Like many other tech workers, I chose this career because I wanted to work from the comforts of my own home. A couple months ago, when my seemingly distant plans to live abroad slammed into me like a truck does to an Isekai protagonist, I was torn away from my comfy corporate job and back into the world of startups. By stroke of fate, I managed to land a comfy, part-time developer job in a tiny little startup that didn't have an office at all.
It took a couple weeks for me to notice that I had essentially achieved what I had set out to do.
Sure, things could be better, but here I was, working remotely abroad. The "abroad" part was important. I always wanted to see more of the world, and had used books and movies as a window to see further from the confines of my home country's borders, but that's a topic for another day.
There was one thing that I immediately noticed about working remotely: it wasn't as liberating as I'd hoped.
I was free to leave my workstation, take a quick trip to the closest mall to treat myself to some snacks during the day! I don't really remember the last time I walked around outside when I used to work a 9-5. It felt so distant, like it was something only children and pensioners did. Then here I was, with flexible working hours.
I could "borrow" some time to go out, but then I had to pay it back in the future. It was a concept not too far from loans --I had to earn money, and to do that, I had to work. What flexible working hours gave me wasn't exactly more time. It was more along the lines of getting a credit card after using a debit card all your life. Just like loans, if you didn't catch up on your work and settle the debt, then you'd rack up interest in the form of more work piling up until it becomes too much. You could, for example, go out on a Tuesday afternoon to catch a movie at 3PM, but you'd also have to make up for lost time later that day or during the weekends.
It's far better than being bound to an office, though, that's for sure. Having the freedom of using a credit card, but using it just like a debit card is an option now, as opposed to only having a debit card.
However, one thing I do miss is the sense of isolation between work and rest. When you work in an office, you obviously rest at home and then work at the office. That's cut and dry. But what happens when you work from home? Where do you draw the boundary between "work" and "rest"? You even use the same device to do work and play, and sometimes, you can sandwich a session of gaming between blocks of working.
I feel that remote work places an old, nearly forgotten type of burden on the worker, one that some people have forgotten about.
It gives them freedom to work, or to laze around. Will they actually work as efficiently as they would at an office, or less, or maybe more because they're better rested and more content?
I do believe in this particular situation, people more accustomed to studying would have an easier time than those that do not. After all, what's the actual difference between studying and working from home when it comes to intrinsic motivation?