clean up vomit, wipe butts, and be spat up on. Of course Ollie's throwing up right now, it's the perfect compliment to my morning coffee. Just look how masterful he is, our entire house is hardwood and he intentionally walked over to that absorbent floor mat. Let me brew my coffee and enjoy a few sips. Then I'll grab some paper towel and the folex, the trash can, gag two or three times, and then it will be all fixed. I'm an expert at this.
I don't really know what I'm rambling on about anymore, but I was quite amused by the fact that I happened to throw up twice from coughing fits while typing out this post.
It gets better!
Sounds glorious.
If you need some daytime distraction get a cat or dog. Taking the house-beast for a stroll around the neighborhood is good for my mental health, gets me away from work, and keeps the pooch happy. Kids make having a dog easier too -- he can bug them to play while I finish reports.
It is, but also I really miss having lunch with them. And definitely get a little stir crazy if I forget to go outside now, so I usually take a 20-30 minute walk around lunch time.
The tradeoff is being away from the people I love for 8-10 hours a day, and even just being present in a baby's/toddler's life is huge. I'd still stay home again.
I recommend finding a nearby coworking space. Spend 2-4 hours of the house if the chaos is too much.