Following on from the article on this site and Dave F, I thought I’d do a response on my thoughts on working from home.

I work from home on a one day a week basis, and so does my partner.   We both commute to London or a more local office the rest of the week (generally London for her, and a 50/50 mix of London/local for me).    One thing we have learnt is that we should not work  at home on the same day…. it presents problems as we only have one office, so the other person ends up st in the living room.    This results in no place to go for downtime, and no clear home/work divide.

On a normal day from home, I’ll go into office at 8am, venturing downstairs only for teas and coffees from the Coffee machine during morning while on the phone - have a distinct 30 min Lunch at 12:30 (watching working lunch!), and finish around 5.     This represents a longer day than I would do in the office, and I do as it represents part of the travel time in the car or train I save by not driving/taking train in.

Communication - A combination of internal Instant Messaging via VPN and phone is used to stay in touch with the office, and meetings..    Also most teams I work with are not in UK - and WebEx/other online meetings are used to demonstrate applications and processes, so we’re already in an online world, as the company I work for can’t send me to a far flung region of the world every week or no actual work would be completed.

Reliability - The biggest issue has proven to be the power locally - this year so far in 7 months we have had 3 days where the power at home has been out for extended periods of time.     This was fixed by placing the DSL router on a UPS which lasts for 3-4 hours after the first experience.      This is sufficent to continue working for at least half the day using the office laptop.    Beyond this our employers have been happy as theres not much that can be done without power.

Overall for me and my partner the experience is positive, but neither of us would be prepared to work 100% from home.    We both realise the benefits of the office and meetings with colleagues.   We both would prefer to be at home 2 or 3 days rather than the current one.

Do you work at home with your partner?   Do you have 2 offices to deal with this if you both work for different companies, or do you get along fine?