I’ve never had a WFH job and I generally don’t think I’d personally want/be successful with one. My sister is fully remote and she actually hates it, but I think its more the job she doesn’t like than the WFH aspect. She says its lonely and isolating on top of disliking her daily tasks. I’m not anti WFH for others at all, to absolutely clear.
There are a multitude of reason why I like it.
The most important is that I am not wasting an hour and change commuting. I don’t need to worry about train schedules. Commuting by car would have been worse: I’d spend hundreds of euros on gas and tolls, never mind parking. I also don’t have a bunch of dead time I cannot really take advantage of. Sure, some of it I could use to read in public transport, or listen to podcasts, but there is a limit. I am prone to motion sickness, so there are limits to when I can do it and for how long. And during peak hours? The experience of getting on a train is, sometimes, not great. Too many people, too hot. As much as I love public mass transport, the experience during peak hours is miserable.
The other thing about WFH, in my current setup, is that… I can just step away? I have gone to a friends house to give them and/or deliver something during work hours because I just have enough time. I have driven parents for appointments because it was quick enough, or I could just take my work laptop with me and work from the car. I have worked from another country entirely, and the biggest difference was the timezone. And if I really want to, I can visit a teammate and work from his house instead!
There are few other reasons why work from home is great, though they are not that important in the grand scheme of things. In the places I have worked, we have had open spaces. This means noise. Others might need to be on a call, or you might need to be on a call. It means that multiple people in the same call is now an exercise in mute discipline so you don’t distract others hearing themselves through your microphone. It also means I cannot just pace around while on a chat, which I sometimes do thanks to the wireless headphones I invested in. Actually, it means I need to use my headphones much more because if I want music, I need them on, whereas at home I can just use speakers instead?
We do get togethers once a month, though I don’t go to all of them. We also are relatively liberal with audio chats for not so serious subjects. I don’t feel lonely for two reasons: I just deal well with calls and other such ways of interacting with people; and I can use the extra time I don’t commute to actually go out with people I like after work.
Yes. Im way more efficient at home. Less offfice bullshit.
No commute or shitty weather.
Roll out of bed and online in seconds, just open the laptop lid, leave it in suspend.
My food and can cook a proper meal.
Also can throw on a wash or whatever during the day.
Depends if you’re an introvert or an extrovert. As an introvert I only see benefits; no commute, a close bathroom at all times, a kitchen with food, not needing to hear annoying coworkers except during meetings etc. If you’re an extrovert then you might enjoy hearing your coworkers all day I guess?
Or if you have a toxic household you need to escape from.
+1 on the bathroom. Few things suck more than having a morning coffee shit at the office, wiping with that ridiculous tissue paper that disintegrates if you get it near water, and then walking around all day with an air of confidence even though you know there is no way you got it all.
Protip for office dwellers: keep a single pack Dude Wipe or similar at the office so you can poop without it being a biological hazard. Just don’t forget it. Asking a random coworker to grab one out of your desk is awkward.
Your own toilet and good toilet paper instead of the cheapest waxy one-ply 🙏 your own control over the AC/heat instead of freezing/sweating 🙏 never having to smell someone heating up fish in the microwave 🙏
I’m 100% remote and love it
There’s no bidet at work
I absolutely prefer working from home.
I’m a programmer; my ability to work is heavily dependent on my ability to focus and think.
At home:
- I decide how quiet it is
- I decide when to look at or even think about interruptions from email or Slack
- I have a nice chair, a fancy ass keyboard and expensive mouse
- I also have a nice 27" monitor and a 34" ultrawide
- I decide when (or if) to eat lunch
- If I am eating lunch I have my own fridge, pantry, and numerous restaurants in a short walking distance.
My office, by comparison:
- I cannot control the volume of the radio or what it plays
- I cannot stop people from saying “Hey BozeKnoflook, what…” and just fucking ruining my last two hours of condensed thought and making me waste time getting back into my prior line of thought just to resume my previous state.
- The chair is acceptable, but I fucking loathe typing on a laptop keyboard
- The office only offers a 23" monitor to hook my laptop up to
- Everybody goes to eat in the building’s cafeteria at noon, because that is when lunch is served. There are no restaurants or food spots in a short walking distance that are a viable option. I can only eat what the cafeteria offers (and while okay, it’s not great food).
Throw in the time it takes to commute back and forth and… why the hell would I want to work in the office? Sure, throw an occasional event (quarterly meetings, occasional dinner parties of the various teams, whatever) to build personal relations but I am easily far, far less productive in the office than at home.
