The working from home thread: tips and advice

I started a new role in May.

I've never been to the office, never met any co-workers, and only had one video chat to confirm my identity.

It has been blissful...

Your experience may, of course, vary wildly.

My only pointer would be to avoid reading any sort of tone into emails from people you barely know, and assume that everyone is doing everything in good faith.

Yep, and I haven't been into the office at all. I met a lot of the team when interviewing before lockdown started, but it feels like a long time ago.

I feel like it's taken longer to get productive than it would if I were sitting with everyone and could grab their attention easily for questions. Equally, their productivity has probably been less affected by onboarding me, and no-one seems unhappy.

I think my biggest mistake was feeling relatively tied to my desk for the first few weeks, because I didn't have my phone set up for their mail & instant messaging. Sort all that quality of life stuff out asap, is my advice.

I started a new job in August. I’ve never been to the office or met anyone in real life.

I’d largely say I’ve also found it to be awesome. No awkward introductions as you’re parades through the office or any of that. The onboarding stuff where they give you a stack of crap to read was much more bearable sat on my sofa.

Some people emailed me to set-up ‘virtual coffees’ (lol) which actually were quite good so tried setting up some of my own which everyone who I asked very happily obliged.

I also had people keep telling me that it must be so difficult starting a new job remotely but honestly it’s been fantastic. Although that may just be the awesomeness of WFH completely skewing my perspective.

I'm not quite in the same boat, but I was only at my new job for a month before I went away for a week's holiday and returned to full WFH.

If you can, ask to be set up with a buddy/mentor other than your manager who you can go to with all the finding-you-feet questions, help you find contacts etc. It's much easier to ask those questions to someone who has signed up to help you than have to decide if it's important enough to bother your manager/teammates. Plus, having a mentor is always good.

Due to a reorg my current team was only created in the Summer and out of 6 of us, 4 joined the company since WFH started. Over the summer we had two on-site days where we reserved a large conference room and spent the day planning our roadmap. Meeting for work is allowed under the Covid rules in tier 3 but of course your colleagues have to be comfortable with the idea including transport. We made ours a short day (10am start, 3 pm finish) to avoid peak travel times. If you will be working with a team and it's at all possible to do something like that I recommend it - just that one day made a huge difference.