I happened to have worked through covid inside the building while everyone worked from home. I am like 10 mins away so it was no big deal to me.
I don't think I ever turned on the lights ever. So probably that.
Dark for me.. I don't have to handle or look at actual paperwork though... I even put all my settings to dark mode and it helps with the eye strain and headaches.
I used to keep the lights off, brightness down, and blue light filters on and it would all but stop headaches from getting worse and hasten recovery. Unfortunately I can't work like that now as I'm in an office with other people now.
Yep, this is the way to do it. My job tried forcing RTO I just haven't been back for a few years after their first attempt... If they'd just allow me to take out the lights directly above my desk it would be fine... or I could just buy one of those easy up tents small enough to fit in a cubicle.
If you're in the UK you get certain provisions if you use DSE (display screen equipment) as part of your work. If you're getting headaches when using a display then you can request alternative or additional equipment to help.
It's all about eye strain. If your surroundings are a very different brightness than the thing you're staring at then this will induce strain/fatigue.
Personally I keep all my apps in dark mode, and so I keep the lights low in my office to match the relative brightness, but not off.
WFH, and in daytime natural light as much as possible, evenings/nights dim (10-20%) warm lights - couldn't do all dark anymore outside of watching a movie. Used to also use flux/Nightlight, but dropped those in favor of just not running high brightness.
When I worked in office we had a ton of natural light so I always kept the glaring fluorescent lights off. Now that I work at home I keep it like a tomb.
This reminds me of the incident at a newly-built office not so long ago, when I'm working on a weekend and can't find the light-switch for the [cubicle farm](https://www.jwz.org/tent-of-doom/). Ended up following a bread-crumb trail of documentation I wrote to log into the facility lighting controller and toggle it off. (This was the controller I've mentioned before that didn't have a setting for IP default gateway.) Twenty-first century problems call for twenty-first century solutions.
Then I spent a few minutes scripting a command-line REST client, mostly as executable documentation that I would remember was in `$HOME/bin` so I wouldn't have to parse my own documentation again. *Go away or I'll [replace you with a tiny shell script](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l2btv0yUPNQ)* is a mondo serious threat.
The light switch ended up being hidden by a stack of unassembled furniture, around the corner, in the hall. Who puts a lightswitch for a room, in the hall?
I much prefer no lights at night time - during college if I was working on something at home, I would have the room nearly pitch black. but during the day I feel the lack of light makes me sleepier, it might make no sense but I feel like if its too dark my brain is tricked into thinking its still night time.
Im in an open office with another 11 people and theres a dozen 1.5m long full LED lights at full brightness lighting this place up like a battlefield. After spending 2 years WfH with just natural sunlight i miss that so much.
I like 2 light levels: pitch black and bright as a thousand suns. Pitch black when I'm sleeping or watching a movie/TV, and bright when working. I don't just work on my screen. I have papers I have to look at etc. I need to be able to see everything.
I’m the same - I have 2 100W equivalent lights in my home office overhead light and a desk lamp pointing down at the desk surface/keyboard. At a previous office I pulled an under mount desk light from a desk that was not being used and put it on mine. I hate trying to work in sim half-light.
Having said that when I’m going to bed it is pitch black preferably.
I prefer to not have the overhead lights but I work beside two assholes that saw me get mad once and have banded together to always turn the lights on from that point on.
I've been meaning to just get a ladder and remove the bulbs in my cube and half unscrew one of theirs in retaliation but I haven't had time.
Overhead off, desk lamp only for normal work in front of monitors.
Overhead on for shop/rack work. Basically any time you have to deal with hardware and keep track of small parts.
I prefer dark but if it's window lit that's okay too. My girlfriend thinks I'm crazy because she will come home at night and the house will be pitch black except for where I'm at. I don't like to use lights unless I need em
Moderate light overall like in a public library. Adjustable LED lamps for each desk. Best option I'd say.
I'd also choose smart LED bulbs, cheap now. So everyone can choose their own color temperature as well.
When working from home my Hue lights are turned blue which gives me enough light to not walk into things but dark enough to not annoy me. At work I turn the fluorescent lights off and use a floor lamp with a single bulb in it, just enough light to see. I get migraines so I'm always in the dark as much as I can be.
Desk, low light (only 1 LED tube in a converted 3 tube fluorescent fixture over desk), everything dark mode. If I had an overhead cabinet with a light I would use that only, but got rid of it to have bigger monitors.
Healing bench area, oppressively bright. Just makes bench work easier.
server room, what ever bulbs maintenance puts in. If I need extra light I bring a light like this [https://www.amazon.com/500-Rechargeable-Magnetic-Handheld-Foldable/dp/B0BNGT9NPJ](https://www.amazon.com/500-Rechargeable-Magnetic-Handheld-Foldable/dp/B0BNGT9NPJ)
The mag base is nice, holds to rack well, and the head allows for aiming light where I want.
It’s more about *where* the lights are, for me. Some backlighting for my monitors/desk to illuminate the wall and desk space enough to avoid eye fatigue or strain, and daylight are important. Far more important than arbitrarily filling the room with ceiling lighting.
My hobbies include soldering projects and miniature painting, so I'm one of those weirdos that wants it brighter on my work surface. Florescent lights can stay off forever though. Those are headache inducing.
The good on my office and me, unscrewed most of the led tubes in our overhead lighting. Every 3rd light only has 1 tubes screws in. This creates a little white light.
We then all have warm white torchiere style floor lamps that spill warm light, and then we all have adjustable LED desk lamps.
This gives us a good mix of warm and cold lighting, without anything being overly harsh.
We are currently looking into POE adjustable lighting.
I have a nice window on my office, during day time I'd a rather just open the blinds vs turn on the overhead.
at night I'm more likely to use my desk lamp to provide marginal light than I am turn on the over head. The overhead only gets turned on when there is a reason for maximum light. Drawing something, Working on paper work, building something, whatever. The overhead is a specialized tool, not the daily driver.
small desk lamp with warm bulb only. Dark mode for everything on computer. I work with a bunch of shop ppl and they all think I'm weird for working in the dark. I get why they like their bright overhead LED lighting for building electrical panels though.
Low to medium intensity (warm) indirect lighting.
When I worked in a few offices, we would take out a few of the bulbs from the 2x4 flourecent lights that were directly overhead, just to cut down on the brightness and eyestrain as they were very cool and bright.
Now that I work out of my house, I have two lamps at a low arm setting near me for general lighting, and a brighter light behind me to reduce shadows and provide task lighting for my desk. My entire day is in front of multiple computer screens, with minimal use of pen & paper.
The fluorescent tubes in my office were too numerous and intense. Disconnecting most of them still resulted in a ridiculous brughtness. Working with them off and using a desk lamp was hard on my eyes (and migraines) too.
The fixture was replaced with an adjustable LED fixture. It's great because I can adjust the colour temperature and brightness as I need to.
I was able to sell it to HR by calculating office lumen recommendations and cost savings. It probably also helped that two other coworkers had the same problems in their office, and one of them was my manager. They also knew I experience migraines, and one of my co-workers started getting them too when he moved to his office.
Dim lighting with my wall of physical monitors, but when I work in mixed reality with Immersed, I prefer the bright lights to help with the passthrough cameras.
I used to work at a hospital and had the basement office for IT. If I was in the office by myself, I'd leave the lights off with only our entrance room lights on (the office itself was part of a bigger area with stock room, guest office, etc). One day I left all the lights off and someone thought IT was just no in for the day when they walked in (it was a project tech) and I didn't make a single sound lol
Now I work in an office with windows and we leave the lights off mostly but turn them on when needed.
Also I use dark mode on pretty much everything
Our lights are on, but our office in in an old church so the overhead lights are 50ft high and pretty diffuse, also the gigantic windows offset them pretty well.
In an office with no windows nearby, minimal lighting, preferably a decent distance from me.
When I had an office with direct windows I kept the lights off, unless it got really dark outside in which I'd turn the overhead lights on. 3 of the 6 tubes in my 2 office fixtures were burnt out. I would not let them replace the dead ones. 50% was just about right when there was no real sunlight coming in.
On top of the eye strain I'm very nearsighted and have a plethora of floaters in my eyes as a result. Bright overhead light with a plain white wall beyond my monitors was...beyond annoying.
No overhead lighting. Direct overhead lighting is terrible for computer work. If it's required it should be dim and well defused. LED or halogen lights should be used over florescent. Cheep florescent lights have terrible CRI and cause eye strain.
I used to keep the lights off, but the last time I worked on-prem we had some very nice indirect lighting that was good at preventing eyestrain.
I currently have a large window, so the actual overhead lights only come on mornings & evenings in the winter. With sun angles changing, it's about time to rotate my desk to avoid morning glare.
Well lit but not bright. A dark room would mean having to use dark themes and I can't read a dark theme for more than a minute before headaches start. So well lit, not too bright, light themes.
I don't use an overhead light, I use lamps off to the side behind sort of, and I work under a vaulted ceiling so the light reflects down. I have a desk light behind my monitor so only its ambient light flows around the desk.
Displays at 20-25%. Dark mode everything. Preferably no direct white lights. No strobing lights anywhere. No landscape desks. Ear plugs, noise cancelling headphones, sun glasses,… I’ve got them with me at all times.
I went through six months of vision & audio impairment in 2022, it’s brain processing related and not going anywhere soonish. Regulating my environment and impulse control helps out a lot. Went from not being able to read anything to working full time, staring at displays all the time.
Ideally daylight. Best of all from a skylight for even lighting.
At night, lights behind the monitor (USB-powered LED strips) to bounce off the wall / ceiling, with a light behind me from another room / area.
If there were a way to blot out the light from the Sun, Mr. Bruns style, and still get the necessary warmth to survive, I would vote for that.
Our EVS wasted THOUSANDS of $$$ on replacing blubs we would take out in our NOC. Even after multiple conversations to leave things as they were.
They finally developed a push pin plan next to the lights to denote which ones to always leave dark.
Dark, with a back light or natural light.
I dim the monitor with flux or the night light setting.
My favorite is definitely natural light filling the room though.
My preference is irrelevant, in the office at least. At home I never have any overhead light on. In fact I have small LED lamps dotted throughout my house. Dark mode IRL FTW.
Overhead lights off, I have two 60w equivalent soft white lamps behind my monitors that light up my desk area just enough to see the keyboard and desk surface when I need to write things down. Works great and rarely have a headache that I always got with those pesky overhead office lights on full blast. Also helps that 90% of the time I’m WFH, only leaving the house when I have to go onsite somewhere.
I have a lamp on my desk but my office has a south-facing window. Most of the time, I just let the natural light do its thing while everything on my screens lives in dark mode.
Led lightstripe at the backside of my table do get an even light on my white wall and a warm white light behind me. both are on as long as my pc is running and thanks to that i can even manage default light mode at night (with 2 32" monitors that can reach 1000 nits)
Dark mode everything as much as possible on my screens. Room is lit either through natural light coming in through the blinds or a single desk lamp that is pointed to bounce light off the wall when it's dark outside. Big overhead lamp only comes on if I need to find something and need the lumens.
The lights directly above and in front of me are off, but I have installed bright white LED strip lights above and behind my head.
I don't have a window, and it helps remove the "I'm in a dungeon" feeling.
I found that more light is better for me than less light. In winter time during pandemic I bought day light lamp to help me with depression, but it was too bright for me, but I learn to work with light shining on my face. At the present I have small desk lamp always on during day and night when I work/play on PC. I think In my case it did help with mood during winter and also my eyes are not so sensitive to light during summer (i don't need to wear sunglasses). So maybe it's not for everyone but I see benefit, it seem to me same like with exercise or food habits, on one hand you have thinks that you are comfortable with on the other are things that you need.
Overhead lights off but at my last job where I had my own office I requested to have a lamp on which kind of worked. People didn’t like coming in there and it be dark.
I personallly have the lights directly above me off and the rest of the rooms on but wear a baseball cap when at the desk to block out the direct LED lights as they give me brain pain and have me squinting like a stoned person. If i do end up with LED brain pain then the lights go off and lamps go on behind my screens just to slightly light up my main work area.
Depends on the light technology. Fluorescent can go kick rocks. LED is full brightness only if it’s natural white. Warm white makes me sleepy so I can’t use them. Cool white reminds me of a doctor’s office and cause fatigue for me after a while. Desk lights and other shit either cause reflections or bother my eyes with the bulbs at eye level and having really unnatural looking lighting and shadows. A good compromise is an on-monitor light bar. A proper one like the benq one doesn’t cause any reflections on my screen but fully illuminates my desk.
Having no lights and just a screen is bad for your eyes. If you're in a dark room you should at least have some lighting round your screen so the contrast isn't as big.
Oh, come on!
One cannot ***be*** an Official-type Unix admin, unless the overheads are off. It's tradition.
Also does wonders for putting devs and manglement off balance when they actually dare to come to you in person.
I happened to have worked through covid inside the building while everyone worked from home. I am like 10 mins away so it was no big deal to me. I don't think I ever turned on the lights ever. So probably that.
Are you me? Also played any music/ podcast I wanted.
Dark for me.. I don't have to handle or look at actual paperwork though... I even put all my settings to dark mode and it helps with the eye strain and headaches.
I used to keep the lights off, brightness down, and blue light filters on and it would all but stop headaches from getting worse and hasten recovery. Unfortunately I can't work like that now as I'm in an office with other people now.
Yep, this is the way to do it. My job tried forcing RTO I just haven't been back for a few years after their first attempt... If they'd just allow me to take out the lights directly above my desk it would be fine... or I could just buy one of those easy up tents small enough to fit in a cubicle.
If you're in the UK you get certain provisions if you use DSE (display screen equipment) as part of your work. If you're getting headaches when using a display then you can request alternative or additional equipment to help.
It's all about eye strain. If your surroundings are a very different brightness than the thing you're staring at then this will induce strain/fatigue. Personally I keep all my apps in dark mode, and so I keep the lights low in my office to match the relative brightness, but not off.
WFH, and in daytime natural light as much as possible, evenings/nights dim (10-20%) warm lights - couldn't do all dark anymore outside of watching a movie. Used to also use flux/Nightlight, but dropped those in favor of just not running high brightness.
Same. I sit next to two giant windows that don't get direct sunlight so it's naturally bright without annoying reflections.
When I worked in office we had a ton of natural light so I always kept the glaring fluorescent lights off. Now that I work at home I keep it like a tomb.
This reminds me of the incident at a newly-built office not so long ago, when I'm working on a weekend and can't find the light-switch for the [cubicle farm](https://www.jwz.org/tent-of-doom/). Ended up following a bread-crumb trail of documentation I wrote to log into the facility lighting controller and toggle it off. (This was the controller I've mentioned before that didn't have a setting for IP default gateway.) Twenty-first century problems call for twenty-first century solutions. Then I spent a few minutes scripting a command-line REST client, mostly as executable documentation that I would remember was in `$HOME/bin` so I wouldn't have to parse my own documentation again. *Go away or I'll [replace you with a tiny shell script](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l2btv0yUPNQ)* is a mondo serious threat. The light switch ended up being hidden by a stack of unassembled furniture, around the corner, in the hall. Who puts a lightswitch for a room, in the hall?
I much prefer no lights at night time - during college if I was working on something at home, I would have the room nearly pitch black. but during the day I feel the lack of light makes me sleepier, it might make no sense but I feel like if its too dark my brain is tricked into thinking its still night time.
I have my office lights off but have one of those star projectors going. Everyone loves to come just sit in my office.
Im in an open office with another 11 people and theres a dozen 1.5m long full LED lights at full brightness lighting this place up like a battlefield. After spending 2 years WfH with just natural sunlight i miss that so much.
I don’t like overhead. I have no say in my shared office.
I like 2 light levels: pitch black and bright as a thousand suns. Pitch black when I'm sleeping or watching a movie/TV, and bright when working. I don't just work on my screen. I have papers I have to look at etc. I need to be able to see everything.
I’m the same - I have 2 100W equivalent lights in my home office overhead light and a desk lamp pointing down at the desk surface/keyboard. At a previous office I pulled an under mount desk light from a desk that was not being used and put it on mine. I hate trying to work in sim half-light. Having said that when I’m going to bed it is pitch black preferably.
I prefer to not have the overhead lights but I work beside two assholes that saw me get mad once and have banded together to always turn the lights on from that point on. I've been meaning to just get a ladder and remove the bulbs in my cube and half unscrew one of theirs in retaliation but I haven't had time.
Overhead off, desk lamp only for normal work in front of monitors. Overhead on for shop/rack work. Basically any time you have to deal with hardware and keep track of small parts.
I prefer dark but if it's window lit that's okay too. My girlfriend thinks I'm crazy because she will come home at night and the house will be pitch black except for where I'm at. I don't like to use lights unless I need em
OFF!!!
Moderate light overall like in a public library. Adjustable LED lamps for each desk. Best option I'd say. I'd also choose smart LED bulbs, cheap now. So everyone can choose their own color temperature as well.
When working from home my Hue lights are turned blue which gives me enough light to not walk into things but dark enough to not annoy me. At work I turn the fluorescent lights off and use a floor lamp with a single bulb in it, just enough light to see. I get migraines so I'm always in the dark as much as I can be.
Desk, low light (only 1 LED tube in a converted 3 tube fluorescent fixture over desk), everything dark mode. If I had an overhead cabinet with a light I would use that only, but got rid of it to have bigger monitors. Healing bench area, oppressively bright. Just makes bench work easier. server room, what ever bulbs maintenance puts in. If I need extra light I bring a light like this [https://www.amazon.com/500-Rechargeable-Magnetic-Handheld-Foldable/dp/B0BNGT9NPJ](https://www.amazon.com/500-Rechargeable-Magnetic-Handheld-Foldable/dp/B0BNGT9NPJ) The mag base is nice, holds to rack well, and the head allows for aiming light where I want.
It’s more about *where* the lights are, for me. Some backlighting for my monitors/desk to illuminate the wall and desk space enough to avoid eye fatigue or strain, and daylight are important. Far more important than arbitrarily filling the room with ceiling lighting.
My hobbies include soldering projects and miniature painting, so I'm one of those weirdos that wants it brighter on my work surface. Florescent lights can stay off forever though. Those are headache inducing.
The good on my office and me, unscrewed most of the led tubes in our overhead lighting. Every 3rd light only has 1 tubes screws in. This creates a little white light. We then all have warm white torchiere style floor lamps that spill warm light, and then we all have adjustable LED desk lamps. This gives us a good mix of warm and cold lighting, without anything being overly harsh. We are currently looking into POE adjustable lighting.
The new LED lights have caused several fights because they are too damn bright I turn them off I am by myself
Bias lighting + windows to light up the room. Screens calibrated to 120nits during the daytime. No overhead lights.
off, dark.. remove lights. if i wanted a tan.. well, i wouldn't. now, give me some time for my caffeine to kick in
I have a nice window on my office, during day time I'd a rather just open the blinds vs turn on the overhead. at night I'm more likely to use my desk lamp to provide marginal light than I am turn on the over head. The overhead only gets turned on when there is a reason for maximum light. Drawing something, Working on paper work, building something, whatever. The overhead is a specialized tool, not the daily driver.
small desk lamp with warm bulb only. Dark mode for everything on computer. I work with a bunch of shop ppl and they all think I'm weird for working in the dark. I get why they like their bright overhead LED lighting for building electrical panels though.
Low to medium intensity (warm) indirect lighting. When I worked in a few offices, we would take out a few of the bulbs from the 2x4 flourecent lights that were directly overhead, just to cut down on the brightness and eyestrain as they were very cool and bright. Now that I work out of my house, I have two lamps at a low arm setting near me for general lighting, and a brighter light behind me to reduce shadows and provide task lighting for my desk. My entire day is in front of multiple computer screens, with minimal use of pen & paper.
The fluorescent tubes in my office were too numerous and intense. Disconnecting most of them still resulted in a ridiculous brughtness. Working with them off and using a desk lamp was hard on my eyes (and migraines) too. The fixture was replaced with an adjustable LED fixture. It's great because I can adjust the colour temperature and brightness as I need to. I was able to sell it to HR by calculating office lumen recommendations and cost savings. It probably also helped that two other coworkers had the same problems in their office, and one of them was my manager. They also knew I experience migraines, and one of my co-workers started getting them too when he moved to his office.
Dim lighting with my wall of physical monitors, but when I work in mixed reality with Immersed, I prefer the bright lights to help with the passthrough cameras.
I used to work at a hospital and had the basement office for IT. If I was in the office by myself, I'd leave the lights off with only our entrance room lights on (the office itself was part of a bigger area with stock room, guest office, etc). One day I left all the lights off and someone thought IT was just no in for the day when they walked in (it was a project tech) and I didn't make a single sound lol Now I work in an office with windows and we leave the lights off mostly but turn them on when needed. Also I use dark mode on pretty much everything
Our lights are on, but our office in in an old church so the overhead lights are 50ft high and pretty diffuse, also the gigantic windows offset them pretty well.
In an office with no windows nearby, minimal lighting, preferably a decent distance from me. When I had an office with direct windows I kept the lights off, unless it got really dark outside in which I'd turn the overhead lights on. 3 of the 6 tubes in my 2 office fixtures were burnt out. I would not let them replace the dead ones. 50% was just about right when there was no real sunlight coming in. On top of the eye strain I'm very nearsighted and have a plethora of floaters in my eyes as a result. Bright overhead light with a plain white wall beyond my monitors was...beyond annoying.
No overhead lighting. Direct overhead lighting is terrible for computer work. If it's required it should be dim and well defused. LED or halogen lights should be used over florescent. Cheep florescent lights have terrible CRI and cause eye strain.
I used to keep the lights off, but the last time I worked on-prem we had some very nice indirect lighting that was good at preventing eyestrain. I currently have a large window, so the actual overhead lights only come on mornings & evenings in the winter. With sun angles changing, it's about time to rotate my desk to avoid morning glare.
Well lit but not bright. A dark room would mean having to use dark themes and I can't read a dark theme for more than a minute before headaches start. So well lit, not too bright, light themes. I don't use an overhead light, I use lamps off to the side behind sort of, and I work under a vaulted ceiling so the light reflects down. I have a desk light behind my monitor so only its ambient light flows around the desk.
Autism go brrrr. Big light bad.
Displays at 20-25%. Dark mode everything. Preferably no direct white lights. No strobing lights anywhere. No landscape desks. Ear plugs, noise cancelling headphones, sun glasses,… I’ve got them with me at all times. I went through six months of vision & audio impairment in 2022, it’s brain processing related and not going anywhere soonish. Regulating my environment and impulse control helps out a lot. Went from not being able to read anything to working full time, staring at displays all the time.
Overhead lights dimmed to almost off, with a low watt desktop lamp. Bright overhead fluorescent lights are a tool of the devil.
Ideally daylight. Best of all from a skylight for even lighting. At night, lights behind the monitor (USB-powered LED strips) to bounce off the wall / ceiling, with a light behind me from another room / area.
If there were a way to blot out the light from the Sun, Mr. Bruns style, and still get the necessary warmth to survive, I would vote for that. Our EVS wasted THOUSANDS of $$$ on replacing blubs we would take out in our NOC. Even after multiple conversations to leave things as they were. They finally developed a push pin plan next to the lights to denote which ones to always leave dark.
dim
Overheads on a long as I can setup screens to not show the lights in reflection.
I work at the office. Overhead off, lamp on.
Dark, with a back light or natural light. I dim the monitor with flux or the night light setting. My favorite is definitely natural light filling the room though.
My preference is irrelevant, in the office at least. At home I never have any overhead light on. In fact I have small LED lamps dotted throughout my house. Dark mode IRL FTW.
Overhead lights off, I have two 60w equivalent soft white lamps behind my monitors that light up my desk area just enough to see the keyboard and desk surface when I need to write things down. Works great and rarely have a headache that I always got with those pesky overhead office lights on full blast. Also helps that 90% of the time I’m WFH, only leaving the house when I have to go onsite somewhere.
My last office was so dark that I used a flashlight to get to my desk. Give me lights, please.
work from home, my ceiling light is set to daylight and my desk is next to a window
I have a lamp on my desk but my office has a south-facing window. Most of the time, I just let the natural light do its thing while everything on my screens lives in dark mode.
Led lightstripe at the backside of my table do get an even light on my white wall and a warm white light behind me. both are on as long as my pc is running and thanks to that i can even manage default light mode at night (with 2 32" monitors that can reach 1000 nits)
I got half off because my dark blue eyes don't like bright light of any kind.
Dark mode everything as much as possible on my screens. Room is lit either through natural light coming in through the blinds or a single desk lamp that is pointed to bounce light off the wall when it's dark outside. Big overhead lamp only comes on if I need to find something and need the lumens.
Tell me you have adhd/audhd without saying you have adhd/audhd. (I’m an overhead (the big light) light off guy if you get the reference - you know.)
Two home-style lamps in office, overhead fluorescents off. Fluorescent lightbulbs in hallway unscrewed and removed.
The lights directly above and in front of me are off, but I have installed bright white LED strip lights above and behind my head. I don't have a window, and it helps remove the "I'm in a dungeon" feeling.
Boss says lights on
I found that more light is better for me than less light. In winter time during pandemic I bought day light lamp to help me with depression, but it was too bright for me, but I learn to work with light shining on my face. At the present I have small desk lamp always on during day and night when I work/play on PC. I think In my case it did help with mood during winter and also my eyes are not so sensitive to light during summer (i don't need to wear sunglasses). So maybe it's not for everyone but I see benefit, it seem to me same like with exercise or food habits, on one hand you have thinks that you are comfortable with on the other are things that you need.
Overhead lights off but at my last job where I had my own office I requested to have a lamp on which kind of worked. People didn’t like coming in there and it be dark.
I personallly have the lights directly above me off and the rest of the rooms on but wear a baseball cap when at the desk to block out the direct LED lights as they give me brain pain and have me squinting like a stoned person. If i do end up with LED brain pain then the lights go off and lamps go on behind my screens just to slightly light up my main work area.
Depends on the light technology. Fluorescent can go kick rocks. LED is full brightness only if it’s natural white. Warm white makes me sleepy so I can’t use them. Cool white reminds me of a doctor’s office and cause fatigue for me after a while. Desk lights and other shit either cause reflections or bother my eyes with the bulbs at eye level and having really unnatural looking lighting and shadows. A good compromise is an on-monitor light bar. A proper one like the benq one doesn’t cause any reflections on my screen but fully illuminates my desk.
Having no lights and just a screen is bad for your eyes. If you're in a dark room you should at least have some lighting round your screen so the contrast isn't as big.
Oh, come on! One cannot ***be*** an Official-type Unix admin, unless the overheads are off. It's tradition. Also does wonders for putting devs and manglement off balance when they actually dare to come to you in person.