How many people here telework 100% or nearly 100% from home? Just curious to see the responses from our Mudspike demographic. For those of you who telework, is it all that you expected it to be or do you sometimes miss the office?
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Used to, found it easy in some ways and very difficult in others. Itās worst on young people just getting started - theyāre deprived of the ability to access the older workers who have more expertise (and who seem to disproportionately prefer telework).
All in all, I think having the option is important for a flexible workplace that cares for its employees. But if I were designing a workplace Iād want people - particularly my more experienced long term employees - in the office at least six days a fortnight. Thatās just my opinion.
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Not possible for me. I am working as a service technician and also help with production at a very small company. Iād need a warehouse, electronics workshop with expensive measuring equipment and the ability to receive large packages and pallets. At home 
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On a normal week, I go to the office 1 day.
Of course thereās a few extra days per month when I get to be in some office (either the clientās or my employerās), so 60-70% is more reasonable.
I like seeing my colleagues IRL occasionally, just to connect, especially with those with whom I donāt naturally bond over the work.
I donāt miss the office because I never really got used to working in an office. I left the lab and got my first āoffice jobā right when covid started and only went to the office a handful of times in the first year or two.
I am very used to working from home, and I have a fondness for and deep respect of deep work and focus time. As well as structured processes and documentation, which are necessary to facilitate it. I try resolving issues by searching first, then if that doesnāt work Iāll type a message, then look if I have some ideas after writing that and only if it looks like it takes too many messages do I ask for a call and interrupt someone elseās flow.
I understand that when youāre working together intensely, it is nice to sit together and bounce ideas back and forth. Iāve experienced that with hackathons.
But to me, too often the (open) office is like a weird place where thereās too many noises, people and conversations to focus and do deep work. It often feels like a zoo where management and clients come to look at people who ālook productiveā.
When I am really productive, I am sitting alone in my room, maniacally reading docs, typing code, bad posture, probably only half dressed or wearing sweatpants and with a bag of candy on my desk. No client or manager wants to see that when they exclaim āhow productive everyone is lookingā.
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I did it for a few weeks during Covid and kinda hated it.
I want to keep my work and my private life separate.
So I avoid teleworking for the same reason that I donāt even look at work email when I am not in the office.
I am also too easily distracted when I am at home. The cats, the kids, and everything else.
So yeah, not for me unless I could literally have a separate room in my house that I only use for work, then it could maybe work.
I donāt enjoy the commute to work every day either, but it sure beats making my home my work place.
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Had to for about 1.5~2 years during the pandemic. āEmergency Online Teaching.ā
Part of it I hated, like the lack of feedback and inability to do more complex pair/group/discussion stuff. Ironically with some classes, usually the shy low-level kids, online was way better because they responded more in the chat compared to in the classroom where they all just sit silently when I pose a question to them.
The parts I loved were not wasting two hours a day commuting, not losing 2-3 hours of sleep so I can wake up in time to eat and get to work, and not having all the mental and physical exhaustion of working in a classroom. And being able to cook my own lunch, do chores, or some quick DCS mission building between classes. 4pm classes over? Straight to the gym (and no one else was there!).
Now I get home absolutely battered despite the workload technically being the same. Canāt exercise without getting dizzy from the fatigue. Can hardly find the energy to fly DCS or work on a model kit. Eat, binge some YouTube documentaries, sleep.
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Every time I commute it inspires me to become Josef Stalin and murder millions. Namely the millions that have moved to Florida in the last 25 years.
I prefer to work from home as often as possible. My commute now takes 50% longer than it pre-COVID. By the time I retire Iāll bet it will be 50% longer if not more.
And no, I can not move closer to my job (because my job was not the determining factor for where we built this house) and there are scant few open jobs any closer. Unlike āhotā job markets, people only leave jobs around here when they retire, die, or move out of state (unless they can telework that job in which case no one gets it).
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This is exactly how I feel about it. I like having some kind of āstructureā that is free of distractions when I have to work and being in an office setting provides that. By that same token, I donāt want to take any work home with me. Work and home are two separate realms for me.
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I telework since the start of Covid, March 2020. At start it was quite challenging, as I had been traveling from 2016 to Covid basically every work week (minus Christmas week). Suddenly everything was possible with zoom or teams, and it stayed like this. As a consulting engineer I found it quite exhausting to go from 9am to 6pm into virtual meetings day after day. When traveling we sometimes had the benefit to travel during the day and not in the evening/night, and this had gone then.
I then switched job and basically support education for technical support personnel as curriculum engineer. This made the teleworking much better, as the mix of meetings and other work has become much more interesting, and less of a grind. Though, having taught computer stuff since the late 90ies, I kind of miss the thrill of the classroom experience now and then. Strangely, over zoom it seems to be much more relaxed, or maybe this comes with age 
Back circa 2010 I also had a part-telework job, working for home 3 weeks, then at a customers office for 1 week, rince and repeat. I found this to be quite enjoyable from a home/away perspective and if I had a choice Iād probably go for such a rhythm again.
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I work 100% remotely and I could not be any happier. As a shy introvert, working in an office was exhausting. Now? I just do my work and only have to actually talk to people once a week at our check-in meetings.
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Define working from home, because I guess I kind of do. I take calls at home, at least.
But, as a pilot, itās hard to do that out of my bedroom.
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Well obviously certain professions will not perfectly fit the working from home/working at an office paradigm. Airline pilot and military pilot would be in that category.
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I had flexible working conditions before the pandemic, but was still in the office probably 4 days a week most of the time. Went full work fun home for almost two years during COVID, which was a lifesaver since we also became parents to a very very medically frail infant at that time.
When we started going been into the office in 2022, it was still mostly part time, but since my work was pretty independent anyway and with folks in lots of other parts of the state and country, it wasnāt that big of a deal. The only real issue was when one of the kids started public school and we had to start covering all the teacher workdays, as well as after school care (and donāt even get me started on summer vacations).
My job now is 100% remote, though Iāll still meet up with folks here in NC for work several times a month, as well as other contacts, conferences, networking opportunities, seminars, etc. Not to mention out of state travel for specific campaigns and other events.
Quite honestly, with both of us working full time, it would be literally impossible for either of us to be in an office full-time, especially with two kids with special needs.
Today is one of five teacher workdays in November for Wake County Public Schools (not including the 4-day Thanksgiving weekend), and we have to spend every one of these days trading off meetings and watching the little ones hour by hour. Being fully remote is the only way we could do this.
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Obviously, the answer is for me to buy a C-119 or some other big beast and convert part of it into a home!
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If you live on a boat, itās called a house boat.
If you live on a plane, itās not called an air boat.
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I think working remotely works well for a lot of people, but not for others. I would have a hard time working from home because of too many distractions. When I head off to the airport it seems to trigger a much more disciplined version of me compared to when Iām at home.
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Retired now. But during āCOVIDā I spent a period working from home/telecommuting.
As somebody who had a bit over 80km commute each way (and about $150 in fuel each week) you would think I would have loved it? Nope:
- It felt less like working from home and more like living at work.
- Because my āman caveā became my home office, any recreational PC time dropped to near zero.
- Even though management kept saying āwe are tracking output not hoursā we were still required to fill out the same timesheet as if we were in the office.
- Due to the nature of my employment it was difficult, very difficult, to find meaningful tasks for us.
- The new expectation that it was now OK for my ābossā to contact me at all hours including weekends.
- All the Citrix crap and other plugins I had to install on my PC just to be able to log in to the Departments FOUO WAN. The only way I was able to completely get rid of it after we returned to the office was to format my drive.
As I said when we were back to ānormalā. If I had a choice between the commute and working from homeā¦ Iāll take the commute.
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That was my issue as well. Something about the commute sends me into a tailspin
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I am so happy that I can commute by train. I have driven rush hour a handful of times, would hate it as the start and end of the weekday.
Sometimes the trains do take forever but at least I can sit down with my Steam Deck and blow up a submarine while travelling.
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An accessible public transport system makes a huge difference.
When I was living and working in Melbourne. Even if I missed the express and had to catch a stopping all stations train, it was still quicker to get into the CBD at peak hour than in a car.
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