Working from home is great… And I hate it!
“What is the speed of your Internet connection at home?” was one of the questions they asked me during an interview for my current position. “Umm… 100Mbps down and up. Why?” The why is simple—my team is fully distributed. My manager is now in Texas, two coworkers in Washington, one in Brazil, a couple in Europe, and one in India.
Working remotely, in a distributed team, seems like a dream to some, but definitely not to me. Being employed by a Fortune 1000 company, we get a ton of the totally-standard-in-tech-pretty-insane-everywhere-else benefits. Coffee, tea, snacks? Of course! Massages? Yep. Adjustable chairs and standing desks? Check! Subsidised food? You bet-ya!
You can understand my follow-up question during the interview. “Soo… Would it be possible to stay in-office?” Amazing as my office is, it gets even better when contrasted with my rental apartment. At 45m² (or ~500ft²) and being a rental, I don’t even have a proper table (rental, also known as “I will move this or next year, what’s the point?”). I do have a chair, which I mostly use for some light reading. I never really worked from home, until that week.
That week, I got sick. I woke up and felt as if a train hit my head. Nevertheless, I set off to the office, just to realize that was a mistake. I begrudgingly finished my pretty-amazing coffee, and while admitting defeat, set off home again. I needed to rest, to nap.
That day, my body forced me to just rest. The next day however, I knew better than to go to the office. I felt like I could be productive, but probably too weak still to weather the cold outside. So, working from home it is. Ugh!
I make my pretty-bad coffee (“I get great coffee at work, why spend money on great coffee at home? I drink it only in the office anyways.”), I sit in my un-ergonomic chair, and start staring into my laptop. You see, while being “extremely portable” at 14 inches, it is also a great reminder that I’m getting old, since I can barely read my terminal font, and I’m forced to zoom in on everything.
And then, around four hours into my work day, I realize something amazing. “I’m… Still working?” How is that possible? I needed to take no break, except to refil my cup. This utterly amazes me, because the only thing that forcibly interrupted my flow was the sudden urge to eat.
It quickly dawns on me how many distractions there are in the office. During my typical work day in the office I run into at least one person while making my morning coffee, and feel guilty if I don’t socialize for at least ten or twenty minutes (“why else would they give us good coffee? We have to talk to share information, right?”).
I then get to my seat just to hear a coworker next to me taking her standup from the seat. Sometimes, she’s not there, but often, her talking means I browse through email, catch up on Slack, HackerNews, and other websites.
It’s also the lights. At home, not only am I able to adjust the amount of light without considering the others; I realized fluorescent light is the devil splashing your eyes with searing water. I know, I’m too sensitive, but I have had to take painkillers for my headaches because the person sitting next to me cannot type without looking at her keyboard, and thus needs light. A lot of it. The more the better in fact.
I quickly put my hypothesis to the test—working from home sucks, but makes me productive. Next couple of days, I had to stay home because of my flu. And so, I created a routine. I’d make breakfast for my wife and me, wait until she leaves the apartment, and then just start working. And boy, I felt like I was on speed!
The number of breaks during my work day was reduced to 2–3. I could focus more, which arguably leads to better quality output. But, the most interesting change—I felt a lot less tired after working. Just as I closed my office laptop, and opened my personal laptop, I was ready to... Do more. I simply felt energized. This also led to less pain overall. No headaches after work, for example.
Working from home brought some disadvantages that I’d anticipated right from the start. My posture was pretty bad. After the third day, my back started to hurt, and I knew that with my current home-office setup, this is not sustainable.
Ergonomics was a huge problem, but not the only one. I knew I would miss some of the social interactions. Being far from a social person, it wouldn’t be a dealbreaker, but I knew that long-term homeoffice would probably have severe consequences on my psyche. Last but not least, the coffee I have home… Well, it’s shit.
It’s baffling how much companies want me in the office. They’ll do seemingly anything for it. They’ll pay for massages, food, drinks… And then cram me into a cubicle with 4 people sitting next to me, and 4 people sitting behind me, arguing about aircon in the summer, heating in the winter, and constantly battling about the lighting.
Feeling better after my flu, I still returned to the office, but I have realized how inefficient I am. I will have to experiment more with my new-found love/hate relationship with working from home. For now, I am still enjoying good coffee and bad environment in my office. After all, if my employer pays me to be inefficient, who am I to argue?
