Working From Home

I’m starting to wonder whether spending £4500 a year on train tickets so I can commute to London, sit in an office and have web conferences with my colleagues and customers around the world is the most productive use of my time and money. The big problem with working from home ime is that it is much harder to put a cap on the day. I’m more likely to agree to 7pm meetings or answer emails at 10pm than I am if I have physically left my place of work.

Full time WFH since May 2015. It is definitely harder to put a cap on the day, though I don't really have meetings or emails to answer (I'm a web dev)

Its the job content itself as much as the WFH but I've changed around my perspective to not see work in terms of hours or blocks of time like this, but blocks of stuff that I need to have built by the end of the week or month. This means the delineation between own time and work time is more entwined. Mentally I'm kind of always at work but also never at work, I don't know if its better or not but I don't miss my 90 minute each way commute!

I feel a lot of the risk could have been mitigated if more organisations were better at actually allowing people to work staggered or different hours - fewer people on public transport at peak times, less crowding on train/tube platforms (can’t count the number of times I’ve been in a crush of a few hundred people waiting to get on a tube train) and management doesn’t have to pretend it cares about having a coherent wfh policy. My parents have never worked more than ten minutes from where they live and I envy them.

I feel a lot of the risk could have been mitigated if more organisations were better at actually allowing people to work staggered or different hours - fewer people on public transport at peak times, less crowding on train/tube platforms (can’t count the number of times I’ve been in a crush of a few hundred people waiting to get on a tube train) and management doesn’t have to pretend it cares about having a coherent wfh policy. My parents have never worked more than ten minutes from where they live and I envy them.

WFH today. Probably one of many. Technically I am a 'remote worker' anyway, having been made one about a year ago, but I still come into the office as it's about 10 mins cycle away. Frankly I've nowhere to work at home - I have a small desk in my room that's uncomfortable to sit at, and my sofa and kitchen table are no better.

been asked to supply emergency contact info at work in case of

lol

"adverse weather closing the office"

politics is the art of what cannot be said etc

The big problem with working from home ime is that it is much harder to put a cap on the day. I’m more likely to agree to 7pm meetings or answer emails at 10pm than I am if I have physically left my place of work.

We have a pretty flexible working culture with a lot of working from home and honestly it's great, but it only works if you're prepared to treat people like grown-ups. TBH I'd retain the same boundaries as you do in the office. I don't especially mind working a bit later if I'm not going to be commuting home, but if you do have a 7pm meeting what's to stop you taking a longer lunch break or similar. As long as you get the work done when you're supposed to, who cares?

International meetings make things harder, but one way psychologically to put a cap on the day is just to make a clean break by immediately doing something that absolutely says to yourself I Am Not At Work Any More. Cooking, opening a beer, playing a video game, whatever. If you just start tapering off it becomes very easy to get dragged back into it.

I'm a freelancer, about 80% of my work is on-site at various places, just had my first conversation this morning about an office shutdown, guessing that most everywhere else will follow, shit is going to get tight.

no wonder u ppl are on ilx all fucking day

Been WFH since 2017. Love it. Possibly starting a 9-5 office job on Monday, though, and not sure how I feel about that (besides “thanks for the money”)...

The lifeblood of ILX the entire internet is bored office workers, moreso without the office.

its a turning point in history

in a bad way

let's run all the megapolls we've been fantasising about

i hope office buildings empty out like suburban malls and are repurposed into affordable housing.

Does anyone do this with kids in the house? Seems kind of impossible without turning child into tv zombie

Looks like this will be me from next week, or even maybe tomorrow. My plan is to move to the conservatory and stock up on educational software / film downloads for them.

I cannot work with kids disturbing me, this is going to be hard.

turn child into book and board game zombie imo

my carrom board is finally gonna get some use, v excited to get good

i hope office buildings empty out like suburban malls and are repurposed into affordable housing.

― Yerac, Thursday, 12 March 2020 12:56 (ten minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

otm

I wish I could find that faux-pamphlet from a few years back about an office building gradually turning into an overgrown post-apocalyptic ecosystem

I've worked from home for almost 19 years. I expect it to all come crashing down around my ears any day now.

i don't maintain much of a social circle outside of work (mostly just my wife, my parents, and my cat) so I do think I benefit from the social aspects of coming into an office every day and interacting with people. i'm lucky in my position that I typically don't HAVE to do much interacting in any given day if I don't feel like it, but if I do then there are always people around who want to shoot the shit.

Does anyone do this with kids in the house? Seems kind of impossible without turning child into tv zombie

i do but there's always another carer around. she (child not carer) occasionally comes up to spin around on my chair but generally respects the sanctity of the office space.

that sanctity in full:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IKxqy9SJ-0I

Spare a thought for us poor sods who can't work from home, we're dead.

My first day of working at home. Not without its downsides, but I did watch an episode of Kojak during my lunch hour, and so without coronavirus I would possibly never known about this meeting of the titans

https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/images/reviews/190/1346970079_6.jpg

I'm less likely to brush my teeth on time WFH

I thought you’d been running this drill for years?

I had no use for it but bring it on!

xpost I have. but bad habits never change.

the only real prob i had working from home was a) animals, who would bark in the background during meetings/training, or b) roommates. right now, "b" isn't a prob cos he's never home and even when he is, he's quiet.

my brother used to walk in the door and intentionally try to get me to laugh while I was in a meeting by yelling non-sequiturs (a man in his mid-30s, going on 12). one day he came out the bathroom singing Billy Joel at the top of his lungs, forgetting I was working, so all of my colleagues were treated to that.

animals, otoh, usually the people on the phone go "aww how cute, what breed are they?"

One blessing of my job is that I have not been expected to read and respond to emails outside of work hours. Based on the rules for our WFH, my management seems to be respecting this.

Recommendation of uncertain usefulness to other ILXors, based on my previous WFH experiences: Get dressed, including putting on a bra. (In my specific case, bralessness soon becomes uncomfortable, sweaty, and otherwise not conducive to work.)

I draw the line at pants (US definition) tho

got access

the daily requirement to reoort back on the detail of my work have made me rather kindly disposed to coming in

one of the first days I worked from home in 2012, I was given a new laptop, and we headed into a web meeting (Skype, Sametime, WebEx, I can't even remember rn). then, like now, I just woke up and turned on my computer in my current state of dress, so I had underwear and pants on, but no shirt. so I log into the meeting, and the webcam comes on by default, and for two seconds, I see myself on camera, face to just slightly below the shoulders. then I realized this was sharing and my project manager said "uhh I can see you", so I ducked below the desk, put a shirt on, and disabled the webcam for-eva

Daily seven-way meeting this morning. Everyone hears a voice: "How much is the toilet roll?" Everyone denies it was them (or a TV they're surreptitiously watching). Everyone then mutes their microphone.

access revoked.

they didnt realise so many people would actually use it

guys I wish i was making any of it up, i really do

It's why I like WebEx because if you dial in through the computer it says who is speaking and there is no denial!

Xxpost

That's fucked, deems, I'm sorry. FWIW, feel like we might not have made it a week into WFH if we hadn't had a confirmed Cov Case in our actual office. MF-ers gonna need a winch to haul me back into that plague den at this point.

I've adjusted surprisingly quickly to working on one tiny laptop screen as opposed to the two big monitors I'm used to. Just involves constant shifting and sliding of all the programs I have open at a given moment. I was relying on this being my busiest time of year to keep me occupied and focused but, ehh, I'm noticing a marked decline in the amount of work product coming in.

All other pros and cons aside, the ability to chair dance and deliver emotive + passionate lip sync performances while listening to music is perhaps the greatest WFH perk of them all.

One uncomplicatedly good thing my work did - let everyone take home their work monitors.

oh dear, dmac

11am, day 2, wfh: announced "dootly-doo" to nobody at all, as there is nobody else here except the cat
1pm, day 2, wfh: singing nonsense songs at the cat, who is maowing back (she started it, miss)

Fear I may be turning into the boss from A thread for Steve n.'s list of songs that his boss sings

The big boss did say we could take monitors and even a chair but I was walking 1.5 miles home so that was not entirely feasible. the chair was tempting as my back is going to be fairly knackered if I sit in this sofa, or even at the dining table in one of our dining chairs, hunched over this laptop for months

(I am sure there are people here who could carry a large Dell monitor and an office chair 1.5 miles through once-busy streets and a v muddy field, as well as my rucksack and carrier bag full of random stuff I found in my desk drawer that I thought I might need, or at least be embarrassed at still being in my desk drawer if I died - not even work paperwork, mostly chocolate and hoarded sachets and pots of instant pasta/noodle/couscous snacks)

the o/h has still been in work so far but he gets to wfh from tomorrow/Mon so then we'll be fighting over the one good chair and the big monitor

actually I don't want the big monitor, it is massive and was bought for gaming and I tried to do some work on it yesterday and it felt like I was squinting at some Excel cells in one small corner of the screen while who knows what was going on in the other 90% of the screen

supplementing my laptop with a good wireless mouse and keyboard has made getting actual work done much easier. logitech mx keys and mx master 3 mouse, official endorsement

I've adjusted surprisingly quickly to working on one tiny laptop screen as opposed to the two big monitors I'm used to. Just involves constant shifting and sliding of all the programs I have open at a given moment. I was relying on this being my busiest time of year to keep me occupied and focused but, ehh, I'm noticing a marked decline in the amount of work product coming in.

Acrobat version finally downloaded

received no work assignments yet this morning

absence of annoying coworkers is best thing so far

finally getting to the first stress test for the boss after the mass layoff and he's....failing. in his defense, they've basically loaded us up with workload approximating last year's, when we had about 8 more people than we do now, but he also got away with looking better than he performed because his boss bailed him out often.

one of my colleagues approached me about him today and I basically told her that it's good that right now, we're in demand, but not to break her back over things and to take meticulous notes in case anybody tries to throw her under the bus. I've been here before, underneath the overworked guy who eventually takes it out on his underlings, and while that's not happening now, it's a matter of time before he flips out I'm sure.

one quandary my team has now is peer feedback. Most of our trainers come from a third-party company that we partner with, the rest come from our company. Regardless of who is training, we as supervisors are expected to observe them and provide written feedback and rate their performance. This is fine and we've done this for years.

Originally, the form to evaluate trainers was rudimentary, with three tiers of ratings, but most of the form consisted of written feedback. This was preferable as you could tell how well you did and the specific details of what was good and what needed improvement were the point.

A few years back, our third-party partner asked us to use a new form for their trainers, a poorly designed template with a 100 point scale, extremely arbitrary categories and weighting. Prior to this form, I wasn't harsh, but I was direct and honest with my feedback.

After the form came out, it became evident that all anybody cared about was the score, and not the feedback you wrote. And the scoring system is too flawed in that even if you take major deductions for major performance issues, it still generates a Green rating. You have to almost game the system to generate a score that matches the written feedback. Adjustments have been made over the years to correct this issue, but it remains.

But I'd notice even if I gave 'green' scores, if I gave a score of less than 90%, I often got pushback from the person I evaluated, even though that's a high score. I found out at their company, their observation scores are directly tied to performance bonuses. They compile the scores we give them into some form of spreadsheet, average them out and this determines whether they qualify for specific performance incentives. And they understandably stress out over them.

so obviously, that's a terrible system for something objective like this. Obviously feedback should play a role in someone's year-end review, but unlike call center metrics, which are (generally) reporting facts, this is a number from a poorly designed template, and there is no current calibration process in place. So your scores can vary wildly from one supervisor to another for the same performance.

so now I find myself still writing the actual written feedback honestly, but grading on a bit of a curve numerically, because frankly, we were originally tasked with doing this to ensure training was conducted properly and to help improve the performance of our trainers, not to be the arbiters of the size of someone's bonus. I'll still deduct points heavily in very egregious cases, but they rarely come up at all. I lead the charge in discussing with my boss and our former department head about how this process caused people to outright ignore the feedback and just look at the score, and how they were 'performing to the scoreboard' now rather than focusing on the class, and all of the other ethical concerns. Basically we're told they're valid concerns but being that it is this partner site's policy, we can't change it (I have pointed out we can refuse to participate in it, but...nobody took that seriously).

I have no qualms with what I'm doing, this just feels like the non-teacher version of teaching to the standardized test now.

third party partner site we work with, that hires seasonal trainees, has a 'bring your own device' policy in that they don't supply the trainees their own equipment. messed-up, yes, but the hires at least know it going in.

one of the pods that this site hired was in a department that due to the nature of the work, supplied them with my company's equipment, which they used for months. they were sent over to us, and we were expecting that they were being allowed to keep the equipment since they already had it.

nope, today with three days of training left we're told they're expected to give it back and get their own equipment now, even though many of them at the start of the project weren't expecting to have to because they were on a different project where it was supplied for them. and now they're moving to virtual workspace which is buggy and slow and they're not used to.

like is this equipment that in demand they couldn't just keep it? "dystopian work" thread I guess. our seasonal employees never used to ahve to worry about this pre working from home, but once the shift was made during pandemic, a lot of these companies began using this bring your own device approach to cost cut

GE HealthCare gave me a laptop when I started working for them. I worked for them for 2 1/2 years, ending this past summer, and they were supposed to send me a box to mail the laptop back to them. I emailed my direct supervisor and the recruiter who got me the job about it several times, but no box or shipping label ever showed up and it's been six months. Starting to wonder if I should just throw the laptop away - it's a real piece of shit that I'd never use for anything else, but I don't want them to come sniffing around for it six months from now...

"we'll reimburse you, don't worry"

Lol the only equipment I ever got from an employer was a polo shirt with the company name on it that I had to wear at work.

I received a shitty laptop that I loathed from a company that then unceremoniously fired me several weeks later because they realized they didn't need me. I loathed the people and the campaign I was to be working on, so no harm no foul. But they sent a box for the laptop right quick lol.

Honestly, I think I got fired because the laptop was tracking my keystrokes and clicks, but because there wasn't much work and I am a fast editor, they realized I wasn't working much.

I prefer to use my own laptop, thanks.

This actually happened to me too, I left a job in 2021 and they kept saying they were sending a courier to pick up my laptop, after 6 months I emailed them and said if they don't come for it in a week I'm throwing it in the bin. They told me to keep it. It was bitlocked so I just wiped it and put Linux on it

someone at a friend's birthday party over the weekend apparently works on an IT team for a large corporation and for his job he's running reports about app usage by groups, etc. and it includes, say, an average number of hours people spend on youtube, etc. along with how much typing is happening

makes some sense, it's your company's laptop, but I still get irritated by this shit. just have competent managers who assign work and know what the work entails, how much time it takes, etc. and don't get into my business. I guess I mildly tolerate tools that are an absolute pain in the ass, like the ones that check all files moved on or off of a laptop. maybe someone really is stealing precious corporate data and the higher-ups want to cover their asses. whatever. it's just the bullshit you have to deal with. honestly, if I wanted to exfiltrate something, I would know how to do it but why the hell would I?

in any case, this guy was saying that nothing, stats-wise, is traced down to the individual unless something pops off as egregious, and of course, he had some egregious examples. don't spend time trying to find porn that's not blocked by your work's web proxy!

the funniest bit was that news articles pop up about mouse jiggler devices or whatever, but they found something that was more common: people leaving an object on the space bar

I used to be paranoid about the data ZScaler pulled because my job runs very hot and cold, right now I barely have shit to do, in three weeks I'll be busy and wishing for it to be quiet again.

But in reality IT has received a lot of complaints that ZScaler has inadvertently been blocking things that are needed or causing certain system issues that didn't exist before. Meanwhile, the guy who runs IT is a belligerent asshole who acta aggrieved if someone asks him to do something, so guarantee he isn't doing anything with any data he gets, plus he doesn't work for us, so extra channels mean you basically have to be caught in person looking at something naughty to get in any trouble

ZScaler's forums are very funny because if you're a developer, it will break a lot of things out of the box so it's all posts about how to get python packages to install when the tunnel software fucks up the downloads

My last full time job bought me a new Macbook when my personal one broke. I hoped they might let me keep it when I got let go, but they gave me the option of either sending it back or paying for it at market rate for a used machine

Are co-working spaces still a thing? Last time I used one in a city (2021? 2022?) the economy was positive but now things feel pretty different. I used one a couple of times when visiting last year and no space to work. One time I was the only person there, the other time there was a woman there for a bit. But this was in a smaller run down town that isn't the kind of place to have things like that.

If for any reason I need to work somewhere else now I'd be more likely to use a library, but trying to work around people doing jigsaws isn't ideal

and here i am being the idiot thinking Zscaler was this in-house monitoring app my Zcompany developed.

I work out of a coworking space, they are pretty common round here. They are all much of a muchness so
I picked mine based on the people in there. I do get the periodical amusement of the space trying out different trees to grow indoors and killing new sets of trees every so often. Currently they are killing some very sad looking tree ferns. It’s otherwise one of the nicest offices I’ve ever worked from.

I really miss working in the one I used to go to in Brixton but that was around six years ago when it first launched but even after the first six months the number of people there regularly dropped to just around half a dozen.

the funniest bit was that news articles pop up about mouse jiggler devices or whatever, but they found something that was more common: people leaving an object on the space bar

another two months, another two attempts at a face-to-face day (last tuesday of the month). only i have holiday to take, so i booked days off for Jan and Feb

it's funny reading all the other 'i won't be there' messages come tuesday morning, including this from our team lead, which went to 107 people:

"Morning all, I won't be in the office today as I am unwell with diarrhea."

said team lead also mentioned that the other half of the team (so the other 8 or so people) are going to start coming into the office weekly and would our half of the team like to also? a resounding No.

five years on and they're still sending these notes to me lol

Dear Andrew ***,

You have 1 assignment that are 1801 days overdue.

You must complete the following assignment(s):

- Executive Series: Securely Working From Home with Quiz

lol @ being on take 5 of recording a tutorial video due to random system malfunctions on 3 of the takes and having mom suddenly beginning an extremely loud conversation in the other room and bleeding into the recording.

sigh

#6!

What, you don't record work videos from the front seat of your car like a real American?

another in-person day today and the loud people have found the quiet area where i'd book a desk.

the chair / desk setup also feels like it's forcing me into stress positions - arms and neck already aching. and the laptop screen is in that awkward distance where my varifocals can't cope without tilting my head unnaturally. i have neither of these problems on the sofa.

Xxposts the summer round our way is the worst for that. Just about finished and the ice cream van comes round the corner, so end of video now soundtracked by a tinny version of the Liberty Bell march.

My work is going to “hoteling” and I’m dreading it

this morning I had an appointment to follow-up on my knee. but I stupidly made it for 10:30, as at the time, my assignments at work were pretty thin. then I get scheduled for a four hour development session at the same time, and I can't reschedule the appointment, so I decided I'd use Company Portal to access the meeting via my phone.

Oh hey, now I can't sign-in (even though I've used this as recently as months ago) due to some random error message. so I go to my appointment with my laptop tethered to my phone in my car, and at my appointment.

success. yay for working from home. but glad the place was close by lol.

finally getting to the first stress test for the boss after the mass layoff and he's....failing. in his defense, they've basically loaded us up with workload approximating last year's, when we had about 8 more people than we do now, but he also got away with looking better than he performed because his boss bailed him out often.

one of my colleagues approached me about him today and I basically told her that it's good that right now, we're in demand, but not to break her back over things and to take meticulous notes in case anybody tries to throw her under the bus. I've been here before, underneath the overworked guy who eventually takes it out on his underlings, and while that's not happening now, it's a matter of time before he flips out I'm sure.

― her pal Santa falls to the floor (Neanderthal), Tuesday, December 3, 2024 3:31 PM bookmarkflaglink

UPDATE: everything has spiraled into absolute, uncontrolled chaos. not like the petty concerns I used to share, basically every day is being given a last minute assignment with missing instructions, or getting pulled onto 17 new projects, or things not getting assigned at all until too late. my manager is falling apart and the four of us left to do work are just basically not finishing half the assignments given to us and nobody even remembers they assigned it to us half the time.

I got a raise a few months ago so that was nice but I'm seeking out what else is available internally. however, lots of departments went through similar downsizing so I can't imagine they're not going through the same thing.

Dear Andrew ****,

You have 1 assignment that is 2149 days overdue.

You must complete the following assignment(s):

- Executive Series: Securely Working From Home with Quiz