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Extreme Telecommuting

Posted by timothy on from the this-ain't-elbonia dept.

wiredog writes: "The Washington Post has an article about a company in Chantilly Virginia, most of whose programmers telecommute from Novosibirsk, Russia." Anyone out there in a similarly distant job?

2 of 370 comments (clear)

  1. Sweatshop? by sulli · · Score: 5, Insightful
    What about the following:

    Lomeiko acknowledged a problem with vacations. Under Russian law each employee is entitled to 24 days of paid holiday, but Plesk can't afford the disruption that would bring, so the company tries to "limit" vacations to 10 days. The work ethic here is pretty intense.

    I'm not one to crow about exploitation, but come on: they're paying Russian wages, can't they accept Russian vacations? It's not like 24 days is that much anyway, for most of the world.

    --

    sulli
    RTFJ.
  2. Good for the programmers, bad for their managers by mblase · · Score: 5, Insightful
    Last year while I was on a job search, I was offered a position as an information architect for a small Chicago firm. Since I'd only worked in production up till then, I was definitely intrigued. But when I heard that all the developers who'd be working under me were located in India, I declined.

    I mean, the position and authority sounded great. But who'd want to manage a group of people halfway across the globe? Even if there were no language barrier to overcome, I'd be "managing" a group of programmers whose clock was off of mine by nearly twelve hours. We'd do almost all our interaction by e-mail, asynchronously.

    I know from having worked only in production that unless you can meet face-to-face with your immediate supervisor on a regular basis, it's difficult if not impossible to develop any cohesion as a team. I could have told those guys what to do, and I'm sure they'd have done it, but I'd never have been able to get a sense of who they were and what they were truly capable of. I'd be managing a big black box.

    Sending programming labor overseas is no new concept, and it has obvious financial advantages. But practically speaking, I'd much rather have a highly-paid programmer next door to me than an inexpensive one several thousand miles away.