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Full-Time Telecommuting -- Does It Work?
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.
I did it for a while as a consultant. It's hard to keep busy for 8 hours unless you have lots of heads down coding to do. You'd be amazed how much time we all waste around the office bs'ing with co-workers and going to the vending machine. If you take that away, you actually have to work instead. Then there's the out of site out ouf mind problem. You risk being marginialized.
I do contract work for O'Reilly and Associates, I know they are currently looking for software developers. I live in Scotland :)
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).
Matt. Want XML + Apache + Stylesheets? Get AxKit.
I'm a software engineer and I used to work full time for a company in Denver. It was my first job, and I was there for three years (yes, that seems a long time for a first job!). I decided to move to Ontario for personal reasons. Upon announcing this, two people I used to work with offered me positions in their internet startup companies. I accepted with one of them.
:) I don't have to commute - I used to do that on a bicycle, I just don't know how people put up with traffic in their cars. If I had children, I would be there to be there for them to take them to/from school. Probably the biggest benefit is that I get to live where I want and still have the job I want - I can't stress how important that is.
The company that I work for (InterActual Technology, Inc - 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!
We (at suntech) have been doing that; so far as freelancing contracts (ie. we settle a contract with a freelancer, (s)he gets it done, and then gets paid), so the company isn't taking a big risk, provided that nothing critical is being outsourced to a freelancer.
:)
:). But we never know for sure.. :)
:)
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
I telecommute fulltime, being approximately 2,000 miles away from my employer (insert plug here for Dreamhost web hosting).
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)
- Jeff
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...--
Just chiming in here -- I'm an 80% telecommuter: I live in the SF bay area, and make the commute (1.5 hours one way) once a week to my company's office. I've been doing this for about five months now, and for the most part, it's great. The 12 hours a week I'm saving go right into family time -- playing with my toddler son, lunch with my wife. I'm FAR more productive at home than I am in the office, and have even been able to flex my schedule around doctor's appointments and the like.
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.
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.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
Here is a web site I found with a list of telecommute friendly companies:
http://www.hartmanresearch.com/telecommute.html
-Carl
Nice sig, a little contradicting though after your story about being a fulltime homeworker....
<grub> Reading
I am in Michigan and have telecommuted more-or less full time for the last three years. My situation was such that I started at the company as a regular worker, that got to know me and trust me. When I decided to move to the other side of the state they asked if I wanted to keep my job and work from home. After almost two years at that company I moved to another company, still on the opposite side of the state, and worked from home for them.
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
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.
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 :-(
I work for a company called Altemi Interactive and we have our server equipment located in the U.S. but we're a Canadian company and all of our employee's telecommute to the server and to meetings as well, we have programmer's located all over the globe working for us. We find it works, I mean it's nice to get up in the morning and work in your bathrobe and drink coffee reading slashdot when your supposed to be fixing sendmail security flaws. :-)
System Panel (Linux When Possible, WinDOH's when nothing else is avalible)
Telecommuting out of state will kill your Drag Coefficient as an employee. To be more competitive, you should consider a combination desk/hideaway-bed. You won't miss the morning commute! ;^)
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.
I've been working out of a home office writing software for 10 years now - long before it was "cool" to do so, and before we had the 'net to make it easy. Here's one thing I can tell you - after a long while the isolation that was your friend (because you can get so much work done) becomes your enemy, as you totally lose touch and daily contact with your technical peers. I'm thinking about getting a regular day job just to get back in circulation with other humans again. So, my conclusion after ten years of it: it works, and with the 'net, it works really well now, and plenty of employers support it. Just watch and care for the psychological aspects of prolonged isolation if you decide to make this a lifestyle.
Rob Malda and Jeff Bates live in Holland, MI ... Timothy Lord and I live in adjoining Maryland towns ... Cliff "Ask Slashdot" Wood lives in VA ... Jamie McCarthy lives in Kalamazoo, MI (semi-near Holland) ... Michael Sims lives on Staten Island in New York ... Emmett Plant lives in Philadelphia PA ... Nik Clayton lives in England ... Jon Kats lives in New Jersey ...
... Jeff Covey, Steve Killen, and Dan Pearson live in Maryland ... Skud and Nathan live in Australia ...
:)
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
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
What we need more of is science!
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.
--
-- Slashdot sucks.
If your job function requires any significant interaction with other employees, it's not going to work. Video conferencing and e-mail can help, but isn't a substitute. If you're strictly a code jockey or tester you might be able to work effectively from home, but even then you'll need the occasional trip in from the office. I work for an insurance company, and here's how we handle things as a rule:
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
-- Josh Turiel
"2. Do not eat iPod Shuffle."
Couple of points from a geezer that used to sell industrial sewing equipment, before he became a technocog in the "new economy"...
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...