I can spill the beans now: like many other folks on here,
I'm onto
a new job. This was an extremely difficult decision, since I
was one
of the founders of the
company I'm
leaving. But working at home, by myself, all the time,
proved too much to bear in many ways.
Concidentally, with the recent
notes on here from graydon
about taking things easier (on ourselves, the earth, etc.),
one of my
primary motivations is taking things easier. For me, working
at home
really taxed my ability to separate the work and
non-work areas of my life, and the balance between
the two
(never right to begin with) got seriously out of whack. It
got so that
I felt guilty doing something (even nothing) for myself --
just
watching TV or going out camping for a weekend or whatever.
This is no
state to be in, particularly for someone who just got
married.
I recognize that I work in an industry -- programming,
web development -- that relies on people enjoying their jobs
and not putting up much of a fuss over working 50-60-70 hour
weeks on a regular basis. Occasionally, this is unavoidable,
but IMO it shouldn't be the norm. Work should be a means to
an end, not the end. IME Europeans seem to have a better
attitude about this than Americans do, but that's neither
here nor there.
Of course, another huge motivation for taking this job is
working closely
with other technical people. I
recently learned what it's like to work closely with
someone over an extended period of time, and I don't know
that I can ever go back. Even if your comrades aren't at the
same level as you, having someone around to interact with
raises everything to another level. (Plus might get lucky
and enter into a teching relationship as either the mentor
or the student.) This might be a failing on my part, this
relying on face-to-face contact for certain things. But I'm
not trying to generalize my experience to everyone else,
either :)
That said, I'm interested to hear from people who work by
themselves all the time how they deal with it, or if they
even have anything to deal with. It might be that my
previous experience working with someone was a fluke because
he's an exceptional person, and that I'll hate working with
people and want to go back to working at home in my
sweatpants with only the cats to talk to. We'll see.