Working from home isn’t a novelty for most DBAs — but a global pandemic forcing an entire office offline is a different beast entirely. Since the office closed for Covid-19, I’ve been enjoying the reclaimed commute time and the fuel savings. The catch? Since moving in 2017, I haven’t put much effort into setting up a proper work area, which is proving mildly distracting.
Other things I have learned Working from home
- I need to keep my schedule as similar to the office as possible
- I need to structure my day as I normally would - times for learning and deep dives, etc.
- I need to remember to get up and move
- I need to remember to take breaks
With everyone else working from home, I have noticed a few things that I do differently that has made my life easier. I leave my work laptop at the office, mostly because it’s 10lb brick and I prefer carrying my MacBook instead. So instead of VPN’ing into the Office, I have a LogMeIn account, so I was spared all the issues with the VPN being maxed out. I also prefer LogMeIn because if my connection gets dropped to the laptop, and I’m running a script than the script doesn’t get ghosted on the SQL side.
Key Takeaways
Somethings I have seen people do that they probably shouldn’t over VPN:
- Don’t do virtual meetings over the VPN, you’re chewing up bandwidth. Instead, drop the VPN connection to have the meeting.
- Don’t rely on a single connection — have a backup plan for VPN outages.
- Please, please, for the sake of those you work with - pay attention to the ambient noises. We know your kids and pets are cute, but listening to them in the background makes it harder to hear.
- Use Mute. Really…if you’re not talking, put yourself on mute.
- Don’t drink or chew on calls unless you are muted.
- If you have a webcam set up, be careful what you broadcast, and don’t forget it’s there.
It’s going to be awhile
Just because you are not in the office, that is no reason to act unprofessional or forget to take care of yourself. Working from home can provide a golden opportunity to get your diet under control, get some training in, as well as spending time with your family and doggos. You can feel good about reducing your carbon footprint (if that’s important to you), you can use the savings from commuting and eating out to fund a vacation when practical, or you can just enjoy the slowdown and quiet in your daily life. We’re going to be at this a while, so we may as well get good at it.
[2025 update: Five years on, WFH has gone from emergency measure to table stakes. The tools got better, the VPN wars mostly got sorted, and — if you’re reading this while muted on a call — at least some of the lessons stuck.]