To start off I want to be clear, I am a big proponent of telecommuting. Big. It has been at least 15 years since I worked in an office with other people on a regular basis. And those other people were a large part of why I started telecommuting (but not because I didn’t like them.)

For me it has been a major productivity boost, but like all magic, it comes at a cost.

How it all got started

When I first started with my previous company 25 or so years ago, I was hired into a temporary position managing software for a call center. They had recently bought property in the city I was living and had big plans for the building as a call center/disaster recovery center. The goal was, in a few years, to replace me with a permanent person who knew what they were doing with the telecommunications devices. I had worked with this company in the past, and I needed a job due to my previous employer changing their business practices, so it was a great fit for a while until everything was in place.

After I was replaced in the call center, I went back to working full time as a DBA and data programmer. Since the location I was at was for disaster recovery and a call center, I was basically alone there except doing some duty as the Disaster Recovery DBA. All the other people I worked with regularly writing database code were 600 miles away. In this building, I had a nice office, great friends, but I only worked with people in the office a few days a month configuring and testing disaster recovery solutions.

Most of the time, these people became distractions more than people I actually worked with. (We had some good Disney planning discussions and ate some great chicken since Prince’s Hot Chicken’s original location was across the street, which did not help the work situation either.) Add to this that I drove 30-60 minutes to sit in this office and worked with people 600 miles away.

I wanted to work off site more, but we really didn’t have the infrastructure to work off site securely only office to office. The concepts of including remote people in meetings was in its infancy, sometimes just being on a voice call. It was complex, but it worked well enough. Then came the best thing for my telecommuting chances, thought the most horrible thing for my sleep schedule…being on call. This really pressed the company to start building secure VPN access for everyone. So if I could fix things from home at 2am, why not work from home at 2pm.

Something was missing

Working in a different location from my direct coworkers, from home or just another office space always had one downside: hallway meetings. It was already hard because my team was so far away, and face to face time is a big part of making a connection. Seeing a face makes you think “hey, I need to ask you a question”, and the imperative is to do it then.

So over time I started going in to the office a few days a month, and occasionally made the 600 mile trek to visit the people I directly work with a time or two a year. Seeing faces made me real, and we got a few extra things done. Over time, since it worked so well for my case, they finally gave in and we added more and more people not located at the home office. We all gathered a few times a year at the main office, had dinner a few times, and connected as a team. By the pandemic came, our team was an example of how it can be done.

And now…

At Redgate, my primary work is somewhat disconnected (other than overall purpose) to the other teams. I am reasonably isolated because most of my time is editing general technology pieces, writing stuff like this post, and sponsoring and attending conferences. Others are focused on the products that Redgate makes.

This leads to the same common communication problems with working at home I already mentioned. If I was completely disconnected from others, it wouldn’t be an issue. But I do need to share what I have written and see what others need things to be written about with others and for whatever reason, it is just so much more difficult to schedule time on Teams/Zoom than it is to see someone at the coffee machine waiting for their latte and take up a conversation.

I wrote down the idea for this article because of a few days I spent at the main office a few weeks before I wrote this. When I had arrived at the office, I sat down in the common area to reserve a desk and I had three mini meetings that started a bit before 10am and didn’t end until a team lunch. It was amazing, because it was meetings I had wanted to have with people, and meetings people wanted to have with me, but we are all quite busy with everything.

Meeting in person gives you this perspective and human connection that is so much easier to have than it is when you are completely remote.

As a reminder

Do not take this as me suggesting that working at home is bad in any way. Working at home is one of the greatest productivity boosters when done correctly. And if you can let your technical workers have freedom to work in a flexible manner, you will probably see a tremendous increase in productivity from most of them.

But work in some face to face time if at all possible, Ideally with as much of the company as possible. Mete out time to work with people in person enough to stay connected, but as often as you are allowed, work from the place that makes you the most comfortable the rest of the time. For me, that is my home office.