The working from home thread: tips and advice

As someone with a 200mile commute I am very much against being forced back to the office more than 1 day a week but they are currently pushing for 2 or 3 days a week in the office which I am doing my best to resist.

One of my concerns is 'hybrid' meetings as I see it going back to the people not in the room basically being excluded from the parts of the conversation but the solution is getting people to use tech properly not forcing people in to the same physical space.

Also the concern raised above, am being encouraged to go back to get face time with people but know I am on a different childcare/commitments schedule from others so a high chance we won't want to be in the office the same days anyway.

One of my concerns is 'hybrid' meetings as I see it going back to the people not in the room basically being excluded from the parts of the conversation but the solution is getting people to use tech properly not forcing people in to the same physical space.

At our place, the solution is: if anyone is remote everyone attends as if they are remote.

We used to do the same even for (non-video) calls, 4 people in the office on a conference phone and a couple of people dialled in and it is easy for the people not in the room to be marginalised.

So they all do it from a desk rather than in a meeting room?

Yep. With on-line only tools too, like Mural etc.

Puts an onerous on preparation and meeting planning. I like it, actually, but in future, it's very unlikely anyone will be 100% remote, I will need to schlep about a bit each week, but that's OK as I'm bored of being in the house all day and doing my own washing up.

we're going to be doing the same. Makes sense because it eliminates the rush for meeting rooms and stops whoever's remote having less input that those in the room.

A Samsung 49 inch monitor for £800 on Amazon.

Tempted but, it’s 120cm wide...
Might go smaller as I may not actually end up using all the screen real estate.

Likely to counter distance bias?

Yep, it is a bit of a monster...

What I like is that I can comfortably have 3 programs open, I found on 27 inch I could have 1 thing open on each screen, but that was actually too big, but couldn't quite get 2 things per screen, with the ultrawide I can have 3 and it is perfect size. So I think it depends in how you work, I have to flick between excels and ppt a lot, so having them all up front is very handy.

That's the same monitor @Sam_w and I have.

Bargain at £800.

We have the added headache at work that different regional countries will, after the "end" of COVID cooperation, reimpose their tax rules for WFH. So if you work here but live in Germany, Belgium or France, you have different numbers of days per year you can WFH without having to pay more tax in your country.

As employer we don't have to report it but we DO have to track it because if the employee ever has to provide proof, we have to have it and if they work > 50% of their time from home, they drop out of the local tax/social security/state pension and have to pay it themselves in their country of residence (so HR have to stop taking tax/SS out). It's a nightmare to manage for HR so we're hoping the regional governments are able to figure it out.

Don’t tell me that....

Just picked up a 32 inch samsung 4k monitor instead, with a 25 inch screen in portrait mode next to it. Loads of screen real estate!

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Advice please: dslr for video tutoring
mespilus jr. has completed exams at end of Y2 at university.
Some further lectures scheduled, but plenty of time to restart his online tutoring. He has (just about) managed with laptop webcam,
but would like something better.
Any obvious choice of (off the pace) dslr to improve his presentations?

Buy a cheap android phone, use DroidCam. It's what I do when lecturing and it works much better than a webcam. Buy a flexarm (eg this or this, latter gives the option of use as a DIY visualiser if he doesn't have a pen-based device) to mount it and get a decent microphone.

Anyone else making a tentative return to the office? I've started going in once a week, mainly to give Mr Betty a break from me and so it's not too much of a shock to the system when it starts being compulsory. I'm finding it surprisingly easy to focus. I think it's the white noise from the aircon.

I'm going to be heading back in for the odd day in the next couple of weeks.

Company is about to announce 60:40 / office:home split. Will be interesting to see what that does as people have certainly embraced the wfh benefits.

Don't have any specific suggestions, but would've thought mirrorless a better option than DSLR.

cheap android phone, use DroidCam

Or iOS and Camo; works well for me.

FWIW, I have an EOS 40D from 2008 which I use with the EOS Webcam Utility.

This is not a perfect solution:

1. In webcam mode the aperture is wide open so the depth of field is tiny (doesn't help that I use it with a 35mm f/2.0 lens).
   
2. I had to build a 6.4v power supply using a buck converter to make it run longer than 1hr.
   
   

But the picture is amazing and the utility works with just about every video platform except Slack calls (Meet, Teams, Skype all good).

Anyone still suffering with a bit of WFH burnout? I think mines coming from not really having a 'break' as such for a long time. Any time I do have isnt really enough to switch off. Any tips, I'm sure a few of us are feeling the same.

Yep, I'm wrecked, and the few days I've taken off end up being DIY marathons and / or childcare.

Exhausted.

Check. 18 months with literally zero interesting input takes its toll. I need a hotel bar in a big city on an asap basis.

I spent a couple of days in the Peak District last week while my car was having some work done to it. Stayed in a place in the arse end of nowhere with no mobile signal at all and terrible satellite WiFi. It was bliss.

We are officially 60/40, but our team was mostly recruited during lockdown so we only have two desks between 9 people and there's no more desk space available. I think we'll get an exception and be allowed to work fully remote until there's more space.

The problem with hybrid working IMO is to be significantly better than fully remote wrt comms, networking, decision making etc everyone has to have the same two days in the office, and then there's no cost savings.