Work-from-home confessions

I'm working from Home from past 8 years out of my 14 YOE. we don't have an ODC or seats allocated thus no option to goto office. During the initial days, I felt blessed about this WFH and lately it impacts my work life balance. I binge eating and binge watch tv shows when there's no priority work. I feel I don't have any motivation to learn anything and also feel disconnected whenever I meet another techie. How do you all cope with WFH? Thank you 🙏

I work in remote mode full time, occasionally visit the office, once in 3 months. My office is located in a different city from where I live in. The work I do is challenging and interesting, but I manage to complete my tasks by working for max 4-5 hours a day. Remaining time of the day, I get distracted, not with household duties but by doing research on random stuff. I want start a company, but I have no idea where to start. I consume a lot of information, yet most of the time I spend goes unproductive. By nature, I am very unorganized. Most of my friends are busy in their own world and I don’t want to disturb them seeking advice. Any idea how I can get over this habit to make productive use of my time, while WFH?

I am an engineer and have been working remotely since the pandemic started. Initially, it was great as I could save time by not commuting to office but now I feel like I am missing out on something. I don't know what it is but I just feel like I need to be in an office environment to thrive. Maybe it's the social aspect or the structure of having set hours, but whatever it is, I can't seem to find the same level of motivation when working from home. Anyone else feeling this way? Any tips on how to make remote work more productive and enjoyable?

Work from home (WFH) has been really beneficial for me in terms of the flexibility it offers. I can manage my chores better, spend more time with my loved ones, and even travel while working remotely. But lately I have been getting bothered with the expectation to always be available. Gone are the days when one could “log out” in the evening and fully BE PRESENT where they were. These days, I get pings on Slack or WhatsApp messages for the smallest of things on late evenings and even weekends. It’s like work has slowly creeped into quality personal time. I love being present in the moment and this culture does not afford that option.

I know a lot of people love working from home. But small rant here. Honestly, straight out of college I thought I would do too. But no, I absolutely do not. Why? 1. No personality development. It's honestly like an online college all over again (1/2 of my college "life" was online). I talk to a screen, waste a lot of time otherwise. 2. I don't have a room to call my own. I know this is going to make me sound like a privileged brat but I need my privacy to feel my full confident self. My family members are always on top of my head and spy on me during work. No they really do. 3. I hate, absolutely LOATHE approaching people on teams. I'm more social, confident and comfortable working in an offline setting be it presenting something or talking to senior folks in general. 4. I have NO life outside of the computer/home. My hobbies, interests everything are inside the tiny room I share with my parents. I still have 2 different desks (which are literally next to each other) for work and personal stuff respectively. When I had offline semesters, it was really awesome as I had balance. I graduated in 2023 and of course I have a lot to learn, but I'm seriously thinking about searching for another job that's not WFH. I'm still early career and I think I should not be working remote. Am I stupid?

Whether it's day-to-day routines, workspace setup, or managing distractions, share your advice and personal experiences for staying on track while working remotely. How do you separate work life from home life and maintain a healthy balance?

Now why everyone is talking about benefits of working from office? I saw post from Sunil Shetty on linkedin. My take is, when pandemic hit companies asked employees to WFH to keep wheel rolling. Now we know WFH can give greater control over personal and professional life(at least for me) we don’t want to go back to office. In my opinion corporate want us to work from office cause, - they can control our time, 9hrs in ofc, you are getting paid for time not skills. - they want to show who is the boss here. - Learning is key reason for WFO, bullshit, we have a lot of learning portals and traffic time can be used to learn but it is never a intention. What you guys think?

I am looking to join a Remote based QA Role and focus on health/finance/travel So I have been looking for remote QA with tech Stack (Selenium, Java, Python,Maven, TestNG, Api Testing, Appium and SQL)opportunities so that I can invest more (No rent), focus on health (less travel time more gym time), and travel (planning 2 international trips this year). For folks working remotely, please share your advice on how I can achieve this and if you guys have any suggestions for any of these topics, I am open for conversation. Thanks.

I was always used to working from the office. COVID changed the game and made remote mandatory. I didn't like it. I used to yearn to go to the office and finally changed jobs to an on site only role a year later just so that I could work from the office. But now I miss remote work. The one year sub consciously charged me. Interested to know some of your stories.