Category: Self development

Working from home vs. from the office

I can’t believe it’s been almost a year since I started working from home.

Let me draw a picture for you so that you can understand my situation.

I’m married, I have two small children (5 and 3) and I live in a two bedroom apartment.

The main reason why I wanted to work from home was to spend more time with my family. I was at the office 9 hours a day, with a minimum of 2 hours commute (in total). I was not spending enough time with my children and I felt that I was investing a lot more in work than in my children.

Another reason was that we, as a family, wanted the possibility to move where we wanted and maybe, in the future, to travel while working.

Here are my lists after 7+ years of working in Bucharest in offices and ~1 year of working from home.

Working from home

Pros

  • More time in general
  • Schedule flexibility
  • Spending more time with my family
  • You can move wherever you like
  • Not being tired all the time
  • Wanting to visit and travel more because I have more energy

Cons

  • Lack of social situations (but that can be arranged by going out with friends and at church, in my case)
  • No real separation between work and home
  • You have to “hunt” for silence if you have two kids (by working late/early)
  • We need a bigger bed
    We need a bigger bed
  • Working near my beautiful wife
    Working near my beautiful wife
  • Working from a camp where my kids went
    Working from a camp where my kids went
  • Working from the park while the kids are playing
    Working from the park while the kids are playing
  • Homemade lemonade
    Homemade lemonade
  • With my lovely girl, Miriam
    With my lovely girl, Miriam

Working in an office

Pros

  • Easier to learn/teach from/to people in person
  • Socializing everyday
  • Company events

Cons

  • Less time for family
  • Commute
  • Less flexibility (working in a range of hours, 1-2 days work from home, if you’re lucky)
  • The Front End Team
    The Front End Team
  • Enjoying some calories
    Enjoying some calories
  • The good old days of making fun on someone on the internet
    The good old days of making fun on someone on the internet

If you have any pros and cos about these, feel free to share in the comments bellow.

If you’re interested in working from home, at OakBits we are always looking for people we can click with. For more info, you can reach me at radu@oakbits.co.

Patience – this generation’s rarest resource

We start our life depending on others. We pretend to be adults in our playing. We pretend we are married, that we have children. We can’t wait for this to be real.

Then we start going to school. We observe that there are a lot of things to be learned and it seems that even if we do our best, there is still a lot to learn. We can’t wait to know it all.

In the meantime, we start to fantasize about being with somebody way to early for our age. Time goes by and more and more of our energy goes towards finding someone suitable for us. We can’t wait to find that special someone.

Then we find that special someone and we are thrilled. For a second.

We get married and we have children. The childhood “pretend” becomes real. They are lovely, especially when they’re sleeping. But then they start with demands, with their own opinions and wants. We try to educate them, to teach them what is right, to make them understand. We can’t wait for them to understand.

Meanwhile, the needs of the family grow bigger and bigger, so we have to keep up with our career. We read, we watch tutorials, we try different projects. We can’t wait to be experts in our field.

This is our life now. We struggle everyday to become better, to earn more, to reach the next step, to teach our kids the values in life and for a small second of two weeks a year, we take a vacation from it all and we breathe.

Is this our life now? Why don’t we have patience with our spouse, our children, our coworkers, with ourselves? Why are we in such a hurry to be the next “me”, when we didn’t enjoy our current self? Time is limited and it’s going fast.

Are you at the beginning of your career? Enjoy the learning and don’t stress about it.

Are you at the beginning at your family? Enjoy the present things now, because they will never be the same again.

It’s not a race, it’s a journey.

Dieter F. Uchtdorf

You know the quote, it has become a cliché. We like to say it, but we don’t like to make it our own.

We don’t become patient until tragedy strikes. Then, nothing else matters than to be with our loved ones, to be near friends and family that we love. To hold our spouse, to kiss our children, to hug our friends.

Please, for the love of God, don’t wait for tragedy.

Have patience now!

AMiCUS Coding Days 2019

We completed the 4th edition of this event! ???

For those of you who don’t know what AMiCUS Coding Days is, let me explain.

AMiCUS Coding Days is an event where people from 14+ learn new technologies and build something with what they’re learning. The event was in August for 5 days and was held near Brasov, Romania.

Every year we have different projects on different technologies. Here are the ones from this edition:

Introduction in programming with Python 3.0

This was a first for us because we didn’t have a project for those who are absolute beginners in programming. This was a huge success (the project with the most students) and the class was held by Vicențiu Petreacă.

They learned the basic of programming, at first with pseudo-code and then with Python 3.0.

App 4 Health

This project was a continuation of last year’s project and the team added new features to an Android app using Android studio with Java. They stepped up their game using a brain reading helmet (Emotiv) with which they could control the app. This project was mentored by Phd. Nicolae Goga.

CV Online

This project went from creating a domain, using git, using Netlify (to do continuous deployment) to creating a CV using Angular 7. This project was led by me and I had a blast with these young developers.

Arduino Smart Home

These guys learned in 5 days more than I learned at the University ? (it’s because I didn’t go to classes). They learned how to use circuits, Arduino boards and different sensors to emulate a smart house. This project was mentored by Aurel Nicolae Floca.

Exploring Libra Blockchain

Raphael Stroe led this project starting with understanding and using Libra Blockchain and then going to Ethereum and developing an voting application on it. In my opinion, this project was the most complex and the most interesting of all.

Extra activities

Besides learning and working, we did a bunch of activities, seminars, board games and of course, a trip to the mountains.

Everyone is welcomed to come and if you want to lead a project, we always need more mentors.

Until then you can follow us on facebook.