7 Things the Boss Should Know About Telecommuting 156
Esther Schindler writes "An article on CIO.com presents input from several telecommuting IT professionals about the benefits that working from home brings to the enterprise. They suggest some processes that help remote workers interact with other team members, and discuss the irritations that twist telecommuters' shorts in a knot. In short, it's what employees truly want the boss to know about telecommuting. Two sidebars also discuss tips for telecommuters who don't want their careers to stall because they're 'out of sight, out of mind,' and the out of pocket expenses that the company and telecommuter need to divvy up."
Telecommuting = positive social change (Score:4, Insightful)
I would love having this option (Score:3, Insightful)
Most important: (Score:5, Insightful)
One day a week (Score:4, Insightful)
The hardest thing about working from home is trying to explain to family and friends that you are trying to work. When they know you are at home, then tend to treat is as if your on vacation, and its ok to call and small talk or pop-in.
Re:Telecommuting = positive social change (Score:3, Insightful)
As a long time telecommuter (Score:5, Insightful)
1. Background noise - Parents, shut your children up! Nothing sounds more unprofessional than hearing kids yelling in the background. This goes for barking dogs, parakeets, laundry room, the kitchen and taking a conference call from the local pub.
2. Get a dedicated phone line for office work with a vmail that has a professional greeting. No "Hi, Jim and Linda are unable to answer the phone right now..."
3. Don't milk the expenses. In fact you'd be better off not charging any expenses as it is a factor when it comes time for layoffs. Software licenses are a different matter, but you may want to consider your own license if you develop on the side.
4. Be available/no sneaking out.
5. There are no set hours. It's not 9 to 5, and being flexible for your customers across timezones puts you at an advantage over cube jockeys with a commute.
6. Avoid day trading.
7. Don't become a hermit. Meet up with the local coworkers for lunch at least once month.
Re:I would love having this option (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I would love having this option (Score:5, Insightful)
Development is not a solo effort, you need to talk to the users, the analysts, the other coders, the testers, there's a whole design process.
While you can do all this remotely via phone and video conferencing, it's nowhere near as effective as face to face, and raising the effort needed to communicate cuts out on a large amount of communication.
On top of just the job at hand, there's a whole lot of personal growth and exposure to new/different ideas/points of view that you just don't get when working from home or working solo.
My last job shut down their Sydney office and let everyone either work from home or from a serviced office. Within a month all the people I regarded as clued in had found other work, and the remainder reduced their quality to the point where I made a point of asking not to be put in teams with them.
getting back towards the topic, I think telecommuting very occasionally, like maybe one or two days a month is ok, it's like a bit of an extra holiday and can give people a bit of space when they feel their job has become a little stale.
Once you're doing it every week though you should really look at the reasons you don't like going to your work place and try to fix those problems rather than running away from them
Re:Telecommuting = positive social change (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Telecommuting = positive social change (Score:3, Insightful)
Another point that didn't seem to come up anywhere is the cost of commuting. Perhaps it's so obvious that people assume it doesn't bear mentioning, but I think it represents a significant, and understated, part of the cost/benefit equation.
The evolution of technological complexity that makes it hard to match up a sophisticated enterprise with talented workers has produced a culture in which people transport their bodies substantial distances away from their homes simply in order to transport ideas. But this benefit is at best marginal compared to effective telecommuting, in cases where that's possible. To assume otherwise is simply an old habit that needs to be reexamined.
If we add to this equation a proper accounting of the effects of commuting on parenting, the development of community, environmental impact, mental health, opportunity for exercise, the enormous burden on road infrastructure and the cost of traffic accidents, not to mention the sheer waste of human time, the social arguments in favor of telecommuting would seem to dominate.
You should be even more surprised that it's not mandatory!
Not just social benefites... (Score:5, Insightful)
The only problems I see are those interests that want us consuming as much fuel as possible. Obviously oil companies wouldn't want a state like California to cut it's fuel consumption in half. That would be a huge revenue hit. The state might also dislike the reduced revenue from fuel taxes as well. I would think that the reduced cost of road infrastructure would off set that though.
Re:Telecommuting = positive social change (Score:3, Insightful)
It's not just work, why not also study? Why on Earth, with the technology available, does anyone need to go to a building and sit with 100 other students in a cold lecture hall for an hour or too. There's no reason why that can be video streamed and questions handled by chat or email. Then you can fit in the lecture when you brain is most receptive, and take breaks when you wish, or replay parts you didn't get. In fact for many subjects, the lectures need only be recorded once for use over many years. Transcripts of previous Q and A's can also be available online.
Sure, labs and tutorials need face to face, but that can be one day per week.
Re:Telecommuting = positive social change (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm reading the article (yeah I know) and I have to say that management is probably most resistant to telecommuting because of the fact that if they cant physically see the employee is only taking 20-25 minutes to complete a task they expect may take an hour that they cant see the employee sitting around doing nothing and pile yet more work onto them.
I read somewhere that employees now are doing 2-3x as much work as employees had to do 10, 20, 30 years ago... Its not exactly fair since workload goes up that much but the wages do not reflect that. We could have much less unemployment if instead of hiring people in high stress situations that they actually hire 2 people to do the work of 2 people. They'd get things done faster and presumably with less errors than the 1 person trying to do the work of 2 people.
Basically, resistance to telecommuteing is a result of not being able to unilaterally pile more work upon their employee which they could do if they were physically present in the office.
And 1 thing you probably shouldn't mention (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I would love having this option (Score:5, Insightful)
Any number of open source projects would serve as excellent counterexamples of highly productive projects involving teams that collaborate closely across large distances. Most of my day job is Linux kernel development, and while I'm fortunate to have great kernel hackers in my office and in the neighborhood who I can go hang out with and ask questions, the nature of the project dictates that most of the people I work with are people I've never, or only occasionally, met face-to-face.
It certainly takes some getting used to. It's been a real test of my reading and writing skills--you need to be able to understand and explain complex technical ideas, and keep discussions going despite personality conflicts. And it'll help to have good local computer resources, a fast network connection, and a mail client that helps you handle massive mailing list traffic efficiently....
Re:Telecommuting == career suicide (Score:5, Insightful)
Yours is "you probably won't get into management".
I don't _want_ to get in to management. I've already advanced as far as I possibly can within my company - a senior R&D programmer (having advanced litterly from the bottom - doing casual handline envelope stuffing jobs). I don't see getting into senior management as "advancing my career", I define it as "Starting an entirely different career, and one I'm not suited to, telecomuting or no telecomuting".
But in anycase, I don't believe the telecomuting would necesarily stop that - I'm pretty heavily immersed in the culture of the company - I've been here ten years, and believe I have earnt the sort of level of respect and recognition required for a move into management if that were my goal (and if I had any actual talent for it).
Maybe five day a week telecomuting might put the breaks on advancement a little (I personally do two to three), but it's more about personality than face time. You just have to be the sort of person that people notice - and ensure that when they do notice you, that there's good things to see.
Yea but... (Score:3, Insightful)
But the number one thing they will realize, is that if you working at home works, someone working in India for 1/6 the wage will work just as well.
Don't be stupid people, if your boss is letting you telecommute, they are just beta testing offshoring.
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