Downsides of Working From Home

[Ralif Redhammer]

Our cats generally only come downstairs to my office to yell at me to feed them at 4:30pm...which is still an hour before their feeding time.

Our dog is old and mellow (but also very stubborn), so she doesn't bark all that much (she's also mostly deaf, so she doesn't hear as much to bark at).

I think one of my cats has conditioned herself to the "entering meeting" chimes of a couple of different applications now. As soon as she hears them, she hops in my lap and starts headbutting my hands to pet her.

 

[Derren]

 

[Eltab]

My problems sound trivial, thanks a lot !
We had to WFH in one week. I kitbashed a jury-rigged setup to substitute for a desk, in one child's bedroom. I live in a small house (but not a capital-T capital-H Tiny House) so no spare room to convert into home office. I am looking forward to my old fits-my-arm's-length desk at work again.

I have FIVE neighbors with barky dogs who have not yet established the neighborhood canine dominance chain - top that !

 

[The Green Hermit]

I think that it's important to reach out to your coworkers, just to talk. It can be about work stuff or not. Whether it's an IM, call, or videocall, it helps. I know I need to be better about that, as it's easy to get focused on whatever I'm working on.

This. We have our required meetings, but I also have three hours of the week that are scheduled to just socialize with co-workers -- without the boss, even though our boss is pretty understanding (and family to half of the workforce).

 

[Blue]

Sorry to hear about your father, and your work-from-home. One of the biggest issues with getting work-from-home approved in the first place was a distrust that people would be actually working.

I was lucky - I'm IT and we supported all of the Americas, so we were kitted out that even if there was a blizzard, we could work remotely. Because we already had things in place (read: they wouldn't have to spend any money), we were tapped to pilot work-from-home in 2015. And because measurable productivity went up, we were allowed to keep doing it. Here's a bit of what made it work for us, but it assume white collar office work.

But it was a large adaption to get used to it, and we lucked out with our big bosses who set the expectations not only among us, but up the chain. First, we were very results oriented as opposed to hour-oriented. And those tasks were measurable. So they could see milestones getting done and didn't care if someone took 10 minutes to say Hi to their kids when they got home from school or finished something after dinner. This really critical, because otherwise there isn't a sense of things getting done to senior management. Hopefully you already project managers or KPIs with baselines of what they can reasonably expect while you are in the office.

Second, get a work instant messager. Plenty like Slack out there everyone can hit over the internet. Being able to chat with people informally is really a big thing. The equivalent of popping your head over a cube and asking a question, or chatting while getting coffee. And really call people you work with. There were times when we'd log three hour calls - 20 minutes of planning something out we were working on together, and then the rest of occasional chatting and connecting to the person, random "put our heads together" when having problems, and sometimes just companionable silence but there was someone there.

I put all ofthat in the past tense - my company has been acquired and the new company doesn't do work from home ... but I'm attached to the corporate head office in Denmark and have to work remotely with people anyhow so I've managed to keep it going. Which is good, commuting to the new office would steal about two hours from my life. And I appreciate it - there's always been the "need a few more minutes" and work late (salaried, no extra money), but going above even that now and then is more than worth it to avoid the commute time.

So I guess the advice can be summed up as: get them focused on deliverables, and make sure those flow, and get instant & informal communication set up among your peers and the people you work with.

 

[Dioltach]

I think one of my cats has conditioned herself to the "entering meeting" chimes of a couple of different applications now. As soon as she hears them, she hops in my lap and starts headbutting my hands to pet her.

I've been working from home for 17 years, and virtually all my communications are by email. So when my wife is away (she usually spends at least a month a year visiting her parents abroad) there's very little in the way of actual speech going on. So whenever I'm talking to the wife on Skype, my three cats go crazy: walking over the desk and nuzzling my face and hands. I assume they think I'm singing to them.

 

[Eltab]

We had a conference call today with a dozen(?) phone participants. You cannot tell who is speaking - important if the boss is giving instructions - because all voices sound the same when filtered through two phones. Also, no visual cues when somebody wants to speak so three or four of us would start at once.

Yay for meeting in person, even though my work team would need to use a banquet hall to properly social distance ourselves from each other, and have a cheerleader's megaphone to make ourselves heard clearly.

 

[Ryujin]

We had a conference call today with a dozen(?) phone participants. You cannot tell who is speaking - important if the boss is giving instructions - because all voices sound the same when filtered through two phones. Also, no visual cues when somebody wants to speak so three or four of us would start at once.

Yay for meeting in person, even though my work team would need to use a banquet hall to properly social distance ourselves from each other, and have a cheerleader's megaphone to make ourselves heard clearly.

Every weekday I have a 'meeting' with my manager and 14 co-workers. Most of us are on video, through Google Meet or Google Hangouts, so we've got the visual cues to avoid talking over each other (most of the time). There is, however, that one co-worker who always wants to go on a rant about things we shouldn't be supporting, who just talks over everyone. Including my manager.

 

[Blue]

We had a conference call today with a dozen(?) phone participants. You cannot tell who is speaking - important if the boss is giving instructions - because all voices sound the same when filtered through two phones. Also, no visual cues when somebody wants to speak so three or four of us would start at once.

Yay for meeting in person, even though my work team would need to use a banquet hall to properly social distance ourselves from each other, and have a cheerleader's megaphone to make ourselves heard clearly.

Part of the growing pains of WfH - you learn to have smaller meetings, and often will do a videoconference.

Zoom is cheap and good - one person with a $15/mo subscription can do unlimited 100 person meetings. We use it to play several RPGs, and we did a 44 person surprise 50th birthday party (along with word/speaking based games).

 

[BookBarbarian]

Part of the growing pains of WfH - you learn to have smaller meetings, and often will do a videoconference.

Zoom is cheap and good - one person with a $15/mo subscription can do unlimited 100 person meetings. We use it to play several RPGs, and we did a 44 person surprise 50th birthday party (along with word/speaking based games).

We have 18 people on my team and we do a call every morning. Only one person speaks at a time, everyone mutes their mic when not speaking. Everyone shuts off their camera if they are eating at their desk. You just get used to the WFH life after a while I guess.