Ask HN: Remote Working

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9980864

by neilh23 • 11 years ago

11 12 11 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

I'm a senior engineer at a small company, and for family reasons I'm going to moving to a remote part of the country soon.

My company have been accommodating and want to keep me on board, but it will be a culture shock working from home full-time.

What is your experience with long-term remote working?

What strategies and technologies do you find helpful for beating the feeling of isolation and staying productive?

mc_hammer• 11 years ago

one tip i always liked was: wake up take a shower and get dressed for work before you go to your home-office. it seems to make people more focused and able to stay for 8 hours

maguirre• 11 years ago

I've been doing it for 4 years now and I absolutely love it! but please be mindful of your self. Find out what triggers you to get distracted and remove it as quickly as it happens. Personally I try to keep a work and a play computer.

atsaloli• 11 years ago

Brilliant. That would help with security as well, I bet.

radu_floricica• 11 years ago

Keep office hours. Make sure you and everybody else around you understands that you are at work. Even when it's polite to interact with somebody (say a neighbor comes by or your wife needs help with a heavy bag) it still counts as an interruption and it's very very hard to know where to stop. Take a look at the concept of "bright lines".

cmorgan8506• 11 years ago

It's very easy to get "professionally lonely". Have a plan to mitigate that with meetups or something. Keep very clear office hours to differentiate work life and home life. If possible keep your office enviornment physically separate from the rest of your house. I think you'll actually find an increase in your daily productivity, so I wouldn't worry too much about that.

Working remotely has been great for me. I've been able to watch my daughter grow up, see my wife more often, and gave me the flexibility to support my family when my father got ill. Be prompt with communications, stay involved with your colleagues, get your work done, and you'll have no problem.

Good luck!

jasonkester• 11 years ago

You mention having a family, so the biggest struggle you're going to have is convincing everybody around you that you're "at work" even though you're physically around.

The best plan is to have your office be in a separate building from your house. A shed out in the yard, a room over the garage, even a rented desk in town. Whatever you can do to avoid being anywhere where anybody can walk past and casually interrupt you.

Barring that, you'll need to set your boundaries well. If it wouldn't have been important enough to call you at the office to ask about before, it shouldn't be important enough to ask about now. No, you can't watch the kids for a few minutes. No, you can't look up the dates when the in-laws are coming out. You're at work.

Sort that out up front and everything else will go smoothly.

Working remotely rocks, by the way. That was the last on-site job you'll ever have. You just won't be able to consider going back to that after tasting this.

Good luck!

velocitypsycho• 11 years ago

I second the renting a desk. I rent a desk in a coworking space and it's been great. It's a mile from home, so the commute is very light.

pjungwir• 11 years ago

I work remotely and I agree with all this, although I'll add that you don't really need a shed in the back yard. I have four kids aged 6, 4, 2, and 0, and I work fine out of a separate room in the house. I close the door and the kids know not to bother me. You might have to train them a bit at first, but really it hasn't been a problem for me. Right now my office is upstairs, which definitely helps keep things quiet when I'm on a call, but I did this in a downstairs office too for a couple years and didn't have issues. Good luck!

q_no• 11 years ago

I totally agree with all the other answers. I'm working home office for about 2 years now and I also love it, but sometimes it's too easy to get distracted. When you find something that distracts you, remove it. Also, it helps a lot to shower and get dressed in the morning as if you were leaving the house. Don't work in a bathing robe ;)

My gf is working in shifts and hence sometimes she's here when I'm working and I have to remind her that I'm working, although I'm around.

rossj• 11 years ago

I'd suggest you find somewhere out of the house where you can go and work from time to time. I've been lazy of late (and regretting it) but I used to rent a desk at a local Hackspace where I could go and work for a day or two each week. It made a huge difference to my feelings of isolation, and also to my productivity on those days when I was at home. I also got to make new friends, which is always good.

ErikRogneby• 11 years ago

Depending on the gig I've been recently working remotely 40-50% of the time, and have in the past done 100%.

1. have good collaboration tools with your co-workers. Whether this be IRC/HipChat/Slack, a good Kanban board, daily standup, a Hangout etc..

2. Carve out a quiet space in your house with a door. Make a Stop/Go placard to hang on the outside. Stop means you are busy and not available. (a call, middle of debugging something nasty, etc..) Go means your kid can come in and show you the awesome thing they just drew.

3. Have a clear start time, lunch, and end time. These can flex just like if you were in the office, but routine isn't just for you but for your family and work like balance too.

4. Just because you are remote, don't be afraid to step away from your computer for 10-15 minutes to get a breath of fresh air, stretch and reset. Surprisingly you spend a lot more time at your desk remote than in an office. You aren't grabbing a conference room with a colleague for some ad-hoc white-boarding to hash something out. It's all happening through this glowing screen and perhaps a telephone.

5. carve out some time to get face time with others in your company monthly or bi-monthly.

kashyapc• 11 years ago

Lots of helpful comments on this thread. Things that have helped me in my past year (been doing it on and off before that) or so as a full time remotee.

Organizing work. Personally, Emacs 'Org mode' has been of tremendous help in this regard. Key thing was sticking to it consistently for about 7 months -- it has now become an almost reflex action to break down work into manageable chunks. Not 100% diligent at this, but I'm reasonably happy so far.

Also, having a fast communication tooling setup (my environment on Linux: 'mutt + offlineimap + postfix' and IRC) that works smoothly over intermittent network connections can be quite handy. Especially so when you need a change of scenery -- working from coffee shops with feeble internet connection, or from a park near by, to shake up the day-to-day humdrum.

Most other points here about work/life balance seconded.

And, yes -- remote work is great, warts and all!

Ask HN: Remote Working

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