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How many people here telework 100% or nearly 100% from home? Just curious to see the responses from our SimHQ demographic. For those of you who telework, it is all that you expected it to be or do you sometimes miss the office?

I currently do not work from home, but during Covid I did for like a month or maybe two months. I remember absolutely hating it, and although remote working is still a thing we can do here, I always come into the office.

I felt like I was either always working or always goofing off. It would cause me to work at my desk until after work hours, then I would be discouraged from playing games at the same desk, so no game playing for that time, I just couldn't face spending my life at that desk.

I like to work among people (even though I'm less than "normally" social outside of work) and I feel isolated and less productive when at home. Also, I like to totally separate my work & home life, and leaving the office lets me draw that line.

I have to go in 2 days per pay period. I think it's a mixed bag to be honest. There's a lot to like about working from home, the environment is much more...relaxed. I have a dedicated room that is just the work office, so I don't feel like my work space is intruding into my home space too much. I like that when I go on break I can completely leave my work environment and take a walk outside or hang with the dog for a bit. I also like being able to have my lunch at home, esp in nice weather when I can sit on my deck and relax during my lunch break.

On the flip side, there is a loss of social interaction working from home that I find unfortunate. I also don't have as much of a sense of camaraderie with my co-workers as I feel I might have were I in the office full time. I also don't feel like the networking/support opportunites are there as well.

So on a personal level, I find it very satisfying. Professionally, I feel like it is very much lacking due to the lack of personal interaction.

This is exactly how I feel about it. I like having some kind of "structure" that is free of distractions when I have to work and being in an office setting provides that. By that same token, I don't want to take any work home with me. Work and home are two separate realms for me.

I'm self employed so I work from home every day. I do not miss the office nor the politics.

When I was a kid I ran a landscaping business, starting at age eleven, so going back to running my own business felt like home. I wouldn't advise this or working remotely unless you're a self-starter, self-motivated, and self-planner who is skilled at setting aside chunks of time to get the work done, and know when to do so. The best part about working from home or yourself is you can set your own hours, work when you want, and so long as the work gets done right, well, on time and to the highest standards, it doesn't matter when you do the actual work part--even if that is at 3 or 4 am or some other odd time.

I think my wife has a much harder time with this than I do. To me, working for myself is natural. I have only had one five or six year segment of my time since college where I "took orders and did what my boss said." They eventually proved to be miserable.

How does the saying go? "If it was easy everyone would be doing it". As you alluded to, if you have the right personality and skillset, being your own boss can be a great experience.

Been working from home since 2008 and wouldn't have it any other way. The long commute I had to do before that (4 hours total on a bad day) was taking all the fun out of it. Most of my job involved working with teams in Poland and India, so being in office was pointless anyway. Around 2018 the office converted from hybrid to fully remote as a cost-saving measure and that turned out to work fine for most people. A few months ago I was laid off and I decided to become self employed rather than look for another company. Being able to continue to work from home played a big part in this decision.

I retired at the end of 2023. From the time Covid hit until then, I was working from home 99+% of that time. I didn't miss the office. My department co-workers were spread out over multiple states, and we had sufficient interactions via Teams (similar to Zoom) that there was no loss in efficiency or innovation. Not losing the 1 hour a day round trip driving to and from work, plus not spending on gasoline and maintenance was a major plus. In return, I would typically give them and extra 1/2 hour or more per day. Plus, I had a better computer display setup at home.

Win-win.

The last few months the company started requiring people in our department to come in to the office (or be at some other company facility) at least 2 days a week, but since I was retiring, they left me alone. It was a great time to be able to retire.

Over COVID I worked remote for 1 1/2 years. Before that I was in the office 100% of the time my whole IT career. In my later career, most of those I interacted with, and all of the technology was 100% remote from my work office - so when we all had to go back in to the office in the summer of 2021 I signed up to work from home 1 day a week. The hoops to go through with HR and my immediate supervisors were extreme to say the least!

I just left my previous employer of 12 years for a company that I had interacted with during my time there - they seemed like a great company, and they had an opportunity with more money on-top of 100% work-from-home! Along with conferences paid as well as a company trip once a year... I could not refuse!

It's really hard to survey a bridge or intersection via telepresence. For now.

As others had done, I worked from home over COVID for over a year, and really had no issues with it. I have my own house and live alone, and don't even have any pets, so there was nothing to interrupt my work sessions. I have a nice dual monitor setup on a desk so I could be very productive at home. I work in IT and many of the systems do require hands-on support from time to time, and there's a team that handles end-user support, so when people started coming back into the office, they were back too, and I began going in because I oversee that team.

I'm fine working in the office or from home now, whichever works best at the time. I work with people on the east coast, 3 hours ahead, so I often have early morning meetings I'll take from home, then later, go into the office. Fortunately, my commute is relatively short and even somewhat scenic, so the drive isn't bad.