[HN Gopher] 38% of remote workers work from bed
___________________________________________________________________
38% of remote workers work from bed
Author : rufus_foreman
Score : 322 points
Date : 2021-07-30 01:15 UTC (21 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.axios.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.axios.com)
| okokwhatever wrote:
| ... and there's nothing wrong about it.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| I have a coworker who works from his bed. He says it's better for
| his back than any specialized back-friendly chair he has tried
| yet. I, on the other hand, would be in traction after a couple
| days trying to work from bed. I really prefer upright posture and
| a good office chair. In my case a Leap v2, though everyone will
| have their own preference.
| jobigoud wrote:
| Not all aspects of the work we do has to be in front of a
| computer screen. Sometimes when I need to think really hard about
| a problem, I lay down, close my eyes and visualise. It doesn't
| even have to be on the bed, sometimes I'll lay on the floor in
| the middle of the living room. Can't do that in the office.
| jaredcwhite wrote:
| The tone of these articles gives me an ulcer. Let me relay to you
| all the places I've gotten remote work done over the years:
|
| * Private office space * Co-working space * Dedicated home office
| * Bedroom corner office * Bed * Sofa * Kitchen * Bathroom *
| Garage * Solarium * Hotel * Coffee Shop * Car * Lakeside * Beach
| * Park bench / picnic table * Jury Duty waiting room * Airplane *
| Subway * Streetcar * Train * Ferry * Top of a mountain in the
| wilderness
|
| And I'm probably forgetting a handful of other locales!
|
| _This is the whole point of remote work._ The tasks you perform
| and the location in which you accomplish those tasks are wholly
| unbundled, and I'll be damned if I let anyone talk down to me to
| tell me which ways are better or worse for me at any given time.
| That's my decision and mine alone.
| fideloper wrote:
| These people must not have kids! I've worked from home for 8
| years, 4 of which have been with kids at home.
|
| An office in that situation ends up being important!
| treebot wrote:
| Maybe this is because a lot of tech workers are living in cities?
| Where space is expensive? There's no reason to live in a city if
| you work remote.
| visarga wrote:
| You might be OK but what about your kids? They need to attend
| good schools and have good healthcare support where they grow
| up.
| iso1631 wrote:
| A good reason not to live in a city
| warglebargle wrote:
| there are upsides and downsides of both, don't do this
| jdavis703 wrote:
| The best hospitals tend to be location in cities. And non-
| wealthy suburban areas also tend to have mediocre schools.
| treebot wrote:
| I'm saying that the reason cities are such expensive places to
| live is because a lot of people want to live there, because
| their work is there. If you aren't actually working in the
| city, you're paying a premium for something you're not using.
|
| There are very good schools outside of cities, as well as good
| hospitals. There are also plenty of beautiful towns with tons
| of shops and whatnot within walking distance, or a short bike
| ride. And they are a lot cheaper to live in than a city.
| pfooti wrote:
| There are plenty of reasons to live in a city that have nothing
| to do with work. I can walk to the library, cafe, grocery
| store, park. I can ride a bike to the beach, go to the opera,
| shows, etc.
|
| I mean, I can't go to the opera _right now_, but soon enough I
| can.
| bjohnson225 wrote:
| The article isn't about tech workers and people can decide to
| work from bed for reasons other than a lack of space. I've seen
| my partner do it for comfort reasons because her job involves
| reading huge amounts (on an iPad), but as an engineer I would
| never consider it.
| meepmorp wrote:
| > There's no reason to live in a city if you work remote.
|
| Some of us actually enjoy it, though.
| dojourner wrote:
| I work from bed on my Macbook Air M1. I just can't do the same on
| my other laptops it's just to hot on my tummy. For me this is the
| first true 'tummytop-laptop'.
| travisgriggs wrote:
| Bed. Meh.
|
| I love the water. Last time I worked from home (a couple of years
| ago), I built a custom desk/rack that suspended over our big bath
| to hold my laptop and mouse. I coded for hours in the bath. I had
| to be careful on the Skype calls though.
| oblio wrote:
| Isn't being in water for so many hours kind of bad for you?
|
| Also, similar question if the water is warm/hot and there's a
| lot of steam.
| travisgriggs wrote:
| Yes. It is. I developed a form of eczema after too much and
| had to manage that. Cereve/Cetaphil and better duration
| management became my friend.
| ilaksh wrote:
| Just my personal take. The real challenge for me has been keeping
| the primary stakeholder for small remote projects engaged and
| communicating routinely.
|
| I have been getting jobs where I am the only programmer for
| years, and one person is funding the project out of their pocket.
| Which means my income is limited, but also is low-stress and
| affords me a lot of freedom in terms of things like technical
| decisions.
|
| One issue is that the sponsor usually realizes within a few weeks
| that I don't really need new feature ideas every few days to keep
| busy. So they tend to be busy with their own jobs or life and
| migrate towards checking in once or twice a week.
|
| Which is usually fine, but I do find myself wishing sometimes
| that they would just glance at the Discord every two days. When
| they get busy, that can sometimes coincide with times that I have
| done a deployment for them to check out or have a lot to discuss.
| Then I am sending them an email asking them to look at the
| Discord.
| truthwhisperer wrote:
| in about one year: 38% of the home workers have serious back
| pains.
| daenz wrote:
| For the past 2 weeks, I've been working from a treadmill. It has
| been incredible. I got a small under-the-desk treadmill for my
| standing desk and I walk at about 2.5km/hour and get around
| 20,000 steps in per day. It has improved my mood, my clarity, and
| also has improved my sleep (because I'm tired of walking). I also
| find it easier to focus on tasks for some reason.
|
| If you can make a setup like this work for you, I highly
| recommend it. Your body will thank you in the long run.
|
| EDIT>> A few of you are asking about the model. I actually bought
| 2, one for myself and one for my partner, who also loves it.
|
| This one is mine https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07V7F8QYK. I
| got it when it had a $100-off coupon, so the price wasn't as
| steep. No real complaints so far, except you can't store it
| upright. I just roll it out of the way when I want to sit.
|
| The one for my partner is
| https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0895DRWVY. She likes it. It's
| a little smaller and can be stored upright and out of the way,
| which is nice. There have been complaints about the remote (and
| it only comes with 1), but the manufacturer claims to ship new
| remotes free of charge if yours breaks.
|
| They're both a little quirky with a very simple LCD screen.
| Supposedly mine has an app integration for step counting, but I
| just use my phone in my pocket. They both get the job done.
| iamgopal wrote:
| share some photo or model of treadmill.
| littleweep wrote:
| Can you please link the model?
| Tempest1981 wrote:
| Surprised to see a "smart" product, sold on Amazon, that
| doesn't integrate with Alexa.
| babesh wrote:
| Picture tech people walking on their treadmills for
| compensation and then picture gerbils running on wheels for
| food. Picture tech people drinking Soylent and then picture
| gerbils eating pellets. The world is whack.
|
| People are substituting artificial things for the natural
| things that made us happy in earlier times. Walking on a
| treadmill vs walking outside in the sun and shade amidst
| plants, trees, and other living things. Eating things for
| nutrition vs eating fruits and vegetables for enjoyment.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| I'm really happy for you that you either don't work or have a
| job that involves a lot of walking outside in the sun /
| nature.
| themolecularman wrote:
| > Picture tech people walking on their treadmills for
| compensation and then picture gerbils running on wheels for
| food. Picture tech people drinking Soylent and then picture
| gerbils eating pellets. The world is whack.
|
| A bit much? I'm not sure where you get soylent from.
|
| Nobody is substituting here, I didn't get that from the OP at
| all.
|
| Another commenter mentioned that working from home allows for
| asynchronous tasks, the OP merely stated that means he can
| work and work-out on a treadmill. He is neither being
| compensated for or replacing going out into nature.
| xkeysc0re wrote:
| Just because you make an analogy doesn't mean it's valid lol.
| Like there's obviously an entire category of differences
| between a person consciously choosing to use a treadmill desk
| versus a captive pet gerbil on a wheel.
| loopz wrote:
| Is it really a bad analogy though?
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Is it? What do you think yourself?
| loopz wrote:
| It might not be, considering one need money to live.
| abdullahkhalids wrote:
| Stephen Wolfram has a contraption for hanging his laptop in
| front of him so he can walk outside and work at the same
| time.
|
| https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2019/02/seeking-the-
| prod...
| jhgb wrote:
| This seems impractical with conventional screens. Maybe
| with e-ink this would work better.
| roel_v wrote:
| Let's not give people arguments for being more like Stephen
| Wolfram here...
| goodpoint wrote:
| He runs two full-height racks only for himself?
|
| That's some heck of an environmental impact.
| vasco wrote:
| The options here are sitting while working or walking while
| working. The options aren't sititng while working or
| disregarding society and returning to the forest.
| ImaCake wrote:
| >returning to the forest
|
| Which is basically a myth at this point. For most of the
| last 5000 years most people have had a much lower quality
| of life than people do today. It's not like things were
| nice before we sat infront of computers all day.
| goodpoint wrote:
| > It's not like things were nice before we sat in front
| of computers all day.
|
| This might be true, technically, but often HN uses this
| point to dismiss any criticism of modern society and it
| use of technology.
| Aeolun wrote:
| > It's not like things were nice before we sat infront of
| computers all day.
|
| But we didn't have to sit in front of computers all day.
| fogihujy wrote:
| It's not that life was living hell for everyone either.
| Plenty of people have lived comfortable lives throughout
| the ages -- it's just that there are far more of them
| nowadays.
|
| There's also still a lot of people who have troublesome
| lives, not to mention people living un-comfortable lives
| in front of a screen.
| joshuahedlund wrote:
| > It's not that life was living hell for everyone either
|
| It's not really that much of an exaggeration. Significant
| percentages of women died in childbirth, young children
| died of diseases, and men died of violence. If you
| didn't, multiple people close to you did. Back-breaking
| manual labor for subsistence was the norm. Even the small
| minority who lived "comfortably" could randomly die from
| a tooth infection.
|
| It can be exaggerated to be sure, but I think it's even
| easier to discount the stunning drop in absolute poverty
| over the last two centuries because we've simply
| forgotten how terrible the old "normal" was. I highly
| recommend books like _Enlightenment Now_ or _Factfulness_
| that do a great, detailed, and evidence-based job of
| driving this point home.
| [deleted]
| mark_l_watson wrote:
| For what it's worth, I made a similar decision. My dedicated
| home office is large enough to reengineer for a treadmill (I
| used one at Google every day for a short while), but I
| decided it was better for me to go on frequent mini 5 minute
| walks outside, with long walks before work and sometimes
| during lunch break. Being outside is healthy, which is why I
| like to find a shady spot outside to work for short periods.
|
| Also, short walks are great times to think about work. Or,
| sometimes having a pad of paper to think away from a
| computer.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Yeah. That's what optimization is. It turns out that when I
| sit for work, then lift for health, then walk in nature for
| enjoyment I get a lot more out of each of these than when I
| try to get one thing to meet all these needs.
|
| Like, this is the most normal thing that it works this way.
|
| This naturalistic fallacy nonsense is so tiresome. "Oh wasn't
| it great that we lived in nature and got eaten by bears". No.
| It sucked.
| sgt wrote:
| Growing plants illuminated by expensive indoor lighting
| setups instead of growing it in your garden with free sun.
| ngngngng wrote:
| Some of the highest performing humans for the past couple
| thousand years have spent an abnormal amount of time in dimly
| lit rooms reading, what we're doing now is not far off if
| you're actually plugging away at useful tasks and not
| mindless scrolling.
| probably_wrong wrote:
| > _People are substituting artificial things for the natural
| things that made us happy in earlier times._
|
| You frame threadmills and soylent (terrible name, though) as
| gerbils in a cage. That's one way to frame it. But I choose
| to frame those things as steps towards becoming something
| _more_ than humans, with humanity taking its destiny in its
| own hands.
|
| Maybe one day we will have conquered death and live as long
| as we want to, but until then a small-ish machine that
| improves my quality of life with me barely noticing is a good
| first step.
|
| We might be the only animals that eat "for nutrition" instead
| of "for enjoyment", but we are also the only animals that
| read.
| maigret wrote:
| I'd have said we're the only animals who eat for enjoyment
| (without having proof of that). Or did I miss the joke
| here?
| daenz wrote:
| I also get plenty of sun and eat well. But I happen work at a
| job that requires me to look at a stationary screen for much
| of the day, like I imagine most of us do. So I am choosing to
| not be as sedentary. But if you're suggesting that we should
| abandon working in tech because it's unnatural, I'm afraid
| you're probably talking to the wrong audience :)
|
| You're not the first person to mention gerbils on wheels to
| me. I think it's mostly a reaction to seeing something
| unconventional, despite its health benefits. If you feel like
| you're not living your ideal life in this industry (assuming
| you are also in tech), that's fine, but don't project that
| onto me please. I enjoy what I do and how I live.
| babesh wrote:
| You are projecting. I referred to the archetype and trend
| and not you specifically.
|
| No longer in tech.
| Groxx wrote:
| A coworker was into climbing and bouldering.
|
| We often joked that, when we all inevitably got treadmill
| desks, we'd have to get him a climbing-wall desk. It'd be
| great! We could just stick a computer at the top of this thing,
| and maybe some espresso for motivation:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AjiepNna8GA
|
| He agreed.
|
| Sadly, we never did get treadmill desks.
| gota wrote:
| Can you walk during calls, e.g. remote pair programming? Heavy
| breathing, noise from the treadmill and footsteps etc. affect
| you?
|
| If not, what kind of mic are you using? I think a headset will
| suffer from the heavy breathing
|
| Also - post your standing desk or its dimensions please
| daenz wrote:
| Yep! I walk regularly on calls and during pairing sessions.
| Google meet is pretty good at noise cancelling. My coworkers
| say they can't even hear the treadmill. Heavy breathing isn't
| really an issue for me at 2.5km/hour. I'll have to dig up our
| standing desk dimensions, but there is no problem there for
| me or my partner. I'm 6', she's 5'8", and we both have
| different standing desks and different treadmills. There
| would be no issue with the desk height or width, but you
| should measure your own setup if you're thinking of doing the
| same.
| rendaw wrote:
| Do you walk 8h a day then? Or do you somehow sit sometimes? How
| do you sit with the treadmill there under your desk?
|
| Do you wear shoes while walking? Do you typically wear shoes
| indoors then?
| daenz wrote:
| I walk around 4 hours per day. Yesterday was 4 hours 13
| minutes, 22k steps, 5.96 miles. It seems like a short
| distance for that many steps, but it's because you tend not
| to take huge strides.
|
| I'll usually do 10k steps in the morning, take a break and
| sit and eat lunch and rest for a bit, then finish another 10k
| steps.
|
| The treadmill has rear wheels, and I roll it back out of the
| way of my desk, then roll my chair back to my desk, when I
| want to sit.
|
| I don't wear shoes while walking or indoors. If I start
| getting foot problems, I might get a pair of indoor shoes.
| pvtmert wrote:
| IMO sitting just makes your blood slower to flow = less juice
| for your brain.
|
| I was helping IT support before the pandemic when I had free
| time (or waiting something to finish) And I liked all the
| walking around the office, between buildings, etc.
|
| Now, I artifically simulate situation by leg-shaking :)
| WettowelReactor wrote:
| In my experience typing while walking has not been an issue but
| using a mouse with moderate to high sensitivity can be
| challenging. Using a gaming feature such as "sniper" mode to
| toggle mouse sensitivity when precise clicking is necessary
| solved the problem.
| pnut wrote:
| After 2 whole weeks, I don't think you should be offering "in
| the long run" advice about things.
| daenz wrote:
| I'm not intending to give health advice but the health
| benefits of walking are pretty well established and commonly
| accepted by doctors. I encourage you to do the research if
| you are skeptical or talk to your doctor.
| appleiigs wrote:
| Health detriments of sitting all day are also pretty well
| established and commonly accepted by doctors. Don't know
| where pnut was going with that lame comment.
| commandlinefan wrote:
| Well, in his case, it would the long walk advice.
| jt2190 wrote:
| I've had a walking treadmill desk for over ten years.
|
| Whether it's for you is quite personal: See if you can find
| somewhere to try it out for a few minutes, in particular try
| typing and using the mouse/trackpad while walking. My
| treadmill tops out at 4 mph (6.4 km/h), which is really too
| fast to do anything but walk. I can watch videos at 3mph,
| code routine easy stuff at ~2mph, code hard stuff at ~1mph,
| and to read hairy code I have to stop completely. I don't
| walk all day, I also stand and sit.
|
| Some things that will help you have a good experience:
|
| * Get a purpose-built walking treadmill: They're smaller and
| more importantly go much slower. * Get a very solid, stable
| desk and put it on a stable floor. Any little monitor shake
| will make things miserable. * The treadmill is not silent, so
| you'll probably need to stop when speaking on video. It's
| awesome to be in watch/listen-only meetings and put in a mile
| or two. * A nice option I'll upgrade to someday is a stand-
| alone walking treadmill with a wireless control, plus a nice
| sit/stand desk.
| IshKebab wrote:
| I tried watching videos on an iPad while walking on a
| treadmill and found that head movement made it annoying to
| watch. The obvious solution is a bigger screen further
| away. Did you find anything like that?
| tartoran wrote:
| I jump on a rebounder a couple of times a day, nothing like
| your setup but it seems to improve my wellbeing. The rest of my
| time is unfortunately quite sedentary, I tried working while
| standing but for some reason it didn't work out for me. But now
| im thinking that standing and walking are quite different. You
| made me think about getting a thredmill...
| pimlottc wrote:
| Google tells me a rebounder is a kind of mini-trampoline?
| What do you do with it?
| tartoran wrote:
| Yes, it is a mini trampoline of around 4 feet in diameter,
| it doesn't have springs but bungee cords so it doesn't make
| any sound when you jump on it and the jump is quite a bit
| smoother. I jump on it in sessions of 10 minutes, and it
| feels like a very convenient and fun cardio. Jumping
| somehow works out your whole body and it supposedly helps
| with lymphatic fluid drainage - actually , any kind of
| movement or sport does help with that but having a
| sedentary lifestyle affects it heavily. It is a good
| general exercise and very convenient to do in the confines
| of your own home. Oh, and jumping on it feels effortless
| while it actually does work out your body quite well, when
| you stop jumping it does feel like you had a workout. Of
| course towards the end of the session the heart and
| breathing rates goes up. I really like it.
| giomasce wrote:
| I never tried that: is it comfortable to use mouse and keyboard
| while walking? To me it feels quite weird.
| coldtea wrote:
| Like everything else, you get used to it. You can adjust your
| speed to lower at first of course.
| abootstrapper wrote:
| How do you track your steps? I have treadmill desk and a
| Fitbit, but my Fitbit is worthless because my arms don't swing
| while I'm working.
| fastasucan wrote:
| Fitbits have longer bracelets you can swap in, so you can
| fasten it over your ancle. People in jobs where they cant use
| watches usually do that if they want to track steps. Your
| doctor/nurse might be wearing one.
| daenz wrote:
| I use a pedometer app on my phone and put my phone in my
| pocket.
| ourcat wrote:
| I've been WFH for over a decade.
|
| I like to call this mode: "Duvet-Desking".
| anm89 wrote:
| This agitates my back problems just thinking about this.
| hartjer wrote:
| this hurts my wrist, neck, and back to think about
| xwdv wrote:
| People that don't like working from a bed generally have
| uncomfortable beds. You should always buy the best bed you can.
| You spend a third of your life on one.
| dartiss wrote:
| That is quite the sweeping statement and I'd love to know what
| evidence you have for this?
|
| I have a comfortable bed but never work from it for that exact
| reason - I'd be too relaxed and just want to sleep again.
| pengaru wrote:
| I've found the most comfortable and healthy bed is no bed at
| all, been true for me for over 20 years now.
| quenix wrote:
| Don't keep us waiting. How and where do you sleep?
| abdullahkhalids wrote:
| Lots of people, in fact entire cultures, prefer to sleep on
| a thin mat on the floor.
| xwdv wrote:
| Yea, some people sleep in hammocks.
| pengaru wrote:
| Not sure what you mean by asking "how", but on the floor
| usually atop an area rug or mat and head pillow.
|
| Often when I sleep on something soft and significantly
| deformable like a mattress my neck and/or back are messed
| up the next day. Never happens on the floor.
| DoingIsLearning wrote:
| I will throw in my 5 cents anecdata (I have a history of
| trauma/back injuries and pain).
|
| I spent about 100 euros on a kneeling chair, that had enough
| adjustment settings for my liking. I have been increasing my time
| on it steadily for the past few months, to the point that I now
| confortably work the whole day from it.
|
| It is a complete mind shift, I actively have to sustain my
| posture (and actively shift it), I don't slouch and I don't
| snooze off. It propels you into 'active mode'.
|
| Whenever I am eventually physically tired it prompts me to take a
| break by taking a walk or eating a snack. I have been absolutely
| back pain free for the last 8 months and overall I feel that my
| posture is improved.
| tester34 wrote:
| Wow, nice.
|
| I bought kneeling chair and sitting ball, but prefered ball,
| but I don't know whether it helps me at all
| tpxl wrote:
| The ball exercises your lower back muscles for sure, but you
| can still have bad posture on it. I used to sit on one cross
| legged with bad upper back posture.
| Ancalagon wrote:
| Is this not horrible for your knees long term?!?
| pelemele wrote:
| One size doesn't fit all - and that's exactly the issue with
| office work. After years in IT business I know exactly what are
| my "peak" hours/time and when it's better not to do anything
| work-wise and just focus on something else. Forcing me to work
| specific schedule in a specific office setup is no go for me.
| Plus other things like being able to exercise instead of my
| commute, eat healthy, use my equipment and tools I prefer, being
| able to refocus when I need and take advantage of my biological
| peak/down hours/time made me super efficient and productive.
| andi999 wrote:
| 104% of all stats are slightly off.
| fooker wrote:
| Also, 62% of remote workers are dishonest.
| jdavis703 wrote:
| I've never worked from bed. Not out of duty to my employer. But
| because I want my bed to be associated with relaxation. I can't
| be the only one.
| nazrulmum10 wrote:
| It's not enough for companies to provide stipends for teleworkers
| to buy ergonomic chairs or desks, Axios' Kia Kokalitcheva notes.
| Many people simply do not have the space allocated inside their
| homes for an office setup, and it can be too expensive to move to
| a bigger place.
| racl101 wrote:
| Ugh, I could never. I love my spine way too much to do this.
|
| This is just asking for back problems.
| pier25 wrote:
| I've been WFH for over a decade now. For a couple of years I
| worked from a recliner because I had back problems. Something
| similar to this:
|
| https://i.imgur.com/oCN6WmW.jpg
| AegirLeet wrote:
| Huh - I can't imagine working without a proper setup: keyboard,
| mouse, at least 2 monitors. Lying in bed is nice, but having to
| deal with cramped, wobbly laptop keyboards, annoying trackpads
| and tiny laptop screens really isn't.
|
| How do you guys do it?
| conductr wrote:
| > Many people simply do not have the space allocated inside their
| homes for an office setup, and it can be too expensive to move to
| a bigger place.
|
| Because they're stuck in the expensive city where their employer
| offices. If WFH means location independence and mobility, these
| employees will eventually find the space they need and can
| afford. At the moment, they're stuck in limbo.
| gsk22 wrote:
| Many people choose to live in a city. Not everyone wants to
| live in the middle of nowhere.
| conductr wrote:
| There's a lot of optionality between _city with roommates and
| no space to setup a desk_ and _middle of nowhere_. Point is,
| it 's not mutually exclusive like it is when you work in the
| office and thus have to reside near the office.
|
| Choosing to live in a city for reasons other than officing
| there is a choice. Given the choice and the preference for
| city life, would they choose a lower cost city where they
| could afford more space?
| gsk22 wrote:
| > ...when you work in the office and thus have to reside
| near the office.
|
| I don't think most people pick their residence based on
| their work location. My company's office is in the downtown
| of a major metro, and yet the majority of my coworkers are
| located far from the city core, often 30+ minutes commute
| by car -- and two colleagues who commute 90 minutes each
| way on the extreme end.
|
| There are much stronger factors influencing people's choice
| of residency, such as familiarity, proximity to friends and
| family, recreational opportunities, nightlife, etc.
|
| Which, to my mind, answers your question:
|
| > Given the choice and the preference for city life, would
| they choose a lower cost city where they could afford more
| space?
|
| I would venture to guess that for the vast majority of
| people, the answer is no. Few people are willing to uproot
| their life for a bit more space.
| conductr wrote:
| These likely aren't the same people in this stat. Once
| you're rooted, you're rooted, but these people aren't
| rooted. You're also supporting the lower costs solutions
| exist aspect of my argument. Sure they require a commute
| but they exist.
| mike503 wrote:
| Personally, before COVID, my company reshuffled me into a group
| without anyone physically around for the most part. I had no in-
| person interaction most days when I went to the office. I simply
| stopped going in and just WFH'ed. I had only one complaint in
| years about it. COVID made it official, and then the company
| decided to make a round of layoffs. I didn't make that cut
| (unrelated to WFH) but was able to find a fully remote job that
| pays better and I have zero change in my work socialization.
| Instead, I've tried focusing more on non-work options, as those
| will be more portable anyway.
| redleggedfrog wrote:
| I almost hate to say this, but reading the headline just put a
| picture of the humans from Wall-e in my head.
| scarecrowbob wrote:
| I've been working remote for about 10 years.
|
| I've had "real" offices. I've worked in open-plan offices. I've
| had a home office. I've worked from bed.
|
| There are tons of good ways to do it.
|
| Lately I swap between a kitchen table and a chair on my porch. I
| no longer use multiple screens, I've just gotten really fast at
| swapping windows on my 15" laptop; I've gotten good at figuring
| out how wide my terminal window breaks should be and where my
| browser dev tools should sit.
|
| Surely there are more optimal ways of doing stuff. Odds are that
| there is a Taylorist approach that would pull more productivity
| out of me. But much like my typing speed (~50WPM) isn't really
| the limiting factor in my programming skill, screen real estate
| isn't a big factor in getting stuff done for me.
|
| But the big thing for me is that, in the end, it's fine for me to
| switch stuff up on a monthly or quarterly or yearly basis.
|
| I could never have done that when I was in an office. I couldn't
| take 20 min and play banjo or accordion and come back to my
| problem with a fresh eye. I couldn't put on my laundry and hang
| it up while I listen to other folks on the daily stand up. I
| couldn't start my lunch cooking in the instapot while waiting for
| a script to finish running.
|
| It would take a hard, hard sell to get me back in an office, not
| matter how much real and legitimate enjoyment and utility other
| folks get in an office.
| AJ007 wrote:
| Here is my first hand experience from roughly 15 years of
| working from home at this point, with a little office time
| mixed in.
|
| This is the right approach from an ergonomic standpoint - cycle
| through how you sit/stand while working and you'll minimize a
| lot of joint issues. If some position is causing you issues,
| it's easy to identify and effortless to switch. At minimum it
| isn't healthy to sit for hours straight. It's also easy to mix
| in a few workouts or use some sort of treadmill or stationary
| bike.
|
| Years ago I went from 3 27" screens down to 1 12" MacBook and
| had no loss in productivity. I was primarily doing design and
| data analysis work. DPI and OS window management matters more
| unless you have vision issues.
| mark_l_watson wrote:
| You have summarized the good experiences I have had working
| from home (except onsite for a while at Google and Capital One)
| since my wife and I moved to a small town in the mountains of
| Central Arizona in 1998.
|
| I have two areas of my yard where I can work, one is always
| shady, I have a dedicated office, but also work in the living
| room and kitchen table. I have a nice external monitor on my
| desk, but I don't really need it for most writing or work
| tasks.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| I've done WFH for a year and a half now (and the odd day in the
| years before that), and I still kinda struggle; it's easy to
| let the distractions take hold, and it costs me energy to get
| started on work. Mind you, the work is not the most exciting at
| the moment either.
|
| That said, as other commenters have mentioned, there is value
| (for me) to work in a team and to have others actually depend
| on me and my progress; I need a bit of external pressure. At
| the moment it's mainly self-pressure / self-motivation, which
| isn't the best.
|
| I do think in the future I'll pursue jobs where I'm both
| independent but also replaceable, because at the moment I'm not
| replaceable so I don't feel like I can move on yet.
| alanwreath wrote:
| " I'll pursue jobs where I'm both independent but also
| replaceable" I totally get the pressure felt when you're not
| yet replaceable. At least from the responsible, not wishing
| to burn bridges vantage point. It can add stress because it
| means vacations are only half spent and makes other
| opportunities seem wrong to take because you know you'd be
| leaving the company in a bad state. And mind you this is at
| the same time as trying to spread as much knowledge around as
| possible. Small teams can make this more common.
| neither_color wrote:
| Getting asynchronous chores done like laundry, dishwashing, and
| cooking/baking are the best part of working from home.
| dartiss wrote:
| Absolutely, 100%.
|
| And I find too that it doesn't even reduce down your working
| time too - an awful lot of thinking time in an office is when
| you get up from your desk and walk to the watercooler,
| bathroom, whatever. I do so much thinking and working out
| whilst doing these home chores.
| hippari wrote:
| Totally agree, I cook more food, learned more recipe, wash my
| clothes more frequently, my house is more clean and
| organized.
|
| Contrasting to a 9-5 job, I would rather just order takeaways
| after getting back home from the office.
| chronogram wrote:
| It's great how everyone works so differently. When I am
| alone, working from home, I can't find a proper mental
| break anywhere and everything becomes a mess and I eat
| worse. Having a physical work/life split makes me cook more
| food, learn more recipes, and gives me a constant fresh
| look at my home and items to make sure it's clean and tidy.
|
| In the WFH situation it's suddenly 20:00 and I'm starving
| and just look to snack or even go so far as to order food,
| but when I work away from home I have the train ride back
| to browse which supermarket I'll shop at and message with a
| friend on how and what we'll each be making.
| ed_elliott_asc wrote:
| Have you tried setting alarms on your phone and when you
| start/stop go for a short walk?
|
| One thing I do to separate work from home is to get
| changed. Wake up in underwear, lounge until work start
| alarm then get dressed/go for walk/start work - end of
| work alarm go for walk/get changed - helps me with the
| mindset of what is work and what is not.
|
| I don't always need to do this, just when it starts to
| affect me.
| mark_l_watson wrote:
| That is a real problem. When I WFH, I do better when my
| customer supplies a secure laptop to access their
| systems. I use that laptop only for work, and simply turn
| it off at the end of work. During the day, I can grab my
| iPad if I have personal e-mail, etc.
| fouc wrote:
| Can you create a work/life spilt by having a separate
| office in a separate part of the house?
|
| Or even have an external office on the property.
|
| If you knew you can work remotely 100% of the time, that
| frees you up to consider cheaper locations where you can
| get a better house for the same rent.
| goodpoint wrote:
| WFH != unscheduled and sedentary.
|
| You can set up timers e.g. pomodoro and do quick chores
| frequently.
|
| [edit: care to explain the downvotes?]
| asd4232 wrote:
| This. I like WFH as a concept, but I feel like it would
| require a separate office room to really work, and right
| now I don't have the space for that. Working from living
| room just mixes up work and leisure really badly.
| alanwreath wrote:
| I'm my case having a "separate office room" is just
| occupying the space where I might have had the family
| computer or my gaming station. I have always had that
| space, at least since the days of my ok' packard bell and
| kings quest!
| slumdev wrote:
| I intend this with all the charity in the world, but it
| does need to be blunt because comments like yours are
| influencing decision makers to force everyone to come
| back, whether it's full time or in a so-called "hybrid"
| model.
|
| You've had a year and a half to adjust. If you don't want
| to move, you could easily rent office space near your
| home. Your lack of planning does not constitute an
| emergency for everyone who is happier and more productive
| at home.
| ngngngng wrote:
| Personally I have a MUCH easier time paying attention if I
| busy my hands with something mindless like dishes. This has
| been ruined lately by me becoming the guy that runs the
| meetings, but hopefully I can change that soon since I really
| dislike running meetings and would much rather wash dishes.
| helsinkiandrew wrote:
| This is the biggest improvement in my 'quality of life' from
| working from home. I'm still not totally convinced I don't
| like working with others around me, but the ability to eat
| well, integrate exercise and chores into the breaks away from
| the screen i'd take in the office anyway are priceless.
| usrusr wrote:
| > I couldn't put on my laundry and hang it up while I listen to
| other folks on the daily stand up.
|
| Yeah, there's a secret value in low level distractions: they
| prevent higher level distractions. When you go into a deep
| focus environment for that daily, chances are your mind will
| focus deeply on something entirely unrelated.
| mech422 wrote:
| I've been working from home 20 years now, and I have the
| opposite setup from you. I've got a much nicer setup then I
| ever had in offices - from 3 monitors to my favorite keyboards.
| As I get older and my eyes get worse, I really appreciate the
| space the monitors give me.
|
| I do agree about going back to an office... Its not really
| something I anticipate doing.
| cmsj wrote:
| ~10 years WFH here and my approach is similar to yours - my
| home office has become almost ludicrously well equipped.
|
| My approach is that I think about how much commuting would
| cost me, and consider that a reasonable amount to invest in
| my working space at home. As a result, I have a very small,
| but very functional space that I feel good about sitting in
| for 8 hours a day. I'm comfortable, I'm calm, and when I need
| to think, I don't feel stressed by my environment.
|
| Edit: to give some examples - I have very carefully chosen
| art for the walls that I can stare at and my mind can drift,
| when I need to solve problems. I had a desk custom made to
| give me the most amount of space because this is a very small
| room (~3m x ~2.5m) that regular desks can't make the best use
| of. I have great audio gear (mic, headphones and speakers),
| carefully tuned lighting, etc, etc. In isolation the
| thousands I've spent on this room seems kind-of ridiculous,
| but compared to the thousands more I haven't spent on
| commuting and compared to the satisfaction I get when sitting
| in here, I think it was absolutely worth it, and I am very
| grateful that I was privileged enough to be able to make all
| these choices.
| bpye wrote:
| I have a desk with dual monitors and a laptop dock where I do
| most of my work, but sometimes that just isn't where I want to
| be. The biggest win is the flexibility, I can be in bed, on the
| sofa or outside and do the same stuff I do sat at my desk.
| amatecha wrote:
| Right? Imagine having even a minimal amount of agency over your
| surroundings and immediate environment.
| gmadsen wrote:
| I never understand the ability to work on a laptop. For me it
| would be a significant blow to my productivity. How do people
| do it?
|
| I have 3 full monitors, one for running 10 or so processes that
| I can glance at stdout, then the other two monitors for having
| many different editor files open, numerous data plots, and
| multiple reference guides open, etc.
| aledalgrande wrote:
| Virtual desktops and 3 finger swipes for me too. I cannot
| understand how having multiple apps visible helps, because
| you have to continuously switch your eye focus and if you
| have distracting apps like Slack in your field it's even
| worse. So laptop with 1 window maximized is the best for me.
| And the mobility that it allows: move to the sofa, armchair,
| cafe, I even deployed from a taxi. I tried to buy and use
| external keyboard and trackpad on my standup desk during the
| pandemic, but I returned the same day - the distance between
| the position of keys and the trackpad was so weird after
| years of laptop only.
| gmadsen wrote:
| thinking about it, I'm probably really biased. I do
| robotics, so live analysis of sensors, processed data
| output running on a real platform as well as involved
| simulations is part of my process. I need to be able to
| glance at data and plots quickly without changing my
| current screen
| aledalgrande wrote:
| For sure, one thing is setups are very personal and we
| shouldn't try to all normalize to the same one.
| Forge36 wrote:
| On windows I alt tab often. I close anything not related to
| work keeping the list of windows short (maybe 5 at most).
| Split screen some where appropriate.
|
| My home office is 2 monitors. My work office is 3, however I
| only find myself using 2
| honkdaddy wrote:
| Different engineers do different work. Not everyone is
| running 10+ processes and referring to reference guides all
| day, some, like myself, spend most of our days writing emails
| or reviewing PRs, neither of which really necessitate lots of
| screen real estate.
| BrS96bVxXBLzf5B wrote:
| You're not looking at and digesting all of that information
| at once (unless you have an impressive dozen sets of eyes :)
| ). You're context switching, and you've found that the most
| productive way for you to context switch is to have
| everything fully available at a glance. For others, being
| able to switch at a literal glance is less productive and
| more taxing (those 10 process can be distracting!) so we use
| different tools or methods, like workspaces, tmux sessions,
| terminal tabs. I usually have three projects each loaded and
| available for attention at once with a key press, but I don't
| need (nor do I want) them actively visible alongside each
| other.
| deeblering4 wrote:
| I have 8 full virtual desktops. I can switch screens without
| even moving my head.
| mojuba wrote:
| That's work from home brilliantly summarized, very true.
|
| However, I have my doubts about productivity in smaller teams
| and startups. Being in the same space physically I think speeds
| up a lot of things. In small teams and esp. at early stage
| startups your whole day is a meeting where things are discussed
| and resolved spontaneously. Sometimes it is important to have
| an environment where information is exchanged dynamically and
| in an unordered fashion, as opposed to structured meetings,
| schedules and planning that become necessary in fully remote
| teams.
|
| Then there's the social part. At least don't forget to do
| regular meetups in real life if you can.
|
| Honestly, I'm very divided over this. Is there a way to have
| the spontaneity and dynamism of working in small teams in real
| life, and have the comfort and freedom of working from home?
| coolaliasbro wrote:
| In my experience, reasons like "spontaneity" and "dynamism"
| are used to cast lack of vision, poor planning and
| management, and amateurish execution in a positive light.
| YMMV.
| long_time_gone wrote:
| In my experience, reasons like "freedom to work from bed"
| and "ability to do laundry" are used to cast anti-social
| behavior in a positive light.
| edgyquant wrote:
| I work remote at an early stage startup, I'm not sure you're
| right. It might be faster to work together but only by the
| amount of time it takes to type. We're on slack talking all
| day and have video meeting when needed. We work fast as it is
| so I'm not sure we'd gain much by being in person (other than
| social stimulation.)
| jnwatson wrote:
| I'm in the same boat with the addition of a Mumble server.
| We're always a keypress away from talking to each other.
| ddek wrote:
| I work on site in an early stage startup, and I think it's
| about commitment to a communication model.
|
| We have a 2x2 grid. On the top we have 'in person' and
| 'remote'. Down the side we have 'synchronous' and
| 'asynchronous'. I've worked in companies trying all five
| (yes) of these combinations. This is my experience.
|
| - in person, synchronous: everything happens in meetings.
| Business likes the certainty of meetings, engineering
| doesn't like the disruption. With the right accommodations,
| most people are content.
|
| - in person, asynchronous: everyone's in the office, and
| no-one knows why. The CEO offers vague maritime platitudes.
|
| - remote, synchronous: "can you go on mute" now causes a
| company-wide gag reflex. Everyone's happy because they can
| apply for new jobs without being noticed. (Seriously, the
| company I worked in that did this had absurd turnover, for
| this reason.)
|
| - remote, asynchronous: engineers contribute to discussion
| when they have time. Hotshot managers want there ideas
| validated now, though. Despite this contention, most people
| are happy.
|
| - hybrid: A cabal has formed in the office. Finally, it
| formalizes when a Jira account named 'Office' appears. When
| a remote worker creates an issue, the cabal convenes to
| decide a response. There is no room for negotiation.
| Gradually, the remote staff evaporate. Only the hive mind
| remains.
| teekert wrote:
| I'm also divided, and I still go to office because of that
| (at the moment we can sort of choose it ourselves), 1 or 2
| days a week. Sometimes 0. I enjoy the time in the office, I
| see who is there, try to gather a big group for a good lunch
| and talk as much as I can. At home I focus on coding,
| document writing etc. I'm all for letting teams hash it out
| among themselves.
|
| One argument that I think fails in the long run is that
| creativity drops. Maybe it does, in the short term, but if
| people are happier at home, and more companies will support
| it, new ways of being creative or even together will be
| found. I wouldn't worry so much about losing the "classic,
| old" way creativity worked before, there is so much to be
| gained and so much yet to be learned. Give it some time,
| embrace it, see where it takes us.
|
| One example of growing creativity for me has been: One
| colleague in our team is from the US, he's the only one. Pre-
| Covid he'd be on a speaker in our meeting room, no cam on.
| Since Covid he has his cam on, same as everyone else. We
| engage much more in small talk, recently we got a tour of his
| house and garden via webcam. What a nice guy! We wrote some
| patents together now too. Even though we are 8 hours flying
| away from each other. The talent pool for teams just grows
| much bigger.
| ithkuil wrote:
| the best of both worlds would be to work remotely most of the
| time and have (frequent?) sprints where you get to know your
| coworkers and also engage in this kind of high bandwidth
| settings.
| goodpoint wrote:
| > Being in the same space physically I think speeds up a lot
| of things
|
| ...and also makes a lot of people unable to focus.
| catherinezng wrote:
| The solution to this is gather.town
| novok wrote:
| You can reproduce it somewhat with an always open mic & video
| chat on all sides. I've done it once, it was remarkably
| effective.
|
| Many people who like remote work although also do not like
| something like that arrangement although.
| thiht wrote:
| You can have that remotely. In my team we (8 people) spend
| our whole day on a visio conference room. We're mainly idle
| but we use it to ask for help, discuss decisions informally,
| vent, talk about whatever(games, movies, etc.), all of that
| exactly the same as in the open space, but better because we
| can still disconnect if we need to focus.
|
| If we need a real meeting or need to talk with a specific
| subject, we just go to another conference room, in the same
| way we'd use a meeting room in the office.
|
| The thing though is that we have a dedicated device for the
| visio. For now it's a Cisco DX but it could work with an iPad
| for example.
| iambateman wrote:
| Are you not self conscious, constantly?
|
| The massive difference between what you describe and
| sitting in person is body noise. A cough in an office is
| normal while a cough in a video chat gets everyone's
| attention.
|
| I feel like it would be very draining but it sounds like
| you're enjoying it?
| NortySpock wrote:
| I usually use Push-To-Talk mode on most video calls when
| I can. I'm not perfect about it, but I do manage to mute
| probably 90% of throat-clearing noises or 75% of my
| typing.
| thiht wrote:
| We just mute ourselves when we're not talking an close
| the camera lid if we're not comfortable with it.
|
| I used to be self conscious about it, but I think the
| company culture plays a role. We had these devices and
| this behavior way before COVID because our teams were
| already remote (5 people in a city in France, 2 in
| another, 2 in Tunisia...), this is the company way of
| keeping remote people close to one another. The whole
| company works like this because all the teas are
| distributed. I went from not caring about it to loving
| it, and if I switched company I would do my best to
| advocate for such a system.
| slumdev wrote:
| Communication points are a bottleneck. Smaller teams help,
| but the ideal team size for accomplishing a task is 1.
|
| Putting engineers in a war room or open office is only going
| to irritate the ones who want to spend their time doing deep
| work. And those are usually the better ones.
| dyadic wrote:
| I think that small teams with high throughput communication
| can work in place and remote. In place the high communication
| is there by default where the default remote position would
| probably be lower communication / more isolation. It doesn't
| have to be this way of course, but it would require the
| remote high communication model to be put into action
| intentionally.
|
| It's worth remembering that this high communication method
| isn't really scalable too, and that larger teams trying to
| follow it will find themselves dedicating a larger % of their
| time to noise. It would take some intentional actions to move
| away from it as the team grows.
| mojuba wrote:
| > this high communication method isn't really scalable too
|
| True, from what I've seen the threshold lies somewhere at
| 10-12 people, assuming a mixed team engineering + marketing
| + etc.
|
| But while you are small you can take advantage, remove all
| formalities and be in-place as much as possible. You can
| move so much faster, having trivial respect and ethics in
| mind, as in don't talk loudly about sales just next to an
| engineer who seems to be working on something. And vice
| versa.
| dsign wrote:
| > Being in the same space physically I think speeds up a lot
| of things. In small teams and esp. at early stage startups
| your whole day is a meeting where things are discussed and
| resolved spontaneously.
|
| Who's going to write the fine-detail code if they whole day
| is a meeting? It may change from case to case, but for some
| small teams the biggest challenge is to produce something so
| good that it out-competes the product of teams significantly
| larger. A brilliant idea gets you 5% of the way, the rest is
| getting busy with very boring details and corner cases.
|
| My small teams and startup experience: none of that boring
| work gets done as soon as there are two people together.
| Simply put, social interaction is way nicer than boring work.
| This is not just technical development work, but even
| commercial research. I know this is a thought crime, but I
| sometimes feel like it would be a good idea to lock the
| socialite sales person in a room with no human contact
| whatsoever until they finish that Excel spreadsheet.
| metb wrote:
| > Who's going to write the fine-detail code if they whole
| day is a meeting?
|
| Reminds me of the time I worked at an early stage startup.
| I used to take official vacation time, and disappear from
| company collaboration tools to get real work done.
| steve_adams_86 wrote:
| Ugh, me too. These are really dark memories though.
| obedm wrote:
| I find this incredibly sad for many reasons.
|
| Taking time off to work for the company that doesn't let
| you work for them during normal work hours.
|
| The irony is so strong but I understand the sentiment and
| why you'd do it
| 8note wrote:
| Doesn't let you do the work that you want to do*
|
| The thinking and talking is still work
| sodapopcan wrote:
| That's really awful. These companies shouldn't be allowed
| to exist. I mean, of course they always will, but many
| exist that aren't like this.
| goodpoint wrote:
| That's the biggest red flag I've seen in a long time.
| alanwreath wrote:
| Did not expect to find someone who does the same thing as
| me. I am actually kind of embarrassed I've taken sick
| days just to work without interruption or to investigate
| some tech I wouldn't get company time to research ("we
| need you pumping out code, whats learning? You already
| know everything you'll ever need!")
| christophilus wrote:
| I used to take sick days for that reason when I worked in
| an open office space. Then, I realized how dumb that was
| and quit that job.
| smichel17 wrote:
| Huh. During my undergrad, one of the most time-consuming
| courses was almost entirely pair programming. Having
| another person there to pull you back on track when you get
| distracted, and vice versa, was definitely a productivity
| improvement. Also less time wasted going down the wrong
| rabbit hole.
|
| The chance that one of us was feeling motivated to put in
| the work to deal with that corner case is higher than the
| same chance for either of us individually. Though I guess
| it depends if the distracted person is more able to derail
| the other person, vs being pulled back on track.
| derefr wrote:
| Maybe "meeting" has the wrong shade of meaning here. The
| comparison isn't to a pro-forma "let's sit down for 30
| minutes and focus on discussing this" meeting. It's more to
| a "war room" continuous-until-it's-fixed meeting that
| happens in response to an incident:
|
| * bringing all stakeholders together with exactly one goal
| (in a startup-as-meeting, that's "finding product-market
| fit"),
|
| * where everyone in the room has domain expertise and
| heavily-overlapping capabilities;
|
| * and any non-shared knowledge _relevant to solving the
| problem_ that each stakeholder brings in with them, is
| immediately pulled out and put on the table, until there is
| formed a complete _shared understanding_ of the problem,
|
| * and micro-tasks / "there's always another thing" tasks
| are then being greedy-scheduled by whoever's free and able
| jumping to take them on next;
|
| * with everyone keeping track well-enough of what the
| solution-space for each task is looking like, that at any
| time the person working on a task can drop it to work on
| something else more urgent+suited to them, and someone else
| will be able to immediately pick up that task -- not
| because the other person had the time to document
| everything and make onboarding to the solution-space easy
| for them, but rather because everyone was learning all they
| could about everything everyone else was doing in
| expectation that they might have to jump in.
|
| In regular work, you do heads-down work and then you
| explicitly decide to "have a meeting", which interrupts
| your heads-down work for a while. In a war room, you're
| always "in" the continuous meeting, and people explicitly
| decide to break off to do heads-down work while the meeting
| continues around them. (Usually with one ear open to notice
| if they need to jump back in and contribute/adjust the
| course of the plans being made.)
|
| For extremely-early-stage startups (i.e. founders and no-
| one else), this is what every day looks like. Rather than
| dividing up the problem along lines of domain-expertise (a
| sort of human Service-Oriented Architecture for problem-
| solving, with single-person "departments"), you instead
| essentially act together as one "multi-core person" to
| solve problems.
|
| IMHO, if this _isn't_ how most hours of the day at your
| early-stage startup look, then you either don't have the
| right founders, or you don't have enough shipping pressure
| (i.e. "too much" runway.)
| mojuba wrote:
| War room is an excellent term in this case, thank you.
| Going to use it from now on. And this:
|
| > Usually with one ear open to notice if they need to
| jump back in and contribute/adjust the course of the
| plans being made.
|
| is precisely what I was trying to describe here in the
| comments. Thanks again.
| jusssi wrote:
| > Who's going to write the fine-detail code if they whole
| day is a meeting?
|
| You do it in the meeting, while others discuss things that
| aren't your concern. If it's something hard you really need
| to focus on, you tell the others to either shut up for a
| bit, or lend their eyeballs for a while.
|
| Also, the boring stuff gets done just fine in a group
| everyone getting their last month's pay depends on it.
|
| Been there, on both counts. The only thing I miss about it
| is how much you get done, compared to being a EUREUREUR
| consultant tied to a spot with red tape.
| reader_mode wrote:
| >Who's going to write the fine-detail code if they whole
| day is a meeting?
|
| In a start-up ? You around midnight. Believe in the mission
| bro.
| edgyquant wrote:
| I've worked passed midnight maybe twice in my 3 years
| working at startups. Both times it was because I wanted
| to get something done not because the founder asked. Some
| times I wake up in the middle of the night and, with
| nothing else to do, start working on something but it's
| only because I want my equity to be worth something
| (nothing or everything) as quickly as possible so I can
| move on: not because I have to do these things.
| mojuba wrote:
| > Who's going to write the fine-detail code if they whole
| day is a meeting?
|
| From my experience, in good teams people understand when
| it's time leave each other alone. I hate the word "sprint"
| which comes from the much hated "agile" culture, but it's
| what it is: there are these small sprints when everyone
| signals DND by taking on their headphones. Which also means
| only disturb me if it's very, very important or urgent.
|
| But it is also important to be aware of what's going on in
| the company. Not just what you are doing but also _why_.
| Everyone can take part in decision making which happens
| during the day spontaneously. Or at least be aware of the
| process. From my observations: if done right, this kind of
| environments can be super productive.
| vladvasiliu wrote:
| > From my experience, in good teams people understand
| when it's time leave each other alone. I hate the word
| "sprint" which comes from the much hated "agile" culture,
| but it's what it is: there are these small sprints when
| everyone signals DND by taking on their headphones. Which
| also means only disturb me if it's very, very important
| or urgent.
|
| When I was working in a startup, we did a "hybrid wfh"
| thing: we knew when we were about to have something
| requiring our full attention and would work one (or
| multiple) days from home. We had Google chat (or whatever
| it was called at the time) for anything that could handle
| a delay in response and the phone for anything that
| needed a chat right away.
|
| At the time, the office was in a kind of co-working
| space, so it was a particularly hellish combination of
| open-space and multiple companies, complete with people
| unaware of their phones' silent mode. The upside was that
| even for regular work, productivity skyrocketed when we
| were home, so the founder, who initially was against
| this, started warming up to the arrangement.
|
| More broadly, I think that different jobs have different
| requirements. I hate it when people talk around me and
| find it harder to focus. I never got used to this even
| after multiple years. And while I love listening to
| music, even while working, I don't enjoy wearing
| headphones all day long. I'm wearing glasses, so bigger
| headphones start to hurt after a while and in-ears are
| pain to put back in after every interruption.
|
| Also, headphones cut you off from the surrounding
| discussion (that's the point, right?) so the whole "you
| can overhear the spontaneous decisions during the day"
| kinda falls flat, doesn't it?
| bluGill wrote:
| > "you can overhear the spontaneous decisions during the
| day"
|
| This is a good thing if the spontaneous decisions are
| always and only the ones that are important to you. This
| is a bad thing if there is any other decision. In a
| shared multiple companies space the only decision that
| matters to you is "where should we go for lunch" (they
| might not work with you, but you can still eat lunch with
| them). In a company only space it is better, but there
| are still a lot that don't matter to you. If it is a team
| only shared space most of the decisions matter to you.
| odiroot wrote:
| > I hate the word "sprint" which comes from the much
| hated "agile" culture
|
| Lowercase agile culture is not hated. What's hated is
| usually completely wrong implementation of that idea and
| cargo-cultism.
|
| Even more so, the whole industry of capital-case Agile.
| DougBTX wrote:
| > the much hated "agile" culture
|
| I never got on well with Scrum, especially with the way
| it has become synonymous with "agile". Really a shame
| that "agile" which focused on people has been swamped as
| a term by Scrum which is process process process.
| mojuba wrote:
| Right, thanks for the correction, I meant Scrum of
| course.
| bluGill wrote:
| Scrum isn't bad, but there are better agile processes.
| Most people doing scrum don't really do retrospectives
| and make changes to the process. In a large company this
| isn't really reasonable as there needs to be some process
| in common with each team, and the processes you most need
| to change in scrum are the ones that can only be changed
| if every team does it at once.
|
| I favor kanban processes - it locks in less at an
| organizational level and thus allows more freedom to make
| changes for the team. Though in my experience there is
| less change needed in the first place because the only
| processes specified are the ones that are locked in and
| everything else is whatever it takes to make it work.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Your thinking is part of the problem.
|
| Agile is rooted on focusing on people. Make a group of
| good people and empower them and they will create a
| process that works well. Also on the cases the process
| fail, they will change it. But if you go and decide the
| process, that's more than half the way towards a failure
| already.
| bluGill wrote:
| What you propose works in a small organization - which is
| the type of place where scrum was created and works well.
| In a large organization there would be too many people
| trying to make conflicting changes for that to work. Any
| individual change might be good, but they conflict and
| nobody can track what you are supposed to do now. That is
| why large organizations are so hard to change.
|
| Agile focusing on people is a good thing. People are
| number one, but agile has always acknowledged the roll of
| processes.
| Kaze404 wrote:
| > Being in the same space physically I think speeds up a lot
| of things. In small teams and esp. at early stage startups
| your whole day is a meeting where things are discussed and
| resolved spontaneously.
|
| I do not understand how people can get work done in an
| environment like this. I've had similar experiences and "the
| whole day is a meeting" only served me for unnecessary
| interruptions, useless workplace banter and unsatisfactory
| results.
| iambateman wrote:
| I do think _some_ work circumstances can benefit from
| periods of nearness.
|
| Programming is not one of them. ;)
| filesystem wrote:
| People who tilt towards extrovert thrive in an environment
| like this.
| mumblemumble wrote:
| > screen real estate isn't a big factor in getting stuff done
| for me
|
| Lately, I've been wondering if less screen real estate actually
| makes me a _better_ programmer.
|
| Being able to simultaneously have 6 files open across two large
| monitors with a lot of vertical real estate means that messy
| code doesn't hurt me as much. In fact, I'm pretty sure the only
| reason I do that is to facilitate dealing with messy code. I no
| longer have to build a stable mental model of it in my head,
| because it's reasonably convenient to just keep referring back
| to the original source code.
|
| When I'm just on the laptop screen, though, and I can fit one
| file full width, or two if I've been good about keeping the
| line length below 90, I start having to keep things in my short
| term memory. Which means that, when it's not amenable to that,
| I'm relatively quick to get annoyed and refactor it for
| comprehensibility. I'd like to think that, with time, I'd
| eventually come to just write more comprehensible code in the
| first place.
|
| A couple more data points here, obviously riddled with bias,
| come from my colleagues. Some have desktop computers with
| multiple 4K monitors, some have a laptop connected to a single
| external monitor, and some have that and also a habit of
| unplugging the computer and working on the front porch whenever
| the weather is nice. My impression is that the people in the
| first group tend to write the least comprehensible code.
|
| Of course, the 4K monitor jocks also tend to work the fastest.
| But I think it's maybe a bit like when I used to work for
| building contractor. Nobody liked to be on the same crew as the
| person who worked the fastest.
| ckosidows wrote:
| I've been using just one monitor for the last two years and
| never once wanted to go back to multiple monitors.
|
| I used to have two external monitors and it was always
| frustrating to dock/undock and re-arrange my windows. That
| was why I transitioned. But I've seen no reason or negative
| impact on my work to drive me to return to multiple screens.
|
| HackerNews often talks about how task switching and multi-
| tasking negatively affect focus. I wonder if those same
| people think multiple monitors contribute to either of those.
| On my screen I only ever have one window; it feels more
| intentional. On three screens I had email and teams on one, a
| browser on another, and my IDE on the third. Surely that's
| more distracting, no?
|
| Initial Google results seem to sing the praises of multiple
| monitors. Am I truly unproductive on my one screen or have
| others seen the same benefits? How can "productivity" even be
| quantified?
| zachrose wrote:
| You're really on to something here about systems thinking and
| the relative power of tools. I feel similarly about big IDEs
| and stateful, long-running test runners.
| kevstev wrote:
| So it seems I accidentally nuked my Macbook pro two nights
| ago after my dog spilled a glass of water on my nightstand
| and splashed some onto MBP- I thought it was an indirect hit,
| but the next morning I plugged it in and appeared to have
| shorted some stuff out internally, and even worse- it seems
| to have shorted out my thunderbolt monitor too.
|
| So I was forced to just use my Macbook Air, and I was
| preparing for a massive productivity hit, and tbh- I think it
| may have actually _helped_ a bit- I don 't think we realize
| how much we get distracted by having email and slack or
| whatever open all the time, and just being able to focus on
| one task at a time visually was actually kind of a relief.
|
| Long term, I am going to want monitors back and all, but I
| think there is a real benefit to keeping the things that are
| not 100% your attention at that moment entirely minimized and
| out of view.
| pawelwentpawel wrote:
| Bringing up an anecdotal edge case, a couple years ago I have
| attended a viewing in a coworking space (Bricklane, London)
| where members had to sit on old recycled school chairs because
| that was the "design". Apparently you need to get a sciatica to
| look like a hipster coder.
|
| Having the right setup is not only about making your brain more
| productive - it's about keeping your spine pain free. While my
| home office is set up for this purpose, only one company that I
| have worked with so far had this aspect in mind. In the past, I
| had to take days off because of terrible set ups and long work
| hours. Having a well positioned and large second monitor helps
| a lot.
|
| You have much more control over this while designing your home
| office. Working from bed is not the way unless you're planning
| to marry a physiotherapist in the future.
| wccrawford wrote:
| The chair thing is always amazing to me. I worked at a
| company that had crappy chairs (because they claimed they
| couldn't afford better).
|
| One of my team decided that they needed a good chair for
| medical reasons and asked for it. They got a really nice
| chair.
|
| I don't know if anyone complained, but it wasn't long before
| the whole team had really nice chairs. The cost was
| negligible compared to the morale boost, IMO. I don't think I
| ever looked at that chair without thinking, "Man, that's a
| good chair!"
|
| When I got a new job that had crappy chairs, I bought myself
| a new chair right away without even asking. Whenever I
| upgraded, I'd give my old one to anyone on my team that
| wanted it. I don't know if they cared much, but it sure made
| me feel better.
| dimitrios1 wrote:
| Now imagine if you got an office with a door!
| ilaksh wrote:
| I think working from bed for a short time is a good way to
| keep varying your posture.
|
| The headline is misleading because I would have answered that
| I work from bed sometimes, but I also work from every chair
| or position around the house. I have a laptop and I move
| around.
|
| Working from bed is when I am trying to finish something
| that's not particularly challenging while also kind of
| watching the baseball game on TV.
| alanwreath wrote:
| Yep, plus I've already learned that (for me) doing work or
| study in bed means I'll be either asleep or uncomfortable
| soon.
| christophergs wrote:
| This, this, a thousand times this.
| mgkimsal wrote:
| I've gone the opposite way. I did WFH/remote for ... years,
| always on a single laptop. I was very mobile - f2f client
| meetings, work from coffee shop, work from hotels, etc.
|
| In the last year, as travel/f2f was essentially taken off the
| table, I've moved to laptop with 2 external monitors, and just
| recently to 'desktop' setup. I still have the laptop, and use
| it to work from home now and then, but I'm slowly getting used
| to more screen real estate. It's not even so much 2 monitors,
| just a much larger main one. 32" vs the 15" has been a big
| difference, mostly for the better.
|
| But... I had _years_ of comments from a lot of folks about "no
| idea how you can get anything done from just one laptop - that
| screen is so small, etc."
| EvanAnderson wrote:
| I worked from home for around 15 years and I miss it
| tremendously. I think my productivity was much better when my
| "take a moment from work" diversions were exactly the things
| you described-- doing some laundry, washing some dishes,
| preparing lunch, etc.
|
| I'm back in a traditional office setting. My diversions are
| mostly the "surf around on the Internet" variety. That's not to
| say random Internet use didn't happen when I worked at home,
| but I found I enjoyed random non-computer diversions far more
| than sitting viewing websites. Now that I'm in an office those
| non-computer diversions aren't an option. I just end up wasting
| time on websites when I need a break.
|
| I also really, really miss working from my couch with my 15"
| laptop on my lap. It was vastly more comfortable than any desk
| setup I've ever had and discouraged me from hoarding physical
| articles in drawers, corners of a desk, etc.
| snicker7 wrote:
| > I could never have done that when I was in an office. I
| couldn't take 20 min and play banjo or accordion and come back
| to my problem with a fresh eye
|
| I mean ... you could.
| refactor_master wrote:
| "Oh that guy over there? He's our chief architect. Don't ruin
| his banjo break."
| scarecrowbob wrote:
| I should say, "I wouldn't have felt free to do that in the
| situations I've been in".
|
| And maybe that's just a supposition that I was making.
|
| People pay me to play music-- it's not that I'm bad at it.
| But there are a lot of reasons ranging from not annoying
| other folks to not looking like I care more about playing
| scales than fixing a problem which make me think I should not
| do that kind of thing.
| holoduke wrote:
| Working from home only possible with experienced devs. Once you
| have lots of juniors, it's very difficult to coach them.
| Juniors need to be able to contact fellow devs randomly and not
| via a zoom call.
| llharper wrote:
| I've been mentoring two juniors at work and I prefer zoom
| actually. It's a lot easier for me to share my screen with
| the both of them than it is to all huddle around my desk. If
| they run into a problem they ping me on slack and we hop on a
| call together. It's not any harder than strolling over to my
| desk.
| keskival wrote:
| In Finland there used to be a culture of everyone from high
| school upwards living in chatrooms or IRC, so it has been
| extremely natural for people to "idle" on chat channels and
| interact naturally over those. I would say chat channels
| feel much more intimate and social environment to me than
| sitting in an office. Even when we worked in offices we had
| IRC or Slack or other channels open and interacted over
| those rather than by actually walking around and talking.
| It's simply much more effective, asynchronous, and leaves a
| log of what was said and agreed.
| samsonradu wrote:
| This is spot on. The 'bottleneck' in programming is not the
| screen size or typing speed but the I/O of information in the
| brain.
|
| I too stopped using multiple screens some time ago because it
| felt like being overwhelmed with information and experiencing
| fatigue, while not being more productive.
| Aeolun wrote:
| I stopped using multiple screens, but only because my 4K (at
| home) and ultrawide (in the office) can fit everything I
| need. I wouldn't do the same with 1080p.
| brainzap wrote:
| Same, moving is key. I once was much in bed and it caused neck
| and headaches for month.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| > Surely there are more optimal ways of doing stuff. Odds are
| that there is a Taylorist approach that would pull more
| productivity out of me. But much like my typing speed (~50WPM)
| isn't really the limiting factor in my programming skill,
| screen real estate isn't a big factor in getting stuff done for
| me.
|
| Your work habits suggest the best "Taylorist" improvement might
| just be to let you roam. Seems to be working best.
|
| > I could never have done that when I was in an office. I
| couldn't take 20 min and play banjo or accordion and come back
| to my problem with a fresh eye.
|
| I've seen music/game rooms at good companies. If a company
| can't set aside some space for breaks, that's a red flag.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| > I couldn't put on my laundry and hang it up while I listen to
| other folks on the daily stand up.
|
| I think stand-ups are useless.
| robbedpeter wrote:
| >>... play banjo or accordion
|
| Being able to noodle on a guitar while stepping away from a
| problem is a super power for me. If you work from home, get an
| instrument you can distract yourself with. The music or drills
| can break you out of ruts, and if you do it half seriously, you
| can develop real skill.
|
| The oh so serious kabuki show we all play out in offices,
| especially open plans, wastes a lot of mental energy on
| "professionalism" and decor. People get away with being good at
| that type of theater, instead of being competent problem
| solvers, or try to turn those things into leverage for internal
| politics and career maneuvering.
|
| If people are doing knowledge work, then the privacy of their
| home gets rid of all the unnecessary play acting. Maybe the
| pandemic will demonstrate once and for all that an employee
| with a good work ethic can be lots more effective from home
| than at the office. And if we encourage music and creativity
| and development of other relaxation and focusing skills in
| service of optimizing mental acuity, that leads to a better
| world.
| mark_l_watson wrote:
| +1 and I like your writing style: """The oh so serious kabuki
| show we all play out in offices, especially open plans,
| wastes a lot of mental energy on "professionalism" and
| decor."""
| long_time_gone wrote:
| ==If people are doing knowledge work, then the privacy of
| their home gets rid of all the unnecessary play acting. ==
|
| Except for all the hours you spend on video calls where
| people are looking directly into your home. If you use some
| type of background to blur your home, that becomes the same
| type of "kabuki show" you reference about offices.
|
| ==Maybe the pandemic will demonstrate once and for all that
| an employee with a good work ethic can be lots more effective
| from home than at the office. ==
|
| Maybe you have a bias here? I know lots of people with "good
| work ethics" who feel less productive at home.
| ksec wrote:
| Just reading this got me thinking. Something may be obvious but
| I have yet to see anyone written or pointing it out.
|
| Does Remote Work prevent burn out?
| nix23 wrote:
| That's a mental thing and it's as easy as it gets to prevent
| it:
|
| 1. Your work is not your life.
|
| 2. Since it's not your life, don't get too invested in it.
|
| 3. Plan your free time ahead and fill it with stuff that
| makes you happy.
|
| 4. Eat good, sleep good, and Sport sport sport (from
| everything a good amount and not too much)
|
| 5. Don't take drugs on regular "recreational" basis (yes
| alcohol is especially included here)
|
| 6. If your away from work, don't think about it.
| dsr_ wrote:
| No, it's a tool, not a panacea.
|
| If you are feeling disconnected from the value of your work,
| being away from other people doesn't reconnect you.
|
| If you are fire-fighting one emergency after another, not
| seeing other people in vivo doesn't get you downtime.
| nayaketo wrote:
| Not at all. It might actually cause you to burnout if you
| begin to feel your work has encroached on your personal life.
| I went through a rough phase a while back because of this.
| Ocerge wrote:
| Not sure why you got downvoted; remote work has been awful
| for me mental health wise since COVID. Not every dev wants
| to sit at home all day while they work. The separation and
| social interaction are important for me.
| zz865 wrote:
| > I've just gotten really fast at swapping windows on my 15"
| laptop;
|
| How's your spine? my neck can't handle laptops any more.
| alpaca128 wrote:
| I really don't know much in this area but this seems to be
| more of a posture thing. A physiotherapist told me he only
| uses laptops because apparently that's the best combined with
| the right table and chair due to the tilted, low screen.
|
| In my experience he's at least not completely wrong, but in
| the long term I still aim to try a standing desk to mix it
| up, sooner or later sitting in general feels wrong when I
| overdo it. And I just prefer a single large screen. Enough to
| fit two windows beside each other with enough space for any
| situation.
| tonyedgecombe wrote:
| I suspect the real problem is lack of movement. If you
| spend long periods of time in the same position no matter
| how good your posture is it is going to cause a problem.
| scarecrowbob wrote:
| To be honest, I am in better shape than I have ever been in
| my life, but that's cause I'm 43 and rock climb regularly.
|
| IMO, core strength has been the big change in how my spine
| feels.
| oytis wrote:
| (half of them without waking up)
| lumost wrote:
| Personally, I'm going a bit batty with work from home. I get my
| stuff done - but it feels like pulling teeth against my
| procrastination and desire to relax in the spaces I've used for
| relaxation.
|
| After a year and a half I've run out of rooms that aren't already
| spoiled for productivity. This used to happen in the office but
| I'd simply migrate desks or work from the kitchen for a few
| weeks.
|
| If I was single wfh would be a godsend to simply travel where I
| wanted to travel and work where I wanted to work. But my house
| has a 10 month old a nanny and a working spouse inside of 1500 sq
| ft.
| Gurdt wrote:
| I feel you man.
|
| I mean, I like working from home, I like the extra time in the
| morning for sports, and in the evening to cook. But I also
| experience disadvantages from it... I really like being amongst
| others, which isn't the same via Slack.
|
| Also, I dislike having my house as both my chill place and my
| work place. I feel it doesn't really work. I already have a
| different room to work in, but I still feel 'locked up' at my
| house somehow.
| 4e530344963049 wrote:
| https://trimread.org/articles/12
| xchip wrote:
| Before posting a random poll, please check the sources and the
| authors.
|
| FWIW that 'study' was carried out by craftjack
|
| https://craftjack.com/toolbox/remote-work-from-home-statisti...
|
| And who knows how biased/correct it is.
| jmmarco wrote:
| Bed is for sleep and sexy time, not work.
| commandlinefan wrote:
| I was having a lot of trouble falling asleep at one time when I
| was in college - to the point where it was impacting my health.
| I brought it up with the nurse and she asked me if I was
| reading in bed and I said I was. She said try staying out of
| bed until bed time and see if you have an easier time falling
| to sleep. And bam - within a few days, I was sleeping normally
| again.
| throwaway98797 wrote:
| The bed is great.
|
| I do worry about long term health consequences though.
| redisman wrote:
| I like it for after lunch for an hour or two while sipping a
| coffee and trying to rally for another productive session. Much
| better than trying to rest my belly on a chair or standing like
| I did at the office.
| SerLava wrote:
| 62% of remote workers are uncool.
| ravenstine wrote:
| I'm really pro-remote, and I've been working from home for the
| last 3 years, but I've never identified with how a lot of people
| do it.
|
| Whether it's remote workers themselves or people like my parents,
| people seem impressed with the idea that they can work in their
| PJs/underwear. I can't work that way, for some reason. I need to
| be wearing the same clothes I'd be wearing at the office.
| Although I don't do this most of the time, even wearing my shoes
| in my office helps me feel and act more professional.
|
| Working from bed would be even worse. I've done it on occasion,
| but I always end up hating it. To each their own, though.
| hellbannedguy wrote:
| I have used my bed as an office since college.
|
| I feel a subtle, but strong, push back to the office by most
| employers, and get I get it some situations. Jamie Diamond is
| right about certain jobs in finance, but most of us are not
| offered those apprentiship type white collar jobs.
|
| You proved you can work from home, why make things more
| complicated? Oh yea, to the people whom have zero social life
| other than work friends, there are still bars. Yes that last
| sentence is a bit rough.
|
| I'm waiting for the "Save the planet" by working from home
| argument. The amount of Carbon whatever saved by people not
| commuting must be great?
|
| I feel like employers are passively aggressive over this whole
| return to a 2 hour commute, office bull crap, and and all the
| other bs we do out of convention.
|
| Oh yea, so lets finally bury the tie for good.
|
| (A bit of a rant--yes. I just feel like they are really worried
| about work from home common sense movement. On another note, but
| strongly related to Covid, and zero pre government planning, I've
| also noticed how seemingly liberal cities, like Sausalito CA, are
| doing everything in the "Move along you homeless person, we don't
| want you here, but we will Act sympathize during meetings time
| handbook".)
| runawaybottle wrote:
| Guilty.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| hell yeah friends, it's healthy to vary your posture throughout
| the day... try a backrest pillow
|
| home offices aren't a luxury, traditional offices are harmful
| KronisLV wrote:
| I'm still amazed at how we lack both ergonomic and comfortable
| ways to use computers, it's usually just either one or the other,
| never both.
|
| Imagine a large pillow that's shaped vaguely like human back
| should be when resting, which you could put on your bed to
| support your entire back, neck and head, at a slight incline.
| Then, add a keyboard support that can be moved around, alongside
| with one for mouse (or just a trackpad), as well as a VESA wall
| mount for a few monitors above the bed, angled so that you can
| look up at the screens directly, without putting too much strain
| on your eyes.
|
| Essentially, it'd be the bed version of this:
| https://altwork.com/
|
| And, because it'd be just a few pillows and some aluminum pieces
| for the mounts, it shouldn't break the bank like the linked item
| either. Otherwise, even with reminders to get up and walk around
| every hour, it always feels like my back is in the wrong
| position, regardless whether i'm sitting at a table with a chair,
| laying in bed with some pillows underneath or anything else. Even
| though i do stretches and daily exercise, the lack of truly
| ergonomic ways to work without having to constantly monitor my
| own posture (which will realistically never happen) feels like a
| detriment, or at least will become one in 20 years, when back
| issues start manifesting.
|
| So here's my question: why are people so obsessed with office
| chairs and why don't we have such pillows be more popular, or
| just don't put more thought into working from bed?
| hyper_dynamics wrote:
| https://dekomilch.de/burodesign-2/bester-monitorstaender-hoe...
| KronisLV wrote:
| Thanks for the link! 400 euros seems way better in regards to
| affordability!
|
| Here's a Google Translate link for anyone who isn't familiar
| with the German language: https://translate.google.com/transl
| ate?sl=auto&tl=en&u=https...
| hsbauauvhabzb wrote:
| Subbing to this, in case somebody drops commercial or DIY bed
| monitor visa mounts or spine friendly bed pillows
| tpxl wrote:
| You can save a comment on HN by clicking the comment
| timestamp then clicking favorite :)
| exo762 wrote:
| I've tried setup like this. I fall asleep immediately. It seems
| that I require some amount of discomfort to stay focused.
| Tade0 wrote:
| For the pillows I recommend pregnancy pillows - they're filled
| with some kind of small grains and adjust to your body
| perfectly, providing an amazing level of comfort.
| birdyrooster wrote:
| Adjustable beds and over bed tables exist and people use them
| to do stuff from bed.
| ganzuul wrote:
| The most capable and ergonomic interface device I have found
| is, after extensive configuration, the Steam Controller. For
| file management, web browsing and social media I don't really
| have to use a keyboard aside from typing, and in both modes my
| posture is symmetric. Transition to games is of course
| seamless.
|
| Sadly, it is no longer on the market but the community behind
| it expects a new model.
| csomar wrote:
| Is $7k really expensive even for non-programming jobs? Assuming
| a 5-year lifespan, that comes at around $120/month which should
| be affordable to most of the developed world.
|
| I have another theory: The reason we didn't adopt such
| ergonomic setups is because they look "weird". We are quite
| used to sitting in chairs and it's not quite far from sitting
| on a rock.
|
| A customized ergonomic setup will pay itself in quite a short
| time.
| ecshafer wrote:
| This is the most out of touch comment I have seen in a long
| time, even for hackernews. A lot of people with office jobs
| are making $35k-$40k a year. You're talking about 1/4th of
| their take home salary, and $120 a month is an expense that
| at least 50% of America couldn't afford and most don't have
| $7k on hand to blow.
| csomar wrote:
| If you get a 10% gain in productivity, the chair/desk
| already paid for itself. It also replaces both a chair and
| a desk, so the total cost is less than $7k.
|
| > You're talking about 1/4th of their take home salary
|
| Over a life span of 5 years, that's less than a 10% of
| take-home salary. Non-Ergonomic chairs have a high future
| cost for your health but I guess doing that math is not
| humans strongest feature.
| railsgirls112 wrote:
| 10% gain in productivity =/= 10% gain in compensation,
| most people already have a chair/desk so replacing their
| function does not automatically make it cheaper. Seems
| like you're doing more of a math problem instead of
| applying this to actual people.
| KronisLV wrote:
| Yes, it is. For that same amount of money, in my country, i
| could purchase 2 used cars, or just buy food for about 3
| years (without eating out), or pay rent for almost 2 years.
|
| Alternatively, such a setup would cost me almost 5 month's
| worth of net salaries (as a software developer in one of the
| countries that people outsource to) and that is before any
| additional shipping costs.
|
| Such setups might make sense for people in the 1st world
| countries with decent salaries, but for me and may others who
| live in Eastern Europe or other countries that aren't as
| financially advanced, that is still a considerable sum of
| money.
|
| As for your point in regards to looks - i somewhat agree,
| however i definitely wouldn't mind such a setup in a full
| remote working position.
|
| Especially when eventually coupled with some high quality VR
| headset that would provide a passable resolution for
| programming (essentially at least an effective resolution of
| 1280x720 per virtual screen). It might be a while until that
| becomes feasible, if ever, though.
| oauea wrote:
| > or pay rent for almost 2 years.
|
| What country is that?
| KronisLV wrote:
| Latvia. To give you some perspective, my current net
| salary is around 1500 euros per month ( the national
| average is a bit under 1000
| https://tradingeconomics.com/latvia/wages ).
|
| Rent in an average small flat is around 300 euros, though
| could also reach 400 euros or more with heating expenses
| ( https://m.ss.lv/lv/real-
| estate/flats/riga/all/fDgTeF4RAzp4FD... some of these
| adverts list daily prices though ).
|
| Regardless, 7000 USD is around 5900 EUR, so 5900/300 =
| almost 20 months of rent covered. This also assumes no
| shipping costs, which might add a bit more.
| zepolen wrote:
| This is almost my setup for years, except using a laptop with a
| hi-res 17" screen rested on my knees.
|
| I can sit in this position for hours on end without getting
| uncomfortable.
|
| I've tried out every office chair including the Aeron, they
| don't compare in any way. If I was forced to work from a chair,
| I'd get a $100 adjustable deck chair.
|
| I also found multiple monitors are very tiring on your
| head/eyes which need to be constantly moving between them which
| takes time and energy. Alt-tabbing is _much_ quicker and as a
| bonus you 're not gimped when forced to work from a single
| monitor/laptop while outside.
| KronisLV wrote:
| I'm afraid that trying to compile an enterprise Java codebase
| with a laptop on my knees would be painful, since currently
| it maxes out all cores for a few minutes.
|
| A deck chair seems like an interesting idea, however!
|
| In regards to screens, I've found that 4 is still not enough
| for me - even some of them are stacked vertically with a DIY
| VESA mount and stand, so the movements end up being pretty
| limited and are more like the occasional gentle stretch.
|
| Then again, I'm the kind of person who likes to have multiple
| categorized browser instances open, text editors, IDEs,
| source control tools and terminals to the point where
| managing all of the windows would be a hassle. Workspaces
| could help, maybe even tiling window managers, but I think
| everyone has their own preferred workflows.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| I have a standing desk, in the corner of my living room. I've
| tried other locations, and that hasn't worked. Being here, I
| don't get the feeling of being "disconnected" from the household.
|
| Most importantly, of course, is that it increases my availability
| to my cats. They are quite efficient at expressing their needs,
| and I have to be ready to drop everything, in order to attend to
| said needs.
|
| I have a nice chair (a Herman-Miller Embody -overrated). I never
| sit in it. I stand at my desk whenever I work.
|
| I have a desk that can go up or down, and have it set up, so that
| I can lower it, quite easily. I never do. It stays at one level
| (42.5").
|
| I have a _monster_ LG[0] that stretches across the entire desk.
| It is exactly as wide as the desk. I have another 4K monitor,
| above it (wall-mounted), for the AppleTV, or if I am giving a
| Zoom class (screen share).
|
| I have a laptop (a 2019 15-inch MBP), but it stays plugged in. I
| insist on a laptop, so I can take it on the road, if necessary,
| but the LG has spoiled me rotten. Using the laptop screen is
| painful. My next laptop will be the smaller pro version M2 that
| comes out, later this year.
|
| When I work, I generally "dress for work" (button-down shirt and
| jeans), but a lot more casually than I did, for over 30 years in
| the office. I feel as if it is important to have that silly
| little bit of self-discipline. On weekends, I allow myself
| shorts, and, occasionally, a T-shirt.
|
| My hours are whatever I want, whenever I want. I tend to get
| started early (I wake up at 5AM), and often code, right up to bed
| time. I sometimes stay up, in bed, testing my work on my iPad
| and/or iPhone.
|
| I take breaks whenever I want, and they can be long breaks, but I
| don't let myself have more than about 3-4 during a day.
|
| I tend to work 7 days a week; sometimes, I allow myself a "half
| day" (maybe 6 hours). My GH Activity Graph is solid green.
|
| I personally feel as if my productivity knocks anything I ever
| did in the office, into a cocked hat.
|
| I also don't make a dime at it.
|
| I've never been happier.
|
| [0] https://www.lg.com/us/monitors/lg-49WL95C-W-ultrawide-
| monito...
| abledon wrote:
| those last 5 sentences made me question If you were making a
| satirical post... ;)
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| Nope.
|
| I think that our industry (maybe true for all industries) has
| a very skewed idea of what constitutes "happy."
|
| It was not a voluntary retirement. I love working, and have
| skills that could earn companies millions of dollars.
|
| It's just that the industry made it _quite_ clear, very
| quickly, that I am not welcome (you see, I 'm -how shall I
| put this- "chronologically-challenged." I'm older than 35).
|
| So I found a few folks that can't afford nice things, and I'm
| working with them.
|
| Feel free to check out my work. I manage to stay busy.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| > but a whopping 50% still say the pain and discomfort of working
| from home is enough to send them back to the office.
|
| I want a breakdown of remote work preference by dollar amount
| spent on office chair. I think this would be revealing.
| bamboozled wrote:
| I sit on the floor on a Zafu and Zabuton, as if I'm doing Zen
| meditation.
|
| Good setup costs about $200USD, you will be feeling enlightened
| in no time.
| goodpoint wrote:
| You can get away for less than 100 USD for a real Zafu and
| Zabuton, and much less if you make it yourself or improvise
| with pillows and some foam.
| bamboozled wrote:
| Yeah, probably, still though, I bought mine for probably
| about $150 USD, all Japanese made with natural Kapok and
| Soba inside, I've had them for about 7 years, washing the
| covers of course.
|
| So well made.
| ramesh31 wrote:
| There's something distinctly American about spending $150
| on a Zafu.
| taejavu wrote:
| You work like this? Like with a laptop on a coffee table?
| goodpoint wrote:
| In Japan millions sit on the floor at a heated table:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kotatsu
| yesenadam wrote:
| I've done this for decades[0], sitting on cushions on the
| floor, used to have keyboard + monitor on coffee table, but
| now it's lower, keyboard + mouse on a large square cushion
| from a sofa, monitor on a small woofer speaker. Working on
| Mac minis the last 10 years. I don't know, I just like
| being low down, it feels grounded or something. I find it
| very comfortable.
|
| [0] Well, no idea what a zafu or zabuton are. My setup cost
| $0.
| bamboozled wrote:
| It's not the only way I work, but I often sit this way,
| yes.
|
| Especially for the first half of my day while drinking
| coffee etc.
| asciimov wrote:
| I bought a pair of Steelcase Criterions from a local used
| furniture store for $75 each. They have been wonderful. But I
| am going to have to order new pistons for them as mine has
| started to slowly sink. Those seem to run about $45 and are
| easy to replace. Might upgrade the casters while I'm at it.
| lowbloodsugar wrote:
| I use a $3999 Hale Aircomfort Zero Gravity Recliner with Air
| Massage [1]. I have three 27" monitors that are attached to a
| motorized sit/stand desk, purely so I can adjust their height
| as I adjust my depth of recline. This is an investment in my
| health that my employer doesn't seem to want to even discuss.
|
| Recent survey asked "Are you missing equipment that is only
| available at the office?" No, it's the other way around thanks.
|
| [1] https://relaxtheback.com/products/hale-aircomfort-recliner
| MattGaiser wrote:
| Nowhere near as nice a setup, but same answer to the survey
| question.
| version_five wrote:
| I've worked from home since March 2020 and I sit in a crappy
| folding chair from Costco. My office sent me a chair, and I
| also tried a kitchen chair, but I found the folding one the
| most comfortable, in that it doesn't lead to back pain after
| long use, while the others do.
|
| I've found the most important thing is setting the heights of
| my screen and keyboard properly, that seems to be the main
| determinant of discomfort.
| imjared wrote:
| I think there's something to be said for the general lack of
| movement that comes with WFH. It could be pure coincidence but
| the years I was in best shape running were the years when I had
| a 30 minute walk to/from work.
|
| I now work from home and try to get out some mornings for a
| walk around the neighborhood but more often than not, I go
| straight from bed to a chair. My body gradually loosens up
| during the day but mostly in a seated position.
| eyelidlessness wrote:
| I'm probably going to be an outlier in any poll because I've
| almost always worked from home, and never bought a chair for my
| desk. I did however have a really painful experience with my
| most recent chair, as in significant pain head to heel daily
| for months. And it turned out it was back pain I couldn't even
| feel. A friend gave me a desk chair when he replaced his and
| now it's down to head and neck pain.
|
| Yep, what you sit on makes a huge difference.
| seventytwo wrote:
| When I found out I was working from home a few years ago, I
| bought a used Steel Case Leap for about $200. Since then, I've
| probably sat in that chair for at least 5000 hours.
|
| It's easily worth every penny.
|
| The same logic for busing a bed should apply to home office
| ergonomics. You're going to spend eight hours per day with
| both. Invest!
| ekster wrote:
| Is there a consensus best pick for home office chair at this
| point?
| breput wrote:
| Surprisingly, "gaming" chairs might be the best, most cost
| effective option. Ars Technica[1] reviewed a couple gaming
| chairs from the home office viewpoint.
|
| I bought a toned-down style version of the Secretlab Titan
| chair pretty early in the pandemic and it is way better than
| my Aeron at work. And the Aeron is way better than any other
| normal office chair.
|
| [1] https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/10/gaming-chair-
| shootou...
| bobmaxup wrote:
| I have found that gaming chairs tend to be bucket style
| seats that aren't wide enough to not cramp your shoulders.
| irjustin wrote:
| Wow that's a tall claim because Aeron and the Steelcase
| leap are the gotos.
|
| I was always skeptical of gaming chairs long duration
| sitting solutions but maybe i'll head to a local store and
| give it a try.
| breput wrote:
| I was always an Aeron fan because it is a great chair but
| also it was also a status symbol. Back in 2011 I was
| working at a startup that finally started making real
| money and one day a semi truck showed up in the back lot
| and everyone rolled their motley collection of random
| office shit chairs out and we unloaded the Aerons off of
| the truck, still wrapped in plastic. I still have that
| same chair in the office, 10 years later, and it is
| basically as good as new.
|
| But...the high back Secretlab Titan chair is so much
| better. The back and lumbar support is great. The
| armrests are ok, but for less than $20 you can buy
| generic memory foam covers that feel like velvet clouds
| and position your wrists just right to help with avoiding
| RSD. The neck pillow isn't used all the time, but when I
| need to literally lean back, it is there. The chair also
| lays almost flat if you need a nap.
|
| For less than $500 it is a no-brainer. There is an active
| subreddit (r/secretlab) that is almost cult-like, which
| was kind of a red flag for me, but it actually seems to
| be legit superfans and not marketing. The chairs have a
| five year warranty - up from three but only if you post
| about it on social media, which is also kind of a red
| flag. But it is a quality chair and after almost two
| years of constant use, the arm rests are completely solid
| and it still feels brand new.
|
| There's nothing wrong with the Aeron but on the rare
| occasions that I'm in the office these days, it just
| feels...inferior.
|
| Edit: The arm rests are actually great - I just meant the
| padding. They obviously go up and down, but they also
| rotate in and out. So unlike most chairs, you can
| position them so they actually support your complete arms
| as you're typing - not parallel to the chair, but angled
| in so your elbows are at shoulder width but your forearms
| are supported closer to the keyboard.
|
| I forget about a lot of these adjustments because once
| you dial them in, it just feels right.
| breput wrote:
| The armrests are
| https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B01M8F9IYC (medium,
| black). I'm sure there are a thousand variants, but these
| work for me.
| bosie wrote:
| it doesn't seem to have an adjustable lumbar support
| area, as in, move it up or down? wouldn't that be a
| requirement since everybody needs the support at a
| different position?
| rtkwe wrote:
| I think the consensus is they're a great option on the
| lower end of the price range. Steelcase, Herman Miller,
| et al are usually much more expensive than the Secret
| Labs making gaming chairs. You might have trouble finding
| a store stocking them though to try out, afaik they don't
| generally have any retail presence.
| ssully wrote:
| The Secretlab chairs are nice (especially for the price),
| but they can be a little stiff and their adjustability is
| more limited then a Steelcase. I have been using a
| Secretlab for the last 8 months or so, and it's better
| then what I had before, but if I had the choice of going
| back to the office and taking my Steelcase there I would.
| nightski wrote:
| I spent over $1k on a Steelcase Leap several years ago
| and ironically switched to a Secretlab last year. It
| comes down to the fact that the Secretlab reclines a lot
| more and I find it far more comfortable. I've only been
| using it for a year and a half though, so who knows about
| long term.
| breput wrote:
| Do you recline while you're working or do you mean in
| between work? I'm just curious because I've napped in it
| a few times but generally keep it locked at a slight
| incline and almost forget how adjustable it is.
| AQuantized wrote:
| Working from home for a few years I have a Steelcase Leap v2,
| standing desk I use about 20-30% of the time, and a crappy
| office chair I use when I'm just sitting down for a few
| minutes (one 'problem' with a lot of high quality office
| chairs is that they tend to be designed in a way that
| promotes continued sitting).
| prh8 wrote:
| I got a Steelcase Gesture since it was expensed and I love
| it. If I had to pay, I'd have gone with the Leap. Great
| chairs
| dharmab wrote:
| Steelcase makes some excellent, but expensive chairs.
| klyrs wrote:
| Piano bench and good posture
| spiderice wrote:
| Is this for real? Can people really sit on a piano bench
| all day?
| klyrs wrote:
| It's totally for real, and I stand up and walk a little
| every hour or so, or I'll get tired and start slouching.
| WFH eliminated my chronic back pain, and I credit the
| bench.
|
| As I understand it, the key is the good posture. My back
| pain was caused by weak lower back muscles. Maintaining
| good posture exercises those, where comfy chairs only
| relieve the immediate discomfort at the cost of long-term
| health.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Not much different than a yoga ball as far as that goes
| is it?
| loopz wrote:
| Yoga ball is better and will train back. Allows for
| improved movement and spreads pressure. Might need
| something underneath to lift it up a bit.
| eyelidlessness wrote:
| I'm every stereotype of queer and ADHD and autistic, when
| it comes to posture. Good for you that it serves you well
| but my body needs back support and a thousand places to put
| my legs :)
| phsau wrote:
| There are lots of good options. The higher end brands
| include: Herman Miller Humanscale Steelcase Ergohuman
|
| Style, material preferences, and budget will guide the best
| pick. You can't really go wrong so long as your choice is an
| adjustable chair.
| dylan604 wrote:
| >The higher end brands include: Herman Miller Humanscale
| Steelcase Ergohuman
|
| Can I buy a comma, or buy you some? ;-)
| phsau wrote:
| The list formatting was not preserved...
| m4rtink wrote:
| Steelcase Please seems to be ideal for my above average
| height. Quite expensive though, if you are getting it for the
| list price - check if your company has a discount with them
| or their local distributors as many companies apparently do.
| throwaway743 wrote:
| It's cliche, but the Aeron. Your ass and back will never feel
| sore or like you need to get up.
|
| They're wicked expensive brand new, but I found mine for $200
| off Craigslist. Have had it for 3-4 years and it's one of the
| best purchases I've ever made.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| Test out first, if possible, everyone is built differently.
| For a lot of us the Aeron puts pressure on our legs at the
| front edge of the seat, and it can become painful. Not
| something you notice in the first few minutes, but fairly
| quickly. For those people, the Leap v2 is usually a better
| option.
| telesilla wrote:
| After switching to standing and seeing incredible gains in my
| body health, it's hard for me to consider spending on a good
| chair. I have a standing stool at the ready if I really need
| a rest, or at that point it means I need a break anyway. Oh
| and I started without a standing desk: just repurposed a
| piece of high furniture to find out if I can work this way. I
| was tired the first week but you quickly get to where sitting
| for long periods is unappealing!
| gauchojs wrote:
| When I tried that, I found that as soon as I wanted to
| alternate into more "passive mode" (Youtube, reading a blog
| post) standing didn't work. I like the stool idea, would
| love to try standing desk one day again.
| bsder wrote:
| Both Neutral Posture and BodyBilt build really good ergonomic
| chairs.
|
| http://neutralposture.com/
|
| https://bodybilt.com/
|
| I've had a BodyBilt from even before the DotBomb so I never
| understood the fuss about Aerons.
| lttlrck wrote:
| I bought an used fully loaded Aeron for $320, delivered, on
| Craigslist 2 years ago. I wasn't sure it would be worth full
| price, so used seemed like the way to go.
|
| I wouldn't think twice of spending full price ($1500?) for
| one now. But I doubt it will ever need replacing... it was
| built in 1998(!!), like a tank. Some time later I bought a
| new gas strut for $50 (the old designs wobble) and some
| Atomdoc castors so it would glide over the hardwood floor.
|
| Adjusted it once when I first got it. Vastly reduced my back
| issues - though a chair is just one part of back care.
| Benjamin_Dobell wrote:
| I haven't seen them mentioned yet. However, I've been quite
| happy with my Haworth Zody.
|
| Haworth are renowned for ergonomic quality, but aren't a
| stylish tech brand. For that reason you can usually find
| great deals, especially second hand.
| [deleted]
| andruby wrote:
| I love the Capisco Hag "standing desk" chair. The desk stays
| in standing position and I hop on and off of the chair. It's
| a chair that encourages you to take new positions all the
| time.
|
| It works really well for me. It's the single best piece of
| equipment I have in my office.
|
| [0] https://www.fully.com/hag-capisco-chair.html
|
| Video: https://fast.wistia.net/embed/iframe/85magd19k5
| zamadatix wrote:
| The Herman Miller Aeron has been so solidly "the recommended"
| chair for so long at this point it's meme worthy.
| 1MachineElf wrote:
| The Aeron is comfortable, but the way it reclines feels
| improper to me. I think their Mirra chair, with it's
| adjustable arm rests, gets reclining right. I like both
| because the mesh bottom is soft enough for my tailbone,
| which gets sore easily due to having broken it a long time
| ago. The missing feature both these Herman Miller chairs
| desperately need is a headrest. A 3rd-party one exists for
| the Aeron, but not for the Mirra.
|
| If you want something like an Aeron, then ask your friend
| with a Costco membership to get you a $120 Metrex IV Mesh
| chair by Bayside Furnishings. It's 90% as good and it
| doesn't have the insane recline that the Aeron does. Only
| downside is, Herman Miller uses much sturdier plastic for
| their chairs, but that's more suited to shared office
| spaces with employees who don't take care of their chairs
| anyway.
| robohoe wrote:
| Quantum Workpro 3000 on Amazon or at OfficeMax is a
| cheaper alternative. It's roughly $300-350 and offers
| mesh seat and backrest.
| randallsquared wrote:
| The Workpro chairs are awesome. I've probably _averaged_
| 70 hours a week in a Workpro 9000 for 4 of the last 6
| years, and it 's still great.
| ramesh31 wrote:
| >The Herman Miller Aeron has been so solidly "the
| recommended" chair for so long at this point it's meme
| worthy.
|
| There's a reason for it. An Aeron will last you your entire
| working life. As a 250lb man who likes to recline, I was
| going through cheap office chairs about every 3 months
| working from home, so I took the plunge and bought one. It
| very much feels like a piece of heavy duty commercial
| "equipment", not a cheap piece of furniture. I bought mine
| used; it's 20 years old and looks brand new. And the
| ergonomics, while controversial, I've found to be life
| changing.
| dylan604 wrote:
| The Aeron was the first chair I used that tilted & locked
| forward to help sit upright instead of leaning back. A
| startup I worked for in the early 00s bought a bunch of
| these from a failed dot bomb for a fraction of the cost.
| Not all of the Aeron chairs have the forward lock feature
| (part of the wide price ranges). The full ones go for
| nearly $1k USD. I found a chair clearly inspired by Aeron
| that has this forward lock feature at OfficeMax for $200.
| rufus_foreman wrote:
| I think consensus would be to try something out before you
| buy it, there are those who prefer a $60 Ikea chair to a
| $1600 Aeron.
|
| I'm OK either way, my cat is sleeping on the Ikea chair, she
| won't touch the Aeron, so I get the leftovers.
| loloquwowndueo wrote:
| I have a crappy $80 ikea office chair. It's served me well
| for years and is light years ahead of random dining room
| chairs - if people are using those for extended periods of
| time I'm not surprised they're getting injured - I've been
| there and it's why I got a half decent chair.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| I've seen folding chairs on Zoom calls. I get why those
| people want to go back.
| officialjunk wrote:
| standing desk
| rjbwork wrote:
| A lot of people recommend the Aeron, but I am not a fan of
| the plastic hoop, as I sometimes pull a leg up underneath me.
|
| I have a Lifeform with a custom seat made with a cut out for
| the perineum and coccyx to make sure all my weight sits on my
| glutes and thighs and keeps pressure off the spine. It's
| insanely adjustable, has a amazing lumbar support, and is
| very comfortable to sit in for long periods of time.
|
| https://lifeformchairs.com/ultimate-2390-ergonomic-office-
| ch...
| ImaCake wrote:
| I use a dining room table chair and never have any problems.
| It's not a very fancy one either!
| samatman wrote:
| That... seems low.
| timwaagh wrote:
| Yeah I did that, when I was really tired and needed to lie down
| every so often. But it's not really conducive to programming.
| Mostly I work from a desk. I don't think it's too expensive. I'm
| not paid that much but I had no trouble affording a 400eur second
| hand sitting standing desk
| sabujp wrote:
| i do system design in my head while in the shower, so that means
| some percentage of my remote work is also done in the shower.
| tluyben2 wrote:
| Been working remote for most of 30 years: I have tried an office,
| a home office and many more things but best seems to be a
| standing desk with treadmill and 2 couches: 1 inside and 1
| outside. I spend most time on the one outside throughout the
| year. Chairs never worked for me, no matter how
| expensive/ergonomic they were.
| floatingatoll wrote:
| My entire back twinged when I read this headline. It sounds
| awful. I have a work chair at my desk for work posture. Sit up or
| get up.
| ximm wrote:
| I feel the exact opposite: My back twinges when I think about
| sitting in the same position for hours. Working with a single
| laptop (without external screens, mouse, or keyboard) I can
| switch from bed to couch to desk multiple times per day.
| floatingatoll wrote:
| I can't do more than 5 minutes of laptop in bed, so I do
| somewhat envy your setup that apparently isn't awful for
| computing. But I'm also in the "don't laptop in bed" category
| so I may not have been motivated to solve it.
| andrei_says_ wrote:
| And now 38% + 1 :)
|
| This is inspiring. Why not take a phone call from the couch or
| the yoga mat or from a walk?
|
| Why not check my email lying down?
|
| I got a 27" monitor in front of my couch so I don't have to look
| down at my laptop and love the setup.
|
| I am more comfortable, more rested, more positive and enjoy work
| more.
| aussieguy1234 wrote:
| The way it's written it looks like the bed (and the couch etc)
| are used for work because alot of remote workers don't have a
| real office to work in. I have a dedicated office in my home to
| work from with a real office chair and standing desk and that's
| where I do my work. A colleague of mine even has an under desk
| treadmill.
|
| This does bring up a valid point that not everyone can afford
| these things, but employers should provide them IMO.
| benhurmarcel wrote:
| Even in their own offices most employers don't even provide a
| height-adjustable desk, or a good quality mouse and keyboard.
| They're not going to pay for a treadmill at home...
| vmception wrote:
| mmm yeah thats a good point, I was considering downsizing
| during the pandemic because I wasn't using some rooms and am
| nomadic and hanging out at cafes and coworking spaces
|
| but now that I'm back I can see how having the dedicated office
| is a luxury
| Armisael16 wrote:
| It seems impractical for employers to pay for an addition to
| your house if you don't have a room (let alone moving you to an
| entirely new building if you don't own).
| pat2man wrote:
| In which case employers should just increase wages to take
| into account how much is saved on office space. Then workers
| might be able to afford larger houses or apartments.
| tayo42 wrote:
| except they're cutting salaries because apparently col is
| lower and they think we don't need the money were
| earning...
| legerdemain wrote:
| Wouldn't landlords just raise the rent to compensate?
| rtkwe wrote:
| If the person is working remotely they have a much larger
| market to look for. If every white collar/knowledge
| worker suddenly got all the office budget and went to
| work from home you'd see big shocks but it could be
| spread throughout the country not just in cities. Of
| course there'd be a huge new market opportunity for
| turning the suddenly empty office buildings into
| apartments or something too.
| oblio wrote:
| Let's never get raises because landlords will also raise
| rent.
| legerdemain wrote:
| Yes, let's not all _simultaneously_ get raises. The value
| of money is its inequity, not its quantity.
| oblio wrote:
| Yup, agreed. I vote that legerdemain doesn't get a raise,
| and the rest of us do.
|
| After all, you didn't specify who should be the target of
| that inequity.
| Johnny555 wrote:
| Then let employees work from home permanently so they can
| afford a larger house.
|
| Telling employees to work from home for a year but be
| prepared to come back to the office at any time is the worst
| of both worlds - they have to pay high housing prices to live
| within easy commute distance of the office, but meanwhile
| they have to work from home and may live in a very small
| home.
|
| Some employees may prefer to live in or near a city for other
| reasons, but others would be happy to move farther away.
| ashtonkem wrote:
| This is the issue with "hybrid" work. You either live somewhere
| where you can afford an office, or somewhere where the commute
| is bearable. Living somewhere where you have a dedicated office
| and the commute isn't hell is a very expensive proposition in
| most American cities.
| osigurdson wrote:
| Agree. WFH a couple of days a week is largely nonsensical.
| Employers still need to pay for office space. Employees need
| dedicated work space in their homes and additional equipment
| while still needing to be located relatively close to the
| office.
| closeparen wrote:
| I like my coworkers to be people I know in real life; I
| also like to code in a silent room. One way of
| accomplishing that would be a private office at work, but
| hybrid WFH is the next best thing.
| lazyresearcher wrote:
| You can have a full office everyday if half of the company
| WFH part of the week and the other half the other part.
| ashtonkem wrote:
| At the cost of drastically lowered productivity per
| person due to hot desking, and not having the space for
| an all hands.
| rtkwe wrote:
| Do you mean an 'all hands on deck' emergency or an all
| hands meeting? If the latter that's a problem with an
| event space not of desk space. If it's the former you
| rarely actually need everyone present and it's unlikely
| every department will be needed at once unless the whole
| company is failing and even then people can work remotely
| for those too.
| watwut wrote:
| That is the preferred way for me definitely. And it seems
| that for quite a lot of people.
| rtkwe wrote:
| If people's work from home days aren't coordinated it can
| save a lot of per worker real estate because you can go to
| floating desks so you only need to accommodate peak
| attendance instead of having a single desk for every
| person. The schedule can be adapted to team needs too so
| that people working together are in the office on the same
| days so they can take advantage of in person collaboration
| when needed.
| chovybizzass wrote:
| i take my meetings from bed. i usually wake up 20 minutes after
| the call is over.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| In a prior job I routinely took a nap during our sprint
| demo/retro/planning. Kind of absurd really that one can sleep
| through a meeting with nobody noticing.
| monkeybutton wrote:
| Serious question, how do your coworkers perceive their own
| Jobs, do they share your perspective?
| MattGaiser wrote:
| They agree (and agreed, as the napping was in a past job)
| that a lot of meetings we are taken do don't help us do our
| jobs. Not sure if they nap during them.
| lloydatkinson wrote:
| based
| evanweaver wrote:
| I regularly worked from bed when I had an actual office to go
| to...variety is good.
| cgs wrote:
| Ugh, never. Bed is only for two things.
| B-Con wrote:
| The three "S"es. Sleep, sex, sickness.
| pjot wrote:
| This guy works.
| DrammBA wrote:
| Going to sleep and waking up?
| Invictus0 wrote:
| HN moment
| mindcrime wrote:
| Sleeping and reading?
| KingMachiavelli wrote:
| Survey seems pretty flawed and potentially biased. The survey was
| done by a contractor/home improvement company so maybe they used
| customer's as their population?
|
| While SWEs might need/want a good desk setup, many office jobs
| just don't need it. I'm not sure people are really improvising
| but rather find sitting with a laptop is how they normally work
| anyway.
|
| And working in the bedroom can be misleading... it's often a
| private place you can put a proper desk.
|
| I WFH and went from living alone to having 3 roommates who all
| WFH. I have my bed, desk, and theater setup all in the (master
| bedroom). It's actually better than a 1bdr apartment, it's
| quieter (no leafblowers!) and I don't have dirty dishes right
| behind me.
|
| I have a small desk but a 4K 32" monitor and a vertical 1080p
| one. A microphone on an arm and NO webcam; I use screen sharing
| 90% of the time but I don't need to see peoples faces. (I really
| wish video calling didn't compress >1080p screens so much). If I
| need a webcam, I use my laptop.
|
| Maybe the pandemic changed things but you could get decent chairs
| for $20 at goodwill.
|
| I guess I'm just skeptical that a majority of people have
| difficulty working from their home... You know the place you live
| and pick your own furniture.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| > Maybe the pandemic changed things but you could get decent
| chairs for $20 at goodwill.
|
| Just get an Aeron and expense it.
| ygouzerh wrote:
| It depends of the country. In my country-side town in Europe, I
| would have no issue.
|
| Now I am in Hong-Kong, and it's really hard to find a place
| that have enough place for a desk in a bedroom / place in the
| living room, without breaking your bank account. I heard that
| it's the same for Singapore.
| shapefrog wrote:
| My home office in hong kong was litterally the wardrobe,
| great view out the window but not a lot of room to pace
| around in.
| marderfarker2 wrote:
| Absolutely believable. I get woken up and reply a message on
| Teams and then go straight back to sleep.
| jurassic wrote:
| After 6 months working in my dining chairs last year I was
| starting to have back pain, so I paid full price for a Herman
| Miller Mirra 2. A year later I feel it's already been worth every
| penny. After my mattress, this is a piece of furniture I spend
| the most time in direct physical contact with. Not a place to
| skimp IMO.
| [deleted]
| timpez wrote:
| I don't think it doesn't matter if you work from bed as long as
| you produce quality output. There are a lot of factors that
| affects your productivity but if you're used to work remotely,
| you can put on your laptop and put your game face on.
| ekster wrote:
| This must include things like checking/replying to emails after
| waking up or before falling asleep.
| sethc2 wrote:
| The article brings up that for most a home office is a luxury.
|
| And i thought how is that possible, just use some extra room in
| your house.
|
| Then I remembered having a house and an extra room might be an
| easy thing to attain as a software developer, but that is only
| true because I don't live in the Bay Area or Seattle.
|
| Yet in those areas you might have more fun on weekends.
|
| Just to see, I looked at prices for a round trip ticket from the
| pacific northwest to the bay, and how much a 3 night stay in a
| hotel would cost. I was able to find a non stop flight and a
| cheap hotel for $200 (which seems crazy to me).
|
| So if I could find those deals every other week I could spend
| bout $1000 (food and Uber included) a month and get to spend six
| days a month in the Bay Area.
|
| My mortgage is like $1900 a month for 4 bed 2 bath 2300 sq ft on
| an acre and a 15 minute ride to the airport.
|
| I feel like if I did that and spent $2900 a month combined for my
| trips and mortgage id have both a good home office and would
| still get to work once every two weeks on a Friday in the office
| and enjoy awesome SF food plenty frequently enough while probably
| paying less then what most people in SF pay just for rent.
|
| Anyone consider this? (I have a wife and kids so biweekly trips
| would be a "not gonna happen" for me)
| 74d-fe6-2c6 wrote:
| > The article brings up that for most a home office is a
| luxury.
|
| > And i thought how is that possible, just use some extra room
| in your house.
|
| You made my day ... LOL ... yes, we all have a house with an
| extra room. That itself is not a luxury at all </irony>
|
| Having said that - I just work in the sleeping room and that
| works just fine as well.
| commandlinefan wrote:
| > just use some extra room in your house.
|
| unless your wife called it first.
| roel_v wrote:
| I knew some people who did something like that 20 years ago,
| "living" (having a family) in the south of France and working
| in Frankfurt. They only did it to give their families the
| chance to live near their extended families or for the jobs of
| their partners, nobody did it because it improved their quality
| of life. It's probably different when you're 25 and single vs
| when you're 40 with a family, but I don't know anyone who works
| away from home several days a week and enjoys it, and it's not
| an uncommon pattern for consulting people around these parts of
| Europe (apart from the status symbol that this sort of
| lifestyle is, despite it objectively sucking - weird how people
| are that way).
| JoeQuery wrote:
| I move around quite a bit during the day. Living room table,
| couch, play room with the kids, etc. I have a portable desk I'll
| pop open outside to spend time with the dog. I experimented
| working within VR on the oculus quest but the neck strain was too
| much and the resolution too low. But occasionally I would lay
| down with the headset on and a keyboard in my lap.
|
| Changing my scenery helps me stay engaged. But I feel for others
| who do not operate that way and cannot afford a setup that
| accommodates how their brain works. That would be very
| frustrating.
| Jtsummers wrote:
| Any chance you could link your portable desk? I've been
| contemplating getting one so my work at home could be a bit
| nicer (move to different parts of the home, in particular, the
| loft gets _very_ hot during the summer) without having to
| actually set up a proper desk, or sit with a computer in my lap
| (I need two, both laptops, so that 's not actually an option
| presently).
| JoeQuery wrote:
| Sure! I got it as a gift but this is the closest thing to it
| I could find. It's very simple but that makes it very easy to
| pack up and go.
|
| https://www.argos.co.uk/product/8814906
| Jtsummers wrote:
| Thanks. That could work for me, or something like it.
| Qem wrote:
| If they made office chairs, when will we have some office beds in
| the market?
| bississippi wrote:
| For knowledge workers, You can either a) get up, shower,
| breakfast, press clothes, put fuel in the tank, drive to commuter
| station, wait for the cattle car, suffocate for an hour, grab a
| coffee on the walk to the office, sit settle down and start
| working Or b) Alarm rings, wake up grab a bit of breakfast
| coffee, plop backdown on the bedroom and start off to the races,
| when you catch a break shower, pay bills and make a sandwich
| while listening on a conference call
| [deleted]
| atoav wrote:
| This number doesn't surprise me. I know many people who don't
| even have a proper desk to work at.
| drenvuk wrote:
| Anyone complaining about the pain doesn't know how to work in
| bed. lie face down and prop your chest up with a pillow. you can
| work for hours that way. When that gets tiring, roll over, and
| brace yourself against the backboard or wall with the same pillow
| to support your lumbar. repeat for zero back stress computer
| programming.
| scsilver wrote:
| After 5 years I got a pinched nerve that has kept me a bit
| sidelined this year. Watch your spine people, be careful.
| iamgopal wrote:
| What about neck, my neck hurts this way.
| drenvuk wrote:
| if it's because of muscles, you should really be training
| your neck but adjusting your pillow to support your head
| works as well. it's a bit more finicky though. If it's
| flexibility you've gotta do more stretches just for your
| health.
| LAC-Tech wrote:
| I'm a fan of raising my legs and propping the laptop up against
| my knee. Comfortable typing angle and my head can rest on a
| very small pillow so I am no craning my neck forward.
| yesenadam wrote:
| Mitchell and Webb on working from home (2min sketch)
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IW3lhfVpLL4
| dartiss wrote:
| The headline appears to just be to pull people in, as I'm
| guessing the original survey didn't differentiate between those
| that have spent a whole day working from bed, those who regular
| work from bed or those that have once, for an hour, done so.
|
| However, the meat of the article is more interesting and it asks
| questions which, sadly, it doesn't even attempt to answer. At the
| remote company that I work for, as well as allowing for expensing
| of an office setup, they will also contribute a reasonable sum
| (enough for most, unless you live in San Francisco, for example)
| to work from a shared office space, resolving the "what if you
| don't have room" in one go.
|
| Of course, this isn't 100% perfect as there will be those who
| don't want a shared office space but equally don't have the room
| in their own home - I'm not sure what the answer is here.
| sokoloff wrote:
| At some point, the answer is probably "find an employer who has
| chosen to return to a 'normal' office".
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2021-07-30 23:02 UTC)