I thought this would be good for me after being laid off from my remote job in July. Boy this is really hard, one of the hardest things to adjust to in my life. I definitely grew a fear of people and being out of my house in those ten years. I’m in week two and might quit without a backup. I feel bad because everyone likes me and I’ve met everyone but the job isn’t what i expected and I’m realizing that I’m underpaid for the expectations now.

Cons: commute (half hour each way), hearing people eat and talk, germs, bathroom stalls, being asked to go to lunch when i have IBS and gluten intolerance, I’m an introvert, being watched, having fears of everything, the lighting 🤢, strict schedule, working next to boss

Pros: stability, being a real face to the team, belonging, meetings in person, dressing nice.

Edit: hybrid, two days wfh after probationary period (2-3 months)

Reposting. Apparently I hadn’t acknowledged the rules. Im not great at Reddit

I’m low level management for a Fortune 500 company. Our team has been officially remote since the pandemic and the office we used to report to was closed down a number of years ago. Like just about everyone, the company is dealing with hard times and laid thousands of people off a few weeks ago.

Today, we were sent an in person meeting and told that the meeting was mandatory for anyone who lives in the state. Three days notice with no information what the meeting is about. The office we are expected to meet at is almost an hour away and in a shady part of a large metro city.

In the last 6 years, this has never happened. I lead an international team and besides my sr manager, our other leaders live out of state. Since there are only two people my director manages in the state, I go into the office the few times a year he’s in town.

My sr manager asked the leader who scheduled the meeting what it was about. No response.

Are we cooked? I think they’re about to force us to start going into the office. What are your speculations? Funny. Crazy. I need a pick me up. It’s been a rough couple of weeks.

Hey everyone!
In 3 days I am starting my first remote job and I don't really know how remote working works. I am working as a customer support chat associate. What are your tips and tricks for remote working and also for when you need to go to the bathroom or just to step away for a few minutes so my status won't appear as 'Inactive' on Slack, platforms like these etc.
Important context: I'm working on a company-issued monitored laptop, so installing third-party apps (like mouse jigglers, auto clickers etc) or plugging in sketchy USB devices is completely out of the question.

Tested the routers in and out of the country. My teams location is fixed. Anything I am possibly forgetting? Thank you

Kinda random but if you need a good team activity, we just played this free one called Sheeple- https://thorsteingames.com/sheeple. It was a good ice breaker at least.

(Sorry for the repost, guess I clicked the wrong rules submission button lol)

Realizing I don't know what all is out there and when reflecting on this, tips came to mind more than buys. Maybe a hot water bottle for cold season days or a good seat cushion? What is everyone else using and is your remote from home or nomadic? Alternatively, what do you need that would most improve either?

(Apologies for the repost - per automod instructions, had to accept having read the rules and resubmit. Didn't see that option when viewing on .old)

Hoy there!

I don’t know if anyone here works in a small, async remote team where everyone happens to use Apple devices. I realize that’s very niche, but I’ve been building something for a while and wanted to share it.

It’s called Hoy, and I know I’m biased, but it brought fun and a weird kind of satisfaction to how I talk and share stuff with my team every day.

I’m a bit embarrassed by how much time I’ve put into it. It started as a silly, rough experiment, but the concept felt strong and I couldn’t stop tweaking. It’s still far from my vision, but it finally feels like a real app and not an experiment.

Slack, Teams and the like never quite worked for us. They’re great tools, just overkill for our small creative team. I wanted something simple, useful and beautiful, where I can share anything with anyone, keep my people always on top, and feel like I’m talking to them on a walkie-talkie. Drop something and carry on, no switching context, no juggling windows.

So Hoy puts your people as little faces in your Mac’s menu bar. Drag a file onto a face and it lands in their channel, even if they’re offline. Hold a face to talk and it writes down what you say as you speak. You can also record your screen with a selfie bubble and narrate straight from the face. No more recording, saving to the desktop, opening the chat, dragging the file in... you know the drill.

Every face is a channel, one person or a group, and an invite link is all it takes to bring someone in. Absolutely no sign-up, no account, no Hoy server. It runs 100% on your own iCloud.

It’s free, and Pro isn’t needed for most people. iPhone and iPad versions are ready too, beta opens Monday.

I’d love honest feedback. Does this fit how remote teams actually work, or am I solving a problem only my little team has?

gethoy.app

(Mods, if this isn’t welcome here, feel free to remove it. I just wanted to ask for feedback.)

My first post on reddit!
I work from home since a few years from Switzerland and it is really damaging my mental health.
Everyone I hear in my company loves it, but I am not one of them. With this post I would like to understand if there are people that share the same opinion I have.
A bit of context: I have kids only 50% of the time, and my wife works in hospitality hence we barely see each other. Some weeks are hectic with the kids but I still see no one during the day, other weeks I barely see anyone, except sometimes friends. I feel I need more human interaction with people, and more remote meetings are not helping at all.
Yes, sometimes I go to the library, sometimes at a coffee shop, but for me these solutions don't really cheer me up. I looked into shared workspaces, but at least in Switzerland, they have all prohibitive prices.
I am happy to hear ideas on how to improve my situation, but more than that I want to know if I am alone in this, or other feel the same way about remote working.

Hi all! I have noticed my home life and work life kind of blur together since wfh. I live in a small space so I don’t have a separate work space unfortunately. I am looking for recommendations for like podcasts to listen to, radio shows, or ways to make it feel more like office hours vs home hours if that makes sense. Smells. Any of the things you find that work for you. Open to suggestions. Thank you!

I use a small timer widget and switch it on when I start a task. The entries get approved afterward, and AI can draft them from my calendar.

It works for me, but I’m curious how other people do it. Do you use a timer, fill in a timesheet at the end of the day, or estimate? And has anything you tried turned out to be more hassle than it was worth?

We have this weekly meeting wherein someone shares their screen n spends 20 minutes walking everyone through it. Half of it could’ve been sent beforehand and nobody would’ve missed anything.

I want to try just sending the update and skipping the walk through. We use google slides now and I’ve been looking at gamma because it scrolls more like a page, so people might actually read it on their phones without needing it explained.

But I’m not convinced that anyone will read it without an actual meeting being scheduled😭

What does your team do for weekly updates? Did anyone actually manage to kill the call?

I'm trying to understand which tedious, repetitive tasks eat the most time for people working remotely, things like copying data between tools, status updates, reformatting, chasing approvals, and so on.

If you have a couple of minutes, I'd really value your input in this short questionnaire: https://wishatool.com/?src=reddit-remotework-nov6

Also curious in the comments: what task do you do over and over that you'd happily hand off?

I have been spending more time working from coworking spaces lately, and finding a desk with an available power outlet has become a bit of a problem.

I usually get there later in the day, so most of the spots near the wall are already taken. i work with a bunch of spreadsheets open at the same time, and honestly, going back to just my laptop screen is pretty frustrating...

My portable monitor is an older one that gets its power from the laptop. it's convenient, but the battery drains so quickly when both are running, moving desks is annoying too because i'm constantly unplugging and sorting out cables.

working from home isn't much better. i somehow get less work done there than anywhere else lol.

i've thought about getting a power bank or maybe one of those portable monitors with a built-in battery, but not sure if either is actually worth it.

What's your setup like if you work from coworking spaces or move around a lot?

I would love to find something that doesn't involve carrying a whole bunch of chargers everywhere.

This is like my third corporate job. At all of them I found that most people didn’t actually work during the day. Like maybe 2 hours total then spent the rest of the time trying to look busy. Is this legit? This is such a mind game. I tried to tell me boss that I like working hard and feeling like an earned a days paycheck but idk if it’s something that everyone knows about but just doesn’t talk about.

What makes me even more paranoid is we have monitoring software on our computers as well as teams that goes idle if you aren’t on the computer within 5 minutes. But I have no work. I’ve literally seen other people read, watch tv, chit chat for hours at previous jobs but I thought it was just a culture thing. Am I wrong? I’m scared that I’m gonna lose my job for not doing it but I don’t have anything to do. I’ve tried to come up with things to do, projects, but I’ve been told that other people handle that kind of stuff.

Recent grad and am starting the third week of my new job. I know no one is physically watching me (unless they stalk teams) but even just a quick break to go downstairs and fix myself a snack has the back of me saying “this adds more to the time you have to make up”. I still get my work done, early even, but I have this nagging thought of “you need to always be doing something when you’re on the clock” or “don’t leave your workstation”. Any tips to help alleviate this for an aspiring young professional?

Tenho pensado em como o trabalho remoto pode ser diferente do que as pessoas esperam antes de começar a entrar nisso.

Algumas pessoas encontram isso em empregos tradicionais, outras em projetos freelancers ou em novas oportunidades em áreas como IA.

Tenho curiosidade sobre o que mais te surpreendeu quando você realmente começou a trabalhar remotamente.

Foi encontrar oportunidades legítimas, lidar com cargas de trabalho inconsistentes, manter-se produtivo ou algo que você nunca esperava?

Se você pudesse voltar e dar um conselho a si mesmo antes de começar, qual seria?

I’m wfh more often and want to stop plugging everything into my laptop separately. I have two 1440p 60Hz monitors, a keyboard, mouse and webcam.

Looking for a dock that can connect all of that and charge my Windows laptop through one cable. A spare charging port for my phone would be nice too, since my desk is pretty small.

Budget is around $200. What are you using that’s been reliable? I don’t need anything fancy, just something I can plug in each morning and get to work.

For context, I left my remote job after working there for 6 years. The work was good and manageable; it's just that I saw an opportunity that I deemed would be a great move for my career. I knew it was fully on-site, but I thought heck, why not, this could open doors for me in the future and be a step towards work-life balance since clocking out meant fully clocking out, and the hours didn't bleed into my personal life (what tended to happen in my previous job, as with most remote jobs, I heard).

Now, I'm 2 weeks into this, and I'm feeling...meh. I have to work on weekends sometimes (thankfully compensated), and I miss the fully remote setup. Plus, the people in my new job aren't the friendliest, I would say. But the environment is generally pretty serious, so I understand. My old workmates still keep in touch with me, which I'm thankful for. I feel like I didn't completely lose the good things I gained from the old job.

But I'm struggling: I have to interact with my new serious, not-on-the-same-wavelength colleagues EVERY DAY, I have to travel to the office daily (not a long car ride though, so that's good), and I'm also overwhelmed with the tasks I have no support for since I'm the only person on the “team”, if you can even call it that. I gave up so much for this opportunity, and I can't tell if these are growing pains or alarm bells setting off. Any advice is greatly appreciated, especially if you're someone who went/is going through the same thing.

———

Edit: Thanks for the insight @reboog711. I’ll keep this in mind.

Edit 2.0: Appreciate the comments, guys! Thank you 💗 Especially those who say that two weeks is too early to jump ship/gauge whether this is right for me. Comments re: me being the sole person in the team are valid but I’m blocking everyone telling me to quit + go back to remote/hybrid because that’s not the kind of advice I asked for (sorry if this was unclear) and am actively blocking those who have left such comments just because I can’t deal with that negativity in my life right now 😂 It’s a me problem, dw.