Working Alone, Together | Hacker News Reader

Working Alone, Together

nytimes.com

69 pointsdigisth19 comments

I've been working remotely (alone) for the past year, it's great, I'm productive and focused, and I have tons of freedom to do what I want when I want.

While it's true, I do need social interaction, I don't need to be "around people" in order to work, in fact I work more efficiently when I'm alone.

Instead of the effort and lost efficiency of a "workplace", it's much easier to participate in clubs and organizations outside of work to get socialization.

Exactly. I think it's somewhat unhealthy for both the employee and employer (even if they're the same person) for the employee to seek non-work-related interaction on even a weekly basis. I'm talking about the "birthday drinks", ping-pong tables, etc mentioned in the article. It just seems distracting.

If you want to hang out with people then do it, but not when you're trying to get work done.

A combination sounds good: soundproof office for when you really need intense focus, but leave the door open or step out and mingle when you feel like socializing with colleagues.

I've been doing that for the most of the last 5 years. It didn't happen immediately, but eventually the lack of social interactions and the general sterility of working alone became a nuissance. For me, it's easily fixed by just working from coffee shops from time to time - after a few trips to the coffee shops, with their distractions (music, conversations from nearby tables etc.), I quickly return to cherishing the sterility of my home office :)

Same for me. I've been in offices for around ~2 years of the last decade, but they don't usually agree with me. Good setups can exist for awhile, but ultimately privacy is easier.

Maybe I am misunderstanding, but a trip to a coffee shop doesn't sound social in any significant sense. When you work in an office you develop friendships with your coworkers and often socialise outside of the workplace. The conversation you overhear at a coffeeshop seems like a poor substitute.

Many people are already socially satisfied: When I work at home I carry on multiple conversations with people over IRC, IM, Skype, video chat, Google Hangouts, and occasionally even the venerable telephone. In real life I have a number of friends who share interests and outlooks, who I'm met in many interesting ways, and not just because we share an employer.

When I go to the cafe (I'm a different person from who you're replying to) I often go to meet up with other peers, but even when I don't, just being around other people mixes things up.

I share the sentiment - I have a social life outside of work so having it at work (with people I did not get to choose) is not crucial. When I go to coffeeshops I'm mostly looking to mix up my routine with the stimuli that coffee shop provides (noises, strangers at nearby tables) which I don't have at home. Something about the brain being bored with the constancy of the environment I suppose.

It worked pretty well for me, on the first year, too. Things went downhill from there, to a point I conciously looked for a job in an actual office to keep me "alive".

Since that, I've lost almost 40 pounds of the 70 I gained while working from my cave, a gazzilion hours a day. Working from home requires a HUGE dose of discipline - otherwise, either your work or your personal life will suffer.

While it might be right for some, it is not absolute truth.

First thing I do in the morning - take a shower and put on my jeans (clean) and fresh t-shirt or shirt.

I have pretty spacious house and can work from any part of it, but when I am loosing focus, short trip on my bike to tea shop near by and working there for couple hours resets everything.

Although I am not typical engineer too. I have degree, but I got it remotely. I got my first ever fulltime job at age of 27 and this was quite forced on me because of immigration laws of USA.

So, as usual - it depends. I bet there are engineers who work their best alone. And there are some who needs presence of their team nearby.

If anyone wants to cowork in Los Angeles, there's Droplabs.net near downtown, next to the Brewery, in a pretty cool freelance artist collective called Big Art Labs. (Disclaimer: I'm one of Droplab's founders.)

Is there something like this in the Silicon Valley, or SF ?

Yes. In Mountain View there is the Hacker Dojo, sort of a specialized variant. NextSpace has offices in San Jose and SF, and there are others... the generic term is "coworking" for anyone who wants to search their own neighborhood.

NextSpace (along with Cruzio) has a space in Santa Cruz. I've spent time at the Hacker Dojo awhile back (before their troubles w/ the City of Mtn View). At the time, it was a little more ... organic that NextSpace and a couple of others I've been to. That said, it is member run as opposed to NextSpace which is commercially run.

I prefer working at home myself, and know when I am being less productive and just need to take a short break. That is hard to do in an office environment (if one is a full time employee), but still possible in a less formal co-working environment. Thankfully, when I need to be productive, I can focus and get things done -- despite my cat wanting to play :)

Thanks for the term. It looks like there is one nearby, in Ann Arbor, MI. http://workantile.com/

Or does anyone know of one in the Boston/Cambridge area?

There's quite a bit.

There's C3 in Cambridge http://www.cambridgecoworking.com/ WorkBar downtown Boston & Cambridge http://workbar.com/

Hangout places & coffee shops include Diesel Cafe, Voltage Coffee, The Venture Cafe, Microsoft NERD etc.

RIP Loosecubes.

Is this The Submarine in action? It even starts off with the infomercial-like anecdote about working at home: "You fuss, you muss, but you just can't make it work! Soon you're fat and lazy."

And in the caption of the photo-

People are “going back to the office to be around people again,” one of its founders said.

Again? Since the beginning of the still incredibly uncommon @home work, a fairly standard practice was to essentially turn cafes into workspaces, including collaborating with other people.

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