What Lessons Have You Learned from Remote Work?

Personal growth would be that I get to see family more often and on time. The professional growth is that I saved time from the commute and was able to be more productive quicker in the mornings.

The drawback really is, not being able to see your co-workers in person. I myself sway in on the hybrid model. Although as a developer, we're known to be introverts, I prefer seeing people and being in-person from time to time. Being able to whiteboard ideas, hear jokes, and brainstorm without the awkward, "oh...you're on mute," or that moment when you cut someone off in a discussion and you have to resort to raised hand emojis. Not saying you should cut someone off while talking, but, you know what I mean? Conversations are, natural.

That's my bit. Off of soapbox. :: bows to audience ::

So, I have had experience working remotely long before COVID. There was a period of a couple of years where I was an independent contractor, and I did that all working from home. I've learned a few things about myself and my own practices which.

I've learned that banishing distractions is impossible. Instead, it's best to have processes for handling them. Kids interrupting me, playing, lawn mowers, all of these things are unavoidable. Instead of stressing myself out trying to eliminate them, I focus on whether or not I'm on task. If I am unable to be on-task, I'll disengage from work and then re-engage when those distractions are less present.

Before COVID, I worked from home by myself, but with COVID my partner also started working remotely. She works remotely still, for the most part, and it has been a learning experience to respect her space, time, and professionalism. She and I have very different professions, and neither of us really understand one another's profession terribly well. I think that's normal, but it's a much bigger deal when you're both at home all the time working in orbit around one another.

I've learned that I need to set boundaries for spaces in my home, not for others but for myself. I built out my home office a bit before COVID—because I was already working from home—and I use that still. I added a water cooler/heater, and a minifridge. I decorate it like an office, and I have a large magnetic white board. It's a home office, but it's also an office.

I'm a people person at my very core, so the most challenging part of remote work has been that of loneliness. Before COVID I was struggling with feelings of loneliness, and COVID made it better for a short period of time (because I wasn't home alone) and then it made it worse. As COVID has waned I have been starting to re-encounter some of those feelings. I still haven't solved this problem yet, but I'm working on it. I live a three hour drive from where my employer is based, so I've been experimenting with co-working space (which is usually more expensive than I'm comfortable with), and with taking day-trips to the "mothership." It's still a work in progress.

That's pretty much all I have. I still find myself wishing I could go into an office sometimes, but then again I also cherish the extra time I've been having with my kids.

To tell the truth remote work almost harder than expected normally. You should be internally responsible to make everything you are planning without change of deadlines and laziness. I have a lot of years with remote work and sometimes I'm dreaming to work in the office.

My experiences are probably unlike most. I began working as a web "designer" in 1995 and built my first professional sites while living in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico from 1997-9. Although I had a registered (in Mexico) company, it was just me and I worked from a desk in my small apartment. In the summer, it was so hot that I worked naked sitting on a towel drenched in sweat. I was the sole developer.

I returned to the States — to Seattle — in 1999 to get a degree in CS, which became instead a degree in Informatics. By then I was subcontracting for a energy consultant in California. Fairly, regularly, I had to fly down for a meeting (back the same day). Otherwise, I worked from home.

In 2001, as a student, I bought my first laptop, a Mac Titanium PowerBook G4. Glorious! Shortly after, I discovered free wifi and never looked back. I began doing most of my coding in coffeehouses, cafés, restaurants, and even bars.

Around 2003-4, I moved to Tangletown in Seattle to be near Zoka coffeehouse, then the best coffeehouse in Seattle and possibly the US. I went in every day at 10 or 11 AM, grabbed one of the huge, overstuffed chairs, and set to work. I was often still there at 9 PM or later.

The noise of the coffeehouse did not bother me. I was able to focus tightly on my coding. The chair was comfortable. When my battery got low, I'd move to a table near the wall to charge up, then back to the chair. I would drink and eat all day while working nonstop, weekends, too.

I met a couple of other devs doing the same thing. I got some of my best work from them, and got pushed into functional programming, too.

In 2009, I left the US permanently, traveling first to Argentina where I also found spots with free wifi. I traveled around a bit, and one of my favorites was living in a small cabin on the shores of a big lake in the central lakes region of Chile while stealing wifi from the motel across the street. That was a cold month, but beautiful.

All my clients were overseas. Even when I did work for a locally-based Norwegian friend, the clients were in Europe. So everything was remote. That's just the way coding happened, I thought. Why work any other way?

There were also times when I had work on a team. One time, I was in Buenos Aires, the boss was in New Mexico, and the rest of the team were spread between Germany, Poland, and Slovenia. Sadly, the code was the worst spaghetti code (all they had were hammers), so that kind of sucked. But I worked whatever hours needed from my apartment in BsAs.

For much of my career, I would start work at, say, 11 AM and work until 3 or 4 AM. Sometimes even later — until 6 AM. I did my best work in the wee hours.

In 2013, I began teaching web development bootcamps — in London, in Santa Monica, in Hong Kong, in Wellington — and these meant that I had to get up early and go to the "office". But every chance I got, I would drag the class out to a local coffeehouse and work there. Did a lot of work at the aptly-named Workshop coffee in London, or at the Department of Coffee and Social Affairs.

When I finally went to work for a bank in NZ, I hated going into the office. What a waste of travel time to and from! So much interference with my work. My coworkers were not there to work, they were there to socialize. I remember the first story I did for my boss. I did it in two hours. He freaked out. "That should have taken two DAYS," he told me. "It will cause trouble with the team if you go that fast. Slow down!"

To me, that sums up the problem with teams quite nicely. It's not at all about "performance".

There was a big earthquake shortly after I started and our building was effectively destroyed. We were all "working from home". Of course, they rented some space in the local museum and made some of us come in. My product owner also insisted that we work together face-to-face, which we did in a local coffeehouse — but not a good one. Ugh.

And I discovered that working from a coffeehouse was beyond the abilities of most of my coworkers. They got nothing done at all. No exaggeration. Nothing! And they kept me from getting work done. I started refusing to show up, going instead to a great coffeehouse and working from there.

Later, after we got a new office space, I took every chance I could to get the hell out and work from my favorite coffeehouse. When I became a coach and had freedom to do it, I did all my computer work from the best coffeehouse in town, conveniently a hundred meters from the office.

That is, until a coworker bitched that I was goofing off and getting no work done and it looked "bad". The irony! HE was getting almost nothing done. I was doing the work of three people. Perhaps that was his real intent: to slow me down or at least to deny my performance.

I've had a couple more roles at various companies since then and I spent as much time as possible working outside the office. COVID was, in that sense, a godsend. I have medical issues (compromised immune system), so I never really had to go in at all.

Now, retired, I have a glorious office in my apartment. My partner works at home as well. Three plus years in, neither of us have had COVID (or been sick at all). It's just us and the cats. I work 6-8 hours per day, seven days per week on my own personal projects. And I'm very efficient. But then, we don't have children.

Others may need offices and the support of coworkers to feel secure. Or maybe they're just lonely and they want company. Or they need a lot of hand-holding. OK by me if companies want to pay for that. But I am only interested in getting shit done, and I can do that several times faster working outside the office.

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