Watching “The Battle For Remote Work” play out in the media is interesting. There is an ebb and flow of articles proclaiming the merits of returning to the office, alternating with articles that extoll the virtues of remote work. I want to make it very clear that I am wearing the “I Heart Remote Work” shirt.
I was meeting with another engineering leader who has a very nice home office. We started talking about our respective setups. That is the modern-day equivalent of strutting your stuff with all of your peacock feathers on display. I suddenly realized there are many successful remote workers I have known through the years, and they all have something in common. Are you ready for me to shock you? Oh wait, you already clicked the link. I do not need to say that.
My realization is that the most successful remote workers and remote leaders have a very well-defined space for doing their work, and it often has very good physical separation from other parts of their home.
Let’s talk about what that looks like, and fill up a post with wonderful Amazon-Affiliate-linked goodies, shall we?
Thanks to one of my kids leaving for college, I have my home office in a full-sized bedroom. It has two desks. An Uplift standing desk and an L-shaped standard sitting desk (from IKEA, do not judge me). I generally have a machine that I dedicate to full-time work and another for personal use (gaming and side projects). Several years ago, I was a fractional CTO for multiple companies and had a desk with a stack of Mac Minis wired up to a single monitor, keyboard, and mouse separate from these machines. Whenever I was doing technical projects, I would insist on being shipped a build/deployment box. This was a very extreme way to ensure that everyone’s intellectual property was compartmentalized, and I believe everyone understood that importance.
The big takeaway here is that not all remote work is the same. Some people perch a laptop on their kitchen table and sit in a dinner chair. Others have separate rooms with sit/stand workstations and custom furniture. It would be interesting to run some studies on the quality of work and the impact of people’s time and space investment into making themselves effective remotely.
Let’s talk about a few other things that helped me succeed remotely.
Get a good chair. I am a fan of the Secret Labs chairs. They are very heavy chairs and very firm. Some people prefer lighter Aeron-style chairs; if you do, Google that on your own time.
Use consistent peripherals. When I buy mice, keyboards, and ergonomic items, I tend to buy them ten at a time. I am not going to give you an Amazon Affiliate Link for my keyboard of choice because they are no longer being manufactured, and I am a filthy hoarder who will eventually need to knife-fight someone to get the last of these that were ever made.
I do recommend the Razr DeathAdder mouse. It is like someone at Razr asked, “What if people who work for a living are also gamers?” The answer was this mouse.
I buy the same set of ergonomic peripherals, too. This ought to be its own point. I am a big fan of wrist rests, and I got one for my keyboard from Belkin and a different one for my mouse from IMAK. As an added bonus, the IMAK mouse cushion is something you can pick up and toss around while you are rubber-ducking a problem. Just be prepared for it to break one day and spill little beads all over your office.
Make sure you have a good mousepad too. I have a variety of hand-me-down pads and a beautiful World of Warcraft mousepad that I received as a thoughtful gift. I recommend the SteelSeries brand for the ones I buy for myself.
Finally, ensure you have a quality camera, microphone, and headset. I purchased a Blue Yeti microphone that does the job, but I should have bought “the other kind” of microphone because I had to do a bunch of finagling to get it to work. I also had to get a four-foot boom arm because of my ridiculously oversized curved monitor. For headsets, I am a fan-for-life of Sennheiser.
I prefer all of my peripherals to be wired. I have had enough meeting complications and online gaming problems that have originated from someone else running out of batteries. No thank you. Do not want. Zero stars.
There are two reasons I wanted to share this list. The first reason is that I am still trying to dethrone myself as Amazon’s worst affiliate marketer. The second reason is that I have put significant time and energy into making myself effective as a remote worker. I do not know if there is an upper bound on what you can spend to improve your work environment. I do know that I am very happy with my setup, having invested two thousand dollars over the years, and that does not include items that did not make the cut.
Thank you for reading along! I hope that you are happy with your remote work setup. If you are one of those “I Heart Return To Office” people, the good news is that some of the items I linked above are probably things you can buy for your weird previous-century fetish. If I offended you, I am happy to fax you an apology.
See you all in a week!
