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: 3, Informative) by VLM on Tuesday March 10 2020, @08:09PM (1 child)
Nice chair
Tea pot
Significant battery backup infrastructure.
A door. You can't speakerphone or videoconference without a door.
If you have work that can go fully mobile, work at a park, weather permitting.
I like the giant whiteboards in the article
Its very easy to set up a home office while spending approximately nothing that is far superior to the "work at office" people which will make them VERY jealous.
Monitors are cheap why the linked article only has two and not five is a mystery.
Despite advice in the article, Brother brand B+W lasers are simply superior. Yes HP was technologically golden in the 70s but that ship has sailed and I'm not using a 1970s oscope but a 2020s printer so ...
Spare parts. Your old system and new system as a minimum. I assure you the old system will be powerful enough for videoconf and reading PDFs and similar.
Figure out some music streaming solution that works for you. Supposedly no human beings use anything other than spotify anymore, but whatever works for you.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 12 2020, @05:28AM
What is your preference for color laser printers?