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Discussion on: Let's talk about remote work.

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Nick Karnik • Edited

I work from home. The level of flexibility I have is a privilege and it is a win-win situation for me, my family as well as the company. I'm very particular about efficiency and getting in the zone.

I have a home office that I can lock myself in if I need to, but most days I work from wherever and whenever I feel like. This varies based on what I need to get done at work, if I need to watch the kids, or if we're planning on traveling.

  • Some days I work in bed while my toddler is playing near me, or watching her show, or sleeping.
  • Sometimes I hang out with the family and continue working on the kitchen counter or dining table
  • At times, I will head to the local library
  • When I get bored working at home, I go to a coffee shop
  • If it's sunny and I need to watch the kids, I will sit in the yard or the sunroom
  • Sometimes I work on the road while my wife drives us. Today, we drove a couple of hours to see my mother-in-law in Anacortes and I'm working in a room right by the ocean. Although it's sunny, it is freezing!

Now, this is not my ideal work environment because I am all about locking myself up in a room with complete silence and getting in the zone and being productive. However, I have a family with three kids and there's always something going on! So, I do what I can and where I can throughout the day and get most of my productive work done late at night. I've done this for four months now and it took a couple of months to get adjusted to it. Prior to that, we were traveling for a year through Asia and Europe.

The most productive setting is late at night in the home office because I love silence (maybe that's all you crave for when you have kids)! The only other time I've been super productive was in a closed office while @ Microsoft.

I'm thinking about getting my home office soundproofed because it gets very noisy. My kids have barely seen me leave home for work over the years, so they could never understand why I had to occasionally go to work (when I worked at other companies that weren't 100% remote). This is like one of those things where they've never seen a physical phone, voicemail on a landline, ethernet cables, cable tv, etc.

Anyway, I've had to let go of two of our engineers because they took advantage of the situation by not delivering on time or writing quality software, all while making good money and traveling the world. IMO, it takes a very responsible and trustable person to live that sort of a life and get things done. I'm still hopeful that somewhere out there exists a couple of really solid, dedicated, trustworthy full-stack engineers that I have yet to meet! :)