Practice remote work: a look from the inside
Look at the search results:
Interestingly, the search results on the pictures really reflect the opinion of most people about remote work, or is this stereotype well established in the Internet? Or maybe it's just me working 8 hours a day five days a week, albeit at a distance of more than 1000 km from my place of work?
')
I do not want to debunk anybody’s dreams and do not seek to break stereotypes. I just want to talk a little about the practice of remote work by the employee.
I work as a copywriter in the Zelenograd Internet Client web-studio. At the same time I live in Krasnodar. At the moment in the studio I am the “oldest” employee, not counting the director, so I tried all the nuances of the remote in all its manifestations. So, in detail.
Skype, e-mail, Google Talk, the internal group of Vkontakte and the phone is quite enough for setting tasks, discussing their implementation and delivering projects. Jira and Bitrix 24 are generally mega-friendly services that allow not only to work quickly with different tasks, but also to take into account the time spent. There are quality standards, there are instructions available. Always ready to come to the aid of "curved handles" programmers.
There is a minus. In the office, one way or another, even without listening to the conversations and not participating in discussions, you are still up to date: who is the customer, what does he want, what does he offer, what options, what can we do ... I don’t know about him, and I begin to pull at everyone who has something to do with him. Or diligently studying the news on the company's website. Well, my patient colleagues and for 4 years of work no one has ever sent me anywhere.
I know that there are people who perceive the house only as a place to rest. I am not one of them. At home, I work much more efficiently than in the office. Measured. First, because silence. No one distracts gossip and telephone conversations, discussion of projects and suggestions to staff. Secondly, I can work in almost any state. A mild attack of gastritis, a cold, or a leg in a cast is not a problem. Lying in bed, I work with the text as quickly as I’m sitting at the table. Thirdly, my workplace is equipped exactly as it suits me. The laptop is purchased in accordance with my needs, the table is selected in height, hard chair for your favorite back. Well, the sofa, of course. Working in a comfortable environment is undoubtedly easier. Homemade, trained over the years of freelancing and remote, they listen to music with headphones, watch TV in the kitchen, move in a whisper. With extraneous questions during work do not stick. The exception is older relatives. But they are a separate conversation. A big plus for a woman is a child nearby. This is all the more important if the child is of the “electro-broom” series. In a situation when I am calm, it is convenient and comfortable for me, the printer does not make noise and the scanner does not creak in the office, new tights or a harmful client are not discussed, the work is more fruitful. It is a fact.
Perhaps this is a controversial statement, but for me personally, remote work allows me to dive deeper into the project due to greater efficiency and involvement. I usually have several tasks (or several dozens of tasks), among which priority ones stand out. It is above them, without being distracted by side tasks, that I can allow myself to concentrate. Especially noticeable is the effect of immersion, when there is a large amount of projects of the same subject in work: furniture and interior, construction and building materials, fashion and style. Independent selection of projects provides an opportunity to take into work exactly the task for which now there is both attitude and readiness.
The working day is clearly stated. If necessary, I can move it a couple of hours back and forth. However, I work out my relatives for at least 8 working hours. Although in spring, when the sun is shining outside the window and the smell of strawberries comes from the garden, it is very difficult to work. In the office, by the way, is not easier. You look, and outside the crowd of smartly decorated female students, a series of cars, ladies with packages from the shopping center - sheer disorder.
I sincerely do not understand how you can experience difficulties with self-discipline and the need to do the necessary today today, and to hand over tomorrow's deadline tomorrow? Well, this is my personal opinion, because I personally know people who can work only in a specially equipped office, with a dress code and in the neighborhood of the boss.
I do not push in the morning in the minibuses. Not standing in traffic. I do not wear high heels all day and I don’t suffer with a dress code. By evening, my face doesn’t itch from flying around the ink cabinet from a badly fitted cartridge and I pretty much save on lunch. During the lunch break I have time to cook borsch, check my daughter's lessons or hang out the laundry to dry.
BUT! Next to the conveniences are very often "pitfalls".
Leaving the office, let the house just 10 minutes walk, before the threshold the brain has time to throw out thoughts about work and focus on the house. The distinction between work and home in this case is not difficult. Here it does not work that way. Breakfast and dinner are held behind the monitor. And what if I urgently need someone?
Going down to the kitchen in the evening, I am still immersed in a complex text or am tormented by choosing a topic for tomorrow's post in the social group. Not turned off the computer in the evening with Skype enabled provokes to extend the working day and finish the job. Moreover, sometimes at 20 in the evening one of my late colleagues decides to perplex me with something interesting. The head disconnects from work tasks for a long time and is difficult. Sometimes the processing of information is delayed in the night. Nothing pleasant. But I can’t get a clear separation of work and personal time in the conditions of remote work from home. The result - busy until late at night working thoughts, pondering the difference in the approach to the audience of Vkontakte and Facebook, in the morning I wake up in a state of three frozen and thawed fish. By Thursday, no work.
And here are solid cons.
First, if the work week is tense, and there are a lot of household chores, then I’m creeping out on my doorstep only by Thursday! To this day, I have a persistent thirst syndrome of human faces. And I literally enjoy the sight of people on the streets. Just like in the popular joke about the gynecologist and the pathologist: “People, people! Faces, faces! This is treated by a daily promenade, which is not always possible to organize in view of the preceding paragraph.
Secondly, as a woman, I simply do not have enough male attention. Before being involved in freelancing and moving to remote work, I had to work in male teams. It's just a fairy tale, what is it!
With remote work, you very quickly cease to feel like a woman, beautiful and desirable. Also treated, but already in the gym. As a rule, a two-hour gym dose with an M: F ratio of 10: 3 is just enough for a week.
Thirdly, the opinion of others. This opinion doesn’t bother me very much, but 30% of my acquaintances believe that with remote work I cover my dependent position on my husband’s neck. Another 30% are sure that the remote is something illegal and illegal, most likely a pyramid or a computer game, in the framework of which I do not do anything, but only collect money from others. Approximately 20% of friends think that I spit on the ceiling, once per hour I knock on the keyboard and for this I get a monthly salary. The remaining 20% ​​understand that I work, but do not understand who and how. And therefore, they can afford to call at any moment with the aim of fray, because “you are still sitting at home”. Especially these stand out close relatives of the older generation, who constantly suspect me of gambling. In any case, the absolute majority is of the opinion that my work fully corresponds to the main part of the pictures at the beginning of the post.
I also have absolutely no one to talk about my work. And this is quite unpleasant, because in most conversations, girlfriends and friends share their working difficulties and feats. Only two people in the world know exactly who I work with and can at least somehow discuss everyday work with me: husband and daughter. The daughter, who oversaw the course of work on the project of a tour operator in Oceania, writes in her school questionnaire: “mom writes about beaches and the sea”. And the husband ... The husband speaks about the same, only a little more expanded: “She writes about concrete, chests, tours to Fiji, and even such garbage.”
My pay is average. So I, to the skeptical surprise of my friends, do not row the money with a shovel, but receive them in about the same amount as the average office worker in our city. The employment contract is simply sent by mail, as are applications for leave, orders, and so on. The bureaucracy. Twice a year, we with the studio's accounting department exchange these pieces of paper without any difficulties.
This article was written to the table, but the idea to post it to the network came to my mind after it happened to help with the placement of the vacancy “Internet client” on many large HR portals. To her surprise, she noted that most web-studios and many companies that need designers, programmers, copywriters, content managers and SEO-specialists, require an office presence as a prerequisite. And re-reading my notes about remote work, I could not understand why people of a number of professions need to work in an office? Do employers share common stereotypes about remote work, illustrated at the beginning of the post?
Interestingly, the search results on the pictures really reflect the opinion of most people about remote work, or is this stereotype well established in the Internet? Or maybe it's just me working 8 hours a day five days a week, albeit at a distance of more than 1000 km from my place of work?
')
I do not want to debunk anybody’s dreams and do not seek to break stereotypes. I just want to talk a little about the practice of remote work by the employee.
Remote work from the inside: not illusions
I work as a copywriter in the Zelenograd Internet Client web-studio. At the same time I live in Krasnodar. At the moment in the studio I am the “oldest” employee, not counting the director, so I tried all the nuances of the remote in all its manifestations. So, in detail.
Communication
Skype, e-mail, Google Talk, the internal group of Vkontakte and the phone is quite enough for setting tasks, discussing their implementation and delivering projects. Jira and Bitrix 24 are generally mega-friendly services that allow not only to work quickly with different tasks, but also to take into account the time spent. There are quality standards, there are instructions available. Always ready to come to the aid of "curved handles" programmers.
There is a minus. In the office, one way or another, even without listening to the conversations and not participating in discussions, you are still up to date: who is the customer, what does he want, what does he offer, what options, what can we do ... I don’t know about him, and I begin to pull at everyone who has something to do with him. Or diligently studying the news on the company's website. Well, my patient colleagues and for 4 years of work no one has ever sent me anywhere.
Efficiency
I know that there are people who perceive the house only as a place to rest. I am not one of them. At home, I work much more efficiently than in the office. Measured. First, because silence. No one distracts gossip and telephone conversations, discussion of projects and suggestions to staff. Secondly, I can work in almost any state. A mild attack of gastritis, a cold, or a leg in a cast is not a problem. Lying in bed, I work with the text as quickly as I’m sitting at the table. Thirdly, my workplace is equipped exactly as it suits me. The laptop is purchased in accordance with my needs, the table is selected in height, hard chair for your favorite back. Well, the sofa, of course. Working in a comfortable environment is undoubtedly easier. Homemade, trained over the years of freelancing and remote, they listen to music with headphones, watch TV in the kitchen, move in a whisper. With extraneous questions during work do not stick. The exception is older relatives. But they are a separate conversation. A big plus for a woman is a child nearby. This is all the more important if the child is of the “electro-broom” series. In a situation when I am calm, it is convenient and comfortable for me, the printer does not make noise and the scanner does not creak in the office, new tights or a harmful client are not discussed, the work is more fruitful. It is a fact.
Perhaps this is a controversial statement, but for me personally, remote work allows me to dive deeper into the project due to greater efficiency and involvement. I usually have several tasks (or several dozens of tasks), among which priority ones stand out. It is above them, without being distracted by side tasks, that I can allow myself to concentrate. Especially noticeable is the effect of immersion, when there is a large amount of projects of the same subject in work: furniture and interior, construction and building materials, fashion and style. Independent selection of projects provides an opportunity to take into work exactly the task for which now there is both attitude and readiness.
Discipline and schedule
The working day is clearly stated. If necessary, I can move it a couple of hours back and forth. However, I work out my relatives for at least 8 working hours. Although in spring, when the sun is shining outside the window and the smell of strawberries comes from the garden, it is very difficult to work. In the office, by the way, is not easier. You look, and outside the crowd of smartly decorated female students, a series of cars, ladies with packages from the shopping center - sheer disorder.
I sincerely do not understand how you can experience difficulties with self-discipline and the need to do the necessary today today, and to hand over tomorrow's deadline tomorrow? Well, this is my personal opinion, because I personally know people who can work only in a specially equipped office, with a dress code and in the neighborhood of the boss.
Conveniently
I do not push in the morning in the minibuses. Not standing in traffic. I do not wear high heels all day and I don’t suffer with a dress code. By evening, my face doesn’t itch from flying around the ink cabinet from a badly fitted cartridge and I pretty much save on lunch. During the lunch break I have time to cook borsch, check my daughter's lessons or hang out the laundry to dry.
BUT! Next to the conveniences are very often "pitfalls".
Leaving the office, let the house just 10 minutes walk, before the threshold the brain has time to throw out thoughts about work and focus on the house. The distinction between work and home in this case is not difficult. Here it does not work that way. Breakfast and dinner are held behind the monitor. And what if I urgently need someone?
Going down to the kitchen in the evening, I am still immersed in a complex text or am tormented by choosing a topic for tomorrow's post in the social group. Not turned off the computer in the evening with Skype enabled provokes to extend the working day and finish the job. Moreover, sometimes at 20 in the evening one of my late colleagues decides to perplex me with something interesting. The head disconnects from work tasks for a long time and is difficult. Sometimes the processing of information is delayed in the night. Nothing pleasant. But I can’t get a clear separation of work and personal time in the conditions of remote work from home. The result - busy until late at night working thoughts, pondering the difference in the approach to the audience of Vkontakte and Facebook, in the morning I wake up in a state of three frozen and thawed fish. By Thursday, no work.
Social aspects
And here are solid cons.
First, if the work week is tense, and there are a lot of household chores, then I’m creeping out on my doorstep only by Thursday! To this day, I have a persistent thirst syndrome of human faces. And I literally enjoy the sight of people on the streets. Just like in the popular joke about the gynecologist and the pathologist: “People, people! Faces, faces! This is treated by a daily promenade, which is not always possible to organize in view of the preceding paragraph.
Secondly, as a woman, I simply do not have enough male attention. Before being involved in freelancing and moving to remote work, I had to work in male teams. It's just a fairy tale, what is it!
With remote work, you very quickly cease to feel like a woman, beautiful and desirable. Also treated, but already in the gym. As a rule, a two-hour gym dose with an M: F ratio of 10: 3 is just enough for a week.
Thirdly, the opinion of others. This opinion doesn’t bother me very much, but 30% of my acquaintances believe that with remote work I cover my dependent position on my husband’s neck. Another 30% are sure that the remote is something illegal and illegal, most likely a pyramid or a computer game, in the framework of which I do not do anything, but only collect money from others. Approximately 20% of friends think that I spit on the ceiling, once per hour I knock on the keyboard and for this I get a monthly salary. The remaining 20% ​​understand that I work, but do not understand who and how. And therefore, they can afford to call at any moment with the aim of fray, because “you are still sitting at home”. Especially these stand out close relatives of the older generation, who constantly suspect me of gambling. In any case, the absolute majority is of the opinion that my work fully corresponds to the main part of the pictures at the beginning of the post.
I also have absolutely no one to talk about my work. And this is quite unpleasant, because in most conversations, girlfriends and friends share their working difficulties and feats. Only two people in the world know exactly who I work with and can at least somehow discuss everyday work with me: husband and daughter. The daughter, who oversaw the course of work on the project of a tour operator in Oceania, writes in her school questionnaire: “mom writes about beaches and the sea”. And the husband ... The husband speaks about the same, only a little more expanded: “She writes about concrete, chests, tours to Fiji, and even such garbage.”
Financial and organizational issues
My pay is average. So I, to the skeptical surprise of my friends, do not row the money with a shovel, but receive them in about the same amount as the average office worker in our city. The employment contract is simply sent by mail, as are applications for leave, orders, and so on. The bureaucracy. Twice a year, we with the studio's accounting department exchange these pieces of paper without any difficulties.
This article was written to the table, but the idea to post it to the network came to my mind after it happened to help with the placement of the vacancy “Internet client” on many large HR portals. To her surprise, she noted that most web-studios and many companies that need designers, programmers, copywriters, content managers and SEO-specialists, require an office presence as a prerequisite. And re-reading my notes about remote work, I could not understand why people of a number of professions need to work in an office? Do employers share common stereotypes about remote work, illustrated at the beginning of the post?
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/178107/
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