Working from home has become the new normal for a lot of companies in Malaysia since last year when the Covid-19 pandemic first started.
Almost two years later, some companies have fully adopted WFH as their de facto standard whereas others have started going back to their offices provided the employees are fully vaccinated.
I’ve been working remotely as a developer for the past 2 years, and I prefer WFH compared to working from the office. That being said, WFH isn’t entirely straightforward, and there are a lot of challenges that you’d need to manage.
As such here’s my take on the good, the bad, and the ugly aspects of working from home.
The Good
1. Cuts down commute time drastically, and it allows you to do something productive instead
Let's look at the typical working hours for a company in Malaysia, 9 am to 6 pm, Monday to Friday.
If I have to be at the office on time, I need to be up at 7am, and I need to hit the road by 8am to skip the traffic. Some might have to wake up much earlier just to do the same.
And I need to deal with rush hour traffic once work ends as well. This is one long and daily battle that will eventually end up exhausting you without knowing it.
Working from home on the other hand, eliminates this entirely.
Let’s take the same example of working from 9am to 6pm. When you work from home, you have plenty of time to get ready for work even if you wake up at 8 am.
You have time to freshen up, plan your day, get some exercise in, and you’re all geared to conquer the tasks of the day. You could even prepare a quick and hearty breakfast before your workday starts.
This is a much better alternative than being stuck in traffic on an empty stomach.
For my typical work from home day, I will usually wake up at 7 am, have a 5-7km run, prepare breakfast for myself, and eat with the family before I fire up my VSCode and start coding away.
For me, this is possibly the best start to a workday as it helps me stay focused and energetic enough to work optimally and productively.
2. Allows everyone to optimise their own working styles
You're sitting in front of your home setup, and you can get as comfortable as you’d like. You can play music that gets you into your flow state, you can play a video in the background while you work or you can sit any way you’d like.
There’s no one around to judge you! You can do your work any way you’d like.
Let’s say you suddenly need a quick break, you can dive onto your couch and take a five minute break to recharge before getting back to tinkering around on the codebase.
Tired of working from home?
No worries, take a stroll to the nearest cafe, sip coffee, and code away. Who knows, maybe the coffee beans and the noise of the crowd could actually help you write bug-free code (for once)?
You might be wondering, “Well that’s good and all but how about the meetings?”
Every company has meetings, and for tech companies, the meetings could be more frequent. Daily standups, retrospectives, sprint reviews, technical discussions, and sometimes the list is endless.
Some might argue that sitting face to face would result in a better outcome than having an online meeting.
And to them I say, “Hop on Zoom, and turn on your camera!”
99% of topics can be covered through an online discussion without it being any different from having it face to face.
We can share screens, go through the code and record the discussion if need be. The communication divide can also be reduced by being punctual to join online meetings, being available on your communication tools, and by interacting with your colleagues from time to time.
The Bad
1. Coordinating every one’s schedules
Nothing is perfect, and working from home has its own share of defects.
One major trade-off to working remotely and having online meetings is the time spent on scheduling meetings with different stakeholders.
From my own experience, it’s much easier to set up ad hoc meetings when you’re in the office because you can see how busy your colleagues are, and you could quickly gather them into a room for a quick discussion.
When you’re working from home, you first need to make sure everyone involved is free to join an ad-hoc discussion, which is not an easy job. And then you need to find a time that works for everyone.
Sometimes, people might overlook your invite because they didn’t hear the notification or they’re busy with something else. When things like this happen, it might delay the process of everyone coming together to resolve urgent issues.
Add internet connectivity issues, weak microphones, and poor audio to the mix, and you’ll have a recipe for disaster.
The Ugly
1. People going MIA
Working from home isn’t for everyone.
If there are people in the team that aren’t responsible, then you’ll have to deal with scenarios where people go missing for hours on end, sometimes, even the whole day.
They don’t reply to texts in a timely manner, show up for meetings on time, and sometimes they might be running errands instead of actually getting work done. As fate would have it, let’s say you face a sudden issue while the said person is running errands, then the whole team would have to deal with the consequences of such issues.
Of course, this doesn’t apply to everyone. It only applies to the employees that tend to abuse such a privilege. That’s why it’s important for teams and companies to have proper SOPs in place to ensure everyone has a seamless WFH experience.
2. Employers that don’t understand boundaries
On the other end of the scale, you have employers that abuse working from home as well. Some employers think that their employees are ready to work anytime (even in the wee-hours of the night) simply because they’re at home.
Within a short time, this is bound to impact everyone’s morale negatively.
It’s very important for companies to define proper working times when working remotely, and they need to respect their employees’ time once work ends. This way, it gives them enough time to recharge, refresh, and to tackle the next set of tasks the following day.
This way, everyone wins!
Final thoughts
Working from home should be a flexible exercise that we can practice. However, working from home must be gauged carefully to weigh out the pros and cons. If the pros outweigh the trade-offs then it would make sense for the teams to work remotely, and to ease things even further, a proper SOP would definitely come in handy.
- If you're interested in joining companies that offer WFH in Malaysia, sign up here! -
