Is Working From Home REALLY Better Than The Office?

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Hey folks, I'm just driving to the office here. We're going to the comments on YouTube. This is from Epic Technav. I just have to take a moment here to turn right at this light. There's a person here trying to wave and ask for money at the end of my street, which is pretty uncomfortable. Um, Epic Technav is asking about work from home versus in office with respect to productivity, mental health, that kind of stuff. I think it's a great question. Um, I think that this is something that I would say is probably going to be very uh situational, different people, different situations. Um, I'll try to share my perspective, like my own opinion, and then also like things I've heard from various people as well, try to cover some different angles, but um, I think there's a a lot of different things to factor in here.

So, um, my goal with this, like a lot of my videos, I don't rehearse what I'm going to talk about before I open my mouth, but, uh, when I was thinking about answering this, I I think that the the goal as I get through this is to just like offer different perspective, right? So, there might be things where you're like, hey, like that's how I see it. That's how it lines up with me. Or the opposite where you're like, definitely not for me. But uh as I go through this, I just want you to think that there are probably people that have uh experiences in all different ways with this kind of stuff. Okay, with that said, um I think for me personally, um work from home is very very beneficial. I really like the flexibility.

um just means like you know we have five animals at home you know never have to really worry about anything going on so can be at home for that not that they not that they need me there all day every day but the fact that I am home is quite convenient uh I don't like you know if my wife and I are both at work or something and then if we both are late or something having to feed the dogs and that kind of stuff like laid kind of sucks they have a dog door so they can go out do whatever they need to do. Um, but yeah, like the flexibility is nice. Um, I try to be pretty open, like if I have to to duck out of work for an appointment or something, it's never an issue. Um, we don't require that people do that, but I like to be able to show people, hey, like, you know, I'm I'm human, too.

I also have to run to the bank sometimes or run to a doctor's appointment. So I uh I try to demonstrate that when I can, right? Um to let people know like, hey, look, you know, manager also has to run out and go do stuff too. Like no one's getting in trouble for this kind of thing. Like uh you know, it's totally fine. So, I like the flexibility to just like also be a human because otherwise when it comes to like productivity and that kind of stuff. I think that we can there's a lot of little things in life that add up that can be crazy stressors over time. Buddy, it's Let's go. It's an advance. Holy My god. This person's watching their phone and looking I can see them in their their side mirrors looking up and down.

Anyway, um I feel like there's lots of little stressors that add up and when you have to push all of these things to like do them outside of work hours that eats into uh into personal time, right? And when I say that you might be like, "Yeah, sure, but those are personal things." But like, hear me out for a second. Like, when are banks open, right? Or depending on like what stores or something you need to go to to pick something up or to get something mailed out. Like, there are certain things that are open during the times that you work and not at other times. So being able to like just duck out and do something when you need to is nice versus trying to like figure out like I have some people that will you know they'll say like hey like can I uh I'm going to take a vacation day so I can like go to my doctor's appointment and I'm like no you're not like go to your doctor's appointment.

It's okay. Um like I want you to use a vacation day to go on vacation. And I don't I don't want people to have to like chew through vacation days because like um you know they have a doctor's appointment or something. Seems like the wrong use. But anyway, my meta point here is like if you like there are things that can really add up and contribute to like a lot of stress over time cuz it's like like death by a thousand cuts sort of thing. Um, so all of that leads to extra stress, which then productivity wise, I feel like, you know, get disengaged, get burnt out, and it's like, well, what what's the thing doing it? It's like it's not one thing, it's a bunch of little things. Um, the commute is like is silly. Uh, I think it's the biggest waste of time ever.

Um, you know, the only for me only nice thing is great, I got to make this channel out of it, right? Um, code commute is born out of me commuting to work. I I think commuting is an insanely wasteful amount of time. So, if I have a commute, if I had to go to the office every day and it was even if it was just 30 minutes, but it's usually like 30 minutes to an hour each way. If it was just 30 minutes each way, that's an hour a day. That's five hours a week just in commuting. And that's not even like a bad commute, but that's 5 hours. That's almost a work day in just commuting. Once we get on the highway, I have to get around this person cuz this is in you can't see them, but the driving skills are uh they ain't okay, and I'm not going to be stuck behind them.

the uh yeah, the amount of time spent commuting um is insane to me. Uh I think, you know, I I suspect there's probably people that turn to other things, whether it's like audiobooks or they feel like they're they have some alone time, like that might be good for them. But for me personally on a commute, like I if I'm not doing something, I feel like I'm just like wasting my life and that really bothers me. I had an internship when I was uh in university and I remember um sorry we had to get around that person. I remember having like 45 minute to an hour commutes for this internship, like the job, everything, you know, not no complaints. But I just remember telling myself when when I grow up, when I'm an adult, I am never doing this ever. There's no way I can't live my life like this.

And like now that I'm by the time we go to do this for Microsoft and it's 3 days a week next year, I'll be 37. I guess I'm grown up. Um, and it's like it's moving the wrong direction uh in terms of where I live and like the commute time. So, um, like that's not really aligned to me. Buddy, you're in the fast lane going not fast. Let's Yeah, you move over and then Here we go. Okay. Um, so if we talk about just the actual work getting done though, uh, for me personally, I find if I'm there's like different types of work and as a manager maybe it's a little bit unique, but um, there's some things for me like if I need to like just sit down and get work done, home is awesome.

uh I don't have distractions uh for me right and I will talk about other people but for me I don't have distractions right I can I can shut my office door if if my wife is working from home or something or she has the she has Fridays off so if she's home and doing stuff or whatever and I'm like no I can't have any distractions like can close my office door I can put music on uh depending on the type of work I'm doing uh and just you know crank out work. So, I feel like in the office, like could I do that? Yeah, I could put headphones on, but the um the opportunity for distractions, not that I'm blaming anyone cuz it's not my goal is like to blame people for being distractions. It's the opportunity for distractions is much higher in my opinion because you're in the office.

There's other people around. There's people that you don't see every day or you're like, "Oh yeah, we were talking about this thing the other day. now that I see you, like this is a great opportunity to catch up on it. So there's just more opportunity for distraction. Um, so if I want to get like, you know, core work done and just grind it out, then at home works really well for me. Um, whereas the office I find is really nice. Personally, I like um doing collaborative stuff in the office. I like brainstorming sessions in person. Like I I enjoy that. Um, I don't know what it is about that, but the conversations feel more natural. Um, whiteboarding things. It's not that like these things cannot work digitally, it's just I find they happen to not be as effective. So, open-ended brainstorming discussions. I really like being in person.

Um, I also like uh like one-on- ones and stuff like they for me they're really nice in person because I don't know like uh my team right now I feel like we're we're in a great spot in terms of you know trust, respect, that kind of stuff. Like I feel like even on calls people can be quite open but especially for for newer team members and stuff like that I feel like in person's really nice because you can read body language easier. I don't know. There's something about that connection in person that I find helps a lot. Again, not impossible to do. Like I have I have people uh that report to me that work in Mexico, right? I or uh you know other LATAM countries and we've never met never met in person and I feel like we have really good working relationships. So it's not like it's impossible.

I'm just saying it's really nice to have the inerson stuff. Um, so yeah, I find creative work is really nice in person from a productivity perspective and like grinding stuff out is really nice for me to be at home. But uh overall um you know if I had to to pick and choose I would work fully remote and then if there's dedicated times where it's like you know uh I don't I don't like the I don't necessarily like the idea of like me living completely far away from everyone because that makes it trickier if you did want to do anything in person. But I don't know if I if I had to pick it would be fully remote. Um, okay. To talk about some other perspectives on this, like I know some people uh that I have talked to have almost the exact opposite feeling about some some parts of what I said.

And in particular, um, home is very distracting for them. and home is very distracting for them. Okay, for for different reasons than for people that I've talked to, I've had people that uh were, you know, early in career and kind of doing a bit of self-discovery and they were asking, they're like, "Hey, can I work from home?" And I was like, "Sure." Like, you know, there's no it's fine. Like, you're asking for permission. I'm fine with it. A lot of people on the team do. No, no worries. Right? And then what happens is over time, a few weeks, we're talking in oneonone's and they're like, "Hey, like I'm actually not feeling good about this. Like I feel like I'm not getting done." And uh I think that's a really good self-reflection moment to be like, "Okay, well, what's up? Like why do you feel that way?

What's going on?" And I've had a couple of people over the years say like, "I find I'm getting distracted." Right? Some people won't say anything, right? Some people be like, I don't even acknowledge that it's happening or like, you know, they see it's happening and they're like they don't want to admit it, whatever it happens to be. But I've had some people be like outright, hey, like I don't actually think this is working for me. Um, it could be that, you know, it's it's easy to turn on YouTube. It's easy to just pull up your phone and start scrolling. It's easy because, you know, you got video games near you and you're like, "Oh, I want to take a break or something." Or like, "It's over lunch. It's okay." Hey. And then like you go too far over a lot, like whatever it happens to be, right?

Any distraction, they're like, I actually don't really have a lot of self-control over that, it's distracting for me. Um, so I think, you know, it's great when people have this self-awareness and they go, hm, like maybe maybe that's not a good fit for me. The other thing that I've had people say is with respect to family. And so, for example, I don't have children. I mentioned we have uh we have three dogs and two cats. So, we got animals at home, but we don't have children. But I I know some people that say like, "Hey, like when I'm at home, based on the age of their children, they're like, it's very distracting. It's they're not saying they don't love their children or anything like that. It's just like it's distracting to get work done.

So they try to coordinate with their significant other to be like cool like these are the days I'm working from home and these are the days you're working from home and or if they need to bring in uh you know like child care or the other way like have their kid in child care for some days or parts of the day or school like figuring all their their scheduling and stuff out which again I don't have to worry about that at this point in my life but for them they do and as a result they have different like completely different working habits s and so they'll say, "Hey, like when I'm at home and I'm, you know, my children are home, it's very distracting for me." So these are the types of days where they have to figure out what kind of work they can do that it's okay to be interrupted a lot because they they don't really have a choice on those days, right?

Or they're working to minimize it, but that's sort of the reality for how things are. Whereas other days, you know, they'll say, I go into the office and I like going into the office. They don't, you know, commute or anything doesn't even come up. It's like, no, I like being in the office because those are the days where I can like, you know, put my head down and I can, you know, I can work through code, I can work through code reviews, I can work on design documents. Like I feel very productive and that's a good feeling. So that's an example of the exact opposite of my own experience, right? Because I find being at home is very good for that. But for them there's too many distractions at home. Whether that's uh you know children, family or for some other people just different distractions for you know easy easily accessible distractions nearby their workspace.

For those people actually I would say too like um you may it's maybe not that like working from home can't work for you but depending on how much space you have at home maybe you need to to move where you work and what I mean by that is like um you know if you have your you have one single spot set up where you have like your personal computer and you know you have distractions and stuff like that's where you normally watch YouTube videos or that's normally where you game or something like I'm not a psychologist but I have heard some things around this where your environment I got to let this bike in. Um you're like your your brain kind of understands like you're in a particular environment. You do certain things in this environment and it kind of like gets you set up mentally to do those things in that environment and as a result um it can be more distracting.

So, like if you have the opportunity to have a separate dedicated workspace, that might be good. Um, I've heard this kind of thing too with like um you know with bedrooms and stuff. It's like, hey, like, you know, a lot of people might have TVs in their bedrooms and it's like, hey, like if you're having trouble sleeping and stuff, instead of putting things in your bedroom that are like stimulating where it's like you could be watching TV or whatever, it's like make your bedroom only for sleep, right? So, when you get into that bedroom, you know, or like maybe subconsciously it's like this is the room where the sleep happens. Like it's not for other distractions or watching TV or anything else. It's just like that's where it happens. Like some people I actually where I used to live in Canada, I had my office set up in my bedroom.

I never I don't really think I had an issue with this kind of thing personally, but that is one of the things that I've, you know, seen videos and stuff online where people talk about like try to have dedicated work spaces for this. So if you find that you're distracted at home and you have more space, maybe that's something to consider or to try, right? I don't know, maybe maybe it doesn't work for you. Um, yeah. I'm not sure what else on this to be honest, but I I guess I wanted to say that like people have there's different motivations and different distractions for different people. And that's why it makes it tricky, right? If you say, "Okay, everyone back in the office." There's, like I was saying, some people on my team where they're like, "Okay, from a productivity perspective, that might be kick-ass for them because they're like, "Yeah, I don't have distractions at the office." I do have lots of distractions at the office.

For those people, they might say, "Cool, that's great for productivity, but I actually can't make that work because the scheduling with my kids and doing that with my partner is going to be chaos. It's like how are we going to ever manage this if we're both having to go to the office? Like now we need to figure out child care and like the scheduling with school and stuff and it's just like completely chaos. Again, I don't have to deal with that. So, I can't speak about that like I know about it. But, you know, that's that's a lot more effort on their part for planning. Uh whereas for me, it's like okay, it's not really a scheduling issue. It's just more like a pain in the ass because now for me it's an extra 30 to 60 minutes each way. So that's 5 to 10 hours if I were going every day.

It's 5 to 10 hours of driving a week. And like that's a that's a decent chunk of my life, which sucks, right? Like I don't I don't just want to give that up. So, bunch of different things to consider, but I guess the meta point is that different people have different motivations and different distractions because they work differently. So, ultimately, I do like some type of hybrid or flexibility to be able to approach these things and give people the option and try to support people like, hey, like if that's not working for you, like cool, like what else can we try for you so that you can work more optimally? when you start forcing people to be in or or to only like there is no option to be in person like it works both ways right I think if you force people only in

the office that means that some people will never be able to work that way and if you uh say there like there isn't actually an office at all there might be some people that that have a hard time with that too that's the nature of some places though but I like the flexibility So, I think that might be it. I'm going to be getting off the highway going onto the next highway in just a sec. So, might wrap it up here. So, thanks folks for watching. Thanks Epic Technav for the comment and the question. And for folks, if you have questions you want to answer, just leave them below in the comments. You can also go to codemute.com. You can submit questions anonymously there. And then I have a few other YouTube channels if you want to check those out. If you want to learn C programming and programming with AI tools, you can head over to Devleer on YouTube.

There's Devleer Path to Tech where I do resume reviews. And then uh I have the Dev Leader podcast where I interview other software engineers, talk about their career journeys. And then Mondays at 7:00 p.m. Pacific, I do a live stream and we generally take a code commute topic, one of the most actively engaged ones for the week and we go over that in the live stream in the following week. So, um, if you enjoy, you know, these topics and you want to be, you know, you want to participate and ask questions and stuff, they don't even have to be, uh, related to the topic, but, uh, it's an AMA format. So, if you just want to come ask questions and stuff, then come hang out. Mondays at 700 PM Pacific on the Dev Leader podcast. Thanks so much for watching. I will see you in the next video.