March 24, 2017 at 11:17 am
Comments posted to this topic are about the item I'm "working from home"
Best wishes,
Phil Factor
March 24, 2017 at 2:49 pm
Discipline is in my opinion the most important thing on working from home.
Those that tend to get distracted with things going on in their house, or that, for example, have their TV on and get distracted by what is going on the TV, are not really a good fit to work from home.
Depending on the team and project one is working on at a particular time, working from home, even with all the tools available, can be less productive at times, as there are points in any project where a good direct interaction with the remaining of the team is either a must or highly advisable.
It also depends on the work/position one has on the team - a straight DBA can easyly, in most times, do this work without interaction with others while a team lead or a "jack of all trades" or a "he/she is the one to ask all the questions" may find it harder to afford not to be on the office, at least for part of the day/week.
But being the person eveyone goes to for questions also has its drawbacks. On my own experience on a 3 year project I was in, where I was such a person, also meant that if I was on the office at 9 AM, in many days I would not even sit on my own desk up to 6PM. Yes I was working - but for the others that had questions/issues - and the specific work I had to do as part of my position was getting pushed to after hours - or at home when I eventually left the office.
So for many years now I work from home in the mornings - and only go to the office on the afternoons. I get my work done, I still give help to the others in the afternoons, and everyone is happy.
And always available in the mornings still for emails/calls and so on. Just not on the office.
March 24, 2017 at 4:10 pm
I've found that working from home on a dedicated project allows me to get a whole lot more done... if I ignore the company email, urgent PMs, text messages, etc, which they don't usually allow to happen. It also generally means that any "conversations" will take 10 - 20 times longer because most people can't read or type as fast as they can listen or speak.
There's also the stigma that Phil talked about and you can't listen to people in the office, which is usually the first indication that a world of S41T is about to slide downhill into your "to do" list.
--Jeff Moden
Change is inevitable... Change for the better is not.
March 24, 2017 at 4:19 pm
Well, I've been working at home for 14 years and I've yet to find myself looking at pictures of kittens.
I haven't had the issues where someone thinks I'm not going much, neither with remote consultnig nor working for others. I think I'm productive and I show that I get work done, so no one questions my work ethic. Ironically, I find that when I'm in the office, I get much less done during the day. All the distractions you speak of become problematic.
I do find that working at home can be hard. I usually get up early, and sometimes spend too long at my desk. I eat meals at my desk, talk on calls while doing laundry, have multiple machines around the house and can constantly keep an eye on work. With no commute, there are plenty of days I spend more time working than I did in some offices.
It is lonely, and it can be a struggle to focus. The same thing happens in the office, it's just different. Over the years I've coped by scheduling lunch with friends or getting outside during the day and breaking things up. A little time spent on another task can help get me in the mindset to get back on the computer.
March 25, 2017 at 2:22 am
I've been lucky in having a home office which, when I'm working from home, I go into to work, and leave when I finish for the day. I keep regular office hours with regular breaks. If I have to slip away from work, I make up the hours. I always dress properly, because of Video calls. I'm much more productive when working from home, but there is always a team problem. Until development and ops teams can cope with having colleagues who work remotely there will be problems.
A great advantage of working from home for Ops tasks is that you can be very quick in responding to a problem, easpecially if you have effective monitoring in place. I've done some of my best work in the small hours.
Best wishes,
Phil Factor
March 25, 2017 at 4:58 am
I find the temptation is to put in too many hours. I start by 630 am so I can get in a good 3 hours without interruptions but I often find myself still at my desk 11 or 12 hours later. Fortunately my wife has started bullying me to go out for walks during the daytime
March 25, 2017 at 8:47 am
I've worked from home since the late 1990's. One of the things I really noticed is the ability to concentrate. I didn't have to shut out other people's conversation, phone calls, etc. I also didn't have to deal with numerous interruptions.
One big difference since then is that the number of e-mails I received has sky-rocketed. And IM can also be a problem when you have people that thinks that means you should always be available, even when you're in a meeting that requires your full focus. (The do-not-disturb button is my friend.) Of course, that's probably a problem as much for in-office workers as for home workers.
March 26, 2017 at 10:18 am
One advantage that I had as my last permanent job shifted from 20% at home to 95% at home was that my teammates were all in another state. They literally could not tell any difference - I was remote even when in the office. As my hours in one long stretch started to approach 80/week, I literally could not have kept that up in the office. I defied ALL of the old, tired, and WRONG cliches about home workers, and I hereby CURSE Phil Factor for lazily repeating them. Get a job, Phil.
March 27, 2017 at 12:51 am
Although my group euphemistically call it "Shirking from home" I'd echo the sentiments that a day or two with no distractions allows you to get a whole lot done.
Which raises a serious question about the modern work place. Although an open plan office is great for collaboration it is terrible for getting into the zone. Slack, Skype for business etc sound such good ideas but for every 10 minutes they save I bet they take up an hour.
March 27, 2017 at 3:37 am
In truth, if you have a properly equipped home office and a good VPN link,
It's sad, but in NZ, where I am, there is quite a difference between "business" and "residential" internet.
Providers consider residential internet not so important, allowing short drops (or not so short), reconnections, slow-downs, etc.
And most of those unfortunate events happen during the business hours, when "only housewives are at home", and when businesses take most of the bandwidth, leaving residential customers somewhere on the background.
If your VPN requires manual reconnection (not allowing auto-connection from a laptop carried around in public places makes sense), on a "good day" you're ending up spending half of your work time clicking on the VPN client icon and typing the password.
_____________
Code for TallyGenerator
March 27, 2017 at 6:31 am
I too find that none of the old cliches apply (yes, I might start working wearing a dressing gown having cleaned my teeth and made a cup of tea but I take a break and, sometimes hours after starting work, I get dressed well before 8 am i.e. no danger of calls before suitably attired). The cliches that are slowly replacing the tired old (and mainly untrue) cliches are ones of longer hours, skipped lunches, less exercise and less hot drinks breaks. The last will unlikely change for me (read as I drink too much tea and coffee regardless of laction, home or office) but I do find that I can take a break to walk the dog or go on the cross-trainer.
I can concentrate more when I control the environment. If I want silence then I can have it. Stick on music? Sure (I avoid anything like films or TV shows in the background though as I can't do those with anything else anyway).
Working from home also allows me to have a day more aligned, time wise, to the offshore team(s) that I work with.
How do I avoid working 16 hour days? Same as an earlier contributor: the better half!!!
Do I take advantage of the situation (not the client)? Yes. I arrange deliveries for when I know that I will be at home. I occasionally go for lunch with the wife. I'll take a break and video call my Dad who lives in a different country (he is in Budapest).. If alone, I may watch a recorded TV programme whilst eating lunch. I see that no one can take issue with that and have heard from many a manager that they expect such behaviour and see no detriment to the work required.
Gaz
-- Stop your grinnin' and drop your linen...they're everywhere!!!
March 27, 2017 at 6:47 am
I currently don't work from home on a regular basis, although I do put in some time once a month patching my production servers. To be honest, I don't mind coming into the office as for me the background noise is "white noise." I tune it out but if it's not there, I have a hard time focusing.
So, when I do the once a month thing, seeing as my home office also has my personal desktop, I fire up Netflix streaming on my personal PC, pick a TV series that I don't need to focus on (Highway Through Hell is a good choice,) and get to work. I'd say I'm about as productive as I would be in the office, and seeing as it's generally on the weekends I patch I don't have to worry about instant messaging interruptions or "drive by" interruptions. Once we get some issues with accessing my servers through VPN I may start working from home once a week, as I'll then be able to use my home lab to set up and test some ideas I've had to improve my server monitoring.
As for why I don't do that in-office, they're extremely fussy about doing any sort of "development" work on production / QA systems (as am I,) and I don't have a development system to "play" on.
March 27, 2017 at 7:12 am
csaptd - Saturday, March 25, 2017 4:58 AMI find the temptation is to put in too many hours. I start by 630 am so I can get in a good 3 hours without interruptions but I often find myself still at my desk 11 or 12 hours later. Fortunately my wife has started bullying me to go out for walks during the daytime
Usually my pattern, though replace "walks" with "horse chores"
March 27, 2017 at 7:23 am
Steve Jones - SSC Editor - Monday, March 27, 2017 7:12 AMcsaptd - Saturday, March 25, 2017 4:58 AMI find the temptation is to put in too many hours. I start by 630 am so I can get in a good 3 hours without interruptions but I often find myself still at my desk 11 or 12 hours later. Fortunately my wife has started bullying me to go out for walks during the daytimeUsually my pattern, though replace "walks" with "horse chores"
When I do occasionally work from home, my dog thinks that I'm working for her.
In truth though success at home depends a lot on the job and the person. I know that at the university where my wife works, typically 'working from home' involves checking email a few times over the day.
Interaction with others can be both a help and a hinderance. The buzz can be distracting, but at the same time you do pick up a lot of the sense of what is going on from snippets of conversation or casual remarks, ad hoc thoughts, complaints ... things that never show up in conference calls or IM chat. For many jobs, this background, undirected chatter provides a lot more information than people realize. A couple of my co-workers are managing remote teams and a good deal of their day is spent on conference calls just trying to keep everyone on the same page.
...
-- FORTRAN manual for Xerox Computers --
March 27, 2017 at 7:53 am
The tools you connect with people with are not trivial, nor well thought through. In the office do you go to a lot of meetings or meet with people one on one? In the office I prefer remote meeting and in person one on one time.
My closest friend prefers emails to texts and phone calls. With another friend who I meet about once a year we have played words with friends for a few year to stay in touch.
At work getting involved with maintaining processes and documentation is a good way of staying in touch. Especially remotely. The more pings the better when you are a remote worker.
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