Since working from home, we’ve had many more meetings than we used to, which is a drain, mentally. Still, I am almost as productive as I was before, but no thanks to the environment at home.
That's counter to our team, where we basically have the "policy" of less disruptions is better. Any discussion item is pushed into an e-mail or chat unless absolutely necessary. If there are items that are deemed to need a voice meeting that are remotely similar then we'll move them up or push them back to combine them to reduce the need to be on a call. 99% of our communication is done via e-mail or a group chat room, and the expectation is that an e-mail can go without a response for 24 hours, and a chat room message can go without a response for at least 1 hour. Anything urgent goes through a direct message, and the expectation is that you check the receivers status to make sure they're aren't in a "do-not-disturb" status before hand. Only time that is ignored is if something mission critical is occurring, like a systems outage. When you can limit 99% of your distractions to something you can check real quick once every hour or so, your productivity goes way up.
I can also say from experience that having your own space, and good equipment, is severely overlooked by people. I used to work entirely in my office, but we rescued a Belgian Malinois a few months before the lockdowns started so I had been working from a chair in my living room since the office is where our cats hang out for most of the day, and I wanted to give them time to adjust to the puppy as well. Even outside of the new puppy distraction, it's really easy to just sink into your "comfort" area and get distracted or stop working. Once she was housebroken, I started working out of our dining room instead so I could keep an eye on her but still not invade the office until she was better trained, and I noticed a significant productivity boost. GCP Grey has a great video on this ("Lockdown Productivity: Spaceship You"), and the idea is that even though the dining room isn't a dedicated office, it's still a place that you don't subconsciously associate with relaxing, so you still treat it like an office.
I don't have kids or a work from home spouse, so I don't have any advice there.
That's why people commonly bring their personal headphones, keyboard and mouse. And sometimes their own larger screen even.
I don't doubt that there are some shitty companies out there that can't get an office chair and a display from this decade, but it's far from the norm.
In the engineering department those who don't do 3d CAD get a single 20" screen, and a laptop with 8Gb RAM. Those who use CAD get a single 24" screen and bigger laptop with a 3d card. Everyone gets the $5 keyboard and mouse that comes with the corporate HP laptops. Basically all offices (except for managers) are the noisy open-office type.
I've been to quite a few suppliers, all industrial/engineering companies of different sizes, and it's a pretty standard setup. It's not some shitty companies, it's just that all companies (at least not specialized in software) just take the basic material that they rent from their corporate suppliers. You can't show a positive ROI/business case for buying a $50 Logitech mouse to 50k office employees, so they all get the free included HP mouse. Same for the rest.
I'm not even getting into the locked-down version of Windows that everyone gets to use. Even launching portable executables is technically against the rules, not that it stops anyone. Until a few years ago most websites were blocked, so it's getting better at least.
In general I think it's pretty ok, it's not really a big issue. That's how the industry is. But very few companies give a very good environment and good computer devices to their knowledge workers. You just need to adapt. Bringing your own devices help. You can choose not to, many do, and accept to spend 8 hours/day using what they give you.
8 years ago I had to move from an area I liked to get a better job. It will be interesting to see what happens with the rise of more remote hiring.
I've heard stories about "water clubs" and "coffee clubs" because some companies are so cheap they don't even pay for bottled water machines - so the employees group together and pay for it themselves. Like WTF?! And a couple of these stories came from programmers too.
As far as I know, we get paid better, have free basics like that (there was free lunch before covid), and whenever we carry our equipment to test sites, it's usually several generations newer and better than anything else I see at those sites. It's kinda funny lol.
It's a bit of a golden handcuffs thing I suppose. The problem is even if they pay better than anyone else in the space industry, I could probably double my compensation by getting a job at google. Of course, landing an interview at google in itself seems nearly impossible.
Sometimes I wonder if having a space company on your resume is a bad mark for hiring managers at companies like google. It kinda feels that way. Like as if only the riff raff work at space companies. But there are a lot of us who just wanted to work on cool stuff lol.
So changing that means doing something else than my studies and experience. And I like working on aircraft.
I don't really have complains about salaries though. I find it's pretty normal compared to other industries. It's pale in comparison to the US, but that's a matter of continent, not sector.
The office was somewhat compartmentalized with biometrics between some rooms, classic in aerospace/defense work. IMO we were at zero risk of having an open office plan or noisy neighbors because of the domain.
The higher manager believed in giving double displays to those who did EE (layout and routing). Eventually every engineers was officially doing that to qualify for the double displays.
We were buying a fair amount of parts/electronics/hardware as part of the activity, some of it rather expensive. It wasn't too difficult to slip displays into the larger orders and get them approved. I recall every test bench I made came de facto with a PC and dual IPS display in the bill of materials lol
That includes multiple floors full of developers. On our floor the entire department had quadruple monitors (24" IPS Dell UltraSharp monitors if you're interested). Allegedly we're privileged because the norm is only 3 monitors for developers, the story goes that when the department was opened almost 20 years ago the head decided that developers would get proper equipment or the department wouldn't be opened.
Back to Dell, many companies are simply procuring equipment from Dell. The most classic display they sell is the Dell UltraSharp 24" IPS display, which is really good and really affordable.
London is the biggest tech hub in Europe with the most tech companies, quite of few of which are very serious about equipment because tech culture. I've not seen a company that didn't have dual displays since I moved here. I can't imagine a company that can't buy a display if you tell them what do buy. I don't want to jump into "just leave your company" because it's a bad HN trope, especially in COVID times, but come on, if your company can't procure a display/chair you can find a better company.
I've never worked for a place that prevented me from bringing my own chair, ottoman, keyboard and mouse. Usually I was the only person on the floor to do so, though.
Open office are an unfortunate reality, space is expensive.
But of course there's more space in the countryside!
Having a fast NVMe disk, 16/32 GB of ram and a current generation (or previous generation) CPU should be the standard for a developer.
Apart from that there is the crappy office keyboard, mouse and all too small mousepad. Fortunately those things can be replaced without much issue.
Making a computer faster for a worker who isn’t on the critical path and who is almost never waiting on their computer doesn’t make sense. Most of accounting falls into one or both of those tests, so they could rightly decide to optimize for cost. They can then wrongly conclude that they’ve already solved that question universally and apply that solution to devs.
Even a lot of IT employees don’t care or don’t know. Some want to just order something that users won’t revolt over and make the deployment and warranty support a first consideration.
All my life I've always just bought the stuff I need and took it to work.
No matter where I've worked it was 1/100th the hassle to do that rather than figure out how to go through channels.
I've also tried stuff and ditched it a few weeks later and tried something else.
this applies to lots of things at work -- who cares if the office pens are free - they suck.
If you want to employ me, please provide me with the tools to do the job properly. An ergonomic keyboard, mouse, chair and desk are a given. A nice display is a bonus.
Especially when it comes to ergonomics I don’t understand employers, an engineer going on leave for a week because of RSI / back pains, is way more expensive.
Aren't most construction workers expected to provide their own basic tools? The contractor usually provides specialty tools and power tools, but when I did demolition, I certainly brought my own hammer.
IT is different though, because the tools are the repository for the delivery also.
I'm also in the camp of preferring to work from home with my triple high-res monitor setup, good chair, height adjustable table, ergonomic keyboard/mouse, and so on.
I dread the day I'll have to go back to the office.
Now that you say this, I wonder what the threshold is for size/revenue of a company that does prioritize computing equipment and accessories. Every public company I have worked for have cared about ergonomics. Below $50M in revenue/100 employees I’ve found it difficult to request certain equipment (sit-stand desk for example)
I would much more prefer a big screen (30 inch?) instead of two 24 inch. But unfortunately my Corp doesn't have such options. I would much more prefer
On the flip side, it is nice to have one screen with video conferencing set up to be as near the camera as possible. But I actually tend to do notes and so forth on a laptop while I'm conferencing because my mechanical keyboard on my desktop is very loud.
Unless you have a real vote in the decision, then the the best move, is to accept either result. Otherwise you saddle yourself with the mental and emotional baggage and clutter.
I suppose this is easier said than done, but worth the effort in converting the dread to acceptance.
This is just some random opinion on the internet of course.
While figuring out the latter would take some first-hand experience of reading the accounts of others, the former is easier to filter companies by, for example:
- https://github.com/yanirs/established-remote
- https://weworkremotely.com/top-remote-companies
- https://remotemasters.dev/fully-remote-companies
- https://remotemasters.dev/remote-first-companies
Of course, those are just the links that a quick Google search turned over, some job ad sites also have filters for remote/on-site positions etc.
There is no reason to settle for something you deem to be sub par, unless you feel more comfortable that way (since people have valid complaints about the hiring practices in ICT nowadays), which is also okay.
One company, several employers back, I brought my own equipment in and nobody said anything. I had my own desktop PC, monitors, mouse, keyboard, and chair in the office and other than the unplugged PC asset tag assigned to me sitting in the corner, I returned everything else to the supply closet. I eventually (after 3 years of using my own) was forced to use company issued equipment. Here was the contrast, the box I brought in to use was a quad-core proc with hyperthreading and had 32GB of RAM, and four SSDs in RAID10 w/ a decentish GPU driving 4 24" 1920x1200 IPS displays. The box I was assigned (3 years later) was a dual-core proc w/ HT, 8GB of RAM, and a 500GB 5200rpm HDD, with onboard video that only supported two displays. The two displays provided were 19" TN panels.
I invest in quality equipment at home, but many, if not most, employers do not. They may think they do, but they don't. It's 2020, I consider 64GB of RAM in a engineer's system a good target, 32GB a minimum. Most developer systems I see are lucky to have 16GB of RAM these days (often the maximum offered in laptops issued). Meanwhile, at home I have a max spec desktop PC less than 3 years old, multiple 4K displays, Herman Miller chair, an electric drive sit/stand desk, split ergonomic mechanical keyboard, an ergonomic mouse, a mini-split AC/heater in a separate room in a house with a door I can close, and in my closet a small rack of servers I can use w/ distcc to accelerate builds.
The great irony is that box I used at the office many years ago (8 or 9 years old), is still superior to what's issued as normal engineer equipment at most companies in the US, and I've since moved on to better systems at home, again. The poster you're replying to is largely correct. I love working from home partly because of no commute, but also because I can equip myself to my standards, which are much higher than the standards of a corporate IT department with accounting looking over their shoulder.
I'm genuinely curious how common that is these days. I certainly work on personal computers and a lot of people I know seem to do so as well.
Yes, I'm sure most startups are lax, but big corporations are not, and there's way more engineers in total working at big corps than at startups. When I said "companies" I didn't have startups in mind.
Software is another big thing overlooked by a lot of companies, in my experience. I've bought a Jetbrains account to use for my development because the effective $12.50/month I spend on it is nothing in comparison to the productivity benefit I get from it.
(I have a couple of colleagues who brought their own keyboards. We'd buy a decent keyboard for anyone who wants one, but they already had them from previous jobs with people who wouldn't do this.)
I, for example, absolutely hate mechanical keyboards with those tall keys, as I get hand/wrist/elbow pain from using them. And the mouse has to be as weightless as possible.
Considering companies usually have to decide on only 1 or 2 options to negotiate buying in bulk, it's hard to offer multiple options. Unless they give you like $100 when you start to buy whatever you want.
> - An ergonomic mouse, vs. a tiny mouse that doesn't even have a back button.
This might be surprising, but you can bring your own keyboard and mouse to the office. Perhaps even get your employer to pay for them.
I've done this with every office I ever worked at. Dear employer I love you but my hands are my bread-and-butter and they trump your office standards. My hands, my peripherals. You're welcome to pitch in. If you have a problem with me using custom gear, bye.
I know this because one of my coworkers went from a shitty pc104 keyboard to a dedicated keyboard tray an expensive kinesis keyboard and a trackball mouse.
I suspect there must have been RSI problems they had to pay out on.
Snacks, fruits, beverages, espresso machine at work vs buy and prepare what I want at home (which has a cost, and demands time)
Ironically also, office was quieter. I can always hear (and feel) the upstairs neighbour walking around, even with noise cancelling headphones. The little noise at the office was way easier to ignore.
And using the bathroom at home, means I have to clean the bathroom more often.
Nice if you have a detached house in a quiet neighbourhood. Try an apartment in a busy area, you'll be wearing noise cancelling headphones too!
- At home I have the most comfortable chair I could find on the market that fits me perfectly. At work there are very basic adjustable chairs and they use some slippery fabric.
- At home I have an ergonomic mechanical keyboard vs. a cheap rubber dome keyboard that kept running out of batteries at work.
- An ergonomic mouse, vs. a tiny mouse that doesn't even have a back button.
- Two 27" 4k monitors, vs. a single 24" monitor.
- Always a nice room temperature, vs. often being too hot or too cold.
- Bathroom always available, vs. sometimes having to wait to use the bathroom.
- No interruptions, vs. occasional interruptions.
- Working in silence, vs. having to use noise cancelling headphone and listening to music when I don't want to.
To me the only drawbacks are that Zoom meetings are worse than in-person and not being able to have hallway discussions, but the many gains in quality of life easily make up for that. But the situation could easily reverse for someone who only has a tiny laptop and no room for a home office.