If you work from home what do you do?

Senior manager at a tech company. I’m pretty hands on and I really motivate my team by showing them the real impact of their work on the world around them so they really feel what they see on the screen makes a difference. Nothing like seeing that real thing the code drives in the real world!

When I was working from home it was just living on zoom, slack, teams and emails. Focusing on current projects and trying to plan new ones. It was a bit less about creativity and more about just getting through the work and the day. Now I’m back to the office it’s much more about creativity, innovation and developing the next big ideas.

It’s been much easier and much more motivating to be back in the office now that I can have those water cooler chats and really feel connected to people more personally. The environment is much better for me in the office and when I walk through that door it is just a switch that flicks inside me that makes me focus. At the end of that day that switch flicks back and I get that closure to the working day that I missed so much.

I spent so long home working I was forgetting what that was like! I don’t ever want to go back to feeling like I’m wading through treacle everyday trying to talk to people on slack that don’t respond for 3 hours/days or sitting in zoom for hours. It wears you out and you just give up on doing your best.
 
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Can see your point. There is also the potential to burn out, for example if it was a nice day and I needed to cut the grass, on lunchbreak I would squeeze it in then reflect on why I felt drained - when we were working from site I would have walked round the local park and had breaks during the day. Much more distractions when WFH.
 
Civil engineering

Spend lot of my time as technical support, could either be software or design review. Normally design railway bridges though this year I spent lot of my time doing lineside rubbish like cable routes and foundations for all sort of equipment. Not as fun but it was something different and there was some fun 3D modelling to do.

E: also writing procedures, training people and checking others work
 
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Most of the people I know who work from home full time or most days of the week are either doing IT support at some level or consultancy type work. One person for instance their job working from home is basically putting the right people in touch with the right people for their needs - basically PA type stuff - talking to people on behalf of other people to make stuff come together with everyone on the same page, etc.

Don't really work from home myself but when I do it is generally logging onto Sharepoint/O365 to read up on documentation and/or do learning stuff, fill out forms where I need to involve other departments in operations, etc. or just generally helping out with support requests if things are busy.
 
Im a contract RF/Microwave (Radio Frequency) Design Engineer so I currently design RF circuit boards for radar systems that go into UAVs and search and rescue helicopters but have also designed mobile base station and repeater equipment in the past. Day to day, I select components, component derating, circuit simulation, circuit layout, create design data packs for peer review, hold peer reviews to go through design toll gates, write test procedures etc......
 
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Bouton Aide said:
^ This is just for OcUK forums right? :D


Remote Sysadmin (SMB's only)

Microsoft office licensing (+setup, rollout, migrations e.t.c).
Microsoft windows licensing (+setup, rollout, migrations e.t.c).
Microsoft 0365 Email (setup/migration/administration).
VPN connections (new, existing, migrations and administration).
Various other applications on request (sage, payroll manager, SIMMA e.t.c).
General desktop support (Outlook, password resets, group policies).
Active directory (setup, migrations, changes and administration).
Remote switch configurations from various hardware.
VOIP (multiple setups from ground up, migrations and current, different hardware, software and administration)
Fiber connection tests (if a line is slow or goes down)
Documentation on any aspects of above.

Some days I don't get any tickets at all so I do the below, some days I'm super busy.

All of the above while watching TV, listening to music, playing games and drinking tea/coffee.
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Pretty much this, I also have PMO delivery tasks too, primarily focused on Projects but support our 1st/2nd/3rd line BAU teams with the above.
 
Th0nt said:
Awesome summation. I can image the latter point being absolutely spot on!
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Pretty much, a lot of the time it's not their fault, they're understaffed, they don't have the remit to specialise in the way that my team and I can, and they're generally dealing with completely uncooperative stakeholders. Having said that there's still a sense that we're coming in and taking their job from them, even though we are all employed by the same organisation and our support, for the most part, is completely free.
 
Work for a multinational IT services firm, most customers are not in UK so was WFH before COVID, I design EUC and Azure solutions, take meetings, watch Netflix.
 
It is funny how many IT people in here are talking about watching netflix, tv, video gaming etc. Probably the same lot that whinge that they get dragged into too many meetings and can't make progress because of said meetings.
 
dLockers said:
It is funny how many IT people in here are talking about watching netflix, tv, video gaming etc. Probably the same lot that whinge that they get dragged into too many meetings and can't make progress because of said meetings.
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I only watch it if it is something I have seen before and don't have to concentrate on and I am not busy, like I am currently. was working with three customers, two have finished the project and a third has postponed their cloud migration for now. so self paced learning and a bit of Netflix.
 
dLockers said:
It is funny how many IT people in here are talking about watching netflix, tv, video gaming etc. Probably the same lot that whinge that they get dragged into too many meetings and can't make progress because of said meetings.
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Background usually with videos/music etc. Never played games while working.
 
dLockers said:
It is funny how many IT people in here are talking about watching netflix, tv, video gaming etc. Probably the same lot that whinge that they get dragged into too many meetings and can't make progress because of said meetings.
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Are you making that connection just because the idea of it annoys you? Or are their examples of this happening here? :p
 
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