Work from home - Does it Work?

Work from home. Should I do it or should I not? The tempting answer would be yes if you really want to have such a dream feature. However, there are a lot of negatives on working from home; at least I have faced a lot of them. Let me list them one by one. Before that, lets go through the Pros first

1. It is a dream come true. This is a very fascinating aspect to have it in your job description. Working from home is almost a dream realised. You have the liberty to relax and still able to deliver on the tasks assigned to you.
2. You can receive packages/posts being at home. Certain things like cheque book, credit cards, debit cards etc., could be collected at home being in-person
3. You can over look house hold repairs by third parties. This is a boon where you can be present at home and supervise the repair items and chores like Plumbing, electricity fixes, AC fit etc.,
4. Hot food, coffee when you like it, even you can cuddle your baby, pep up your wife and even do a quick grocery visit to a nearby store. 
5. Working far away from office. Since work from home does not put any restriction on where you need to be, you can very well be thousands of miles away from your workplace. All you would need is a fast internet connection and a relatively quieter environment. Which means you can take short vacations clubbing few work from home days thus commuting and being with family at your native place a bit longer. 
6. Watch that cricket match or at least take a peek happily

Now to the cons,

1. Work from home means Distraction from work. Talk about all possible distractions. All the ones said in the Pros are indeed distraction in one way or the other.
2. Physical presence takes a hit. Since you can achieve a lot of things by running at colleagues desk and do items quickly.
3. Silent Partner in meetings. Meetings you will miss a lot of items because you will be sitting in a separate room where you will not be able to participate the same way you would have in a meeting
4. Reduced productivity by subordinates. If you happen to be a lead or manager, there is obvious reduction in productivity of your subordinates since you are absent.
5. Extension of fights and brawls at home. There is a good chance that you will involve in a quarrel with your wife. This will not only upset your mood, you work will also take a hit.
6. Careless mistakes. Again this is a result of distraction where the chances of you mistyping an email or only skimming on items which would result in catastrophic failures based on the intensity of the mistake you commit. 
7. Addiction. This will soon become an addiction and you will detach yourself more from your work life thus having a reduced learning curve.
8. Spoilt subordinates. If you are a lead and you do work from home on a regular basis, your subordinates may follow suit and it will be difficult for you to stop spreading this disease across the team
9. Detrimental from Company's point of view. Any company gives this option as an emergency/backup for its employees and not something to be abused or over used. This may come back and haunt you at your performance review/ratings.

Overall, use this option very carefully and avoid it unless and absolutely necessary. That way you would have respected on why this was provided in the first place as well as making the business continuity going smooth which will make your superiors be happy and in peace.

Cheers!
Braga

Not a very merry christmas

2014 Christmas Eve is not a very merry one to begin with. It is all because of trusting my subordinates' word for something and not verifying the validity of the statement. It is indeed upsetting that I had trusted someone and taken the word as a Gospel. However, one thing I learnt here is never to Trust anyone's word for that matter when you become an interface for the outside world or to a set of highly trustable recipients. With my trust broken, I have committed a sin of breaking many other's trust. It is time I stop skimming on items where I am the most responsible person. It is indeed a good lesson for me not to repeat this mistake again in Future. Best lesson to start new year 2015 !

Enough hatred for a single day

I was TubeFollowing videos in YouTube where I searched for accident related videos. Started with Plane crashes, then to Truck crashes, then got interested and wanted to see Road accidents in India. The Road accidents were horrible. Even more horrible was the Hatred speech in the comments section below. There were a lot of Racist remarks and people were fighting between each other. Trying to prove their superiority on which Race is better. Amidst this battle I see some serious scathing comments between multiple sections of people. Looking at all these really fed me up and wanted me to more focus and find that Unified field and transcend there and realise all these are nothing but a variation or an instance of Maya. I cannot change them or educate them, from a pure practical standpoint, although I would like to. However what I can do to fix them is to find my inner self for answers. Hope I will find it someday at least in this life or the next.

First from mobile

This is the first blog entry i am posting from my iPhone Device. Just wanted to try out how the blogging app works from a mobile. To have a better blogging experience one should be able to post things easily and also in a quicker manner. However I show you how the ui is looking right now I can't see what I am typing when I hold the phone in a horizontal view. This is the only way to use both my hands to type faster and with less spelling mistakes. Well, I have to say I am disappointed and this would be my first and last post from my phone.

Cheers,

Bragadeesh. 

Coach.me (Previously Lift) - Amazing iOS/Android Application for Coaching/Self motivation

I've been using Coach.me for quite sometime now and all I have to say is I am humbled by it. This application does something to you that money can seldom buy. This application is your personal motivator and guide. I am a trained procrastinator like the millions others out there. I wanted to focus myself and start making a habit - some of the day to day routines which I have only dreamt and failed miserably. I wanted to have something that could keep me going. That is when I landed on this application, thanks to Google! 

The best aspect about this application is the social interaction that it provides on people on the same subject. This is not like a random facebook page where people of the same/similar thoughts/practices get together and share youtube/twitter links. This is more than that. Try the app yourself. It is available in both iOs and Android. Also, you do not necessarily have to install it via a smartphone (although that is ideal), you have the browser version too - http://coach.me - BEAT THAT !

I am writing this because I recently deleted (archived) one of the habits - Brushing teeth at night. The reason I deleted it because I no longer need coach.me to motivate me. Its in my blood now, I cannot go to bed without brushing. From the outside, this may seem a simple thing, but I've been struggling to keep this a practice and failed miserably for the past 16 years. I did it religiously and targeted a 100 day streak and successfully completed that!! Thank you very much Tony Stubblebine. You are my rockstar!

Cheers!
Bragadeesh.

Collective comparison

I have been an avid stackoverflow user trying to answer a lot of questions which I would have come across during my development tenure. It would be frustrating at times that the answers you give will not be accepted because you gave them few seconds late. Even frustrating at times is that you will not know answer to so many questions asked there on the tag that you've subscribed to. And obviously I would not have been able to answer so many other technology questions, not even the basic ones. I felt i was dumb and way way backwards in the Information Technology space.

But I was not realising what I really was trying to do. I was trying to compare my individual ability to almost everyone else there with varied experiences in vast amount of technologies. Its like feeling guilty because you cannot memorize all the articles from Wikipedia. I mean, no one can ever do that! Not even Einstein!

The lesson I gained during this is that I can't know everything instead of don't know everything. Even attempting towards is dumb. Life is short. Be happy!

Cheers,
Bragadeesh.

Screw that

I had this crazy framework within myself that I would not blog anymore unless its a public message or a concept that I would be able to illustriously write with a picture that has a something worth reading. Turns out I was wrong for many years. All this time I’ve been drafting a lot of articles but could not complete because it did not make much sense and it did was nowhere near the Quality standards which I thought I had one. Screw that, I am going to blabber or brag whatever I think. At least for the money I am paying for keeping the domain name each year :)