I have to laugh at this. Not because he's wrong, but because it's so indicative of the programmer's mind. Structured, orderly, formulaic. Laying down rules and procedures. Which is fine--nothing wrong with that, however...<p>Let me offer a counter-example, for what it's worth, which perhaps isn't a whole lot. I've been working at home for almost a year, after being in the office for six. It's very simple. In the morning, I start working, sitting on my couch, using my laptop. Eight hours later, I sign out. Obviously eating some time in the middle there. That's it. Nothing to it, really.
I've never tried working from a coffee shop but it seems people do.<p>How does that work out financially? I imagine they aren't too pleased if you just buy a coffee and then occupy space for 5 hours.<p>But I don't really want to spend a fortune on excessive caffeine consumption and $5 bagels.
I worked alone from a home office for 20 years in my consulting practice until, in the last year, as my company has grown, I've moved to commercial office space for the first time. I found working at home a delight, and enjoyed many years of jokes about my short commute (18 feet.) However, in the end, I found the repeated advice of friends to be correct: I'm more productive with an outside office. The extra focus more than offsets the cost of rent. Being in commercial office space has also made it easier to meet with clients. It's also more social as there are other people at the office that I can talk to (or ignore) as needed.<p>My commute is still short (I often do it on a Segway), and our company is still virtual (with both staff and contractors working from their own spaces -- which we don't plan to change), but don't underestimate the value of a separate, outside, workspace.
I went back to remote last year after not doing it for quite a while and it turned into a bit of a disaster. I won't deny that my being out of practice with it and not doing some of the things this guy and others talk about contributed massively to it not working out, but I want to add one piece of advice since I don't think this talked enough about external factors:<p>Be careful who you do it for. When he talks about all the communication tools you need to use in order to be successful at it, make sure they already have a bunch of those already set up, unless you're in a position to make sure they set them up and use them.<p>In particular, the company I was working for had no company-wide chat system at all, and clearly didn't feel they needed it since most of their employees were in-office or only temporarily remote. Various attempts at getting one going were hampered by lack of support from above. They'd get maybe 5 random people using them off the bat and it'd dwindle from there. At various times there were competing solutions active.<p>In the end I gave up, they gave up, and it just didn't work out and was frustrating for everyone involved.
The only thing that I have grown to despise a bit is timeboxing. Coding is a job and a hobby to me, and sometimes setting those hard limits kills my ability to improve code by forcing me into a rigid schedule. It turns what I view as play into unpleasant work, and that's how burnout starts.<p>Sometimes its faster to come up with a solution without setting hard time limits, and just let your mind churn passively on a concept. I've always found a certain amount of anxiety associated with feeling like I have to complete a task in a predetermined amount of time.<p>You should always have (and try to meet) deadlines, but the micromanagement of 25 mins per hour (example from the article) is just stressful.
I wrote something pretty similar almost 8 years ago[0], and for the most part I've found the advice holds up.<p>My current job is a lot more flexible for remote working than any other I've had before. I don't work remotely all of the time, but at least 33%. For me, I found a bit of self-discipline is essential, as is being able to "train" others. I'm living with my parents at the moment and had to get my mum to realise she couldn't just pop into the room at any moment to chat - I could be in a call with my boss/a client, or trying to focus on a task... anything really.<p>Another anecdotal observation I've had - once you've trained yourself to work from home, you'll often find you're at your most productive there. I know I do. Partly it's the more comfortable/relaxed setting, and partly it's guilt of being caught "goofing off". Scott Hanselman mentions the guilt aspect in his reaction to the Yahoo! ban on remote working[1].<p>If I ever lost the ability to work remotely I don't know what I'd do. Nowadays I can't go more than a few days at the office without feeling completely drained, demotivated and demoralised. The flip-side is working from home for an extended period can leave you wanting to go into the office to see real people again, not just a Office Communicator window.<p>[0]<a href="http://chrismcleod.me/2005/06/15/six-tips-for-working-from-home/" rel="nofollow">http://chrismcleod.me/2005/06/15/six-tips-for-working-from-h...</a>
[1]<a href="http://www.hanselman.com/blog/BeingARemoteWorkerSucksLongLiveTheRemoteWorker.aspx" rel="nofollow">http://www.hanselman.com/blog/BeingARemoteWorkerSucksLongLiv...</a>
I have been remote for 10 years. The secret not to get nuts is to interact online with colleagues as often as possible.<p>"From the employer’s perspective, you’re risking burning yourself out if you work 50-60 hours a week"<p>mmm... 50 hours is pretty common in the software industry, and being remote makes it easier not to burn out in fact because you're not losing time in commutes and in loud open spaces where you can't hear yourself coding.<p>In any case it's quite hard to define a number of hours per weeks. Building software is done by waves. You can spend a 70h week because of a production push that goes wrong, then a very calm week. So don't take those numbers/week too seriously imo.
I really enjoyed this article, and I'd like to add that software developers working remotely could probably learn a lot from the wisdom of writers, which has been collected in hundreds of articles on the web. (search for "advice from best authors" or "daily routines of great writers", etc, and you're bound to find many such articles. Some are good, most are puffery, but so it goes with anything).<p>Not all of the advice applies, of course, but there's a lot of good advice on making a good workspace and keeping yourself motivated. I've certainly noticed after working alone that there's a lot of implicit encouragement merely from working near other people, and this makes working at home harder than the same work might otherwise be. That's part of the reason why many prefer to work from cafes or worker/hacker-spaces, I think. Motivation is contagious.<p>(The positive flip side is that working from home removes a certain set of distractions that might otherwise be bothersome, and gives you more fine-grained control over the distractions you have in general).<p>Lots of authors use funny setups to transition from home-mode to work-mode. Some people build extra doors in their house so they can "leave" their house and "enter" an office that is sealed off from their house, but is otherwise the same building. One author (Roald Dahl?) worked from a bunker.<p>That being said, its probably a bad idea to get hung up on the idea of perfect working-from-home conditions. Per E. B. White:<p><i>"A writer who waits for ideal conditions under which to work will die without putting a word on paper."</i><p>Some similar important words from Tchaikovsky, which I found especially relevant to working from home:<p><i>Do not believe those who try to persuade you that composition is only a cold exercise of the intellect. The only music capable of moving and touching us is that which flows from the depths of a composer’s soul when he is stirred by inspiration. There is no doubt that even the greatest musical geniuses have sometimes worked without inspiration. This guest does not always respond to the first invitation. We must always work, and a self-respecting artist must not fold his hands on the pretext that he is not in the mood. If we wait for the mood, without endeavouring to meet it half-way, we easily become indolent and apathetic. We must be patient, and believe that inspiration will come to those who can master their disinclination.</i><p>I think motivation is under-stated in its importance when it comes to working from home. Even if our work demands little distraction, we're social creatures, and we've probably all had days where its hard to even open up the editor.<p>It's important to stay positive and stay at it. As Joel said, "We just have to come in every morning and somehow, launch the editor."[1]<p>[1] <a href="http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000339.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000339.html</a>
I've had a bit of a revelation recently.<p>I absolutely need some kind of human voice in the background for at least a few hours per day. If I don't get it then my mind just shuts down and refuses to work on anything.<p>My favourite radio presenter went off the air about 8 months ago and I've not really found anything I really liked since. But since then my ability to actually get anything done has gone down drastically.<p>Anyway on a whim I re-listened to one of his old episodes for a few hours while working, suddenly I'm tearing through my work again.<p>I can't explain it but it makes all the difference in the world.
No surprises there, but good solid advice that a lot of people need to hear. Well done.<p>The one thing I'd add is that working remotely means working away from machines as well as people - test machines, internal websites, etc. Even companies that are generally supportive of remote workers (like mine) often scatter essential information and resources across an annoying variety of machines that are not accessible from outside. Then they give you a VPN that's utter crap (usually because it's overloaded) or ssh to a bastion host so you have to tunnel/forward anywhere else. It's really worth the effort to make sure you use every trick in the book to get networking on your home machines and/or laptops set up in a way that actually allows you to get work done. I'm pretty darn good at that kind of stuff, but even so it took me several experiments over a period of weeks to get something I was happy with - and BTW it bears no resemblance at all to what the IT group thought would suffice. Similarly, it pays to make sure that using test machines is as friction-free as possible, and that common tasks are automated as much as possible so that you don't have to keep watching/tweaking things from afar. All good sense even if you're not remote, but even more important when you are.
As some one who does this every day. This is all good advice.<p>I would add that it is really really important to occasionally do something different. If you you usually work from home, go to a coffee shop, sit in a restaurant for a few hours on a laptop.<p>You will be amazed how much of a difference that one day outside your office will make you excited about the same work that the day before seemed like a boring slog.
Good advice. I'd like to add something that has helped me in the last year or so of working from home: have a dedicated work device (in my case a laptop + monitor) that is exclusively for work.
All other browsing, personal side projects, etc that I do in the morning before I begin work or in the evening is done on my "personal" devices (second laptop or ipad). This way my workstation is in the state I left it in the next day and there aren't any distracting tabs I have to prune before I get to work.
Been working remotely for a bit more than a year now and it's definitely largely about pace for me too. I generally start relatively early to try and catch up with my colleagues (I'm on PST and they on GMT) then head to a coffee shop later in the morning. Just having the walk in itself is quite an important motivator.<p>As far as coffee shops go, I think the criteria for a good place to work from are as follow:<p>- how is the coffee, and do they have refills<p>- how good is the wifi: speed, quality of signal, ... also whether they use tickets. I find tickets irritating, I keep forgetting about the limit and having remote shells disconnecting and whatnot.<p>- how good are the seats: comfortable as well as good for your back<p>- how good are the tables: I tend to prefer individual tables to large, collective tables, possibly because it feels more like a desk. You also want the height of the table to be good in relation to your seat<p>- do they have a lot of power outlets throughout the place<p>- what's the atmosphere like: I've been to places that turn into pubs half-way through the afternoon, even with headphones it's really not conducive to work, particularly when lots of people walk right around you.<p>- how good is their food: if I find a good coffee shop with bad food, that's not a deal-breaker and I just won't eat there, but good food does help<p>Surprisingly, I haven't found that many places ticking all the boxes. I actually wonder why there aren't more places dedicating themselves to providing this sort of environment (at least in SF and Vancouver).
Allow me to add:<p>Time Zone issues: If you work in a different time zone, then adjust to it to lessen the difference. This only works if you are from 1-4 hours away. Your team will appreciate the effort.<p>Try splitting the work day into shifts. One of the issues I had was working non-stop (as in an office job) for 8 hours. Reason was that I felt jailed into my house. So I splitastwer my work day into two shifts. One during the daylight, and one during the night (once my family has gone to sleep). I work better, and faster.<p>Get a hobby. When you work in an office, you have little hobbies that you do without ever noticing. Maybe its talking with another employee, or cleaning your desk, or anything. When you are home, you feel like you are in the office 24 hours a day. So get a hobby (preferably outside the house), so you feel like your life is not all about work.
Working remotely was tough for me as I was working with an all non-remote team. One thing that I took away from that was that communication is really key in that situation. It also helps if the local team members know that as well. Everything seems to take longer unless communication is preserved.
This works when you're a remote worker, but what about when you're a freelancer with multiple clients, using time tracking software? Where do you bill the "going for a walk to clear your head", the "restroom break" or that all-too-common one, "popping on Hacker News to see if anything exciting's happened in the last 5 minutes"?<p>Joking aside, I've reached burnout by driving myself hard to get 8 billable hours each day (plus communication, writing proposals etc on top), and apart from lunch don't step away from the computer even when tired and procrastinating. Because if I'm sat there working on a problem I can bill the client, if I step away (even though I'll be more productive when I come back) I can't.<p>I know it's a matter of perspective on how I define 'honest' and 'billable', but I cannot make the mental leap needed!
That's strange, there is nothing I hate more than routine. But everything is this world seem made around routine and the expectation that tomorrow will be the same as today. Did anybody have the same aversion as me and try to tackle that?<p>How do you work without common everyday routine in the team etc.?
A lot of this article applies just as much to working at the office. Managing time, distractions and communicating clearly are important no matter where you are.<p>Does anyone have any links to articles that talk more about the tool for collaborating and developing remotely? With existing tools I find it pretty easy to get code written and coordinate remotely, but it it still seems very difficult to actively collaborate in real time remotely. I'm a little surprised at how hard it is still to do some white boarding with someone else remotely or just share my desktop with them so they can see a prototype easily. Gotomeeting and Webex are ok but cost money and are more geared to showing presentations than anything else.
I have found opposite regarding using email.<p>In 6 months, I have been using IM mainly first half, email mainly the second.<p>While using IM, I tended to talk more about doing than rather doing. It used to take hours to discuss things and chats which were supposed to be 15mins long happened to be an hour or more.<p>When switched to email, I became way more efficient. I spent more time on thinking about questions I'm asking, and questions to potential answers. This lead to 1) well thought designs 2) efficient communication 3) no distracting IM.<p>IM is still good for the times when you need to discuss something quickly. And I mean really quickly.<p>I guess it largely depends on the stakeholders/managers communication habits.<p>P.S. I am working solo with my boss
Is that kind of job viable when constantly moving? I want to travel in the next two years, and I was thinking about keeping only stuff that fits in a bag and just going away with my wife, but doing that without a decent amount of cash or a job you can have on the road would be hard. Is it viable to have a remote job while travelling, in the event that I might stay for several days in each city and do most of the travelling on weekends?<p>I believe that not having a place would help in keeping the blood pumping and staying proactive, yet it would probably be hard during crunch times if the correct workspace cannot be found. Would it be worth giving a shot?
From my discussions with other people working remotely and my own personal experience (not quite a decade), it is the eating-exercise-social parts that are extremely difficult.<p>If you already are strong in these areas and continue your current behavioral patterns you should be fine.<p>If you live somewhere outside a densely populated area, or if your eating-exercise-social patterns revolve around work you can be in for a very difficult time. The first weeks, months, may be fun, years in you can end up with real medical problems.<p>Figure those three things out, and then wrap your work patterns around that. It is much more sustainable.
"it’s not things, techniques, or even programming languages that get you rich, it’s people (no one got rich on their own!)."<p>The best line in this post for me. If only we could all print this and stick on on our walls!!
This article makes no mention of spouse or kids, both of which can be major distractions. For adults, it's very hard to not see someone as "here" even though they are just down the hall; for kids - it's impossible. The compromise my wife and I have is that I take time during the day to help out around the house or run errands, but I make up the time at night.<p>Also, I pretty much have my headphones on all the time, which is not so different from when I worked in a real office.
Also, in some work place like mine. There are set of pseudo rules implied by managers who ask people to quote a valid reason when you work from home. Most of the times, There is no reason when I feel like working from home. Actually thats also i have come across few people who kind of misuse the option of working from home and employ it when they have some other stuff to do, in which case they would be spending lot less time working.
I think everyone has their own cup of tea. I have been working remotely for about a year now in different places around the world and what I find most appealing to is to find a co-working place where I can get stuff done and have that busy/creative feeling all around without the constraints for work hours.<p>I have met some of the smartest and most amazing people in these places. It's also nice because doesn't make you such a loner :-)
Can you recommend some companies where you can work remotely? Maybe even abroad? (I'm living in Germany.)<p>I'm searching for a part-time job somewhen in the future.
I'm a huge fan of coworking spaces. Depending on your budget and needs, sometimes you can even rent a desk to call your own. It's been great for me to work around other developers, bump into people and have interesting discussions, and just get out of the house.
I've worked remotely for over a year on multiple occasions. The article sounds right to me. You absolutely need your own desk and office, with a door that closes. There is no substitute.
<i>> Work the amount of hours you agreed to with your employer</i><p>I was wondering: are there any firms that don't set strict number of hours one have to work? How many of them is like that?
This whole bed is for sleep is anecdotal nonsense. My back isn't great so switching from standing to sitting to laying is what I do throughout the day.