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from the all-the-better-to-identify-what-can-be-outsourced? dept.
Dustin Kirkland has written a blog post about telecommuting for over two decades. He goes into a lot of detail about his particular setup. He closes asking what other people's remote offices look like and what, if anything, he missed.
In this post, I'm going to share a few of the benefits and best practices that I've discovered over the years, and I'll share with you a shopping list of hardware and products that I have come to love or depend on, over the years.
I worked in a variety of different roles -- software engineer, engineering manager, product manager, and executive (CTO, VP Product, Chief Product Officer) -- and with a couple of differet companies, big and small (IBM, Google, Canonical, Gazzang, and Apex). In fact, I was one of IBM's early work-from-home interns, as a college student in 2000, when my summer internship manager allowed me to continue working when I went back to campus, and I used the ATT Global Network dial-up VPN client to "upload" my code to IBM's servers.
If there's anything positive to be gained out of the COVID-19 virus life changes, I hope that working from home will become much more widely accepted and broadly practiced around the world, in jobs and industries where it's possible. Moreover, I hope that other jobs and industries will get even more creative and flexible with remote work arrangements, while maintaining work-life-balance, corporate security, and employee productivity.
See similar article at the BBC.
How much, if any, can you work from home? What tools are on your "gotta have it" list? What cautions, suggestions, and resources do you suggest for your fellow Soylentils?
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday March 10 2020, @05:55PM (6 children)
I have a grueling ten minute commute to a brightly lit office. (eg, an office building, a room with interior and exterior window and door that closes; door is almost never closed)
I have nice equipment to work with. Numerous different servers here in the building, including a pretty nice one in my own office (room).
The first major problem to work from home would be: Windows.
I don't have it. I don't want my house infected by it. At work there are people responsible for maintaining that thing.
I can't imagine being able to work at home without distractions. The office is relatively quiet.
The biggest thing: I can keep work at work, and home at home. The boundary is clear. People have my cell number if there is an emergency, and I'm only minutes away from the office.
Some people need assistants to hire some assistance.
Other people need assistance to hire some assistants.
(Score: 2) by acid andy on Tuesday March 10 2020, @06:34PM (4 children)
I suppose ReactOS and Wine wouldn't suffice?
Welcome to Edgeways. Words should apply in advance as spaces are highly limite—
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday March 10 2020, @06:38PM (3 children)
To run an entire suite of Microsoft Enterprise products? Outlook? Sometimes Excel and Word. (Although I do use LibreOffice.) Teams. Skype. And other assorted bits.
Microsoft? The company known to sabotage its software not to run on DR DOS ? (Back in early 1990s or late 1980s)
Not something I would want to bet on.
I would probably instead ask for a corporate laptop, which would be equipped with all the standard apps and security, including our VPN, Bitlocker, corporate antivirus, etc.
Some people need assistants to hire some assistance.
Other people need assistance to hire some assistants.
(Score: 2) by acid andy on Tuesday March 10 2020, @06:44PM (2 children)
Yeah I was pretty sure that was the case but thought I'd just throw down the comment anyway. I've never tried ReactOS actually. I must admit running code written by M$ under Wine does really creep me out. A separate machine is the way to go.
Welcome to Edgeways. Words should apply in advance as spaces are highly limite—
(Score: 3, Informative) by Freeman on Tuesday March 10 2020, @08:18PM (1 child)
No need to be creeped out by Wine or running M$ code on Linux. In fact, it's essentially sandboxing your program.
As far as ReactOS is concerned. It is not ready for prime time. You can tinker with it, but it's still in Alpha and lots of things don't work quite right still. It's leaps and bounds better than it used to be, but it's got a long journey ahead.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 3, Informative) by acid andy on Wednesday March 11 2020, @03:46PM
https://wiki.winehq.org/FAQ#How_good_is_Wine_at_sandboxing_Windows_apps.3F [winehq.org]
Welcome to Edgeways. Words should apply in advance as spaces are highly limite—
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 10 2020, @06:40PM
Well put. For your sake I hope that you aren't forced to work from home during this virus crisis|scare event.
As counterpoint to your situation, I'm now in my mid-60s and have always worked from home, an engineering consultancy with a few others who also work from home. Over the years I've done spells of up to a month at a variety of different customer sites and have seen plenty of bureaucracy, office politics and bs at all of them...enough distractions that working there just seems like it would not be productive.
The walk downstairs or across the house to my office is effortless and I can't imagine commuting to work. Most of my local driving/bicycling is during off-peak hours, but every now and then I have to drive during the local rush hour, which isn't any fun at all. I enjoy driving my stick shift car and suspect that avoiding rush hour has a lot to do with this.
One of the other threads mentioned backup internet--I'm fortunate that my sister's house is about 2km away and I keep an older laptop there which is (mostly) in sync with my main computer. If there is a problem at my house, I can work from the other house, use that internet, etc.