Out of the blue my manager calls me and asks – “You are Home, right?”. I felt a bit awkward in that situation, but what could I do? I had to answer that question. “Look, I am not completely yet, but I am interested in becoming one”, I replied. “Then fill out the forms and I will approve them”. That is basically how I became Home Office.
As a regular employee, I still had the right to do Home Office 2 days a week. At first comes a feeling of guilt. You cannot just accept, right off the bat, that I will not have to get up at half past five in the morning and face almost two hours of traffic to leave Santo André, take Avenida dos Estados and finally reach the building where I work. I confess that not leaving home so early and sitting down in front of the company notebook wearing a hoodie causes a certain discomfort at first. It gives the impression that we are not working, that we are doing something wrong.
After the feeling of guilt comes the slacking off. To this day I still get up early to take my wife to the train station, which is exactly 7 minutes from my house. In the first weeks, I would go back to bed and get some more sleep until nine in the morning. I have even managed to arrive at work 30 minutes late while being only twenty meters from it. Having breakfast in front of the notebook became routine. But that passed. I think that as time went by, the body and mind get more rested, until a point where you no longer feel like going back to bed. Besides, I still have a reasonable list of books to read. The time I used to spend in traffic, I now spend reading, and that is working out really well.
My neighbors must now think that I got laid off and that I am supported by my wife. There is someone who, besides cleaning my house, prepares my lunch. That way, I can have lunch in 15 minutes and I am not going to run back to the notebook afterward. I need to do my photosynthesis. For that I go have an espresso at a bakery that is waaaaaay up there and take the chance to soak up some sun walking to the bakery. Having a scheduled time to catch some sun even sounds like a prisoner’s routine. Sometimes I take my dogs for a walk during my lunch break. I do not blame my neighbors. What would you think if you saw a person of about thirty years of age, with a few days’ beard on his face, walking dogs at noon? “That guy walks dogs so he can get money for booze”.
Well, I really am drooling and shuffling around in the eyes of the neighbors. What is complicated is what your relatives think of you. To get coffee, I pass in front of an aunt’s house. You know that aunt for whom all she managed to understand about what you do is that you work with computers, she is just not sure whether it is cleaning them or selling them. On one of those trips back and forth for coffee, I ended up running into her. “Hey Fernando, are you off today?” – she asks. “No, auntie, I work from home now” – I answer all pleased, but looking at her expression, you can just imagine the gears turning in her head – “Oh, poor thing, he must be doing one of those side gigs like Work from home, ask me how“.
Harder than convincing yourself that you can work from home is convincing others that you are working from home. Back when I did Home Office only 2 times a week, my wife always asked me – “Are you going to work tomorrow?”, as if I did not work at home. My brother once told me, ” …but aren’t you going to be home tomorrow? So, I will drop by and we will go look at that car part”.
Working from home requires discipline; although I can make my own schedule, I prefer to have a fixed time to have lunch, and to start and stop working. I am not just talking about working less. Working too much is a bigger risk. You are already there with a tough nut to crack, just one last test to go, which has been the last one for about 5 tests now, you do not have to deal with traffic, you are already in the comfort of your home, and by the time you notice it is already nine at night.
Nothing changes for the company?
I work on a global team. Some here, others in the United States and India. The development team’s manager is in another hemisphere. Do you really think this is going to make any difference to him? Even when I was working in the building, all I needed was a network port. Even though I have a notebook, it is used to open a remote session on one of the machines that serve the external labs (Brazil and India). The test machines are virtual for the most part; the real ones are also accessed remotely. All the meetings are held via Web Conference. Your extension is forwarded to a VOIP tool on the notebook. You dial an extension to talk to someone on the other side of the planet. All through a network port.
When you become Home Office, the company gives you a reimbursement limit to buy furniture, a phone and phone bill, broadband Internet, a printer and office supplies. Obviously everything has to be returned when you stop being Home Office. Fortunately my house already had all the necessary requirements, and so, I will not end up using a desk or a chair that are not even mine. The good thing about that is that I can replace them whenever I want.
What will mainly change for the company is that now they will have one more free cubicle. A company this size does not fit in the buildings where we are (that is right, plural). The company encourages Home Office. One of the clauses of the transition to Home Office is that you must remain in this condition for at least one year. I got worried when I read that part, so I went to ask the people who were already Home Office what I was not managing to read between the lines. What happens is that at the company I work for, the vast majority of the employees are salespeople. A salesperson is the extroverted type of professional, who talks a lot and greatly values contact with people. For that kind of person, being cloistered inside the house is death. So much so that many people who are Home Office leave their houses to fight tooth and nail over empty cubicles back at the building. My own wife, if she stayed at home, would go crazy biting the arm of the sofa in less than a month.
Yeah, there are people and there are people. As you have probably noticed, I am a software developer. I am the type of person who prefers to have their own time to do things; I like having my space. I am not saying that I am allergic to people and that I walk around with a paper bag stuck over my head. I am just saying that I do not mind working alone at home, listening to my favorite music while I do everything over the internet. In fact, that gives me a hook to talk about a book I read and that I imagined I would never have the opportunity to comment about on this technical blog. This book talks precisely about the differences between extroverted and introverted people. It explains that although 75% of people are extroverted, there is nothing wrong with being introverted. The book explains that introverted people do have their advantages. They concentrate more easily. They know fewer subjects, but in more depth. They have fewer friends, but the friendships are more intense. I found the book interesting, with its statistics and reasoning to explain the why behind people’s behavior.
I still have not said everything I could say about my transition to Home Office, but this post is already getting far too long for an Off Topic.
See you…
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