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Teleworking in the UK?
neiljt writes "As a UK-based IT worker living about a 90-minute journey from London, I am interested in the idea of working from home, or teleworking. In the UK, however, the take-up of this practice has been less than frantic. My own immediate plan is to find work at home here in the UK, however my ultimate aim would be to find employment, which gives me the freedom to live where I choose. What barriers exist to working in the UK for a non-UK (e.g. US) employer. What about a UK citizen living outside the UK working for a UK or US employer? (Feel free to substitute your country of residence)"
It would be interesting to hear both from employers who support (or would support) this model, and from employees who have successfully negotiated employment at home.
In general, have your experiences been positive? If you have had problems, how have they been resolved? And now that the technology has been available for at least 10 years, will teleworking ever take off in the UK?"
"The arguments will probably be familiar to most here, but I will state them anyway, just to be sure you know how I'm thinking.
Advantages for me:
- Save journey time of 3 hours per day
- Save travel expenses
- Save travel frustration (delays, crowds, mobile phone idiocy, etc.)
- Be fresh and alert when I start work
- Feel better at the end of the working day
- Be at work promptly each day
- Work in a pleasant/relaxed environment
- Ready access to my (large) technical library
- Cost savings
- Office space savings
- Improved productivity
- Increased motivation
- Reduced traffic congestion
- Reduction in total travel and therefore pollution
- Employer needs to monitor quantity and quality of work performed
- Internet connectivity (mine currently limited to 56Kb)
It would be interesting to hear both from employers who support (or would support) this model, and from employees who have successfully negotiated employment at home.
In general, have your experiences been positive? If you have had problems, how have they been resolved? And now that the technology has been available for at least 10 years, will teleworking ever take off in the UK?"
A couple of years ago I worked for a fabless semiconductor company coming in to their offices (50 miles away) one day a week and working the rest of the time from home. I was already set up with a cablemodem and PCs, there was no problem doing the actual work and keeping in touch by telephone. So "the problems" have "been solved", in IT-type work.
All of your advantages seem realistic, a disadvantage you'll probably have to add is to have to carefully manage your motivation. I found that a phone call and a chat would cheer me up and get me going if the news was positive, more often in that company the news was negative or depressing and it requires some mindgames then to keep yourself pouring energy into the work and not slumping in the chair thinking "what's the use?". Being on the phone regularly and documenting where you are at in a place easily visible from the office (CVS, email project dumps, etc) can deal with the monitoring problems in a good way.
However, this company had the most amazing political situations going on. I found that by not physically being there all the time there it was easy to miss out on the latest twists and turns in the ongoing sagas, and that in such a hothouse political situation that can be a big drawback. I also found that there was a tendancy by others to regard myself as less committed, simply by lack of physical presence, even though in every other way it was clear I was playing more than a full role. So there are psychological issues in not being physically present when problems and bad or good news comes up, you are not seen to be proactive when someone else is always first on the scene to fight the fire, since the call is going to come to the office.
The advantages are clear, especially if you have children. But the disadvantages make themselves felt pretty clearly too, if you cherish hopes of getting a more managerial responsibility over time, you might find this system is not helping you towards that. In the end I quit after 14 months, when the political sagas reached a point where it was clear there was no growth path for myself (and in fact anyone else based in their UK office as far as I could see, three other people also left out of a total staff of 8 while I was there).
If you are willing to work for $8000/yr, I think you have an excellant chance. That seems to be the current rate for teleworking in the US now.
sounds silly, but it isn't. you're on your own for a lot of the time. you have to do things to keep yourself from going crazy. maybe i've been really lucky, but except for a few rotten apples i've always had great co-workers. and not being able to work with them kind of sucks actually.
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the entire programming dept. of the company I work for telework and have been for the last 3 years. We go into the office 1 day a week for production meetings, though often one or more of us is on a conference call for those too. So long as your type of work allows it. I highly recommend getting one or more broadband connections to your home (I have adsl and cable in case one dies), and using a conference call service (there are many at about 8p/minute if you google for them).
Yes there are advantages to teleworking.
Yes it would save company money.
It will never catch on though. Bosses like to have their staff lined up in little cubicles. They like to feel in control. In the minds of most bosses empire building, politics, and wanting to look like they are in charge is important. Company money isn't.
How many times has your company wasted money on stupidity because some overpaid fool thought it was a good idea??
My company does this often.
Of course, I'm a developer. Not sure what it's like for non-pure IT staff.
Cheers,
Ian
Advantages for me:
Save journey time of 3 hours per day - (I can sleep in an extra 3 hours)
Save travel expenses - (Forget the car, I can use my Snoopy slippers)
Save travel frustration (delays, crowds, mobile phone idiocy, etc.) - (I only have to trip over my dog)
Be fresh and alert when I start work - (Morning crack and coffee)
Feel better at the end of the working day - (I'm drunk by 0930)
Be at work promptly each day - (Work starts when I wake up... bitch)
Work in a pleasant/relaxed environment - (Did I mention my crack and coffee?)
Ready access to my (large) technical library - (Google)
Advantages for my employer:
Cost savings - (I can browse for porn at home)
Office space savings - (No need for a cubicle, I don't have to leave bed)
Improved productivity - (crack!)
Increased motivation - (I can say 'fuck you' to my employer and not be heard)
Advantages for society:
Reduced traffic congestion - (I'm a maniac driver, if I don't have to leave home no one will die due to my poor driving skills)
Reduction in total travel and therefore pollution - (When I soil my britches no one will notice)
There are a number of disadvantages and factors to consider, though none should be insurmountable. A couple might be:
Employer needs to monitor quantity and quality of work performed - (That's what webcams are for, watch while I surf porn sites, smoke crack, drink my coffee, and soil myself)
Internet connectivity (mine currently limited to 56Kb) - (My employer should cough up some dough so I can get a broadband connection so I can be more productive in my porn browsing)
Around lunch time when I leave the office I especially love to turn my speakers on full blast and execute a perl program that turns makes Mozilla go here 10 minutes after I leave.
I also make sure sure Xscreensaver is on with a password so my other coworkers can shut it off.
However I found my speakers in the parking lot with piss all over them after I did this. My boss permanently took awhile my priveldge to use speakers after that incident.
http://saveie6.com/
.. and you want that to be somewhere nice... The best option is to start your own business.
I work from home full-time, and make a good rate doing it. (Occasionally I have business travel, to client sites, say about 10 days/year.) I work for an software consultancy.
The way I got here was to work for this group full-time on-site on a number of different engagements over a few years. When the first opportunity to work at home came up, I took it. I provide my own hardware and net connectivity.
Since I have proven my ability to get results and to do whatever it takes to satisfy the customer, I got this chance. Since I still make my dates and satisfy the customer, I am still afforded this opportunity.
It has its downsides, no doubt. My 2-year old daughter doesn't always understand when I can't interrupt myself and come do what she wants. But the time I've been able to spend with her has been priceless, from coming up to eat lunch with her, to dropping by the pool in the afternoon for a half-hour swim, it's been wonderful.
I consider myself lucky and work hard to keep this opportunity in my life.
The best way is to set up your own company, being employed by a foreign company is a PITA, both for you as well as their HR department.
British employers are very sceptical over this, because they trust their employees least, second to USA.
as other posters have stated, its hard to keep the motivation up when you work at home. the company i work for also doesn't really have any offices so we don't do meetings etc - we just stay in touch by idling on irc all day :)
5 days per working week is 15 hours per week.
Assume 25 days holiday per year which is 5 weeks, so 47 working weeks/year times 15 hours per week is 705 hours per year spent sitting in traffic...
Assuming 16 waking hours per day, you spend 44 days per year of your awake life just sitting in traffic. A month and a half? That's gotta be fun.
Assuming a working lifetime of say 40 years of the same, that'd be 1760 days, or nearly 5 years of your life you'd spend sitting in a cage, listening to Chris Tarrant on the radio.
Now, isn't that an interesting, exciting, useful, challenging and productive way to spend 5 years of your life?
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
Save journey time of 3 hours per day
Save travel expenses
Save travel frustration (delays, crowds, mobile phone idiocy, etc.)
Be fresh and alert when you start work
Feel better at the end of the working day
Be at work promptly each day
You would also find that you will get better connectivity than 56kbit.
None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.
Savings for the employer are that when there is a traffic jam or freak snow storm, the employee can continue to work from home.
Omnis amans amens
I have worked for several consultancies, including big 5, who all allowed home working, mainly due to the fact that they never had enough hot desks in the offices.
Whilst for some tasks it works really well, e.g. reading documentation, writing presentations etc., for most work I find that it inhibits communication between colleagues. Communication (or lack of) is one the biggest issues that companies face. Many companies spend a fortune implementing all kinds of systems and processes to improve communication, but often the most efficient and cheapest way is to have the entire project sitting at adjacent desks. People then just tend to chat about problems, solutions etc.
Personally though my biggest problem was sitting at home by myself for an entire day with no-one to talk to. I also found it much harder to motivate myself and would often just put things off while I watched day time TV. Maybe I'm just a lazy b*stard but I don't think I'm that unusual.
Disadvantages for you I can think of are timezones and exchange rates.
.com boom times. It was hell trying to co-ordinate properly. Language, culture, timezones and the asshole quotient (French people) made it difficult to work effectively - and we had an office!!
The A$ is currently worth not very much at all (too lazy to look it up) so working "over here" would not be possible - A$50 is a decent enough hourly rate in Sydney, which I think is about 16 pounds and around US$25. I doubt, therefore that someone in the US or UK would want to Telework to Aus. (but contact me with outsourcing opportunities *grin*).
Timezones. I used to have an office in Switzerland (I am based in Sydney) during the
It is amazing that an 8 hour time difference and a lack of understanding on the other side made it difficult. I was regularly attending meetings at 2am and staying back until 7 or 8 on a daily basis. We couldn't change hour working hours much as we had Aussie customers to deal with.
Now I am working from home by necessity, and I must say I find it more effective, but this is a factor of who I work with rather than the location.
Motivation is key. Time management is a must. Install instant messaging client to reduce comms cost and provide a feeling of connectivity - you can page people to say hi, ask a question.
Working from home you can also get a sense of Isolation, of not being part of the "real world".
It was good recently that I had to go work in the city, put on a suit and get on the train. I enjoyed the variation, it got me out of the house - and also made me appreciate my lair more when I got back home!
Watch out - if you work from home the employer is responsible for making sure that the environment is suitable for working in. This might not mean a saving for the employer if they have to kit you out with chair/desk etc at home as well as at work (if you have to come in every now and then), they will at least have to send someone round to check out your _office_ space.
I'm currently managing to work from home ok, even though it's my three kids holiday.
Advantages for me are plenty (especially for avoiding pointless commuting), advantages for work..... well as a programmer I get disturbed less at home so can get more work done, it also means I'm available to do any work any hour of the day/night.
Broadband connection, VPN is essential though. I have done bits from home over 56kbps and it's not fast enough for real work, although using citrix might help you there.
Our sister office is in London. Having worked with my UK based compatriots for a few years now, I can safely say that while they have no objections about working late hours THEY DON'T DO S**T DURING THEIR ENTIRE WORK DAY.
I work in the UK.
I hate to say it, but you are right in a lot of cases.
I see a lot of people talk about football and do very little work all day. They then start working at 5 pm just so they can be seen to be working hard when the boss walks past later.
I don't do this, I work when I'm paid to work. But I see people getting pay raises for this.
I think it boils down to the fact that some days, when you wake up, you just don't feel like getting up. On those days, at a company that doesn't allow home working, you might be tempted to ring in, and call a sickie. But if you are allowed to work from home, you would probably roll back to sleep for a few minutes, and then get up, and do some work from home.
The company I work for also provides me with company paid ADSL which terminates in the lab I work for, thus meaning that I can simply plug in to the lab network at any time. This has a bonus for them, as quite often, at weekends, and evenings, if I think of something, rather than wait until the next working day, and/or maybe forgetting it by then anyway, I will log in, and do some work in my own time.
I really appreciate the way this company treats its employees, and I think the motto is: Trust your employees, don't treat them like slaves, and they will work happier, and be more productive. At least, that's how I'm finding it.
I know someone that worked through a whole weekend for free, moving servers from one part of the city to the other - from 9 am to 10pm on both days. They arrived at work on Monday about 5 minutes late, and the boss pulled them up about it. Forget thanking them for their hard work (for free!) over the weekend. They quit that job soon after, and got a job with a funky little tech company, and now work harder, as their work is appreciated.
Obviously, I understand that some kinds of work can't be done from home, but I think in the majority of case, where people write documents, support networks, answer phone calls, they should be trusted with the opportunity to work from home for say one day a week.
I digressed slightly towards the end there, didn't I? But I see working from home as an example of how a company treats its employees.
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Basic Field support job... basicly a business where time tied to a desk was lost money.
Most of my best work was done from home. My computers were faster, my connection was faster, I had software the boss wouldn't buy, and saved a 4hour commuite from hell. It wasn't every day I was at home, but about 1/2 the work week was done from the home office, well till eventually I gave up on the whole going to the office.
The boss didn't really approve though... basicly under the old impression of, "if I can't see you working, you are not working", but at the very least had server logs, VPN access, database access to somewhat justify why I wasn't in the office. Simple answer, "I was working" It was honestly a case where it was pointless to hit traffic go to the office, just to check my e-mail to see what projects were schedualed for the day, then drive back home to complete them.
But eventually there was an argument over paying me for work done in my home office, basicly a documented claim in e-mail about how he doesn't pay for what I do on my own time, which was fine by me, so I just billed the clients directly rather then going through him, and made more money. He wasn't happy, but it was his choice.
But the point is that telecommuting can work, provided you don't have an employer who's a total bozo. In my case simple call forwarding to my mobile, or mobile to my land line, gave the illusion of a tradidational office setting. Phone the office, need to talk to the staff, the staff answers. (Little diffrence in America being the cell holder pays for the air time, never the caller, but the office switchboard should accomplish this illusion quite well). I know also that the network known now as t-mobile supported fax to mobile services, where the subscriber who recieved a fax on the mobile could route it to any number of their choosing, again making it easy for the staff not to be near the physical office fax.
There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary. SHUT UP! There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
Isn't the proper term telecommuting? Has this changed while I was in Basic training? Or is this a UK type of thing...? ;)
-kalle
"What barriers exist to working in the UK for a non-UK (e.g. US) employer.What barriers exist to working in the UK for a non-UK (e.g. US) employer."
1. Cricket: Learn the rules of this (supposedly) gentleman's game. And no, this is not baseball played with a smaller heavier ball. It isn't a chirping insect either.
2. Conversation: Folks in the UK are quick to note when you're being sarcastic. They're also a bit more relaxed, and can laugh at themselves. Not so high strung as the folks across the pond.
3. Beer: The local flavors are so different, and the temperature varies a lot.
4. Dating: More 'F' geeks around, more opinionated as well.
5. Football hooliganism: Forget NBA, this is the UK. Don't venture miles near a match, especially the big leaguers.
6. Getting online: is much more expensive, but lots better and smoother in the UK.
7. Driving, power voltage, frequency, etc..
A few more, but I'm in a rush.
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
You'll be dealing with the INS. As self-serving a bunch of human beings as you're likely to encounter. They make sure you wear brown lipstick because they have some things (a visa and the power to toss you onto the next plane to nowhere,) only one of which you want.
It doesn't get worse than that unless you're black, don't dress in visibly wealthy "old money" style and just went through a stop sign...
America is a great place as long as you have money... Its pretty damn dismal when you don't.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
Sorry, I forgot to add... I really really miss my whiteboard. Great to grab a few of the team and a whiteboard to collaborate.
Telephone doesn't cut it, regular meetings help, but I still miss my whiteboard. Even though the markers hardly ever worked.
A tiny 2 bedroom flat in London city center can cost £200k-£500k GBP which would be $320k-$800k.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
I did that for a while and it's great (and I'd like to do it again) but it takes a place where you can work without other bits of life getting in the way. If you have kids, annoying roommates, annoying family, or whatever you may find it hard to concentrate. Also you don't get as much freedom as you might want because if you live out of state or out of the country it causes tax problems (and other kinds of redtape)for your employer (unless they are big enough to already have offices in that area).
I liked it rather well for system admin work but found that my day to day life was to distracting to stay in the zone for programming work. If you have a way to block those things out then you should be fine. On the other hand I found that I worked almost constantly because I enjoy my work and without having to drive to and fro and work precise hours I felt less of a sepperation between work and play.
As for advice of how to get such work.. good luck unless your current employer or someone you know is willing to hire you to telecommute. With the economy in general in a piss poor condition it's hard to be picky about what jobs you take. On the other hand that can be a good bargaining chip if you find a willing listener.. a lot of money can be saved by not needing to pay for extra office space and so on.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
Working in your own business has many more advantages, but some disadvantages as well. You should consider trading security for freedom if you choose this option.
The good thing is, with borders becoming more open and broadband internet more common, it will probably get easier to do so. At least within the EU, which is more and more becoming one big country rather than a collection of small ones.
Although that development itself has a myraid of disadvantages, it could improve freedom of choice regarding residence and clientele.
The biggest issue in the UK is the availability of broadband in rural areas. With a bit of luck, as more people want to take up teleworking, this might help smaller towns and villages reach the critical mass for telco installation of broadband to be cost effective....
Vacancy for signature. Apply within.
It's really not difficult to set up your own company in the UK. Also, you don't have to live in the UK to be director of a company based in the UK.
Having your own company gives you much more flexibility than just working for a single employer. It also gives you more flexibility with regards to how you pay your taxes.
Where you live can be transparent to your clients - you can have a UK-based address with someone to answer and redirect your phone calls quite cheaply. Your clients don't necessarily need to know you're coding whilst sitting by the pool with a cool drink in the south of France or wherever. Go for it.
This makes you a sucker. How does it feel, sucker?
No, I lose the pay raise, but I gain 3 hours a day.
I also get the same or more work done.
What barriers exist to working in the UK for a non-UK (e.g. US) employer.
I don't know about being a US resident working in the US (it's outside the boundries of the European Community)...
For the EU, there would be no problem in attaining a permit to work (it is after all the EU)... The one thing I'm unsure of is taxes (here in Sweden, you pax taxes to the municipality you live in (as opposed to the one you work in)... The employer on the other hand pays taxes based on where you work.
I'm not really in to tax laws between countries and such... *Sigh*
I'm in Australia, and I telework 4 days a week. Actually, I telework about 6 days a week and turn up in the office on the other day, but have very flexible hours. I've also done some technical writing for a usa company. (free plug: www.devx.com) Situation: I got my setup as I have to provide after-hours remote support to our manufacturing sites during the production season (cotton harvest, March-July). Also, I do both development and network admin tasks, and cannot focus on the devt with all the interruptions in the office. Still being in place once a week does help the relations with other staff - even without realising it we tend to give people more credibility in person than remotely. "The office" is only half an hour away, but that's "the next town" - ie around here it's considered a hassle driving that long to get to work. otoh, half of "the office" (including my manager) is being relocated to another town 5 hours away. I got the option to choose, and chose to stay. Most didn't get an option, they were told. I started with a modem-router, then moved to ISDN, and now ADSL, which I've ramped up to the highest speed available here. (I do at times download huge fixpacks and tools under development subscriptsions with IBM and MS). Foreign Work I was approached via email to do some tech writing, by someone who observed my activity on a relevant newsgroup. I'm paid a flat rate per article of a certain size, in $US. (The jolly exchange rate movements have wiped 20% off my current invoice - dang!) This has worked fairly well, with an added bonus that I can write while my editor is asleep, giving next-day turnaround on minor edits. I have to declare the income as "other foreign income", ie it doesn't fit in any normal categories on the tax form. Actually the tax office wouldn't even know unless they audited my bank account records. Lifestyle Working from home with flexible hours has been great, as I have two young children. It meant I could be at home with #1 while my wife was in hospital with #2. It also means my wife can do part-time work. The lifestyle thing can go either way. There's the danger that you won't self motivate. There's also the risk that you end up spending every waking moment in front of the computer, working, feeling no other sense of identity. You can start in your pyjamas and forget to get dressed. (That's if it actually matters). It works for some. It doesn't work for others. Having a dedicated "work area" is essential, especially if anyone else lives in the house. It's then easy to define "I'm at work now" by which room you're in. Finding work It's just another arena for the same question - how do you find work at all? It can depend on contacts, on reputation, on spending time hunting or you might just fluke it like I did. It depends on managers' perceptions and requirements. Good Luck. I hope it works for you, but don't forget to go meet people sometimes :-)
-- All your bass are below two Hz
I'm also in the UK, coincidentally about 90 mins from (central) London. Before I took this job I'd lived & worked in London for 8 years. I was/am amazed at the way everyone seems to accept spending hours a day sitting in car commuting. Give me trains any day - you can read, sleep, finish that last minute report... :)
Some of my group are often on the road visiting clients (mostly doing firewall installs but also presales and other consultancy); personally I'm looking forward to the time I get myself some proper accomodation, work pay for broadband and I can do my (pentesting) work from home at least some of the time. That said, I'd go bonkers if I never came into the office at all.
"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free." -- Goethe
India is quite attractive. There are fewer americans :)
Starting your own business is great. . . but don't expect overnight success. I've been working for the last 3 years almost 'non-stop' apart from a change of country and wedding.
Really, it depends on your personality. Do you have sufficent self-motivation, can you whip your own butt into doing work when you'd really rather just laze in front of the TV.
It's a choice - do you want the comfort of a consistant (??) pay cheque but without the freedom of time-choice, or vice-versa.
I recently had the opportunity to telecommute if I was to become an employee of another company, doing almost the same thing I'm doing now - but, then it struck me - the most important thing to me is the ability to do as I please, I'm just exceedingly fortunate that I manage to still make enough sales.
Regards.
It would be interesting to hear if open source developers think that this might work - I imagine it's a similar style of working albeit with different motivations....
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For about 200 rupees a day, you should be able to answer phones for Hewlett Packard/Compaq!
It amazes me that you first pay for adsl and cable, and then you spend extra money on a conference call. Why didn't you use VoIP?
"It's too bad that stupidity isn't painful." - Anton LaVey
I've seen the file 'The Net'
of course its feasible other wise they would not have made such a realistic in depth computer movie about it.
Simon
Kingdom of Loathing (www.kingdomofloathing.com) Addicted is me
If you can find a DSL connection and an employer who likes the idea, you should have no difficulty. On the other hand, US employers are rather leery of employing teleworkers in the UK. Two reasons--UK tax rules, and the fact that most US workers do not have a contract and most do in the UK.
that's so funny, an american calling the british lazy.
Please thing of that you will become lonely and strange if you do that for longer time.
Move to the city or find a job close to home.
I am currently living in Tokyo a city that is 3 times bigger than London so I know what I am talking about for NOT commuting.
It is "normal" for Japanese to commute 1 1/2 hours each way after working 12 hours here.
Regards,
Lars
For example: you are a UK citizen working for a US company remotely, who pays you? Who do you pay income tax to? Who is responsible for paying NI? Do you need a work permit / VISA? Also with the time difference between the UK and the US the woking day overlap may be as little as a few hours, this makes scheduling a pain.
All these issues can be resolved, but you will have to be an exceptional emloyee to make it worth the employers time and/or effort.
Within the EU things will be easier, but maybe not easy enough, and then there is the potential language barrier :-)
I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed or numbered.....my life is my own.
However, there are several times a week that I must report on site (I work for a University). Working from home means that you aren't on site for customer support duties, which can be important for small employers. From your point of view, your desire to work for international companies (e.g. U.S.) may be unrealistic. The tech sector in the U.S. is having a very tough time of it for the last 3 years, and unless you have very special skills, there is plenty of local talent that you will have to compete against. Competing on a price basis is going to be tough because much off site development is being shipped to India in the U.S. due to a talent pool (IIT grads are strong and labor costs are lower).
In the US, anyways, it seems like the real problem to getting to work at home is managment. Most managers think if they can't see you (wiggling your mouse around) then they can't know if you actually working.
Most IT management philosophies do not consider managing progress or productivity by the state of the code. They are based around managing hours a person works.
It's interesting to note that in the US sales organizations have done extremely well implementing work at home. I attribute this success to the fact that sales organgizations manage by results (sales $$$) not hours at the office.
If you can work from home, then you're proving to your employer that someone in Asia could work from their home for 1/5 your salary. There is a good chance you will ever find yourself unemployed as soon as it's "working really well for the company".
The reality is your employer was simple beta testing its remote worker processes.
- Adam L. Beberg - The Cosm Project - http://www.mithral.com/
Whereas an identical flat within 1 1/2hrs commute costs £120-£350k.
UK average salary: £27,000
Minimum salary to buy the cheapest as a first time buyer: £35,000.
Is there any link between 9% voting turnout in 20-24 yr old bracket and UK government total ignorance of issues that affect this group? Hell yeah.
Another interesting fact: the group most likely to vote, 50-55 yr old bracket, own the high %age of property in the UK.
Current soaring UK house prices are not an accident - they are a deliberate government policy.
The ratio of house prices to salaries in the UK is now at it's highest since records began in 1900.
"Those who cast the votes decide nothing; those who count the votes decide everything." (attrib. Joseph Stalin)
Having worked for a year as a Network Consultant from home, I found it to be a nightmare.
I still needed to travel to the office at least once a week for meetings, or to trial equipment in the employers labs.
I ended up working longer hours, and was made to feel bad if I left home after my contractual 5pm finish time. Of course, you can claim tax breaks through having a home office, but this just adds complication to your tax return...
The biggest thing I noticed, was not feeling part of the 'team'. I could turn up to events, and no-one would know who I was....pretty bad considering I brought in a large part of their profits!!
I wish anyone else trying tele-working out the best of luck!
if you are thinking about working for a US employer, you will either want to find someone who is already in the UK, or work by contract. to pay you as an employee, they have to pay taxes, and there's no way that someone is going to want to take that on just for you.
there are tons of great people on the street right now. you will need to use your network. there's no way that an unusual working condition is going to get past hr, no matter what the benefits for the company might be.
Have you taken a look at paneris.org? From their website " PanEris is home to a collective of web developers working together as a virtual corporation. We partner with organisations who wish to outsource the development of their Internet sites, and the information systems behind them.".
They are very opensource freindly, the only downside is that most of their work is in Java!
... but I receive daily literally tons of e-mail offers about working at home, and for Real Money, That Really Works, you know?
Germany / Munich here (although I have worked in the UK and US as well)
Technology and organisation are not the real problem - it's usually middle management and their fear of lossing control.
I have been freelancing for many companies, who were all "capable" of supporting teleworking. But the decision was mostly based on how paranoid the middle management guys were. And if they felt "secure" and "empowered" to let go of their cubicle slaves.
The benefits you mention really are great. Especially if you're used to being salaried and managing your own time and working without much guidance. It's very easy to get distracted by housework, spending time with the kids, surfing the net, etc.
The only complaints I have are ones that other people have brought up: not being there physically has side effects. Other than email, the only contact I have with the office is a weekly 1-hour phone call, and a two or three day visit every six months or so. So I'm totally out of the office politics. My department used to be software-only, and recently got merged with the main IT department, so this can cause some stress. You can go in physically more often, so I'd suggest going in at least once every week or two to prevent this.
The other side of not being there is the reduced personal interaction. I'm a total introvert, so I didn't think it would be an issue, but it still is. You need to make sure you get human contact and don't just withdraw into your cocoon.
And one more thing -- expect the taxes to be really complicated if you work for a company in a different country. And expect both countries to be completely unhelpful when you're trying to figure anything out -- at least that's my experience. Just yesterday I had someone from the Centre for Non-Residents (e.g., UK expats) tell me they probably knew the answers to my questions, but wouldn't talk to me b/c I'm resident in the UK.
-Esme
I have trouble with the motivation thing too. The only way I could get round it was to write plans, lots of plans. I'd list all the things I needed to do to get things done, and if any of them looked too big, I'd try to break them up like solving a maths problem - tackle what looks easy until it falls apart.
And then I'd try to prioritise these things and work them into a schedule. When I started, I had an overview, but I only scheduled one day at a time. I'd schedule lunch as well. And I'd try to make each day's thing look easy. And then I'd email the schedule to someone. It's good if you can trust your boss with this. But you need to get your boss to understand that the schedule is for me not you. They like their schedules to show bigger pictures and sometimes you can't do that or you get overwhelmed. If you can't trust a boss, try a friend who is not a co-worker. Emailing the thing off somewhere increases your committment to actually doing some of the things on the schedule.
When I'm really good I'd write tomorrow's schedule at the end of each day (schedule plan time). This would be really handy the next morning when I couldn't always remember where I was at, the schedule would actually set me back into my train of thought. There should be at least two or three different things on the schedule each day. If the schedule says the same thing each day eg "code sales app" for days on end then you haven't broken it down enough.
If I wrote a plan, I had a fair chance of keeping the daytime tv at bay, if I didn't then the tv won. I've been thinking about selling my tv.
There's a bit of help on the web, key in "procrastination" and "overcome" etc
Overcoming Procrastination
Dealing with Procrastination
And I read most of the sample chapters I could find at Amazon, but the uni stuff to help students helped me.
Of course when your dot-com company runs out of money and makes you redundant, it is really really hard to overcome that kind of disappointment. However, I must, because I still have a system to finish before I have something coherent or useful to add to my resume.
And I know I like coding - because I happily slapped together something to help out my local club keep score when they hosted a championship recently. There is something else going on in my head that makes me put off doing things I enjoy.
You might want to look into the 2002 EU teleworking agreement.
/. . If you are self-assessed for tax you definitely want to contact the DTI/Revenue or your accountant to make sure you're not going to get screwed for extra tax.
This page has a reasonable description (skip down to the bit about the main points) although some of the links seem to be broken.
The agreement is voluntary but lots of large companies do follow this. My own experience was that companies often prefer to have you work *part time* in the office rather than full time at home, to avoid the onus of a health and safety inspection of your house (I can't remember if this one is required under UK law, we have some regs which differ from the EU agreement). There are definite tax implications in the UK when you work from home, and you should allocate a room or an area in your house as your 'home office'. (the issue was, IIRC, that if the company provide you with furniture and/or equipment - as is often the case because of their health and safety duty of care - then this can be taxed as an additional benifit, unless you use it *exclusively* for work)
If you belong to a professional organization or union they will almost certainly be able to provide you with better advice than anyone
You should also read this note on working outside of the UK.
Disclaimer: IANAL, but I did serve as a union official 3 years or so ago, and dealt with a couple of teleworking cases.
-Baz
Technology can solve that. Agfes ago I saw an ad for an APP which did a shared whiteboard on a PC - displayed on several PCs, anybody can write on it. Needs a sound channel as well.
One of my ideas for "when I get round to it" is a pair-progrsamming IDE. Two users with same display on screen, VoIP chat, multiple windows, two pointers for pointing things out. "Programmer in charge" can edit in his window(s), "Second Programmer" can browse code in his window to point things out but not edit. Roles change with a single click. Kibitzers can watch - visibly (e.g. management can "look over shoulder", but not spy) and drop in suggestions via an IRC-type window.
If one programmer could drop out and be replaced, you could get true rolling software development, with people dropping in and out as time is available. Egoless programming, many eyes on the same code. What could you do in a 60-hour round-the-world development session over one weekend?
Consciousness is an illusion caused by an excess of self consciousness.
If this were true we'd have died out centuries ago...
I have no problem trying overseas programmers again, but only for very well defined projects, and not where the client requirements are in the slightest bit fluid.
This sounds about right.
We don't produce any more. We have no outputs.
It doesn't matter if we work hard or do nothing, then end result is the same.
you had me 'till "egoless programming" ;)
Anything to enable interaction and collaboration is a fantastic idea, but sometimes you need that personal touch. Roll on the VR version of your concept. I'm sitting in Sydney in my comfy slippers, virtually working in a 3d simulated environment in San-Francisco with programmers from all over the world.
And you never need to iron your suit.
If we all try to push for these small steps where we can, then hopefully general perception of telecommuting will change. I'd love to be able to work from home every day.
There are a couple of downsides. If you're not visible, in the office and working, when the next round of redundancies roll around, your name will be high on the list
Secondly, finding a company to let you do this is nearly impossible. I currently work from home about 1/3 of the time. I'm in the office 8 hours a day and then work from home 2 - 4 hours a day. The work I do at home is of the same quality that I perform in the office, but generally the same chunk of work takes less time at home due to fewer interruptions. Despite this, we are not allowed to work from home. Management will not allow it, despite having presented a fairly good business case.
I can really relate to that. It's the achilles heel in on-the-road code plans, unfortunately, but that's not quite your problem. I for one still can't quite go totally digital for information look-up needs, although increasingly i do use web resources. No matter, it's not desirable to work without decent paper manuals, you just can't beat their random-access times and scannability.
That said, my home office library, currently used only for the odd evening session, is WAY WAY better then the junk on the shelves here in the office. I often yearn for it mid-way through a toughie, frustratingly picturing the page on the manual i need but no way to connect to the info therein.
Advantages for my employer:
* Cost savings
* Office space savings
Yeah OK sounds good to the ployer but don't do yourself out here. If you start to work full time from home then you have to acknowledge the costs that you will incur. Your employer should recognise the cost benefit to them and transfer some to you to cover your overheads. And you should book your costs accordingly for tax purposes - heating, rent, equipment, coffee, consult your local tax inspector...
Since the exact countries I'm interested in are being posted, does anyone have any advice for someone in the US looking to work in London (or anywhere in the UK)? Personal classified reads: Currently a web developer, Masters degree in 2 years, willing to settle.
I'd need something beforehand to get a Visa to work there and I'm only looking to go for 1-2 years (I have no attachments whatsoever). Any advice from experience or observation would be much appreciated.
Rock!
From what I've read, mostly on the BBC's web site and in The Economist, the biggest thing holding back teleworking in the UK is trust (sorry, I have no links.) I've been paying particular attention to these stories as I've been working from home for a few years and we've been considering moving back to the UK for a while. It sounds like management types don't trust their employees and so won't let them do it. What a great working environment, eh? And so much the employees being professionals.
"An interesting example is MySQL AB, the company behind the excellent MySQL. They are a true virtual company: their employees are scattered all over Europe (plus some in the US), and rarely meet. Obviously, as a pure virtual company, they have had to conquer the problems from day one. But also, they have found a way of teaming a larger number of skilled indivduals in a narrow technical field than you would expect to be able to gather in any single commuting area. If the world is your fishpons, any single city looks small."
And hence the solution to the tech slump. The jobs are in one place. The technical resources in another. Why do the people shuffle, when technology reduces, or eliminates the need? Everyone's too busy thinking inside the box.
I've done it, because of a relocate I went from 5 days in the office to 1-3 days at home and 3-1 days in the office - yep I went to a 4 day week too, which was fine with me. I worked my 8 hours (got the work done), but often that was 4 hours in the morning and 4 hours in the evening with the afternoon spent shopping (better midweek than weekend), seeing films, spending time with wife and friends. If the commute hadn't been so grim it would have been great, but I was commuting from one end of the Central line to nearly the other end of the District line. I got a lot of reading done but there was plenty of stress on my bladder during a 1.5 - 2 hour jouney with no facilities. And that was a good day ;-(
Sure, it's called a quid pro quo. I'll turn up late, spend a few hours on Slashdot & keeping up with list traffic (luckily, my employer recognises that reading Bugtraq, incidents et al is an essential part of work...) - OTOH I'll pull 80 hour, 6 or 7 day weeks now and again without grumbling. Seems to work out OK - the work gets done, on deadline.
Anyway, the lad types who talk about football & sex all the time are rarely very good company anyway.
"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free." -- Goethe
As someone else has said, the best way is to start your own company and find your own clients. I know that can't be done in some cases, but if it's an option, then it should be taken with both hands.
I've worked from home for the last 3 years or so, initially in London (New Malden) and now in Telford. It seemed mad to be living in an expensive London suburb when I didn't need to commute at all. And now we are out of the cramped London conditions, next to the countryside, with NO TRAFFIC JAMS!!!
Again, being in IT, it's fairly easy to get everything you need installed at home. A clutch of PCs and servers, software, some kind of Internet connectivity, and a telephone.
With a permanent Internet connection, IM helps you stay in touch, and to be honest I probably make more of an effort to chat when i see friends & family all over the world appear on my IM list. It'll be better if ADSL is actually going to make it to my local exchange...
Telford is about 2.5 - 3 hrs from London, so not exactly a huge distance away, and my trips there (and to Reading) can take place up to 3 times a week without any problems - any more than that and it would be a bit tiring...
But as someone else has said - if you have kids, it's great. My first child I was working a 1-1.5hr drive away. She was just getting up when I left, and just going to bed when I got back. She seemed to grow up really quickly. My second child, I was working only a 15 minute scooter ride away; I saw much more of her and could take part in more of the school related things. With child number 3, he has just hit 2 years old, and he has a strop when I have to go out for the day! He is so used to me being there, that when I'm not, his whole world gets shattered.
The ability to pop out if needed, take a day off at short notice, and basically decide your own game plan is fantastic.
And long may it continue, I hope...
stuff goes here
I work for a small software/web company located about half an hour outside of London
About six months ago, it was decided that all technical members of staff would be allowed to work from home whenever they wanted as long as they weren't supposed to be in a meeting or something.
About half of the staff here have never bothered doing this; I have tried it a few times but usually come in. Why?
In short, you can keep it. I'm friends with the guys I work with and I like taking my lunch at a pub on the side of the Thames...
I support ADSL teleworkers for my company and I must it seems to work well for a lot of people.
However, a lot of corporate laptop builds and models don't seem to cope to well and some users find it a complete nightmare and waste of time.
This mainly tends to be where their laptop can't handle the load of the secure VPN client and extra data being hoofed in.
Personally I'd be glad to work from home, even though I don't live far from my work place.
Then you won't have to take the train into London, which means that there will be no opportunities for someone to be murdered under baffling circumstances, only to be revealed that the secret Davis-Harkinson plans are somehow involved, leading to a deadly knife-fight on the roof of the club car in the dead of night.
Is THAT what you want?
Interesting thread.
I wanted to work from home, none of my previous customers were happy with me doing it since they paid me per hour. Paying people per hour gave them this strange compulsion to actually have me on site so that I could see that I was actually working.
I changed my relationships with my customers such that I now quote for "lumps of work" or "deliverables". They say "We want XYZ", I say "Thats £2.50". How I do it is none of their concern - how long it takes me, what I do in the intervening time is my business - not theirs.
How do you sell that view?
Advantages to Customer:
1) Liability. When things go wrong, if the consultant is on a time-based contract then the bill to the customer is as long as it takes to fix the problem. Ie, open-ended liability. If things go wrong YOU get the bill. Goodbye IR35.
2) Accountability. Once you have given the customer the comfort level they need that you can provide the services to them competantly, they are more than happy to outsource their non-core business functions out.
3) Cost. If the customer insists on working you on T+M, provide an incentive. I have two rates, Rate A is for formal training and knowledge transfer or anything which is ON-SITE. Rate B is for anything else which is OFF-SITE.
I'm not going to publish my rates here, but to give you an idea - my discounted rate (offsite) is 40% of my normal rate (on-site).
This means that the customer saves 40% on his costs if he doesn't mandate my consultants being on-site.
What does this mean for me now?
Well, I've been working mainly from the home office for the best part of two years, my customer visits are on average two or three times a month.
I have my green-card, I'm emigrating to the US on July 1st. What difference does this make to my customer? None at all. Does my customer mind? Not in the slightest. If they need me on site a few days consultancy easily covers travel expenses.
My customer continues paying my UK company. My company continues paying UK taxes. I continue paying (some) UK taxes, and according to two Tax Attournies in the US I am exempt from US taxes.
I don't believe them.
Hope that gives you some ideas and food for thought.
ive been working remote for roughly eight months now. it helps if you have a good case to make with your employer. in my case, i am self motivated and have a good skill set so my employer decided it was better to give me the opportunity to work remote than lose me to another company. i for my part have been determined to work hard such that there is no question as to whether im working or not. if anyone that matters, like your manager, has to wonder if you're working you're probably not..... also i've made extensive use of AIM/MSN/IRC, e-mail & telephone so my co-workers can contact me instantly almost any time of the day which has helped tremendously.
...you just might get it. As an aerospace engineer who spends all of his time programming, I used to think how wonderful it would be when aerospace companies would allow telecommuting. However, now we are faced with competing with workers from countries with much lower costs of living than the USA, like Russia, Poland, Ireland, and India. So I may ultimately have wished myself right out of a job.
nohup rm -rf ~/. >& zen &
So perhaps working out of home isn't the best idea, but perhaps your local coffeehouse might allow that simple social interaction that would help.
This is my digital signature. 10011011001
Improved productivity
According to scientific studies, telecommuting actually lowers productivity. My companies allows telecommuting infrequently(depends on the manager). Telecommuting is an advantage when you are working long hours. Work in the office for 10 hrs, come home, go to the gym, work for a couple of hours more.
Same things go for everywhere. I spent 7 years working in the USA. Same thing went on there, too. Except they talked about American football, or pick up trucks, or conservative politics.
Personally, I found my most productive hours was if I came in very early (5:30 am). I could get more work done between 5:30am and 9am than I could usually get done between 9am and 6pm due to lack of pointless meetings and lack of interruptions.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
And one more thing -- expect the taxes to be really complicated if you work for a company in a different country. And expect both countries to be completely unhelpful when you're trying to figure anything out -- at least that's my experience. Just yesterday I had someone from the Centre for Non-Residents (e.g., UK expats) tell me they probably knew the answers to my questions, but wouldn't talk to me b/c I'm resident in the UK.
Bureaucrats have a stupidity level above and beyond everyone else's - it's either a job requirement or a badge of honour. (I swear, if they were an AD&D character class, Intelligence and Wisdom scores under 6 would be prime requisites, and being a pain in the ass would get them a 10 percent experience bonus.)
Next time you have to deal with that department, withhold your number when you call (dial 141 then the number as you normally would, if I remember correctly) and just pretend that you're calling from abroad. If anyone questions why you're phone conversation has no time delay on it, tell them you're calling from your holiday home in Ireland or France. And if being in another EU country doesn't count, then tell them that you're calling from Norway. (If they ask you for a contact telephone number, just give your mobile - with international roaming a standard option on all UK mobiles, they won't be able to refute your "overseas" location.)
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
THEY DON'T DO A? SHIT DURING THEIR ENTIRE WORK DAY
Perhaps their toilet facilities are better at home so they prefer to wait until then...
I personally love spending part of my working day laying meters of brown cable and getting paid my normal hourly rate.
Contractors - SHIT at work, make your brown-time their down-time.
:-)
I work from home. Overall, its pretty good, though i find myself missing the office. I am a "loner" by nature, and keep myself to myself. however, i find i really miss the social interaction of an office. Its just little things like saying 'morning!' to that guy at the desk you walk past every morning, it really keeps you human. I find myself becoming very introverted and detached (to the point where i feel it to be unhealthy) unless i make a serious effort to get out and see friends. Another thing is its very hard to stay motivated. I really enjoy the work i do, but day after day, waking up at the office, spending 9 hours working by yourself not saying a word to anyone (or even rolling your eyes with someone at some stupid comment made by a coworker) it gets very hard. It's strange the effect it has long term. Theres definately a difference between corresponding via email or over the phone to actually being physically present with someone, seeing the reactions they make to what you say and so on.
it depends on your situation really. maybe you have a partner you live with, or kids you want to be able to pick up from school, that would be different. but i live by myself and more or less spend monday to thursday in complete isolation (friday nights i go out). That may sound nice, especially if you have coworkers you dislike, but after a while, lame as it sounds, you start to miss it, becauuse (at least for me) there's coworkers you like as well.
these are quite important things i feel. there are some serious pluses to working from home, but everything comes with a price. try work it so you go into the office one or two days a week. If they know you're going to be in on certain days, generally they'll schedule meetings requiring you and other stuff on those days youll be in.
One thing to be warned about, teleworking is heroin. The more you do, the more you'll resent coming into work and the more the cubical will be unbearable. Since you go into the office less, when you are in there you spend all your time socializing with your co-workers.
Teleworking has gotten so addictive to me that I've passed on jobs that offered a 50% raise but no telelworking. So, teleworking is great, but just be warned.
I live in Edinburgh, and work at the other side of the country. I only get to work from homw two days a week, but it makes a huge difference to the amount of spare time I've got, and the amount of time i spend in the car. SSH is the best thing since sliced bread! I use it ever day to connect to computers in the office, run X applications remotely, check code into CVS, and surf the company Intranet.
Follow me
The tem "Egoless programmin" is a little misunderstood, but I don't know a better one for it. It does not imply lack of pride in what you do, it implies tha twhat you are working on is a contribution to a shared project. Which means not being paranout about "my" code. Conventions and comments should always be so that another person could pick up from you at any time. CVS or such should be used so that if anybody spots a stupid mistake in your code, they can easily fix it, and your reaction is "thanks for improbing my product" not "get your filthy hands off my code".
Consciousness is an illusion caused by an excess of self consciousness.
I'm a US citizen currently living in the UK (also about 90 min from London) and have worked from home for nearly 3 years. The first time was as out of necessity to help take care of our 3-year old when my wife was ordered on bed-rest whilst pregnant with twins. I arranged to write code for my employer from home and go to the office when we had other help around. At the time I only lived about 10 min from the office so going in on occasion or even on short-notice wasn't an issue.
The next time was after relocating to Germany to work for the European office of a US internet consultancy. The company went under when the dot-com bubble burst and I took a job with a US software company which was expanding into Europe. I was living in the north of Germany and this company's German office was in the south of the country (about a 7-hour drive). I worked remotely and travelled to customer sites for several months and then relocated to the UK but continued to work from home full-time.
Since then, I've changed employers again but was able to negotiate working from home 3-4 days a week.
My experience:
-I agree that you need your own space in the house. When daddy's in his office the kids need to understand that they can't be screaming outside his door or barging in whenever they want.
-If you've got a dedicated connection, being on IM or at least being able to quickly reply to email is an invaluable way of keeping in touch with colleagues and even partners or customers.
-Being remote doesn't have to hamper career progression or management opportunities. If you're working for a multi-national company and most of the folks who report to you (and the folks to whom you report) are in another country it doesn't really matter if you're talking to them from home or the office.
-My current client is in Milan but my deliverables don't require me to be on-site so, again, it doesn't matter if I'm working on my tasks from home or the office.
-I've been on conference calls with executives from customer or partner companies across Europe and discovered that more than one of us are calling in from home (I've even heard they're kids in the background).
-Regular communication (phone, email, IM) during the day with fellow workers can help address loneliness and isolation.
-Keep consistent hours. Start and finish work at the same time and for Pete's sake, change out of your pyjamas before you clock in.
I'll admit it takes discipline but getting those extra 4-5 hours a day to spend with the family is all the motivation I need.
I've done a lot of work from home over the past two years, and it was a miserable experience.
I have two kids age 2 and 6 - so about the only time I could get any work done was at night, and after a while this nocturnal lifestyle got really annoying (I'd go to sleep at 5am only to be awakened by kids at 7am)
The bottom line is that it was really difficult for me while my employer was saving money, time and trouble. I bought into this thing initially because it seemed cool - but two months later I essentially had to quit this job.
I think the ideal scenario is when the employer provides you a good place to work (preferably a quiet office with a window), yet does not insist that you are there 9 to 5 every day.
I also found that the act of "going to work" puts my brain in "work mode", but it is much more difficult to get into that mode when you're sitting only a few steps away from TV, kitchen, shower. I found my train of though constantly getting interrupted with chores I had to do around the house - "do I finish this code now, or do I go fix that curtain". I know many accountants, lawyers, etc work out of their houses - I don't know how they do it. I found that I just don't have that level of discipline (and not really interested in developing it either).
grisha.org
As we have learned here in the US... When your job can be done remotely, it can be done anywhere. You can try to apply this to any function where the output is data files (Software development, Circuit design, most things engineering). Once it becomes OK to have someone work remotely, you'll have to compete with the rest of the world. People in China, India, Eastern Europe, Taiwan, Korea, etc... they are all cheaper than YOU. There are short and long term problems with this, as well as potential real benefits in the very long term.
Having been working for the same company for the past six years in London, last month I actually took the step of moving abroad (to Cannes, France...); for reasons split between reducing living costs and wanting a change in lifestyle.
Being responsible for a company network and also doing production (websites, graphic work) this isn't too much of a problem to carry out remotely and was easily arranged due to a reduction in the size of the company - in fact we're giving up the office altogether, resulting in everyone starting to work as a remote team, although due to our fairly specific roles communication follows fairly direct routes between each other.
For the past month I have even managed to work over a dialup connection (no, not ideal but it takes time to get ADSL installed when France Telecom engineers go on strike) much to my suprise finding that it is actually quite easy to cut back on badwidth usage (latency is my only problem...) this would have been hard had the company been larger and if I were supporting more users though!
This kind of situation is easy enough to support using IM, screen sharing and project management tools, I also have a UK number which makes it look to clients like I'm still in the country! But one has to be careful to choose the most appropriate method of comms, for example it can be hard to explain a concept by IM when it's not clear what both parties are talking about and easy to waste hours when a telephone call could have bee a lot easier, but it doesn't have to be more expensive - if one uses a SIP/VOIP system for example (although dedicated handsets are really required). And the PM system is important - the employer or project manager needs to know they can easily keep track of what remote workers are doing and where there are with a project. Personally I use a to-do list with a sharing capacity, but I found nobody ever looked at it and always wanted to ask me directly, this is only slightly less true with the PMS and one can find that you spend far more time explaining what you are doing when working remotely, reassuring the employer that you arn't lazing around on the beach with a beer (but then if there was Wi-Fi on the beach...).
Previously I lived about a 15 minute scooter ride away from the office so travel was not an issue, although at previous times I used to be up to an hour away, now I'm a mere 10 second stumble from my bed - but as a result I do miss observing and interacting with the world every day, working from home could lead to becoming somewhat divorced form the real world. Working in the same physical location as colleagues does also install a little more necessity into ones work ethic, wheras in ones own home you must have a very strong will not to become distracted, developping a schedule to which you can stick to, although this is less true of a support-role where working from home is actually ideal - you can distract yourself easily but still be ready to respond - without being bored! "Helpdesk, Hello? Yes It'd be my absolute pleasure to help you with that horizontal rule you're having trouble deleting in Word, anything to distract me from the blue skies and cold beer whilst you're stuck in your miserable little cubicle". Think of the karma that could be generated by shipping entire support teams to a remote island somewhere with gigabit dark fibre back to the realworld. Actually this why they get outsourced to India, no that's the cost, the sunny disposition is third after being slightly harder to understand...
I think remote working has many benefits for certain professions (paticularily ICT service industries, key knowledge-holders and anyone just manipulating data), but will never be practical for most others.
Cost wise it is obviously cheaper not to travel, and you can choose to live somewhere cheaper, but you will also see communication-related charges go up, but these should be covered by your employer as they should see reduced overheads, unless you are working for yourself, but working f
As a UK-based IT worker living about a 90-minute journey from London
So you live, what, 2 miles outside the city limits?
Thank you, I'll be here all week, you're a great crowd.
...they are probably seeing this list of advantages/disadvantages like this:
Advantages for me:
Advantages for my employer:
Advantages for society:
There are a number of disadvantages and factors to consider, though none should be insurmountable. A couple might be:
So if you're having trouble getting approval to work from home. You might be running into these attitudes.
Have a nice day!
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
Another dutch guy working at home.
I switched company to be able to work at home, not because my former employer didn't allow me to, but because it was not part of the culture of that company (I would have been the first) and I expected political trouble like described above.
The new company solely exists of homeworkers, each having a small office at home usually with some additional seats so if teamworking is required you either visit your collegue or all go to the small central office (basically only two meeting rooms and a small kitchen).
Tbee (or not?)
Jarius, is that you? What the fuck are you doing on slashdot, you're supposed to be working! GET BACK TO WORK, ASSHOLE!
Having telecommuted for a few years, I know it can be great from a productivity point of view. If you are a good worker your bosses will like this. But you will miss out on any chances to supervise others, which is necessary for career growth beyond being a "highly paid programmer". Depends on where you want to head. Think about your 5 year plan also.
I've been a fulltime telecommuter in the US for the past 3 years. Before I offer my 2 cents (er, shillings?) on how to become a teleworker, let me add to your list of disadvantages.
- It's lonely. I didn't think it would bother me, but after 3 years, I'm starting to feel it.
- You get left out of a lot of discussions. Think of all the time a decision is made in the hallway between two offices. You won't be involved, and will have to live with the decisions made.
- It can be difficult to disengage from work. When you work in an office, all you have ot do is leave. Since I work from home, I find myself sitting down after the kids are in bed to check email or review documents. It has taken a real effort to stop working at a reasonable time.
I don't mean to make it sound like a bad way to go. I wouldn't change my situation for anything. One advantage you didn't cover is the flexibility you can get form telecommuting. I am able to spend a couple of hours a week helping at my kids schools. Something I couldn't do if I were 90 miles away at the office.
Now, if you still wan't to become a teleworker, here is how I did it.
1) When I took my current job, I made sure the company was open to it. I didn't start working form home right away though.
2) As I reached certain milestones with regard to training, usefullnes and autonomy, I started discussing it in earnest with my manager. I started by working from home 1 day a week, and advertising the benefits the company was receiving. "Hey, look at what I did yesterday. I could have never got that much done with all the interruptions in the office"
It took me about 18 months to get to a full time teleworker status. I now go to the office about once a month to meet with people. This is critical to maintain relationships and find new projects/opportunities within the company.
As for the technology, I have VPN connection running over DSL. I use email, telephone and AIM. Occasionally I will use netmeeting to share a screen with someone. I have not seen a need for video conferencing.
If a company can "tolerate" telecommuting, then they will most likely go with less expensive countries, such as India where they can pay about $2 USD per hour. All things being equal, bosses prefer to see physical people, and will pay a premium for that. Thus, must jobs will either be in the office, or 3rd-world.
Table-ized A.I.
I am working for a Marketing Consulting firm in more or less of a support role, but as time has gone on, I have selectively chosen projects that could be done remotely and tried to not take any projects that relied on me being physically tied to any one place.
The end result is that if I wanted to move now, I could move and keep my job in NYC. I find this especially attractive because wages in NYC are very high to compensate for a high cost of living, but when I move, my cost of living should be much lower.
Working from home is also attractive to me because of all of the airborne allergies I have. I run air purifiers at home and they make a huge difference in how good I feel. Unfortunately, I am actually allergic to my employer's offices. But since I am there a couple days a week I just have to take my meds and deal with it.
Those who trade freedom for security will lose both, and deserve neither" -- Ben Franklin
you plan on working in IT from home?
you gonna install arrays and change cards from home?
idiot
This Monday, FCC Chair Michael Powell will hold his vote on media
consolidation. There's nothing special about that date -- it's totally
arbitrary. The vote will conclude a process which has shown deliberate
disregard for the views and opinions of the American
people. Powell has refused to even release the actual language of
the rule change -- it won't be known until after the vote. And he's
only held a single meeting to hear the views of the public. Even when a
bipartisan group of Senators requested that he give Congress some time
to discuss the impact of this change, Powell brushed them off.
Chairman Powell still has the power to delay the rule change and allow
time to have a democratic debate about its consequences. Please call
him today and ask him to allow a real public debate on an issue of such
massive importance.
You can reach Powell's office at:
(202) 418-1000
Once you've made your call, please let us know at:
http://moveon.org/fcccall.html
"Moving through the masses like a fish through water." syrup
Working from home is a holy grail. There are many advantages and disadvantages as pointed out by others.
I've only been able to do this properly in two jobs. One where we were supporting a rollout in Japan and I negotiated to work remotely from Sydney, Australia since there's only 1 hour time difference. Worked OK for 6 months but although the UK bosses were happy the Japanese couldn't deal with me being at the end of a phone rather than in their office. I missed out on a whole load of things going on the office too.
On returning to the UK, I got a job where they were happy to allow this kind of working but since it only took 5 minutes to drive to their office it didn't really make sense except for out of hours support.
In the current economic climate, us IT workers have little negotiating power but things may change if/when things pick up.
I still dream of being able to live in Cornwall or Cumbria and work remotely but I don't think it's viable as a long term solution. Perhaps a compromise of a week in the office and a week at home would work.
My company is headquartered in Indiana, and our servers are also located in Indiana. However, I live on the Big Island of Hawaii. Since Hawaii is separated by 2500 miles of ocean in all directions we rate as one of the most remote places on the planet (note, remote does not mean inaccessable).
Going to work means getting up, making coffee, and trudging upstairs to the computer lab. There I have multiple computers running real-time sensors with alarms to my remote servers. Constantly SSHed into them I type with very very long fingers (thousands of miles long) over cable modem. Back before cable modem I used dual dialup lines and that was also adaquate.
I also have servers at my significant others houses from which I can do the same monitoring and work when there and not at my place... as well as Handspring-to-cellphone for emergency telnet sessions while on the road (or hiking or playing in the lava).
Depending on your direct industry, face to face meetings are rarely needed these days. About 80 to 90% of our clients never meet us and all communication is done by email (preferably) and phone.
What are the minimum requirements? Good FED-X, Good phone service, Good internet, Clean air and lots of fun things to do around you at all times.
What are the downsides? Your work is your home (I'm assuming here that you will be working from your home)... thus it is also your prison. Make sure to distance your work from your actual living quarters. My servers are set to alarm if they can't see the remote systems, which I can hear in the main part of the house... but other than that - you need to be able to seperate your home life from your work life or the home becomes a hell.
Good luck and Aloha Nui Loa
The big danger with the telecommuting paradigm, especially for IT workers, is that you eliminate the primary factor that keeps your job located in your home country (UK). If your job was easily transferrable to a telecommuting job, then why wouldn't your employer replace you with a guy who will work for 1/10th the cost in India or China? Location is just about the only advantage that you have over this cheap but very capable labor, and so I would not be so hasty to discard it. If you want to promote the "work anywhere" strategy, then prepare to compete against those in China and India. I hear they work for $10/hour and live like kings in their native country. I doubt you could say the same for the UK.
We already work for US company here in India
- for much less that you people from UK would like
to get.
IANAL, IANAA Beyond the issues you mention, one that you should not forget, lest you been pulled into a very dark hole, is taxes. This mostly applies to having a job in one country and living in another, but there may actually be tax relief for working at home.
Avoid traps: being taxable in both places - make sure the countries have a tax treaty, or that the country where your employer is only taxes residents, not "workers." - e.g. US and UK have a tax treaty
Seek tax havens: being a citizen of the UK is a pretty good deal, if you are not ordinarily domiciled in the UK, and don't stuff bank accounts there with cash, you are not taxed by the UK. This means you could move to a place with low/no income tax and smile every time you get a paycheck. Even if you DO live in the UK, if your income never crosses the shore in the same tax year in which it is earnt, it is not classed as income and is not taxable - see avoid traps.
But I do agree it takes a lot of self-motivation at some points, especially when you need to do things you do not enjoy.
Most of the business-owners will have no problem spending lots and lots of time on their product or core service, but 'we' also need to spend a lot of time and effort on things like marketing, account management and administration.
For me the bottom line is: Being self-employed allows one to combine play and work. As an employee, all work and no fun does make you a dull boy ;)
Trust me, it's the same in the US. I guess folks at the top are into the Horatio Alger-type stuff, but underlings everywhere pretty much avoid work at all costs.
The problem is even worse government, which can run in the red as much as it wants. I took an internship at a government office (city of Baltimore) and, aside from the three competent people who actually kept the place afloat, no one did anything until ten-thirty or had any clue in hell what they were supposed to be doing. The administrator "in charge" of the place knew absolutely nothing about our field and only got the job because she knew the mayor. There were at least five secretaries, none of whom (apparently) did any work or knew even in the slightest what went on in the building, in spite of, you know, the big huge machines with labels on them like 'Dell.' There was one lady in a cubicle who was put in place by a previous administration and was totally unknown to the current one. The mailbox she dropped her work at hadn't been checked in years.
In the US at least, teleworking is generally referred to as "telecommuting," which of course makes absolutely no sense at all. I mean, isn't getting in my car and driving to work 'distance-traveling'?
I'm going to say "teleworking" from now on.
Yeah like GTA, I could virtua myway to fares!
There would be like a plastic guy, you know an avanter, and, like yeah it be me, an my joystick,whooooooooooooo dat be cool
I have a friend, he's about 50 and has a PhD from Columbia. He is one of a few in the world in his speciality - the 3D analysis of seisimic echo data for the oil industry. He has been here in NZ about 6 or 7 years now. To begin with his employers just put up with the fact that he was in a different time zone, and he was paid the same as if he was an employee in the office. The money saved on commuting and the much lower cost of living was spent on a number of trips back to the office in the US. A while ago the original small company was bought out by a larger one, which was in turn was absorbed by a large conglomerate. Very quickly after that my friend was replaced by a much younger local worker who turned up at the office every day and did as he was told. My friend now finds himself out of work with a set of skills completely inappropriate for the local economy. Another aquaintance is working here doing programming on embedded controls. When he arrived the pay was very generous but the exchange rate has changed from 27 to 35 over the last 6 months. So he has had to take a pay fairly hefty cut in pay. Fortunately that friend has a more marketable skillset locally. I knew somebody else who tried this some years ago and had to return to the real world. The benefit for the employee coming to NZ is that the lifestyle is superb when compared to that which is available to employees in big cities in the Northern Hemisphere. The advantage to the employer is that they can expect, literally, overnight solutions to their problems. The hazards are that you can lose your income at the drop of a PHB's bad day. Exchange rates. Failure of the telecom system. We have had one 4 or 5 hour outage over the last 14 months.
If you'd like to do independent consulting from home, you might want to try out KEEN at the UK site or the US site. This site allows people with questions to get connected with you for help, and you get paid. I have no association with the site other than someone showed it to me a couple weeks ago.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
After reading the comments posted here I have little to add to the excellent observations and descriptions of experiences. I have worked as a freelance teleworker (software/IT/technology consultant) for several years and have not seen a single person I have worked for in that time. Everything I do is over telephone, fax or the Internet.
My favorite part of telecommuting is that it forces managers to clearly define tasks and goals in writing. When I worked in an office and was verbally instructed to perform a task that did not have a positive outcome, the manager usually denied her/his involvement.
I do miss office socializing. However, the politics I can do without and I can join clubs or do volunteer work if I wish to meet people.
Teleworking requires trust between employee and employer. This is the usual barrier to a business setting up this work structure. Also, managers may feel they are losing power if they can not oversee your work directly and generally oppose teleworking efforts.
As a consultant I do not have this problem. Work is paid for after completion so my motivation is assured. When previously working in an office I (and I am sure most of you) have seen coworkers spend entire days feigning work and actually doing very little despite management productivity efforts.
You don't have to miss this. Go check out www.webex.com and use it for free for a 15 minute test drive ( I think - they used to have it like that, not sure if they still do ) and have your buddies watch your screen while you describe problems over the phone. I work remotely and we do this all the time.
Glonoinha the MebiByte Slayer
Easy, it is called VisStudio 6.0 or whatever you want to use. Often when I am in the office (which isn't often) I am there to fix problems I don't know how to fix, but one of the other guys do ... so we load my code on his machine and he types at the keyboard with me standing over his shoulder. I am driving at a fundamental level, and he is handling the actual typing of code, converting my concepts and direction into whatever API calls he wants to ... the lead programmer isn't actually coding he is looking at the big picture and understands what the rest of the program is doing and needs from this particular piece of code, and he is looking at the smaller picture of getting syntax of API calls correct.
Works well.
Glonoinha the MebiByte Slayer
TIme zones and real availability during crisis makes that a non issue for certain fields.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.