Welcome to an update of working from home, 2020 Covid edition. For those who are new to this blog, or who forgot, I did a post about working from not at work a long while ago: Working From Away. With Covid-19, most programmers are working from home, including me, so I thought it was a good time to discuss working from home again.
The major difference this time, is you shouldn’t travel. In my previous post I said I liked working outside the house, usually in a coffee shop. During a pandemic, that’s probably a really bad idea. I would suggest supporting your favorite coffee shop. You probably want to drink there again after the pandemic ends, but you should really choose to stay home.
I’m going to assume you work for a company, and your not a self-employed contractor. If you are a self-employed contractor, you probably already work from home. Good for you!
As a programmer, you probably have a laptop that was issued by your company. This is probably the machine you will be working with. Depending on the company, you may ssh into a physical machine located inside of your company or you may do your work directly on that machine. I don’t find the difference to matter, though I do all of my programming on Emacs in terminal mode.
1. You may choose to work solely with your laptop.
I personally don’t like this scenario. The screen is to small, not enough screen real estate to view all of my code.
2. You may have a monitor.
I have a 27′ monitor. I find it’s a good size, I can easily have two or three side-by-side Emacs buffers up. I also use my laptop screen for web-browsing.
3. You may have more then one extra monitor.
I find two screens to be optimal, one for code and one for non-code. You may like three. I hear Bill Gates prefers his three monitor setup.
Now, where to work. Some people like to sit on a couch. This is terrible for your back, please don’t do this to much.
My wife likes to sit at our dining table. This is fine for small bouts of work, but I don’t want to work at my dining table, I prefer to eat there.
I recently purchased a desk from IKEA: https://www.ikea.com/us/en/p/micke-desk-black-brown-10244743/ . If I had more space I would have ordered a larger desk, but it barely fits!
Make sure you have a decent chair.
With a little one, you should also be able to wall yourself away. If I wasn’t in a separate room, little one would never let me get work done! If you don’t have a little one, I would still suggest having a separate room. It gives your life distance from your work.
One last note: Please stay at home. Don’t go to your favorite coffee shop! Feel free to support them though. Help support your local hospitals.
Please read:
Don’t forget to have fun.
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