Working from Home

[Shane Costello]

This article in Tech Central Station (www.techcentralstation.com/090303A.html)deals with the perceived movement away from organised places of work towards an increased occurance of people working from home. I've often wondered about how this actually works in practice. For instance does productivity improve or suffer? How many of you out there have tired or curremlty work from home?

[The Don]

I have a friend who is a plumber, working from home significantly reduces his productivity ;)

[Upchurch]

I work from home and I personally hate it. My productivity drops like a rock everytime I've had to do it. I mean, look how much I post on here, for crying out loud.

The biggest problem I have with working at home is that I have very little personal discipline. If no one is there to shame me into working, I tend to screw around.

The second biggest problem I have is the total lack of human interaction during the day. Which is probably another reason I converse online so much.

Given the option, I wouldn't recommend it unless you have kids at home.

[RandFan]

Originally posted by Upchurch
I work from home and I personally hate it. My productivity drops like a rock everytime I've had to do it. I mean, look how much I post on here, for crying out loud.

The biggest problem I have with working at home is that I have very little personal discipline. If no one is there to shame me into working, I tend to screw around.

The second biggest problem I have is the total lack of human interaction during the day. Which is probably another reason I converse online so much.

Given the option, I wouldn't recommend it unless you have kids at home. Ditto, couldn't have said it better myself.

[Samus]

I would tend to agree with Upchurch and RandFan, but let's face it, I really don't get anything done when I'm at the office, either. :)

Actually, I think during certain times, I could successfully work from home. Right now, we're in testing for our software, so other than occasional bug fixes (which only take about a day every week or two), I don't do anything but waste away.

My time would be much better spent in my underwear with a bag of popcorn watching old Chevy Chase movies. "What kind of name is Poon, anyway?" ... "Comanche Indian"

[Shane Costello]

Originally posted by The Don:
I have a friend who is a plumber, working from home significantly reduces his productivity
;)

Does he tell them that he'll be "over sometime next week"? ;)

Originally posted by Upchurch:
I work from home and I personally hate it. My productivity drops like a rock everytime I've had to do it. I mean, look how much I post on here, for crying out loud.

Sounds familiar. My only real dalliance with homeworking was when studying for exams in college and school. Of course, measuring study-time productivity is next to near impossible, but in the end I always got very decent exam results. Right now I'm a grad student in the life sciences, so I'm based in the lab most of the time, but looking forward to the day when I'll be writing it all up and wondering where would be the best place to do it. I reckon I've enough disicpline ot do it at home, but perusading various family members tht I do have serious work to do and can't run various errands and cook dinner is the key.

[Hexxenhammer]

I couldn't do my homework for school at home, and I screw around at work too (ie right now), so I don't think I would get anything done. On the other hand, my wife works from home a lot and she's gets all her work done no problem. In fact, she's worried right now that since she went back to hourly instead of salary that she won't be able to fill up 40 hours. I keep telling her that all the other slackers she works with probably aren't putting in 40, and some in management aren't either and not to worry about it.
Geez. Some people and their work ethic!

[Upchurch]

Oddly enough, given that I screw around alot, another problem I have is differentiating between "at home" and "at work". Depending on what is going on, I sometimes don't stop working at the proverbial "quitting time" and would work on into the evening. Or get up in the middle of the night if something occured to me and go downstairs and work for a little bit.

In general, I think we need that distinction of "this is where I work" and "this is where I don't work" so that we can leave work at the office and relax at the end of the day. The last time I went from working at home to working at an office, I remember feeling so much more relaxed in the evenings.