Working From Home

working at home = dud for me. 6 mos. of freelancing for aol and i was ready to comit hara kiri with a letter opener.

Always got stuff done though - often at 9pm on the Sunday night when server traffic was quiet and my conscience was playing up.

working from home: classic
working from home when your flatmate has been made redundant and is mooching around the flat with his annoying boyfriend all day: DUD DUD DUD oh god just go awayyyyyyyyy

I twisted my knee playing football last night (that's why I'd stopped playing!), and couldn't walk properly today as a result, so I emailed in sick to work, and told them I had various things I'd do online and that I'd be available via email and my work mobile. As result I've actually been marked down as "home working" today rather than on sick leave.

This is the first time I've done this (although I do, if off sick or on leave, generally check work emails reasonably regularly - especially when I was off after my hernia operation for instance), and it's been surprisingly productive; I've organised as many if not more things as I would have done had I been in the office, sent a gazillion emails chasing various things, edited a load of copy, drafted some new web pages, AND had a nap and stroked the cats. And all while wearing a pair of shorts and a t-shirt that are full of holes and not fit to be seen in public.

i'm working from home today and it is fucking amazing.

-shouting abuse at co-workers who can't hear you in response to their emails
-singing along to records
-cooking your own lunch
-not bothering to pretend to work if there's a lull or you're done by 1600
-no commute obviously

I have been working from home for almost four years. I can only see advantages. If you're office based and you have Skype, Webex and so forth I really don't see any reason *not* to. The people who still insist on buying or renting huge energy consuming, Earth destroying office space (space which could be used so much more constructively, be it for housing, parkland or given back to nature) are truly behind the curve.

What I'm interested in -- and I'm interested to know if there has been research in these areas:

(a) Has anyone done serious calculations of how much energy we could save (inter)nationally if everyone who *could* work from home did so and secondly,

(b) from a sociological point of view, the focus has been on the negative ("you can't get to know/work properly with people who don't see and physically interract with, ergo groups of home working people are doomed to failure") but shouldn't we also consider the flipside, that home working allows for people to be judged on their true merits, rather than the ad hominem nasty stuff that comes to the fore when people have to share a space?

Heh, my wife just started doing this full-time and has liked it so far.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, a couple people at my office must have asked about the possibility because the partners sent out this really passive-aggressive email at the start of the year about how it will never be a possibility here because, basically, "it is impossible to believe that anyone could work productively out of their home". It was just laughably obnoxious and reductive about any possible benefits. (Of course, several months later one of the partners' favorites moved to Texas with her husband and was suddenly approved to work "remotely")

I don't ever want to do it

with my immunocompromised status and the virus terror, I may have to

BUT

the plantation I contract for, at a pitiful wage, uses a "VPN" that requires use of your

PHONE

which I do not have and do not want

fuck apps, fuck texts

is that app PingID?

no

Full time wfh since Oct 2012. Best thing ever. Makes work not suck. Def still look forward to the weekends but I no longer dread Monday. Limits my "advancement" options but I don't care; if I could maintain current position now thru retirement I'd be thrilled.

makes personal traveling mid-week possible. it's harder now that I changed roles, but when I was working in implementations, all they cared about is that I worked, not where I worked from, so sometimes I'd head out of town mid week and bring my laptop.

did manage to go to Vegas midweek last year because i had no classes that week

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

My commute is minimal, half hour walk, 15 by bus, 10 by bike. Still prefer rolling out my bed minutes before work starts.

cat was being a dick and waking me up multiple times through the night. slept in by an hour. nobody notices. i love you wfh

so we're still all in WFH mode and now they're not even requiring people to pick up equipment for WFH at the office anymore, but they're shipping (which is the right move, of course).

But nobody at my company can fucking pivot, or ever wants to acknowledge potential obstacles, so they based the whole strategy on the idea that everybody would get their package on time and there'd never be any delays/issues, ever. so now we wind up with learners who on Day 1, have zero equipment and can't do anything besides log in and listen.

some of these people don't get their equipment for two full days, so they fall two days behind. they won't let us bump start dates of class, of course, so these people wind up two days behind and some of them get frustrated and quit. or, we have to move them to another start date class weeks in the future (which means weeks without income for them that they expected to have).

the "radical thinking" of sending the equipment a day earlier met with resistance from just about every leader. "what if they open it early, before their hire date?"

well, for one, they won't be able to log into anything. and is this not preferable to having 20% of a class quit or get moved to a later class?

and then these same assholes ask why we have such high attrition.

so we shipped someone everything but the actual PC. monitor, mouse, etc. they're on Day 3 of training and have no computer still.

gee wonder why people quit.

also one of the other ones was sent a defective machine, and at least 3 people in the last week indicated we sent them the wrong cords.

going in a few times a week and it's getting painfully obvious that I really do not need to be in this particular building whatsoever to get my job done!

other than to justify the stupid office space this makes zero sense

is there any way to bring that up? like, okay, i trialled this. here are the advantages to me and to the company of doing this (not much), here are the disadvantages, let’s be sensible.

yes, my boss who works remotely from his home in ANOTHER state tells me he is looking into some kind of compromise for some of us that don't benefit greatly from in office work, so we'll see.

Here are your Great Moments in Classist Bullshit for today.

My company, for its agents, has an unplanned absence line, has been in place for years. You're going to be out, you simply call it.

Very easy.

Welp, now they're changing to....a cell phone app, for Android or iPhone. Old line is being retired for the teams going on the new interaction platform.

This assumes the agents (who are the lowest on the pay totem pole) all can afford or desire to have the latest and greatest phones, and people who use older, cheaper phones with outdated iOS/OS won't be able to download it.

In fact, got my first agent today that said they had a very old iPhone that could not download the app because it required iOS 13 or higher. so I was told they just have to tell their manager when they're out and it might delay notification to Workforce Management of their absence.

So.....everybody with the right cell phone gets to avoid talking to anybody and just submit their absence online, and everything's taken care of ASAP. People who can't afford or don't want the newest fancy gadgets might have to call and talk to a manager who might try and talk them out of calling out, and will temporarily show as a No-Call No Show in the system.

that is fucking bullshit. I already shared my concerns with my boss's boss but trying to find out who I can escalate this to. it's discriminatory

That is awful, glad you are pushing back on that.

Good for you, I'm definitely stubborn about smartphone requirements. It was nothing as essential as that, but there was a work app to help coordinate a conference, and I couldn't download it on my old android Galaxy S6 or whatever. I was basically like, well, that won't be happening, guess I'll look at someone else's phone if necessary.

made the HR report/complaint today.

I suspect there might actually be a secondary option available that hasn't been broadly communicated, but nobody seems interested in sharing it, so this should force that out into the open.

did it anonymously so my boss's boss doesn't think I am selling her out, as it was not her decision (it was leadership's).

i am so disengaged due to life distractions and the aforementioend issues that I'm barely phoning it in at a very low level right now. wonder how long before someone notices.

every single group zoom call makes me want to scream now

Well thats what mute is for ive always presumed

I did a lot of group zoom calls with my family over the last year, but we got really tired of it and we can see each other in person now. I just participate in zoom book club meetings at this point, since our members are scattered across the country

In practical terms I've only had to do two regular Zoom meetings a month, each an hour long, one with a team of about ten and the other just three. I can live with that, and certainly I'm not going back until maybe sometime in March.

i’m in them at least 2-3 times a week for work now & i hate every minute

genuine question--if you don't mind articulating, what do you hate about zoom meetings?

Fucking sitting down at a desk/table in my house or wherever. I don't mind Zoom at my work office, oddly. No question it's made life easier: no need to drive to campus for that 30-minute meeting, but the idea of Zoom-ing all day induces vomiting.

xpost

varying connection speeds
loudness/softness due to connection speeds
tinny voices due to connection speeds
ppl talking over each other

i find them v exhausting with my particular group of coworkers

if i could remote work without video meetings i’d be v happy

ppl talking over each other

i find them v exhausting with my particular group of coworkers

― terminators of endearment (VegemiteGrrl)

^^ this. Imagine egotistical faculty.

try 12 salespeople 😖

yeah that's interesting because some of the positive feedback i've heard is that zoom kind of flattens everyone so that no one person can take over a discussion. but university faculty would probably take that as a challenge ime

lol as would salespeople on their worst behavior

Feel like exactly the opposite is true tbh, v easy to take over a zoom call and any more than about 5 on it requires srs management

Feel like exactly the opposite is true tbh, v easy to take over a zoom call and any more than about 5 on it requires srs management

i'm in like 3-5 zoom calls per day, it's just what work is now. i've gotten used to it i think. one nice thing that some people have started doing is scheduling them to start at 5 or 10 minutes past the hour or whatever, so you don't going directly back to back.

or whatever the english for that sentiment is

Bluetooth headphones save my sanity on long remote meetings. I roam all over the place, clean cat boxes, yell nsfw nonsequiters, use my giant tape roller on the floors, water plants. Super thankful most don't use video anymore.

Same. My office is on Skype. Boss once clicked the video button call and I just hit the answer- audio- only button or whatever cuz fuck that. I dunno if he even meant to have video. Video seems more assumed on Zoom.

I was brought back to office full time suddenly 2 weeks ago, it is wildly tiring.

if you're the host, zoom allows you to mute everyone, so you can totally control the discussion. i very rarely host zoom meetings, but i think you have to tinker with the settings and it may be a paid feature. it has been done in meetings i've attended, for sure

we use teams for most meetings, though. i don't mind it, actually. the only issue is our vpn doesn't play nice with it so sometimes we're forced to use zoom (sometimes we can't disable vpn due to legal/safety precautions)

we had a "no meeting august" or whatever where we were forced to reduce the amount of (1) time spent at meetings and (2) number of meetings in general for the month

it worked out okay. i was able to reduce my meetings in general from 60% of my time (say, a week) to around 30%, but i deliberately do not attend some i'm invited to and just get any info needed from other colleagues, if i need to. i think people are generally on board with less meetings and reducing time spent on them. most people shoot for 30 minute meetings now, which i think makes sense. we had a lot of hour-long meetings before and lots of people got pretty angry at that

luckily, turning on my video is rarely required, so i usually chill on the couch for the long ones

it's still a million times better than in-person meetings

60% of a normal week in meetings?!

it was very bad. it's mostly because i'm on a lot of different projects and people always want me to stay in the loop because they don't want to have to explain anything i may need to know. keyword is "may need to." it's usually PMs scared of technical details and stuff that want me to join. but i really do not need to know all the details. i can usually get away with not attending until i get around to something and then i can ping a dev that knows exactly what i need. luckily a couple of those projects have wrapped up

having said that, i've been on meetings with stakeholders (PMs, account executives, etc.) where people are literally coding on the fly to fix an issue and we're checking data. lol. jesus. those don't happen often but some of those lasted probably three hours

Hmm. Sounds like you're going to have to hire me. This is from home indefinitely?

well, i requested to work from home permanently and they accepted. but the company hasn't really said what's happening in the future. for now, they've said we are all working from home until further notice. and that once we are able to get back into the office, it will be a hybrid model. super light on details, though

since we're not an actual dev company, we hardly hire devs anymore. what's your stack?

My job has literally become 7-8 hours/day Teams meetings. I hate everything about this turn of events. What used to be resolved with casual conversations in the hall now requires someone to book 1/2 hour a week in advance because everyone’s calendar is chockablock.

What's a stack? ... Where do you see me in 5 years?

lol! oh okay!

xxp That's straight up hardcore. You've changed.

We have a new “work from Hell” mandate

i’m going back in 2-3 days a week starting next week. Every Monday, then the other days kind of ad-hoc. Still very much an experiment. Kind of excited tbh!

i'm wfh into January at least, even then i'll work it to barely be in the office and if i get shit i'll bounce. i reject so many zoom meeting invites, you'd be surprised what you can get away with ; )

we have the option to wfh for 2 days a week. I have opted out cos i live 15 mins down the road and it saves on my bills etc.

I may as well be wfh though, no fucker else seems ever to be in.

(our team is 7, there is always 2 on the late shift which is always wfh anyway)

we were extended to at least nov 22, after that i will go in 1x/week. another two months to not buy any clothes or shoes.

I can count on two hands how many times I have worn my dress slacks since March 2020.

I threw all mine out, nothing fits anymore.

I have been WFH indefinitely because I switched industries in late December 2020, and now I have another side gig that is also WFH...so looks like I won't ever have to wear dress slacks ever again. Hurray!