Ask HN: What is your experience with working remotely?
I am a pretty social and interactive person. I love working with people, whether it's just saying hello and catching up at the beginning of the day or doing some pair programming from time to time. I am driven and capable of working outside of an office but I just don't know if it'll make me happy and if I'll get the satisfaction I get out of working in an office with other people. What are your experiences with working remotely vs working in an office?
17 comments
I'm on a fully remote team, though I happen to live two subway stops from our product's HQ. A few times a year I will go in to work alongside people from other teams, or when someone from my team is in town for one reason or another.
My experience working remotely has been overwhelmingly positive. A notable advantage is avoidance of certain office dogmas -- particularly, the expectation of 8 contiguous work hours.
When it comes to coding, I don't have the mental stamina to produce meaningful technical thoughts for longer than 4 or 5 straight hours. 8 hour shifts are inefficient for me personally, because I get drained and "waste" 25-35% of those working hours with lower quality output.
Working from home lets me work in multiple 2-4 hour spurts a day with time to mentally refresh inbetween. I'm still available to my team during the 9-5 block(computer nearby, phone always on if I'm out), but if I were in an office, I think coming in and out for 2-5 "micro shifts" a day would be frowned upon.
The major downside is that at times it is difficult to turn off. My manager's (tongue in cheek) claim is that WFH is a trick to make employees work longer. I'd say that's true. The lack of effort it takes to start working when you're at home makes it easy to justify "oh, I'm here; I'll just hit this now." At it's worst -- this August -- there was so much work that I'd work straight into the night, fall asleep, wake up, and pick up my laptop. If I was working from an office I imagine the 9-5 rhythm might have been easier.
One other thing worth mentioning is that I lucked out with a great team. They are great technologists from a wide variety of backgrounds and I'm humbled and impressed by my teammates frequently. Sometimes I think learning little things from them has been more valuable to me than the experience I've gained in our "hot" technologies..
My experience working remotely has been overwhelmingly positive. A notable advantage is avoidance of certain office dogmas -- particularly, the expectation of 8 contiguous work hours.
When it comes to coding, I don't have the mental stamina to produce meaningful technical thoughts for longer than 4 or 5 straight hours. 8 hour shifts are inefficient for me personally, because I get drained and "waste" 25-35% of those working hours with lower quality output.
Working from home lets me work in multiple 2-4 hour spurts a day with time to mentally refresh inbetween. I'm still available to my team during the 9-5 block(computer nearby, phone always on if I'm out), but if I were in an office, I think coming in and out for 2-5 "micro shifts" a day would be frowned upon.
The major downside is that at times it is difficult to turn off. My manager's (tongue in cheek) claim is that WFH is a trick to make employees work longer. I'd say that's true. The lack of effort it takes to start working when you're at home makes it easy to justify "oh, I'm here; I'll just hit this now." At it's worst -- this August -- there was so much work that I'd work straight into the night, fall asleep, wake up, and pick up my laptop. If I was working from an office I imagine the 9-5 rhythm might have been easier.
One other thing worth mentioning is that I lucked out with a great team. They are great technologists from a wide variety of backgrounds and I'm humbled and impressed by my teammates frequently. Sometimes I think learning little things from them has been more valuable to me than the experience I've gained in our "hot" technologies..
"WFH is a trick to make employees work longer" -- the term
for this is "Living at Work" rather than "Working from Home".
Some days work gets WAY more time than 8 hours, some days it
gets WAY less time.
Programming is a lot like art work. I've watched my wife (an artist) spend hours mixing paint, stretching canvas, washing brushes ... and have not a stroke of paint on the canvas. Then the next day she spends 12 hours doing nothing but painting. Programmers also have to do "setup" time work which does not result in code and appears unproductive. When working from home it appears that you're not working because bad managers only count lines of code.
In the office environment setup work still looks like work because you are "at your desk". Learn to live with the fact that you appear to be slacking when working remote.
Also be aware that NOBODY does more that 70% of their total possible output on a continuous basis. NOBODY. Even bricklayers, where you can count the bricks laid, take time for lunch, use their cell phone, drive to the hardware store, mix cement, and everything but lay bricks.
Programming is a lot like art work. I've watched my wife (an artist) spend hours mixing paint, stretching canvas, washing brushes ... and have not a stroke of paint on the canvas. Then the next day she spends 12 hours doing nothing but painting. Programmers also have to do "setup" time work which does not result in code and appears unproductive. When working from home it appears that you're not working because bad managers only count lines of code.
In the office environment setup work still looks like work because you are "at your desk". Learn to live with the fact that you appear to be slacking when working remote.
Also be aware that NOBODY does more that 70% of their total possible output on a continuous basis. NOBODY. Even bricklayers, where you can count the bricks laid, take time for lunch, use their cell phone, drive to the hardware store, mix cement, and everything but lay bricks.
I've been working remotely from home since 2004, as a contractor/freelancer developer. Before, I had worked in a big consulting company (that one). Since 2008, I've been living so far way from big cities that since then I haven't seen the face of my clients.
Working from home, at least for me, means to be more productive, even with kids at home. It also means eventually I work more hours to accomplish my daily goals, and that can become a problem some time (the oldest son already told me "you don't know anything else?")
Depending on the client, there may be some resistance from the in-office workers that have to stay there every day. The key is to do a good work and win confidence from management.
On socializing, in the last two years I started missing more. Probably less because of working and more because of staying too much time at home.
Working from home, at least for me, means to be more productive, even with kids at home. It also means eventually I work more hours to accomplish my daily goals, and that can become a problem some time (the oldest son already told me "you don't know anything else?")
Depending on the client, there may be some resistance from the in-office workers that have to stay there every day. The key is to do a good work and win confidence from management.
On socializing, in the last two years I started missing more. Probably less because of working and more because of staying too much time at home.
I've worked remotely for the last 10 years. My largest
coding effort lasted 6 years, generated 60k lines of code,
and 6k pages of documentation. The same averages (10k loc,
1k docs, per year) seem to hold for all projects. In general
I find I'm very productive working from home.
The hard part is that I discovered that I have a "natural" 27 hour day so I tend to be out of phase with the group. In order to communicate I end each "day" (aka bedtime) with a 1-3 line email stating progress (or at least effort).
"Work" is also a 7 day per week activity as there are no natural boundaries. It helps that I really love to write programs. Calling saturday morning is fine but I might be asleep on tuesday at 3pm.
Also, I write "literate programs" so the work product is a book containing the explanation and the source code. That way the boss can read everything up to the lastest overnight checkin. The book contains all work done to date so there is never a question about "the state of the work" or whether there is "progress".
On the other hand, if you don't like weeks of dead silence, a lack of extra eyes to find bugs, a river of badly brewed homemade coffee, and hotdogs for breakfast ... get an office job. Working from home is not for everyone.
The hard part is that I discovered that I have a "natural" 27 hour day so I tend to be out of phase with the group. In order to communicate I end each "day" (aka bedtime) with a 1-3 line email stating progress (or at least effort).
"Work" is also a 7 day per week activity as there are no natural boundaries. It helps that I really love to write programs. Calling saturday morning is fine but I might be asleep on tuesday at 3pm.
Also, I write "literate programs" so the work product is a book containing the explanation and the source code. That way the boss can read everything up to the lastest overnight checkin. The book contains all work done to date so there is never a question about "the state of the work" or whether there is "progress".
On the other hand, if you don't like weeks of dead silence, a lack of extra eyes to find bugs, a river of badly brewed homemade coffee, and hotdogs for breakfast ... get an office job. Working from home is not for everyone.
Literate programs sound fascinating. Is there somewhere I can read more?
I've always thought self-documenting code was the way to go.
I've always thought self-documenting code was the way to go.
Buy a copy of Physically Based Rendering (Pharr and Humphreys). It is a literate program that won an academy award. Make that your "gold standard" for good programming.
Literate programs explain "why", not "what". Think of a literate program like a physics textbook. Your code is the equations but your explanations (not comments!) give the reader the reason WHY you wrote the code.
See http://axiom-developer.org/axiom-website/litprog.html for an example of a trivial literate HTML program.
Literate programs explain "why", not "what". Think of a literate program like a physics textbook. Your code is the equations but your explanations (not comments!) give the reader the reason WHY you wrote the code.
See http://axiom-developer.org/axiom-website/litprog.html for an example of a trivial literate HTML program.
Literate programming is a method introduced by Donald Knuth (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literate_programming). I've stumbled upon it whilst reading Physically Based Rendering, and then LCC: Retargetable C Compiler.
There are some programs that can turn the "documentation" into code : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WEB , but most of them are quite old AFAIK.
There are some programs that can turn the "documentation" into code : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WEB , but most of them are quite old AFAIK.
I work from home. I have to convince my wife all the time that I'm actually working and can't just run to the store and get groceries.
I like working from home, but from time to time it's good to go see people in the office. If you are keen on making a career you have to show up and socialize a bit. You will not be promoted if you always work from home.
I work from home in the afternoons during the school year, and then full time during the summers. It's real nice to be able to have the option to work from home whenever I'm sick or there's a blizzard, etc... But for the most part by the end of the summer I'm really ready to get back into the office.
I like people, but not particularly stressed out adults at the office. I work half a day from home on engineering projects and the rest of the day I tutor kids at a high school which allows me to have some human interaction in my day. It's been a good balance for me.
Where do you live?
My suggestion would be to find a company with a local contingency in your city. Like 3-4 developers that are local to you and can meet up to cowork occasionally or a few times per week.
It works best if you have some nice coworking spots locally within a reasonable commute.
My suggestion would be to find a company with a local contingency in your city. Like 3-4 developers that are local to you and can meet up to cowork occasionally or a few times per week.
It works best if you have some nice coworking spots locally within a reasonable commute.
Can anyone share how/if Health Insurance benefits are provided?
I dislike people, specifically, stupid people. I loved my last year working remotely. No dealing with stupid people is an amazing plus.
If you are a talker, you might it harder seeing only a handful of people each week. (Family, friends, service industry workers.)
If you are a talker, you might it harder seeing only a handful of people each week. (Family, friends, service industry workers.)
Working remote is great, most of the time. The biggest benefit is not having to commute . . . saving on gas, mileage and most importantly TIME. I would recommend at least trying it out.
The only lacking part is office banter . . . socializing . . . but that is good and bad to miss out on. With skype and conference calls it's easy to stay connected with team members.
The only lacking part is office banter . . . socializing . . . but that is good and bad to miss out on. With skype and conference calls it's easy to stay connected with team members.
I worry that it might be a bit harder to feel like I'm part of the team or that I truly belong. Maybe that's an unfounded worry but without a little chit chat here and there, might it be more difficult to feel a sense of camaraderie?
If the whole team is remote that wouldn't be a problem. If all of them are in the office, and you are the odd man out, then you should worry about that.
I believe that working successfully remotely doesn't work for every company or team. They must be actively encouraging it, and they should be aware of engagement issues that arise from working remotely.
I believe that working successfully remotely doesn't work for every company or team. They must be actively encouraging it, and they should be aware of engagement issues that arise from working remotely.
When I worked remotely I'd get my work done and with the additional spare time I had, since I didn't have to commute waste time in meetings, I went to as many meetups as I could to make up for the lack of social interaction at work. Working out of a coffee shop or co-working space can also alleviate some loneliness.