I’ve achieved my ideal remote work setup
After asking for furniture and gears for my home office for my birthdays and Christmas for the last two years, I’ve finally achieved my ideal work setup as a full-remote software developer at Whoz.
There are two types of developers at Whoz regarding their work setup: those who want the best gears and ergonomics (like me), and the others who only work with their laptop so they are always as productive wherever they work. If you are, like me, of the first type, you will find this article interesting, so welcome to my workplace!
Computer
I work on a 16' M1 Macbook Pro provided by Whoz. Most developers work on Mac in our teams, though you can choose between Mac and Linux.
This M1 Macbook is a beast; I can run every app at the same time — back-end and front-end —, debug them in IntelliJ IDEA, and share my screen on Google Meet, with an external display plugged in.
This is a huge step up from my previous 2019 16' Macbook Pro (you know, the one with the touch bar but with a physical Esc key). My laptop was maybe defective, but this computer had big heat issues. Basically, out of the 5 activities I described above, I had to choose 2 or my computer would start its “Jet engine mode” with its fan at full speed and CPU throttling. I could not share our Whoz app on my screen with a coworker if I needed both front-end and back-end started. I could not plug in my external display while sharing my screen with the back-end started either!
The visual design of the 2019 Macbook was great, I cannot deny that, but I’m glad Apple went back from its thickness race, because after all it is a Macbook Pro, and I have work to do on that thing! Bonus point for having back an HDMI port and the magnetic charging port.
The only caveat of the M1 Macbook is some software compatibility issues, especially with some of the docker containers of our stack. We had to upgrade Neo4J and lived with connection issues to Kafka for a year. Thankfully the Kafka issue is now fixed, and a large part of software vendors are now publishing ARM-compatible versions of their products.
Anyway, at Whoz we are willing to give you the best tools to work and we avoid hampering your productivity to save a couple of hundred euros.
Screen
Whoz provides a Samsung C27F396FHU 27-inch 1080p curved monitor for developers wanting an auxiliary screen that is already comfortable and should suffice for most users. However, I wanted even more space and a slightly better resolution. What I did not want was a plane cockpit setup with a lot of screens. That’s why I decided to buy an ultra-wide 34-inch monitor, and I chose the MSI Optix MAG342CQRV which seemed to be great value for 399€.
I am pleased with this monitor, the ultra-wide allows me to work with my IDE on 2/3 of the screen and another app on the other third, usually Slack or Google Meet. On my laptop screen, I’m mostly displaying my web browser or Postman.
The characters are sharper thanks to the 3440 x 1440 resolution which is noticeable.
There is one slight annoyance: you generally cannot share your entire screen in video calls because most of your coworkers do not have such screen size and/or resolution.
Anecdotally, since I bought a second-hand GTX1080 gaming PC (the black box you can see behind the laptop in the pictures), I’ve been able to immersed myself in A Plague Tale: Requiem or Shadow of the Tomb Raider after a productive day of work, that’s the cherry on the cake of this ultrawide screen.
Furniture
First and foremost, the most important piece of furniture is… the desk! Especially a standing desk. Working mostly standing has erased the back pain I had for years. I have a classical Flexispot electric standing desk. They are one of the most famous standing desk vendors, I think you can’t go wrong with them. However, I recommend not buying the board on Flexispot, they are overpriced and too thin in my opinion. I found a wooden one at my local DIY store with perfect dimensions (1400 x 700 x 34 mm) for 60€.
I use the four programmable heights:
- One for the standing position
- One for the sitting position
- One for walking
- One for the aesthetic
The last one might seem strange, but I work in my bedroom. I know you’ll read everywhere that you should have a dedicated room to work from home, but I have a quite big bedroom (16 square meters) and I’d rather have a room fully used, night and day, than move out to a bigger and more power-consuming house solely to have a dedicated office room. So my loved one and I want my office corner to be aesthetically pleasing.
After about two hours of standing, my heels can start to feel uncomfortable. I can sit in this beautiful and comfortable sled chair to rest.
Or I can walk thanks to this machine to energize myself. I do this mostly in meetings, walking can also help to think sometimes by the way. I walk at the speed of 2 or 2.5 km/h, faster is distracting, and slower is not energizing enough for me.
I also wanted my laptop screen to be higher for ergonomics so I got this fine-looking bamboo laptop stand with two tiny but practical drawers. They are big enough to fill in pens, cables, and post-its.
Gears
This last Christmas, I received a wireless keyboard and a wireless mouse to replace my entry-level wired ones.
Keyboard
The keyboard is a Keychron K8 Pro with a Swiss FR layout. I am french but I switched from AZERTY to this QWERTZ layout a few years ago. I find Swiss FR QWERTZ better for programming while still being efficient to write in french.
Aside from having this unusual layout available, the Keychron K8 Pro is a mechanical keyboard, the first I ever use. I must say it is pleasant to type on such a keyboard, there is a better flow and fewer missed keys. I also like not having a num pad, so the mouse is nearer my right hand. I just would rather have an Fn key on the left, just like the Macbook keyboard, instead of being weirdly stuck between the right option and control keys.
I still need to get used to the position-swapping between the command and the option keys because I was using a K120 “Windows” keyboard before, binding the Win key on command. The good thing is when I’ll get used to it I’ll be more comfortable with my laptop keyboard because it is the same layout (except for that Fn key, once again).
Finally, this Bluetooth keyboard is multi-device, which means it can swap between devices with a simple key combination, very practical to switch from my office Macbook to my gaming PC.
Mouse
The mouse is an iClever MD172. I like the ergonomics, way better than my previous wired one.
A strange behavior is that my mouse pad — where there are some flamingos printed — makes this mouse glitch. I did not have any problem with the wired one. Until I find a pitch-black mouse pad, I just use it on my wooden desktop, but the wood resistance is not as satisfying as using a mouse on a mouse pad.
It is a Bluetooth multi-device mouse like the keyboard, which is great, but I can feel some lag when my keyboard, my Bluetooth earbuds, and the mouse are all connected to the Macbook. There are some interferences. Thankfully the mouse comes with a wireless dongle that is not Bluetooth, using that connection mode fixes the issue, but while the dongle is really tiny, I need a USB-C adapter for the MacBook that is three times bigger than the dongle itself! Nothing deal-breaking of course, but I was surprised.
Earbuds
My earbuds are the first thing I bought when joining Whoz and becoming a full-remote software developer, almost three years ago. And if there is one gear you should get, it really is earbuds.
Mines are the Jabra Elite Active 65t. Those are “true wireless”, meaning there is no wire even between the earbuds, like the Airpods. I suggest using those instead of a headset. Headsets are heavier, and you are not as free in your movements as you are with true wireless earbuds. Remember, I am standing at my desk and sometimes even walking.
Those earbuds are good for work, you can hear your coworkers clearly and they can hear you clearly too. Ambient sounds are filtered enough in the mic and for you. Despite their name, they are not actively filtering your surroundings, it’s a marketing trap Jabra should have avoided. The passive filtering is sufficient for my taste though. However, don’t rely on them to listen to music, they are terrible on this topic in my opinion.
They can pair to 2 devices, which allows me to use them on my phone seamlessly to listen to audiobooks or podcasts (again, no music though!).
I bought them more than two years ago so they are probably outdated by now, what’s important here is that wearing earbuds with good capacity for voice input and output is of utter importance.
Webcam
I have an additional webcam, a second-hand HD Aukey. It is worse than the Macbook’s built-in camera but it allows me to be in front of other people when I’m looking at my ultrawide screen, which I do most of the time, especially when pair programming. I configured my Google Meet to receive and send 360p videos anyway so I’m not demanding amazing webcam quality.
Software
At Whoz we are aware that full-remote work needs great online communication and collaboration tools. We are packed with Slack, Google Workspace, and the Atlassian suite.
Developers also all get a Gitlab premium account.
Finally, I won’t learn you anything, the most important piece of software you’ll need as a developer is an IDE. Good news for me and my coworkers, Whoz provides an IntelliJ Ultimate IDEA license for all developers. I don’t need to detail how great is IntelliJ, whether for our Kotlin/Groovy back-end or our Angular front-end.
If you like working from your home and being able to fine-tune your work setup to your tastes and needs, but still evolving in a huge T.E.A.M spirit, we’re hiring! For now, speaking French is required, but we are rapidly growing in international markets, so keep an eye on us for the next months if you don’t speak French, that requirement should be dropped soon.
Maybe are you already a full-remote worker yourself? What do you think about my setup? How is your different? Please leave me a comment!
