There comes a time eventually in every software developer's life to make a choice. To work from home, or to work from the office. Why not both? Let...
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Working from home gives people the most flexibility and in my experience your work rate is significantly higher. There are no office shenanigans or distractions. And you wont drain your energy from commuting to and from work.
Usually when I go to work, we spend at least an hour just chatting before actually getting a single thing done.
Most of the time, I do a lot more work at home!
I am a freelancer so I always had home office. My friends prefer actual office. We shared notes on this topic a lot of time.
Pros:
Cons:
Me as a freelancer : -
I have a proper home office, with table and chair, dual monitor, no bed, sound absorbing boards. Since I work and play on the same system. I always work fully dressed including shoes and socks. Only time I sit on my system in pajamas is when I play. I have a good communication with my family and they respect my office hours. If something is unavoidable, They always inform me at breakfast, allowing me to adjust my timings with people I work with.
But I haven't made any new friends, connections, network, since college. I have always been introvert, and home office has not helped improve my personality flaws regarding this.
My friend as office person : -
He got health issues within first 3 months of lockdown. He got seduced by concept of working from bed in his pajamas. He worked anytime he wanted, inadvertently working over 12 hrs without overtime pay. He missed his deadline for the first time in his career because he got distracted by IPL(cricket). Once during urgent conference, he forgot about his underwear drying in his messy rooms. When it was over, he got call from HR regarding display of dirty underwear and some posters visible in his background. No matter how much he informs his parents about his office hours, there is always some form of interference. Sometimes its to go out to buy vegetables, sometimes its help to get something from high shelf, sometimes its his mom on a phone call from relatives wanting him to say hi to them. He don't say no, and isn't strict about it. But he always complain about it to me over beers. He hates working from home.
But since he had an office job, he have a good numbers of friends, contacts, social and networking opportunities.
His office has started from this month, he was excited to go there and see new faces other than his family members. Interact with new recruits and socialize with old ones, but this time, his travel time of 2.5 hrs in hot Indian summer (its 35 deg C at 9:45am) is noticeable to him. Added with rising cost of fuel in India, and no pay increase or bonuses, despite his company making record profits, He is now conflicted. He can't work properly from home, but he is hating his office. I on the other hand is jealous of his social life and professional circles.
I really get the two sides of the coin.
One thing I want to address is that most of the time, socialization in the office is not equal of making friends. You can have incredible, funny and amazing time together, but does it lead to deep, strong friendship and connection? Sometimes yes, but mostly no!
We, people are social creatures and we need some kind of engagement - some require less, some more.
I am also planning to go fully freelancing at some point and I hope it goes well.
Like everything, I think it depends on a lot of variables. For me, if I live close to the office and/or getting there isn't a big challenge, I like the idea of having a few days a month working from the office to have face-to-face conversations and get closer to others. However, I also love the privacy I have working remotely and the ability to create my schedule based not only on the company's needs, but mine as well.
When I go to the office and want to concentrate and fully "separate " myself from other and get a little bit of "privacy" - I go to a remote desk, put my headphones and just ignore people until I get my job done.
As far as I know - headphones on are the international sign of "don't bother me".
I agree that real privacy just can't be achieved at the office!
Clean desk and the absence of distraction make a lot of difference. Then, the lighting and soundproofing have to right as well, there need to be space for some stretch time away from the desk. You also need good neighbors around you and by "good neighbors" I mean neighbors you don't even know they are around you. All this described an office. Likeminded professionals also minding their own business, fully understanding the necessity of absence of outside stimuli in performing high-grade work. Home is a very different thing. Home is where you rarely get that absence of stimuli.
What I saw during the pandemic when professionals that had offices were forced to work from home is that single people that lived alone transitioned into the new requirement the easiest. Those that had families at home had it extra difficult to adjust to the new requirement because schools during the global lockdown were also closed. So children were at home too, and of course parents had to be with their children first.
Well said, Dimitar! I have been working 100% remote since the beginning of the pandemic, and I find this awesome. Heavy traffic, high gas prices, as well as open work spaces can strongly impact productivity and motivation. As a recruiter I advocate the fully remote working model to stakeholders, because I see people massively prefer to work from home.
Savvina Drougouti
IT Recruiter & Project Manager
👉 Follow and connect with me on LinkedIn for future open remote positions and fresh career content.
I am glad to find out that there are recruiters who are very open to this!
Usually remote work is considered, for most companies, a "bonus" and while you can work fully remote all the time.. people at the company look at you like you are "pretending" to work at home..
I prefer the hybrid model, but if a person prefer 100% fully remote, so be it!
Connection send!
Currently back in the office after being 95% WFH for a long time. We are full hybrid, but with talk of moving the office, so it's barely set up with the expectation that everyone will be home. Now I can't plug into an external monitor. Damn Mac adaptors.
My positive is from having Covid being able to separate but still work. But the tools are still a long way for code pairing and for me it would be an issue long term because of the senior dev using a different ide and not use to doing it in vscode and sharing the server isn’t quite there yet.
It’s been a eye opener and has been less distracting as I’m a extrovert. But working in the office especially in a incubator has benefits in certain areas (unfortunately not in dev mentorship here yet)
If final outcome we are looking for is "productivity" then there should be no debate in whether wfh should be allowed or not.
Bcoz we all know that in the end all that matters is "Has the work been done ?".
then it also comes to personal preferences of employee.
The only time when employer should have say in this matter is "if productivity is going down".
As for juniors for taking help from seniors there are so many tools around that proves even more beneficial than taking help in person.
Add few images :)
I will keep it in mind for future articles.
Thanks for the feedback!