The last time I was on-site at a customer was March 10, 2020. I usually spend about 20-40% of my time working from home. But working exclusively from home is something completely different. A new experience. After a year it’s time for a brief personal retrospection.
The Good
More at Home
Pretty obvious. I know. Anyhow, I’m spending more time with my wife. She also works from home, at least most of the time. It’s good to see that we get along well and spending more time together doesn’t become a problem. And I don’t miss dinners with her because I want to finish some task at work or avoid traffic jams or both.
The Children Are Grown Up
Our boys are 29 and 27 years old. Both are healthy. Our older son changed his career path and is working part-time while studying computer science. Overall he is doing quite well. It’s not that easy for our younger son who is a producer, musician and DJ. Berlin was a perfect place for his career. However, the party scene is pretty dead at the moment. However, we as parents are happy to help where we can. When I hear about the problems other parents have with their younger children, pupering teenagers and the school, then I’d say we can be really happy. Proud parents, for sure.
Better Mood
I spend much more time with our dog. I believe that my mood is generally better when he’s around. When I grab a fresh cup of coffee he demands his strokes or he can persuade me to play with him. Anyway, he always makes me smile.
Upgraded Workplace
I improved my workplace at home. Here’s a list of some gadgets I ordered during this time:
- Bose QuietComfort 35 II, wireless headphones with microphone
- Samsung SyncMaster C43J890DKU, A 32:10 ultra-wide curved 43.4″ monitor
- Logitech MX Keys Plus, wireless keyboard with palm rest
- Logitech MX Master 3, wireless mouse
- Logitech Brio Stream, ultra HD webcam
- RØDE NT-USB, microphone
- RØDE PSA1, studio boom arm for the RØDE microphone
Due to supply bottlenecks, I’m still waiting for some of these gadgets to be delivered. However, my workplace at home is now better than everything I ever had at a customer site or at one of my employer’s workplaces.
Ready for Virtual Meetings
During working hours, I am always ready to have a video call. Microsoft Teams is open all the time. Establishing a call and sharing the screen has never been easier. In the past, I’ve joined the meeting a few minutes early because more often than not, I’ve run into a problem. Video, audio, or both. Maybe because I rarely used these tools and only launched them when needed. As a result, I was either early or late (restarts always take longer than you expect). These days I dial in on time, and technical problems are the exception. It’s almost as stable and easy as making a phone call. I also like that almost everyone has their webcam enabled. It makes the conversations more personal and makes communication better.
Better Virtual Meetings
In my experience, the fewer people participating in a video call, the better the call. For reviews or pair programming, I find video calls even more efficient than physical meetings. Giving access to input devices happens in a much more controlled way. Grabbing the mouse or the keyboard does not work. You have to ask and wait for the other person to accept your request. I also find some Scrum rituals better in the virtual form. Tools such as Miro help to improve collaboration in a way that I never experienced in a physical meeting. Working in parallel on a board works surprisingly well. I experienced that we are much faster and all team members are aware of what others have written. A lot happens in parallel. Sorting and grouping while adding sticky notes. Better results in less time.
I participated in various mixtures of physical and virtual meetings. Typically most of the people met physically in a specially equipped room where a few others joined virtually. I call the persons in the same room first class participants. The others are second-class participants. Why? They are not equally present at the meeting and they miss a lot of non-verbal communication. If audio and video are badly configured some persons cannot be heard and sometimes you never get a video stream of the talking person. A pure virtual meeting makes us all second-class participants. All participants are equal from a technical point of view. For the former first class participants the meeting experience degraded. For all others, it improved, a lot.
New Skill
I never felt comfortable with webinars. When I present, I need to feel the audience to get immediate feedback. The audience helped me to adapt during the talk. Go faster, go slower or ask questions. This does not work in webinars. In the last year, I had the chance to present at various virtual events. I think I’m getting better. For one event I pre-recorded two talks which was very instructive. I completely underestimated the time required for such a task. For one talk I spent more than 12 hours recording 45 minutes. At that point, I just decided that the result was good enough. However, I developed a new skill. And that’s good.
So if you would ask me to do a webinar now, I might say yes.
The Bad
Lack of Informal Information Exchange
When I work at the customer site there are a lot of unplanned interactions. At my desk. Near my desk. At the coffee corner. After a meeting. During lunch. These are informal meetings or events. Where we exchange business or non-business-related information. They happen more or less unplanned. When everyone is working from home this kind of information exchange does not happen. Virtual coffee or lunch meetings are no suitable replacements. Why? Because when we meet physically we discuss things in groups. Persons interested join. Persons uninterested leave and join another group. So there are several bubbles. And certain information is exchanged between two persons only. A virtual coffee meeting using Zoom, Teams or similar cannot work this way. In the end, it is unsatisfying for everyone. As a result, I stopped joining these meetings.
After a year I think I feel the missing information. Scheduling virtual meetings does not help, because you cannot connect to the persons while they are in the “right” mood. And there is no way to check without starting a conversation.
This is bothering me because I have not found a good alternative yet.
Less Social Interactions
That, too, is somehow obvious. A consequence of isolation. Some people need more social interactions than others. I’m one of those who can live with fewer social contacts. However, almost none is too few even for me. I’m very lucky that I don’t live alone. So I am complaining on a very high level.
Blurred Boundaries Between Business and Private Life
Everything is accessible via my MacBook. Some things even via my iPhone. So it’s easy to switch between business and personal work. This is nothing new, but since I work 100% from home, I’ve had to introduce some additional rules to make sure business doesn’t creep into my personal life and vice versa. I’m not super successful in this area. It’s a risk. Constant monitoring and control is necessary. In my view, the recipe for success is not to be controlled by others.
No Physical Meetings
The more sensitive a topic, the more important a physical meeting is. Why? Because we communicate on different levels. The spoken words. The tone of the voice. Other sounds or even smells. And last but not least the body language. In my opinion, body language accounts for more than 50%.
I believe that I can feel the mood of the persons in a room to a certain extent. Without special effort. I get these impressions intuitively. It’s just there. However, in a virtual room, I do not trust my impression and often I do not get a good one, even if all persons have enabled their video feed. Maybe it’s just a matter of practice. Nevertheless, the face is what we see in a video stream and never the whole body. I think I miss legs, feet, arms and hands. Maybe also some sound. I don’t know. Furthermore, in some situations, people hide their video stream. For a short moment or even a longer period. This is not possible in a physical meeting.
Technology might help in the future, but right now we have to live with the capabilities of the current technologies.
No Physical Conferences
I mentioned earlier that I like to give a talk in front of a real audience. A virtual setup is better than nothing, but not more. At a conference, there are a variety of opportunities to connect with people you know and people you don’t know. It’s natural. It’s the way we are used to interact. It is often the basis for future (virtual) collaboration.
However, I think there will be room for virtual or hybrid conferences in the future. As a result, there will be fewer physical conferences. The remaining physical conferences must offer clear added value beyond that of their virtual counterparts.
Vacation at Home
Every year since I started to work we take three consecutive weeks for vacation. We spend the time out of home. For me it doesn’t matter where. The most important thing is a change of scene. Apart from that, nowadays I’m happy with a comfortable armchair where I can read some books. This year we had to spend the vacation at home. I was only partially successful in breaking the routine. As a result, the vacation was not as refreshing as in previous years. We have planned this year to spend three weeks in a very nice house at the Baltic Sea. However, I suspect that we will have to spend this vacation at home again. This gives me a chance to improve.
No Commute
When working at a customer site I spend typically two hours commuting. At first, I thought that working from home with a commute from the kitchen to my study would be a good thing. It surely is from an environmental perspective. And I clearly do not miss the traffic jam. However, sitting with the hot coffee at my desk feels like a cold start. I’m not ready for work yet.
Driving from home to the office was like a “fade in”. While listening to my favourite radio station with news, music and jokes I thought about what work I had to do at the office. When I arrived I was ready for work. I knew exactly what I wanted to start with.
It was similar on the way home. Like a “fade out”. I left the office after finishing some unit of work. In my car, I listened to music while driving and enjoying being alone. When I arrived at home I was really there and was interested to hear about my wife’s day. Nowadays it’s more like an interruption of work. Not a real closure. It’s like my mind and my body is not in the same place. And guess who is figuring that out every single day?
It sounds strange, but I miss commuting.
4 Kilograms
That’s the weight I gained during this time. The temptations at home are simply too strong. I guess I need to start working on my self-control.
Conclusion
When I look at the list, I feel pretty privileged. I still have a job. I like my work. My family is healthy so far. I have no real reason to complain.