The Dangers of Working From Home

http://sunshineny.com/working-from-home/is-working-from-home-worth-it

by ajv • 16 years ago

53 31 16 years ago

bmj3• 16 years ago

I just don't buy the "you won't be distracted in the office" argument. I work from home ~12 hours a week, and I find being in the office more distracting because people are constantly badgering me with questions. And I see plenty of other people wasting time talking around the proverbial water cooler.

Working from home requires discipline, especially when it comes to unplugging from work. When working from home, I try to provide a schedule of availability to my co-workers, so there's no expectation that I'm going to answer an email at 6:30 PM while I'm eating with my family. There are also days, however, that because of family schedules, that I work from, say, 11:00 AM to 7:00 PM, and folks know they can contact me 'til that point.

dhyasama• 16 years ago

Providing a schedule of availability is a great idea. I work in the office in the morning and at home in the afternoon. One of the things that was a struggle at first, and I received feedback on, was knowing when I was available. Providing a schedule is a great way to address that. How do you make it available and how often do you update it?

bmj3• 16 years ago

I typically send an email in the morning of the day I'm working remotely with my availability schedule. If my schedule is going to be fluid, I tell folks to look at my Skype status--if I'm online, that means I am available.

It's also advantageous to be able to simply forward your desk phone--when I'm available, my desk phone is forwarded to my mobile. When I'm finished working, the forward is deactivated (it also helps that only my direct manager has my mobile number, and he would likely only call if something had seriously blown up).

Goronmon• 16 years ago

I'm not sure why people asking questions in the office is considered a bad thing. Sure, if they are inane questions not related to stuff you or they are working on, then yes, that could get really annoying. But if people are asking questions that help them get work done or to clarify some aspect of something they are working on, isn't that kind of a good thing?

By working from home and avoiding distractions caused by other people's questions, it seems like you trading other people's productivity (you are making it harder for them to get answers to their questions) in order to boost your own.

bmj3• 16 years ago

I'm not saying that people asking work-related questions is a Bad Thing(TM)--I'm saying the assertion that you can easily get into a distraction-free groove in the office is not necessarily true. It might be true in the case of a small start-up, but I've never found it to be the case in my experience (and I've never worked in an office with more than 40 or 50 people).

At home, I can close to the door to our "office" and everyone knows that I am not to be disturbed. At the office, I'm in an open cube plan, so short of doing some sort of jwz-style camo netting, it's harder to convey "leave me alone."

theBobMcCormick• 16 years ago

I actually find the people in the cubicles around me to be much more distracting than anything I run into while working from home even when my kids (3 and 7) are home. When the kids are at school it's sooo much easier to focus at home then at the office. Unfortunately, for some reasons the higher ups at my workplace don't like to allow people to work from home regularly. :-(

abyssknight• 16 years ago

This is very, very true. I worked on a start up for a friend of mine years ago, and I lived in his guest room. I woke up, rolled out of bed, walked 2 feet to my desk, and coded for my 4 hours work day, then some at night, and it was exhausting. I know, that sounds crazy, 4 hour work days and being exhausted, but when you work where you sleep you get pretty confused. The 4 hour work day was mostly due to distractions: video games, walking in the woods, arguing with cofounder about randomness. On top of that, where we were was so isolated (about 16 miles from civilization) so I never really saw anyone but my cofounder. Things got tense sometimes, and there was no one to vent to.

lsemel• 16 years ago

There are plenty of distractions in an office as well -- chitchat, meetings, poor environment not under your control (e.g. too hot or too cold) and noise. You do need to be disciplined because there's none of the peer pressure that arises from being around other people who are busy working. Additionally, I'd only work from home if living in a big city, in order to combat isolation. In a city you have access to people, whether by interspersing meetings into your day or simply stepping outside, and this combats isolation. I would not enjoy working at home in the suburbs.

pw0ncakes• 16 years ago

Hard-line 9-to-5 sucks much worse than working from home, but the best is to have an office available with flexible hours. I think the optimum is somewhere around 20-30 office hours plus 20-30 work-from-home hours.

One of the lingering benefits of old-style work environments is the idea that a corporation is invested in your career development; you're their employee. In practice, a lot of corporations ignore this responsibility, but that's another topic... If you work from home, it becomes more visibly evident (or at least seems to be) that you're just providing services in exchange for money; there isn't even the pretense of that sense of responsibility.

gcheong2• 16 years ago

The no separation between home and work in my case is more of a mental thing than a physical one. If I'm caught up in a problem, I tend to obsess on it no matter where I am and my ability to get away from a problem seems to be more about having satisfied my brain that I have some kind of solution or approach to it worked out than my physical location.

russm• 16 years ago

hey guys-

i do freelance social media for sunshine as one of many, many freelance projects that i have, and one of the fringe benefits of putting in a few hours a week for sunshine is that i get to work out of either of the Manhattan locations. it's a bit of trek, since if i'm at home i'm in astoria and if i'm with my girlfriend i'm in greenpoint, but i've found that the act of getting up and actually going in to a desk space, rather than saying 'yup, gonna start working" at arbitrarily assigned time, even figuring in the hour of transit.

it's true that a lot of the same distractions, or rather variations on such, can exist in a co-working space. annoyingly loud phone calls, bothers from home, cat videos on the internet (sooo many cat videos. SO. MANY.).

but in a co-working space, every distraction is an opportunity, really-someone COULD be bothering you to see if you do graphic design, because they're looking for someone to do their business cards. and i've found those opportunities outweigh the negatives? because when it comes to stuff like not slacking around on the internet, that's still a temptation anywhere-may as well place yourself smack dab in the middle of networking opportunities.

that's just my two cents-i'd probably STILL be working from home if my work at sunshine hadn't introduced me to Coworking with a capital "C", but, honestly, I've tried to work from home and it just doesn't happen.

hexis• 16 years ago

This does a better job of illustrating the problems of credibility on a corporate blog. I mean, really, this company is selling you office space and is blogging about the downsides of working at home? I bet I could find lots of blog posts about the downsides of cooking at home on lots of restaurant blogs.

rmk• 16 years ago

Heh heh heh... first thing that ran through my mind as I started reading the article and looked at the banner above it :)

gcheong2• 16 years ago

The HR dept. at the last company I worked at used a similar pitch based on a "research document" in an attempt to sell the programmers on how much better bench seating in an open floor plan vs cubicles would be for productivity.

hkuo• 16 years ago

If these are the only dangers from working from home, I would take that over the dangers from working in an office. I haven't even given those dangers much thought, but I'll start with a few.

1) Commute - wasted time and energy sitting in traffic, plus added stress depending on amount of traffic. (not to mention all that gasoline!)

2) The walk-by - trying to get work done when anyone can just saunter over and ask you a question, or just shoot the sh*t.

3) Noise and smells - people playing music randomly, loud conversations, YouTube videos, someone eating a smelly burrito, chinese food

4) The cold starter - someone has a cold but feels fine or wants to show they got guts, spreads the cold to 50% of the office.

5) Constant trivialities - walkby hellos, lunch anyone?, who's driving?, peeing next to someone in the bathroom stall

Anything else to add?

qjz• 16 years ago

Petty power struggles and office romances. You don't even have to be a participant for these to add massive amounts of stress to your day.

edw519• 16 years ago

Anything else to add?

Yea, plenty.

- I impose discipline upon others. Since you can't just poke your head in with an "idea", you have to think about it first (imagine that). If your email doesn't include enough data for me, I say so and hit "reply". Same for phone calls and voice mails. Signal to noise ratio increases dramatically.

- My performance metric is WorkCompleted / WorkPlanned because that's all people can witness. Not 101 other meaningless metrics like number of sessions running, time spent on internet, time spent BSing, time spent on cell phone, time spent at lunch, shirt color, or droplets of sweat on forehead.

- Wake up at xx:34 a.m. Start work at xx:37 a.m. (if I want to).

- Wake up in the middle of the night with an idea. Log in and work on it immediately.

- No meaningless team building, HR, or mandatory meetings.

- I eat what I want, when I want, where I want. No more vending machine or carryout crap.

- Headphones or speakers? Oh wait, never mind.

- Casual dress, gym shorts, or warmups. Again, never mind.

- Cats often make better companions than cubicle mates.

- I hate shaving.

wlievens• 16 years ago

Oh my, you couldn't be more correct.

I've got one more to add: people going in and out and in and out for their smokes. Plus the smell they bring in. Quit already!

Tichy• 16 years ago

- Drinking too much coffee

This happens because it is not so easy to just take a nap in most office, and regular office hours make it more likely to end up at the workplace being dead tired. Access to high tech coffee makers does the rest.

alain94040• 16 years ago

That's why I believe in the eventual coming of the virtual business.

9-5 cubicle life will look as obsolete in 20 years as the first Ford assembly line looks to us today.

And I did something about it: I started a virtual company host: http://fairsoftware.net - for now it applies to smart workers only, people who spend their life behind a laptop screen, writing software and apps.

I'm curious if anyone knows where this will go for non-laptop folks. I can think of two options:

a) stays the same, there will always be people needed to do actual "physical" work

b) eventually all work will become digital, so everyone will be able to stay home (imagine what that really means???)

amosamos• 16 years ago

We live in the best networking city in the world as far as I am concerned and the last thing I want to do is stay at home when opportunity is out there. I am currently working out of Sunshine Suites @ Tribeca West and I got to tell you I really benefit from meeting a ton of entrepreneurs, in fact I just heard a lecture in one of the conference rooms about social media law really helpful.

pyre• 16 years ago

Huh? Who is 'we?' What city are you talking about? How does 'working from home' mean that you literally have to be at home working instead of just remotely working from a cafe or something where you can also interact with people?

The fact that you just created your account for this comment smells fishy to me too. It's a little suspicious that on an article where people are commenting that the author has a conflict of interest (i.e. claiming that working from home is bad, while selling office space), someone creates an account just to comment in favor of the product that the company is selling. You're not agreeing with the article (that working from home is bad) so much as you are praising/pimping the product.

This is one of the reasons that I feel 'crowd-sourcing' isn't as important as 'social-networking' because I would trust someone I know more than some random person that shows up just to make a single comment. You could be a real person that just wants to share you experiences, but you could also just be a marketing/social-media person for Sunshine Suites that's trying to 'drum up' some interest in the business.

mark_l_watson• 16 years ago

A sensationalist article title, for sure. My answers to the three "dangers" listed in the article:

No separation between home and work: in the late afternoon I shut down my computer and have a glass of wine and snacks with my wife. Work day is officially over.

The prevalence of distractions: earphones.

Lack of human interaction: I broke up my work day today by spending 90 minutes at our local shooting range with my wife and three friends. On Mondays and Thursdays I go on 2 to 3 hour hikes with several people. (Anyway, human contact is probably over rated :-)

The bottom line is that people should do whatever works for them. One caveat about working at home: you either really have to love your work or to have a strong work ethic.

mattm• 16 years ago

I like the lack of human interaction. After working from home for a while, I found myself going regularly to hobbies in the evening to get human interaction. I much prefer this way.

derefr• 16 years ago

Indeed. It's a general question of what you'd rather do: spend all day doing grudging, necessary work with alongside people who happen to do the same kind of grudging, necessary work as you do, then go home and "unwind" by spending time alone—or do all your grudging necessities on your own, and then unwind by spending time having fun alongside people who like having the same kind of fun? One social group seems much more likely to promote emotional health (though both can be intellectually stimlating.)

jemfinch• 16 years ago

Wait, a company selling/leasing office space writes an article about how people shouldn't work from home?

Yawn.

brc• 16 years ago

They forgot to mention one of the dangers of working from an office : paying exorbitant rent that you could save by working from home.

jsz0• 16 years ago

You could easily argue these points the other direction. To me the office environment is really distracting. I focus better at home. If I had my own sound proof office at work with a big, lockable, door I'd probably get an equal level of focus but that's becoming a rarity in the cubicle environment for most people. Ideally a mix of both works best. I like having the option.

kentosi• 16 years ago

The fact that you have a "sound proof office at work" seems to agree with the article.

It's not that you're travelling to a corporate office environment that helps you work, but the fact that you're in a separate environment to your usual home that's distraction-free (be it a library, or as in your case, an separate office room).

Had you not had the sound-proof office, you'd easily get distracted by the TV, the book you were reading yesterday evening, the kitchen, etc.

wglb• 16 years ago

Just short of a self-serving advertisement. As someone who has worked at home for a substantial portion of my <redacted> years long career, and have managed teams that work exclusively at home, what works is 1) have an office with a door that closes and make sure even the most slow-to-learn family member knows to treat the closed door as you being out at the office 2) I have found more distractions in corporate workspaces than at home. See #1 for reducing distractions 3) Find or build a community that is refreshing--it is likely to be better for you in any case.

There are certainly some office situations that are impossible to duplicate from home, even with lots of electronic communication, however. They are quite rare in my <redacted> experience.

ippisl• 16 years ago

What: Journal of Applied Psychology article about teleworking and professional isolation ...

Bottom line: The authors surveyed 261 professional-level teleworkers at a large corporation (80,000 workers) to study the effects of professional isolation, which is defined as a state of mind that one is out of touch with others in the workplace, on job performance and turnover intentions. Professional isolation led to lower job performance and lower turnover intentions. The effect on turnover intentions was contrary to expectations. The authors argue that this unexpected effect may be due to professionally isolated teleworkers losing faith in their skills and knowledge and their ability to find alternative employment. Another possible explanation may be that teleworkers face family or dual-career constraints due to which they telecommute as a way to maintain their job. Or it may be that those who telecommute enjoy its benefits more fully, so that despite professional isolation, they don’t seek employment elsewhere. The authors report other findings too. For instance, professional isolation led to even lower job performance for those who spent greater time teleworking and lesser time interacting face-to-face. In other words, the negative effect of professional isolation on job performance reduced for those who teleworked less as well as for those who engaged in extensive face-to-face. To reduce professional isolation, the authors make several suggestions. One of the suggestions is to include structuring activities between coworkers to ensure sufficient levels of task and social exchanges, so as to build and strengthen interpersonal connections while achieving work objectives.

Source: http://www.leadingvirtually.com/?p=157 , which is a great blog on all aspects of remote work.

The Dangers of Working From Home

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