Most people working at home are working at home because they don't have a choice. No serious company that performs and grows consistently, which has a strong vision for the future and is constantly building and developing and launching, allows anyone that matters to work from home. There might be rare exceptions but it is far from the rule.

And working at home and from an office is not comparable in any way, shape or form.

Probably just your age showing. :winkwink:

So what is that thing on the right? Feet washer? :winkwink:

Ok you are still not getting the point...

Everybody who works at home have 2 options:
a) work from home
b) rent office space in office building (reasons for that - better productivity, better life at home quality when home is just for relaxing and so on) and do the same thing there. That also gives you better options for meeting clients (if you need to) and so on and so on.

We are discussing about doing the SAME thing at home VS doing the same thing at rented office.


Not self employment VS working under a boss...

It's a bidet, it's for washing like you said, but not for your feet. :winkwink:

Regarding the Sochi comment, the main difference is that these actually function as intended. :D

I have "The Squealer" on "ignore". But reading what you quoted him saying made me laugh.

There is no "one size fits all" for a business.

I would say that "yes", if you have 4 or 5 employees working for you, it's best to have an office.

"No", if you are working by yourself.

We used to have employees. Had an office. It was great.

Now, I do everything myself. I have a very, very nice office set up right here in my backyard by the pool and jacuzzi.

As for "The Squealer", I'd love to know what it is he does in this business and maybe some pics of himself with his employees at HIS office.

Bill Gates worked out of his garage when he started Microsoft.
And when he got bigger and NEEDED employees. He got an office.

I'm pretty damn successful, and I don't see the need to spend a few grand a month on an office space for no reason when I have this giant building in my backyard by the pool about a hundred steps from my house.

Folks like "The Squealer" need to realize this ain't 1960 anymore.
You can make millions of dollars from any location with the internet.
And if you are a "one man show" like I am...I'm way over-doing it with my office by my pool now.

Most of the people replying have no option to rent office space. They are employees. As someone who used to have over 300 employees in a performance driven company, there is absolutely no substitution for having an office, leading, managing, keeping everyone focused, keeping everyone driven and on task, for infinitely better communication etc etc etc. No one that is important or even relevant to the susccess of a serious company is allowed to work from home.

There is a reason for that. ;)

Its about productivity.

Just glancing over the names, sigs and based on the way they responded plus my recollection of meeting some of them personally, it actually seems like most of people posting in this thread work for themselves and can do whatever they want. Some of the others seem to be independent contractors or remote employees of medium sized companies that also have options for telecommuting.

I totally get that a large company with 300 employees would need at least one central office and people on site interacting dynamically. But that kind of business structure doesn't describe more than a small fraction of the people posting in this thread.

I have worked from an office an worked from home.

I currently wok from home and hate it. Fucking family life gets in the way, people call round when the fuck they feel like it and I can't get nothing done.
It's been like this for ages.

I used to work from an office. Go in when I liked, leave when I liked, toss off when I liked. I don't know why I thought home would be preferable.

For the few hundred bucks a month it costs for an office I would suggest taking that route providing you are comminted to your business.

Same thing is for most, working from home decrease productivity and thus earnings.
Of course some people do not have this issue as we can see from some replies. Takes very tough discipline to do that and many people can't.
I have many friends who are webmasters, designers, affiliates and who work on their own. And every one of them increased their earnings when they decided to work from rebted office space.

Simple example. Let's say you earn $4000 from home. Even if you increase your productivity by 15% that extra $600 easily covers office rent and you are still in the "profit".
And on top of that you have your home only as relaxation space, that adds to the well being of a person as well.

You're way off.

First of all...finding a nice office space for $600 a month? Maybe in the backwoods somewhere.

Second...then you have to have electricity and water service for your office.

Then you have to pay AGAIN (because you should already have the fastest, most expensive ISP hooked up to your home connection) for internet service.
That's money being wasted on redundancy.

I get what you're saying that most folks just aren't disciplined to go to "work". (though for people like me...I can't WAIT to go to work everyday, I love it)

But to say it's only gonna be around $600 a month just isn't so.

Also when you first move in to that office...you're going to have to spend days just getting it all set up right.

I don't think that most self-employed succesful people who do not have a bunch of employees really have any trouble with self-discipline and getting things done.
Most of them are work-a-holic A-type personalities.

Employees on the other hand...they absolutely need that.

Could be but my office has a 48" TV, a fully stocked bar, and a seriously comfortable couch.
Do young people enjoy that shit?

Also I forgot to add one thing:

When you have an office, you are now visible to the authorities in your town.
All it takes is a little bit of word of mouth before the nature or your business becomes known to the wrong religious nutcase housewife.

And THEN you find yourself with a whole new headache.

Actually I was not even saying that whole $600 would go towards rent, $300/month included utilities would be enough for most of the world including many US towns.
I am talking about one man operations (webmaster, designer, affiliate etc) where you would need 10-12 square meter office cabinet. I am not talking about "something nice", I only imagine what do you have in mind there. :1orglaugh
BUT - these numbers were just random, to show a point that extra income would cover office rent. So let's not get into the numbers as they were just to illustrate the point and were actually random.

As for "not having trouble with discipline", trust me, ABSOLUTE MAJORITY of them do. At the very least 80%, in reality 90%+.
Everybody I know who moved to office immediately started being way more productive and 15% extra is just very small number, many of them did twice as much as they used to do from home.

If you are:

1. In the USA & outside Cali & maybe NV
2. Have kids under 16
3. Work from home

You're nuts.

All it takes is for one neighbor, ex-wife, school teacher etc to contact DSS and you are in for a world of hurt.

perhaps but working from home is the future if we want to reduce pollution due to horrible commutes and such. regardless if you are a one man show, there isn't much difference between working from home and working from an office unless you have kids or something at home during the day.

I disgree. I think you need to change your mindset.

When I worked in an office I used to get dressed for 'work' despite me being the only person there.
I used to wear my best shoes, my shirt and proper trousers.

After I started working from home I quickly started to start work later, get dressed slower. Wear slacker clothes and finish earlier.

Workin' from the office! I doubt I'd get much done at home. I'd send an e-mail and get distracted by YouTube or something.

If you work from home, you will be the first to get a phone call from family or a friend to help with a favor because your "available" . lol

Still not getting it.

I grew up in NJ - in the middle of nowhere - and our pool was surrounded by trees. Stuff falling from trees wasn't the problem so much as dead animals. Wake up in the morning, scoop the crap out, and you are good to go.

I couldn't disagree with you more.

I work for a company that is based out of Europe, but has a huge affiliate base here in the US. Our office in the UK can't help much because by the time people in California are coming on line, people in the UK are going offline and going home. We have three offices in Europe, yet we still have other people in Germany, Italy, Japan, and of course the US. We plan on moving into South America shortly, and we will be sure to hire someone local there too - It just makes sense.

Working from home is much more productive too. I start work earlier, take a shorter lunches, less breaks, have no co-workers to bother me, and can work later. If three is an emergency or a big project, I don't have to "drive" back to the office... Weekends too - I can work weekends without leaving home.

It's perfect.

You have to have a routine.... I start work at 6am by answering emails every morning, but at 7:30am I take my kid to school - which requires me showered and dressed on time. I take lunch at noon every day, and try to quit at the same time every day.

Honestly, you are so full of shit. If we were to believe everything you claim to be true about yourself, well then there is nothing you do not know and have not done at the most elite level :1orglaugh

I'm not getting it, LOL? You just proved my point perfectly: You have to skim the debris and dead animals out of your non-screened pool every god damn day. I too remember doing this daily as a teenager as part of my household chores when my family had a backyard pool in NY state also surrounded by trees. Guess how many times I have skimmed my screened pool in Florida? ZERO point ZERO times.

It's quite good to work from home, but I think it's better if you are in the office with your colleagues because If you need help asap thank you can just walk to the person who you need.

I have worked from home for 17 years now, If a project warranted it I would rent office space, but my business does not require it.

Three minutes a day spent skimming the pool vs having a pool that is not really outside.... I'll go with the outside pool.

What's in the law about it?

I work from home, love it :thumbsup

I used to work from "home office", after 1,5 years it was really boring. Now I am working from office and enjoying lunch with my colleagues :thumbsup

Oh boy... Let's start with this .. do you live in the USA?

WOW not at all what I expected from you. I guess dont judge a book by the cover lol. Please looks great..

Like i say, advantages and disadvantages. Plenty on both sides...

I've been working from home since 1997 and I wouldn't want it any other way.

To each his own, but you do realize that the screen around the pool is just a light weight mesh 25 feet over the surface of the water which lets the sunlight, the air, the weather and temperature through, just not leaves and mosquitoes? It's not a hermetically sealed enclosed glass panel that shuts out the outdoor environment!

Arguments that people need an office to be productive are b.s. Frank Schilling, the most successful domainer, runs a business from home. Within 4 years after starting, he had a $100 million buyout offer for his company.

In an interview with DNJournal, Frank said "The most important dollar I ever made - the one that made me shout for joy and feel rich - was the dollar it took to allow me to work from home and to stop going to an office. Everything since, everything, has been anticlimactic for me."

Yeah, I get that... but if you want a thirty foot running start on a belly floop.... You can't do it.

What I don't is why only Florida does this? I've never seen this kind of screen enclosure outside of Florida, and it's not like "you all" have to deal with fall and snow and what not.

When I lived in West Boca I couldn't imagine living without the screened in pool. My buddy Ray was a purist and did not have an enclosure, he regularly had to fish out frogs, snakes, palmetto bugs, vegetation, lizards & worry about gators.

And the mosquitos , flies etc were ridiculous.


Now, living near the inter-coastal in Boynton .. no problem foregoing the cage.

I work in my home... I don't have any other choice since i dont make a lot of money.
If i sometimes make enough money i might think about buying an appartment with 2-3 rooms and making one of the rooms my office :) But thats too far to think for now :D

I guess what it comes down to, if your role is to reach out to prospective clients or manage your inpersonal properties you can do very well with a home office.

If you actually need to manage people or things as a part of the executive team, that's a whole different story.

Well, I could always leave one of the screen doors open if I really want that running start, lol. But I would guess the popularity of screened pools in Florida as opposed to other hot summer places like Arizona or California has to do with the sub-tropical environment here and keeping all the vegetation, insects and critters out of the water like Trend was saying.

If I ever end up in Hungary (or wherever ur based out of hah), can I rent a desk LOL

I would have problems going back to an office. It's not getting up and dressed and being on time, I'm fine with that... It's people stopping by desk to bother me about stupid shit I don't care about. You got a new puppy? Well isn't that special? Post it on Facebook so I can ignore it. I don't want to have a twenty minute discussion about your fucking dog when I am knee deep in HTML.

I hardly ever have this, just be clear on things.

That's because nobody likes you at the office Roald! :1orglaugh:1orglaugh:1orglaugh

The older I get the more I crave an office environment... I used to work at a dotcom 11 years ago and those were some fun times.

Yeah, the camaraderie at an office is something I miss.

The weird thing to me is reading some people saying that they are more productive at the office than a home-office.

When we had our office...we fucked around all damn day. lol
Telling jokes, drinking, going to Hooters for lunch, finding funny pictures and vids online to pass around.

I remember that around 6 p.m. everybody would be gone and I'd settle down at the office and actually get all the shit done that I needed to because nobody was bothering me. lol

Here at my home office...I work uninterrupted. No music, no television. Just me and my giant freakish brain. :1orglaugh

Lol thats probably true

Me ??? I work from Home.
 

I work from home and honestly, I'm trying to figure out how to make a living doing this stuff. I build a website or two for a small businesses, but I'm trying to get this adult stuff up and running. Any insights would be helpful.