work at home...

[rh71]

I'll be doing this soon enough as a full-time thing. I've been at it on and off for a year now (including today)... maybe 4 or 5 times a month working from home. Don't you people find it incredibly dull? I mean, yes, it's nice to not have to wake up and jump in the shower and rush out the door, but I feel like a complete bum sitting here. I am doing work on my laptop next to me, and surfing the boards here at the same time (yes it's do-able for what I'm working on now)... but it's not all it's cracked up to be...

Or maybe it's something I just have to get used to... once I do this full-time.

 

[Ameesh]

i think its better, you can watch tv while you work.

 

[stebesplace]

I used to do some freelance web site work for a company. Worked at home for about 6 months (and in school), and needless to say, it was nice. Getting up at 9, not 6, working till whenever i felt like it, since there were only dealines, not daily dates. It was really nice. If i wanted to go out to the park, or mall, i would. If i decided to ski, i would. But the work always got done. It was much better than the preverbial rat race i am in now. . .


-Steve

 

[Parrotheader]

I occasionally get to do it, but rarely. I personally love it. Yes, you can get a little bored if you don't have enough to do or are a person who doesn't like to be alone for extended periods of time. But I find I can get more done in 3-4 hours at home than I can get done in a whole day when I'm at the office. When I'm at the office, there's meetings and conversations in the hall and all that other stuff to distract you. Plus, I'm looking for entertainment distractions since it's such a dull environment so I surf around periodically and don't get as much done. When I'm at home, my distractions are all readily available so I don't feel the need to goof off as much. I can push myself to work that much harder at home and then reward myself with a break to watch a movie or something. Plus, if I'm not in the mood to work during the morning I don't have to. I can work on a project later at night (which is when my insomniac brain tends to be at its best anyway.)

The only bad thing about that is that you don't get that feeling of separation of work/home life. So you'll find yourself thinking about work stuff from home more which can be annoying. But I inevitably do that anyway so it doesn't change the situation for me too much.

If for any reason I ever lose my job, I'm definitely going to try and take some of my big clients with me and try to work from home for awhile and see how that goes.

 

[FoBoT]

i could not do it right now, the wife and 4 year old at home would be a big distraction

 

[Descartes]

I love working at home. At times I've worked at home almost weeks at a time. I like it because I can wake up at the normal time (~7am), run to my coffee shop to grab a bagel and a latte, come back home to watch the news for a few minutes, etc.. When it's nice outside, I grab my lappy and work outside (802.11b). I have everything I need at home to be a mobile office, and my clients can always reach me. I also consult quite a bit, so I'm out of town often.

As a developer, I really have little need to actually be in the office.

[edit]I thought I'd also add that I'm single and live in a house that's large enough to have a dedicated office so I at least get the feeling of "going to work" so to speak[/edit]

 

[rh71]

Originally posted by: Descartes
As a developer, I really have little need to actually be in the office.

This is why I was approved to work at home full-time. It cuts down on facility costs for the company big time also... and they'll pick up my cable modem and 2nd phone line bills. But as Parrotheader stated, I do think about work while on the couch at 8pm sometimes... VERY annoying.

 

[Wheezer]

work at home...man I wish

 

[Fausto]

Hehe....my wife would kill me.





I'm a biologist.

 

[HamSupLo]

if i could work without having to wear a shirt or pants...hell, why not?

 

[notfred]

Originally posted by: rh71
I do think about work while on the couch at 8pm sometimes... VERY annoying.

Eh, I don't work at home and I do that, too.

 

[neovan]

I would love a chance to do this.

 

[Ime]

I don't work from home often, but I do it enough to appreciate it.

I like having a variety, and working from home on occasion helps provide it.

Of course, as a sysadmin I get to work from home at least once a week... normally between the hours of 2am-4am when I get a call. <grumble>

 

[T2T III]

I think there's a nice happy medium between working at home and working at an office 20 miles from your home. Many cities now have "work hubs" which are usually just a few miles from your home. You just take your laptop in, plug in and get to work. You're not nearly as stressed because of the shorter commute. I think I'd do much better if I were able to work in a hub as opposed to an office for the company because I could avoid a lot of the politics and still be very productive.

 

[nord1899]

I've worked from home a few times and I found it way too easy to get distracted. All the games I have, the TV, etc... Just too easy for me to load those up and there goes an hour or three.

 

[Descartes]

Originally posted by: nord1899
I've worked from home a few times and I found it way too easy to get distracted. All the games I have, the TV, etc... Just too easy for me to load those up and there goes an hour or three.

Well, being disciplined is obviously a requirement to working at home

I don't have much choice in the matter. If I decide to not work during the day, I'm going to have to do it later in the evening. I also find that I often work more hours when I work from home.

Some of my less trusting clients actually want me to work on-site. I guess if they want to hinder my productivity by asking me "what does that do?" after every line of code, I don't mind billing them for it.

I absolutely refuse to ever work in a Dilbert-principle-enforced environment. A strict 8-5 corporate monkey lifestyle is not for me. Now, if only my 802.11b antenna was strong enough to reach the park a few blocks away, I'd be set.

 

[rh71]

Originally posted by: Descartes
I absolutely refuse to ever work in a Dilbert-principle-enforced environment. A strict 8-5 corporate monkey lifestyle is not for me. Now, if only my 802.11b antenna was strong enough to reach the park a few blocks away, I'd be set.

Meant to ask you about that before... wireless and security. Doesn't your company (or do you work for yourself?) have rules and regulations about using wireless to "tap" into the company network? We have a whole section on our intranet on wireless from home... and I won't even bother going wireless because of it.

 

[Descartes]

Originally posted by: rh71

Originally posted by: Descartes
I absolutely refuse to ever work in a Dilbert-principle-enforced environment. A strict 8-5 corporate monkey lifestyle is not for me. Now, if only my 802.11b antenna was strong enough to reach the park a few blocks away, I'd be set.

Meant to ask you about that before... wireless and security. Doesn't your company (or do you work for yourself?) have rules and regulations about using wireless to "tap" into the company network? We have a whole section on our intranet on wireless from home... and I won't even bother going wireless because of it.

I VPN into my office. It's no less inherently insecure than if I were doing it from home using cat5. My servers at home are all on cat5. The only 802.11b device I use is my laptop. My WAP is treated by my firewall as an external network, so the firewall rules are fairly strict. The only real problem I see is if someone were to sniff a valid mac address (which would be my laptop, as it's the only 802.11b device, so that won't work...), crack my wep key (which I rotate), and brute force the admin account on my laptop. This doesn't seem verly likely, and the same could happen on any network anyway.

To answer your question: no, my company doesn't define any wifi restrictions for home use. Even if they did, I'd figure there was greater potential for exploitation by users of my customers' networks, not transient war drivers.

 

[rh71]

I think the biggest concern would be others catching typed keystrokes, etc. as you connect to work machines (we VPN also). Then again, I am not a network guy... I can barely spell TCP/IP.

 

[wyvrn]

I would love to work at home. I mean there are always downtimes at work where you wish you could leave and do other stuff at home. Plus it saves commute time. I could picture myself feeding the baby, working on a proposal, and be on a conference call all at the same time. True multitasking!

 

[Descartes]

Originally posted by: rh71
I think the biggest concern would be others catching typed keystrokes, etc. as you connect to work machines (we VPN also). Then again, I am not a network guy... I can barely spell TCP/IP.

I can assure you that doesn't happen. The only concern I would have is the use of plaintext authentication mechanisms. Protocols like telnet, ftp, nntp, pop3, and smtp are *all* plaintext. These can be easily sniffed. I use their SSL supporting counterparts like ssh, sftp, spop3, etc..

People can't exactly watch traffic on a VPN connection as it uses PPTP to encrypt traffic before it's pushed across the wire. What cipher is actually used is defined by the implementing device...

I'm not so concerned about people sniffing my traffic on my 802.11b connection. First, Windows doesn't support rfmon for 802.11b cards; that's required to put your card into promiscuous mode in order to sniff packets. Linux does support this, but I find that the casual war driver is usually not targeting anything, and most of the time they're using netstumbler and a windows box. The hardcore war driver usually has a target, and I seriously doubt I'm it. If I am, they'll still have a hell of a time getting in.

 

[Yossarian]

Working from home is cool, I did it for a few months in '95 when I was working for a consulting company. I would be talking to some bonehead client on the phone while playing Madden '95 with my roommate.

Do you have a home office? Good tax writeoff, but lots of rules to follow or you get nailed.

 

[Scarpozzi]

I work from home every now and then... It's nice because I can do my job naked...and anytime you can be naked and get work done, that's always a plus. However, the office interaction thing is what you lose out on... It's nice to be able to see people and of course, make your presence known to your boss...