>Hi,
>
>After almost 30 years of leasing offices (probably moved 5 times) and working mostly from the office (except evenings and weekends), I just submitted a letter to my landlord that I will be moving out. Several things concern me (worries a great deal):
I'm working from home since 2002. No big deal. The actual office is the space between your eyes, monitors and keyboard. Get a good ergonomic chair. Adjust the light to suit your needs. Play the music at the level that's comfortable to you, and have a keyboard with that start/stop button.
>1. customers find out and start jumping the ship (to competitors)
N/A to me, I'm not a lone wolf. Always in a team, and isolated from customers most of the time. Now physically isolated last six years - none of them are in my country. So others may reply to this.
>2. productivity at home. so many distractions: tv,fridge, wife, pianos, guitars, street.
Productivity at office - not necessarily so much better than at home. Always someone coming to ask a technical question, have you seen Harry this morning, can you check this printer, hey what happened to that server I can't access it this morning - oh, we migrated it (so I lost ten minutes already checking on my own, ten more minutes getting to the network guy, ten more to visit all the places where the server name was mentioned, twenty more until it finally works). Checking on some tech question with the boss but let's not start now, we have a meeting in ten minutes (which doesn't start on time) etc etc. Plus smoke breaks which break my concentration, I have to take the time to put it in writing (paper or the.log file) before I go, then read that and on return try to remember what I wanted to do.
I'm not saying that work at home doesn't have its own distractions, but hey it saves time on commute (to lunch and back as well - for me it's two meters), and sometimes if I'm facing an interesting problem I can just return to it in the evening, perhaps just take a look and make notes for the morning - without going anywhere or going through any protocol to connect to my work. It's always at hand.
And when it just won't go, when you need to sit and think first before coding, you don't have to pretend to be working, draw diagrams or whatever - you can actually take a nap (now extended from 10 to 15 minutes, have to admit the age is somewhat catching up with me). And then when you know what you're doing, you don't care if it's 16:30 already and too late to start anything now - you can go on for an extra hour or two, just to put things together that you wouldn't so easily remember in the morning.
>4. All the while I was hoping to find someone to continue this "project" after I retire (the plan is in 4 years). But now with no office, this plan is not practical.
Why? Anyone can create space between their eyes, monitors and keyboard. And with guys working from home, you aren't limited to only those close enough to your office - they can be anywhere. The only two reasons I never worked from the beach were the sand (if it was a pebble or rock beach, I'd reconsider) and that my laptop at the time had one of these fancy glare screens. Looks nicer but it seems that I always sit so that I see myself instead of code.
