Working remotely from the office

My thoughts on remote work, office and how important it was to me to be connected with other engineers

I’ve been working remotely since the pandemic. Actually, that was a few months before the first lockdown, when I started collaborating with a different team, in the same company, but from a different city. I was the only person from the team in Joinville, so it made sense to stay at home.

Before deciding not to go to the office anymore, late in 2019, I had questions on how productive I could be not working from an office. But after March 2020, there was no going back, especially after I started working with US-based companies. So basically, I had to learn how to handle distractions, procrastination and other variables you have when you’re at work and at home at the same time. That’s the Schrödinger Software Engineer cat: you’re both at home and at work, until you close the laptop.

My first impressions on working remotely? The best possible: no traffic, more hours of sleep, more flexibility to handle personal things. I’m not an introvert, so being surrounded by lots of people was never a concern, but I must admit that spending more time with people I love and not having to meet inconvenient people for hours is a benefit that only remote work could provide.

But throughout these years, two things made me reconsider working from home all the time: not having contact with people who work in the same industry and the birth of the cutest thing in this world, a lil girl called Antonella¹.

Even though I work with other software engineers on a daily basis, the working environment is not always the best place to spend time talking about things that are not related to your daily work. And that makes sense. There are deadlines, production incidents, problems to solve, meetings to attend, pressure to ship things… Well, it’s hard to schedule a meeting in the middle of all that just hangout and talk about relevant things in tech, but that are not relevant to the most urgent need. And setting up another Zoom call for that? Nah, thanks.

So that was the first thing I missed: talking about all-things-software, but not in the middle of the rush of every day life of work. Talking to fellow engineers, hearing about their experiences, having the chance to ask questions about how they solve problem A or B in their companies, that was the kind of conversation that I was missing. And regarding the other factor that made me look for an office (to be honest, that was my wife’s idea): having a baby at home makes it harder to focus, and even more when I could hear her crying. Get yourself the best ANC headphones in the market, you will eventually hear it and you can’t pretend you did not.

What did I do then? I contacted a friend who had invited me in the past to share an office. By that time I was doing just fine, as my house used to be a quiet place. But when things changed I was glad that the spot was still available.

And what is the real benefit? A place entirely dedicated to work: My brain knows exactly the difference between work and home. I don’t have the feeling of finishing work and still being at work.

More than that, now I have a routine outside of my house. It feels good having somewhere to go. And who do I meet at the office? Friends who also work with software, but that do not work with me. What does that mean? Nobody is going to knock on my shoulder to ask me a burning question. Each one of us has its own schedule, working for different companies. You can go in, out, arrive, leave at your own convenience. No one’s tracking time, watching your behavior or any other corporate bullshit. Every conversation is spontaneous, not forced by some critical circumstance. It’s like an office, but not an office. At the end of the day it has the best benefits from each side:

• Working remotely with flexibility and being able to plan your day.
• Meeting friends and discussing life and tech.
• Having your own schedule.
• A quiet place to work.

There are more benefits than these four I just mentioned, but key point is having a dedicated place to work outside of your own desk at home. And more importantly: working with other engineers, but with enough time to discuss everything we want, or nothing at all. At the end of the day, not all offices are bad. Maybe I’ve found the hybrid model that works for me.

¹ I took so long to write this post that my new kid was born. Time to stay at home, support the family and eventually go back to the office.