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Comment by marknutter | Hacker News Reader

Title should be "Working alone sucks for some people".

I've been working from home for years and love it, for instance.

I truly believe 'alone' is more a state of mind than anything else.

Having recently left a veritable 'Office-Space' like enterprise, with 500 people on my floor you'd think I wouldn't have been so lonely. But being lost in a sea of cubes and water cooler/misery loves company talk replete with excuses of why someone can't do something and something didn't get done at every corner can wear one down.

As a newly minted Rails consultant going on 6+ mos now, I have yet to meet any of my clients/designers face to face (there's 10 people involved in 2 separate long term projects). They live on the East Coast and I'm in southern California. But we're in regular communication... skype/google hangouts, phone, basecamp, email, pivotal tracker, github.

When it comes to my career I'm feeling amazingly whole when I'm 'virtually' surrounded with highly competent people who see eye-to-eye than when I had to grudgingly come into a mediocracy every day. I've never experienced this level of cohesive team work before... to me it just seems like the physical presence thing is icing on the cake.

If I get 'physically lonely' heck while working I'll go out to one of various local cafes I frequent and take my headphones out every once in awhile and chat up a stranger. Usually we have far more in common than I did with any of my former co-workers. To top it off I find myself more regularly hanging out with friends while not working... having a fluid schedule + getting rid of that time sink that is commuting really opens up one's options to be social.

“Our language (...) has created the word loneliness to express the pain of being alone. And it has created the word solitude to express the glory of being alone.”

-- Paul Tillich

This fits with a life lesson I've been internalizing for the last couple years:

For many problems there are many right answers.

More specifically for opinion/work situation articles like this, the argument applies to a particular personality type and/or particular personal situation.

If you're extroverted, then working alone may leave you bored and unfulfilled.

If you in the middle between introverted and extroverted, working alone may work if other parts of your life have personal interaction.

If you are introverted, working alone may be the best possible situation.

I find working from home works well for me, though at times I feel disconnected, out of the loop, and generally not charged up. But most of the time I find it ideal. I'm middle of the road on the introvert/extrovert scale, am easily distractible when bored (ADHD), and get a charge from working with people - but only when I have part of the day to unwind alone.

I also know working entirely alone on a solo project get me nowhere.

But most of this is about my personality, not about software development, working in a large company, or founding a startup.

There are many right answers. My right answer and yours may be the same if we are similar and in the same situation. Otherwise, my advice probably won't help you - and visa versa.

>If you in the middle between introverted and extroverted, working alone may work if other parts of your life have personal interaction.

I think this is a good point, and for me one of the scarier aspects of this type of work. Working alone is fine until it isn't. I think your work quality / satisfaction are always going to be relient on your out of work happiness to a large extent, but when you're working alone there's that much less of a buffer. Work is such a large part of our lives, doing it alone is a pretty large commitment to aloneness.

Specifically since this person mentions that he's "active, extraverted [sic] and social." Which is not to say that such people will always hate working alone, or that people who enjoy it can't be those things, but it seems from his description that working alone is something he probably should have avoided or, now that that's impossible, do something to change.

I think the coworking environment in another comment is a great suggestion in that vein. Having worked in one of them for the better part of a year, for people who really just want to be around others while working, that's pretty ideal (aside from the relatively minor expense, but if that's something that's going to make you significantly happier, it seems likely to me that you could find one with a cost that makes it viable and worthwhile).

Edit: I've also been working from home, alone (cue Macauly Culkin), for years and love it.

+1 for co-working. I occasionally work from a co-location workspace or a coffeeshop with local friends and hackers and it satisfies my need for human interaction without being too distracting.

There is a difference between general human interaction and specifically having a peer working with with you on a common goal.

Which is actually a good argument for coworking spaces, regardless of which you're looking for, as they tend to attract both a variety of people/businesses and people like the author who are just looking to be around other humans. Of course, depending on your priority, it'd be ideal to check out whatever's in your area and see if there are such spaces that would cater well to your particular inclinations.

I pair program with a couple other devs on a Google Hangout all the time and it literally is no different than being in the same room together. In fact, it's often much better because we can easily switch between presenters.

does pair programming with google hangout really work? i cant find a way to make the video stream fullscreen which isnt ideal for viewing code imo.

Yeah, it works quiet well actually. You just make the window size bigger and the video scales to fit it. I never have any buffering issues and it's always clear enough to read the other dev's code without them having to increase their font size. The best part, as I said above, is being able to easily switch between presenters.

You are definitely not alone. Being as "loneliness" in my business was a personal pain point for me as well as for my co-founder, we decided to create VocalTap to help connect business owners/entrepreneurs together in a private, meaningful way.

It certainly helps to have others support your business or at least empathize with your struggles.

It's definitely nice being able to work with intelligent people to solve a problem, you learn a lot (and sometimes you feel like others are learning, which is rewarding in itself). Working with uninspiring people can be pretty distracting and counterproductive. I was fortunate to co-work with a few people having similar goals and work attitudes in the past; in short people i could become friends with. Does this happen in generic co-working spaces?

Not to nitpick on a trivial point but extrAverted is an accepted spelling alternative to extrOverted. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extraversion_and_introversion

Sure, but all blog posts titles should have "…for some people" then. And all opinions should be concluded by "it depends".

Well... maybe not all of them... it depends.

I've been working from home for five years now. It has its perks but I do miss some things about working in an office.

Mainly the clear demarcation between "work" and "home." Working from home I just make myself some coffee, walk upstairs, and I'm working. Or not, I may go down and work on my car or clean the kitchen. Working from an office I had the drive to clear my head and go into work mode. And then the drive home to get back into "home" mode. I couldn't let "home" bleed into "work" and vice-versa.

I also miss being able to go knock on someone's door and bounce an idea off of them. Now I have to type it out or fire up a skype session to discuss things. Typing in the chat room isn't easy and nuance is lost. And the effort of bringing up a skype session and the human niceties that tend to go with it (the "hey how are you?") and technical problems ("you need to upgrade!", "internet is slow!") make it hard and I tend to just not do it.

That said, working from home on my own projects is nice and I don't know if I could ever work in an office for someone else ever again.

Same here! And I'm an outgoing person with more friends than most at my age and happily get along with most people socially.

However, if I've got my head deep in the code and some berk interrupts me with inane crap it feels like a physical slap in the face. I actually, physically "jolt". And this happens all the time in an office. So working from home by myself all day lets me focus on my work with no distractions, and I just make sure I get outside and meet people when I'm not working.

I think it's not about working alone. He obviously likes working alone, what he doesn't like is that lack of team work. As in his previous jobs, he had team interactions. His current job doesn't offer that same peer-level of interactions and that's what sucks. You may be working from home and loving because you may have interactions with peers at your same level but he doesn't have that. And the board, which should be close to that, doesn't offer the interaction and challenges he desires.

+1 Yes, this is exactly it. You've articulated this point better than I have. Thanks.

I had this same problem recently. I thought co-working would fix it, but it didn't. Like you, the problem was deeper; I missed shared goals, successes, and even failures.

How did I fix it? I quit. I loved my job and my boss and my work hours, compensation, benefits & vacation... but I quit anyway. In January I start work at a small highly collaborative company, and I feel SO good about it :)

Nice. Good luck!

But, based on the upvotes of the post, the OP seems to ring true for a significant number of people here.

Also, this is not a person who occasionally works from home, but works from home all the time.

PS. mandatory oatmeal: http://theoatmeal.com/comics/working_home

Pure genius

I would love to have his "problem". I'm envious of those who get to work from home full-time.

Same here. I love working alone because I can hack away for hours undisturbed.

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