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Working at home


LSW

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A List Apart (ALA) has a series of articles starting on the art of working from home, the first one is a good read and I figured we could use a thread on the subject, I will update as I find things or people suggest articles or ways.

 

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Walking the Line When You Work from Home (ALA)

 

Offices and The Creativity Zone (Hivelogic.com)

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  • 1 year later...

I worked at home for nearly four years from 1997 (building industry - measurement, preparing tender documents and valuation).

 

The firm was expanding and the firm was increasing the number of computers from one or two per team to one per person. They needed more work desks and I had a bad back and it was suggested that I could work at home. I was given a new computer and it was connected by direct dial-up to the firm's server. I think it helped the firm because I released a valuable workspace.

 

At first it was great, I could start work at 7.30am, take a long lunch break and work on in the evening, all in peace and quiet.

 

As the years went by I found that I was getting out of touch with people in the office and new work developments, new IT systems, etc.

 

Every time I went into the office I saw people I didn't know and they stared at me like I was a newcomer, even though I'd worked for the firm for twenty years.

 

I was called in on occasions when a new computer program was being used for my work, but I still found that I missed the contact with people in nearby desks for advice and casual conversation. Luckily my main contact, the person I sent all my work to, didn't leave. I think I would have found it difficult to build up a relationship with someone new without working close by.

 

Getting huge piles of drawings and documents sent out to me was difficult and sometimes delayed me. If I had been in the office I could have started work on a revised drawing immediately (time was always critical) but I would either have to go in to the office to pick up the documents or they would be sent out with an office junior by taxi.

 

Sending my work back was easy - Excel or other files sent by email.

 

I retired after about four years. I don't think I could have done it for a lifetime. Too quiet eventually! Working at home for, say, two or three days a week would probably be the ideal because you could then keep up with latest developments and people in the office..

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  • 3 weeks later...

Hi all,

 

Good idea for a post.

 

Thought I'd reply as the flexibility of working from home is one of (if not the) main reason that I am pursuing a career in web design, so would also be really good to hear about other peoples experience of it.

 

I can see that working from home full time with little contact with colleagues or clients could quite rapidly send you a bit stir crazy, but the idea of doing perhaps two/three days a week at home seems ideal to me. I'd love to have the flexibility of fitting my working day around my lifestyle, rather than being tied to a desk 9 - 5 all week.

 

Another interesting thought on this is how working from home affects your effectiveness. Perhaps the first thought on this would be that because you don't have someone watching over you all the time, cracking the whip as it were, then you might tend to slack off/do the laundry/pop to the shop/stick on the tv for a while etc... On the other hand, for the more self disciplined perhaps this would be an opportunity to increase productivity; if you have a set task to complete and know that once you complete it you are free to do what you like (because the boss aint watching) then maybe you'd find yourself powering through the work??

 

For me, I'd like to think I'd do the latter and maximise the freedom that working from home offers...but I guess that remains to be seen!!

 

Has anyone else here had the experience? What are the pro's and con's?

 

I read the ALA article a while ago by the way - interesting reading if anyone here hasn't seen it yet.

 

G

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I read the first article from ALA and it was really interesting but when I was about to read the second article from Hivelogic.com I found that the link was broken, thanks for sharing this Kyle.

I've updated the link -- looks like HiveLogic changed their URL structure at some point.

 

Take another look: http://hivelogic.com/articles/offices-and-the-creativity-zone

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  • 4 months later...

working from home would drive me nuts never under sell the value of human interaction and good old workplace drama that makes the office so fun and interesting

...and there's politics, favoritism, backstabbers to name a few unless you condsider that 'fun'. In either case both working from home and at office has its pros and cons.

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  • 1 year later...
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  • 2 weeks later...

working from home would drive me nuts never under sell the value of human interaction and good old workplace drama that makes the office so fun and interesting

 

If you stay at the office for long time, you may have the opposite feeling.

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