This pretty much says it all, I think: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=co_DNpTMKXk -- Leigh

-----Original Message----- From: Keegan Holley [mailto:keegan.holley@sungard.com] Sent: 04 December 2011 18:50 To: Jay Ashworth Cc: NANOG Subject: Re: On Working Remotely

Maybe I have a different personality, but I find it much easier to work from home (provided home is empty). I think "networking" from home, which I do periodically during the week is different from coding from home which I do on the weekends. It does take some getting used to. I find I'm much more productive from home. (again as long as home is empty) I spend less time talking about sports (professional, college and little league) TV, the opposite sex, hunting... etc. etc. I also tend to make healthier choices since the coffee and cigarettes aren't free and no one invites me to order pizza for lunch when I'm at home. To each his own though.

2011/12/4 Jay Ashworth <jra@baylink.com>

...

Some more thoughts on telecommuting, from the guy who built Stack Overflow.

http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2010/05/on-working-remotely.html

Cheers, -- jra -- Jay R. Ashworth Baylink jra@baylink.com Designer The Things I Think RFC 2100 Ashworth & Associates http://baylink.pitas.com 2000 Land Rover DII St Petersburg FL USA http://photo.imageinc.us +1 727 647 1274

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What the heck... I've been working on a project for the last three years at home and mostly by myself. It has been one of the more productive times of my life codingwise precisely because I am at home and can juggle life's responsibilities as needed all without really having one. When you go into the office day-in day-out you have artificial bounds of work/life -- even though we all know they're blurry these days. I don't know... I really don't relish those bounds all that much anymore because inspirations hit when they do, not when you happen to be in the office (like, oh say, after the morning shower). The downside is not having somebody to bounce ideas off of, even if it's mostly a soliloquy. I've worked around that by having a weekly meeting with others working on the project which works ok, but it's not always adequate. On the other hand given that my project is related to skiing, the lift conversations are terrifyingly geeky for the poor souls riding with us :) MIke On 12/05/2011 07:09 AM, David Radcliffe wrote:

Same here. I like isolation just fine and work much more productively and usually for a longer time at home. I don't have kids and my wife has learned when she is home if I say I will be working, don't bother me.

It actually works quite well. I like socializing but not when my mind is on work. I can code very effectively for hours without breaking because I get in the zone easily at home.

I do have to say to anyone planning to work from home, make sure you have a proper work space. I have a computer room. It contains a dozen systems, electronics gear and parts (I used to have time for that hobby), and comfortable and ergonomic work spaces. There is no TV. No reason for one because this is the work room. The mind set should be "I am now in the work room, so I am at work." Really works for me.

On Sunday, December 04, 2011 01:46:51 PM Keegan Holley wrote:

...

Maybe I have a different personality, but I find it much easier to work from home (provided home is empty). I think "networking" from home, which I do periodically during the week is different from coding from home which I do on the weekends. It does take some getting used to. I find I'm much more productive from home. (again as long as home is empty) I spend less time talking about sports (professional, college and little league) TV, the opposite sex, hunting... etc. etc. I also tend to make healthier choices since the coffee and cigarettes aren't free and no one invites me to order pizza for lunch when I'm at home. To each his own though.

2011/12/4 Jay Ashworth<jra@baylink.com>

...

Some more thoughts on telecommuting, from the guy who built Stack Overflow.

http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2010/05/on-working-remotely.html

Cheers, -- jra -- Jay R. Ashworth Baylink jra@baylink.com Designer The Things I Think RFC 2100 Ashworth& Associates http://baylink.pitas.com 2000 Land Rover DII St Petersburg FL USA http://photo.imageinc.us +1 727 647 1274

Yes, it is easier (I think) if you have the space to dedicate a work room. My game system is in my computer room but I only game twice a week and only with my friends. I have no doubt I might be diagnosed with a little OCD (or something) but Q: Game? A: It's not Wednesday night. Q: But you could run the game now? A: Yes. Q: But? A: It's not Wednesday. I could force myself but the universe would feel odd. I guess it's really about the mindset. I suspect I would still work effectively in a smaller, non-dedicated workspace. I have before in hotel rooms. Not at my mother's house. She doesn't get "Gee, mom, I need to focus for a while." Obviously, there is no one solution for everyone but I hope to find a way (with current employer, but most likely will have to change employers) for me to work from home. Part of my goal is actually to find someone who will more deeply use my talents. As you say, you can find yourself rolling out of bed and dropping into work without eating or showering. I have often done this and am quite comfortable with it. On Monday, December 05, 2011 10:35:27 AM Sean Harlow wrote:

I can not agree with this more. I have been working from home for two years now and unfortunately live in a small apartment where I do not have a dedicated space to assign for "work". My "workstation" is also my gaming machine and my servers sit right next to my game consoles. It's impossible to get entirely in to a work mindset when your bed is literally two feet from where you sit. This one's hard to solve when you don't have the space, I can certainly say there's a reason I have the most time put in to Skyrim out of all of my friends.

Another thing you might not think about is how much it can interfere with anything you consider part of a morning routine. Where you used to get up at 8, shower, eat breakfast, get dressed, etc. before heading in to start work at 9 it doesn't take long before you realize you can instead wake up at 8:59, put on whatever pants might be within arm's reach, and sit down at your chair. Next thing you know it's 6 PM and you haven't eaten or showered yet. I've started setting an alarm and trying to work out in the morning to counter this and it works pretty well, but it took some effort.

tl;dr version: Working in an office provides structure that you may depend on without realizing it. Be prepared to replicate as much of that structure as needed to remain productive and not turn in to a slob. ---------- Sean Harlow sean@seanharlow.info

-- David Radcliffe Network Engineer/Linux Specialist david@davidradcliffe.org www.davidradcliffe.org Nothing ever gets solved better with panic. If you do not know the answer, it is probably "42."

David Radcliffe <david@davidradcliffe.org> wrote:

I do have to say to anyone planning to work from home, make sure you have a proper work space.

For whatever it's worth: I have been working from home for the last 3.5 years. I live in Manhattan in a one-bedroom with a 4 year and now a 2 months old daughter, meaning I work on my laptop in the middle of the livingroom with all my life around me. I context-switch a lot; I put down the laptop to read my daughters a story or play for a few minutes, I go shopping, cook etc. But: when I go to visit the office (about once a quarter or so), I wonder how on earth my colleagues get any work done. They are constantly interrupted, asked to have coffee, lunch, breakfast, a snack, go for a walk and just chew the fat. Yes, I work a lot at night and on the weekends. That is the one thing that people who do not work from home are not aware of: you have no more distinction between "home" and "office", which usually means that when I'm home, I'm working. I could see how having a "home office" with a closed door could create this impression of "going to the office" and "coming home", but I don't find it either desirable nor (in Manhattan) practical. -Jan

Reading this thread, is encouraging to me. My whole team are remote workers and for myself, I've asked to maintain a cube in a nearby POP. I have small ones at home who don't understand why dad can't be as available to them as they wish. For me, I can't focus well with these kind of distractions especially if I'm on a call or can't drop what I'm doing, but I admire those who can. Also, at this point, I don't have a dedicated "office" area at home and find myself huddled over a work bench in the garage next to my server rack. Not the most ergo setting. That said, unlike my co-workers, I don't get a home office stipend, I spend more in gas and my days are longer when I add the commute time into the mix. Ideally, I would like to transition to working more at home. I also perceive it's going to take some time for me to change the paradigm of 9-5, (6-4) and transition to a model where I can work the same amount of hours and be just as productive by logging in these hours in non-contiguous chunks. Having the ability to "context-switch" as Jan has labeled it, I believe is key here. This is a helpful thread, thanks you all for sharing. -b On Mon, Dec 5, 2011 at 7:40 AM, Jan Schaumann <jschauma@netmeister.org> wrote:

David Radcliffe <david@davidradcliffe.org> wrote:

...

I do have to say to anyone planning to work from home, make sure you have a proper work space.

For whatever it's worth:

I have been working from home for the last 3.5 years.  I live in Manhattan in a one-bedroom with a 4 year and now a 2 months old daughter, meaning I work on my laptop in the middle of the livingroom with all my life around me.

I context-switch a lot; I put down the laptop to read my daughters a story or play for a few minutes, I go shopping, cook etc.  But: when I go to visit the office (about once a quarter or so), I wonder how on earth my colleagues get any work done.  They are constantly interrupted, asked to have coffee, lunch, breakfast, a snack, go for a walk and just chew the fat.

Yes, I work a lot at night and on the weekends.  That is the one thing that people who do not work from home are not aware of: you have no more distinction between "home" and "office", which usually means that when I'm home, I'm working.

I could see how having a "home office" with a closed door could create this impression of "going to the office" and "coming home", but I don't find it either desirable nor (in Manhattan) practical.

-Jan

-- Bill Blackford Network Engineer Logged into reality and abusing my sudo privileges.....

the problem w/ working from home is that not everyone appreciates "Those Darned Accordians" or "Insane Clown Posse" or "Donny and Marie Osmand" at 0330 local cranked up to 11... Much easier to pull off in a remote, mostly empty office building. And no one complains about my singing off key. /bill

On 12/5/2011 11:00 AM, David Radcliffe wrote:

I know many people who can work as you and we all adjust to our setting. I just also know people who gravitate to their distractions and need the wall to define work. It's best for me even though I will work as effectively at midnight as in the middle of the day.

I have to say I am impressed. Working with a 4 year old and 2 month old around. Wow.

Being a forced office worker, I can honestly say that I still get more done at home at night than I do during the day at the office. I'm most productive when I have scheduled maintenance, as I'm permitted to sleep in, which puts me working during my comfortable time frames (I hate getting up early). When I was younger, I did my best work at the applebee's bar. Even had my own brass plate on the bar. C++ and tequila worked well together. For the record, my home schooling son does more work late at night as well. Jack

On Mon, 5 Dec 2011, David Radcliffe wrote:

I do have to say to anyone planning to work from home, make sure you have a proper work space. I have a computer room. It contains a dozen systems, electronics gear and parts (I used to have time for that hobby), and comfortable and ergonomic work spaces. There is no TV. No reason for one because this is the work room. The mind set should be "I am now in the work room, so I am at work." Really works for me.

That's one of the reasons that I don't work from home very much at this point - I don't have a proper office, however I'm hoping to fix that some time next year. The other reasons I don't work from home very much are that my job still has a lot of hands-on responsibilities (which I don't mind - pulling cable or racking equipment is a nice break from staring at a screen for long periods of time), and, unfortunately, upper managements' perceptions of things like teleworking and flex/comp time have not caught up with the times :( jms