I Don’t Understand Why You Miss The Office
I thought to share my personal experience regarding remote working and alongside with it, also the reasons why I don’t really miss the office.
I don’t know what you guys think on this topic but I personally don’t agree even a bit with all those people that keep saying that they miss the office. I just don’t understand them, because my experience so far when it comes to working remote is better, nearly in every aspect of my life. So let me tell you about a few things that I am really loving about working remote.
The daily commute
I live in a beautiful council in the south from London called Surrey. I am a Java programmer and consultant and my work is often in central London, where of my clients are based. Normally on a week day, I would spend on average nearly two hours in public transport(one hour to go to the centre and another one to come back). The return home in the evenings depends on the day but I could say that each day I arrive home between 6.30 pm or 7.00 pm.
If you think that’s bad, I can tell you that this is nothing, I have friend who told me that I should consider my self fortunate, because their daily travel is at least twice as mine. So what kind of life is that where you have to spend so many hours travelling to get to a work place where all you are doing can be done over the internet. I find it just extremely absurd.
Did you see that picture above? That’s what I’ve being doing every morning on week days for the last 8 years since I live in London. That can’t be good for you.
With the decisions that many companies are making to allow their IT crews to work fully remote, this has given me two extra hours to enjoy my life. Now when I log off at 5.30 I can go for a jog, exercise a bit, watch a movie, etc … This extra time have increased the quality of my week days.
Noticeable health benefits
I don’t know how is this affecting others, I am aware that many people are experiencing anxiety and different types of mental health issues due to be locked at home working. For me, it’s being the exact opposite, I think my health has improved significantly. I will give you a bit more detail.
I used to have this kind of cough and/or phlegm since I came to the UK and I realised that this is something that many people here have. I don’t know what the reason is but I suspect it has to do with the smog.
Since I work remotely I don’t really breath the air I used to breath in the public transport nor in the streets of central London and to my surprise the cough and the phlegm have disappeared. I am convinced that it had to do with the pollution.
Also I don’t really use an alarm clock anymore. As long as I am disciplined at the time I get into bed on week days, I just wake up well rested every morning at around 8.30. I really think a good sleep is a great way to improve the overall health condition. When i was not working remotely due to the lack of time, sometimes I would go latter to bed and in the morning I would feel more tired overall.
Cheaper life
Let’s be honest, this is one of the things I love the most. Before lock down my life in London costed me just under 2000 pounds each month. During lock down, my life is costing me a little bit over 1000 pounds. Most of the reduction is due to travel costs but also food. Not just bulk buying was more economic but also eating at home is also cheaper. When I used to work in the centre many times I would buy my lunch because preparing lunch the night before was time consuming and doing meal-prep on the weekends was tedious.
I understand that maybe some people could be thinking, that yeah is logical that there’s less expenses since many leisure places are closed at the moment so logically you would spend less. But Even if we were working remotely under normal circumstances with no virus, just the amount of money that many people would save on food and transport I think would be significant.
Working practices
When it comes to work itself, I observed lot’s of interesting things. Initially I thought that it would be difficult since as an “Agile” consultant, I was always advocating for the face-to-face. In fact many times I referred my clients to the part of the agile manifesto that says this:
I thought that working remotely was going to be just madness and that nothing was going to get done, but I was completely wrong. I think I don’t exaggerate if I say that many people and I include myself(to my own surprise), are more productive and efficient when working remotely. I don’t know why that is, but looks like we are all thinking a bit more before we act and talk. I feel that now somehow there’s a greater awareness in the industry about the importance of communicating efficiently.
Believe me or not, but I worked for many companies in London as a Java software programmer/consultant in large back end distributed systems and I have observed on many occasions how teams operate in silos and lack communication channels even if they work next to each other in huge open spaces.
Agile for many companies was just a buzzword. In some companies, there’s so much inefficiency at so many levels that in many cases no value is really added to the final product. In my opinion, the biggest culprit for those inefficiencies was the lack of ability to communicate efficiently.
I don’t know if is out of fear or out of necessity but people now are forced to learn how to communicate and collaborate. It is surprising but now I practice pair-programming regularly(remotely of course), I interact on daily basis with Business analysts and Quality Assurance engineers via video conference. It feels like everyone all of the sudden became hyper-communicative and hyper-cooperative.
You know what? This maybe sounds crazy but it feels that the industry is embracing more the “Agile philosophy” now that when we were all working on site. Look! These are just my observations, I know some things maybe don’t seem logical but, this is what I am experiencing.
I will tell you also another thing, maybe a bit inappropriate but a friend of mine I was talking to about this, said he agreed with me and that he strongly believes that the reason many software companies are becoming more efficient in the last few months, is because they fired lot’s of middle management which was making internal communication harder. Note, that’s not what I said, my friend said it. Nevertheless an interesting point.
Office socials
Fine, many people say that they miss office socials and that office socials are very important. I agree with that, I think office socials are an important team-building activity. Sometimes companies do events such as field trips, dinners, etc … with the aim to reinforce the relationships among the employees. But have you notice that in business socials other than the ones that are organised by the companies(e.g lunch time, tea-breaks, after work drinks, leaving drinks …), the people in some occasions tend to be segregated by teams and ranks? Let me elaborate a bit on this.
I have observed in many companies that: managers, team-leads, DBA’s, QA’s, etc. Tend to go for lunch, tea-breaks and even drinks after work in different groups. Even if a company claims to be a “flat organisation”, yet there’s a feeling that ranks somehow exist. I think when I perceive this, it is a sign that somehow a form of silo still exists within the organisation.
In IT terminology the silo effect happens when separate teams within an organisation don’t communicate effectively with each other
Fair enough, friendships and sympathy cannot be forced, they are a natural occurring phenomena in the workplace but sometimes how the communication channels within the organisation are set, will facilitate the work relationships an even future friendships among colleagues.
A very interesting effect seems to be happening while we work remotely. I think when we work remotely the perception of hierarchy fades and also does the perception of authority. And I think that’s a very positive thing. Of course, maybe I am wrong, this is just an impression I have, not every company is the same. But I am starting to think that remote programmers are more likely to challenge Architects, Managers, Team-Leaders and others than if they were face to face.
Conclusion
To conclude this article, I just want to re-iterate that all what I said are just my personal experiences and observations. I completely understand that everyone's experience is probably different. Please share with me your views on remote working in the comments section, I will be very curious to read about them. Even if you don’t currently work remotely, please do share your opinion, it is interesting to see what are all the views out there.
One last thing: I want to end this article just by expressing my gratitude to all the key workers that have risked their lives to allow another few of us to comfortably work remotely. Sometimes I read the media and many people insist that the lock-down is an attack to their individual liberties. I personally don’t agree with that view. I felt happy when the UK finally decided to lock-down. Even on lock down, sadly a very large amount of the population don’t have the luxury of working from home like we do: Nurses, doctors, scientists, warehouse employees, drivers, farmers, supermarket staff and many others … I think we should be thankful to them that we will survive the pandemic.
Thank you to all the brave key-workers that are risking their lives in the fight against Covid-19 and condolences to all those how have lost a loved one during this crisis.
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