Question to indie dev working for home

Hi,

I am soon going to resign from my full time job where I have been working for 8 years now. As the date to put down my papers is approaching (1st June), me and my wife are getting concerned over the change in life. Can some one share thoughts on reduced social circle. Currently I have face to face discussions with at least 10-15 people daily starting from boarding the bus in morning to returning back to home where I discuss about politics, religion, economy, world, technology etc. We are concerned about getting bored at home after few months and this could result in health and relationship issues.

Do you guys working from home have chance to talk about so many topics with people.

After resigning on 1st June, I will have to serve around one month of notice period.

Do share your thoughts.

There are pros and cons for both types of jobs.

I’ve been working as a freelancer my whole life: working alone, in a room, with no one around me for most of the day (until evening). I do have a lot of time at my disposal and I can afford to leave whenever I want in order to complete other personal tasks. I have time to leave on vacations without applying for a holiday but, earning a living from freelancing means that the time I am on a holiday is not paid by my employee.

Obviously, my social connections are not the best because I am all alone while working, but the time spent with friends is more precious than it was before.

It also depends on where you live. If you have a house, for example, you can go outside and do some 30 minutes gardening or a 30 minutes workout in the middle of the day.

I guess the type of man you are really matters in this case and it’s up to you and your wife to make the most of your spending more time together.

Good luck!

I am an introvert so I don’t mind spending time alone. But I also have much more time for social activities right now because I am not constantly tired as I was when working full-time. I started studying again for example (English), this time of course taking evening classess. And I hated all my previous jobs and my coworkers were not good people to talk to anyway, so the change was for the good for me… As with your situation - you could find other ways and places to meet people. Travelling is a good example. My aunt does that, she uses all her rent and savings to travel around the world.

I am an introvert so I don’t mind spending time alone. But I also have much more time for social activities right now because I am not constantly tired as I was when working full-time. I started studying again for example (English), this time of course taking evening classess. And I hated all my previous jobs and my coworkers were not good people to talk to anyway, so the change was for the good for me… As with your situation - you could find other ways and places to meet people. Travelling is a good example. My aunt does that, she uses all her rent and savings to travel around the world.

And if there are children… I can’t imagine raising children while working full-time, you would only know them on the weekends and evenings. I don’t have children myself but spend a lot of time playing games with my niece and nephew. :slight_smile:

yes I have one son named Hemang. When I was working mid day shift (1:30PM to 10:30PM), I would only see him on weekend not even on evenings. But now I have day job and financially I am stable to leave that job.
I think I agree with Magnesus, my colleagues from earlier projects have settled in other cities and we rarely call up. Just FB, Twitter, LinkedIn connections etc. but that I am also doing with you guys here on this forum so those personal connections are short lived. Those guys don’t even care what is happening in my life and neither do I.

I will discuss points mentioned by @avradu1984 with my family and try to convince them. Any one else also pls. share your experience.

@macfinch, your experience on this?

I am an introvert as well - so for me it’s perfect to work at home. If I want to get social I go out :slight_smile:

I am pretty happy with that situation, because it just suits my lifestyle somehow … pretty sure this is not for everyone. Good thing about being a freelancer is, you can always search for new opportunities and new things to do to fill up any (social) gaps

My son is a big reason for me trying to make it as an indie developer. Currently I don’t get to spend nearly enough time (if there is such a thing) with my son. If I make enough to quit the full time job, my ideal would be to work at home during the school hours, and spend more time outside school with him. The other great thing about being an indie developer for me would be the opportunity to work from anywhere.

I believe that sharing your working space with other people is beneficial.

Beneficial for your results, for your mental health, for your social intelligence, for the benefit of others … whatever.

I think that Coworking - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia is a solution and I work this way. If you are about to quit your job and assume a 100% work from home, do read that wikipedia page if you have no idea what Coworking really is.

PS. Anyone from Warsaw area doing full time Android development? Let me know via a PM please.

Not sure what others think about it, but from my point of view, being a freelancer indie dev means full time dedication … it’s hard to get the head free. That may not be true for smaller projects but on a larger scale it can be hard to put your work down … well, maybe I am just a workaholic :-p

I have found that lack of human contact will lead to depression. You need to make sure you get outside, get some sunshine on your skin (vitamin D) during lunch and find your social interactions somewhere else. Online MMORPG is not the answer for that… it needs to be real people. Check if there are interest groups local to you that you might be interested in. You could go to one of those a week and see your kids the other 6 nights a week :slight_smile:

Also, if you and your wife are working at home, make sure you take time to be nice to each other, eat meals together, etc, etc

If you are missing being close to other people, take a laptop to a library or cafe with wifi (depends on location I know) and sit down with other people for a while. Coworking spaces are also good if you have one close to you. If the weather is good, you could even take a laptop to a park.

You need big house, but when kids are back from school / kindergarten at 3pm (that’s my situation), they can still disturb your work, even if you hide in a basement… :wink:

[QUOTE=javaexp;61299][/QUOTE]

Well i must agree that both the situations has their own pros and cons.

Good when you in Full time job:-

  • As you mentioned, rich experience talking on different topics with different people
  • Daily new leanings
  • Feeling of being one among your friends. Feeling of doing something most of our surrounded people do
  • Sword of pressure to take max out out of you
  • Good work/life balance (provided your jobs allows this)

Bad when you in Full time job:-

  • Permission for everything
  • Hectic enuf to see your little kids always in sleep when you back from your office
  • Dirty politics
  • Feeling of doing something which may or may not recognized after one year during salary hikes
  • Working on anything xyz technology which may or may not shine your next job your future
  • Fear of unsafe future always with unpredictable project/role changes
  • Working seriously and for long on something stupid projects

Good when you working for yourself from home:-

  • Will add later

Badwhen you working for yourself from home:-

  • Will add later

My Manager needs me for a stupid meeting where he wants to discuss the plan for tomorrow (does’t matter today’s work is finished or not)
Rushing …

And this argument wins that it’s better to work for yourself.

Here is my take on it. I work full time and from home. I vote for working full time for the following reasons:

  • You always need a break from the family. Alot of common time means more chances for problems. They tell tell, never be a roommate with your best friend for a a reason. Offcourse this is not always the case, but the probability of fights are higher. You leave home, the family misses you and there are new stuffs to talk about. Offcourse this is assumed work/lifebalance is available

  • let’s say your home job is no longer profitable and time to get full time job, what are you going to talk about in a interview? I can see so many questions screwing you up.

  • you will be getting to retirement at one point, do you really want to spend that time at home too? Think about that

Now offcourse working from home has advantages. Weigh the cons, not the pros

Good Goodluck

Agree with hanfoosh,

Cons:-

  • Family thinks that you are at home full day and there is little compromise with the respect
  • House hold stuff draws your attention and you get involved in many not-development stuff.
  • Efficiency may be effected with surrounding atmosphere
  • Relatives and neighbors will always be around and chances of clashes are more
  • Doing work from home for long time might make the chances of coming back to full time job very difficult because of the age factor.
  • Postivity of the office environment and aura of the team will be missed at house
  • Last but not least, Beautiful girls in your team and around you who keep on chirping whole day may not be achieved at home.
  • Free meals and snacks of the office will be missed
  • Free transportation will be remembered on times when you have to pay for taxi in night.

Been there, done that. You just talk about all the experience you gained while managing your company, programming, solving problems, managing outsourced workers etc. In my case they were impressed but my salary expectations were quite too high and I wanted to work part time which they didn’t like. Anyway, now I wouldn’t even go to any job interview, just start a new kind of business - this is why you need to save money. And you can always just freelance.

For me all gcc said are advatages not disadvantages. (Maybe beside the girls, but in my jobs they were not beautiful) Unless all you care in live is job and working.

A job interview won’t just be about technical and management roles. it will be about the behaviour. The moment you say that you work alone, then you don’t show team work work competency and unknowns hurt. But if you open company and have like 2-3 people people you deal with (onsite not virtual) then it is a different story. I think Javaexp is in that position yet.