Like many other people, I shifted from working at the Intel office to working from home full time during the pandemic. This wasn’t exactly a new experience for me since I worked from home full time from 2006 to 2013 but there were some things that were different this time.

First, during the pandemic, I wasn’t the only one working from our home. From March to June 2020, all 3 of our kids, plus our middle daughter’s partner, were living with us again. 2 of them were teaching, 1 was working in a job that requires as much quiet as possible, and 1 was a college student. Somehow, we managed to make it work, thanks to having a relatively large home with a finished basement. Eventually, I gave up my office in the basement (it was originally designed as a music studio so is more soundproof than most standard rooms) to my daughter who needs a quiet environment for her work.

I wound up moving my office a couple of times during the pandemic and finally wound up sharing it with my youngest daughter’s bedroom since she no longer lives at home. It is wonderful to have an office that is above ground so I get sunshine during the day. But there were some things that were in my office in Hudson that I really needed to improve my productivity in my home office.

So, I made the decision to clean out my office in Hudson and move everything I needed to my home office. While I am officially what Intel calls a “hybrid” employee (I work remotely sometimes and on-site sometimes but don’t have a permanently assigned office), I work from home >99% of the time. Having had an office in Hudson since 1993, I had a fair amount of stuff to go through.

When I arrived at my office in August 2021 (fully masked), it was like stepping back in time – everything was frozen in March 2020. The calendar on my wall was showing March 2020. There were papers on my desk that were relevant at that time that were useless in August 2021 (stuff moves fast in the tech world). It took me about 3-4 hours to go through my stuff and throw out as much stuff that I no longer needed. In the end, I brought home very little – the biggest thing was my older Dell 27″ 4K monitor.

I am very grateful to Intel that they helped us to outfit our home working spaces. They supplied everyone in the US who asked a brand new, high quality ergonomic chair (shipped directly to my home – very nice!) and gave us $500 to spend however we wanted. In my case, I used the $500 to invest in a second 27″, 4K monitor from LG so I now have a dual monitor set up which has enabled a HUGE improvement in my productivity. I can’t imagine going back to a single monitor set up. I purchased a dual arm monitor setup (about $50 on Amazon) so the monitors can be moved up and down easily for optimal placement.

In addition, I invested my own money in an electric sit/stand desk. This is the model I purchased from Vari: https://www.vari.com/electric-standing-desk-60×30/FD-ESD6030.html

Having the sit/stand desk is definitely a big improvement to my ergonomic setup. Sitting 10+ hours every day IS NOT good for your health. Here is a pointer to several articles showing the benefits of sit/stand desks: https://www.vari.com/office-wellness/references.html

The set up of the Vari desk could not be easier. The hardest thing was carrying it up to the second floor – actually setting it up took less than 15 minutes.

A couple of other small purchases I made to enhance my presence in video calls:

• A Logi HD 1080p external web cam so that I don’t need to use the crappy built in web cam in my 2016 MacBook Pro
• Two inexpensive LED lights to improve how I look during Zoom/Teams calls. They sit behind the monitor where the camera is connected and their brightness can be adjusted via wireless remote controls. I don’t have a link to them but I think they were around $25 for both on Amazon.

I also invested in upgrading my Bose noise cancelling headset to the latest Bose Noise Cancelling Headset 700. The audio quality of the Bose NC700 is excellent and the reliability of the connection to my MacBook and my iPhone 13 Pro is great.

I like to listen to music while working so I asked for an Apple HomePod for my birthday and set it up on my desk so I can listen to music without headphones on. I also have an inexpensive clock radio for the time and to listen to local sports radio shows (98.5 The Sports Hub, to be exact) while working.

I moved the family’s HP OfficeJet Pro 9010 printer to my new office so it is easily accessible to anyone who needs it. It is connected to both our home WiFi network and to my MacBook via USB so I can use it even when connected to the Intel VPN – otherwise, the firewall blocks the connection 😦

In spite of being mostly paperless, there are still times when you need to store stuff so I purchased an inexpensive 3 drawer filing cabinet to store things that are printed. I also have a set of drawers for storing various office supplies.

The last thing I did was to invest in a WiFi extender for the second floor of our house. This improved the WiFi performance in my office significantly and since Internet access is my lifeline, this investment of around $200 was well worth it.

So, summary of my new home office:

• 2016 MacBook Pro with 2 Thunderbolt 3/USB-C ports (still going strong after 6 years) with Apple wireless keyboard and an inexpensive Amazon basics wired USB mouse I prefer it over the Apple wireless mouse). It all connects to an inexpensive USB-C bub.
• Dual 27″, 4K monitors on adjustable monitor arms
• Sit/stand desk by Vari
• High quality ergonomic chair
• 1080p web cam
• Inexpensive LED lights
• Bose Noise Cancelling Headphones 700 (such a weird product name…)
• Apple HomePod
• WiFi extender to cover second floor of our house

Because I work with teams all over the world, working from home has proven to be the best solution from me. I save roughly an hour of commuting time each day and Intel winds up getting that time from me. Even with all the money Intel and I have invested, the ROI is clear when you factor in how much employees in the high tech industry are paid.

I’m not an expert on real estate expenses, but I can imagine that companies can significantly reduce their costs by moving most employees to a mostly (or fully) remote work environment. As Linus Torvalds pointed out in a recent interview, the Linux kernel development community has worked this way for the past almost 30 years – they do all of their work via e-mail and rarely meet face-to-face. All it took was a pandemic for the rest of the industry to wake up to benefits of remote working.

I am concerned that we’ll forget everything we’ve learned and force people to work on site again. Humans are not good about learning these types of lessons – we tend to fall back on things that we are comfortable with in spite of lots of evidence to the contrary. Let’s hope the powers that be really listen to and absorb the lessons the pandemic has taught us rather than slipping back into pre-pandemic ways of working and thinking.