Ask HN: What are the top pains of being a remote worker?
As more companies allow for remote work, it's good to understand what employees actually want and miss.
As everyone got a taste of working remotely, a lot more attention got brought to these types of questions.
In my case, my biggest pains are:
1) Feeling part of the company and engaging with other employees
2) Having to pay for my own benefits (in my company, I need to get them myself)
3) Getting good wifi depending on where I am
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[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 140 ms ] thread2) Trust is also difficult to establish for new teammates.
My team’s written communication is crystal clear. Anything with more emotional overtones gets a zoom call.
If I had to do it over again I'd find other WFH people in my area and rent a space where we could hang out and get our work done, like a hacker space. That leaves me in control of my working environment while providing some separation from home.
2) Not having the work social circle and chatter. I consider myself an introvert but I still find myself missing the short conversations in the open office and in the hallways that often led to new ideas implemented, quick checkups, social integrity.
3) Not having work equipment. I'm a designer. Been able to work off of the laptop fairly well, but I miss our (specialized) printers deeply.
2) Did you find anything to solve this? I have this as well
3) This seems like a tough issue to solve
Only one person can talk on Zoom at once..the project is going slower and they don't know why.
1) Meetings
2) have to work on a beautiful sunny day
3) have to work
So maybe this is a challenge because of lack of childcare rather than working from home vs in an office building?
A woman I spoke to mentioned that pandemic remote work is nothing compared to actual remote work, where you have your kids in childcare
- Feeling disconnected from my company and team
- Lack of physical/ face to face human interaction
- Reduced motivation
- Lack of spontaneous opportunities to meet new people, learn from others and socialise
I try to work from (SE) a different environment at least 3-4 days a week (Coffee shop, shared workspace etc, I head there after I've had lunch) and it really makes a difference for me - The small price of a couple of filer coffee's is definitely worth it.
Also reduced motivation is tough. Are you seeing anything that might help with this?
For me there's something about being in a place with others that keeps me concentrated and focused on the tasks at hand, breaking up the monotony of working from the same room at home every day.
I try to have very regular calls with my team and arrange days to meet and work together from a location we can all get to with relative ease, along with full team meet ups at least every month.
RE lack of motivation, I think it's more of a company culture issue rather than WFH itself.
Also the lack of motivation because of company culture, what do you mean by that?
- Family thinking that you actually don't work and instead thinking they can schedule tons of things to do while you're supposed to be working
- No boundaries in terms of when work ends and begins
- Not leaving the house enough; eg getting tired of being home all the time
- No boundaries in terms of when work ends and begins
I really struggled with this throughout last year. By the end of the year, though, I'd set up a home gym (this requires space, I have a basement rec room that was near perfect) and that became my end of day space. At 4:30pm I put on socks and gym shoes and go down there and exercise for 30-90 minutes every day (with spring and summer part of that was moved outside for running). I was no longer finding myself still at my work computer at 6pm, or turning it on at 7pm to see if I'd gotten responses to certain emails from people in other timezones. My day simply ended. It also helped to elevate my mood and reduce my anxiety as I was getting into better health.
It's still hard to do with kids, and again you have to have the space for it. But it can work very well if you can pull it off. Even just getting out for a 30-minute run or walk after work is a nice disruption to help separate the work day from the non-work day (that was my routine when I worked in the office but couldn't stop thinking and stressing about work after the work day officially ended and I went home).
I've also seen that working days have increased in liquid hours, as it's easier to just go and "check your emails" in the night
(2) Interruptions/distractions
(3) Can you hear me? Well, oh sorry didn't mean to interrupt. What are you saying? Let me whiteboard this...okay need to share this window, now that...
In my apartment I can never quite switch over to work mode. I just think about cleaning my bathroom or going for a walk or doing the core workout I meant to do yesterday. At best I can inject "Implement feature x" into the same list, but I can't fully flush the home stuff. Which means I do much less work stuff.
1. I can't handle one of my work colleagues who is an awful awful man and instead of powering through it like I used to I've become borderline phobic of going into the office at all ever. Also because everyone else is working from home if I do go in I'm there with him on my own.
2. I can handle my work/home boundaries and when to switch off at the end of the day but other people can't or choose not to and they end up acting inappropriately, for example by messaging me work queries through personal social media at 11pm or using a work query as a trojan horse to start a more casual conversation I otherwise wouldn't have with them. This was always simmering in the background but there is definitely a new layer of entitlement since March 2020.
3. Increase in pressure to do things like work drinks
4. More difficult to get ahold of other people who are also working from home
Previously:
4. I worked from home a few years ago and had issues with people thinking that meant I wasn't working at all and they could schedule things for me or with me, or otherwise easily attention seek. This was a good catalyst for me to spot that these people saboutaged me across all areas of my life and I got rid of them and things are so much more peaceful now. What I am left with now is the people in my life like this that i can't so easily shake - tradesmen for my landlord dicking me about and my alcoholic neighbour.
Having said that, I do have something to add to the list: since going fully-remote the amount of after-hours social time with colleagues has dropped categorically. This is not entirely a bad thing, of course, but it has resulted in fewer chips and salsa/queso sessions (and that is a pain).