WorkWise
Photo of Marcus Reid, founder of WorkWise

Marcus Reid

Founder & Editor — WorkWise

Former software engineer. Working remotely since 2014. Started WorkWise in 2023 after a decade of figuring out what actually makes a home office sustainable — usually the unglamorous things nobody wants to write about.

LinkedIn Twitter / X marcus@workwisesetup.com
10+ Years working remotely
40+ Pieces of gear personally tested
4 Home offices built so far

How I got here

I started working remotely full-time in 2014, back when "remote work" still meant convincing your manager you weren't watching TV in your pajamas. I was a backend developer at a startup with no office. For the first six months it was glorious. Then my lower back stopped working.

Turns out, slumping on a kitchen chair eight hours a day, with a laptop balanced on a stack of cookbooks, is bad for you. Who knew. A trip to a physiotherapist and about $400 of equipment later, I had a real workspace — and a kind of weird obsession with figuring out what actually mattered versus what was just expensive.

From my desk

The chair I broke my back in was a $40 IKEA dining chair I'd had since university. The chair that fixed it was a used Steelcase Leap I bought for $280 on Craigslist. The lesson — and the whole point of this site — is that the right answer is rarely the most expensive one, but it's almost never the cheapest one either.

What I do at WorkWise

I write most of the guides here, edit everything that goes out, and personally test or long-term use the gear we recommend whenever I can. When I can't (sometimes a $1,400 chair just isn't going home with me), I say so clearly and lean on verified reviews and published ergonomics research instead of guessing.

I'm explicitly not interested in chasing the latest shiny thing. Most of my picks are products I've actually used for 6+ months, and a fair number are at least a couple of years old. If something on this site is recommended, it's because I'd buy it again — not because someone paid us to feature it.

My current setup (as of June 2026)

Marcus's actual home office desk

My desk, mid-afternoon. Yes, the coffee cup is half-empty. It's always half-empty.

  • Desk: FlexiSpot E7 frame with a 60×30" walnut top from a local woodworker. Standing maybe 30% of the day.
  • Chair: Refurbished Steelcase Leap V2 (the one from the Craigslist story above). Still going strong after 7 years.
  • Monitor: Dell U2723QE 27" 4K, on an Ergotron LX arm. One monitor, not two — switched back from dual two years ago and never looked back.
  • Keyboard: Keychron K2 Pro with brown switches.
  • Mouse: Logitech MX Master 3S on weekdays, MX Vertical on weekends. My forearm hates the standard mouse after long sessions.
  • Lighting: BenQ ScreenBar Halo over the monitor; a Wiz floor lamp aimed at the ceiling for ambient.
  • Headphones: Sony WH-1000XM5 for focus blocks; AirPods Pro for calls when I'm walking.

None of that came at once. Most of it was a series of small upgrades over years, each one solving a specific problem the previous version couldn't.

Editorial principles

  1. We test what we can. Affiliate revenue is not a license to recommend things we haven't used.
  2. We say when we haven't tested something. Loudly. With sources.
  3. We don't take pay-for-placement. No brand can buy a higher ranking in a roundup. Ever.
  4. We update when things change. Old picks get retired when something better arrives. If you spot something outdated, tell us.
  5. We disclose everything. See our affiliate disclosure.

How to reach me

Easiest: email marcus@workwisesetup.com. I read everything that comes in and I reply to most of it within a couple of days — assuming it's not a "guest post" pitch, in which case it goes to the trash with the rest.

For product suggestions, corrections, or "you got this wrong, here's why" — those I genuinely love. The site gets better because of them.