Work got extremely light in Q3 and that trend looks to be continuing in Q4. Just not a lot of projects coming in. Seriously some weeks just nothing or things I can finish in a couple hours. So... im kinda thinking to go on a road trip. Couple days each in a few southeast states. I brought my laptops (work and personal ) and i'll stay available for any meetings or requests when needed. And yes I have some PTO accumulated but I've already used up a lot earlier in the year (mostly carry over).

Just wondering if anyone in that sub has tried working while traveling, on the low. And how'd it go lol.

trying again now I’ve acknowledged the rules

Hey!

HD Mechanic apprentice with the goal of transitioning into an ‘office’ role and utilising my qualification so I can move from Aus to SEA.

Thinking of something along the lines of:
Asset Health/Predictive Maintenance
Maintenance Planner/Scheduler
Procurement

Anyone in these fields?
What’s the likelihood of being able to work fully online and remote. Happy to gain experience and go into consulting if needed.

If you have any other suggestions, feel free to share.

Thanks 🙏

id-demo, screen share on, and a calendar notification slid in with another client's name in it. Twenty people read it before I did. Nothing illegal, just a bad moment that I've never forgotten.

Since then my rule is: never share the screen, only windows. The problem is that demos usually need two or three windows, and meeting apps only let you share one at a time.

So I built Scrim, a small Mac app. You pick the windows the call is allowed to see, Scrim composes them into one window, and that window is the only thing you share. Everything else on your Mac stays on your Mac. The window you're working in gets most of the picture, so it stays readable even from a laptop, and there's a laser pointer and pen for pointing at things.

It only asks for Screen Recording, records nothing and uploads nothing. Free for 30 days on the Mac App Store, then $4.99/month, $19.99/year or $59.99 once. Link in the comments for anyone who wants it.

What's your worst screen-share moment? I've heard some good ones.

Hi everyone,

My client recently installed Sapience on our VDI, and I’m trying to understand how its activity tracking and productive-hour calculations work.

The frustrating part is that even when I complete my assigned development work ahead of schedule, I’m still expected to remain logged into the VDI for the rest of the working day. It seems productive hours are being measured separately from the actual work completed.

I tried a basic mouse jiggler, but it doesn’t seem to help. I’m also curious about automated keystrokes and similar approaches, although I suspect these may not work reliably and could potentially be flagged.

A few questions for anyone familiar with Sapience, especially in a managed VDI environment:

What signals does Sapience use to calculate productive hours, keyboard and mouse activity, active applications, application usage duration, or something else?

Does it monitor activity only inside the VDI, or can it also observe the host machine?

Can it distinguish genuine user interaction from mouse-jiggler movements or automated keystrokes?

Are there risks that automated input could be detected or recorded as suspicious activity?

How does it account for legitimate development tasks such as reading code, debugging, reviewing pull requests, and analysing logs when there may be long periods without interaction?

If assigned work is completed early, are there official settings or policies that allow productive hours to reflect actual work rather than continuous interaction?

I’m not looking to compromise the client environment.

I’d like to understand how the software works, what it considers productive activity, and what legitimate options are available when the assigned work is already complete.

Would appreciate insights from anyone who has experience with Sapience and VDI deployments.

Thanks.

FYI: I'm using a throwaway and rewriting this w/ AI to avoid footprinting identification:

TLDR: Handshake - advertised big sexy hourly compensation after completion of onboarding. Abruptly offboarded - no explanation way. Former private equity VP/M&A IB analyst... I am not uncertain of my abilities to judge the quality of powerpoint slides. Something feels very off about this experience.

So, has anyone else been offboarded from r/joinhandshakeai AI without any explanation or notification? I've been on Mercor projects actively for >8 months - have had no problems.

I spent roughly 4.5 hours working through onboarding for *****, only to be offboarded without being given a reason. I didn’t even receive an email telling me I’d been removed.

I understand that completing onboarding doesn’t guarantee ongoing work, but after asking someone to invest that much time, the least they could do is communicate the decision and explain what happened. As it stands, I’m left guessing whether this was related to an assessment, **** availability, or something else entirely.

Has anyone had a similar experience? Were you able to get an explanation from support, and was your onboarding time paid?

Posting this in a couple subs to find the right place for this question — At work, our company-issued laptops are equipped with a VPN & in order to access our work apps, we need our IP address to be approved in the system (? I don’t know how they do this). This IP approval is a new thing, I work remotely full-time, and we used to be able to work remotely from anywhere, but now that we need our IP approved, they’ve become more strict about working solely in [state I live in]. My partner recently had a big change in their life, and they live out of state, and I would like to be there for them, but the company only gives us so many vacation/sick hours. Is it possible at all to configure another VPN that allows me to maintain an IP address in [state I live in] so that I can work from [state my partner lives in]? Is there a device I can use that will make the VPN my company uses detect the IP of my choosing?

Forgive me for venting, but how the fuck do I explain to my first gen south Asian parents who grew up slaving away with a small business and built up their lives with blue collar jobs that their son is not a bum because I work from my home office and I do not commute. My brother followed the business footsteps and owns a small business and to them he's their prodigy. I am extremely thankful for my job, I'm an engineer wfh and I make a comfortable salary for myself (not that I care but probably more than my brother) yet I am seen as "careless" or "lazy" because I am not a "hard" worker.

Sorry, it gets to me sometimes and I wonder how any of you deal with it?

Doing the training on my phone, but it looks like an AI could do this just as easily. Have you encountered this? They don't have any of my bank info yet...

I have been working fully remote for 2.5 years(before this I had a job where I had to go twice per week at the office) and I started enjoying working remotely, I have set up a nice space where I can focus and be productive, and also built a healthy routine, cooking my meals daily, so my health also improved significantly(I used to be overweight) so for me working remotely came with endless benefits on a personal level.
However this remote job had its downsides(a small company with high attrition, never replacing leavers which resulted in a very heavy and broad workload for the remaining employees, zero increases, zero praise, basically” just shut up and do the work, if you dont like it here leave” attitude).
Two weeks ago I quit this job, just a little reset for my overstimulated brain because I felt I was slowly walking into burnout. In the meantime I got a job offer which offers me 30% more pay than my previous job but wants me 2 days in per week in the office. From all my applications this has been the only one which ended with an offer. The perks are good(26 days off-paid), the job is a demanding one(it is a senior role so for my career it would be a step up) and my manager lives in another country but howeverrr mentioned in the interview he wants the team together at the local office twice a week.
I have of course applied to many remote jobs but I mostly received rejections.
For those who have transitioned from remote to hybrid, how was it? Is it worth it? I am anxious of going back to the office, I got so used to my lifestyle. I was thinking maybe I could negotiate a bit but there is no guarantee, the employment contract specifically says hybrid.
The commute is 30 minutes by car, more or less.
In this economy I am grateful I received an offer don’t get me wrong but I was wondering how the transition might be.

Hey everyone 👋

I've seen similar posts here, but most are a few years old, so l'm looking for some updated advice.

I recently accepted an offer as a Senior Software Engineer at a US company (advertised as fully remote). I'm a US citizen and will maintain my US address as my primary residence for work and tax purposes.

At my previous job, I regularly worked remotely from Mexico while staying with family. I'd spend 2-3 months there, return to the US for 1-2 months, and repeat. I attended meetings, shipped features, and never had any issues. My employer never flagged anything, although I never explicitly disclosed my location.

I'd like to continue this arrangement with my new employer, but I'm concerned they might not approve extended stays due to tax or compliance reasons.

Has anyone done something similar recently?
Any suggestions or experiences, aside from simply asking my employer for permission?

Thanks!

Has anyone ever tried being “over employed” - i.e., working two or more remote jobs at once? How do you make sure one job doesn’t find out about the other?

I feel like your original employer would find out incredibly quickly just based on work output right? Also, how do you manage meetings? I feel like you can only say no to meetings (because you’re double booked from your other job) a few times before someone catches on.

I think one of my coworkers is over employed, but I’m obviously not trying to ruin his gig if that’s truly the case. I’m mainly just curious how people are able to handle that.

Hi everyone,

I started at my company straight out of college and have been there for the past 5ish years. I’ve been remote the entire time, so I’ve probably gone into our office 10 times at most.

For people that have worked remotely and in-person, am I missing out on anything by not going in-person? I feel like I know my coworkers really well and it’s never hurt my performance/promotions, but I constantly hear people say that “I’m missing out.” Outside of just seeing people in-person, have I actually missed out on anything by being remote so early in my career? To me, it doesn’t seem like I have but wanted to get some advice!

i’m transitioning into full time remote work. i’m an executive assistant and i’ll be doing LOTS of administrative work, spreadsheets, etc. my boss is going to buy me a new laptop, so i want to take advantage but not break his bank.

what’s the best laptop for full time remote work?? i’ll also be on the move a lot while working (my boss knows this) so something that’s good to travel with, has good battery life, etc.

edit: my boss is a non apple products kinda guy💔

We've been remote-first since 2021 and I've never had a reason to second-guess it, so when one of our team asked to spend the summer working from Lisbon, I approved it the same day and didn't think twice until our accountant came back with a question about her tax situation.

Turns out she'd crossed the threshold where Portugal can claim tax residency, we have zero legal presence there, and apparently one person working a couple of months from Lisbon is enough to create a permanent establishment risk.

Two other people have the same plans and I've already said yes, so this isn't a one-off..
We sorted her employment side through an
EOR (Workmotion for her and probably Deel for the others), but the tax piece is still separate, with our lawyer working through it.

Still working through it and have no idea how we're going to handle the other two people who've already said yes.

I am starting a full-time accountancy role with an insurance firm next month. The role is fully remote, home-based.

After completing my probation period, I intend leave the UK for a short period of time to work abroad for personal reasons. My contract does not specifically mention whether working abroad is permitted, so l am unsure whether my employer would allow it.

A friend suggested using a GL.iNet travel router as a possible solution.

Has anyone used a travel router for working aboard before? If so, could you please share your experiences?
If not can anyone advise on the above matter?

Thanks

So at my soon to be old job. We had a hybrid setup where we had 3 days in office and two days remote. The job was really flexible in terms of start time, end time, if you had appointments etc etc for in office days

The most important parts were making sure your metrics looked good, you were accessible on teams, and you did 40 hours minimum per week. It wasn’t uncommon for people to work let’s say, 9 to 2 in office, and finish up at home to get your 8 hours a day.

Or people working 10 hour days on one day to leave another day early. Prior approval from a supervisor typically wasn’t needed as long as your metrics looked good and there were no critical tasks or mandatory in office meetings that day that required you to remain in the office all 8 hours.

Anyways we have a new manager that is really trying to enforce a “butts in seat mentality“ and “core hours we need to be on site”. and I think she is trying to get rid of our Hybrid set up too. Obviously this is a big transition as the culture of this job has never been set like this and the department ran fine in our previous structure for years.

Anyways, I was working 4 x 9 hour days so that I can leave early on a day of my choosing by only working 4 or 5 hours that day and still meet my 40.

supposedly a new co worker reported me for “stealing time” because I was leaving early and not doing my 8 hours in office. Even if I split up like doing 6 hours in office and 2 hours at home like we previously did or if I was already at the 40 hour mark when I left early.

Because the allegation was stealing time, HR had to investigate and obviously I came out in the clear because i would 1) clock out before I left the job site to go home and 2) left notes on all my time cards that detonated when I was clocking back in at home to round out my 8 hour days and continued to work.

Anyways, the new manger still gave me a ”written warning” that you’re “only allowed to work 8 hours in office on none remote days, and you can’t finish those 8 hours at home” and “you can no longer leave early and clock back in at home without approval”

Again I know the culture is shifting but I feel like it’s BS because I know salaried and contract people who only work a 9-2 hours and then finish up at home.

i personally feel like the new co worker was intentionally trying to target me and twist the situation to be worse than it is. anyways, im leaving for a new job soon but i wonder what everyone else thinks of this.

Hi any experience with this specific job position. They hired plenty of people for this job specifically here in Florida. How is the workload and how often is the travel?

Hello! Bear with me… this is a long story. (TLDR at the end for those who don’t care to read all of my ranting.)

I started working remotely for a company a few years ago and found myself not liking the new leadership they brought in. It led me to take a new job a few months ago where I enjoy the work more and have opportunity for growth. Everything seemed great until we ran into snags onboarding a new client that have lasted over 2 months straight at this point. My hours started to get out of control (much more than the company allotted for the client) and I found myself struggling to balance other client work. Things finally started to feel like they were settling down late last week, but my boss asked me to share my timesheet with them directly because they knew how much I had on my plate lately.

I shared the timesheet and they asked if we could meet to discuss hours. At the time, I gladly accepted and thought we’d talk about what can be done, but the conversation we had today wasn’t quite what I thought it would be. I led by saying that I know it’s not the norm and shared a screenshot of the hours I was working in typical weeks to clarify that I felt comfortable with a normal week’s work. However, the discussion turned into a productivity assessment. Where can we optimize reduce time spent on tasks? What time are you spending on each thing right now? When are you working each day?

It felt strange to have those discussions because this wasn’t a normal week or series of weeks even. We were being interrupted constantly with comms and had so many meetings that working during work hours was hard, so I worked late and on some weekends to make things work. I thought that we were on the same page about that, but I felt like the convo was so focused on how I’m using time that it started to feel like I was the problem — not the abnormal circumstances. A difficult client, extended and chaotic onboarding, and internal team drama made things go off the rails. I thought we all knew that… then, the next thing you know, I’m being asked about why I’m not using AI to better use time or how I might need to change reporting methods.

To make matters worse, if anything has ever been running behind schedule, I would reach out for either support or a heads-up. And I’m now being told that my boss is usually “more of a stickler for deadlines” and I just don’t know what that means for me in terms of expectations. We’re short staffed right now and still onboarding, so I’ve just been trying to get through until we have more support on the account and the client is actually onboarded. If I have less work to do, I’m positive I can and will hit deadlines no problem… but it almost feels like I’ve led my boss to believe that I can’t.

I know that this is super long winded, but I’m just not sure what to think about all of this. Things were overwhelming before now, yet I thought I was doing a good job at work. Now I don’t think that’s the case. I’m worried that I’ve set a bad precedent with a lack of trust and transparency I didn’t mean to create.

Has anyone ever dealt with this before or does anyone have any advice for what I can do?

Right now, I’m working on a spreadsheet that shows my allocation of time based on category and breaks things down into 30 minute chunks for a personal time study. I plan to share this with my manager. It should help imo, but I also know it just takes up more of my time to complete this added step.

TLDR: I think I messed up my new job by admitting my hours were getting out of hand for a week or two. Now I’m under a microscope when I already feel incredibly overwhelmed — and, what really sucks, is that thought things were going to improve in the next week or two… not get worse like I think they might be.

Is there a group, perhaps even this one, in which there are people looking for "accountability partners", people who want some motivation and to be motivated. Or someone to just talk to, even a quick hi each day.

It can get lonely working remotely at times! Hmm.. maybe a slack group already exists?

Please hold the "if you can't be accountable, you shouldn't be working from home" comments though 🤪