Major part of IT industry has moved to work from home (WFH) model recently. I can imagine the hesitation on employers side. Companies were investing significant funds in creating office spaces that are comfortable, secure and facilitate communication.
It can be hard to arrange similar conditions at home. No dedicated space for work, distractions from children, poor network connections. That are the problems we often face when working from home. That’s why I believe that all modern skyscrapers that are currently being built in the city center of Warsaw will be still useful 🙂
Personally I enjoy working together with the team at the office. It is good to have that option at least from time to time and especially when on-boarding new people to the project, or preparing a new project in a workshop-style. But as we know it is not always possible. Not only because danger like COVID-19, but often simply because teams are distributed by design and work from different cities around the world like we do at Mash for example.
That’s why, to prepare better for current times, I have put some effort to arrange close to enterprise-level workspace at home. Now I will be boasting a little bit. But this is intended to provide some transparency to the people that employ me as a software professional. I think employers/managers/investors deserve some transparency on how we work from home, that their projects are safe and that the work is kept professional.
This is how my home office looks like:
That are the key components of my WFH office:
Separate room that is used only for work. No children toys, no eating, no TV in the background, no people walking behind your back. And I can even close the door when I want to be sure that my son is not suddenly running into an important call when he comes back from the day care. It’s called physical security 🙂
Stand-up desk. I like to put my desk into a stand-up position, especially on daily stand-up’s 🙂 And you can read a lot about the benefits of limiting the sitting time. It is not an advertisement, just wanted to share what option I have chosen and I have to admit that I’m happy with that, you can check here.
And there is another benefit of a stand-up desk besides ergonomy – my equipment is 118 cm over the floor what makes it out of reach for my 2 years son 😉
When looking at this photo I have actually realised that I need to cleanup the wires hanging down, well, continuous improvement 😉
Ergonomic chair. It is very important, pain in the back is something that you really want to avoid. There is no better way than exercising to care about your back, but while working we should also keep ergonomy in mind. Check here for the model I’m using.
Whiteboard. Especially when working in architect role, I like to sometimes take my eyes out of the screen, take a breath and have a design session with the whiteboard. Whiteboard also makes this room feeling more like the office. Whiteboard is useful for writing short TODO lists, designing the architecture or having a diagram of the piece of software I’m working on behind my back as a handy cheat sheet.
Fast network connection. Last on the list but the most important component of home office. I have 1Gbit fiber to home wire and LTE mobile backup. Effective speed of course won’t be the same when using VPN, but at least the infrastructure is ready for that and reliable.
I understand that not everyone can arrange similar conditions at home and we have various limitations. But by this post I wanted to share that WFH should not be thought as keeping the laptop on the laps and sitting on the beach or in the garden. Es employees/contractors/consultants we are responsible to keep our workplace as professional as we can.
I wish you many successful WFH projects 🙂