I don’t like working from home. I wanted to use stronger language but my editor said that LinkedIn doesn’t like profanity.
I am well aware that many people prefer it and have made strong careers from working from home, but I would honestly rather never do this again. I have a few reasons for this which I’ll get into in a bit but for right now, I just wanted to vent that from my perspective, this is significantly sub-ideal and I want to go back into the office. Clearly I’m going to work from home until public health officials advise otherwise, but I’m not going to be doing cartwheels in the living room to celebrate.
I work in that building.
I miss it so, so very much.
The COVID-19 pandemic continues to rage across the globe, and here in Eastern Massachusetts it has continued to keep us all locked inside in generally dreary wet and cool weather. I don’t know if 36 and rainy is my least favorite weather, but unless toads are falling from the sky it is definitely in contention for the bottom spot. Since the weather is kind of sour, I figured that I would harness that energy in order to complain about some of the reasons that I personally do not like working from home:
It hampers communication. Yes, I know I have IP telephony and Skype for Business. I can IM or call anyone on my team or any other teams and connect with them. But I don’t like calling them. I like stopping by their office or cube. I’m an extrovert and I enjoy spending time with the folks on my team. When I call someone, the small talk always feels forced – and I can almost hear them screaming “get to the point.”
Interruptions aren’t just frequent, they’re continuous. I live in a small house in New England. I know some of you are reading this in the palatial confines of your 3500 square foot house, but I don’t have that. I have a small colonial that fits our family of four fine – just not when I want some space and privacy to work. I don’t have a home office and my basement is unheated, unfinished and very, very tiny. I also have two younger kids in the house, and while I love them - I still haven’t found their volume knobs. Come to think of it, I haven’t found their speed potentiometer or their off buttons either. I started this by working in the living room which was a mistake. Interruptions are now a way of life, and throwing foam balls at my kids to get them to quiet down is a science. I barely even remember what this blog post is about I’ve been interrupted so many times.
I desperately need a scenery change. I don’t know how you people who routinely work from home do it. I’ve been here all of a few weeks, and I’ve already decided that I’m selling this house immediately because I hate being in it so much. I am currently exiled to my bedroom, which means I’m spending about 20 out of 24 hours in the same room. Do you know what looking at where you sleep all day does to a person? I’m starting to have nightmares that I’ve not woken up and I’m just dreaming that I’m working and have to wake up to work the full day again. I don’t want Zoom backgrounds; I want a virtual background for the real world.
VPN. I feel no need to further elaborate on this particularly unpleasant effect of not being in the office. Suffice it to say that I die a little inside each time I press that “connect” button.
Meetings are about as efficient as the DMV. I get it – we’re all Zoom experts now, but there’s always that one person who has the boom mic under their nose and you get the “Darth Vader” sound effect for 20 minutes. Or you’ve got Jimmy who doesn’t know how to mute and whose dogs just saw the mailman carrying a hot, rare porterhouse go by. You can’t have side conversations to catch people up or vet ideas as efficiently either before you bring them to the group – which means that many of these ideas don’t get put in front of the larger team. I worry that we aren’t getting all our best ideas out in the open.
Stepping on one of these hurts.
Stepping on one of these during a team meeting is soul-crushing.
What all of this means for me is that my day has stretched by several hours to compensate for these issues. I routinely find myself working almost continuously from 6:30 am until 11 pm, just about seven days a week. Yes, I work in an industry highly disrupted by COVID, but I’d certainly feel the pressure to be doing so even if I worked in an industry that was largely unchanged by the whole thing. Not having any division between living and working - either geographical or temporal - means that I’m effectively always “in my office.”
So, I decided to take one step to make my work-from-home life a little better: I bought an exercise bike. I make sure I’m on it at least once a day, and often I’ll hop on it during a call to (slowly) keep myself moving. It’s worked wonders for my mental state. I also make sure to set up “water cooler” meetings with my team as frequently as possible to just “shoot the breeze” and have non-work related conversations. We usually end up talking about work, but in that informal way that doesn’t make it feel like any kind of formal meeting.
Still, I fully appreciate those who work from home daily and contribute so much to their teams. My hat is off to you. While I’ve seen lots of posts about how the COVID-19 crisis may start to bring about the “end of the office,” I hope it’s not the case. I appreciate how remote work can help people access employers and job roles that they may not be able to in their region or grow their careers without uprooting their families. I think this is all great – and I do hope that companies become more open to remote work.
This picture is 100% lies. It never looks like this. Never.
All in all, I guess my thesis is this – I love that we live in a time period where work from home is possible. I think more companies should be open to using WFH as a tool to find the best possible person to add to the team. It reduces barriers and makes skills more accessible for a company. It also makes career growth more possible for some employees. But there are just as many (or possibly more) current and potential teammates that prefer working in the office. I’m one of them. All in all, as technology leaders we need to make sure that we are doing our best to make sure we provide work environments that bring out the best in our teams – wherever they may be.
For me, however – if it’s ever time for me to switch roles, I’ll definitely be looking forward to scoping out where my office would be. For now though – I’ll just look at a picture of my desk and wonder when I’ll get the “all clear” to walk back through the front doors again.
How about you?
Do you miss being in the office, or is working from home a breath of fresh air? Something in between?
What one step can you take to make WFH more successful for you or others on your team? Can you start today?
What are you doing to support teammates – both in the office and from home – to be as connected to the team as possible?