For the last 2.5 years I've been working at DigitalOcean as a remote employee. DO has more than 50% of the staff remote. I think it's important that a large chunk of a company & team be remote, to be successful in the exercise, so that there be a forcing function to use asynchronous communications. It's been really life changing for me.
We have a bunch of style of remotees; work from home, work from coffeeshop, work from coworking spaces and work from a new place every day.
I've tried all of these styles, starting with work from home, then getting super depressive from loneliness and getting a coworking space (DO pays for it), then realizing I didn't use it and instead working from a mix of home, coffeeshop, and random visits I pay to my friends. And now I've been switching to mostly working from the crazyest settings I can think of. I worked from camping spots, from a sailboat, in a national park, on a beach in Asia, and it all works out once you're used to "travelling from anywhere".
I'm having the best time of my life by experimenting with what it really means when your ability to feed is now decoupled from your physical location. I feel like I'm living in a future that maybe more of the people will have the chance to live soon, and that it's my duty to find a "Theory of Working In The Future". My first theorem is "Don't stay home everyday else you shall go crazy".
Also, think about the implications of OneWeb and the constellation that SpaceX has been working on; I'm thinking "what if I could get low latency/high bandwidth internet from the middle of any ocean"? The future looks bright.
[edit]: just realized I'm kind of praising my employer a lot here. My comment isn't meant as recruiting spam, tho I think DO's great to remote folks. Also we're building massive distributed systems everyday and it's fun. So uh... check this out? http://grnh.se/wv3fgo
Agreed asynchronous communications can have a ton of benefit as mentioned in the article (fewer meetings, schedule flexibility). But on the other hand, taken to the extreme, this also can lead to just the isolation the article mentions.
I spent ~5 years remote at a larger company where the vast majority of employees were on site. Needless to say, the culture didn't adopt any "remote best practices". I worked from home during this time, and am probably somewhere similar on the social spectrum as the author: some aspects of introversion and extroversion. I think the frequent meetings and synchronous communication with colleagues is exactly what kept the job from feeling too isolating during that time. (However, meetings were TOO frequent for productivity).
I feel like your experience is germane. You're relating your experience with remote work directly. If anything, what's really coming across the loudest is your drive to be productive to the point of being conscious of problems arising from work conditions.
I traveled like this with my family with 1 kid and a pregnant wife as well as with two young kids. I really enjoyed how having young kids acted as an ice breaker with people in other countries.
We tried to stay in each place for at least a week at a time.
We're wanting to settle down a little more now so we can have a stable social life and do more things like gardening, but I also know someone who has 3 kids and lives out of an rv with his family.
When one was only 1.5 years old, she mostly just stayed in a carrier on my wife's back while she explored the area, going on day trips and running errands like buying groceries (which in a foreign country can be fun on its own). When we had a 1 year old and a 3 year old, we were nomadic for about 2 months and we mostly found an airbnb for a week-month and drove on the weekends. During the day, the kids and wife would go to local playgrounds, public libraries, state parks, national parks, beaches and kids museums (a membership at one gets you a membership at most in the US).
Now that our oldest is about start kindergarten, we're more interested in staying in one place so she can make longer lasting friends, but when they were younger it was a lot of fun. The sweet spot for us was when they were too young to walk and could ride in the carrier for hours on end, or old enough to walk well and be interested in more activities and places. In between was harder: not wanting to be carried, but not really capable of walking for more than a few hundred feet at a time.
Yeah for sure, though one of the places we stayed at in Guatemala would have taken our daughter for an English-speaking preschool had we wanted, though it was an area with a lot of people who had immigrated from Europe and the us.
>Out of curiosity, do you have kids ? I bet the answer is no.
I live a somewhat similar lifestyle( although not as extreme as gp ), I have 2 cats which that I leave with my girlfriend when I fly out.
>I envy you that you can do it.
I sometimes regret not having a structured lifestyle and
warmth of family. I am envious of my friends with kids who are going with the flow of life and are not living in existential dread. It's a classic human dilemma of freedom vs security.
> I sometimes regret not having a structured lifestyle and warmth of family. I am envious of my friends with kids who are going with the flow of life and are not living in existential dread. It's a classic human dilemma of freedom vs security.
I've been working remotely in a semi-nomadic manner for a few years now, and while on average I have no desire to give it up, this sentiment definitely pops up from time to time.
I find I oscillate between a desire to be in a place where nobody knows my name, and places where I'm (relatively) well known.
Working remotely grants me the opportunity to adjust my location and lifestyle accordingly.
It really depends on the time and what projects we had running, and the needs we had in term of experience and background at the time! It doesn't mean anything about your adequacy. Try again, things change every month!
In general for remote positions, we look for people who've done it successfully before (or some shape of something like that - for instance I had experience as a research assistant for a prof from afar), or that have a lot of experience in their field of expertise.
(note: I'm an engineer, I'm not really involved in hiring stuff, so take what I say with a grain of "needs to be confirmed by competent authorities")
Is DO actually only hiring people with 7+ years experience? I ask because if not, I'd be interested in knowing how the decision to not put any entry/3-5 years experience positions affects the pipeline of candidates.
I'm from Canada but in Argentina right now. We have lots of folks in Europe and some in Asia! We have folks doing the round the world dance too. We had folks in Australia.
Important question: do they differentiate salaries according to your region? In other words, are you paid similarly as your North American peers or you get a Turkish salary?
I'm working on getting some support from the marine engineering department of my local uni to assess the idea of a ferrocement boat with basalt rebar reinforcement instead of steal.
I think this has a bunch of advantages over other techniques for this kind of lifestyle.
I would love to receive some emails (myusername@gmail.com) or comments talking about oneweb, and the freedom it could provide for people who like this kind of lifestyle. Some testimonials that there are actually people considering this.
I'm not exactly sure I understand what you're saying but my plan is 100% to, when I become an adult that needs to settle down, buy a catamaran instead of a condo and live and work from there!
I read this so often and can't understand it. It's like most people never get friends outside of work. Like they never grew up and are still in the 'I can only get friends at my school/class'-mindset from when they were young.
The best people I know I met at places of my choosing, not at work, not at school.
I work remote because my private life is so demanding and I couldn't get it work with 40h in an office.
The regular social circles of most adults do come from their occupations, simply because they spend such a large part of their waking hours there. There's nothing strange about that. If that's not the case for you, cheers, but empirically speaking, most people aren't lucky enough to have a vibrant and dynamic private and outside social life beyond work—least of all in the highly isolated, individualistic automobile landscape of America.
And so, of course, it comes as no surprise that people look to work to fill a lot of their social needs, and that coworkers play a big role in not only their job, but their life satisfaction.
> like most people never get friends outside of work.
60 hour weeks and a young family will do that. I literally don't have a single friend outside of family members. I'm also suffering from bipolar depression but it's either support my family or be happy. I'd rather they be happy. I guess.
I can only speak for myself, but it can be hard or impossible to talk to others without having a good reason to do so - i.e, that person being necessary to your current mission ( work ).
Create a good reason to talk to other people then. Maybe learn a new language. Now you have a reason to talk to people that speak the language you are learning.
Fair point. However not every setting has very good internet. It might be slow or not reliable, strategies to mitigate that would be very interesting to me.
As a remote worker, I would really enjoy a coworking space at least 1-2 times per week, but the hour commute and the expense just are not worth it for me. I've been working remotely for two years and absolutely go stir crazy, and even into fits of depression, when I'm not really pro-active about getting out.
I've been volunteering with a community theatre this year, which gets me out of the house after work most week days. My mood goes up about 10x when I do this. During the month or so downtime between plays though, things start going bad again.
I'm also involved with some other meetups/clubs and do piano lessons. Putting together a deliberate schedule of "outside activities", at least for me, is absolutely necessary to make it work.
And I would still never go back to working in an office!
I am in the same situation. People tell me all the time how lucky I am to work remotely, and I was excited when it started. But it definitely has some drawbacks that I didn't expect, especially in the mental health department.
Webex/Hangouts/GTM is fine for 90% of the banal, communication meetings. But it really fails for any design meetings that need a whiteboard. I have tried getting my team to use some alternatives, but there is always some eye rolling, and it never sticks around. It doesn't help that the majority of our team is onsite, so any alternative is 100% for my benefit. Also I haven't found an app that can compete with the tactile feeling of a physical board.
Also I feel like I miss out on the "water cooler" talk. Any sort of communication I have is very formal. My team doesn't like using chat casually, so it really hampers my ability to form relationships with them.
Finally, time management is an issue. When you have an office, its much easier to turn on and off. When I am at home too many mornings start late, and too many evenings run long.
It doesn't help that the majority of our team is onsite, so any alternative is 100% for my benefit.
This really seems key. I've done various sorts of mixed telework/onsite teams, and it never works well. I think either the whole team should be onsite, or the whole team should telework. Anything else will leave some people out of important interactions.
You can even mix on a day-to-day basis, as long as you follow the same schedule. One office had a general practice of everyone in the office Mon-Thur, and then everyone teleworked on Friday. It was great.
The office I'm in now, though, has some people teleworking one day a week, and working four 10s so they're off completely on Friday, and some others working five 8's, in the office every day. It's murder to schedule a time when everyone has access to the same interaction tools.
Microsoft is in a really interesting place as far as workplace collaboration goes. Between the Surface {Hub,Book,Pro} lines and their enterprise messaging technology, it really seems like they just need to fix SharePoint.
I do wish that Microsoft would have standardized on thunderbolt 3 as opposed to the surface connector, but between power and all the compatability problems I suppose I get it.
I have been working remotely for 7 years now and I honestly don't get that vibe. The opposite.... Xmas is a time to dread some terrible jolly meeting.
I have a friend I meet for beer on a Thursday every 3 weeks, Family and the Missus occupy the rest, and the sliver of time I have remaining goes to personal dev / gaming.
I don't recall ever caring about being lonesome, so I don't think I got used to it as such.
Everyone is different for sure, but I too would never go back to working in an office!
Seems you are doing the right thing. I used to work remotely for a long time. During that I did a ton of non-work stuff. Now I work in a cube farm and I am way too tired in the evening to do anything. In addition, most of social interactions at the company are bullshit like meetings and politics.
One thing I did for a while was to rent a little office with two other freelancers a few bicycle minutes away from home. That was the best setup for me. You go out in the morning but still control your work environment.
Overall a well written article with some valid criticisms. After 2 years working remotely I observed roughly the same facts, but have a slightly different spin on the whole thing.
Like everything in life, working remotely has tradeoffs. One person's pro is someone else's con.
Pro: I potentially gained hours of my life back every day. I know many people who work for similar companies who spend more than an hour commuting every day. They take less-desirable jobs and leave behind their coworkers just so they can get an hour of their life back and reduce their commute from 2+ hrs to 30 minutes.
Pro: I can disassociate my COL from the company's choice of office location.
Pro: I can cook food in the crock pot on a regular basis without worrying about my house burning down.
Pro: I can walk my dogs during my lunch break (or pick up food from the grocery store or run some other errand).
Pro: (subjective) My coworkers competence is higher than what I typically observe from companies that limit their hiring pool to people who live within a few minutes (or hours) of one office building.
Pro: I can and have worked from a hammock, a camper van in a state park, a car on a road trip, and a cafe in Paris.
Pro: No requirement to waste literally hours of my day in bullshit pre-lunch planning, post-lunch coffee, etc. When I'm onsite I'm happy to spend lots of time on watercooler talk, but I'm not obligated to do it every work day.
Pro: I can go hiking on my lunch break.
Con: I don't see anyone but my spouse. I have to go to additional meetups in order to make up for this.
Con: Not as much face time with execs. This can matter politically and for your career.
My list is pretty much the same—for an introvert who values deeper relationships with fewer people, the cons aren't too bad. And being a meetup organizer for two different meetup groups means I'm forced (a good thing for an introvert) to see other people in the area who work in the same area.
I've been working 100% remote for 5 of the past 10 years, and part-time remote the other 5, and in none of this time have I gone stir-crazy or felt depressed about my work... some people are able to thrive in a remote/isolated environment (I still do video calls 2-4x a day for different projects, so it's not like total isolation), while others really need a group of people working with/around them to thrive.
It also helps to have a family or more than one other person living in your residence if you choose to remote work from home—it forces you to have face-to-face human interaction (to the extent you choose to put down smartphones, laptops, etc. outside of work hours).
> And being a meetup organizer for two different meetup groups means I'm forced (a good thing for an introvert) to see other people in the area who work in the same area.
Funny you should mention that. I'm a co-organizer of a pretty active meetup. The first tuesday of the month is the highlight of my social calendar.
We were also worried about burning our house down with a slow cooker. So we grabbed an Instant Pot pressure cooker (among other functions) and it can do in under an hour what takes a slow cooker an entire day.
At first getting commute time back was awesome. I was averaging 2.5 hours a day also. Now I just work because I don't have a good excuse to leave physically. Then the 7am - 7pm days creep in with a mandatory 10pm meeting. It still feels better than sitting in traffic though.
Working remotely killed my mental health. Even with Slack, Hangouts, and all the rest, I became lonely, had difficulty focusing on work, and generally became significantly less happy and productive. I tried a coworking space, and while I made some great friends there, it still wasn't doing it for me.
I've been back at an office job for about 3 months now and it's been a huge improvement. I love being in an office with a team of people all working on the same thing, solving problems together, and socializing.
Obviously, different things work for different people, but I wish I hadn't bought into the remote work idea as wholeheartedly as I did. It's important to be aware of what you get out of onsite work in addition to the drawbacks.
As someone who spent the better part of the last decade working remotely, and having read tens of rants about open office floor plans with which I agree 100%, I think that the problem here is that there is no Silver Bullet. Those of us who prefer a results only work environment will never thrive in an open office, and those of us who need human contact will not thrive in a results only work environment.
More likely if you're reading this, you're somewhere between those two extremes. I'm an introvert when I need to get things done, but I'm an extrovert everywhere else. I have seen just as many people crash and burn trying to motivate themselves while working remotely as I have seen people go quietly nuts in an open office.
I am going to be working from a co-working space in the near future, but I suspect that I will still need to spend significant amounts of time on my own in my home office if I want to stay productive. I don't expect that solution to work for anyone else, but after nearly two decades in the software industry, I know what works for me.
I like traveling, so working remotely from Australia for a couple of months, then switching things up in Japan for a while works well for me. I haven't been able to do that for a few years though, since my current employer likes to see everyone in the office at least once a week.
I wouldn't consider myself an extreme introvert but I am 100% satisfied working from home (been doing it for 4.5 years now).
The author mentions socialization only in real life. What about online socialization? I still talk to 2 of my best friends in a chat room (used to be IRC, now we use Slack). I keep up with old friends on Facebook. I have discussions and arguments on HN and Reddit.
And probably most importantly, my remote company has a VOIP chat that everyone is on and we routinely have "water cooler" type convos, in addition to serious stuff.
So yeah, I think you can solve this problem without needing real life interactions. Embrace your digital life to the extreme! And, companies hiring remote workers need to support them better, with VOIP and text chat rooms that they can be in (with other employees) and feel like they're part of the team and not just a worker.
I think a lot of folks overlook online interaction. Heck, that's how I met my spouse - and how we did most of our communication for some years. Now I've traded that communication for communication with family. I chat with my sister daily.
I get stir crazy sometimes, but that is easily solved by longer walks and other such things.
i'd consider myself pretty introvert and have been working remotely for 5-6 years and only realised on how much i missed out socially after getting a regular job at a startup again. I just enjoy working in a team of motivated people, talking to them randomly about non-work/non-tech stuff. I still feel more productive even though there are more interruptions, but at home i tended to create these interruptions myself and was never really satisfied with my productivity either.
Online socialization interactions/chats (even video) with friends/team members never gave me the same kind of feelings, and i still felt more lonely. I guess there is something about face to face that I like.
Yeah, I'm curious how I would feel if I went back to a normal job. Before working remotely I worked in the game industry for 10 years and I mostly loved it. But, I also really like my current remote setup.
I think a big part of it is that I started working remotely at the same time as I had kids, so now I can take off any time I want to spend time with them. I normally take a 2 hour break for eating dinner and helping with bedtime, then I'm back to work. I remember people from my office job who would say that they only see their kids for 10 minutes a day or something like that. I didn't think anything of it at the time, but now that I have kids of my own with my current setup, I can't imagine only seeing them for 10 minutes a day. That just doesn't seem right.
> I didn't think anything of it at the time, but now that I have kids of my own with my current setup, I can't imagine only seeing them for 10 minutes a day. That just doesn't seem right.
This may be viewed as a benefit rather than a downside by a surprisingly large number of people.
I'm not passing judgment here, just speaking empirically. For men especially, the office and work are the default place to hide from unhappy marriages, dull domestic life, housework, and [perceived as] perfunctory obligations that they want to avoid (due to lack of interest) but which it is not socially acceptable, or perhaps politically correct, to reject. Not everyone is in a happy marriage, and not everyone actually enjoys spending time with their wife. Furthermore, not all fathers have the right combination of personality, emotional constitution and intellectual disposition to have fruitful interactions with all kids, at all ages, and all times. "I love spending time with my kids more than anything else in the world!" is an obligatory refrain nowadays, so few people will admit otherwise—even to themselves—because it's very non-comme il faut. But the truth is that 2 1/2 year-olds can be pretty unstimulating company. For a lot of busy, career-minded, highly accomplished, worldly people, ten minutes before bedtime sounds about right. That sounds cruel and terrible now to a lot of people now, but would have been quite uncontroversial half a century ago.
That has been one of the most important functions of the organisation office in the 20th century. It's a cover that gets many men—often fairly inscrutably—out of having to deal with things they don't really want to deal with. Feminism picked up on this a long time ago, and that's what's behind a lot of the "second shift" double standard critique. The charge is that men still have an easier time cloaking themselves in inscrutability when they attend to their careers. In this version of events, nobody really has a right to question why they're at the office so much, what they do there, or why they're working so hard.
I'm not talking about men that lie that they are "at the office" when they're in fact at the hotel with their mistress. I'm talking about men that are legitimately ambitious and interested enough in their work that they take on more of it—a lot more of it—than they absolutely have to willingly, because they are secretly not so interested in achieving "work-life balance", as other aspects of their life are not fulfilling to them. There's a lot you can get out of if you have to stay late at the office all the time due to meet a legitimately ambitious shipping schedule. Hard to argue with.
Another, related problem is that most non-digiratti don't really understand computer-based self employment. I'm sure we have all dealt with the problem of older relatives, more traditionally-minded people, or unenlightened spouses perceiving that we are simply sitting on the couch "playing on the computer", much as many of us have always done since childhood. In the mind of such people—a vast segment of American society—work is a place one goes, with a briefcase, and which keeps defined business hours. Intellectually, they understand that the money comes from somewhere, and that you are not actually paid to "play on the computer". But instinctively, they can't process that. The appearance of "playing on the computer" means you don't really do much of anything and are always available to chat, run errands, walk the dog, feed the baby, etc.
Some will say, "But that's why I have a house, with a door that closes, and everyone around me knows not to ever bother me when I'm in there!" Yeah, okay. My experience hasn't been that this works. The first time your wife walks in there anyway and sees you browsing Reddit instead of feverishly parrying phone calls and struggling to right critical infrastructure to prevent impending apocalypse, that's done. From that point onward, you're just hiding in there to play on your computer and are preemptible by processes with nominally high priority. :-)
That's another class of problem that going to an office solves.
Are you in the VOIP chat all day, or only when you want to talk? And if all day, is your mic open all the time, transmitting whatever sounds you make as you're working?
We are in the VOIP chat all day, but no one uses voice activation. It's all PTT (push to talk).
For some meetings we use skype or google hangouts and then it is always on. Most meetings, including our daily standup, just take place over teamspeak though.
Part of getting a good remote team is making sure everyone has all this communication software setup right and knows how to use it effectively: advice on what keys to use for PTT, what settings to use, etc.
Coworking spaces are a mixed bag. I went there for few months but stopped again.
Good is that you face more serendipity than when working from home. But really, it is not that much more. After only few weeks, the novelty wore off and I got bored and saw more the downsides. Like super small tables, no dual monitor setup, always too cold, the commute, less free fruit, and the people. Some are quite nice and you realize that you need random social encounters but there are also the typical odd people to whom you cannot relate at all (like everywhere). Those people don't hurt but I remember one who reserved the best flexdesk the night before by leaving tons of her post-its and other papers there. No big deal but nobody who makes you happy either.
I knew most people I met there before. Bonding with new people without having a common mission was not easy, it just didn't feel natural (and I am rather the extrovert sales type of guy). So, you can still feel 'alone' in a coworking space.
I think a coworking space makes more sense if you need a space as a team and want or need to see each other f2f on a regular base.
For business meetings or doing interviews, I prefer lobbies of top hotels, they are even more representative than the best coworking spaces and at the end of the month also cheaper with full service included and no extra fee when booking some meeting room. And for two hours working away from home, I am a fan of Starbucks or any coffee ahop with good wifi.
I've worked in a number of co-working spaces and what I've seen is a huge inconsistency in spaces. (which is to be expected.)
Some have internet that is flakey or slows down on crowded days. Some are just too loud. Some are just too hot or cold. Some have bad locations. Or have horrible chairs and desks. The list goes on and on. Seems like you have to find the one that is just right. Even still, don't go there every day. Mix it up by working from there, home, cafe's, etc.
I've realized I'm very picky about my work environment...
> If you’re thinking of working remote, then think about what kind of working environment you’re happiest with before you take the job, and make sure you’ll have that environment available to you.
Seems to me that the best part of remote working is the ability to figure out what the best environment is for you. Don't be a theorist, be an experimentalist: try a bunch of different situations and see what you like best. It sounds like the author started down this path, but stopped too soon (at first).
> Are you sad when a lot of your office is out sick, or are you relieved?
Usually relieved, then I wonder why I bothered with an hour of driving to sit in the office by myself, when I could have done that from home.
> Do you get uncomfortable when you’re in quiet environments for too long, or do you revel in them?
Love quiet! My office at work has no windows (not even internal ones); being able to close the door and cut off the outside world is the best!
> Do you feel weirdly lonely when you’re in a noisy coffee shop, or do you feel energized?
Annoyed by the noise mostly. Coffee shops are for getting coffee and getting out. Libraries are way better for actual work, IMO.
I think almost everybody will have the same answer here. I don't think it's a good question, because most people have too much interaction every day and is tired of it. That does not mean they will be happy standing most of their days alone.
-- negative: lost interest in having friends (and generally the patience needed to talk to people), no social life, no career, work-life balance completely broken
-- positive: sleeping 8 hours a night! (and more if I need to), making walks in the park/training at noon, never really sick, comfortable home office, can be efficient again (only my job doesn't require that). Started having ideas again and thinking about side projects.
Before going remote, during 15 years I was commuting 2+ hours in the morning (so 2 hours again in the evening), sleeping 4 hours a night by the end of the week, dozing off the entire weekend and generally feeling extremely exhausted, mentally and physically, easily catching flu etc.
Would I move back to office employment? I really hope I won't have to.
Hmm, I also have an extreme lack of patience for other adults (I say adults because I have plenty of patience for my kids). I've been working remotely for 4 years now, I wonder if that is why? I don't think I used to be so impatient with other people. Interesting...
It is not just remote work either - I've noticed a trend in my work where although I work in an open plan office surrounded by people, my teams are increasingly "global" which means that usually there is 1 team member on their own in each office.
Although I am surrounded by people, since you're not working with these other people, and/or there are desk moves every 3 months or so as teams are growing, you only ever end up with very superficial "friendships"/social interactions. "Hello" "How was your weekend" "Which team are you on?" "I am on this team" etc etc. You're just doing it out of politeness really, then in a month or two they'll move on to another team/office or there will be another desk move and you're back to square one, surrounded by strangers.
It is not unusual for me to go a whole day in an office surrounded by hundreds of coworkers without physically saying anything to anyone apart from "thanks" for holding open the door.
This echoes my current gig to a tee: worked at home for a couple of months, went stir crazy, found an office. For me, the first office space was a hipster cafe type place that was just too freaking noisy. I moved to a Regus office which was ok but Regus were awful so a few of us clubbed together and got a truly shared office with both closed and open spaces for different type of work. I can highly recommend this setup as some days you just need to hole yourself up in a private enclosed office to do brain work. However the open space promotes social interaction and feeds the soul.
I run a small coworking space, and we have some private spaces and some public spaces. You can be in a room with a few other folks, or you can be in a room on your own. I switch a lot, and some others do too. It's crazy to me that people think 'one size fits all', regardless of what the size is (open plan office, private space, cubes, etc). Most people need somewhat different workspaces depending on the work they're doing.
+1 to the comments about Regus. While some of the spaces are really well designed & in perfect locations, their billing systems were so broken that I got out of my contract as fast as I could. They couldn't even charge credit cards automatically each month, and they accidentally leaked their entire Australian client list in the To line of an email (then tried to fix it by using the Outlook "Recall This Message" feature).
[Since then I've opted to work from cafes, shopping malls that have started encouraging laptop workers, and a 'coworking' space I found that was mostly empty.]
I was on that email list. I was absolutrly livid. They also double charged me $2k+ twice. Will never work there again. What's your tips on Cafe's (if you are in Sydney)?
Alas I'm in Perth, and I have terrible taste in coffee... I mostly work at Starbucks whenever I can. (Or Gloria Jeans, since we don't have Starbucks in Perth.) It's a while since I was last in Sydney.
If you're ever in Singapore I can recommend the 100th Starbucks in the financial district (at The Fullerton Waterboat House). Large space with lots of windows, a great view and not very busy. Terrible WiFi though, so tether to a cheap Singaporean 15GB SIM.
I've been working remote now for 5 years. All from home (sometimes from a car or a cabin). It takes discipline and limits. In my case - limiting my urges to finish out a project or get a bit further at 2am. It can be a blessing and a curse. I'm getting ready to 'venture out' - spend time at coffee shop or coworking. For the record, I've been 'remote' in many roles; employee and consultant. Overall, for me, I find routine an absolute necessecity to get work done. By routine, I mean 'get dressed as if going into the office' - it's about mindset.
I love working at home. Not going out of my house for weeks on end doesn't bother me at all, and I'm much more productive when I'm working on my own. I think I could be quite happy as a shut-in. I can see how the lack of a social life would bother some people though. I guess the success of working remotely depends a lot on your emotional needs and personality.
On another note, I do have to disagree with the author with regards to making the most money in either New York or the Bay Area. Perhaps the salary looks bigger on its own, but when you consider housing costs, food, gas, taxes, and other costs of living, you actually end up making a lot less than you do in other locations. I've received multiple offers from the Bay Area, and one or two from New York, but they just can't compete, all things considered. Plus, I don't have any desire to cram my family into a 1,000 square-foot cubbyhole, when we can enjoy seven times the space elsewhere for half the price.
Getting a girlfriend who also works at home may be hard, but it can fix most of this problem. I liked working while my girlfriend was working at the same time...with some fun interruptions.
The funny part is, I have this, and it's fun to joke about, but we never actually do anything. I'm too busy in my world of meetings/development etc to even desire sexy times. I just want to get the next bug fixed.
My company is 100% remote. And I recall very clearly in the interview process one of the most important traits to succeed - Be self-aware.
Everyone is different. Every new remote worker figures out what they need to do to make it work for themselves. And we do not all do the same things. But we all know ourselves well enough to try things, see how it works for ourselves, and figure out what changes we need to make it work. Of course, we also talk to each other, give suggestions, etc. But ultimately, to succeed on your own, you have to proactively care for your own mental health. And self-awareness is vital to doing so.
Living abroad I've gone the remote road since 2009. I went through a lot of this same stuff but never associated it with my being remote/working from home, though now looking back I can see it most likely did. My health and mood increased once I started to force myself out to socialize more and once we had our children - the household is always busy and full of noise and life now, versus before when my wife went off to work and I sat alone in a quiet apartment all day long. Since the birth of our second I've been doing my first sprint in any nearby coffee shop each morning and that has improved my mood and productivity even further. I've been toying with the idea of a co-working space and this article has convinced me to give it a go.
We are social creatures, to varying degrees, and if we limit out interaction with others too severely, I think it makes it too easy to look exclusively and excessively inward. I'm all about self-analysis and looking inward but there comes a point when you go too far and it's no longer about reflection but a feedback loop of anxiety/fear/self-doubt... at least that has been the case in my experience! Also, regular exercise (running, lifting) has always helped me out of these emotional funks.
Great post. The spectrum stuff is very important and it's important to be honest to yourself and during the interview process about what you expect. I now tell every place I interview being on-site all week is not gonna work for me. I need to be remote at least 2 days out of the week to recharge. Otherwise I will burn out in less than 6 months. Most places seem to be ok with that and make concessions to letting me do that.
I have a similar issue at the moment. I have tried co-working spaces, but I work with people globally and my day tends to start at 5am. So to get to a co-working space, I'd have to leave at 4:30am, and that's provided they were open (they aren't.)
I've spoke to one about potentially giving me a key to the space, and perhaps that would work, but it's often easier just to roll out of bed, throw on coffee, and start my meetings.
I tend to repeat, and stop going outside much at all, just staying indoors. That then perpetuates my desire to not go outdoors.
It's solvable though, it takes effort on my part to continue experimenting, and trying new things. It only becomes an issue when I just keep repeating the same situation. Definition of insanity, repeating same things, expecting different results.
I joined a co-working space this summer and it was...meh. The people were nice and the facility was great, but I don't really see the point unless your employer is going to pickup the tab and/or you have a small apartment with no office or an insufficient one.
I found myself missing my widescreen monitor, standing desk, and chair. The amount of money I've sunk into my home office felt wasted when I used the co-working space.
And the co-working space would swing between eerily quiet or way too much noise. It seemed weird to go (and pay) for a co-working space where everyone is primarily staring at their laptops.
On the other hand, I would maybe consider going from a two bedroom to a one bedroom apartment if I had a full-time 24/7 use of a co-working space and then the cost would more than even out.
I spent my last two years at Yelp working from home in Portland, OR, where I'd moved by myself. I started to go completely insane toward the end of my first winter. Being in the same room all day and having nothing ever change around me was much, much worse for my mental health than I had expected - prior to this, I'd never even thought about the concept of my own mental health, but this experience really brought it to the fore.
I tried a couple of coworking spaces, found one that I liked, and have been going there regularly since - my employer paid for my membership at the time, but I quit my job a year ago and it's still worth it to me to have a space where I can go every day to get out of the house and be _around_ humans, even if I don't socialize with them as much as I could.
I've always identified as an introvert, and used to fantasize about the idea of e.g. working in the top room of a lighthouse for a month - assuming you had a good Internet connection, you could get so much coding done there! - but it seems that being around people is much more important than I'd given it credit for, particularly in the winter when it's pitch black outside at 4pm and you're already kind of depressed by default.
Working at the top of a lighthouse for a month would be awesome (assuming good Internet) if you were motivated to get something in particular done. I think if you went there with a generalised notion of getting something done, I don't think it would work nearly as well.
Excellent personal story on finding the right workspace in a remote situation. Home office vs. Coworking space is a conversation I have with other remote works quite a bit, and the answer is different for everyone.
Working remotely for 7 months now. Three things I do not miss are
- neon lights which used to trigger my migraine on a regular basis,
- 45-60 minutes of public transport commute in the heat/cold,
- the need to look busy when the work is already done.
While I did experience a bit of a breakdown at one point, it is something to overcome. I like the "lazy days" of regular work in coffee shops, libraries and sometimes even pubs (no alcohol during work hours though, that's bad on so many levels). When there is heavy need of cognitive abilities, I tend to stay in, start the day with a cold shower, breakfast and coffee, then work at my standing desk.
I find standing desks really something all offices should support for their workforce. It keeps you active during the day and allows for greater focus. Start small, go for what fits your physique. Use a rubber mat. I would suppose it also helps with what the author calls "off-days", since I do not encounter them. There is always something to improve upon. If no hard-work is available, I just work on documentation and learning new skills that advance my work/life/career. This allows me a good night's sleep.
Working from home might genuinely be the ideal environment for those closest to the introvert end of the spectrum, and I think those are the people who form angelic choirs of blog posts asking if you have met their lord and savior, the Fortress of Infinite Solitude, Home Office Edition. For them, the quiet work environment makes their jobs dramatically more enjoyable. But for me, it was the opposite: I’d gone from management (high social interaction) to software development (lower social interaction), and from working in an office (hundreds of people) to working from home (two cats), and expected that this would all be fine.
Am I missing something here? Paying $1000/mo rent for a remote space seems insane. At best, that's 15% of your take-home salary. You're basically forcing yourself to work 15% more than you would without an office.
I'd take the extra 15% of free time over the hit in the "socialness" of my office space. I can get that social fix during that time instead.
> Industrious seems nice. It would be a good option if you're a Lawyer or CPA or something where you need to keep up appearances; i.e. clients physically coming in and talking to you.
I don't know that Industrious is the right place for a lawyer or CPA. Maybe a rather nontraditional one. But I would expect someone like that to prefer traditional "Class A" office space a la Regus.
> However, as a software engineer, it seems like the only benefit is social. And with that, from a financial standpoint, it doesn't make much sense to me. You're basically paying to work.
Well, if you buy the premise of the articles—both the parent and mine—then that benefit has value. It has a lot of value to certain kinds of people. By the sound of it, you do not have such high psychological needs. :-)
I didn't talk about it in my article, but the OP did in his: getting one's social fix outside of work isn't that easy, particularly if it's work-related socialisation that is the deficiency you're trying to address.
Having said that, even Industrious doesn't magically fix certain existential problems. For instance, I'm in VoIP, so I have relatively little to discuss or collaborate on with the usual array of people who commonly inhabit such places: SEO/web marketing firms, web developers, miscellaneous ad and marketing agencies, etc.
Industrious had less of these than the typical coworking space, and the tenants of that nature who were there were less obnoxious, but still: being in an exotic and highly technical niche removes a lot of the benefits of shared work culture and water cooler talk, the ability to bounce ideas off officemates or answer their questions, etc.
edit: $1000/mo is pretty steep for a one-person office. Industrious didn't charge me quite that much. But it was pretty up there.
Whoops. I probably should have proofread my comment before submitting. Your response seems almost nonsensical now that I've butchered my original post D: Sorry about that.
It's been awhile since I've needed to look for coworking spaces, but I have to say- what an excellent blog post! It seems so rare these days to read something that goes into detail about something like this.
This mirrors my experience going from product support to software engineering. I moved roles in a company that was primarily a sales organization, so I still had a lot of responsibilities to other people that required social interaction. When I switched companies to join a product development team all the social interaction went away. In fact, earlier this year I went for several months without any real interaction with my co-workers, and I work in a cubicle farm. This had a severe impact on my mental health, to the extent that I'm in therapy now. I've since started seeking more interaction with co-workers during the day because I actually need it to work effectively.
People often write about software development as if it's a solitary activity, but I can only do my best work for other people. Having personal relationships with my co-workers makes me a stronger developer, and I can't do it remotely.
As a remote worker myself, I can definitely resonate with the dark sides of working remotely as described in this article. The lifestyle is mostly portrayed as living the dream, however the lack of social interaction and finding a proper work-life balance where you also set time aside for friends, exercise, or meditation for example, is pretty difficult. That's actually what gave me the idea to bring together a community of remote workers to work, live, and travel the world together where the hassle of accommodation, flights, work spaces, gym passes, and social activities are taken care of so remote workers can enjoy the remote lifestyle to the fullest. If anyone's interested you can find more info here http://www.theremotetrip.com
For my job(s) the last 8 years or so, I've had a mix of on-site (10%), travel (40%) and work-from-home (the remainder). There have been very long stretches when I'm neither in the office, nor travelling to meet with customers, however -- sometimes, months. From my standpoint, I can commiserate with the author here. I live out in the hinterlands with my wife and 6 kids, so there's no shortage of social interaction -- however if I've been stuck here for 6 weeks, I begin to get a little stir crazy. I "recharge" by going to trade shows/events/meetups in NYC (which is about an hour and a half away) -- the energy of the city is refreshing, but I wouldn't want to put up with it every day. Just once in a while...
I have tried coworking in both co-rented offices and "office hotels" as well as work from home. For a long while I had a (pretty expensive) seat at a coworking space that I didn't use, but just knowing that I could leave my isolation at home and go there meant it felt less isolated.
I wish I could work in cafes, at friends etc, but I just can not bring myself to work without a proper big screen and keyboard, which means most nomadic coffee shop setups are off limits. One day working off my laoptop and my neck, eyes and and back hurts. I need a proper desk, which makes it a lot harder to move around.
>But for me, it was the opposite: I’d gone from management (high social interaction) to software development (lower social interaction), and from working in an office (hundreds of people) to working from home (two cats), and expected that this would all be fine.
Could be the change from bossing people around (being a manager) to being bossed around (being a dev)? Because all the rest (interaction with friends, walks, going to the gym etc) one could still have from working remotely -- like the author says they did for the first months anyway.
What I like about working from home with regards to socializing is that I get to choose when, where and with whom I socialize. I didn't have that control in an office setting. While most of my clients and colleagues are in other cities, I make sure that I have several local if for no other reason than to have some professional socialization opportunities. And of course there are a dozen groups that I could choose to participate in - actually more than I'd ever have time to do.
Short commutes + some privacy at work would probably entice most people in.
Having 1-2 days a week at the office would be grand.
Being able to focus for long periods without interruption is quite important, frankly, I have no idea how software gets written in those cramped open workspaces with all the noise etc..
Granted, different types of software for different types of things.
I can imagine a deeply technical problem requiring more thought than say a lot of dev-ops, scripting, code reviews, bug fixing, etc. etc..
feeling isolated is not a good thing most of the people, that's why libraries, coworking spaces and meetups exist. After all, the human being is a social animal.
But what we can do to prevent this is planning where to work from, where to go, analyzing if working remotely is good or not for us. I found this piece of content really helpful as I'm tired to read how nice is to be a digital nomad, well... it is if you're an outgoing person, or if you're the type of guy who likes to feel pushed to always go the extra mile.
But we have to prevent people from just going to the middle of nowhere expecting amazing things will happen as you have to be the one who moves first.
Loved this!
Does anyone know of a valid study of how workgroup size, the ratio of meetings to individual working time, etc. compared to well-organized remote work? By well organized, I mean designed to mitigate the problems cited in this article and otherwise.
A day when you don't feel like you're being productive, even though you're trying to get something done. One of my coworkers wrote a good article (https://medium.com/@jdan/quantifying-my-off-days-27e85f5bc15...) about that, linking it to pomodoro techniques.
We have a bunch of style of remotees; work from home, work from coffeeshop, work from coworking spaces and work from a new place every day.
I've tried all of these styles, starting with work from home, then getting super depressive from loneliness and getting a coworking space (DO pays for it), then realizing I didn't use it and instead working from a mix of home, coffeeshop, and random visits I pay to my friends. And now I've been switching to mostly working from the crazyest settings I can think of. I worked from camping spots, from a sailboat, in a national park, on a beach in Asia, and it all works out once you're used to "travelling from anywhere".
I'm having the best time of my life by experimenting with what it really means when your ability to feed is now decoupled from your physical location. I feel like I'm living in a future that maybe more of the people will have the chance to live soon, and that it's my duty to find a "Theory of Working In The Future". My first theorem is "Don't stay home everyday else you shall go crazy".
Also, think about the implications of OneWeb and the constellation that SpaceX has been working on; I'm thinking "what if I could get low latency/high bandwidth internet from the middle of any ocean"? The future looks bright.
[edit]: just realized I'm kind of praising my employer a lot here. My comment isn't meant as recruiting spam, tho I think DO's great to remote folks. Also we're building massive distributed systems everyday and it's fun. So uh... check this out? http://grnh.se/wv3fgo