Work From Home

I can finally lay out some of the pros and cons of working from home as a remote worker. To be honest, working from home is an anomaly in my career. The only reason I have this privilege now stems from the Pandemic of 2020. Before this latest stint, I was 100% in the office, even when working on remote teams, with remote coworkers and remote bosses. When the initial decision for us to work from home was announced, I expected it to only last two weeks. That’s extended to four years.

Since I’ve worked from home I’ve made very little changes to my daily routine. I expected myself to go back on premise at some point and I didn’t want to set up a new pattern that I would have to unwind again. I didn’t take the work in Thailand/live in a van in a National Forest route. I’ve never done a “day at the pool” or “working from the back porch” either. I am a creature of routine, and doing my work in the same spot at the same time is most comfortable to me and reduces complexity. Besides, I’m not trying to change the routines of my family’s either. In fact, I never even took my youngest sons out of daycare. I  know that is popular with some working parents, but I didn’t think I could take care of them and work. I was also afraid I’d lose their daycare spot in case I ever needed to go into an office. Now they are in school so that’s not a concern anymore.

Overall, I like my setup here in my home office as it facilitates my work flow. I have the pleasure of utilizing four monitors, two that are stacked, one that is vertical, and another to the side. I also have a premium keyboard and mouse and a top of the line office chair from Secret Lab. Although I surrendered my original home office to my son so he could enjoy his own space, I was able to move my setup to the basement. Eventually I will install another formal office here so I can go back to having my own space.

One of the arguments in favor of working from home relates to productivity. Am I more productive? I’m not entirely sure. For one, I was fairly productive in the office and I transferred those same skills of time management, organization, and prioritization that I utilized before to home. One behavior I’ve greatly reduced is context switching. I deeply dislike context switching, aka multi-tasking, which is probably the most misunderstood term in business in my opinion. When people say multi-tasking, they really mean prioritization, not actually swapping your attention around. There is a significant cost in productivity to multi-tasking and I try to minimize it as much as I can. I recommend everyone to improve their approach to work in this way. You’ll get more done and it will be of higher quality, with a reduction in rework. For home office worker, one of the great improvements in distraction reduction is probably related to being around people. I do not have anything visual to distract me, like someone in a red sweater walking past my desk, or anything auditory either, like a deliveryman bringing in that day’s UPS deliveries. You don’t notice all of the commotion around you until you are in a space where there is nobody around you.

What about other changes in my day to day? One enormous difference is my reduction in compartmentalization. In the office, there is a work version of myself and there is a home version of myself. Most people do this, or at least those who try to exhibit an act of professionalism. I personally don’t like an enormous difference between my two selves because I try to live authentically,  and I am sometimes uncomfortable around those who really turn on that “other self,” as if they’re hiding something. But to no longer digress, once I turned the key in my vehicle to start my commute, that was the end of work thoughts and my work personality for the rest of the day. Now, there is no compartmentalization in what I do. I think about work problems all the time, in the mornings, evenings, whenever. It’s nice to solve a really sticky issue and be able to hop onto my machine and fix it. Of course, I was assigned a laptop when I commuted, but that meant getting it out of the bag (if I brought it home), firing it up, logging onto a VPN, waiting for it to boot, opening all of my programs, and then doing it. Now, everything on my VDI runs all the time and is ready to go. Some people have differing opinions on it, that it might lead to burnout, but I think a lot of us want a seamless approach to the two and we just want to be good at our jobs.

If there is one pickup in productivity, it is that I never miss work and I’m never late. Not that I missed work much when I commuted (I loathed to make that phone call into the boss), but I’ve not missed a day of work in four years and counting. I can work sick and it’s OK. I can still stay on track by taking a nap at lunch if need be if I am really feeling it, and I’m near my own restroom if it’s something gastro related. Tardiness was another infraction that’s gone away on my part. I used to commute through one of the most congested traffic corridors in the United States (super fail on Eisenhower’s administration for planning to squeeze together multiple interstates to cross one three lane bridge over the Ohio River). I made it to work on time most days as long as there was not a traffic accident, but getting home on time was a total crap shoot. Since working from home my evenings freed up and they are more predictable. Probably the biggest winner of this is my family. I get to see them way more than I ever saw my parents during the work week growing up, and summers are great. I come up stairs and have lunch with them and see how their day is going when they are off school. If they are sick they can stay home and my wife and I don’t have to panic about who is going to call off that day because they have a fever. Working from home is excellent for working parents. It’s probable that more of it might affect the decisions of young people especially in having children.

So what about the cons? I’m going to put it out there, work from home is not for everyone. Some people just need to be in an office and need that structure, they are just not able to self impose it. The biggest con though is something I don’t think anyone is thinking about and that is the level of competition out there for work from home jobs. In my opinion, if I interview for a position that is local, I might be in the top five of candidates in my region who do what I do and are looking for work at that moment. For remote jobs, I may not be in the top 1000. If your work can be done anywhere, it can be done anywhere in the world. I know there is a vicious competition for the remaining work from home roles, especially for those who moved away from urban centers who are now getting called back in. I suspect for a lot of us our next transition will be back in the office, at least in a hybrid role.