I'll present a pretty hot take. I'm a Software Engineer, and I don't think you should be working from home. I know – crazy.
For a while, during and after the pandemic in 2020, it seemed as though we'd be entering a new era of work. It seemed as though we're witnessing the great democratization of white-collar work culture. "If it could be done during the pandemic, why couldn't it be done after?" – a phrase I've heard all too often.
For the majority of my professional career, I've worked from home. I got myself an office in my flat, a decent standing desk, a great monitor – and a variety of coffee machines (sequentially, not in parallel). It seemed like the norm. I've started my first full time job a year or so before COVID. After that, I was exclusively hunting for opportunities where fully-remote was there in the job description: in black and white.
This blog post, however, is my first, very public acknowledgement of that failure. And an ode to a subsequent realization.
Struggle
For years, I've had a very difficult struggle with my energy levels and focus during work. Far too many days I've felt incredibly sleepy, and far too many days did I feel as though my deep focus would be broken by factors consistently out of my control.
Family visiting. The mailman. My cat. A phone call.
Psychologically, working from home seems to kind of blur boundaries. Your bed being nearby makes you sleepy. Your dirty laundry being around makes you want to sort that out before all else. Your kitchen being right there prompts you to begin cooking over lunch. There being nobody else around to make the situation awkward, you pick up any phone call. Your deep focus is consistently under attack, by a myriad of factors.
And it doesn't just blur boundaries for you – it blurs them for whomever else happens to be around you. Flatmates, girlfriend, kids, parents. My cat. You name it. All of a sudden, their percieved cost of interaction with you becomes practically zero. And from their perspective, it is effectively zero – except now, your focus is broken.
And if there's one thing I know about Software Engineering, is that real work gets done in uninterrupted Flow (Read more) chunks. Yet nothing could, consistently and predictably get me into that flow state. Not 5 coffees a day. Not a better monitor. Not me dressing up in outside clothes. Until one day, I was visiting some family in Manchester.
A realization
It was a Thursday morning. I travelled back to Manchester to my dad's place the previous night. Everybody was off to school and work but my smallest sister. The house was quiet-ish. I've grabbed myself a room, a desk, and opened my laptop to start my day. Yet by the end of the working day, as I was jotting down my end of day status in my notes, I've realised – I've barely got fuckall done. It was much worse than a normal WFH day – because I didn't even have my fancy equipment to keep me comfy and productive-ish.
So with that in mind, I downloaded WeWork, and booked myself a day pass for the Friday in Dalton Place.
Much as the public transport bit of that experience was dreadful, as usual, as soon as I've stepped into the space, I've felt so, so incredibly energised. The interior was modern, vibrant, full of what seemed to be a bunch of entrepreneurial tech-y folks, all roughly my age.
Needless to say, I've had an extraordinary day on many fronts. Without any of my fancy equipment – just a 14 inch Macbook and n cups of coffee.
Power to the employee
Work from home seems, on the surface, to be a win for the small (albeit white-collar) man. You gaining agency over your time. And importantly, getting back all those hours of struggle on public transport. It felt as though, for a blip, we had discovered a way to get back some control over our busy lives.
Though I think we must ultimately look at the bigger picture. What is the cost that we pay for this freedom? Its impact on our productivity? Our mental health? Our ability to socialise? Our career-progression, even? And worst of all, as Europeans, our already much-diminished competitiveness?
I just think that we're not psychologically wired to work from home. Our brain, in many ways, is super crude. It ties habits and moods to places. And in my experience, home either infringes on work. Or work infringes on home. Neither is good.
A slightly unorthodox model
The current company I work for offers a 2-days at home work policy. It's a healthy balance that gives you some breathing-room during the week. I like it. Though, I did go the extra mile to rent myself a coworking desk at a super-cool office in Budapest nearby. I'm around 4 months into the experiement, and I've never been more productive.
Shoutout to Puzl – the Budapest coworking scene is dreadful in quality on many fronts, yet they stand out fiercely.
Don't get me wrong... I love chatting to my coworkers at my company's office – but truth be told, on most in-office days, I can barely get an uninterrupted hour or two for myself.
Ultimately, though beyond a decently productive day, for the first time ever, I also feel like I can switch off when I get home. Read. Pop on a show. Play some Baldur's Gate. Without the thoughts of work looming over my subconscious.
As a sidenote, I realise renting an office space might be a bit of a luxury. For me, it made a lot of sense, as I can now move into a smaller flat. The difference I save there, is roughly the amount I pay for the desk. Plus, I have a space to work on some freelance projects over the weekend, and after work. It's well worth the extra productivity.
Finishing words
I think there's a silver lining to it all. Ever so often, the fabric of our societies unravel ever-so-slightly (often on our own volition), and our collective memory gets a refresh. I think that the takeaway of COVID and the pandemic was that human connections cannot ever be replaced. Seeing other humans busy around you makes you busy. Chatting to someone new over a cup of coffee is an irreplaceable part of being human. Getting home after a long day of work and unwinding is a moment all of us deserve to avoid burnout.
Yet amidst all of that, I think it's shed light on the fact that we don't need to be so rigid with the office. It's okay to miss the morning because of an appointment. It's okay to work 10-6 or 7-3. It's okay to decide that you want to spend the rest of your days in a coworking space. Or that having your very own home office is your way to get shit done.
And so if there's one thing I'd like for you to take away from this, (putting the clickbaity title aside) is to give yourself the opportunity to explore what works best for you. Put time, thought, and effort into your workspace – it's where you spend almost half of your life.