From the Editor’s Desk: Feeling Remote (Premium)

30 years ago this coming year, I started working from home full-time, which set me apart from virtually everyone I knew. And while some friends and family members joined me in doing so in time, most workplaces that could accommodate working from home did not do so for all the obvious reasons. Reasons that were later proven wrong when the 2020 global pandemic forced their hands. As it turns out, many people are just as productive, maybe even more so, at home as they are when forced to commute into an office.

Or maybe not.

Three years after we all emerged uncertainly into the world again, we’re all still fumbling around trying to figure out what normal means now. What I can tell you is that normal for me hasn’t changed in the slightest, at least from a work perspective. And that my initial thoughts about working from home in the 1990s are just as relevant today.

Put simply, it’s not for everybody. A conclusion I arrived at after a few years of experiencing it first-hand. It feels like a million years ago.

In the mid-1990s, we were living in Phoenix, Arizona, and my nascent new career in writing had taken off, first with books and then with web publishing, or what we’d later call blogging. But the transition started in 1993 when we moved to Phoenix so that I could pursue a degree in computer science at Arizona State University (ASU). In the span of just a few years, I attended school and then dropped out, wrote several books, started a few websites, worked remotely for a tiny web publishing start-up in San Francisco, went solo, and then was hired by the company that published Windows NT Magazine back in an era where paper publications were both important and prestigious. Everything changed.

I’ve been lucky in many ways, and I’ve had many unique life experiences, several of which happened during these critical years.

For example, because I unexpectedly couldn’t get in-state tuition during our first year in Phoenix, I had to get a job and attend a local community college part-time at first. That job ended up being a temporary return to banking, which was unwelcome, but it also led to the bank robbery stories I hold in the Thurrott Premium newsletter a few years back. And in attending Scottsdale Community College (SCC) instead of ASU that first year, I met Gary Brent, the professor who mentored me and kickstarted my writing career out of nowhere, another story I’ve told before.

There was also the time I visited a professor at ASU after my transition there so I could find out which books we’d be using in an upcoming class, only to discover that I’d written one of the contenders. After conferring with the higher-ups at ASU, who told me I couldn’t just get credit for that class—I suspect this circumstance had never come up before—I dropped out to write full-time.

Given all this, I place my work-from-home start date somewhere in early 1994, and I probably forget half of the jobs I was able to perform remotely in the early years. I did work at SCC briefly, part-time in two of its computer labs, and I even co-taught a Visual Basic class there with Gary one semester. I worked for a local ISP briefly, too, for which I created a Windows 3.x-based application launcher for its customers using the 16-bit version of Delphi, though I never really had to come into the office. So I guess my last full-time in-person job was at that bank in Arizona, which I left in early 1994.

I’ve told this story too, sorry, but it’s pertinent: When my wife’s car was in the shop at some point in the mid-to-late 1990s, I drove her to and from work for a few days, and on one of the drives home, I complained about all the traffic. “What are all these people doing on the road?” I groused. “They’re driving home from work,” my wife said. “That’s what people do.”

Fair enough. That is what most people did. But even though I was only a year or two into working from home, I was already used to one of its key benefits. And my wife’s cutting comment reminded me of one of its key downsides. “You know, the nice thing about working from home,” I responded, semi-channeling Seinfeld, “is that you’re driving home from work.” What I meant by this is that those who go into an office or other traditional workplace work set hours and then have the rest of their time to themselves. People who work from home—especially those with basically commitment-free schedules like writers—are always at work.

And it was then that I developed those initial thoughts about working from home. I was at the time a curiosity to those around me specifically because I worked from home. There was some resentment and jealousy, I’m sure, especially from those who hated their jobs and commutes. And I understood that. But I also came to realize that many of them would never succeed in working from home even if it had been possible for them to do so. And that it wouldn’t be their fault.

Back then, working from home required you to set your own schedule, hit milestones without any outside prompting, and work without anyone looking over your shoulder. You had to come to terms with those times in which you were not working, and had to accept that needing to eat, do laundry, or head out on errands wasn’t irresponsible but was in fact necessary. You had to find that balance that worked for you.

I mostly did, in time. But the downsides to working from home were just as obvious. Because I was never around other people, I could feel isolated and alone. This was good in some ways—writing is a solitary activity, after all—but I dreamed of some future in which I could be part of a team. Co-writing with Gary in the early days helped, and my later work always involved some form of at least occasional in-person gatherings with coworkers and clients. I will say I never achieved the perfect balance between staying home and heading out into the world, and that by the time I finished up at Penton—which had purchased the publisher behind what was once called Windows NT Magazine—I was either traveling too much for work or not enough, depending on the month. That ideal remained—and to this day remains—unrealized.

But I don’t think many people could have handled my schedule or style of working in those days. And I would tell them that when they asked. But working from home in the 1990s was a dream for most, regardless. My wife’s employer then—also a publishing company—would never have allowed this, and they were more enlightened than most. So this was a non-starter at more traditional companies.

When the pandemic started three and a half years ago, several people asked me for advice since I had been working from home for so long by that point. Curiously, I had a hard time coming up with anything relevant. Just as my career was a byproduct of luck and circumstance, my ability to work from home effectively is probably mostly a similarly lucky combination of genetics and life experiences. Being suddenly thrust into this world after decades of traditional in-person work experiences because of a pandemic must have been both thrilling and scary. This was something I had eased into decades earlier. I understood it on some level. But I couldn’t relate to it.

I was fascinated by Microsoft’s shifting messaging during this time: The pandemic marked the start of a two-year boom time for the software giant and its Big Tech cohorts, but Microsoft was uniquely positioned in the productivity space and its evolving discussions about “the new normal” were quite interesting to me. As was how this conversation evolved from WFH (work from home) to hybrid work and then, in some cases, to back-to-the-office. There were some positive developments during this time, among them the notion that remote meetings were so exhausting that Microsoft changed its policy for default meeting times from 60 minutes to 30 minutes. I embraced this, but I was then dismayed when the tiny company I worked for at the time turned my already-tedious 60-minute weekly meeting into a 90-to-120-minute all-hands-on-deck meeting that I grew to resent.

But as the pandemic ebbed, there was a backlash that in hindsight should have been predictable. Companies that had previously reported being surprised by how productive their employees were when working from home started asking them to come back to the office. And then demanding it. Some compromised with hybrid schedules that mixed time at home with time at the office, and I do feel that this is probably best for most people, given my experiences. Some simply gave up and tried to implement traditional work schedules again. In some ways, this has been as uncertain, upsetting, and confusing as the pandemic itself.

During all this, I just kept doing what I did. I watched as many of my friends and family transitioned from traditional office work to working from home and then more hybrid scenarios. I listened as they complained about each change, though most simply went along with whatever was required. Dress codes were dropped. In-office perks were expanded. Companies did what they could to retain employees. All issues I mostly didn’t need to deal with.

And here we are. Things are still in transition, of course. But my thoughts from the 1990s survived all the turmoil. Working from home can be great. But it’s not for everybody. The difference now is that this is true on both sides of the equation: Some employers embrace or at least allow it, but it’s not for all employers either. Thus the friction: There are people who have proven themselves able to handle working from home and now they’re being denied the ability to do so. Few are happy.

Here, again, I’m lucky. I love my job, love writing, and love to interact with those who share my passions. I love working from home, and if anything I got a little too comfortable not traveling for work during the pandemic. I’ve not exercised that muscle enough in recent years, and even my three short work trips to New York City this past year were each exhausting. I felt out of place, like I was hanging out in front of the high school I had graduated from a few years earlier. This will ease with more of these trips, but I also know that it will never be like it was before.

And maybe in that way, I can relate to what’s happening with the broader workforce. For many, it will literally never be like it was before. It will just be different, better in some ways and worse in others.

The thing everyone needs to understand—and this is true of employers and employees alike—is that working from home ruins you. It makes returning to a traditional job and schedule difficult if not impossible. And that was a lesson I learned in the year 2000, thanks to yet another unique life experience. I was consulting for a software company, and they flew me out to Israel for several days of in-person meetings with their developers and managers there. We would meet each morning for breakfast at the hotel at whatever time before driving into the office. And so I would have to spend entire days in the office among coworkers for the first time in many years.

On the second morning of this trip, my boss called my room to find out why I wasn’t at breakfast yet. And though I wasn’t actually late, my years of working from home afforded me a humorous reply. “But I went into the office yesterday,” I told her in a purposeful whine. As if doing so would be such an imposition for this self-styled WFH pioneer. Which, honestly, it kind of was. As it is, today, I think, for many others.

I’m sorry if you’re dealing with this today. Especially if your workplace isn’t smart enough to compromise with a win-win hybrid schedule. There’s nothing worse than having the rug pulled out from under you, and that’s exactly what this back-to-the-office movement feels like. Events like the pandemic are traumatic enough on their own, and we’ll be dealing with the ramifications of this time for years to come. Let’s at least learn from this time and not ignore its lessons.