Your setup reminds me of an article I read many years ago on these sorts of "tricks" to stay disciplined when working from home. One of the tips an individual used was to
1. Walk out his front door
2. Lock it
3. Walk around the block
4. Re-enter the house
Seemed quite brilliant to me at the time.
edit: Just noticed that enraged_camel engages this exact technique below.
It forced me to get up, shower, put clothes on, see some kind of sunlight, even have a tiny bit of face to face interaction with another human at the convenience store/cafe/sidewalk, and then get home, log in, and probably just procrastinate for an hour or so anyway - but at least I was clean and dressed.
Your parent is referring to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14265636
[1] http://www.ird.govt.nz/business-income-tax/expenses/homebus-...
Too bad these in-law houses (or nanny houses) are so rare in the Bay Area. Where I used to live in Florida they were all over the place.
I can't imagine making a setup like this work for even maintaining basic sanity. Every time I read a post like this, I realize I did the right thing by not having kids. I'm constantly stressed out as it is because of the open-plan office; if I had to come home to people "carrying on loudly and ransacking the house at all hours", I think I'd shoot myself. How people can live without a good amount of peace and quiet, I have no idea.
At home is the only place I get a little peace and quiet, aside from my cats jumping in my lap. Kids would eliminate that.
Where I'm working at the moment, apart from the noise and distraction of an overcrowded open plan office, there are people in my face literally all the time due to meetings, questions, pairing, dealing with outages, and other miscellaneous interruptions. As an introvert this all becomes seriously draining so home is very much my escape.
I don't think I'm alone in this either - plenty of introverts in software, and I certainly didn't choose software as a career so I could sit around yakking to people all day. Quite the opposite in fact. (I may have made this observation in a comment on HN before, so apologies to anyone who may already have read it.)
The real downside of all this is that I often don't want to socialise with my friends or talk to my family outside of work because I'm basically peopled out and need some peace and quiet.
Add to this the fact that the work is boring and the commute is a gruelling 2.5 hour motorcycle roundtrip (>4 hours by car, due to traffic, or about 5 hours by public transport) and it's probably high time for me to find other work.
I am a pretty outgoing and easy-to-make-friends-with person but I still hate working in offices and 6 or so years ago I fought tooth and nail to achieve it. I succeeded, at the cost of a relationship, very old animal friends, most of my "circle" and quite a bit of few other sacrifices.
My point here is that there are other things to have in mind when choosing between on-site and remote: I personally hate commuting. Even if it's 20 minutes from my door to the office, I still hate them. That's a time nobody pays me for, and a time during which I can't be with my loved one.
Add to this that we all know that no work day is like any other; there are days when you're worth $1 and there are days when you're worth $20,000.
Outgoing, extroverted, expressive, call it what you want -- but I want to work on my own terms. And I am times more productive ever since I work remote. (And yes I am in a very happy relationship.)
Even if you made less, not having to commute would make you feel better.
Sometimes you just need to put some distance between where you sleep and where you work.
> When your game sells and makes some money, treat it in terms of how many years you’ve got until you’d have to get a ‘proper job’
> I’d released three games before I went ‘full time’, and my 4th was just about ready to launch. The first games were made in my spare time while my Real Job paid for my food and rent, because honestly fuck starving yourself, fuck living on beans and worrying about rent. Go Full Indie when you can afford to Go Full Indie, and not before
If you're just starting out, making your first game in this case, it makes no sense to spend a ton on office space, designers, etc. You have no income yet... one step at a time sort-of-thing.
Too many people fall in love with the idea of running a business, but don't actually know what that really means. They run around organizing things, setting up office space, getting logo's designed by fancy marketing companies, hold meetings, etc... they do everything except figure out how to make money. They love the idea of being a business, but not the actual work that comes with that territory.
I just heard an extremely similar message from Steve Martin in his Masterclass video series: "I was talking to some students and they were saying things like, 'how do I get an agent?', 'where do I get my headshots?' and I just thought... shouldn't the first thing you're thinking about be how do I be good?"
We should call them "cargo cult businessmen".
I live about 22K out of town, in the green wedge with lots of trees. I like how I am still physically connected each day to the vibrant Melbourne tech community, but can come home to the family and be in a more open, natural space. I am so much more productive when I am in the office and it works well, when meeting clients, to have an address in town.
Best tax-deductible money I have ever spent.
https://www.wework.com/buildings/w-43rd-st--new-york-city--N...
I see that issue with cafés, but I never had such an issue with libraries. At least the libraries I know are very quiet and their staff takes great care to keep it quiet.
My problem with the library was that on some days, I needed to phone quite often, or was called quite often. Each time I had to leave the library temporarily, and this in-and-out was very annoying for me.
> rent a tiny artist studio for $350/mo
Wow, that's still quite a lot. Did you try co-working spaces? Roughly speaking, there you pay for a desk in a room, not for a whole appartment.
That doesn't include a desk that's yours, just that you can come in every day and use the space.
Your own desk starts at the price point for his office.
If your goal is peace and quiet, I would argue his studio is money well spent.
Source: https://members.co-up.de/
Or you could invest in some sound insulation and a good lock.
I even made a video about it: https://youtu.be/912WN4gUBCs
Edit: I'm not affiliated with WeWork (aside from being a customer). I just like their business.
It's probably totally fine for certain types of work, but for me it wasn't a good place when you had to really focus on solving problems and writing code. Way too many distractions.
It also explains the cons about these brand new "wide noise open offices" that companies are building today.
I've been a solo dev for nearly a decade (8 years) and I found that sometimes it makes complete sense to pay for an office. Before my daughter was born, I was able to work from almost anywhere: noisy cafes, at home, the library, etc. But after she was born it was like my brain needed a space away from home where I could close a door and have a room all to myself, a place where I couldn't hear family sounds or be within walking distance of anyone I knew. I tried cafes and libraries but, oddly, they no longer worked for me—the noise and the people walking by suddenly became a huge distraction. I couldn't focus. I decided to rent a tiny artist studio for $350/mo that I found on CraigsList and it was the best $350 that I spent each month in terms of direct impact on my ability to get work done.