The subject of remote work has been batted around and with some strong opinions and if it wasn’t for a conversation I had with my daughter, who was preparing for a presentation in school about the pros and cons of working remotely, I would not be thinking about this today.

I have a lot to say but the final point will be rather concise. Bear with me to put things in context.

Let me premise this by saying, until the pandemic hit us in 2020, I never worked from home as a layout designer. Since 1990, I had always commuted to the office, whether as an employee or as a contractor.

The toughest times created several keen memories of working late nights, missing dinners, having marathons with colleagues around the clock trying to push projects out, sleeping under my desk to try staying warm in the middle of the night waiting for an LVS or DRC run to complete. There were many many times when Mondays are no big deal because you never had the weekend measure it to. Powerful memories of what it’s like to work in a start up company, a startup department when your company or department has to prove its existence, or doing what it takes to meet an critical schedule.

IMHO, There is no such thing as Work-Life Balance. When you realize that work is a major part of life, and for most people, a necessary means of sustaining life for you and your family, it just becomes life balance. It’s true, you just cannot just stay pedal-to-the-metal (PTTM 🙂 ) always but some of all of us have a certain predisposition to go all out for X amount of time when duty calls.

For the founder of a company, that factor to be PTTM will tend to be off-the-charts, but that’s natural as much as it is for a mother to care for a child. It can be intimidating at first, but when you better understand people and yourself, you tend to build a certain understanding of that reality. The idealism espoused by the common HR policies didn’t exist in a startup company and that’s why the company exists in the first place, because people were willing to take their skills and talents to the limits (and beyond) to bring something into existence. You can’t bring something into existence by sitting on your…. hands.

I have one memory from the mid 1990s of coming into work early in the morning to continue troubleshooting full chip LVS. The founder, Fu-Chieh Hsu, who was willing to jump in and help me debug, said he would come in by 4:30 am which was a time he thought would be before I would come in. Being prideful and competitive, I showed up at 4:00 am and was a surprise to my boss (I’m sure, pleasantly surprised). Having done everything in the layout department at that time by myself, I had a certain egotistical desire to want to get the job done without help. Yeh, fast developing layout designers can appear arrogant or self-willed (on occasion appearing like a jerk), not unlike the way I was back then. What can I say? I got *#%@ done, just like, I know, a lot of you out there.

Back to 2020, when we were all instructed to work from home, I really had no idea what to expect. Long story short, I discovered it was amazing and extraordinarily productive. It was further amazing because for several months I was working strictly off the company lap top which had a screen that was substantially smaller than my desktop monitor I had in the office (which I finally was able to bring back home).

*

SOME INHERENT POSITIVES

Working from home has the obvious advantages of no wasted commute time, no cost for gas, no wear and tear on the car, flexible hours to work 24 hours a day if necessary, which in an multi-time zone collaboration can be quite convenient. All of these can be a significant savings on ones budget and be equal to a significant raise in salary.

It’s probably a testament to the performance of the VPNs I used and having a high speed ethernet connection at home, that I did not experience lag on a regular basis, or at least not any more so than working from the office. Initially, I was probably most surprised and glad about this.

Unless there are extraordinary security measures required for a given company, it’s my observation from a layout designer’s perspective, an entire chip design group, working within and across departments is at least as productive compared to working from the office. With the advent of various meeting APPS and the proliferation of high speed networks, the efficiency of communication has gone way-way up between people, groups or people in remote (domestic and international) locations.

It seems that most presentations need to be prepared to meet the needs of remote team members in any case, so that’s another reason why working from home more on par with working from the office. If anything, the people gathered in an office have less of a presence in a meeting than someone remote.

However, another thought about security, nowadays, at least in my experience, there is zero need to print anything out of the secured system. There is no need to download anything out of your system, which is better for security. In the old days, my office would have stacks of schematics filling file cabinets. Now? None at all. Modern technology provides for this and saves that mess as well.

*

A Word About Design Engineers

I’m sure that among the various design engineers that sentiment of working from home is not quite as absolute, apparently because their effective interaction requires a lot more peer pressure, body language, finger pointing at multiple papers and monitors all at once (OK, I’m being tongue-in-cheek) but they really can do an excellent job in a remote position.

Seriously, there can be a camaraderie among design engineers that goes deeper than the average layout designer. This bond can be due several factors, for instance, the depth and breadth of knowledge shared and common higher educational foundations. With each company, their networks deepen. Simply stated, they have more of their lives invested in the designing of semiconductors. The amount of experience and insights they can contribute to the overall discussion and problem solving can be staggering.

It’s a beautiful thing when engineers leverage this wealth of knowledge and experience in effort to build others up, particularly other engineers, regardless of their experience level.

*

FOR LAYOUT IS WORKING FROM HOME BETTER?

Although in my case remote work has worked out great, I cannot dogmatically say “Heck yes” in all cases. Each case must be based on the actual office conditions, the conditions at home, managerial styles, and personal preferences and tolerances. I can easily imagine working conditions in either work or home to be better or worse.

If you have family, that can be another positive in that you are in a better position to respond to family needs, and then easily add that time back in later. Like I said, there is no LIFE-WORK, it’s more just LIFE balance. If you are living with an elderly parent or someone with special needs, that can be an essential game changer.

If private offices or an open cubical somehow improves the ability to concentrate, that condition could also be reproduced remotely.

Restrictive and awkward social interaction policies, like many implemented during the pandemic, -that- can be a big negative on productivity and lead to what is like a circus atmosphere in a not very serious professional working environment.

The obvious benefit of gathering at work is the potential for team building and social interaction, although the interaction, by and large is likely to be outside the office, during lunch, or after hours, depending on your demographic.

There can be environmental conditions that can be difficult to deal with at work, for example, body scents (which can be more toxic than a virus is harmful) or body odor, office conversation, finding conference rooms to have private conversations, generically bad lighting, or impromptu visits from anyone. However, similar distractions could also exist at home.

Last but not least, I would have to say that the amount of trust there is in the working relationship is pretty high on the list as to the degree someone can be relied upon to get the work done. That is a human factor that goes beyond the scope of this article. It would be a good discussion over favorite beverages.

*

LAYOUT IN OFFICE OR AT HOME, WHICH ONE IS IT?

I can only say that my experience as a layout designer working remotely proved to be pleasantly surprising and without inherent negatives, only inherent positives as I have cited above. The objective point being, however, the unknowns, the variables, play a big part in your personal work situation in determining which is better.

Do you have any opinions are whether layout designers should be working remotely? Let me know in the comments.

Feel free to Like, Share, Follow, and Comment

CKY

***

Copyright © 2023 Challen Yee / ICLayout.blog  Some Rights Reserved

Disclaimers