There has been a lot of discussion in the last few years about people working from home where it went from almost no one to most office workers working from their homes. My experience working from home differs from most people as it has been part of who I am for 25 years, way before it was what every one did.
My first time working from home was in 1998 when the company I worked for closed its offices and kept me employed for a few months until I found another job. Back then we pretty much only used email to communicate. That experience was awful as I had only lived in Portland for less than 6 months and really didn’t know anyone. I was definitely not a fan of it, but doing that was better than being unemployed.
About six months after I started my next job in Portland, I decided that I really didn’t like Portland. I was lonely and the weather was pretty bad during the fall and winter (overcast didn’t work for me). I sold my house and gave notice to the company I worked for and started preparing to move back to San Diego. I didn’t have a job lined up, but I’d figure it out. The owners of the company I worked for asked if I wanted to work remotely. That was a no brainer as I didn’t have a job.
At the time, I had an extra phone line and we used email and AOL Instant Messenger to communicate. I really enjoyed the job even though I didn’t interact much with my colleagues in person. I continued for about 3.5 years and I parted ways as I was bored and the company didn’t have work for me at the time. Working from home was never considered an issue and I was pretty effective at my job.
Over the course of the next 20+ years, I contracted and had a few jobs all being able to work from home. Video conferencing didn’t become the norm until about 7-8 years ago so we used AOL Instant Messenger, fax, telephone (dial into a conferencing system), VoIP PBX, and email to communicate. Never was there a question if I could do the job being at home; it was just what I did. The only time it came up is I had a manager tell me that I couldn’t get promoted if I wasn’t in an office and the closest office was in San Jose.
During this time that I worked from home, I got married and became a father. Looking back over that time, I can tell you that I wouldn’t trade working from home for any amount of money as it gave me the flexibility to be there for my family. I didn’t miss a school performance, school conferences and was always there if needed. I drove my son to school and picked him up a few times a week when my wife worked. In addition, the time I didn’t have to commute allowed me to spend more time with my family. This is time that you can never get back. Doing some rough numbers, if I had to commute 30 minutes each way over the last 25 years, 1 hr/day * 50 wks/years (allowing for vacation) * 5 days/week * 25 years = 6250 hours = 260 days! Even a short commute would take a lot of time off my life.
In the few times when I looked for a job, I tried to look for remote work as I didn’t know if I could actually go into an office. About 9 years ago I did get a job where I had to commute 30 minutes each way, 5 days a week. I only lasted at that job a short time with not being able to work from home one of the several reasons that I went back to contracting.
After my last company went through some rough times, I decided to look for a new job. This time, however, I didn’t exclude jobs where I had to go into an office as I’m in a different place in my life. My son has now finished high school and no longer needs me to drive him around. The job I landed requires me to be in an office 3 days a week and I go.
It is kind of interesting that I go into an office where my immediate team is not located; I’m the only person in this country! When I have calls, I always see lots of squares where everyone (with few exceptions) is in their own location. It is kind of rare to see 2 people in the same room. With teams spread out around the country and world, are we more productive with everyone in an office? I’ll certainly understand that some jobs have to be done in an office due to security/secrecy, hardware availability, etc.
As I’m not generally a social person, working from home has been pretty good to me. A major downside to working from home has always been working too much and not being able to separate work from home as my work computer is just there; it was even harder when I was a contractor and my computer was used for both work and home. Working for someone else and having a separate work computer makes it a little easier to separate the two as I close my work computer at the end of the day/week. However, I can’t help but to put in long hours especially now that my team is in a time zone that is 16-18 hours ahead of me.
Will working from home stay for most office workers? I have no idea. I can’t imagine having to go into an office 5 days a week; 3 days is hard enough as I’m far more productive at home than I am in an office full of cubes.