Thu, 13 Apr 2006

Working from home

"Oh but you can take holiday whenever you like ..."
"Oh but you can get up whenever you like when you work from home..."

And how popular would I be with my colleagues if I did that then, eh? No, I'm afraid people who work from home can certainly work as hard or even harder than people who go into an office. Personally there are days when I find it easy to just walk away and days when I don't. I own the business as well which undoubtedly makes it a little bit different but there does seem to be this culture of using "working from home" as a euphemism for sitting around all day looking at porn which just isn't true.

It's not all bad; I can stay in for deliveries or pop a load of washing on whilst I make a pot of tea and I can have decent coffee and tea throughout the day. I miss all the commuting so I don't have those costs or hassles though equally some days (weeks?) I never leave the house now.

So what are your preconceptions about working from home? Or if you work from home, what are the misconceptions you've heard?

3 comments | /work | permalink

Comments

I'm currently working in an office again, and I realise how much I miss working form home.

Partially because of things like, good coffee, and decent hi-fi, and no commute, but also for not having to pretend to work when my brain is broken or there's nothing useful for me to do.

Yes, I work longer hours now I work for myself, and yes, there are weeks when I forget to leave the house or have any contact with the world except through my DSL.

But, still... working from home (for myself) is probably the best thing I've ever done.

-- dkscully at 2006-04-28 13:50

I occasionally work from home when the development workload gets busy. Asides from saving the daily commute (which was taking about an hour round trip by bike before), it also avoids the distractions from other people in the office. Certainly, I get a considerable amount more development work done. It also helps when I'm able to take a reasonable break every two hours or so.

The downside is that I also tend to stay sitting at my desk to some obscene time in the evening, and after a couple of days in a row of working from home when living alone, you do start to go a bit stir crazy.

-- Kevin Campbell at 2006-04-28 16:34

I 9-5 it with an hour's commute round-trip, then go home and do out-of-hours Web development, so I get the worth of boast worlds :)

-- Rob at 2006-05-12 11:56

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