Forum Discussion
Remote working and what it takes
Keep us posted SyntaxBearror as I expect the current environment is shifting a lot of perception on what it takes to truly WFH. How will this impact company culture?
ShonaBang I think you'd like to hear some of these perspectives considering you are also 'roomies' with a fellow MSFT employee 
100% agree that setting boundaries with your co-WFH spouse is super critical. It takes a lot of patience, coordination and COMMUNICATION to ensure that you get a good setup going in your home.
Living in a small home (hey, housing prices are expensive in WA!) means you need to be really creative about the spaces you can carve out for these purposes. My husband and I set an agreement that whoever has a "big call" (i.e where one of us has to speak/present on it, lead etc) gets to have the home office while the other will have to use either the living room, or dining table or the kitchen counter as a working bar area. If you both need to have calls at the same time, then just be sure to set expectations about noise level (keeping tones down, opening/closing doors quietly etc). The last thing you want when you're working in the kitchen bar area for your spouse to come in and turn on the blender to make a smoothie etc 🙂 Communication is everything.
For more tips on working remotely, I also recommend reading this post by our Humans of IT guest blogger and Microsoft WFH veteran April Spreight- a few years ago she transitioned to a fully remote role and called it "life-changing": https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/humans-of-it-blog/guest-blog-adjusting-to-a-fully-remote-work-life/ba-p/1210320
ShonaBang we have such similar experiences in our house. We can both wfh in our setup area. If one is on a call, the other usually has music in noise cancelling headphones to help focus. There are times when there is a polite gesture meaning "can you talk a bit quieter"... its funny how the noise cancelling headphones result in it feeling like everyone is yelling!
We do both run workshops and formal sessions from home and have for a long time. Similar plan to you - the workshop requires the proper desk setup and tech so that gets priority. The other person often will take their internal less formal calls in another space.I am careful not to run applicances that create noise if he is in that area on a call.
It's a balance and requires communication some days - a quick "do you have any formal meetings today"etc. And if one of us is wfh and the other does the school pickup, we also have educated the kids on when not to walk in and chat to mummy/ daddy, along with our desk placement being in a way that if the kids walk in they are not on camera... or if I am on a later evening call and they come in naked after bath which has happened before!
We also do alternate days. We coordinate shorter and longer cbd days. If I drop off kids I wfh and zoom to that desk by 9am. He does a city day, and this allows us both to have days with an empty house to have deeper focus and personal space.
The important thing with more and more couples potentially both being at home is that they will both need longer term comfort, ie. not a couch or bench for weeks of work. That is ok for an afternoon or a day.
