When the work is overloaded, you would like to focus on it and get it done ASAP.
Many IT professionals in Infosys, Bangalore, India started staying at office, even after office hour to get the work done from office rather than working from home.
I'd rather work not be compulsory. I actually do like people.
I despise power differential, brown nosing, ass kissing sucophants, pretending to care about things I have no natural interest in, and condescending tough guys.
I recently took a remote job. Initially, discipline for work / non-work time was tough. But in the end, it lead to better habits and more productive time spent actually working.
I like working in offices, however working remote has been surprisingly pleasant (although I'm definitely more of an introvert).
I often retreat myself in the conference room to be "alone", more often than not headphones or me frantically typing doesn't seem to convey the image of me being focused. I used to be working remotely and miss it a lot just for my peace and focus, my manager told me I can't have a day or two working from home and I'm seriously considering leaving just because of this reason...my colleagues often says that I'm quite shut but tbh when I'm in my zone I don't want to be stopped every five minutes.
I can absolutely see how this is true for some people.
Conversely: I have a family, and find that a day of open-plan leaves me consistently too frazzled to hand much in the way of meaningful interaction with my partner and child.
I don’t really know how to square these too, other than to suggest that different environments make sense for different people, and wonder how we can implement this without it getting caught up in status-game space (“why should X have the office...”)
Yes, I'd rather just be alone. Some weeks I manage to get as many as four days in a row working from home, but most I end up just taking Friday as a WFH day so I can focus on getting things done.
As I type this in my open plan office at 1:39 PM, there's a vacuum cleaner 20 feet away, three different conversations going on around me, the stairwell door at my back opening every minute, people walking in front, behind, and to the side of me, and the janitorial service emptying garbage cans. Every few days we'll get noisemakers, screaming, and clapping and cake for birthdays or work anniversaries.
When working from home, I get a good nine solid hours in with great focus and the occasional break to take pets out. From my, admittedly non-scientific reckoning, I get about three times as much done in one work day at home. I go into the office mostly just to be seen, to participate in social rituals, for physical meetings, and to be "available" for questions and drive-bys. It's not that I don't like my co-workers, it's that my office is noisy and distracting. And it's one of the quietest floors in the company.
When I worked for IBM and had a private, quiet office, it took some getting used to being alone. When I moved to full-time remote work, it was a really good balance for me: I could exercise during phone conferences, have a healthy and properly-proportioned lunch with my wife, and get a balanced amount of distraction and "away" time by taking the dogs out.
I recently worked remotely for a month while on a semi-holiday. It was a lot better than I was expecting.
I was worried I would end up not getting enough work done or worst yet appearing as if I was not getting enough work done. But being able to work remotely from a quiet place actually meant I got more work done in a shorter time period, and it also afforded me proper breaks from my work. Like heading out for 1-2 hours and doing Pilates, or going for a long walk in the park.
For me breaking my workday up into like 2/3 3-4 hour sessions, with exercise and other activities as breaks actually improved my work, and I was way happier than sitting in an office for 9 hours straight.
Years ago, when telecommuting was the bright future, I thought working from home would be great. I don't anymore. I'm more productive when I'm with the people I work with. We can discuss stuff, help each other, etc. More team cohesion, more cooperation, more knowledge sharing, more working in the same direction.
I enjoy working with my team as well but I think there’s a happy medium to be struck. It’s not a binary of :: have your attention constantly pulled or being hidden away and unavailable for collaboration.
I like a mix of alone time and collaboration time. Ideally I’d work from home a couple days a week and be in the office the rest of those days.
Also - I invested in a “do not disturb” light that I flip on while on a call or while I need to focus on something. It seems to be pretty effective as most requests that would have been walk ups are now turning into emails.
I don't really have a 'team' as such these days (the joys of corporate silos) - I don't work in a vacuum, but the others that I interact with are spread out over the country, so I generally work from home 3-4 days a week. The office is open plan, and quite noisy on a 'busy' day, but a lot of my peers also work remotely several days a week, so most of the time its not too bad.
If I manage to find somewhere in our open office to get work done in solitude, every individual who walks by feels the need to comment "oh, colanderman, you must be trying to get work done! Well I guess I'll leave you alone". It is so. Goddamn. Annoying. Like seriously, the fuck people, you don't need to vocalize every thought that pops into your head.
The only two solutions I've found are to (a) legitimately book a conference room, or (b) work from home. Except the latter reminds me how futile it is to spend such a short life working for someone else during all the beautiful hours of the day.
or those that don't check that a conf room is already booked and just show up expecting it to be empty. You still have that interruption "oh, I didn't know someone was using this room, sorry".
I've done that. It makes it worse. You get confused people jiggling the handle, knocking, and looking inside, as they try to enter the conference room they didn't book, after which you need to unlock the door, and explain to them that you locked the door to avoid interruptions, can they please go away and research the social signal a locked door is meant to convey.
The trick is you need to look unremarkable, yet also uninterruptible. I think the best strategy (short of finding an employer that values productivity) is to team up with someone else who values getting work done, and book a conference room with them. That way it looks like you're "having a meeting" and no-one will ask vapid questions.
Better still, dial your cell phone with the room's conference phone, so it looks like it's "on" to anyone peering through the door's window, and sit with your back to the door. People are less likely to try to take over the conference room if it looks like it's complicated to get you to vacate.
Unless I lock the door and/or hide in a corner, I've found that that interruption at least tends to resolve itself quickly and doesn't interrupt my flow. People react more predictably and reliably to familiar scenarios.
I absolutely love remote work. In fact, if I could not be bothered on slack by constant likes and rehashes of links I can go read and find on my own it would be even better. If I want a meeting of any kind it should be scheduled. I feel physical pain when my time is wasted.
I work remotely so the only person in my home office is my wife who also has a remote job. I use headphones and we have a general understanding that during work hours we limit idle chit chat and if headphones are on, shoot each other a text.
For co-workers, they are also remote so we schedule meetings and chats. If something comes up we ask when we could interrupt via chat and the person responds when they can.
If the end of the day comes and a person hasn't responded we shoot an e-mail to get on the radar for the next day with the understanding that it should be handled asap the next day before entering a heads-down mode.
Even better than being alone, not having foot traffic anywhere near my desk would be nice. I don't know how the guy sitting right by the door does it. People coming in and out all day and walking right by him.
They're good. They only come to me when they're having a problem and it's only a few times a day so I can get a lot of work done. If I must, I close my door and put a sign "Coding but welcome" and I'm sure some just wait until it opens but I'll never know.
At my old company, under extreme cases, I put up a physical whiteboard on top of my desk with "Focus mode: on" and "Focus mode: off" depending on my mood.
Worked great, and nobody seemed offended. I may think that even the directors love it when they saw it.
I had a coworker who put on a hood with giant bunny ears when she had heads down work to concentrate on. You knew not to disturb her when the bunny ears were up - and it was very effective because you could see those huge ears from across the office so nobody wasted time walking all the way to her desk only to find her in focus mode.
We have an open office and the chatter ebbs and flows on mutual terms mostly. Doubt it would work with over 30 people. We're a fairly tight-kmit group and that becomes impossible after a certain size.
Our office has many places you can be alone, and we take advantage whenever needed. The open office warehouse echo still blows, but we manage
Working with my team is important but I need at least one day a week working from home in my bath robe, not only for my own sanity but also to actually get things done. I don't begrudge anyone else that! Not everyone is an outgoing extrovert and that is just fine - as long as there are results!
I much prefer and find it far easier to work when alone. I'd like to work from home more for this reason but have resigned to just putting in earphones to try block out the rest of the office. I definitely hope to find a remote job in the near future though.
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[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 103 ms ] threadMany IT professionals in Infosys, Bangalore, India started staying at office, even after office hour to get the work done from office rather than working from home.
I like productive chat but also having dedicated alone time is important.
Too much if either is not good
I despise power differential, brown nosing, ass kissing sucophants, pretending to care about things I have no natural interest in, and condescending tough guys.
Co-workers think it's weird but they are office workers and sales so talking all day is 80% of their job.
I like working in offices, however working remote has been surprisingly pleasant (although I'm definitely more of an introvert).
Conversely: I have a family, and find that a day of open-plan leaves me consistently too frazzled to hand much in the way of meaningful interaction with my partner and child.
I don’t really know how to square these too, other than to suggest that different environments make sense for different people, and wonder how we can implement this without it getting caught up in status-game space (“why should X have the office...”)
Coworkers can be incredibly distracting in close quarters.
As I type this in my open plan office at 1:39 PM, there's a vacuum cleaner 20 feet away, three different conversations going on around me, the stairwell door at my back opening every minute, people walking in front, behind, and to the side of me, and the janitorial service emptying garbage cans. Every few days we'll get noisemakers, screaming, and clapping and cake for birthdays or work anniversaries.
When working from home, I get a good nine solid hours in with great focus and the occasional break to take pets out. From my, admittedly non-scientific reckoning, I get about three times as much done in one work day at home. I go into the office mostly just to be seen, to participate in social rituals, for physical meetings, and to be "available" for questions and drive-bys. It's not that I don't like my co-workers, it's that my office is noisy and distracting. And it's one of the quietest floors in the company.
When I worked for IBM and had a private, quiet office, it took some getting used to being alone. When I moved to full-time remote work, it was a really good balance for me: I could exercise during phone conferences, have a healthy and properly-proportioned lunch with my wife, and get a balanced amount of distraction and "away" time by taking the dogs out.
I was worried I would end up not getting enough work done or worst yet appearing as if I was not getting enough work done. But being able to work remotely from a quiet place actually meant I got more work done in a shorter time period, and it also afforded me proper breaks from my work. Like heading out for 1-2 hours and doing Pilates, or going for a long walk in the park.
For me breaking my workday up into like 2/3 3-4 hour sessions, with exercise and other activities as breaks actually improved my work, and I was way happier than sitting in an office for 9 hours straight.
Years ago, when telecommuting was the bright future, I thought working from home would be great. I don't anymore. I'm more productive when I'm with the people I work with. We can discuss stuff, help each other, etc. More team cohesion, more cooperation, more knowledge sharing, more working in the same direction.
Also - I invested in a “do not disturb” light that I flip on while on a call or while I need to focus on something. It seems to be pretty effective as most requests that would have been walk ups are now turning into emails.
Devops and architect stuff is a whole lot easier to do with open office since you don't have a million things in your head at once.
The only two solutions I've found are to (a) legitimately book a conference room, or (b) work from home. Except the latter reminds me how futile it is to spend such a short life working for someone else during all the beautiful hours of the day.
The trick is you need to look unremarkable, yet also uninterruptible. I think the best strategy (short of finding an employer that values productivity) is to team up with someone else who values getting work done, and book a conference room with them. That way it looks like you're "having a meeting" and no-one will ask vapid questions.
Better still, dial your cell phone with the room's conference phone, so it looks like it's "on" to anyone peering through the door's window, and sit with your back to the door. People are less likely to try to take over the conference room if it looks like it's complicated to get you to vacate.
For co-workers, they are also remote so we schedule meetings and chats. If something comes up we ask when we could interrupt via chat and the person responds when they can.
If the end of the day comes and a person hasn't responded we shoot an e-mail to get on the radar for the next day with the understanding that it should be handled asap the next day before entering a heads-down mode.
If extremely urgent then we pick up the phone.
Worked great, and nobody seemed offended. I may think that even the directors love it when they saw it.
Our office has many places you can be alone, and we take advantage whenever needed. The open office warehouse echo still blows, but we manage
Can’t concentrate at home because Slack (virtual open office plan).
Always open office.