Will Telecommuting Kill a Career?

coondoggie writes to mention that Network World has a piece taking a look at the effects of the telecommute on advancement within your career. From the article: "Over 60% of 1,320 global executives surveyed by executive search firm Korn/Ferry International said they believe that telecommuters are less likely to advance in their careers in comparison to employees working in traditional office settings. Company executives want face time with their employees, the study said."

Of course...

[rrohbeck]

if you're just a voice on concalls and a name on emails, what do you expect?
You got to have at least some face time.

Independance

[MindStalker]

Its really about weighing your opportunities. Sure if you telecommute your chances of promotion within your company are much lower. But a telecommuter is more of an independent agent anyways. If your telecommuting you can work multiple jobs much easier. Don't consider yourself tied to that one employer, consider yourself a free agent, even if your not..

All telecommuters take note

[Anonymous Coward]

I have been working from home for a company based 400km away for 2 years, and having no face time has resulted in my position being viewed in a resentful and misunderstood manner by other staff. managment think i do nothing and are constantly having new brain farts attempting to make me do more work for the same money.

unseen == unappreciated. this is dispite the fact i dragged this multimillion $ company out of the dark ages and wrote them a business system and POS system linked together which run the entire venture, i also admin their web/email/db services at the same time. without me they would still be scratching away are hand written paper reports and trying to make it work on excel.

to add to this insult, i did all this on a cut throat budget at a bargin price for them. my rate is 50% of what the next guy would charge.

non-exclusive telecommuting.

[flaming-opus]

In my office we use telecommuting not to recruit people in different metropolitan areas, but cantidates further away, within our metro area. I usually go into the office 2-3 times a week, and try not to be driving at rush-hour. If I can work at the office 10:00-3:30, a few times a week, and get the rest of my work done remote, that's considered sufficient "face-time". It means I can live a lot further away, and endure the long commute because it's not very often, and not at rush hour.

I don't think we'd put up with complete telecommuting, not unless the employee was phenomenal.

Decreased ladder climbing motivation

[Paul Carver]

Telecommuting may decrease the urge to "climb the corporate ladder" if the pay is sufficient. I've found that telecommuting is a strong job satisfaction component. Now, I'm not the type of person who would have ever climbed to the corner office at the top of a Manhattan skyscraper. If I had a shot at that sort of oppulence I'd be foolish to risk missing out by losing "face time".

But as far as climbing a bit faster in the middle levels of corporate IT? The job satisfaction of avoiding the 10 rush hour commutes per week, the large home office, home cooked food instead of cafeteria or lunch bag amounts to quite a lot of non-monetary compensation.

If I couldn't telecommute I'd probably jump from job to job and company to company in order to maximize my income, but as long as I can telecommute a lot of the time and as long as the job isn't too unpleasant and as long as the pay covers my expenses, I don't have a whole lot of motivation to look for a new job.

Re:It might do if you want to progress further

[SnowZero]

One thing to remember is that you can do both telecommuting and traditional office work in a given week, and thus achieve whatever balance you want of advancement-vs-convenience. I know some people who telecommute two or three days a week, giving them a fairly flexible work week, but still allowing time for normal meetings and face-time at the office. Obviously this won't work if you're telecommuting across states, but its a good way for local employees to not waste as much time commuting.

When your boss is 3000 miles away does it matter?

[LordofWinterfell]

I don't know about most of you, but in the larger companies (I work for a Major Telecommunications Company in the US and its the one at the far end of the alphabet), a lot of staff is spread out across the country anyway. I'm in Dallas, my boss is in New Jersey, my team mates are in Los Angeles, Vermont, Philly, St Louis and Boston. When I do go to the office, I'm sitting in a room with a bunch of people that I don't work with.

So Face Time is when we all fly to a central location, twice a year, to meet up. And I have an office job - most of the time is on the phone, email or instant messaging - all of which i can do easier from home in my PJs than driving for an hour to sit in the office, still not have face time with anyone that matters, and add to my dry cleaning bill.

So does telecommuting hurt? Only if I NEVER show up to anything. As long as I make it to events, the occasional face-to-face meeting, I still get the same opportunities as anyone else.

So it's a problem of perception, then?

[Ironica]

This article says that, while most people would like to telecommute at least some of the time, and companies don't perceive telecommuters as less productive than in-office employees, executives are still less likely to promote telecommuters than people in the office every day. But, why? People are talking about "face-time" and "company culture," but should decisions about promotions really be based on such incredibly subjective characteristics? It sounds like the problem that these executives have is that they haven't had time to become buddy-buddy with the telecommuters, and so they're reluctant to advance them in their careers. This is important information... because it tells us we need to change something about how executives view telecommuting, and in a larger view, career advancement.

It's pretty subjective, but most CIOs are clueless

[v3xt0r]

I worked at home for over 3 years doing telecommuting for a small start-up, and enjoyed every minute of it, despite some of the cons.

Pros:

> work your own schedule
> wear whatever you want (even your boxers, only)
> Save money on gas
> Increased productivity due to isolation
> Listen to music as loud as you want/can!
> no boss breathing down your neck (but rather via IM instead)
> no sick co-workers infecting you with their germs
> no office-politics

Cons:

> Anti-social behavioural patterns
> Distractions (TV, Telemarketers, Fridge)
> Consuming your life with your work
> Consuming your work with your life
> No benefits (if 1099)
> get treated like a contractor (even if you are technically an employee)

Some of the note-worthy issues that made me switch from telecommuter/contractor to FT in-house cubicle farm slave...

1) I was working on average of 10-16 hour days, from home, to prove that I was not only doing my job, but accountable for my time and hours.

2) When I asked for an increase in my salary, I was told that because I am working from home, that I am 'unaccountable' for my time and efforts, even though the managers knew damn-well that I was working 10-12 hour days, and the work I did (err, product I made for them) transformed their 4 man start-up to a 120man multi-national, multi-million dollar corporation.

For the most part, I still prefer to work at home, on my own, with no distractions or office politics/strife.

However, it's not something I can do forever (nor is being a full-time cubicle farmer), and it's not for everyone.

I think that 'work ethics' need to evolve. This is a digital age, and face-time is a 20th century excuse for an archaic work-force mentality that is no longer relevent in this globalized economic structure.

Re:All telecommuters take note

[Anonymous Coward]

I am doing something about it. i'm leaving their ungrateful ass's.

dont' get me wrong i was happy to work for 50% less then the going contractors rate because the perks and working from home were worth it to me. i still made a lot more then most people in my region and i had all the free time i wanted to work on my own pet projects. I'm a geeks geek, i donn't need uber money i just need to be entertained by what i do. But now they've fucked it up for themselfs by trying to push shitty contract terms on me and asking for unrealistic deadlines and ignoring my advice on technical issues. so i'm leaving.

Somehow not surprising

[Moraelin]

I think it's not entirely surprising, and here's why:

I've worked with good managers, but I've also met at least one person whose idea of management was showing everyone who's the boss, full time. He seemed to have some deep seated belief that _noone_ and _nothing_ works unless you keep reminding them that you're watching them. He literally used to keep clicking on Netscape's title bar (this was in the 90's) to show Netscape that he's watching it. He actually believed that Netscape actually loads a page faster if he does that.

So, well, yeah, I can't see someone like that trusting that someone can actually work from home.

How true

[SnapperHead]

I have been working from home for about 5 years now. The first company I worked for, sort of forgot I existed for a while. Checks were coming in, I was providing them with results, but nobody knew who I was. In fact, very few people in the company knew I worked there to begin with. The company wasn't big either, it was only like 25 employees.

The next company (the current one), I have been with them for 1 year now. MANY people in the company know about me, I am much more in the "public" view then previously. I have a greater interaction with people then before. Every day, its conference call after conference call.

But, if I keep staying at home and working I might get passsed up. Which is why I think I am being asked to move across the country. I am ready to do it, but its going to take a lot of adjustment going back to an office structure. I get way more done at home then in the office. Which is strange why they would want you to be in the office all the time.

I don't have kids (nor do I want them) and I am not married. I am in a long term relationship, and she will be going with me. I am lucky that I don't have the distractions at home. When that office door is shut, that means GTFO. At first I had friends bothering me during the day, until I stopped answering calls from them or answering the door during business hours. That helped a ton.

Anyway, if you work at home too much you will lose touch with the office. Many times there are things going on that I don't hear about, or find out way too late. This can also make you miss promotions or showing special interest in events. Hell, even attending events becomes interesting.

Bah (telecommuting for 5 years now)

[Kostya]

The only thing that will hamper your career if you tele-commute is if you suck at tele-commuting.

I have been working from a remote location for 5 years now. For 3 of those years, I would travel once a month or once every two months for a week on-site. The rest of my time (that is at least 40, but usually 46, of the 52 weeks of the year) I was working out of my home. And during those three years, my clients were 3 time zones away. I was a senior technical lead and I usual lead teams from 2-5 people. I was a senior contributor and I received 2 "absolute best" team awards on one project. During the other two years, I worked exclusively from my home.

The only time telecommuting hurts your career is if:

1. You have poor interpersonal skills (well, this will hurt you regardless, but it tends to lead to even more misunderstandings if you are remote)
2. You are not self-motivated. If you can't stick with the code instead of catching ST:DS9 on G4 because you are bored or frustrated, telecommuting is going to expose this weakness.
3. You do not have a dedicated workspace. If you are trying to do 10 things at once AND work, you are screwed.
4. Your company isn't telecommuter friendly (kind of a "duh", but it needs to be said). You can't force a company to accept you as a telecommuter if they hate telecommuters.

I find a lot of companies that are "family friendly" are usually good telecommuting places. They usually have the infrastructure and have good speaker phones in their conference rooms. They are set up for it and they don't look down on you if you attend a meeting by phone.

You can also mitigate a lot of issues by coming in for face time on a regular basis. While it isn't my favorite approach, it tends to make most employers happy. Just having a good chat program and a dedicated phone will work wonders. If people can almost always get ahold of you exactly when they want to, they usually don't mind the telecommuting. It's when they can never get a hold of you and you never seem to be "on-line" that they get fiesty.

To be clear, I usually work the schedule of the company, not my own. So even if I could wake up at 12p and work till 8p, I don't do it. I work 8a-4p so that people in different time zones can reach me at a reasonable hour their time. And since most coders come in late and work late, that works pretty good when I am three hours behind them ;-)

All that said, I have never wanted to be a manager. Sr. technical lead is as far as I let a company promote me. So maybe I don't care about career advancement in the technical sense. I'm happy cranking out quality code, and companies continue to hire me for exactly that reason. Even if I had worked on-site all these years, my career would be pretty much the same, since I would never take a management position.

I don't think you can be a manager and tele-commute--unless your whole company is virtual or network based. There is just too much that goes wrong on a daily basis, and if 90% of your workers are in one place and you only see them once a week ... well, stuff is going to go bad.

Sometimes design or brainstorming meetings are difficult. But this could be solved with tech too--it's just that most companies don't want to be bothered with true teleconferencing setups and virtual whiteboards. I find this forces people to be a bit clearer when explaining things over the phone--which can be an added bonus. Or you just make sure you are on site for important design meetings.

Re:So it's a problem of perception, then?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, not exactly. Generally, a promotion involves the employee doing something *other* than what they're doing now. Without real face time, it's harder to get to know a persons strengths and weaknesses. Sure, you know the person is a good coder, but how do you know that promotion to product manager is going to work out. Promotions that have more to do with personality traits than technical skill will, and probably should, go to a person that the employer knows well, which can mostly only be accomplished with face time.