Ask Lemmy

A little. I like 1 or 2 days at home. I tried total WFH and I got very lonely. I am an extrovert, so being in an office fits me.

However my current role is 100% in office. I also don't like that. I don't have the flexibility to schedule people to work on my house, it's expensive to commute, I miss my dog.

I'd love a hybrid 2/3 schedule.

Depends on how busy I am. If I'm just sitting around waiting to hear from people or deal with shit as it occurs. Yea WFH is nice because I have more shit to occupy my downtime. If I'm busy and need to focus it sucks ass. Also it's nice to interact with the coworkers I actually like in person and I think it makes us get along a lot better and work more effectively. I don't know how many of my coworkers would agree though. All of them except one barely come into the office. It's just my opinion though I wouldn't try to force them in more.

I've been fully remote for 12 years. I've had two jobs during that time and moved five times over three countries.

I'm glad I got into my industry on-site. But I've come to realize that I hate cities. I hate commutes. I'd rather take a pay cut and live somewhere cheap.

My wife works from home, too. We have two dogs. We do our meetings, have time for focused work and grab lunch together.

My previous job was definitely not lonely or isolating. I was the go-to-guy for everything, so people video calling all day long. My current job gives me space to get shit done. I've got two days a week blocked off for just deep code mode. No meetings.

If you don't like the job on-site, then you're not going to like it remote. You've got to do something that feels rewarding.

It is lonely and isolating. Especially after my divorce.

Idk. I really don't.

I'd be honest. I'd personally love a dedicated WFH day(s) it's truly the best of both worlds

Yes, I regain 3 hours of my day that would normally be wasted that I don't get paid for.

I need the home-work separation, or both suffer. I constantly get distracted from work with home stuff, and can't be fully present with family at home because I'm thinking about work.

I absolutely prefer working from home.

I'm a programmer; my ability to work is heavily dependent on my ability to focus and think.

At home:

• I decide how quiet it is
• I decide when to look at or even think about interruptions from email or Slack
• I have a nice chair, a fancy ass keyboard and expensive mouse
• I also have a nice 27" monitor and a 34" ultrawide
• I decide when (or if) to eat lunch
• If I am eating lunch I have my own fridge, pantry, and numerous restaurants in a short walking distance.

My office, by comparison:

• I cannot control the volume of the radio or what it plays
• I cannot stop people from saying "Hey BozeKnoflook, what..." and just fucking ruining my last two hours of condensed thought and making me waste time getting back into my prior line of thought just to resume my previous state.
• The chair is acceptable, but I fucking loathe typing on a laptop keyboard
• The office only offers a 23" monitor to hook my laptop up to
• Everybody goes to eat in the building's cafeteria at noon, because that is when lunch is served. There are no restaurants or food spots in a short walking distance that are a viable option. I can only eat what the cafeteria offers (and while okay, it's not great food).

Throw in the time it takes to commute back and forth and... why the hell would I want to work in the office? Sure, throw an occasional event (quarterly meetings, occasional dinner parties of the various teams, whatever) to build personal relations but I am easily far, far less productive in the office than at home.

I'm liking it, in moderation. Just rolling out of bed, turning on my computer and making coffee on company time right away is very time efficient. It's also nice that I can work in peace and ignore coworkers whenever I need to.

The downside is that it's pretty annoying to collaborate on things, especially if it's with more than one person at a time. Gotta schedule a meeting, even if in person it would just be a thing of walking over and talking to them for 5mins.

My ideal mix is 4 days wfh : 1 day in-office. I get all the talking out of the way on that one day (plus it's enough socialization for the whole week) and the rest I just exist in peace.

On ocassion yes.
But as you said it feels kinda lonely.
And I get really easily distracted. Last time I had a major side quest I did instead of doing my actual job.

Edit: And I have no office. I value my mental sanity by segregating my home/living space from my working place.

No, not really.

I have quite different desk setups and it just feels strange working on my home setup. It's fine for the odd weekend fix under an hour, but for proper work I'd rather go to the office. Also less distractions (cats) in the office.

Even during covid I was pretty much at the office every day. Someone had to be there to receive mail and such, so I volunteered.

I dream of being able to WFH. But I am just a high school graduate. The only kind of job I really could get that would allow for remote work is certain aspects of IT, reception/call service, or sales. And I don't wanna do sales. It's not that I can't do other jobs, I just very likely won't even get an interview when I have no degree in anything.

It's alright.

I'm glad I can take my laptop and essentially work anywhere with a power outlet and an internet connection.

Despite socializing a lot when I was working at the office, I pretty much immediately loved working from home after the initial 3 months. I'd gone back in temporarily a couple of times for a few reasons, and the whole environment was... Bad.

I run really hot in general, so being able to control my AC was great, since I swear the office was on 74 with about a thousand bodies worth of heat in a comparatively small space. To emphasize: I tend to open a window when it's anywhere between 0-50F (-17 to 10C) outside.

Everyone had on different kinds of perfume, which just blended into this awful smell on top of whatever cleaning chemicals they used. Having 30+ people talking within earshot made it hard to focus on anything. I could go on. I didn't realize how much I hated it until I started working from home, and it was so much better.

I love it because I bought everything I need to feel good in my office : a dock to switch easily between work and personal computers, a standup desk, many things to reduce back, neck and shoulder pain too. I have a wall painted that I can look at when I need to have a break. I don't have transport, so I wake up 15mn before work starts. There is no noise. When I feel I can work less without feeling tracked : as long as I get my work done in time, there's no issue. I can take breaks to do some house-related tasks (tho I don't take breaks lately, but I could do it).

I could not go back to any job requiring me to go to the office.

80% wfh, 1 day at the office. I'd prefer 100% wfh, I just cannot deal with these open plan offices and sales people not taking their calls into a booth, or having the room pling-plong from whatsapp notifications. Drives me up the wall, even with my NC headphones on.

I never really hated my job or anything, and before COVID we even had an option to work from home one day a week, but I never bothered with it. But when I went to working from home full time, my quality of life improved significantly. Just driving to work used to be the most stressful part of my day, and eliminating that makes me so much happier. Not having to constantly "look busy" is also huge. As long as I get my work done my boss is happy. I also used to have bad neck and back pain which went away when I started work from home. Even though we have supposedly "ergonomic" setups at work, I guess something about it wasn't working for my body. I love working from home so much now that I would more readily accept a pay cut than to have to go back to the office.

Yes: I don't have to waste time on the commute, and get to spend more time with family

No: When at the office, I am more easily focused; with WFH, it takes some effort. Commute means I get some walking "exercise" in (living in a walkable EU city). Being in the office is somewhat better for collaboration with colleagues.

It's for sure not all "rainbows and sunshines", but in the end, I by far prefer to save the commute time and invest it into other aspects of life.

I work remote 100%. All the replies cover a lot of things that I love about it already. One important thing that I think helps to WFH is to make the spot you work, devoted only to work. I have a small desk set up that I use for work. When I’m done I’m never at the desk again until I’m working again. I think there’s a negative effect if you make your workspace also your play space.

Been 100% WFH for 4ish years now, absolutely do not want to go back. It's no different than working in the office during covid really, and this way I don't have a commute longer than it takes me to walk up a flight of stairs

I thought I'd hate working from home, it wasn't too bad. Then they made us hybrid, I thought oh no, worst of both worlds, it wasn't that bad either. I went back to the office full time because I don't have a home office and wanted to reclaim that space.

It's pretty much the same job but teams meetings suck even more than in person meetings, and training new people too, worse.

What I do not like is a commute. I live about one mile from work so don't even have to drive most days, if it was farther the calculation would be different.

My family loved me working from home because I did more of the cooking and housework, it kind of intensifies that inequality I think.

So I think personally I didn't get much benefit from working from home but it was not nearly as bad as I thought it might be, if I had to I would.

I dont. My appartment is small. And i cant focus. I dont have a "hey i am at work" mindset. Because of that i take the way 1 ½ hours to work

Love it! Clients have better accessibility; lose less of their days in commute, they are now able to see a niche professional state / nation wide, and I can charge 40% less in not having an office.

At the moment it seems like market forces are pushing me back to an office. I will pass the increased costs to consumers.

A lot of the personal benefits have already been spoken of.

What my work has really found value in is that WFH has nationalized what was once a single office team. So people from across the country work together. We have access to more talented people not just those from the office city.

Something blows up late on the East Coast? And a person on the West Coast can immediately respond because they are three or four hours behind.

This is helping me get through a meeting right now.

Working at home since 2020, and while I agree with the advantages most people post here, I definitely miss talking with people over lunch, or even getting out for After Work beers now and then. (Obviously that depends a lot on if you like your coworkers or not)

This is apparently a super controversial opinion but I wouldn't mind working somewhere that forces people to the office 2, maybe 3 days a week. Just not every day.

I work 2 days in the office and three from home. It is a perfect balance, where I can do the in person interactions with non-technical people who need that connection and then buckle down and get a bunch of work done without office distractions the other three days.

It does help that I have a work area from distractions in the home, not quite an office but with a door at least.

Reduced commute (especially when the weather is crummy!), not needing to dress up on wfh days, eating food at home and being able to do house chores on breaks are the biggest benefit although the money saved is nice too.

I like it. I would not go back.

But I have a nice home office, don’t live alone, and found office culture and colleagues to be disruptive.
I have ADHD. My job tends to be wide but not necessarily deep. A “quick question” can cause me to lose my train of thought, cause me to get disordered while trying to figure what the hell I was doing, get shut down by the frustration, and lose hours in ‘wait mode’ for the next interruption because it took me so long to enter a flow state that I’m fearful I’ll get interrupted again.

Being able to shut my office door, silence notifications, and focus with music playing in the background has been incredible for me.

Working from home for 8 years now and it's the best. I don't need to deal with people I don't like. I can have a comfortable setup with a decent chair and desk and not have to fight for it every day. I have enough free time after work to do whatever I want. I can live wherever I want. There's no downside to it at all.

I was working from home for a couple of years and had a mixed appreciation for it. While I was still driving my wife to her job in the morning, it was nice to come home and start my day. Less gas and all that. But not having coworkers around, and not enough separation from the home space sent me stir-crazy often. My wife had a ride home from work since my schedule went past hers, and I would be trying to go places or something after work and she just wanted to chill after her retail management day. But since I was laid off and had to re-enter retail management myself, I wouldn't mind a hybrid situation if I had the choice.

I have a contract that allows for up to 50% work from home. I use 0%. I live 10 minutes from work, so the commute isn't significant (and it gives me a reason for some light exercise). It's easier to work with colleagues if you're talking face-to-face, and I like to mentally separate being in a working mindset and a relaxation mindset, which is more difficult if my home is a workplace.

There was a time when I worked in an office where I had a door and a 15 minute commute. I preferred that over working at home for the social aspects, but longer commute eating into my free time and and the stress of trying to focus while working in open floor plans make WFH way better than the average office

Somewhat, but it also scares me.

I know that I'm very introverted. I like to go "heads down" writing code all day. However I'm also painfully aware from experience that not talking to others means I'm out of the loop and soon I'm developing great code for something the company doesn't need. I need to spend time in the office listening to others talk - I get much less done, but at least what I get done are things the company cares about, and in turn I'm much more likely to keep my job (having to find a new job is one of the worst things that can happen to an introvert - I have to convince strangers to hire me)

Right now I go to the office about 16 hours a week, which seems to be enough. I also live close enough to work that I can ride my bike - in turn commute time is also exercise time, something I need to get more of anyway.

Generally speaking, no.

I like getting out of the house, and I find I'm more efficient, better at focusing, in the office/field. Maybe That'd be different if I had a separate dedicated 'work office' at home, but I don't have space for such a thing.

But, I do like having the option to WFH. Bad weather, car trouble, feeling a bit sick (but not enough to call off).

No. I thought I would but I don't get anything done. I'll rather just have a time and location where to show up.

It isn't about liking it better or not, it is about it being immoral and wrong to not allow WFH for jobs that can facilitate it.