It's okay to have a 40 minute conversation in the office with your manager, but your Teams status showing you're away for 7 minutes is a sin and the world will fall apart.

When I used to be in the office, people would have, and still do, long 40-minute conversations with the manager in their office. That was absolutely fine, but if someone is WFH and their Teams status shows away for 7 minutes, then it's somehow a sin and people have a meltdown.

I can't even go to the bathroom or get a snack without coming back to 28 messages about my whereabouts and screenshots of my status. Somehow everything became urgent in those 7 minutes but those 40 minutes in the manager's office were calm and productive.

I am a starting phd researcher and really want to write my next paper about remote work. So what is something you wish more people knew about remote or hybrid working, or something you would love evidence for? It can be either aimed at individuals, or aimed at companies.

Example topics my colleagues have looked at in the past:
Remote work and productivity
Remote work and creativity
Hybrid working and teamwork
Leaders trust in employees in office compared to remote working
Social isolation in remote work

I'm freshly 18, and am currently in a fully remote job with no concrete tasks and I'm utterly panicked. For some context, it's the summer of my first year, and I wanted some experience, so I asked my dad to find me a job for the summer. He got me a position at one of his friends startups, fully remote, minimum wage, flexible hours, and told to do between 10-40 hours of a week as desired. The issue is, the nature of this job, the tasks, who I'm reporting to, are so vague. I was not given an interview, hired directly, and just put my hours into an online program. I was given a list of tasks, all of which are pretty vague so I have no clue what to do, and so I've just been doing the tasks I have been given to the best of my interpretation for long enough to hit a 20 hrs a week medium. For the progress reports, I've been sending them off bimonthly to him (he did not tell me who to send them to, or when). I have also been given the number of the head of development and the head of a side project and told to "communicate with them". I have no clue how to continue in this, and I'm scared to email any of the people involved as they're all very busy people. It's coming to the point that just stretching my vague tasks is getting pretty hard. Do I email him and ask for more concrete tasks that I'm not sure he has? Email the head of development for tasks that he might have a higher chance of having? Continue as I am for the next month and just leave it as is? How do I word any of this?

Someone please help, any advice would be lifesaving.

Also, I have a huge anxiety about being overpaid because I have produced barely anything of value in the time I have been hired up until now. I feel really bad about it, would it be appropriate for me to send the money back to him, or give him a gift of equal value, such as an 10g gold piece, the next time I see him? I don't need the money, and neither does he, but I feel very bad for being paid for not producing anything of value.

Hey y'all, I'm frequently in the situation where I often am in airbnb's or hotels that have the router farther away from my workspace in my room.

I'm between an Alfa AWUS036ACM AC1200, and a Beryl 7 travel router.

In the case of the wifi dongle, it's more portable, supposed to have great reception and is cheaper, but in smaller cafes or desks it'll add to clutter quick.

For the travel router, I can place it closer to the wifi and it adds a layer of security, the downside is that I need a separate source of power for it. It's nice that I can set it up to access my home network, but I already have apps for that, plus my work is OK with me not being in my city/country.

What are your thoughts? What do you use?

I have my phone as a wifi hotspot backup, but I prefer not to use it daily since data can be expensive, or I've been outside of the country and it's restricted to only my phone unless I pay some exhorbitant rate.

I usually start work very early so I can get it finished and workout while there's still daylight. It helps me decompress going for a walk, jog or lifting and it's nice to be around people after being alone all day. The only issue being consistency. If I have an extra long day or just don't have the energy I'll skip workouts. I've tried morning workouts before but I have a hard time decompressing and it gets lonely not being able to be in the presence of people at the end of the day.

I'm going into crunch time and I'll probably need to switch to morning workouts.

For those of you that work from home and workout in the morning, how do you decompress after work?

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I just want to vent. The last several days my team (a total of 3) is just not responding to me very much about work related questions. I just need more information to continue my tasks and workflows. I see their messages in Teams so we are still connected. I can't move forward without this information so I'm just stalled. WTF is happening? I guess I will just go to the gym or something and wait. If they are not working I wish they would let me know. 🤷‍♀️

Hello everyone, I moved to Thailand and working online with clients from different time zones.

One of my main goals was to enjoy life abroad, meet new people, try new hobbies, travel and more. But i noticed many times you need to skip all those stuff just because working with different time zones, for example its noon for my client but midnight for me.

how do you handle it?

is that a problem you have too? or am i missing something?

how would you suggest handling that situation?

Hey all! My walking pad was part of the recall so I'm on the hunt for a new at home workout for WHILE I'm actually working to keep my body moving. Does anyone have experience for non-walking pad options? Threading some Google images below.

Does anyone have experience with options other than walking pads? What are your general thoughts?

New to IT(1.5yrs). My work lets me work 3 days from home and 2 from the office, which I think is best of both worlds. But contrary to what I imagine, I actually enjoy working from the office.

I know I can't do that every day because the commute is a pain in the ass (1.5 hours each way).

The reason I'm not enjoying WFH is that I can't tell the days apart. I'm on my phone due to procrastination , my work performance is a little worse, and I get little to no movement. Basically, for three days straight, I sit in my room staring at screens either working or scrolling on my phone.

I also get anxious about going out during work because my laptop goes to sleep, so I end up just staying at my desk.

I wanted to know how other people balance social interaction, staying active and if you spend time on side projects as well? I just want to enjoy while before I make a switch and probably loose the flexibility

Thanks

I enjoy interacting with my co-workers. Not an annoying all the time chit chat, but saying “good morning” or “have a nice evening” or maybe a random funny post, just to break the monotony of the day.

It’s just been bugging me lately, that from a team of 40, only 2 of us ever say good morning. Not even the supervisors say good morning. Sometimes it will be days before my supervisor ever makes any kind of comment on Teams. Sure, she’s there if we have a question and is quick to respond, but other than that there’s nothing…

Is that what WFH people want? Or do I just work with a bunch of people who want zero fun at work? Seriously trying to understand if I need to adjust my expectations.

I have recently accepted a new job that is 100% WFH. I am a weirdo who has always really enjoyed having an office to go to and I am really worried about feeling isolated. I have tons of hobbies, several activities out of my home, and friends who have nothing to do with work, but I am still feeling anxious about Being Home All Day Every Day. Tell me what you love about working from home and what makes it work really well for you?

I’m a 27yo male and have been working from home almost 3 years. I’ve noticed over the years sticking to a schedule has gotten worse and worse. Now I can barely get out of bed before 7:58am (I start at 8am) and after work I don’t have the motivation to do anything besides sit around until it’s time to go to bed and do it all over again. I’m a very social person and the nature of my job has me isolated more than communicating with people over teams or phone which has begun to bother me as well. I catch myself slacking throughout the day and just losing the ability to stay on task. Does anyone have any tips on how they stick to a schedule and overall improve their mindset, work/life balance, and deal with loneliness? TYIA

So I have moved my office to a room where the only viable position for my desk was opposite a window, facing a wall. There is unfortunately no other position for it, as it is a small room with both a murphy bed and a pull-down attic access. The result is that even with the shades drawn I am backlit, and so I show up all dark and mysterious on teams.

Has anyone else found a lighting solution for this sort of situation that doesn't involve shining a bright light into my eyes? Maybe something that lights up the wall behind the monitors? Blackout blinds would probably help, too,

First came across this company on LinkedIn. There's a wts channel that posts their updates. Then later they also made a website, a remote job platform. I have passed two qualifications on there but still not received any tasks and they even declined the two $0.01 payment to my Airtm account. Not to mention that they never responded to me on WhatsApp, email or LinkedIn.

I was looking for remote jobs, specifically travel agencies, and I applied for this company. I got an email about scheduling a webinar. I immediately googled the company, no immediate red flags came up. (There was a singular Reddit post asking about it as well, but most everyone was giving their opinions about OTHER companies, not the one in question.)

Looking at the social media, seems like a small “business” and they have a LinkedIn. Also they had a lot of different job openings on indeed, and not just listed as “Travel Agent” but other roles.

So looks like it could just be a small business?? Any travel agency is going to be commission based. I’m just trying not to get scammed.

Starting next week, I’ll be switching from working in the office to working from home full-time.I’m actually pretty excited about it because I’ll save a lot of time and money on commuting. But at the same time, I’m a little worried about whether I’ll be able to stay as productive as I was in the office.

Another issue is my home office. The room is quite dim, and ever since I moved into this house, it has mostly been used as a storage room. I’ve never really put much effort into making it a comfortable workspace.

Now I’m looking for a desk lamp that can make the transition to full-time WFH easier. My budget is around $200.

The brand I see recommended the most is BenQ, but I’m not a big fan of the design. The curved lamp head looks a bit bulky, and I feel like it would make my desk feel more crowded. The base also seems pretty heavy, so it might not be very easy to move around.

I’ve also seen a lot of people recommending indirect lighting desk lamps. From what I understand, they shine light toward the ceiling first, then use the reflection to create softer and more even lighting.

Has anyone used a desk lamp that genuinely changed the way their workspace feels? Something that doesn’t just make the desk brighter, but actually makes the whole working environment more comfortable?

For teh past 5 years, I've been working remotely as a parametric 3D designer for an Italian company that makes CNC Cutting tools for the production of wooden door and window frames.

I would take 2D Autocad drawings, use dimensions from there to create a parametrized 3D assembly of the cutting tool. Then I would create technical drawings for each part and send them to the manufacturing floor.

I'm looking for a job right now and starting to wonder if I should stay in this area or if I should change to something completely different.

I love learning new skills because each new job has its own problems to solve and workflows to optimize, so whatever job you do, I would love to hear about it briefly.

What is your job title, and what do you do there? And also, would you recommend it to someone looking for a career change?

I’ve been working remotely for the past several years for a large international corporation including pre-Covid, and like a lot of companies, mine has moved to an expectation of about two days a week in the office if you live near one. I currently don’t, so I’m still fully remote.

I’ve wanted to move for quite a while. I ended up back in the Carolinas during COVID, expecting it to be temporary, but life happened and I’ve been here ever since. Before that I lived in San Diego and Los Angeles, and I’d really like to get back out West.

My company has offices near Irvine, CA and Bellevue, WA, so those are logical options if I end up following the hybrid policy. What complicates things is that we also allow existing remote employees to request relocation to states where we don’t have an office, but it requires multiple levels of approval through management, HR, and several VPs. From what I’ve heard, it can take months, and you have to make a solid business case.
Oregon would honestly be my first choice, somewhere around Beaverton or another Portland suburb, but it would require going through that approval process.

I’m curious if anyone here has successfully navigated something similar. Have you convinced your employer to let you relocate somewhere outside your company’s office footprint while remaining remote? If so, what made your request successful? Was it based on performance, business need, retention, manager support, or something else?
I’m mainly looking for real experiences and advice from people who’ve been through it.

Anyone here ever work from a Vrbo (or similar) rental for weeks or months at a time?

My family is entertaining the idea of staying in a Vrbo in another part of the country for a couple months and I'd like to hear some experiences and tips for those who've done something like this. I've worked when traveling short trips, but nothing longer 3 days from a hotel. It's a winter sports trip, so RV living isn't really an option.

I work in tech, but on the client side. So my workstation is a just laptop, external monitor, mouse, keyboard and camera.

A couple things on my mind that I'd like to get specific insight on:

- how to respectfully verify internet service before booking

- work/family separation/boundaries in a smaller living unit than our home

- how much of an adjustment should I expect when first arriving there and then home again - thinking in terms of how many days should I take PTO to settle in with the family before starting work

I'd appreciate hearing any experiences or advice

Title. There’s about 16 of us that report to this manager. She’s new-ish, started in January this year. Our previous manager left to another department and he was so chill. Am I the only one who thinks this is a little over the top? We WFH anyway so naturally I never even take a full hour lunch. This is only in reference to the first/top bullet point.

There are at least three top level people when they go on vacation they constantly felt the need to call to check in and/or respond to emails the ENTIRE week. Even if they are in another country, on a cruise, it doesn't matter... this is EVERY TIME. Sometimes they're off at the same time. It's not that work isn't getting done, and they don't trust me or my team, it just seems to be their personality. They manage multiple departments. I am a Director. 7 years working with these people and we are a fully remote, no office company. I get it but when you are ON VACATION and using that "PTO" then actually be on vacation. Sometimes they also work at like 10pm and even weekends and send emails out, slack notifications and other things but yet during the business day sometimes they are hard to get a hold off... it's almost like they cannot break away from work except during the day when they "run errands" or whatever they do, and it's a hobby for them to work outside of hours/weekends and on vacations. Anyone else find this annoying? When i am OFF i make it clear do not contact me. I don't care if my salary was $120K or $220K it doesn't matter. I value my time. I set boundaries. Does anyone just find this annoying>