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.
You must log in or register to comment.
its amazing and i never want to step foot in an office again
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!
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.
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.
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.
I’ve been working from home for about ten years, so when COVID happened, it was no real change for me.
Generally, I love it, but I’ve always worked on and with geographically separate teams, so even when I have an office nearby, I’d only be going to it to be on Zoom/Teams meetings anyway.
Financially, it’s great! It’s wonderful not having a commute, saves a ton on gas, vehicle wear and tear, and the habit of spending money on lunch. I also don’t have to maintain and upkeep as many “professional” sets of clothing.
It’s also great for keeping up with house chores, when I take a break to stretch, I can throw in some laundry or fill up the dish washer.
Downsides- work life balance. Work is always there. My work set up is right next to my personal PC set up and when an email comes in after hours, it can be tough to not address right there.
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’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.
