Full-Time Telecommuting -- Does It Work? 236
beznadan asks: "I am software developer currently located in Silicon Valley, but I just bought a house in a neighboring state. The high-tech job market there is picking up, but doesn't come close to the market here (linux.com/jobs returns 0 results for the entire state in all categories). I am wondering if full time telecommuting (with occasional trips in for meetings, etc.) is a feasible option. Does anybody out there have experiences with this? Would prospective employers even consider an applicant who planned on working offsite all the time?" This is a topic for all of you who have ever wanted to (or currently do) work at home.
Telecommuting - could be good? (Score:1)
Old Old days - Ug went out to hunt, Ugette stayed home with kids.
Old days - Ezikel went out to work on the land, Sarah stayed home with the kids.
Yesterday - Bob goes to work, so does Sally, kids at child minders.
Tomorrow - 'You got a face to face today? OK I'll stay home' etc.
Think about it - You are at work one minute, then the doorbell rings or a child crys, and you are at home for a few minutes. Can't sleep? work and have a lie in in the morning.....As long as you put your contracted hours in (perhaps with a semi intelligent sensor on the computer to make sure you are really there) perhaps this would be real flexitime.
Is this how the career or children question will be answered for people in the near future?
Re:Home Office Experiences (Score:1)
Re:ORIGINAL LINUX GROUPWARE TOOLS NEEDED (Score:1)
Re:ORIGINAL LINUX GROUPWARE TOOLS NEEDED (Score:1)
Re:I wouldn't get a regular job again (Score:1)
> later on.
This is an excellent point. The industrial revolution legacy 9-5 fixed attitude of backward employers is actually costing them money.
Why? Because they pay you to sit in an office during the times when you're not feeling productive and don't let you properly utilize the times you are and could get more done.
Sometimes I can't sleep, my mind is racing and I could code like a demon. I don't get up and do it because they'd rather see me in the office next day working at an average pace and not making any trouble.
Like many other posters I would not want to be out of the office completely. A balance is best as you can assume that if you're not present then people are talking about you. In many companies it's not how good at your job you are that matters - it's how willing you are to follow the particular foibles management insists on (and how free you can keep your back of knives).
Coding something many times as fast as if you'd been in the office is no help if this fact either never gets through past your manager or is balanced out by people saying "(s)he's not a team player" behind your back.
If they can't see you, you ain't workin' (Score:1)
It's been my observation that most companies are ambivalent about telecommuting. If they support it, it's viewed as a suppliment rather than as a substitute for being at the workplace. I've heard lots of excuses for not adopting telecommuting but I suspect the real reason is if they can't see you, you ain't working. It will be a long time before corporate America is ready for fulltime telecommuting.
What about part time telecommuting? Why does this have to be an either/or proposition? Consider that if we could get most of the office workers to telecommute just 1 or 2 days per week, we could effectively reduce traffic congestion, fuel consumption and automobile air pollution by perhaps 25%. Why aren't the environmentalists advocating telecommuting? Where I live, they're proposing commuter trains and carpools. Fine. What if you work unpredicatble overtime or have to pick up kids from day care?
I say it's going to take a big shift in attitudes. Basically, we are going to have to wait for a bunch of the stodgy minded smokestack managers of yesteryear to retire and/or die before telecommuting becomes an accepted alternative.
Re:it can be tough (Score:1)
Homeschooling (Score:1)
Although I can't comment on what it's like to telecommute, I can point out for us younger Slashdot readers that homeschooling is possible.
I've been homeschooling now for two years, and am currently what traditionally would be a highschool junior. It is possible, and I recommend it to any young slashdot reader. The only distractions I have are fighting the desire to code since I'm basically sitting at my computer most of the day. As stated in some of the above comments about office work, it is amazing how much can be done outside of a school environment.
Working at home... (Score:1)
I was never marginalized simply because of that productivity gain. People I work for often comment, "How did you do that so fast?". However I usually work on solo projects on putting the database glue to whatever the branch offices design teams have come up with. I'm the only one in the company that works from home, but I've never heard any complaints.
I have another friend that does graphic design work from home that does indeed involve a considerable amount of collaboration. He just sets up all his meshes, exchanges them via ftp, and has his co-workers render them on the server farm. Works nicely. The key is getting the boss to go for it. But frankly with as tight as the job market is, if you say, I'm going with or without you... chances are he's going to try out the work from home path. If your a sys admin... your screwed, but other things that don't require access to the hardware make good candidats for this kind of work.
Gov't (EPA) should REQUIRE more telecom jobs! (Score:1)
Re:It seems that... (Score:1)
[...]
>My theory is that it's because I don't get asked questions or I'm not hearing other's conversations over the cubicle walls
Unfortunately, we're nearly always limited to a choice between working in an open-plan (cubicled) office space, or working from home. Many people have trouble working in open plan offices due, as you point out to noise, interruptions, etc. etc. On the other hand, many of the same people also have problems working from home due to home noises, and home interruptions, plus the isolation etc.
My preferred solution would be to work in the central office, but in a central office that was divided into small (say 4-person) rooms/offices, offering the benefits of peace and quiet, while still offering the benefits of ease of communication with coworkers and management.
I've experienced this mode of work, and it's been my favourite working environment - I shared an office with the other 2 members of the unix admin team, and the support team were in another office down the hall, with shared printer area, canteen, etc. where we'd generally meet up at various times during the day. This, for me at least, was an ideal compromise between cubicleland and isolation. I wish more companies realised this happy medium existed!
Long Distance / Full Time Telecommuting (Score:1)
ICQ *really* helps, and having video conferencing would have really helped. Having a good long distance plan really helps too. However, as time went by, they'd give me less and less to do. At one point, I couldn't get a hold of my boss for a full week, with nothing to do. Its difficult communicate with your co-workers, if they're not used to ICQ/text-based chat (talking to sales people at my company was basically impossible).
So, in my experience, if all parties involved (including all the people you interact with) are not commited to making it work, its not going to. People have a tendancy to forget about you too (out of sight, out of mind). I was lucky in that I was a straight coder (perl/mod_perl/apache/websites), so I could just SSH into the office servers.
Your work environment really matters. I had a separate room dedicated to my office (rather big, really), but it didn't have a door into the rest of the house. I learned, that I couldn't pay any attention to my cat during the day, but I couldn't shut the door (none to shut). I also found myself spending my entire day in the office, even after I stopped "working". I'd surf the web, or just waste my time away, all the while feeling like I was still at work.
I don't quite know how to solve that one, but having a home office really does encroach on the rest of your house. (I guess if you had a life, unlike me, it wouldn't be a problem).
I might try it again someday, when the technology is better, and video conferencing and VoIP is everywhere...
Personal Interaction can be a big factor (Score:1)
My Experience (Score:1)
I'm a co-op student on my 4th work term. This is my second term as a fulltime telecommuter. (A term is a 4 month period) I've worked for the same company for all 4 terms. The first two terms I had to work from the office for the most part, but once trust had been established and my employer got to know me better, there was no problem with me working from home. Actually, my company has a number of employees who work from home (coincidently all programmers). We talk via icq and email frequently and it really doesn't cause any problems at all.
Now, I think it really depends on your job whether or not working from home can be plausible. Generally, i'd say that a programmer will have the best chances of being able to work from home simply because surroundings tend to be irrelevant when you just need to be sitting in front of a computer. Of course, the occasional meeting at the office (or someone else's house!) will likely be required.
Occasionally i'm called upon to do tech support type work and i've never had any problems talking to people on the phone or accessing their systems remotely from my home. I just bring my phone bill to the office and get reimbursed.
A lot of companies are very understanding if you have young children at home and, if your job allows for it, wont stop you from working there.
I'll answer any specific questions you have, just reply to this and i'll respond.
Works for me. (Score:1)
I think it's great. I get to spend more time with my wife and kids, I can better allocate my time, and I'm much more focused than I was in the office.
It's important to (a) have a decent network connection, (b) have a separate office that you can close the door and keep out the rest of the world, and (c) have a strong sense of when to take a break. The last is very important. Everyone I talk to assumes it's hard for telecommutors to keep from being distracted, but for me the opposite was true. I used to work 80 hour weeks, because the computer was always at most 30 seconds away, and there was always work to do...this was
very unhealthy. You have to take breaks, and you have to resist the temptation to make the home-office your only life.
But I highly recommend the experience. I think it's the wave of the future, allowing people to stay in small communities and spend more time with their families.
Telecommuting can be made to work (Score:1)
Hi,
First, some back ground: I have been telecommuting since 1996, when I followed my wife to ALabama. There are few high tech positions here on the gulf coast, and I have been working for people in New England, wihch is rooughly a commute of 1500 miles ;-).
I initially worked as a critical escalation specialist, which is a PHB way of saying fourth level support or firefighting. That worked out well, since most of the time I was answering emails that filtered through to me, or heading out to the client site on 24 hours notice to handle crisis situations, and really there was no team or office work involved (I did get to visit Hong Kong and France ;-)
My current job is a more conventional integration/development position. In both these posts, I have realized that for the telecommuter, espescially a long distance full time telecommuter, you have to work harder to resolve issues. The most common are:
Mostly depends on what the work is... (Score:1)
On my side of the business, the insurance applications are hosted on Unix servers, and we SSH in from our desks. We can also SSH in from home via low-cost cable modems, but the usability of the connection varies widely from time to time, making work slow at times when at home. If you have all the development tools you need and don't need to edit files online frequently, working from home can work quite well. The downside we've had is that we're in 'starup' mode, and while we're small and trying to figure out our business, there's a lot of impromptu meetings, not a lot of specifications for the programs we write, and the specs we do have change often - in other words, we need a lot of face time. But we still have our assignments and can work 10-20 hours a week from home (out of 60!). When I was sick this winter I worked for a whole week from home, and while frustrating at times, it was successful overall.
On the other side of the business, Education-World.com has been doing telecommuting for years very successfully. The webmaster and several of her assistants all live in Hawaii, the content editor and writers live in Conneticut and surrounding states on the East Coast, and the servers, administrators, artists, and programmers all live in Oklahoma City. For the most part there are defined roles, and each remote team is remotely connected and pretty much autonomous. They conference call weekly and get together for a week twice a year to discuss major changes and issues.
I think the keys to successful telecommuting from our experience are the connection speed/stability vs the type of work being done, communication with co-workers on a regular basis with at least some face-time every so often, and whether you have either a lot of autonomy or can be sent detailed design specs.
As somebody else mentioned, having your own office with no kids, family, or other distractions is extremely important. I don't know if your town has one or not, but I've heard of 'telecommute' offices where consultants or telecommuters who are in town for who knows how long can rent a cube or office in an office building for a pretty cheap price. If you have some money and are in a city, you might see if you can get some other people to see if they want to do it, then buy/rent some office space or a house and be the landlord of your own 'telecommute' office! The company you work for ought to be able to tell you how much it spends per worker on office space/cubicles/etc, and could pay you for space at wherever you work in your town, espcecially if it's cheaper.
Good luck and I hope it works out for you!
sure (Score:1)
Our company is doing it - and succeeding (Score:1)
Well, we all signed up and I set about creating a VPN infrastructure to support this (linux, linux, everywhere). One year later it seems to be working very well. We have about five remote offices within about 400 miles of SV - some are just a long commute away (like San Francisco).
In our basic setup we use people who can come into the office at least one day a week. The company covers their transport costs if they fly. The other days they work from home or a remote office that we set up near their home. We are pretty much a no-paper outfit and we use email and instant messaging as our core communications mechanism, so being at home is not really much different from being in a cube. Don't get me wrong - it takes motivation and you have to become communications proactive - but it's a great lifestyle. Coming into the office every week really helps keep you in touch with the team and alleviates the cabin fever. You get the flexibility of being an offsite consultant without the headaches that go with running your own business. I'll never go back to the "old fashioned" way of work if I can avoid it.
BTW (here comes the plug) - we're growing and hiring like mad. Check us out at www.finisar.com, or you could email me at jdouma@NOSPAM.finisar.com if you want more details on how we do remote work.
Home is Home and Work is Work (Score:1)
I know in my present job, one of our developers moved away but we decided to allow him to telecommute. It didn't really work because no project manager seemed to want to work with someone they never had any "face-time" with.
I know for me personally, I try to separate work and personal life as much as possible. Instead of bringing work home I'll just work later. Home is home and work is work. Plus, I don't get in the proper mindset as well when working at home I don't think.
Never underestimate the power of IRC (Score:1)
I stay in daily contact with my work pals through internal IRC. Not to mention the occasional cracks into each others' home computers
Yes it is important to go out with the people, it's just a bit tough to organize something that would be fun for everybody.
Re:Home Office Experiences (Score:1)
Hourly contracting (e.g., programming) is a different matter; it's probably easier to do remotely.
--Philip
telecommuting has been neglected so far (Score:1)
Telecommuting. A Lifestyle choice (Score:1)
So far not many of the companies I'm dealing with mind too much about the distance, just as long as the work gets done and doesn't cost too much.
Works in our company (Score:1)
developers in four major cities.
Maybe about ten are full-time telecommutors,
visiting every couple months. Another half
telecommute 2 days a week. The full-timers
are generally long-term employees with good
track records the company wanted to keep when
circumstances changed.
The view from both sides. (Score:1)
What I would say is that full time telecommuting is the best way to do things -- when it works, which in my experience, is only about 10% of the time. That said, here's my personal top ten list for when it will probably work well:
- 10. The commute is 45 minutes or longer each way.
See why only 10%? Remove any of the above, and it becomes progressively more difficult to get the job done.9. The project(s) you are on have clearly defined goals.
8. The company has a well thought out telecommunication policy.
7. A 56K or faster connection to the IntraNet
6. Adequate problem solving resources at the home office.
5. A tight communications loop with your boss.
4. Frequent reporting of progress and problems.
3. A non-distracting home work environment.
2. A focused, effective work methodology (how to get the tough work done...)
1. A personal integrity based work ethic.
myths of Oog and Ezikel, my experience (Score:1)
In a telecommuting situation, both parents can be there for the kids. When I needed to concentrate, I stayed in the basement office and the kids knew to stay away. Just like in a work situation there are times when you're interruptable and others when you're not. You just have to have equivalent telltales that your coworkers or spouse can see and stay away (or interpret as a green light to shmooze).
Socially, I had some techie friends I'd pick up a phone and call from time to time when I was stuck on a problem. They were free to reciprocate.
The most significant aspect of telecommuting was the impact it had on my relationship with my wife. She's a stay-at-home mom and she was watching kids while I was hacking. I'd take coffee breaks at the kitchen table and hang out with my wife. It really had a positive effect on our relationship. Similarly, once the kids were at school we could take the phone off the hook at lunchtime...
Downside was that I'd be expected to do those "just five minute" errands around the house during work hours. And I had a tendency to work 24x7, or it felt that way. If I had a knotty problem I couldn't solve, I'd get up and shovel the sidewalk or something, or I'd get up in the middle of the night and code up a sudden inspiration.
Part Time is Better (Score:1)
Re:100 years ago, they passed laws against it... (Score:1)
[slightly OT] Re:Full-Time Telecommuting (Score:1)
ObOnTopic: If you work at home you're always around to fix those scrooey little things that happen to her Linux box that you can't get to from your former office because of the steenking firewall...
--
The five minutes after 9am are far more productive than the fire hours after 5pm.
-- me, from years of experience
It works for me. . . (Score:1)
but I've never actually telecommuted full-time. As an IT consultant/contractor, I've found many opportunities to assist clients from my home office. This includes a great deal of system administration work that I've done remotely.
At least one person mentioned above that sysadmins can't get by without physical access. That is simply not true. Many servers can be set up in such a way as to allow full remote sysadmin capability. I do it all the time with HP-UX systems. I've done quite a bit of work for one client whose site I haven't set foot on in over a year.
You need a few things to be able to do this:
It also helps to have well-designed, sufficiently redundant systems to maintain whatever level of service is required by the end users.
That said, it's almost always a good idea to make an appearance once in a while for some scheduled maintenance or to just let people know you're alive. It helps to let yourself know you're alive too. :-)
There are plenty of companies that can meet the above requirements and hire telecommuting sysadmins. Some of them (especially those with too few servers to justify a full-time position) prefer to hire contractors like me.
Michael Ossmann
Ossmann Consulting [ossmann.com]
Not for everyone (Score:1)
Another important factor is the culture of the company you're working with -- our office is strictly administrative, and all the programmers telecommute, so there's no penalty. I've heard tales of serious problems where you're the only telecommuter -- being treated as an outsider, ignored, etc.
Even more important in this case is choosing a company that has an IT infrastructure that's telecommuting-aware. If you can't get to source code control, etc. from the outside, it's pretty useless.
I do it (Score:1)
Valley company. It works for me.
Then again, it may not work for everyone.
I have no kids, so that is not an issue. My
fiancee comes home for lunch, so I'm not alone the
whole day, and friends stop in once and a while.
I don't know how responsive employers
would be to hiring people for an arrangement like
this though. I worked for my employer for two
years before moving back to New York. They then
hired me as a consultant for a while and are now
re-hiring me as an employee (the HR department
there must hate me).
Technically, it's no big deal. I dial-in
behind their firewall, send myself a few xterms
over my cable modem and hang up. Phone bill is
minimal. Sometimes I do the pppd over ssh vpn
thing.
In any case, it works for me.
Telecommuting from the management perspective (Score:1)
1) The person has to be mature, dependable, a self-manager, and driven to excellence on his own. Anything less is a set-up for failure
2) You must get support from upper management. A person above me decided that one of my telecommuters wasn't reliable anymore, apparently because he wasn't in the office. As a result, that person discouraged new projects being assigned to that engineer, and downgraded an annual review.
3) Don't stint on resources. For my employees, at minimum a reliable 256k connection (Frame relay, DSL, etc), dedicated work phone, dedicated office space, and a work-provided computer with all the programs and access needed were provided.
4) Encourage the telecommuter to come in for important meetings and events. It really helps to both remind them that they're part of a team, and to remind the team that that person is there.
All that being said, I do not think I would ever hire someone to be a telecommuter from the start. I believe that our learning curve is steep and our processes are complex enough that to properly learn the job you'd have to be on-site, shouting
questions over the cube walls and talking with your cow-orkers.
--doug
Re:it can be tough (Score:1)
The big problem with telecommuting i've seen is staying focused, it's too easy to goof off if you don;t have anything obvious to do.
Re:I've done it (Score:1)
As for that life? A 3 YO daughter, a lovely wife, Live Steam trains (which requires a whole machine shop in the basement), Shooting etc (check my web site)
Re:Get out of the house ... (Score:1)
Take the advice to heart. If you do this, get out of the house
If you DO have a clear cut project/section of code to work on, you can make great progress, when you don't (aka, you need more info), you can die waiting for info
I've done it (Score:1)
I had a job working for one of my best friends, who also turned out to be one of the best bosses I've ever had. The problems are social.
Picture you are a typical geek. You'll get up in the AM, and log in, and then stay there till you go to bed. You'll go weeks without leaving the house except for food. Gets REAL old after a few months.
The other problem (for both you and your employer) is that it gets hard to separate home from work. You never leave work, but you also never leave home. You know those "dead times" you always get at work? It's real easy to drift off into home mode, but it's also real easy to spend all day working, and it feeling like you are ALWAYS at work (like 24x7).
Another problem that isn't so bad today now that things like Cable Modem and xDSL are around is the cost of phones. We were using ISDN, and the phone bill from my end to the office ran around $1100 per month. This costs your boss some real $$$
I could see telecommuting 2-3 days a week, but NOT more than that.
I'm sorry to say it didn't work out, but luckily, it didn't hurt the friendship
telecommuting (Score:1)
Some people also don't get any work done when they are in their own home. Others - like me - code best when I'm totally isolated from the rest of the world. I don't have a land line home, just a cellular phone which is on "silent mode", and ADSL. If I want to, I can totally block out the rest of the world and focus 100% on my work.
However, I find that every now and then you have to go to work just to get "a feel" of what's going on. It can be once a week or once a month, but it's pretty much a must in order for you to really know and understand your co-workers.
Telecommuting - Wouldn't have it any other way (Score:1)
Yes, telecommuting can have its drawbacks, as with any type of job. In general, I've found the following to be true:
1.) Working in your bathrobe isn't fun after the second week. Sweats and a T-shirt, however, are wonderful, and you won't feel odd when the FedEx guy/mailman/&c. comes to the door.
2.) It's important to structure your time. Otherwise, it's easy to get out of bed late and putz around the house all day. OTOH, you don't have to be Orwellian about it. Once you get into a routine, you've usually got the problem licked.
3.) It's very important that spouses, family and friends understand that you're 'at work' even though you're physically at home. The first month or so, my wife tried to load me down with all sorts of 'honey could you' projects. She just didn't realize that I wouldn't have time to grocery shop, clean the house, run her packages to the post office and run errands all over town for her. After all, I was at home all day, right? Once we talked about it and she realized what she was doing, it stopped and hasn't been a problem since.
4.) Don't let yourself become 'housebound'. Get out and go for walks occasionally. Take the laptop and work from the backyard if possible. Forward your phone to the cellphone and take the laptop down to the local diner and work once in a while. Things like that. Generally, so long as your productivity is as good or better than most people working 'in the office', managers won't begrudge you a little flexibility in your schedule. There are exceptions, of course, but you can always tell them you were in the bathroom or had gone out to the mailbox to get the mail and didn't notice the message waiting on the voice mail when you returned. So long as your productivity doesn't drop and they think of you as 'reliable(TM)', you're usually good to go.
5.) Phone meetings and phone conferences are becoming more and more accepted in the business environment. I've yet to have to fly to Michigan. Everything's been nicely handled via phone and email. *Do* remember to keep in touch with your clients / managers. Some sort of minor email 'check-in' daily is generally a good idea, if they expect you to be working 'full time' on a project. "Out of sight, out of mind" isn't really much of a problem, if they hear from you regularly. OTOH, pestering people with inappropriate messages is a *bad* idea. Use proper judgement.
I've just been 'sniffed' by an IT outfit on the other coast, and am talking about the posibillity of working for them as an employee. While I might consider becoming a 'corporate lackey' again (keeping the free-lance business on the side), I wouldn't consider working 'on site' for more than a couple of weeks unless I was truly desperate. I find the stress level and other hassles are so much lower, working from a home office. I'm actually enjoying work for the first time in years.
depends... (Score:1)
But if your work is connected to others' work, it'll be far more productive if all the team is available IMO.
even with IRC/ICQ/NetMeeting or any other instant messaging services, the face to face discussions and meetings are very helpful and can convey the ideas much easier.
I, for one, could, but... (Score:1)
I only meet face to face on work items occasionally and the rest of the time it is more social.
The company will not let anybody do that, no idea why, they just don't and they recently began VPN service for some managers.
On the writing-on-the-side-for-free gig, no problem at all, never met the cofounders of securitygeeks.com, everything I do there is from wherever my computer is connected.
I would swap the two in a second.
My Personal Pros and Cons (Score:1)
CONS:
1) The biggest problem, and not often addressed, is social isolation. When in Philadelphia, I loved working alongside my coworkers. It's a very fun environment. To not see or talk to another person all day, every day, is very depressing. [And, as an aside, you'll find that not opening your mouth nearly as much causes the smell of your breath to become worse, and to degrade more quickly.] There are cycles of good weeks and bad weeks. (Depression level exacerbated by project difficulty/confusion level.) I find that here, remotely, 3pm comes very slowly, and drags on forever into 5pm. At the office, 5pm would show up and I couldn't believe it happened. Time went much more quickly with others.
2) You need a VPN. I'm the first full-time telecommuter, and my company still doesn't have a VPN in place, so it's more difficult to work on the same project with other people. I don't have access to all the files I need, and have to make phone/email requests to get them pushed to the server I can FTP to.
3) Interactivity suffers. It's just not f2f. When working on a project without source control, it's important to be able to yell to your neighbor, "I have to do a mass find/replace...don't touch anything for 30 seconds." You just can't have that kind of interactivity remotely. Because of this it's most efficient to get large, isolated chunks of work that can be done solo with little interaction. However, I personally need variety in my day, and if I'm on a tedious project, there's no way I can do it all day long, even with 10 minute breaks interspersed.
4) It's harder to make friends in a new area. I moved fresh to St. Louis, and don't have co-workers to show me the local areas and to organize poker games with. Fortunately my fiancée goes to college, and I've found a pick-up group of Ultimate Frisbee players.
5) Distractions abound. I don't have children, so I'm safe there, but I do have cats, and delivery people and television. You must be committed to your work (or your office must have some good checks and balances in place to ensure that you aren't slacking). On the whole, I am more productive here (measured by work accomplished/time period). [This may partly explain why time disappeared so fast at the office--I got less done.]
6) It's easy to do too much work. My office is in my house...I try to stop at a certain time, but sometimes I find myself wanting to solve a problem and working after/during dinner. Great for the employer, not so good for keeping you from getting burnt out.
PROS:
1) Fabulous location. Depends on how nice your home office is--I have a fabulous room on the 2nd floor with windows on three sides that all open! In nice weather, overlooking my backyard and garden, as the trees swish in the window and warm air flows through...that's fabulous. And, even if you don't have a great office in the house, where your house is may be very important. For example, I love my job, I love my company, but I couldn't commute from St. Louis to Philadelphia every day.
2) You can easily do extra work. The flipside to con #6 above. You don't have to stay late at the office, annoying your spouse, when you have more work to do. You don't have to drive xx minutes to/from the office after dinner. You just go do the needed work and then *poof* you're home again. Nice.
3) Your own hours. Because the projects tend to be very 'me' oriented, if I feel the need to take a break and watch TV for an hour, or go for a walk, I can. I can always make it up later.
4) Work computer/home computer the same. No synchronization of email/programs/files. All work functionality is yours at home. Your company should pay for the equipment, too, so you may get nicer equipment at home than you'd be willing to pay for yourself. Add to that an ergonomic chair/desk (really should be bought by your employer) and you're getting some sweet equipment for off-work enjoyment.
Oh, there are other pros too, but I'm too lazy to type them all. :)
ADVICE:
1) Visit the office occasionally. Not only to keep from being 'marginalized', but to keep in touch with worker friends and keep social interactions alive. Find a way to make the company pay for the trip if it's a big one :)
2) Get a social life. Do something outside the house. It's important.
3) Finally, don't get the sole bathroom in your house remodelled--working all day without a working toilet is a problem! :)
Anecdotal: it can work (Score:1)
The short of it is, it can work. The critical issues, as I remember, were:
Best Thread EVER... (Score:1)
I have to say that most of the comments I see are dead on. The problems I am experiencing are guilt over not being constantly 'on the clock', and the uncertainty that I am 'missing' something that the people in the offices are doing.
There is a small amount of boredom also, as even SlashDotting becomes a distraction I must force myself to avoid (not too successfully).
In closing, I would just like to say that, this type of article is SlashDot at its best. This is good, informative stuff, with not alot of noise. Just a frank discussion about how to cope with a not so common situation.
Kudos Guys!
PS: Does anyone here have kids, and attempt to home school them? Does anyone have any good resources on this subject? TIA.
"Don't try to confuse the issue with half truths and gorilla dust."
Bill McNeal (Phil Hartman)
Re:Telecommuting - Wouldn't have it any other way (Score:1)
EACH point is valid, and, as a matter of fact, I am printing this out for my wife to read.
Someone should mod this up big time.
"Don't try to confuse the issue with half truths and gorilla dust."
Bill McNeal (Phil Hartman)
From the other end. (Score:2)
I work at on Office in MN, and can in theory tellecommute anytime. (THere are dial in servers and the like to get around the firewall. As a Unix orianted enviroment we have it easier) There is one guy who lives in Arizona (For those who don't know US geography, he is about 1700 KM away) He gets his work done, I get my work done. However when we have to work togather it is difficult. I cannot show him what is on my screen, he cannot see what is on mine. (not well anyway) I cannot point to a line of code and ask what that does. He cannot take control of my screen for a moment to write a line of code that he understands better then me. I need to look over his shoulder when he does because I understand the pig picture of that function better then him, but he knows the function I want to call better...
OTOH, many of the guys around here will send a message once or twice a month "Working from home this afternoon". We find that once you know how a piece of code works, how it interacts with everything else, it is much more productive to go home where there is nobody around (Note, see the children comment someone else made) to get a lot of code written and tested quickly. Turn that around though, if you don't understand howyour part of the program works, or how it interacts with everything else, you are better off at the office where you can wonder the hallways: "Hey Dave, soon as your out of the restroom there, mike and I have a question for you." Meaning that if you need someone your better off face to face, maybe with a white board to sketch things on.
Telecommuting can work. Sometimes it works better, other times it is worse. My boss encourages us to tellecommute once in a while because he knows that once in a while you are more productive. (Besides, I'm in Minnesota, once in a while the snow gets bad enough that you cannot get to work, much less safely get to work. Tellecommuting doesn't cost him near as much.)
Re:From the other end. (Score:2)
Sigh, I knew I should have put qualifies on this.
I'm aware of (but don't use) programs that would help the situation. My point was that the human contact is lacking at times. Those proposing a technical solution are sticking a finger in the dike and ignoreing the water pouring over the top.
When you can't be there technical solutions are better then noting, but the lack of human interaction of not being there is a price that you will have to pay no matter what.
It's not much different... (Score:2)
In my experience at my last job, we had two telecommuters. They were both underperformers, but I can't be sure if it was because they were lazy and did nothing or were just really bad programmers (it was most likely a combination of the two).
I personally wouldn't want to telecommute because I think the small daily interactions between coworkers are important. Just yesterday, a coworker and I just happened to start talking about a way to implement something which turned out to be perfect because our ideas fed off of each other. It's hard to get that via phone or email without a whiteboard.
Re:From the other end. (Score:2)
I used to use ytalk for that. You could run a shell in the talk window!
In the Windows world, pcAnywhere can be really useful in this department.
Eh? (Score:2)
--
Only way to go for me (Score:2)
I've been sitting here behind a 700kbps line for two years now. I love it and I hate it. Half of the company I work in does this, but I'm one of the most home-staying ones. Recently they bought me a laptop to use on way to work, to see me more often, but it doesn't have wireless net yet, so here I sit in my pile^H^H^H^Hpit.
Expect your phase [tf.hut.fi] to get even worse messed up. Expect a new kind of freedom (no clothes at work!) and a new kind of slavery - at home.
Request a perfect line. "512kbps should be enough."
If you're outgoing, social, don't do it. Unless people like you so much they come over, giving you natural breaks.
It's a stretch of sanity, both physical and mental
Maybe I should come back when I've thought a bit better what to say. Nevertheless, I take my situation as an interesting experiment. It is not actually a well-established way of working, so... You'll be on your own, after all, finding out your own way of doing it, I guess.
It seems that... (Score:2)
My wife was telecommuting and was able to set up meeting as needed when a face-to-face meeting was more effective. She didn't find it isolating to be away from the office and she didn't find herself working 24/7 (picking up the girls from preschool was her daily break from work).
In her case, though, telecommuting did affect her career path within the company. The reason was totally stupid, though: they didn't allow full-time employees to telecommute, only contractors. Their reasoning was that (and as Dave Barry would say: ``I'm not making this up!'') if they allowed one full time employee to telecommute then they might have to let others. I guess that before you know it the managers don't have anyone's shoulders to look over and micromanage. (Justice was sweet, though, in that due to the unenlightened management policies, poor pay, etc., they were losing talent faster than you could say ``seller's market''.)
There are times when I do wind up working from home (like when you're waiting for a contractor to come and work on the plumbing, etc.) and I find that I am able to get twice as much done. It's a great way to get some quiet time when you can crank out documentation which I can take back to the office on tape. My theory is that it's because I don't get asked questions or I'm not hearing other's conversations over the cubicle walls. If it ween't for having to have occasional physical access to hardware (tape drives, etc.) I'd ask to work at home a lot more frequently.
--
Re:it can be tough (Score:2)
BTW Linux and GNU was the ultimate telecommute
BSDI does it... (Score:2)
Telecommuting is great. I love it. I probably work slightly longer hours than I would otherwise, but I feel productive, I get stuff done, and I haven't had to commute in something like three years.
(And, if you're curious, no, our jobs are not at risk with the merger. In fact, this is an excellent time to work at BSDI.)
My whole company is Virtual! (Score:2)
Our parent company has 2 real offices here in TO, where the graphic designers and IT staff live for both companies.
I thought I'd never want to work at home until I was freelancing last year for an ad agency. They were constantly running out of machines to use, and I hated working in Windez. So my producer said if I wanted to work at home, by all means go for it. I was hopping back and forth to the office a couple of times a week, but for the most part we emailed files back and forth and talked on the phone to discuss things.
Then I got the job I have now as HTML guru and production guy, and there is quite literally no reason for me to go into the office: as I said, all the people I work with on a day-to-day basis aren't even in the same time zone as I am, so why would I go into the office?
I've been asked by coworkers why I don't work in the office, and I figure I get more work done here because I get to use the tools and OS I like instead of theirs
Pope
so true! (Score:2)
It works (Score:2)
I achieve a lot more work being comfy at home, and most of all I can start late and work late (all night sometimes). So I work when I feel best for it. If I need a break, the balcony is in front of me and I can just breathe fresh air and think about what I'm doing in a much more relaxed way. And I don't have to deal with a boss, either!Not having to wake up in the morning is great!
When I compare my efficiency to when I was working in an office, I think it 50/50 at worst. The good days, I think I achieve twice more work being at home than at the office. It's all a question of self-disciplin, otherwise you get easily lazy.
Hey, when working at the office, we were mostly communicating by email and ICQ even though we were next to eachother...
Go for it.
Re:I hope its feasible... I do it! (Score:2)
Now, as it has been said before, when you have a lot of heads-down, balls-to-the-wall coding to do, there's no substitute for being able to geek naked in the solitude of your own spare bedroom, and being just a few steps away from your own bed and your own snack cache and not having to worry about vending machine change.... and a really competent support geek can do a _lot_ with a DSL line and a headset for his voice line (I also know travel agents who work this way.... means Momma can stay home _and_ bring home the bacon). (AT&T does this with operators, too... voice line, data line, headset, "AT&T, how may I help you?")
But.
I really honestly have to say that when you're doing that sustaining, support-group kind of environment, cubieland is, in MY experience, more effective. For most things.
Perhaps the best approach is an employer enlightened enough to allow the employees to be flexible on the issue.... one of my previous ones was. A simple e-mail "I'm working from home today" was notice enough when one needed to be heads-down on something... on the other hand, everybody wanted to be in on Friday, because that's when the beer and chicken wings were served. :)
--
"It's cocktail time..." -- Skip Caray
We do it. (Score:2)
It requires communication (Score:2)
I was a telecommuter until recently. In my case, it didn't work out, but I know that there are other employers/employees doing it successfully.
In my case, the major problem was lack of communication. Partly, this was because I was working for a small company in which the boss basically embodied the company, for all practical purposes. In other words, he spent a lot of time in and out of the home office, dealing with customers, and found that he often didn't have time to call me or email me with new or updated assignments. With the other programmers in the office, he could just verbally give them quick instructions as he buzzed through the office. But as the only long-distance telecommuter, I was a special case that he had to take extra time out for. Time he didn't have.
Also, I found after a while that I missed the social interaction that you get in a regular office. Sometimes I'd get a mental block on some code I was working on, and long for feedback from other geeks. Peace and quiet is great sometimes, but every once in a while you need a little distraction.
I think the keys to a successful telecommuting experience are: 1) good management. Yeah, yeah, I know "management" is a four-letter word, but it really is necessary in most job situations. The person signing your paycheck needs to know that he's getting his money's worth. You need some sort of regular communication -- structured, but not stifling. 2) contact and communication. Working in complete isolation can be disorienting and disheartening after a while. You probably need some way to communicate with your virtual coworkers. Stay in contact via ICQ or a company chat server or something. And when it comes down to it, having to visit the office once in a while can be a good thing. I had to drive up for a mandatory company meeting once a month. It was a 4 hour drive, but it was actually kind of refreshing to get away from the house for a while. The most important thing is that the company understands that just because you aren't in the office, it doesn't mean that you aren't getting work done. And of course, you should try to help them understand that by providing them with progress updates as often as is feasible. 3) discipline. You really have to be disciplined, or you'll wind up spending all day reading Slashdot instead of getting work done. Eventually, your boss is bound to notice :)
Telecommuting can work, as long your employer knows how to handle it. As for me, I'm back in an office, with a 45+ minute commute. Not my dream situation, but I enjoy the work, and I've got good people around me. And as long as it pays the bills, those are the important things.
--
Ernest MacDougal Campbell III / NIC Handle: EMC3
Got Spam? http://spam.gunters.org/ [gunters.org]
Re:Home Office Experiences (Score:2)
So, I got a normal office job. But, I do kick myself every day the weather's nice.
It Works For Me! (Score:2)
It is good for the client also. They do not have to find me a cubicle or workstation, and I am more productive in my own environment anyway. For the right type of work and worker, this a total win for everyone involved. I expect this to trend to begin growing like wildfire... in fact, I am working on a business plan for a virtual consultancy. Anyone here want to join up?
Thad
Re:The real answer is "it depends" (Score:2)
We have quarterly meetings where everyone flies to DC, but aside from that, we all work from our homes.
I will agree with what others have said about needing to set aside space in your house as your 'office.' I have taken one room and it has been made my office. That has made a huge difference because I know the difference between work and home.
Re:It gets old pretty quickly... (Score:2)
I telecommuted for about six months while working on a contract for a company in Northern Virginia (I'm near Baltimore and refuse to commute 3 hours a day). Worked great: I was very productive and happy, the dogs were glad to have me around, I worked the weird schedule I like (hack a little, play a little, hack a little, play a little, hack a little).
I hope to find a similar arrangement the next time I change jobs. (Looking for a good Unix/Internet geek to work off-site? Resume's on the web [infamous.net], drop me a line!)
Working off site problems... (Score:2)
I've worked around 25% or more offsite for previous clients and the biggest advantage is that you get much more work done as you aren't interupted as much (and less prone to RAMs (Random Acts of Mangament)).
The problems however are coordination, it requires a lot of effort from the team leader to make sure that everyone is on track and on the ball. Once the pattern is laid out however its very easy to manage.
The biggest problem is Configuration Management and releases. If your company uses something like StarTeam or ClearCase it becomes unusable over a sluggish (less than 10Mb/s) connection for large projects.
The biggest win for the company however is the save in travelling time and the reduction in stress which produces better quality work.
The downside for the worker is the lack of face to face and the inability to physically threaten the sys-admin when they switch off access to something you need.
Interesting . . . (Score:2)
My observations from telecommuting... (Score:2)
--No distractions from noisy coworkers.
--Reduced Commute!
--With a wireless LAN, you can work from the porch if the weather allows.
--Future tax breaks for telecommuting??? There's a bill [state.ga.us] in the Georgia legislature which would grant a carry-forward income tax credit of $1000 for the employee and $2500 for the employer. Fat chance of actually passing, but it's a start.
Con:
--Some lack of contact with valuable coworkers.
--Marginalization.
--Distractions from pets, children, spouses, pet projects, environmental noise (traffic, construction, etc.).
--Time-based projects don't transition as well as goal-based projects.
Miscellaneous things I've discovered while telecommuting:
--After work, instead of wanting to return home, I want to leave home for a while.
--I've spent enough time on speakerphone to be distracted by background conversation when I do go to the office.
--For non-sensitive work that does not require direct network connectivity, "Have laptop, will travel."
--I've been able to use a PC built out to my specs (PII/350), not the company specs(p-166!).
--Running bandwidth-hog distributed apps remotely from an office machine (of whatever type) tends to save runtime.
AT&T (Score:2)
ORIGINAL LINUX GROUPWARE TOOLS NEEDED (Score:2)
IMHO Most current groupware is brain-dead copycat sorts of things.
I've got a few new ideas myself. I bet you do too.
Linux is getting easy enough to code for that I bet with only a little effort we could redfine and implement the way remote work is done. IT COULD BE really useful and intuitive for all parties.
I could have a tube with a subscreen for each client/customer that becomes active when any of the group needs to communicate with whomever in whatever form..... Real time.... You get the idea.
Our telecommuters were office jockeys first (Score:2)
Full-Time Telecommuting (Score:2)
Re:Home Office Experiences (Score:2)
Also, if you're inclined to "move up" at all, you'd best program in some regular face time. Familiarity may breed content, but it also breeds promotions.
Yes, companies will hire telecommuters (Score:2)
I wish you luck. I think the era of telecommuting is starting to open up.
I hope its feasible... I do it! (Score:2)
As another example, a friend of mine recently moved to Ohio from Florida. His company begged him not to quit. To benefit both parties, he agreed to continue working for them out of his home (in Ohio!) until their current project is finished in May.
So, I'd say it is feasible. As long as you can acheive good communication between the telecommuting employees and the rest of their counterparts, and can ensure that they will adhere to proper working hours, there isn't much difference! How many of us ever left our cubicles anyways???
Nay (Score:2)
It works! (Score:2)
Looking at the success of the open source movement, one might say full-time telecommuting works. Ok, it isn't exactly working for a company, but the problems with it a are very similar (CVS, project forking, other type of communication/management needed, clash of egos).
Some companies will not hire telecommuters because of these problems, other companies like the cost savings aspect of it (they don't need large office buildings).
-><-
Grand Reverence Zan Zu, AB, DD, KSC
it can be tough (Score:3)
O'Reilly? (Score:3)
I have a 64k leased line to the 'net (very expensive here - ~ £350 a month), and we have weekly meetings by phone. I talk every day with my boss on AOL Instant Messenger ("Gaim" here).
So I guess that answers your question - it can work, given the right employer. Most employers I've met just aren't willing. And that's all it takes - the willingness to develop a relationship with your employees so that you can trust them to do the work. No special hardware or special secure VPN links (although ssh helps).
I've done it for 6 months now (Score:3)
The company that I work for (InterActual Technology, Inc [interactual.com] - DVD company responsible for PC Friendly [please, no tech support Qs here, I don't work on that product]) is reasonably distributed, so they already have experience with my situation. The head office is in San Jose. The main software development office is in Denver, and there are also a couple of other people sprinkled around, such as in San Deigo. Last time asked we had about 30 people (and desperate for good people in CA or CO!).
So how do I find it? It can be hard! I used to be quite a social person, especially liking going down the pub for a quiet Guinness with friends. Now I don't get out nearly often enough. The time zones can play havoc with my evenings when we're really busy (although that should change if we could just find good people to hire). My girlfriend is a full time student, so she's often around whilst I'm trying to work. She has an expectation that as I'm home, I can take breaks at anytime - this is stressful as I don't always like breaking my concentration at those times. I really miss the social interaction that I used to get in an office environment. Careerwise, I really miss the exposure to other people's ideas and them talking about what's going on technologically - it's a paradigm shift when it comes to learning new things.
My work days are now longer as I haven't instilled good practices: everything gets drawn out. I get up, sit at the computer and read the news, look over my email. If there's some pressing work I look at that. Finally I decide to go and shower, then sit down at the computer again, before going off for breakfast. Maybe this lifestyle doesn't suit me. I've considered getting a small studio/bachelor apartment (cost of living is low in this city) so that I have an office to go to - this would also help me separate work from personal life, which I often unintentionally and mistakenly blur.
The biggest problem area is with communications. I'm completely reliant on what people tell me over the phone. If I don't get told what's going on, I can nasty suprises. Other areas are hard are when we're designing something new, or trying to tackle a problem as a group.
Tasks/projects must be clearly defined. I worked reasonably independently for several months. Initially I did some brainstorming with somebody through Yahoo! Messenger. It's great because I can copy and paste the transcript. Recently I've been working quite closely with somebody in the CO office - I'm sure I'll have a big phone bill! Sometimes I just wish I could get up and show what I'm trying to describe on a white board - it would be so much quicker and less frustrating.
There are some benefits too. I get to live somewhere I really like. I really get to work flexible hours (especially when I'm working on something alone and I don't need to be there to answer questions). When the under-staffed office is working hard I don't get so effected by the stresses there. I get payed a salary I couldn't even possible consider in this area
A good internet connection is paramount - I have DSL. The ISP is important too. I downloaded a 1.5GB slice of a DB the other day. Some ISPs have limits of 1-5GBs for residential customers. I can really be at the whims of the internet. The CO office is 17 hops away and when the main routers in Toronto and Chicago get bogged down things crawl (I can get ping times between 500-5000ms). The CA office is 11 hops away so I can get reasonable performance out of VPN/pcAnywhere/etc.
As for visitation. I've been down there once. At some point I have to go down for a company meeting. There's also talk of having me come in a few days a month. I can really see how that would be beneficial. It gives me short trips back to Denver - I can't complain about that!
The thing that made it easiest, and perhaps initially workable was that I already new all of the people in the CO office when I started. We were already friends as well as co-workers.
If I sounded at all negative, ignore it, I was just try to highlight some of the issues that effect me. I actually quite like the situation I'm in. I can probably last another year before going crazy (cabin fever anyone?) and need to find an office job again. It's really down to experience. Try it, if you like stick at it. It's very dependent upon your personality and situation and the people who you work with and the people you live with.
I can sit and write a long rambling posting like this without feeling guilty like I would at the office!
Experience of an employer (Score:3)
However we'll soon setup an actual telecommuting contract with someone, too bad you didn't wait a few weeks to ask that, I would have had more to tell about this particular experience
So far we only had very good experiences with freelancers, but I knew people beforehand, and they are pretty wellknown for being serious (such as the excellent Andrew Apted of GGI fame
What I can say is that we only do that with people we really trust professionally, ie. that they'll get things done in the time we agree on, will be available in normal daytime for questions and problems, and will not disappear as soon as the job is done; we ask for a few months of post-coding maintenance, in case we bump on bugs and such.
Just be sure to put yourself in the position of your employer before you ask for that.. It can have many advantages (like getting top coding skills that you would never get in-house; if you're that good) but the risks are pretty high for the employer; think about it, and reassure them
It can work (Score:3)
It takes some getting used to, though. When I first began it took me some time to get used to partitioning my time - you have to be (or become) very focused in avoiding distractions. I don't have kids at home or anything so that helps.
The one main issue I should mention for both employees and employers is that it's important to stay in contact. If your work is something that doesn't change too much from day to day it's not too bad, but if you do any sort of project work then you need to make sure anyone and everyone at the 'home base' knows you are alive. Things like ICQ or IRC can be very helpful in that regard. I never realized how valuable it is to have regular contact with coworkers until I left my old job. I fly down there for a week every few months or so which helps immensely - it's good to know who you work with.
There can actually be fewer distractions when you work at home. After a while you can get into a work pattern that, well, works - that's very beneficial. Also, hours tend to be more flexible for people like myself who are most efficient in non-standard work times (although I've been working on getting up earlier).
On the employer side, I imagine it could be cheaper in some respects. If you streamline things enough, the savings in office space, heating, etc. can add up. I'm not an employer, so I can't say this with much authority, but it could very well depend on what kind of work is being done and the kind of people you hire.
The upshot is that telecommuting can work quite well, but you can't do things 'business as usual'. You have to determine if the kind of work you're doing can be done from remote (mine can), and if you can stand being cooped up at home for long periods of time (I can).
- Jeff A. Campbell
- VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com [velocinews.com])
Perspective from an IT manager... (Score:3)
I have just written a report detailing why recent attempts to promote out-of-office work has failed at my company. For reference, we're an Australian Real-Estate business.
For a start, there is a difference between the standard "teleworking" from home, and "remote access" from anywhere. The first reaction of staff is to think we're wanting them to work at home, but what we're actually trying to do is just get them out of the office. I'm trying to make it possible to let them work from anywhere - my ultimate goal is to make it possible to work while you're walking down the street.
Basically our Remote Access initiatives have failed because we're not yet a paperless office. To quote part of my report;
The company has been pushing notebook PCs and remote access for longer than I've been here, but we've got staff with their own portable who have never even taken it home. We're also migrating to technology that sends correspondence electronicaly, but staff still feel compelled to print stuff out...Other issues include not just the "go nuts over the silence" stuff that other teleworkers have mentioned, but problems with politics and promotions. Another quote;
Now, the report I wrote is about staff not wanting to telework, which isn't a perfect match for this specific case, but it does highlight some of the problems you might expect. I hope you find this post useful - I'd make the entire report available, but it contains some sensitive internal company references...Re:Do you have children? (Score:3)
--
Another telecommuter in the Bay Area... (Score:3)
Down sides? Trying to get answers from someone at the office -- they're not answering their email or phone, and I can't just swing by their desk. I miss a lot of events and impromptu meetings. Teleconferences generally suck, and I'm resisting a webcam, since it means I won't be able to go until the late afternoon before showering.
Tips: you *have* to have your own space for this, especially with a kid. My office is the extra bedroom, and I *close the door.* Get yourself a good pair of headphones, and keep that CD/MP3 collection close at hand. And impress upon housemates/significant others/etc. that you're not "really" home -- you're at work, it just happens that work is down the hall from your living room. Go into the office on a regular basis if you can: weekly is working good for me, and my in-office day is generally scheduled to the max -- that's OK: you're there to be seen. Keep a log of all the work you do, to show your PHB, esp. around performance review time.
Given the terrible commutes in the San Francisco and Silicon Valley area, the high-tech bias, and the shortage of engineers, I bet you can do this. You'll need to prove that you're a Responsible Person at work, but it's worth it.
Re:ORIGINAL LINUX GROUPWARE TOOLS NEEDED (Score:3)
As broadband access becomes more common, audio and video conferecing over IP will surely become more important for linking team members, but the text-based protocol have the large advantage of creating a "document trail". Indeed, I think that's one advantage of working remotely - more things get actually documented somehow, rather than just being passed on by oral tradition.
Companies (Score:3)
http://www.hartmanresearch.com/telecommute.html [hartmanresearch.com]
-Carl
Re:Full-Time Telecommuting (Score:3)
It works for me (Score:3)
I think the key is to success is trust. It also helps if you are motivated and can concetrate without the distractions that you have at your home. I rarely work a standard eight hour day, I usually work a couple hours here and a couple there. I often get distracted and have terrible output for a day or two, but I will pull all nighters to catch up.
I make my self available via telephone and email pretty much all day everyday, because I trust my employer not to abuse my privacy. I actually encourage them to call me whenever so I can "stay in the loop".
I do go in to the office about once a week. Since it is almost a three hour drive, I usually only spend about 6 hours in the office per week. Since I am a full-time employee I cannot get a milage deduction for the commute, but I believe contract workers can.
The things I think are important are:
1. Trust between employer/employee (that may be hard to come by with out working in the office for a while)
2. Communication. You have got to stay in the loop. Many times I'll get busy and they get busy and we forget about each other. Thats not good.
3. Independent thinking. You need to be able to work without outside motivation, and without a lot of guidence. So you nede to know how to get the people your working for to give you all th information you need to do your job. Sometimes scope creep, and infered features stay locked up in the minds of the powers that be. You bust your tail to get a project done, then they say oops, we meant to tell you it needed this or that. Then nobody is happy. So its much better to ask a lot of questions up front, and COMMUNICATE.
4. Weird hours - It would be hard for me to imagine a programmer who can getup every morning walk to his orher home office in their pjs and sit down and program diligently for an 8 hour work day. Programing to me is like writing, I often get a case of writers/programmers block. (A full time internet connection doesn't help my work habits either!, nor does my baby boy, etc) So overcoming distractions and working when you can is important. I don't want to slack off and screw up the oppurtunity to work in my undies!
I am sure there are a lot of things I should have stressed that I didn't. I cannot imagine a better job. So good luck.
-MS2k
Re:Do you have children? (Score:3)
I have several children. I telecommute one day a week. I've found that having a separate office and working hours keeps the spouse and children away. I've also found that when I open my door, the children burst in. So, creating a physical barrier between "work" and "home" made telecommuting reduced the home distractions.
When work time is over, my time goes to the family. This is where telecommuting has been great for my morale. My "commute" is as simple as opening the door and taking a couple of steps. I can immediately help my spouse with the dinner routine, where before she would deal with it on her own during my two hour drive-commute. I also can participate with those evening activites that parents "should" attend.
This issue was one big reason I rejected a $15K salary increase. The offering employer did not want to make telecommuting arrangements.
I hope that employers will take note of this. I'm sure there are others who made a similar decision because of telecommuting.
Get out of the house ... (Score:4)
The biggest downside for me is rather a mixed blessing - office politics - on one hand most of them sail over your head you don't have to get involved with the tacky trivia - the downside is that when they do matter you tend to lose out because you're not there. Make sure you have a manager you can trust to regularly keep you up to date with what's going on in the company.
I've worked at 2 companies this way now - the one common piece of experience was that things worked great for the first few years - but over time I find I tend to get disinterested managers and less interesting work than when I started - this may also related ton the size of the company - when they were small they were great - when they are larger it's easy to forget about the people who aren't there.
Oh yeah when it's free tee-shirt time you always end up with choosing from the leftovers - XXL :-(
Our company does it (Score:4)
Can't accelerate... too much drag (Score:4)
Cabin Fever is real (Score:4)
While I was able to get a great deal of work done, there was the feeling that things were happening in the office that I wasn't party to. The social nuances of having a physical presence should not be underestimated. Its almost impossible to exert a meaningful influence over serious decisions remotely. That said, if you really want to "climb" in your organization, a physical presence at work is probably mandatory. If you're a contractor or simply don't care that much about advancement, telecommuting rocks.
Home Office Experiences (Score:5)
Andover telecommutes like mad (Score:5)
On freshmeat, scoop lives in Germany
Andover's HQ is in Massachussets. I fly there once or twice a month, and that's enough. The trick seems to be that people performing defined individual tasks can easily telecommute, but management work is easier if everyone is in the same place most of the time. But since we like to keep editorial separated from management and ad sales, it's probably a Good Thing that I'm 400 miles away from HQ and that Rob/Jeff are 1000 miles away.
Programming, writing, and editing are all essentially solitary tasks, and since that's what we do, telecommuting works for us.
I don't think it would work as well if we were running a machine shop or auto repair garage, though.
- Robin "roblimo" Miller
Do you have children? (Score:5)
The single most important factor: Do you have small children that will be around the house most of the day?
I worked from home via modem/DSL for about three months, and it is very difficult if you have small kids (ours are 1.5 and 2.5 years old). No matter how hard you might try, it is impossible to actually "go to work" and isolate yourself from the bedlam. If you write code with complicated pointer arithmatic, you start to eat a lot of Advil.
And now that we have office space, and are moving into it, my wife really resents me not being around the house to "help out for a minute" several times a day. The kids are also having to adjust to having me out of the house most of the day...
I guess it also depends on your personal work habits. I like what I do enough that sitting down to do it does not require a manager in the immediate vicinity. Not everyone or every job is like that.
Bander
It can work.. and it can fail... (Score:5)
The time that succeeded, I was able to get a lot more work done than I would have at work. I was able to fix gobs of bugs, and was able to develop near perfect concentration. And, when I was concentrating too hard, I'd take my two year old to the park. In this case, a happy employee was also a productive employee, and I cranked code at an astonishing rate.
The time that failed, nothing got done. I couldn't make any progress on the project. My wife was continually bugging me, and couldn't seem to understand that I needed to work, Damn It (Janet)!
I think the big difference was this: the time that worked, I had clear goals and objectives. I had a clear path ahead of me from management, and I was not given a lot of conflicting assignments. The other time, all of the above problems were present. The company didn't know what they wanted me to do, they didn't have a clear assignment for me, and I was continually being dragged to other projects unrelated to the one I thought was supposed to be mine. In fairness, all these problems existed in the office. But in the office, I had eight hours a day that I /had/ to work. At home, it was too easy to just slack off.
I guess the bottom line is this: if management is already screwed up, working at home will make it worse. If it is already working, working at home will make things even better. It's like anything else: telecommuting is a powerful tool, which can be used for good or evil. And it tends to amplify whatever it finds.
Incidentally: on the selection of a home office, may I suggest the smallest room practical? There are fewer distractions that way.
--
The real answer is "it depends" (Score:5)
We have two 3/4 time claims analysts working out of home (they are both trained workers who left to have children). We set them up with ISDN Centrex for network access, regular Centrex for telephone and fax, and periodically they will come in to go over paperwork or meet with people in their department. They each work approximately 30 hours per week. It was a win for us because we kept office space open (it's especially tight in our claims department), and we kept two trained workers who otherwise would be lost entirely. Both live within commuting distance, though.
We also have four marketing reps who are in the office an average of one day per week and either work from home or the road the rest of the time. We accomodate them through dial-up from their laptops. We also handle our five claims adjusters (who are scattered all over the state) the same way. The adjusters rarely come in - they work mainly by PC, fax, and mail.
In IS, we will occasionally have people work from home, but not on an extended basis. I have a mainframe wizard/DBA working under me that I will have work from home sometimes when he's in a deep coding mode because he's demonstrated he's very productive that way without distractions. Other programmers in the department get nothing done out of the office and therefore don't have this option. We decide it on a case-by-case basis.
Basically, I think most companies don't hire with the objective of having people work from home full-time, since there is a group element that helps much of the time in a development environment (and most others). Telecommuting as I see it is more of an option that companies use to resolve situations that would otherwise result in losing a trained, high-skill worker, and even then sometimes not. Unless your work is the kind of work that is solitary by nature (like being a field claims adjuster, for instance - though that example doesn't fully apply here), don't expect a telecommuting gig. You probably are going to have to fish where the fish are.
An option could be having a home where you really want to _live_, but renting (or sharing) an apartment where you want to work, with commuting on the weekends. Though that can get old awful fast.
- -Josh Turiel
100 years ago, they passed laws against it... (Score:5)
At the turn of the century, the sewing machine was a close analog of the PC, in its potential to "free the nation's populace from the drudgery of manual labour." Like the PC, the sewing machine was a universally adopted device in both rural and urban homes, and considerable fortunes were made supplying ever improved and cheaper models to a large domestic and industrial market. Within 40 years of the patenting of the practical mechanical lockstitch mechanism, most American homes had at least one sewing machine, and virtually all commercial textile product manufacturers were fully mechanized. (Anybody see any real close analogy here?)
A price war in clothing developed, that continues to this day. In America and Europe, commercial manufacturers sought to capitalize on the large potential workforce of women who stayed at home, by supplying them with foot powered machines, and by setting up delivery and pickup services to bring them work, and take back completed bundles of clothing. Piecework pay systems were developed to reward those who would work longer or harder, or who could enlist the help of underage children, many of whom began to be held home from school, to increase the family income.
Eventually, organized labor unions (the first being the famous Ladies Garment Workers Association, headed by Samuel Gompers) brought political pressure to bear, to pass stringent "home work" and "child labor" laws that effectively ended the practice of employers setting up individuals to work at home. The enlightened thinking of the day held that only in commercial workspaces that could be inspected by government and union officials could adequate health and safety regulations be effectively enforced, and workers be compensated without the abuses of child labor, so prevalent in the home situation. Many of these laws are still on the books, and are probably applicable to employer/employee home work situations today...
But today, we call it "telecommuting" and we think that somehow the natural economic forces which mandate people getting other people to produce the most work for the least money may not apply. Perhaps "knowledge workers" are somehow immune from economic exploitation in a large, fast virtual services market? Perhaps, but how many people in the financial markets now "start" at 3:00 a.m. from home, via PC, when London opens, and don't "quit" until the wee hours, when the Far East markets start again?
I dunno. Perhaps a more perfect flow of information does, somehow, materially change relationships that once required law and enforcement to keep in equilibrium. Even in the early years of the 20th century, the end of abuses in "home work" and "child labor" didn't end abuse in the workplace, as the New York garment workers fire of, I think, 1907, demonstrated. In that case, a multi-story building full of sweatshops burned, with considerable loss of life, because the doors to fire escape routes had been chained shut to prevent employees from going into stairwells and out on fire escapes during working hours.
In our company's case, we have a couple of women who were formerly full time office employees, who left to have have children, that we've supplied with machines and software to work from home, at their request. They do special projects, mostly database maintenance and "key punch" work, not the jobs that they used to do in our office. Our sales people have laptops, and we've bought cell phones, Notes servers and bandwidth primarily to let them file reports and do paperwork anywhere, anytime (except for the limitations the FAA makes on use of these devices on airplanes). A few of us have voluntarily installed AS/400 and network access software on some of our own machines at home, and use it to do projects on weekends that would otherwise require us to come in. So far, it's all employee driven, and it's genuinely being done to enable people to better balance work and home life.
But as the IT manager, I frequently get proposals from companies offering cheaper and faster IT services using "virtual development teams", generally meaning that they have a bunch of people in India or somewhere else that are willing to work all hours for less than I'd pay for local talent. I haven't used them yet, but I know companies that have, and it's a growing business.
I do know that those who forget the lessons of history are doomed to repeat the mistakes of their forbearers...