I've been doing WFH for 5 years and feel like the rest of the world just caught on. In addition to what you mention:
- Control of food. No more bagels or carb dumping ground. No more limited food options. My own kitchen.
- Control of equipment. Need a 4k monitor? Need a trackball? No approvals needed.
- Control of ergonomics. Get exactly the chair you need. Get an electric height adjustable desk without going through facilities.
- Control temperature. Never be too hot or cold.
- So many great options for breaks. Walk down the street. Meditate in the garden. Play Beatsaber. Take a nap, naps are magic.
- Control your lighting. Good color temperature and comfortable brightness make the space more relaxing and can aid sleep and wakefulness.
- The ultimate corner office. Privacy and separate space that you can personalize to your heart's content.
- Location flexibility. Work from a beach rental. Do a city-stay near a WeWork. Find a mountain cabin with high speed internet. Move to a new state without having to change jobs.
- Finances. Live in a low tax state. Have an older car. Spend less on clothes, lunches, parking, gas, tolls. Live in cheaper square footage without worrying about what it does to your commute.
- Stress. More emotional speration between you and your work. Relationships are through Zoom and require less emotional investment. Work forms less a part of your identity and changing it involves fewer changes to your daily routine.
- Caffeine. With more tools to manage your wakefulness, less need to lean on the crutch of caffeine. For me, less caffeine means less alcohol as well.
Other people are free to have their opinions that they don't like WFH or can't wait to get back into the office. For me, I really struggle to understand how you cannot love it. With total control of my environment, I can easily correct for minor downsides such as needing to maintain work-life balance and good social connections. After years of optimization, I have a better quality of life than our CEO. I'd be insane to give it up.
The other thing I don't see mentioned enough is the impact on disabled people. Thanks to spine issues, I can't comfortably drive. That has limited me to either working where a train line goes or at the same place with my wife where I can carpool with her as a passenger. WFH is one of the most freeing things that has ever happened to me. It not only frees me to work anywhere, but it also means I don't need to take as frequent breaks. I used to have to work at places that could accommodate my need to lay down to decompress several times a day, and that meant I couldn't do any actual work during that time. At home, I can much more easily keep working from bed when sitting or standing gets too painful.
Not just disability — basically everyone in every marginalized group is doing better working from home. My queer friends are thriving in this environment. You don’t have to code switch online to the same degree you do in real life, and it gave people time to consider the cognitive and emotional toll that code switching takes.
Like, I’m trans and have kept it hidden most of my career. It’s always been hard on me, because I have to carefully curate my image because if I don’t I opened myself to discrimination if people could tell.
I started a new job during the pandemic and went full-on “fuck it” mode and I couldn’t be happier. Joined the LGBT ERG and helped organize some of the younger trans people at my company into pushing for expanded healthcare benefits (I don’t need them personally, but they will). I don’t think I would have found the energy to do any of this if I was also worried about how I was being perceived by others — all that energy would have gone into creating an illusion that’s acceptable to the people who do my reviews and sign my paychecks.
It's also applied to switching dialect, word choice, and even accent. Lots of people in the US who grow up with any kind of regional or ethnic accent or English-variant end up being capable of code-switching to Standard American English, especially if they move around much and/or attend school somewhere outside the area where their dialect is normal, though even regional schools will provide some social pressure to avoid non-standard accents or dialects that are common in their areas. AAVE (African-American Vernacular English) is a commonly-cited variant from which one may wish (or feel strong pressure) to code-switch to SAE, but similar (if less race-fraught, so perhaps not directly comparable) pressure exists for people with strong Bostonian or Appalachian or rural-midwestern accents, or most anything other than SAE.
The positive reason for this, is that it allows potentially extreme variants and dialects to co-exist while letting everyone still communicate clearly with others (by code-switching to whatever's considered standard). The down-side is that it often exists alongside negative stereotypes about those who can't, or choose not to, code-switch to SAE (but, of course, refusing to becomes its own counter-signal for very high status—Fussell, for instance, observes that adhering to SAE is a middle-class and up tendency, but not among "old money" or his "top-out-of-sight" rich, since they don't need, at any point in their life, to give a damn whether some employer or other gate-keeper judges them worthy or intelligent or whatever).
I didn't get what code switching meant until my first job out of college. I had a coworker who would copyedit what I wrote to a level that would impress an English professor. It was great, he made me sound so much smarter to the rest of the company. When we became Facebook friends, I was surprised to see that he had a totally different manner of speaking to his friends.
I can't speak for the GP commenter, but from my own experience being non-binary, I have to expend cognitive energy every morning thinking about what I'll be doing that day (what meetings, any errands, etc), before deciding what clothes I can wear. If I'm staying home all day, with no meetings, or only meeting with trusted colleagues, I will dress differently than a day where I need to go to a store, or if I need to meet with coworkers I've never met before.
For trans people, just existing without conflict or judgement from others is a constant struggle between society's normative expectations and the desire to express who you really are.
Yeah that’s basically it. Working from home I can be in a t-shirt with no bra and a days worth of stubble and nobody is the wiser. It helps that I pass without makeup though.
I have cystic fibrosis. It's fairly mild, but I do have to do daily breathing treatments, and it's so nice to be able to take care of those needs while working. To say nothing of when I'm ill but can still be fairly productive around rest. I've even gotten work done from the hospital during an admission.
As a kid who grew up with a father who worked from home, I will say I loved it, though. I knew I shouldn't bother him much while he's working... but I could if I really needed to, and he was around if something important happened. His flexible working conditions also meant he could be a part of everything and take you places and then you'd want to do something he'd find boring and he'd just say "I'll sit on this bench, come get me when you're done" and he'd put in a half hour of work in the middle of nowhere as he could (his job also was for a company half a world away, and so he didn't really need to be in contact with them constantly--pre-Internet--or work very specific hours). So like... it might be a bit harder on you--particularly when the kid is young enough to not understand "work"--but I feel incredibly lucky that my father did that (and like, he actually was gone three months of the year to work for that company "in the office"... but I still feel like I got much more of a father than anyone else I knew).
Yes, familywise it's great, I just came back from a 1h lunch break on the beach digging sand castles for a good 30 minutes of it with them all, something impossible with any other setup.
I didn't technically ever work without internet access, but since it required an expensive long distance phone call (10 to 25c per minute) over a 2400bps modem, most work time was offline.
I'd typically do a short dialup call in the morning and one in the evening to upload emails I queued up to send, download any emails I received and sync up code repositories.
Honestly I often wish for similar conditions today (except the 2400bps part!). The productivity and mental peace of zero distractions all day long was so much better.
As to how to work? No different from today really. Sync up the code repositories and do all development locally for the day. Or work on architecture/design documents.
I sometimes seek that peaceful working condition by working remote at locations with no signal. Wish I could do it more often.
Any intellectual work that typically traded on paper.
-Design jobs like architecture and drafting
-Small device repairs (where the device is high value and can be mailed)
-Creative labor like copy writing, editing, etc
Also, where I grew up in rural Montana, a lot of jobs that are considered to require an office but which can be done over the phone were worked remotely up until recently. Sales in many industries was done over the phone with people stationed throughout the Western U.S. states, each managing about a 100,000-300,000 sq mi area.
The answer to your direct question is, in fact, "fax". The digital fax machines that started to come out were able to send documents without much loss and then print multiple copies of them (rather than essentially attaching a modem directly to a glorified receipt printer like earlier ones had).
He had a Palm Pilot he would scribble on a lot to work out of the house when those became a thing, and he had one of the first actually-portable laptop computers. We (he involved me in a lot of his process of learning tech) tested out early tablet computing devices (running Windows 3.0 "for Handwriting" ;P).
There are different answers to this, depending on what "without the internet" means. Pre-internet it was phone or fax, but early internet it was intermittent/dial-up internet, meaning you could do offline work that you upload later. Even during ADSL neither I or any service on the internet relied on always-online assumptions. Think git (but before actual git).
> Sometimes your SO forgets you are not "Home" and this also can be bad, as it can create stress between you 2.
Simple solution, put a sign on the door that indicates you are working and only to interrupt if it's important. You can still set boundaries here without it being an issue. Be creative, talk it out with your SO.
This can help when kids get old enough to understand as well, but admittedly won't work with small children.
> miss software design sessions with my team, we would go thru issues 2x faster being together.
I think this is something that can be solved with software but it'll take some time to develop workflows that work for everyone. Talk to your team to try to find ways you can optimize.
> - Onboarding new team members is a lot harder and they feel less part of the "team"
This comes down to the culture, which is your last part.
You can help new members feel included in simple ways. Or simply include them in decisions and discussions is helpful. Really it's the same as when you're working in the same location. You just have to be proactive about including someone that you're not seeing. This is more on you and less on the new person.
I suspect anyone that enjoys living in a high cost of living city (SF, NYC, etc) and isn’t obscenely wealthy is working from their living or bedroom. If you’re not living alone, WFH becomes a lot harder.
I would prefer to live in SF and go to the office (because my house/apt is too small) than live elsewhere but be able to afford a house with a dedicated room for an office.
How about a middleground solution: Live close to SF (say San Mateo, ~30 mins to SF)? That way you can get dedicated room for office and be in proximity to the city.
Still EXPENSIVE as hell, and no big open spaces to yourself, but also still not a quick stroll to all the world-class amenities of SF.
Maybe it varies for other people, but when i think of "live in to enjoy the city" i think 2 blocks from enough food to never cook again, new bars every friday, a quick transit ride to almost any activity i could want - and no car ownership needed. Its a lifestyle of living out of the city as a communal space, not a destination to visit on weekends.
Well it comes down to personal preferences. For me, SF is unhabitable due to crime, shit + syringes, homelessness, and the fact that it's a ghost-town on weekends.
Combining that with the fact that we don't do bars, we cook and need car ownership so we can do hike-trips...
I work from my living room, my girlfriend works from the bedroom. Sure she sometimes comes out to get water or something and walks past me and into the kitchen and I can see her and hear the sink running but it isn't exactly a huge distraction
Oooof, that sounds painful but also a pretty atypical experience for people not living alone. My girlfriend has a job where she's on the phone a lot, but in the other room with the door shut that isn't really a problem at all. I can barely hear it, and if I have my headphones on I can't hear it at all
That's another thing that a permanent WFH mindset can solve - move. I've been WFH for ~20 years, and can't imagine giving up the freedom I have in selecting a home.
I still live in the Bay Area, but it's a 45min (no traffic) to ~1:45hr (typical) commute to the South Bay. It'd be hard to do this every day, but I don't have to.
As a result, I get to live on huge chunk of land, with an office to call my own, for the same $$ I'd spend on a 4br/3ba 'normal' house in San Jose.
A) It’s not a multimillion dollar home, and B) that’s not really relevant - the point is that WFH frees you from having to live in high cost areas, which means you can also afford an office in your house.
I've onboarded a few people over the pandemic and that's really the only downside. I can't really gauge their mood while pair coding over zoom. So its harder to pick up on where they are struggling to keep up.
All that has meant is that ramp up time is a little slower. And I can come into the office for 2 weeks for the two times a year we onboard people. Hell, if we did an office rental then neither of us would have to commute into town. It may be shocking to hear, but new people typically live in the outskirts where housing is cheap. Right next to where I live...
Great commentary. Regarding 'I miss software design sessions with my team, we would go thru issues 2x faster being together.' My team struggled with this at first, mainly because we had a massive markerboarding wall in the office. We tried setting up whiteboards in our home offices and doing some whiteboard sharing. There was just something about marker on markerboard paint we missed. Then we found Miro which allowed us to virtually markerboard remotely and asynchronously with ease. It doesn't hurt that our video conferencing app Whereby has Miro share feature so we do it directly within Whereby and not have to context-switch so much.
<plug / request for feedback from targeted, experienced user>
Please check out https://sharetheboard.com -- we too didn't want to give up markers (on paint or boards or anywhere else). We're working on a number of integrations at the moment. Hadn't considered Whereby yet (Miro is on the short list) but open to suggestions.
This is true, the thing is kids grow up and then that stage is gone. With my oldest and second I missed so much, not something I would want to repeat again with my current 18 month old. Kids settle down as they get older, and I'd much rather have a quick play distraction than the annoying conversations that you get sucked into around the water cooler. And I'd also rather get locked into WFH roles now and put up with the young kid noises now with the long-term payoff of less distractions.
How many of us are newscasters anyway? I've given up even instructing my wife to take the kids out unless it's a really important presentation, because so many of my co-workers are in the same boat.
> This is what can happen when you WFH with small children:
Very early in the pandemic our CEO was doing all hands sessions with the company and these things happened on and off.
I still don't know if it just happened naturally or if it was staged, but either way it was brilliant. It set the tone for the company that if even big shot billionaire CEO was having kids wander into meetings, it was certainly ok for everyone else.
Those are all good points. Which is why I think we need to distinguish between different actual situations when we talk about this stuff.
The fact that you are not going to the office is too broad of a category. I mean just look at the name, work from home, and it is misleading right there.
You may need to look into a co-working space or other option to get out of the house with so many distractions.
It's also going to be totally different for people who have no kids or who are employing nannies or day care to occupy the children.
The software design sessions thing, I absolutely do not buy the idea that this cannot be done remotely. Use a Zoom meeting, one of the many collaborative whiteboarding sites/programs and get people Wacom tablets if desired. But just a chat room, phone call, Discord voice channel, etc. should actually be adequate most of the time.
For onboarding and culture, just because people are not coming into the office does not mean that it has to turn into a free for all. You can still have rules about being around at a certain time or using certain software or video calls or whatever you feel you need to keep people integrated or whatever. The only thing that needs to be different is the literal physical presence of the person. Virtual presence can still be facilitated and required if you feel it is necessary.
> Onboarding new team members is a lot harder and they feel less part of the "team"
On the other hand, we onboarded someone who lives in Vermont (the rest of the team is in the same town on the west coast) and since we are all working remotely, other than changing his working hours to align with our own, you can’t tell the difference between him and us.
> For me the perfect balance is to be at the office once a week.
Out of necessity I've been WFH for the past 2 years. While overall I have enjoyed working from home, the issues you describe are real. Once it is no longer necessary for me to be WFH full time, I think one day a week in the office would be ideal.
I'd go further and say, make both optional. Come to the office space when you need it, stay at home when you don't. Once a week? Twice a week? Every day? Once a month or never? Doesn't matter.
Maybe some things would need to change in terms of what office space is leased, and the capacity, in order to manage the cost.
I think there's value in consistency in terms of setting expectations (both for my family and for my colleagues) the the flexibility to determine what that consistency looks like is key.
You need to get one of those screen protectors that prevents people from seeing your screen form different angles, and make sure you get that corner seat.
I liked how to worded "emotional separation"
The reduction in my stress has been amazing, especially considering we've been in the middle of covid. My moods are way better regulated now. I'm no longer trying to ignore my angry office mate who's muttering under his breath. I didn't realize how much upset people influence my own mood. I thought I was good at ignoring angry people, but the action of ignoring took up a lot more energy than I previously thought. My biggest worry about back-to-office is how I'm going to managed my increased stress levels.
Same, the whole elbow office politics is definitely much smoother. I had a few situations where a work colleague would try to convince me in joining his angry crusade when we had a call. But from home it's much easier to distance from that or just escape the call. No more people coming unannounced to me asking me for unreasonable work tasks. I will very likely switch if office presence becomes mandatory again.
I am the same way. I am very sensitive to the emotional states of the people around me. I think most people are. A stressful office environment was a pressure cooker where we stewed all day in each other's stress hormones. My stress was off the charts.
> - Control of equipment. Need a 4k monitor? Need a trackball? No approvals needed.
No approvals, but you have to pay for it.
Prior to COVID, I used vacation time every summer to work at an academic summer camp for three weeks. Most of the other staff members—largely college students—had to go through this dumb supply request system whenever they wanted materials for an activity. I just ordered whatever I wanted off Amazon, which was expensive, but I figured I was technically on a sort of weird vacation, so screw it.
My point being, you can make this trade-off in many workplaces. Working from home just normalizes it—and sometimes removes the choice.
In open office or hot desking environments, you really might not have the choice. My last office from 2015 on Market Street was all hot desk. You could not have any personal items left on the desk at the end of the day. The only way to get a standing desk was to get a doctor's recommendation and have an ergonomic consultant approve it. You could use whatever peripherals you could fit in a backpack.
I now have an electric standing desk with memory settings, a cushioned standing mat, a great office chair that fits my back perfectly, a kneeling chair, a yoga ball, a stool, plants, original artwork, fidget toys, cozy lamps, excercise equipment, ergonomic keyboard and mouse, a large external display, the best video conferencing headset I could find, laptop and monitor height adjustable stands and probably a few other things as well. I changed jobs recently and didn't have to do anything but swap out the laptop.
Jabra Evolve 40. I chose wired so I didn't have to deal with Bluetooth audio issues. I wanted something with a professional appearance and strong mic and headphone performance for voice frequencies, plus a mute button. Very happy with it.
I'll heartily agree with this recommendation, though I have the Jabra Evolve 75. As best as I can tell it's exactly the same as the 40 with the addition of Bluetooth. I happened to pick it up in February of 2020 and it's been fantastic for my hours of daily calls.
They don't put much pressure on the head, certainly not enough to describe it as crushing anything. A characteristic of this type of headset is light weight, so the clamp pressure does not need to be strong to keep them in place.
As a result they're significantly smaller than over-ear cans, and able to be stuffed in a laptop bag easily.
The style can become fatiguing with extended wear, that is probably their biggest flaw along with limitations on how much sound isolation they can achieve.
I'm not OP and it's not a headset, but I have to say—nothing beats the Blue Yeti for microphone audio quality, and there's a headphone jack on the bottom you can just use with any pair of headphones.
It's a bit of an investment, and very slightly cumbersome at times versus a wireless headset, but I think it's worthwhile in order to sound good.
(Well, okay, a truly professional microphones would presumably make you sound even better, but you're very much past the point of diminishing returns.)
Sidetone. The essential hardware feature that Blue Yeti and few others get right. I've had one on my wish list for a while.
On the main topic, as a boomer who suffered through office work for decades (the dictation system in my first job was a DictaBelt, and electronic forms were what the secretaries stored on their IBM Selectrics), going 100% remote 12 years ago was the greatest productivity boost I've experienced since my first work PC (which I built from parts sourced at Jameco Electronics... in 1988).
There is _no_ way I'll ever return to an office, with all the distractions (we used to call them "drive-bys") and already mentioned ergonomic barriers. My manager is a genx who is fully behind remote work, but there are lots of late boomer and genx execs who are really uncomfortable with it for a load if reasons -- including that it denies them opportunities to intimidate through physical presence (never a problem I experienced personally, mostly because those same sorts of managers tend to be intimidated by age, experience and credentials).
I find it ironic that so many execs who now lament the loss of "collaboration" weren't voicing those concerns a couple of decades ago during the massive push to outsource and offshore. I know from personal experience that collaborating remotely is not only possible, but often superior to in-office -- as I think dozens of my colleagues across a couple of oceans who I worked some pretty difficult technical issues with would attest.
I’d get something like the AT2005USB or similar instead.
Besides being half the price, it’s a dynamic mic instead of condenser.
True, a good condenser will sound marginally better, but it will also pick up a lot more background noise more readily. Better off to pick up cleaner audio to start with rather than try and filter it out after.
And to your point about diminishing returns, I think especially over the generally iffy quality conferencing software we’re all using something like a Blue Yeti is already well into the diminishing returns.
How does the yeti perform on echo cancelation and background noise isolation? In my experience, the Evolve 40 is good enough that I can turn off Zoom's software filters and get a further quality boost.
That is basically because it is near you and far from anything else. So it doesn't have to do anything to not pick up background noise. You can do that with any mic, headsets just have a bit of an advantage in having a fixed placement right near you however you move. I have a mic on a boom over the monitor so it ends up close to me and I wear headphones so that has much the same effect. But its all about placement.
In my home office, I've got pushup stands, a pull-up bar, suspension straps, an ab roller, yoga mat, resistance bands, and some dumbells that I use in those moments while something is compiling. No back pain for years and I'm in great shape.
If I did this in an office, I'd get endless remarks and cocked eyes, eventually being told by a superior that my "coworkers find that a little weird". (i.e. stop doing that)
I do this too! It's especially great when I'm starting to doze but don't want a full nap...I can hop up and do a set of whatever. After that, I'm good to go!
Same here, when the gyms closed I immediately bought the equipment I use and it made for a much better work experience and home experience as there is the extra time from not going to the office or the gym. It’s also more peaceful to exercise in quiet rather than get blasted by loud ads all the time.
This is a cultural thing that varies a bit. It wouldn't be unusual to spot workout equipment at or around an engineer's desk in sports and fitness tech.
I loved working from home because it allowed me more time with my dog. His need to be taken outside occasionally was a perfect reminder for me to take a break. Plus, the light snoring coming from under my desk was super comforting.
While I was more productive at home, I think that came at a cost to others that I work with. Every interruption that I avoided while WFH is a slowdown for somebody I work with.
I'm back in the office again but I'm hoping that I can one day arrange to work from home most days and only occasionally come into the office.
> Move to a new state without having to change jobs.
I see this point but it's often not a guarantee, particularly if you work at a small company. In the US if your employer is in State A and you want to move to State B, then your employer must become registered as a business in that state and abide by that state's labor laws. Many small businesses aren't capable of (or interested in) maintaining compliance with every state's laws.
I believe this will change in the future, but right now I wouldn't bet on it.
I actually went through really severe caffeine withdrawal last year, it turns out that the always-ready coffeepot at our coworking space was keeping me way, way more caffeinated that I could reasonably do at home
I also spent the year stressed out by the endless stream of Slack messages, eating poorly, forgetting to take breaks, and slumped on a couch rather that bothering to use my nice ergonomic chair, so, YMMV
> After years of optimization, I have a better quality of life than our CEO. I'd be insane to give it up.
Maybe you did run in to it but haven't mentioned, or maybe 5 years is not enough to see it -- have you noticed that a big part of the "remote culture" that few know how to build, is proper recognition of remote workers in the mixed- or dominantly-office- teams?
Those CEOs are perfectly aware that your life quality is higher than theirs on a much lower income, they know full well you are not going away anytime soon...
One thing people are going to have to learn is to not have mixed teams. I don't think you can avoid the problem you describe with mixed teams. Even if a minority on the team are office bound, if they are in the same office you will essentially end up with two teams. You also need to divide things by timezone if you are global, as otherwise cliques will emerge. At a remote first company, our product teams are timezone restricted remote, our follow-the-sun support is three sub-teams. The office bound teams, where people came from that sort of environment, are dissolving into remote work, more quickly thanks to a big push from the pandemic.
Yes, working from home can be very comfortable if you invest in comfort.
But for me, comfort isn't everything. I'd rather be a bit less comfortable if it means being able to feel part of something nice. I really like being among people, experiencing things together. For me, that feeling easily outweighs comfort.
Then again, my work is a 10m walk from my house, and I have quite a bit of influence on how our work environment is shaped - so that may be easy for me to say.
I've been doing WFH for the better part of ten years. So beat you. Lol.
But it is kind of vindicating seeing people everywhere start to have the same philosophy. It makes me hopeful that other good things may catch on in the future eventually.
The next stage is possibly moving somewhere with a lower cost of living. Been spending most time in Mexico for almost three years.
I've been WFH for 20 years (by the end of this year).
I've considered moving for a lower cost of living or living the "nomad" life, but I honestly prefer big crazy cities with tons of people and endless possibilities every day.
And so I've lived in big cities the whole time and have loved every minute of it. I pay more, and I charge more, and generally try to make sure my clients aren't local so they don't suddenly get the crazy idea that I should pop into the office. But, even when they are local, I keep office visits to a minimum (once per month or less).
It's been pretty great to see so many start to see the delights of working from home. It get that it's not for everyone. I'm positive it's for a lot of us.
I don't optimize for cost, I optimize for quality of life. I'm a semi-nomad and try to be in places that offer family, friends, walkability, and nature.
It is my equipment. I am not buying it for them, I am buying it for me. My health, my back health, my eye health, my wrist health, and my comfort are 100% worth the investment. I don't expect any company to take care of my health for me. I take care of it myself. Are you renting your company access to your car when you drive in? If so, I guarantee you spend more than I do.
In addition to all you said, you mentioned your car...do they also pay you for your commute time? Of course not.
Say you have a 1hr each way...2 hours/day, 5 days/week, 48 weeks/year, $100/hr: $100 * 2 * 5 * 48 = $48,000. WFH literally just saved you $48k of billable time.
Buying a 4k monitor (that you can also use for non-work activities) on your own dime is probably reasonable.
There are specific carve outs in employment law and car insurance for commutes. Try using your personal vehicle for work with out additional have an accident and your insurer will wash their hands of you.
Most people can do this in their office. Unless you’re hotswapping (uncommon in my experience) then you can just bring whatever equipment you want in. We had plenty of people do that at all the jobs I’ve worked at.
Some professionals, notably those whose work culture encourages self-determination, can be allowed to bring in their own hardware or request custom hardware. These are usually the outliers, rather than the norm (and in fact, this is often advertised as a "perk" of being employed at that particular place).
The vast majority of corporate environments are rather locked down and standardized, understandably, with one-size-fits-all or a set menu of tech provisions, depending on role (e.g., designers often get larger screens than accountants).
Even as a developer, I had to fight for larger screens for my team, as IT saw no inherent need for larger screens beyond what they initially provisioned.
Contrast that with my WFH setup, with my 3-monitor setup on a 7-foot standing desk...
Okay? But I’ve never been in an office or seen one where they banned bringing in your own equipment. Even in places that had the set menu for different roles. If you had some stuff you wanted to bring in, go for it.
I've worked in several in larger/Fortune 500 companies, including one where the desk setups were handled by a labor union, any changes required multiple approvals, and DIYing anything (using personal equipment or even adjusting the existing desk position or height) was a rules violation and prohibited. You wouldn't be able to get past security with personal equipment larger than what could fit in your pocket, and carrying so much as a monitor or laptop that didn't have a company barcode on it already would get you stopped.
So yeah, these sorts of workplaces exist and thousands of people have to contend with their on-site limitations.
Besides the sibling comment, here in Germany it is common to have electricity certifications on equiment done by external companies.
If managed to bring through securty some stuff that you plug into the office network, isn't certified and something goes wrong, short circuit or whatever, it is on you to deal with whatever might happen including dealing with the insurance company.
Even if allowed, if you want similar equipment at home and in the office you'd have to buy two of it all, or tear it down and take it home with you every night. If you just work from home you don't have that problem.
I’ve never run into this personally. And I’ve worked in some old ass enterprise type companies. Maybe for high security clearance places this is an issue or something...
I wouldn’t focus on niche places that do this though as an arguing point. It may as well be, “but some chipotle’s don’t offer guacamole. So, ya know, can’t rely on it.” Might be true but sounds rare.
I've worked at old-school telcos and startups alike.
It was acceptable to bring your own keyboard and mouse to two out of the five companies, other than that, no other hardware was allowed to be brought in. So you are stuck with the monitors provided, with the rest of the hardware that was provided, and while you could bring in limited ergonomic stuff, you were also limited to whatever office furniture was available.
I worked for a US health insurance company for a while, and they were almost this strict.
People got away with breaking some of the rules, but it was definitely a risk - it was theoretically grounds for dismissal to bring in your own hardware, IIRC, let alone to run unapproved software.
The concern in that case was a PHI (personal health information) breach, which could bring the wrath of the US judicial system down on the company.
So, not top-secret or anything like that, but still very conservative and with decent reasons to be so.
Huh - I worked in health with HIPPA data issues as well - never had this hardware specific issue. But, we were a group of software engineers who weren't idiots - so... we understood that bringing our own monitor or keyboard/mouse wasn't likely to do anything and not a real risk.
I have a keyboard that runs custom, open-source software.
It would be easy to figure that out about me, if you cared. Say if you found a list of employees and contractors.
A sufficiently-motivated attacker could backdoor my firmware with a timer-based exploit (e.g., start your keystroke payload after ten minutes without input events)
and I might well not notice if it was a deft-enough change.
It might not be worth the cost, given that I might well notice it and it might not pay off even if I didn't.
Still - the point is that keyboards are not innocuous, harmless devices that it's a no-brainer to allow.
I brought in my own mechanical keyboard to the office. It has clicky keys so it's not quiet. I haven't gotten any complaints yet, but that could change depending on who my next cubicle neighbor might be.
This is the social equivalent of the opt-out dark pattern. A lack of complaints should never be interpreted as approval. Generally people try to be agreeable and avoid conflict. You clearly know that people do not like your keyboard but you are putting the burden on them to ask you to stop. You have made a decision that internalizes the benefits but externalizes the costs.
Which also comes with all the hubbub which was already mentioned before. Freedom of choice comes with the burden of payment.
Here's an idea: instead of expecting the employer to provide more than a basic level of ergonomics and potentially having to go through all the bureaucratic and mental hoops, both on receiving and on returning, we just.. pay the employees more money so they can decide for themselves.
Why you're putting this in the frame of "employer is not your friend" is beyond me, no one was framing it that way to begin with. If anything, it is because we can't expect employers to deliver beyond a basic level and introducing all these rules to make it harder, that it makes more sense to bite the bullet up front and be in control.
I get the idea you are in the UK and I think that accounts for a significant difference. In the US, employers have very little legal or ethical obligation to their employees. Decades of pro-business lobbying have basically solidified our status as an exploitable resource that companies can use up and dispose of "at will". An employee lives and dies by their share of political capital. I could use my political capital to try to get home office equipment, but the $500 I might have been able to expense is really not worth it in comparison to other perks I might be able to "purchase" with my political capital instead. These asks need to be carefully considered. A team mate asked for an ergonomic chair and was denied. I have asked for far more valuable things and been allowed.
I save 160 Euros per month by not commuting. I invested 3 months of these savings in a height-adjustable desk and a 4K monitor. The 90 minutes time each day I keep for myself. I wouldn't call that a bad deal.
- Control of food. No more bagels or carb dumping ground. No more limited food options. My own kitchen.
- Control of equipment. Need a 4k monitor? Need a trackball? No approvals needed.
- Control of ergonomics. Get exactly the chair you need. Get an electric height adjustable desk without going through facilities.
- Control temperature. Never be too hot or cold.
- So many great options for breaks. Walk down the street. Meditate in the garden. Play Beatsaber. Take a nap, naps are magic.
- Control your lighting. Good color temperature and comfortable brightness make the space more relaxing and can aid sleep and wakefulness.
- The ultimate corner office. Privacy and separate space that you can personalize to your heart's content.
- Location flexibility. Work from a beach rental. Do a city-stay near a WeWork. Find a mountain cabin with high speed internet. Move to a new state without having to change jobs.
- Finances. Live in a low tax state. Have an older car. Spend less on clothes, lunches, parking, gas, tolls. Live in cheaper square footage without worrying about what it does to your commute.
- Stress. More emotional speration between you and your work. Relationships are through Zoom and require less emotional investment. Work forms less a part of your identity and changing it involves fewer changes to your daily routine.
- Caffeine. With more tools to manage your wakefulness, less need to lean on the crutch of caffeine. For me, less caffeine means less alcohol as well.
Other people are free to have their opinions that they don't like WFH or can't wait to get back into the office. For me, I really struggle to understand how you cannot love it. With total control of my environment, I can easily correct for minor downsides such as needing to maintain work-life balance and good social connections. After years of optimization, I have a better quality of life than our CEO. I'd be insane to give it up.