CGarchitect.com - View Single Post - Working from a home office

Jeff Mottle · December 12th, 2007

When I worked for Smoothe UK, I worked from home for 2 years. I also now work from home for VisMasters. It can be done, but the company has to be really commited to maintaining open lines of communication. It can get really frustrating quickly if that does not happen. There are also a lot of things that are difficult to do when you are not in the same office as your co-workers. You definetly take for granted how many 20-30 second conversations take place during any given day that collectively add up to a lot of knowledge you miss out on.

Also simple things like accessing network drives, special software licenses, access to render farms etc will all become much more difficult on the IT end. For example at VisMasters we have hardware VPNs on both ends that allow me to access our internal network. Now consider I don't do production anymore, but I do deal with a lot of files and I can tell you now it's VERY VERY slow. When I was with Smoothe it was even worse as it was VPN overseas. The IT people will need to open a lot of holes in their firewall and allow access to resources that normally they would prefer to leave "off the grid".

Also, working from home takes a lot of dedication. It's really easy to become distracted, especially if your goal is to be near family. Even though you work from home, once you are in your office (hopefully a seperate room with a door), that means no one should come in to bother you. There really needs to be that understanding.

There are a lot of little things you take for granted when you work in an office. It's definetly not impossible to work from home and obviously a lot of people do it, but it's very different from working from an office.

Also, if you value your life and time, you should put a lock on your door and when your done for the day, you lock the door and you don't go back. Given I work for VM and own CGA it's hard not to work all the time (8am to 2am almost every day, with break in between), but it VERY easy to never leave work if there is no physical seperation from you and your office.

December 12th, 2007	#2 (permalink)
Jeff Mottle President/Founder Join Date: Jul 2001 Location: Calgary, Alberta, Canada Age: 33 Posts: 5,164 Name: Jeff Mottle	Re: Working from a home office - Possible? When I worked for Smoothe UK, I worked from home for 2 years. I also now work from home for VisMasters. It can be done, but the company has to be really commited to maintaining open lines of communication. It can get really frustrating quickly if that does not happen. There are also a lot of things that are difficult to do when you are not in the same office as your co-workers. You definetly take for granted how many 20-30 second conversations take place during any given day that collectively add up to a lot of knowledge you miss out on. Also simple things like accessing network drives, special software licenses, access to render farms etc will all become much more difficult on the IT end. For example at VisMasters we have hardware VPNs on both ends that allow me to access our internal network. Now consider I don't do production anymore, but I do deal with a lot of files and I can tell you now it's VERY VERY slow. When I was with Smoothe it was even worse as it was VPN overseas. The IT people will need to open a lot of holes in their firewall and allow access to resources that normally they would prefer to leave "off the grid". Also, working from home takes a lot of dedication. It's really easy to become distracted, especially if your goal is to be near family. Even though you work from home, once you are in your office (hopefully a seperate room with a door), that means no one should come in to bother you. There really needs to be that understanding. There are a lot of little things you take for granted when you work in an office. It's definetly not impossible to work from home and obviously a lot of people do it, but it's very different from working from an office. Also, if you value your life and time, you should put a lock on your door and when your done for the day, you lock the door and you don't go back. Given I work for VM and own CGA it's hard not to work all the time (8am to 2am almost every day, with break in between), but it VERY easy to never leave work if there is no physical seperation from you and your office. __________________ Jeff Mottle CGarchitect.com