Phoning it in since 2008 - successes and failures working from home

Worked for 6 different companies, wrote 3 patents, published 2 papers, and started (then sold) 1 machine learning startup — all from home.

The last time I worked in an office was late 2008 after a startup I was working for closed its office after an acquisition by a company based elsewhere. There were a few days of packing boxes and organizing equipment (we were a hardware startup), and divvying up the ethernet cables (for some reason) amongst all the employees. On the last day in the office I drove my car into the city, paid for parking across the street, said good bye to the guy who operated the elevator (he was awesome), loaded some ethernet cables into my trunk, and headed off to Queens via the 59th street bridge, never to return.

I cannot believe how much has happened since that day. Spoiler alert, it was a bunch of stuff. I’m going to share with you how I learned to turn working from home into an advantage, so you too can phone it in and get lots of ethernet cables (what?).

Know The Tools.

My first meeting from my new remote office (my living room) was a failure. I don’t even remember the crappy software used to conduct the meeting, but what I do remember is not realizing my camera was on when joining the conference. I was presenting my…