The Hilarity of Working From Home

When Arkayne first started it was run from the Casita at Nicholas’ house; this proved useful until we realized it was out of the way for most of our team and not as spacious as you would think. We then started utilizing multiple locations such as CollabLab up in Deer Valley, SkySong down in Scottsdale, and other various locations including our own homes. All of us dream of working from home at one time or another. You get to see the family, get food whenever you want, turn on ESPN (or in my case Spongebob Squarepants) and can easily decide if the bed in the corner of your eye is yearning for someone to take a nap on it. We here at Arkayne quickly realized as nice at is being at home, it was time for an office. Here are some stories from the team about what it was like to work from home.

There are a lot of upsides to working from home, including being able to roll out of bed and right into your office.  And being home when the UPS truck needs a signature for the latest delivery from Amazon, or when the cable guy gives you a 4 hour time window for a service call.

The biggest challenge is the separation of Work Time from Home Time when you have a home office.  On the one hand, work can easily be interrupted when the kids arrive home from school, the home phone rings, or the dogs need attention.  It takes a bit of discipline to get in the home office, close the door, and not let distractions disrupt your work.  On the other hand it can also intrude on family time.  The office phone rings during dinner.  After dinner, when you go in to “just send a quick email” you can get stuck for hours, forgetting there are people out there needing help with homework.  You need some time to just unplug, and that can sometimes be difficult when the office is always right there, beckoning.

All in all, having the flexibility to work from home is a great luxury, but having a cool office like the Atrium to go to provides an environment to really focus on getting things done.
- Bill Bradford, VP Marketing and Sales

Like so many other people with more work than time, during my time at PayPal I longed to work from home thinking my productivity would skyrocket free from office interruptions. So when Arkayne started taking off I set up a home office finally realizing that dream. It was perfect except for one thing, there was no one interrupting me. I guess I learned the value of human contact over those few months. People communicate surprisingly well in subtle ways, and isolating myself from that at home started to hinder my work. Once the Arkayne team grew to more than 3 people and I found myself having the same conversation 3 times a day, thats when I knew we needed an office.
- Paul Kenjora, CTO

At the outset of my employment with Arkayne, I decided that working from home would present too many distractions. I had attempted it during past freelance gigs, and concluded that my productivity would suffer due to the proximity of TV and dirty dishes in the sink. I opted instead to work from the local coffee house, thinking that the soothing jazz music, free wi-fi, and aroma of coffee would be a boon. It was nice for a little while, but the novelty soon wore off. Distractions were still abundant. Coming home each day smelling like coffee did not endear me to those around me. I missed having printers, whiteboards, and other office conveniences. Ultimately, I wanted to feel more like a professional. Moving into our new office was a welcome change.
- David Lindquist, Senior Developer

I didn’t have too many quarrels about working from home. Of course that was because when I worked from home I had the opportunity to slack off and purposely get myself distracted. It’s amazing how the fact that your bed is not made or that your clothes aren’t put away can stop you from doing anything work related. And who could concentrate on work when Kathy Lee and Hoda are on NBC doing the fourth hour of the Today Show. Needless to say after my knowledge of Arkayne went down and my knowledge of Al Roker’s weather vernacular went up, I knew it was time for an office.
- Tyler Metcalf, Marketing Intern

Working from home makes it hard to separate your business life from your personal life.  There would be times where I would be working and be distracted by things going on in my apartment, or vise verse where I would be enjoying my after hours and get a call about work.  With the new office I at least know I can count out a majority of those distractions during the work day; now if I could only cut out the work from my free time.
- Adam Ayers, Marketing/Sales