I’ve worked from home a few years now, and whilst the upsides are well known I’ve personally found some challenges there too. Have you experienced anything similar? How did you deal with it?
My tale:
When the UK went into lockdown (along with everyone else) in early 2020 I started working from home full-time. For the first year I was with the same team I’d worked with for years whilst in the office, so nothing really changed except my location.
I switched jobs mid-2021 and the new team was much smaller. I work as a software developer, and this team was a grand total of three people including myself. We didn’t have many meetings, only one a week, and except for being assigned new work I never interacted with anyone. It took a big toll on my mental health and I quit after three months.
I took an extended break from software development and started working on a plant nursery, driving tractors and tending plants - it was so much fun, but paid very little and ate into my savings a lot.
Went back to software development last year and thankfully manage things much better. I’m not a very social person, so it was surprising how important socialisation was to my mental wellbeing. I’m now part of quite a large team that speaks regularly, and when I next change jobs I know that this is something I need to look for.
I also have a garden now, so when the call of the wild hits me I go outside and sniff my tomato plants. I do miss driving tractors though.
its amazing and i never want to step foot in an office again
I’ve been fully WFH for about 3 years now, and its a mix of pros and cons. Mostly pros, though. If I had to pick the key factors, they would be (in no particular order):
Pros:
- No commute, I get more time per day!
- I control my working environment. I pick the temperature, music, lighting, furniture, and everything else.
- Privacy (I previously worked in a cube farm)
- Flexible(ish) working hours. As long as I’m available for meetings and slack conversations, it doesn’t really matter when I actually work. I can sleep in and work late, or vice versa, without it being a huge inconvenience.
- More time with my wife!
Cons:
- Call me strange, but I really miss the social aspect of working in an office. Water cooler talk, team coffee breaks, lunch with friends, secretly passing birthday cards, and all that stuff. Even office drama can be fun once in a while.
- Lack of a daily structure
- No option for a face-to-face meeting, even if its really needed.
I’m with you on the cons. I know it’s “work” - but I was friends with my coworkers. Sometimes best friends or “work spouse” status as we would call it! (terminology & person approved by my actual spouse). I absolutely miss being around people.
Same! I know some people prefer to keep work separate and not make friends there, and people can obviously do what works best for them, etc. But I like work friends! I spend so much of my time there, if the people are cool then why wouldn’t I want to be friends? To me it’s like if I’d gone through my schooling years with the mindset that I was only there for school and not making friends.
So. Much. This. Been working from home since the pandemic started. I guess being an introvert helped a ton since I know a lot of people who struggled with it.
I think for the social aspect, I noticed working from home removed (or at least dramatically decreased) the feeling of being in a team. I do miss that, surprisingly. Now it feels more like I’m a hired gun rather than a part of a team. We do have regular team meetings but it’s just isn’t the same.
Another pro is I get to interact more, despite in a limited fashion, with people from different countries. We usually had our higher ups manage that and just cascade when there was information to relay.
I don’t think I’ll ever go back to the office, tbh.
i love working from home lol. today I got to play street fighter 6 during my down time, go for a walk, weight lift, make breakfast and lunch, and still get a lot done.
I’m lucky to be in a position where my manager trusts me as long as stuff is done when it needs to be. i appreciate the flexibility and being able to get more sleep. and save so much money on gas, lol. like literally hundreds of dollars in the past few months
There’s absolutely a lot of upsides. Yesterday I finished THPS1+2 on my lunch break.
Is there nothing you’ve found harder since you started working from home?
Nothing major to be honest! But I enjoy my solitude personally. The biggest one is probably remembering to move around. In my office I would get up and get water or something as an excuse to let the blood flow, but that’s gone now. So I have a standing desk that I have automatically shift from standing to sitting every 60 minutes.
Which is the other thing: my setup clears anything a work office could give me.
The biggest one is probably remembering to move around
That’s a big one for me too, I’d also get up to get water, or even just walk around to a colleague’s desk to ask a question when realistically I could do it from my desk. WFH I can accidentally go a few hours without moving.
The automatic desk switching sounds great though, I will look into that!
I work from home (since the pandemic), and it’s mostly ok. I don’t miss the commute — from my old house and old job it was a 1h15m commute each way, and from my current house and current job it’s 1h30m. I absolutely could not do that every day, not anymore. So I definitely appreciate that.
Another positive is that my ergonomic setup is way better at home than it would be at the office, which is really important since I’ve been battling ongoing wrist pain.
Also at home no one can hear me swear at my computer all day except my partner in the other room 🙂
On the other hand, I really do miss the social aspect of the office. Which was surprising for me to realize as an introvert when the pandemic hit. But lunch chats, coffee breaks, Friday afternoon beers, even just overhearing people on different teams talking about what they’re up to, etc. are something I miss, and added a little fun to the day even when work itself was a slog.
I go into the office once every couple of weeks now, and it really makes me appreciate seeing people in person. Even just not having the small but ever-present Zoom lag makes such a big difference for me in reading body language, being able to jump in without talking over someone, actually staying somewhat focused, etc. Of course in person meetings are exhausting in their own way, but Zoom meetings can be like a special level of hell to me.
I feel like I wrote a novel, hah. Last thing I’ll say is that an extended break from software development is something that’s sounded quite appealing to me for a little while now, I just have no idea what I’d do instead 😅
Hi, I’ve worked from home for over 20 years. I’m self-employed and build websites for different design agencies. I chat regularly with project managers so do have ‘work contact’.
I don’t mind being home alone all day, we (married 20 years) have 3 cats who are verbal throughout the day so there are interactions and I don’t feel alone.
That said, through lockdown I loved my wife being home all day. Luckily my workload only took a small dip, and we had a great time in the garden, reading, watching new TV etc.
I also play badminton twice a week in a club so have enough social action away from the computer.
It sounds like you’ve got a good balance now, keep well 🙂
Thank you for sharing! You reminded me of another good point - When I first started working from home we weren’t allowed pets, but after I started at the plant nursery we were able to convince our landlord to let us get a cat. We’ve since bought our own house, so there’s inevitably going to be more cats to follow. I think having a cat has also made working from home alone a lot easier.
At least in the UK things are starting to turn around and it feels like pretty soon the default will be to allow pets in rented accomodation and landlords will hopefully have a hard time rejecting them. They have a big impact on mental health.
It’s almost all I’ve known at this point. I had a normal placement year, finished Uni, went back to work and then started working from home half a year later due to COVID. It’s turned into hybrid but I’m starting a new job soon which will be almost entirely remote.
I like it. I feel really lucky that I get to be with my partner on the days she works from home, even if I am working. We go for a walk at lunch and have coffees. It’s also closer to what I used to do as a hobby in programming; work with a team of people from my home. Saving money and time from daily commuting is a huge plus.
Your break sounds amazing. Anything that changes your focal point from a screen to something like entire fields are the best for desk job workers.
A common theme here is being able to spend more time with partners, I never considered how much time you’re forced to spend apart when you work 100% office based. That’s definitely a huge upside to WFH.
Yeah, it’s just nice that I get to have more time around the person I practically chose to share my life with. It is sad to think how much time we’d have to spend away from each other if none of this happened.
I’m supposed to be managing a small team and from that perspective, it’s a mixed bag. Everyone I supervise has taken a firm stance that they want to be 100% remote, and I support them because I can see that work is getting done, and I want to retain the talent that we have. At the same time? I’ve never met any of these people in person, I don’t have a great sense of who they are and what motivates them, and a couple of them take 60-90 minutes to respond to an e-mail from me.
When I go into the office, every two weeks or so, I can have more meaningful interactions and I feel like I know the in-office team members better than I know the people I manage. If they don’t respond to my e-mail right away, I can turn my head and see if they’re busy, out to lunch, or just watching YouTube. I try to be pretty easygoing about it but the fact is, there are a lot of advantages to being in-office if you’re expected to give people performance reviews. I can only view so much when I’m in Washington and my team member is in Texas. And you always have some people who will take advantage of the flexibility that they’re entrusted with.
WFH so far is great for me. Naps during lunch break are wonderful, and I’ve built up some nice gear (ie, boom mic and very nice webcam) that will stay with me regardless of where I work now and have made my day-to-day routine far comfier.
I love working from home! I really like hunkering down, focusing, and getting into a good flow, and doing that from home is easy for me. I’ve been WFH about 3 years now and can’t see myself ever taking an office job again. I also have kind of brutal anxiety that is so much easier to handle from home.
One thing I do like is when my team meets for an in-person event, once or twice a year. It’s a lot for me, but I’m ready for it and have a good time when it rolls around.
I’ve also been in a position of managing folks who are remote, and I find that to be a lot easier as well. I made better connections on Zoom than I did in the office from a manager level, because it removed a social anxiety barrier I had. I don’t manage anymore, but if I did, I’d be happy to have a remote team and wouldn’t want it any other way.
I absolutely love working from home. Started in office but went and have stayed full time remote when covid hit. I eat so much healthier now, as I often wouldn’t want to meal prep and would just get something near the office for lunch. I’m able to be home when packages arrive and don’t have to worry about them getting nabbed. I can get chores done.
Plus not having to be around a bunch of people made my transition so much easier and comfortable. Being able to do it on my own terms without thinking about what others may think about me was very nice and put my mind at ease a ton
Been working from home for 3,5 years now, and I find it overwhelmingly positive since since we also have scheduled time in office from time to time. However, if I were to apply for a job I’d probably look for a hybrid setup with an office nearby. That because as nice as working from home is, I find it hard to beat the creative productivity when being in the same room.
I’m a working from home cyber security researcher. Wife and I found out we were expecting a kid a month before the lockdown started. That year was awesome - I got to spend all my free time with her and my home office was way comfier than work. I gained two hours of free time by not having to drive to work. Then after the kids was born we decided to move closer to grandparents. The only downside is that there’s no facility nearby to do classified work so I can’t do that. But those who do classified work can’t work from home either so it’s a bit of a mixed bag.
In a previous job of mine I had to sign a form confirming that nobody else had access to my work laptop and that I wouldn’t keep smart speakers in the same room I worked in. They couldn’t verify it of course, we just had to promise.
Given your field, when widespread homeworking became a thing was there any concern or resistance from management? I’d also be interested to hear whether you think the move to homeworking makes things more or less secure on the whole?
For unclassified work our technology use policy just dictates us to always use company’s VPN and to never use personal machines for work. The latter can’t really be verified automatically (only through audits) but our contract also says that if an audit points to private machine we agree to give it up for further inspection. So essentially the policy is enforced by fear of losing your home desktop. That’s about it. We do research so we can’t really even be restricted by what applications we install because we often times need to run someone else’s matlab model or something like that. Instead we are heavy into zero trust architecture. To access company’s code repositories I need to VPN in, open a browser and log into a special portal, only then I can ssh into the git server. As soon as my browser is closed - the git server isn’t even pingable from my machine, and I think the page has 4hr timeout. The only resistance from management I was aware of was about collaborating - “it’s a lot easier to bounce ideas off of each other in person”. Funny enough those managers were the ones to never use corporate chat.
On the classified side working from home is completely out of the question. You can’t take classified data home, period as it needs to be stored in only approved containers and those containers need to be checked every day by an approved person that’s not you.
Sounds like we work in similar fields. I changed jobs recently but at the one I had last year, I occasionally needed to do classified work. My boss told me I’d have to come into the office to do that, and I lived more than 50 miles away. So, I talked to someone who actually knew what he was talking about instead, and determined that I could, in fact, use a SCIF much closer to home. Just saying, if you get a chance to get a second opinion, it might not hurt to ask.
I went full WFH in 2020 then back into the office in 2021. At that point people began clamoring for some kind of long-term WFH policy and we eventually landed on up to 2 days WFH per week.
In 2020 it was rough. I didn’t adapt very well, and work time versus personal time started to become very fuzzy. There also just wasn’t a whole lot of socializing being done in general at the time, and losing that aspect from work didn’t help.
Fast forward to today and I’m better adjusted to the current setup. I think I’d be fine with going full WFH again. I’m just glad that they haven’t yet decided to backtrack like so many other businesses have.
I work from home pretty much full time with a team and stakeholders spread across the country and a few in various place around the world.
I’ve been WFH almost full time about 18 months, prior to that it was a a couple of days WFH a week, starting with COVID (which initially was full time WFH for a few months).
I love saving 2 hours a day by not commuting. Like you mention, I find I have to deliberately organise in-person meetings or catch ups with friends otherwise I don’t get the social interaction that as an introvert I previously avoided. I get to see my kids way more, and I also work somewhere very flexible on working hours (since half the team are in different time zones) so I never have to worry about when I’m gonna get a chance to see the doctor or dentist or chaperone a school trip.
I’ve been work from home since March ‘20 (with about a month in office near the start of ‘23), and I absolutely love it.
At the start I was doing a lot of end-user tech support and kitted out my workstation with a nice desk and chair, and I’ve never been more comfortable working at a desk. I think ergonomics are one of the biggest perks of work-from-home, plus the whole saving on commute thing.
