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)"

"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

Advantages for my employer:

• Cost savings
• Office space savings
• Improved productivity
• Increased motivation

Advantages for society:

• Reduced traffic congestion
• Reduction in total travel and therefore pollution

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
• Internet connectivity (mine currently limited to 56Kb)

The above illustrates that some take-up of the teleworking approach would be in the everybody's interests, but I am frustrated at the lack of good quality resources I have been able to find on the subject. There seems to be plenty available explaining the concept, but very little in the way of actual assignments or contacts. Of course I may have been looking in the wrong places, so if you know better (and I hope you do), please share.

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?"

Comments

My experience

[warmcat]

I am also UK based and have worked from home like this.

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).

Re:My experience

[krist0]

I am living in the netherlands atm and i agree with the above, especially on the part of how when you are not constantly in the office, it affects how you are seen in the organisation, out of sight, out of mind.

Its true that there are alot of positive and negative points about working from home, the most important thing i found for myself was making a area at home that is solely dedicated to work, because if you are sitting in front of the TV with a laptop on your lap, you aren't gonna be too focused on your work.

Mind you, its also a huge time saver as well, as 2 hours work at home (say if you are trying to document something large and complicated) is greater than a whole day at office (constant interuptions)

i think working from home should only be done when its appropriate, but shouldn't be a regular thing unless you are a outside contractor (paid on completion) or if you have small kids or something like that.

Re:My experience

[hbackert]

I was working for the IT department of an austrian company in Tokyo. The company grew and office space is expensive, especially if you need to move to another building. The simple fix was, to let some of the developers and translators, who were working already several years at the company, work from home. After all, those do not need physical appearance and they prefer (due to the nature of work) a quiet environment. Something which is difficult to get in a japanese company.

Worked out well, as it was easy to check they are working by checking the results. The employees (not all wanted to work from home) were generally happy, some office space was saved, travel money (paid usually by the company) was saved, in the end, everyone was happy.

I think the trick in this excercise was, so let experienced workers work from home. People who are known to be able to motivate themself. And as everyone could check the productivity, the usual problem of teleworking, not being able to tell if the employee watches TV or works 8 hours, did not apply here.

Re:My experience

[AKnightCowboy]

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.

You'll probably never get over this though. If no one can see you at work, you're not working. You could be sleeping at your desk and your coworkers would have a higher view of you than a telecommuter. I don't know if it's jealously or just plain incomprehension of the fact that someone doesn't need to sit their butt at the office to do work for the company.

It's not like you're sitting there sorting and filing papers or working at a factory. All you need is a computer with an Internet connection and most of us could do 99% of our jobs in our pajamas from home. Of course, then you get the frightening prospect that your work could just as easily be farmed off to some low-payed worker in India. It's a double-edged sword.

Re:My experience

[krist0]

My theory about why it doesnt happen to much is the simple fact that most managers (not ALL) have no clue what their techies are doing, or what needs to be done.

I'm a network engineer, when things work, no one complains, if its broken, i get attention, but day to day, my boss has no idea what i do (come to think of it, neither do i....well, slashdot for one thing)

the simple fact is (to quote dilbert) your boss usually knows two things about you

When you arrive/leave.
What you look like.

Take those away, they have no idea how to judge you....

its not always the case (thank you allah, buddah elvis) but usually is.

Re:My experience

[Cally]

My experience is that the political stuff varies from company to company. Current employer has an amazingly low level of background political radiation. We have several people who very rarely come in, including someone who works from the Czech republic... and anyway, most of us (geek types) do most of our in-office communication using mail/IRC/whatever anyway. What difference does it make whether someone's on the next floor or the next country, either way you won't see them very often. So long as they answer mail, it doesn't really matter.

Re:My experience

[Saint Stephen]

I know there are as many opinions about this as there are people, but, for me, working from home is not even desirable for the reasons it's supposed to be good.

*When there was someone in the house and I worked from home, (a) I couldn't get anything done but more importantly (b) I didn't want to see her that damn much anyway.

*When there wasn't anybody in the house, my god how maddening to get up, go sit over there, do stuff, go over there, go to sleep, repeat. Like being in an institution.

This isn't the usual "it's no good because you can't get your work done" thing", this is the "it's no damn fun" thing. It's just my opinion, and I'm sure some people have completely different experiences, but I was WAY happier going over to *that* building to do shit just cause I at least get to see two different buildings! and I have a reason to shave and get out of the pajamas...

But an office is a drag too. My favorite was when I was an accounting consultant. We had about 35 clients. I'd be in one place in the morning, another in the afternoon, sometimes one place for a whole week, sometimes at home. The variety of environments and people was stimulating.

Re:My experience

[juraj]

Hello work. I'm from slovakia and I have been working from home for two years now.

Personally, not needing to pay attention to political sagas is an advantage for me, since I don't have to care about that. I have my work done and I don't have to bother with unrelated stuff.

The disadvantage is, that you are not seen and people don't think you are commited. They will eventually see the hard work, when something bad happens and they see how promptly you can solve issues.

Now I'm also a contractor for other companies, also working from home mostly. I don't have to be anywhere during working hours, I just need to have my laptop and cellphone connection with me in case something bad happens. And of course I need to have my work done. Pretty nice, I wouldn't change.

Re:My experience

[kmilani2134]

The thing I find annoying about working from home is that on days when I am home my girlfriend thinks that the house should be cleaner and various chores should be done before she gets home from her job.

Fortunately, this is an extra motivation to actually do my office work and try to limit the interruptions of doing "house work" just because I am home.

Re:My experience

[darnok]

> This isn't the usual "it's no good because you
> can't get your work done" thing", this is the
> "it's no damn fun" thing.

As someone who used to work from home 1-2 days a week, I can sympathise with this. I got around it by partnering up with a work colleague who also worked from home and working together at either his or my house every so often. Having another human around can make things a lot easier, especially if there's always a subconscious concern of "do people really think I'm productive when I'm working at home?" in the back of your mind...

That said, having worked from home shortly after the birth of my first child, there's plenty of times when you really do want to be home alone. In my case, I resorted to getting 8hrs work done in a 24hr period, however possible; when you're rocking a baby to sleep at 2am, you actually can get some work done (even reading printed documents) and neither of my 2 kids have developed obvious social problems because their Dad read a few documents while they were dozing off with a bottle.

Re:My experience

[NetSettler]

If no one can see you at work, you're not working. You could be sleeping at your desk and your coworkers would have a higher view of you than a telecommuter. I don't know if it's jealously or just plain incomprehension of the fact that someone doesn't need to sit their butt at the office to do work for the company.

I've telecommuted on and off for about a third of my 20+ year career in computers, and I've thought about this a lot.

I think the real problem here is that if you are away, the superficial information bosses are used to using to tell if you're working go to pieces and they have to either (a) come up with equally superficial ways of judging you at home or (b) [and they really dread this] decide to judge you on what you actually do.

Now, I don't think that it should necessarily even be the case that a boss could do his/her underling's job. However, I think the problem that comes with judging people on what they actually do is that many managers are either ill at ease or downright unqualified to say whether the people working for them are in fact doing their job if the actual criterion to be used is "understanding what they are doing" or "knowing whether what is being done is being done right". And the lack of desire to own up to this is a big problem. Managers have to figure out when and who to trust, and that's not always easy.

I've worked at companies where when you were tired, you just took a nap and no one said anything. After all, wasn't that better than sitting at the console sleepily, one eye on the clock waiting for 5pm so you could duck out after a day of getting nothing done? People came and went when they wanted, too. But this meant that managers had to have the skill to judge who was producing and who wasn't, and the confidence to put their own reputation on the line in asserting this belief and trust.

At MIT, many years ago, I asked why I had to take so many hardware courses for a degree in software. I was told that they didn't know how to grade software, and so they wanted me to take at least some courses that they did know how to grade. Working at a technical job is a lot like this--you have to both do the work assigned you, plus also some busy work that they know how to grade you on.

Slashdot reader TaraByte struck a chord with me with some sad but true commentary on another article, including the remark "For extra credit, send in your report at 8pm or later." This is so familiar. I've had situations where I was working my heart out for up to 80 hrs a week at home, barely eating and sleeping, and it went entirely unnoticed by management until once, not realizing the effect it would have, I sent a status report at 3am (a perfectly normal working hour for me). Someone in company management picked up on the timestamp on my report and said "wow, he's working really hard" (without, I'm quite sure, checking to see if I had been asleep at 3pm that day). I had been working really hard, and was glad to have it realized, even if the "evidence" that led to the conclusion was bogus.

Salary

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Salary

[Malc]

+1 Interesting? It sounds like a bloody joke! I earn that in a month teleworking.

loneliness

[kevin lyda]

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.

Re:loneliness

[Timesprout]

you have to do things to keep yourself from going crazy

Care to elaborate on the 'things' you have to do ? Do the voices in your head make you do them ?

Re:loneliness

[kevin lyda]

go out for lunch with friends in your area from time to time. call coworkers/friends. if you can find a group of teleworkers in your area, get together.

Re:loneliness

[the_bahua]

I don't think it's important what the "things" are. He is just making a point that if you're all by yourself, working for a living, boredom and loneliness settle in more easily.

I personally don't think I could ever work consistently from home. I need human interaction. A more pressing concern, however, is that the boredom will drive you(or me, at least) to stop working more often than it would at work.

That's one nice thing about work. You are there with a purpose. Working from home, to me, would be like wandering around a mall, in my eighties.

Re:loneliness

[tigersha]

Ask any frustrated new mother who sits at home with baby. The situation is similar. Raising a baby is a lot of work (and you have to be on call all the time) but there is little social contact.

Work is for many people as much a social activity as it is a financial activity. Being with coworkers who are roughly doing the same as you and working for the same goals does make a difference and being alone will driveyou crazy.

Also, the whole "discussions at the watercooler" effect tends to go away if you are not there. Those discussion are sometimes very important.

Re:loneliness

[scottme]

I work from home a couple of days each week, from choice, because I can get peace & quiet to work uninterrupted. I'm not sure I'd want to do it full-time, for reasons such as have been highlighted by other posters - like personal motivation, the need to see people face-to-face once in a while, meetings with partners, vendors, etc.

However, at the company I work for, there are some useful things to help stave off the loneliness thing:

• we have an internal IM system, which means that most of my colleagues are easily reachable and I get a sense of "who's in", even though like me, many of them may well be working at home. In fact, since many of them are in different coutries and timezones, I don't see them even when I'm in the office.
• we also have a series of internal discussion groups on an NNTP server, covering all kinds of technical and non-technical topics. There are several "watercooler" type groups where people exchange funny stories, gossip, and so on. All of it strictly business-related, of course :-)
  

Neither of these things is hard to set up, and they go a surprisingly long way to make up for the lack of a sense of community that comes from working on your own at home.

Re:loneliness

[Malc]

Well, I wasn't awake in time to post this: you beat me to it. Getting up in a timely manner - especially if you're in a different time zone - takes a lot of discipline. I've been working from home for 3.5 years. It's been tough at times. It didn't help that starting the job coincided with moving not just to a new city, but a new country. You're right: the loneliness is the hardest part of working like this, and if you suffer from seasonal changes, winters can become especially nasty. I didn't think I did, until the last three winters.

All my friends are my wife's friends. Well, I've started making some of my own, but when you don't get out socially on your own terms, it's slow. You've really got to work hard on getting to meet people, or you'll go crazy for social interaction... and no, chatting on the phone or IM or email with people at work 3,000 miles (my case) won't cut it. It's almost driven me on a couple of occasions to quit, take the 40-50% pay cut to work locally here in Toronto, but work in an office again.

It's hard to network when you work from home. It's hard for your career to progrees when you work from home: you have to work on easily packaged projects, and more senior roles involving management of others are less effective. You have to have a team that communicates well. Personally, if I were in a hiring position, I wouldn't take on anybody like me who can't even get to the office.

The flexibility makes up for a lot of it. I'm in a position that allows me to re-arrange my hours as I see fit. It takes a lot of self-discipline though, and a lot of trust by my employer. If I want to run errands during the day, or go for a run, I do. If I want to meet my wife for beer when she finishes work, I do. If I want to sleep in the next day with a hang over, I do.

Re:loneliness

[barnaclebarnes]

I would have to agree with this statement. I am currently employeed as a pre Sales technical consultant with a mobile computing software firm. It can get quite lonely when working from home. A few things to do to make up for it:

- Have friends close by who also work from home. Regular 'Lunch Meetings' gets you out of the house. Especially today since London is in the middle of sunshine (About time right!). Also Friday 4pm is 'Beer O' Clock' with the mates to wind down from the week.

- If you are working for a US company the timezone difference can be hard. I always check my email once before going to bed at night. I usually end up spending an hour then dealing with any issues that may have otherwise wasted a day in the US. This makes me a little more relaxed when taking an extra hour in the middle of the day for lunch. I kind of feel like I haved earned it.

- Meet up with your 'workmates' at least once every 2 weeks. There are 3 of us in the UK (2 slaes guys and me). It is good to get together, bitch about the US people and let of steam. Also builds those 'water cooler' relationships you don't get being alone.

- ADSL (512K is plenty for me), WLAN and a mobile phone is all you need. I connect to our US office via VPN for access to Exchange and the network drives. Web based presentations are done via WebEx and conference calls. It works well.

- If you can get your employer to say you have to work at home you can claim tex rebates in the UK. You can claim (Number of Rooms in house/Number of rooms used for business) for Electricity, Councli tax, Heating and Rent (you cannot claim for mortgage payments).

it isn't that uncommon

[Anonymous Coward]

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).

Advantages.

[1s44c]

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.

Re:Advantages.

[AlecC]

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??

That is the way companies were in the past. If doesn't have to be the way companies are in the future. Once upone a time all employees had timecards and clocked in and out - they still do for "warm body" type jobs where you have to have somebody - almost anybody - present. But for brainwork type jobs, successful employers long ago found that it is not worth splitting hairs over clocking on and off times. A more relaxed attitude gives better motivation, and if anything leads to people working more, mot less, hours (in most cases - and the exceptions probably aren't very productive even when present).

If it has enough benefits, companies that cannot do it will go out of business and be replaced by those that can do it. But the fact is that the benefits do not much exceed the costs. And the greater part of the benefits accrue to the employee, not to the employer. Since the usual format is that the employer has more power, they are not motivated to overcome whatever difficulties occur.

Two things can change this. The first is to give yourself some power over the company. This is uaually by having skills they cannot get elsewhere. If you are competing against other moderately skilled people for a job, they will naturally prefer the commuter to the teleworker, for reasons that have been given. However, if you have some scarce skills, and make it clear that you are only willing to telework, they may have to accept you. this may involve a bit of arm-wrestling - refuse the communting job, then call a month later and ask if they have filled that hard-to-fill post - or are using expensive cosultants and/or contractors. Secondly, you can share some of the benefits which you get with them. Yes, they get some benefits - but (empirically) not enough to motivatge them. You get a 27% reduction in your effective working day (11 hours to 8) and save commuting costs. Share some of that with them - ask for less money than the commuter.

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.

Re:Advantages.

[realdpk]

For a lot of people, being available so that people can just walk up to you and ask you a question is a big inconvenience - especially developers. The solution here is to have a ticketing system mediating all questions. This increases productivity for everyone because everyone benefits from the answers to questions - not only those who were within earshot and were listening in.

Meetings can be more of a pain, but quite honestly, meetings are automatically a pain. Most meetings are non-interactive - they're manager-to-employees dissemination of information. I have not been in a interactive meeting that could not have been handled over e-mail, and in fact, in our 24x7 environment, this makes more sense because it can involve everyone.

Re:Advantages.

[1s44c]

You could give a presentation without your pants on!


Never again!

Try the banks

[mccalli]

Well, I live in Marlow, which to reach the centre of London is about a 90 minute trip. I'm a contractor and have worked in a few City and Docklands-based banks. Most banks now allow VPNs from home. It's not the norm to work from home, but many are pretty flexible these days.

Of course, I'm a developer. Not sure what it's like for non-pure IT staff.

Cheers,
Ian

Re:Try the banks

[Alan Partridge]

I live in Amersham, and it takes me about an hour each way into London in my car each day (I work in Covent Garden). I don't really see any problems with this kind of commuting - I don't need to get up particularly early (I need to be in the office by 09:30, so I leave around 08:00) and I usually get home at around 19:15.

I've considered teleworking (possible for maybe 30% of my work), but I ENJOY London and all it's facilities, I don't want to be stuck in a small town (even a nice one like Amersham or Marlow) all of the time. You've got to ask yourself, what would you DO with that extra 2 or 3 hours? I'm pretty sure I'd just waste it myself.

Re:Try the banks

[Mr. Slippery]

You've got to ask yourself, what would you DO with that extra 2 or 3 hours? I'm pretty sure I'd just waste it myself.

Now that's pathetic.

What could you do with two or three extra hours a day, 10-15 hours a week??? Read books. Watch films. Learn to play guitar. Study a martial art. Spend time with friends. Take a class at your local college. Write poetry. Play with the dog. Play volleyball. Volunteer for some cause you think is important.

If you can't find an interested way to spend that time, you are in serious need of a life transfusion.

You'd rather spend all that time stuck in your car? Ugh.

I find a half-hour commute to be just on the edge of bearable. I'd slit my wrists if I to drive 90 minutes each way every day just to go sit in front of a computer, especially when there's a perfectly good computer less than five meters from my bed.

In Layman's Terms...

[Ridge]

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)

Re:In Layman's Terms...

[Jellybob]

Only on /. could this be insightful.

Re:In Layman's Terms...

[caluml]

Insightful? It's the crack references that got the mods going on that one...

If you really want to work at / very near home...

[jlanng]

.. and you want that to be somewhere nice... The best option is to start your own business.

I do this, but it takes time

[moebius_4d]

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.

3 hours per day... Sitting in traffic...

[Moderation abuser]

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?

Re:3 hours per day... Sitting in traffic...

[mccalli]

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.

It can be. Honestly.

How? Well, I work during the day. I have a 16-month old daughter to look after when I get home, and I often have paperwork too. The travel time can be quite relaxing in comparison - time to sit on your own for a bit, listen to some music...no trouble. If you're capable of relaxing rather descending into road-rage, then it actually can be a good time. A break to get a moment's thinking time for yourself.

Cheers,
Ian

Old fashioned teleworking

[Captain Pedantic]

You could move to near where your place of work is. In doing so you would....

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.

Re:Old fashioned teleworking

[hplasm]

Commuting is the most pathetic human activity.

It is akin to migratory animals who have no choice but to spend half their lives moving south, then the other moving north.

Moving house to be near work is nearly as bad as being a migrant beast. This is the 21stC ... why should we still live to work. Whatever happened to all of the "increased leisure time" that technology was supposed to bestow on us all??

Bah!! Work To Live - Not Live To Work!!

/rant

I found it incredibly depressing

[mark2003]

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.

Re:I found it incredibly depressing

[inflex]

I sympathise - I'm in the same situation. I've got $$$ waiting on some new [relatively simple] features to come out in my product, but even the promise of money just doesn't kick start my zest to code.

Instead, I sit here watching slashdot hoping that someone will post a recepie for a major fog-clearing, zest inducing power juice.

Excuse my while I now go get beaten up in Tekken III by my wife.

Re:I found it incredibly depressing

[Billly Gates]

"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. "

M&M mars does this.

No cubicles! Just desks and rows of desks for groups of employee's who are on the same project. Some of the programmers even share one long foldout table so they can work together if the group is tiny enough.

Hell even the CEO does not have private office. They have standard desks just placed at the front of the big room so other executives can talk to them if they need to.

Its a great idea.

People worried about productivity? Well if you goof off everyone will see. Also communication like what you mentioned is always there. I would much rather have this then cubicles.

Cubicles are ugly and make me uncomfortable. They are almost slave like in a way. Its like a tiny personal prison.

Re :Teleworking in the UK?

[TallEmu]

Disadvantages for you I can think of are timezones and exchange rates.

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 .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!!

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!

Working at home....

[cymantic]

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.

Re:My take on it...

[1s44c]

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.

To all employers

[caluml]

I was just thinking about this today, coincidentally. I've noticed that I've taken less sick days since I started working for a very employee-friendly company that allows me to work from home if there is work that I can do at home.
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.

I've done this before

[zakezuke]

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.

I thought the term was telecommuting.

[k03 kalle]

Isn't the proper term telecommuting? Has this changed while I was in Basic training? Or is this a UK type of thing...? ;) -kalle

Work barriers...

[jkrise]

"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.

He can't afford the accomodation

[Moderation abuser]

A tiny 2 bedroom flat in London city center can cost £200k-£500k GBP which would be $320k-$800k.

Re:He can't afford the accomodation

[Cally]

> A tiny 2 bedroom flat in London city center can cost £200k-£500k GBP
> which would be $320k-$800k.
>

So get a few friends together and rent a house. We paid £1100 pcm for a 4 bedroom place with std. mod cons, front & back garden, 7 mins walks from the tube. (Granted, this was a bit of a bargain, but they're still out there if you're prepared to look.) Get a geek house going and you might be able to club together for a leased line, too. And think of the savings in video rentals when the Matrix, LotR etc come out ;)

And anyway, tech workers in central London still earn a fsck of a lot more than the average wage, even post-boom and with the City firing thousands. In fact this HELPS- without all those huge bonuses, the demand for very high-end gaffs has dropped off a lot, and theoretically at least that'll ripple down the accomodation food-chain. IYSWIM.

Broadband

[benjiboo]

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....

Set up your own company

[pubjames]

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.

Re:Set up your own company

[rmonday]

It doesn't often make sense to form a standard company/corp in a country other than the one you live in full-time (or, in the US, outside the state you live in).

This is because most countries have a "control" test - if the shareholders/directors of a company live in that country, the company can be taxed there.

For example if you have a UK co and live full-time in France, the French authorities (as well as the UK!) can tax it. Nightmare of paperwork. Of course they have to find it but nowadays any arrangement that relies on secrecy is doomed to failure, eventually.

But the lower tax solution: incorporate offshore and then live in a country which does not have such rules, or live in multiple countries for part of the year without being a resident in any of them (a great lifestyle which I did for years).

Note that many clients would have problems paying some of the more "offshore" places like Nuie, Vanuatu etc. The Isle of Man is the best place to form a company for European Union people (in fact best for most).

Rob

EU

[Anime_Fan]

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*

Another my experience

[swordfishBob]

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 :-)

out of London

[Cally]

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.

Re:If you really want to work at / very near home.

[inflex]

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.

Collaborative development

[benjiboo]

Do you think we'll ever see virtual software houses taking off, e.g. a bunch of developers all over the world who never meet in person, developing applications *and* actually making any money??

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....

Working from home

[schouwl]

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

Re:Working (from) abroad

[vidarh]

It can also be tax heaven. For people working in the UK and considering working for a foreign company, or for that matter even doing consultancy work in the UK, I would recommend looking into offshore Employee Benefit Trusts, and consultancies that can help you with them. There's at least one Isle of Man based one that can handle all of it for you for a small percentage of income (unfortunately can't remember the name).

Essentially the deal is that the UK tax system is heavily rigged towards rich people (aren't they all, but the UK more than most), but Employee Benefit Trusts can often be utilized by mere mortals too.

If you are employed by an offshore company, and that company pay you a salary, you still have to pay normal income tax. However, nothing forces the company to pay you everything as salary. Instead, they can pay you a "low" salary (low for the IT sector) of up to about £20k-£25k a year, which will be taxed at the lower tax bands, and pay an amount into an employee benefit trust every three months or so.

Technically the trustee is independently deciding what the money should go to - that is a requirement for trusts to be able to pay out to UK residents in a tax efficient manner. However the company will recommend that the money be paid to the employee (you) in a tax efficient manner. Since the trustee is legally bound to act in the beneficiarys best interest, it would be almost unprecented for the trustee not to do so.

The net result can be that with proper planning you end up paying 15-20% income tax at most, even with salaries 4-5 times the UK national average, or more.

It could in theory be used if you're working full time for a UK company too, but I doubt they would be ready to take the hassle, as you would need to be employed by some offshore shell company for it to work.

Beware...

[Duncan3]

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.

I don't know about you...

[the_olo]

... but I receive daily literally tons of e-mail offers about working at home, and for Real Money, That Really Works, you know?

Middle Management - the real probleg

[orangeguru]

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.

I'm Doing This

[esme]

I live in Brighton (well, Hove, actually) and telework as a programmer for a university in San Diego. My wife and I used to be there physically (she as a grad student, me as a regular employee). When she got a position at the U. of Sussex, we came and I kept my job.

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

EU teleworking agreement

[Bazzargh]

You might want to look into the 2002 EU teleworking agreement.
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 /. . 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.

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

From an Employer's Perspective

[NibbleAbit]

For 15 years now, I have hired nothing but 'work at home' programmers, both locally (in Canada) and abroad. Locally is definately easier. I spend 5 to 15 hours per week on the phone with programmers, all of them long distance, but at least in the same country. When I hired abroad, I found I was much more concious of phone costs, and conversations were much briefer. There is also the curency issue. We get paid in our local currency, and I don't like taking the exchange risk. It can quickly take a marginal profit (a project gone bad) to a loss.

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.

Visibility

[Builder]

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.

Re:Nor can we

[mccalli]

The ratio of house prices to salaries in the UK is now at it's highest since records began in 1900.

Aah, but the mortgage rates are also some of the lowest since records began. This makes mortgages more affordable than they have been for a long time.

Don't get me wrong - I'm a UK house owner, yet would love to see a house price crash. Why? Because at the moment all the high prices mean is that various people get to swap pieces of paper about with big numbers printed on them. What does it matter if both my house and the house I'm buying went up £100k in the last two years? Actual value hasn't gone up - the relative cost is the same. However without first time buyers to drive the market, no-one can sell at the bottom level. Which means there's no-one to buy at the middle level. Which in turn means there's no-one to buy at the top level...you get the idea.

Cheers,
Ian

Out of London -- into Telford

[stevebrowne]

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...

An experience of this:

[evrybodygonsurfin]

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?

• While it might sound great, it is actually pretty depressing seeing what goes on in your street during the day.
• You just get a call on your cellphone every five minutes about some trivial query that would usually be shouted across the office.
• You inevitably need some essential item that you have left on your desk.
• If I, personally, work from home my wife expects me to have fully cleaned the house and prepared dinner when she gets back.

• 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...

But if you telecommute

[dynayellow]

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?

Teleworking

[noidd]

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.

local coffeehouse

[lpret]

I used to work at Starbucks, and a customer would come in at about 10-11 in the morning and stay until about 5-6 with his laptop and work. We got to talking, and he was a developer for a software company in Seattle (this is in Dallas). He said he tried working at home, but he needed to get out of the house and go somewhere to see other people and interact.

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.

It's all about the discipline

[zacharay]

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.

90 minutes to London?

[analog_line]

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.

If your management resists...

[rnturn]

...they are probably seeing this list of advantages/disadvantages like this:

Advantages for me:

• Save journey time of 3 hours per day (Not our problem)
• Save travel expenses (Not our problem)
• Save travel frustration (delays, crowds, mobile phone idiocy, etc.) (Not our problem)
• Be fresh and alert when I start work (Not our problem. We expect that anyway.)
• Feel better at the end of the working day (Not our problem)
• Be at work promptly each day (Not our problem. Can't you just leave earlier? Obviously your estimate of 90 minutes was incorrect.)
• Work in a pleasant/relaxed environment (Is there something wrong with your cubicle?)
• Ready access to my (large) technical library (We hired you not your technical library. Besides, don't you have a back seat or trunk in which you could keep those books?)

Advantages for my employer:

• Cost savings (How?)
• Office space savings (Not if I fire you and hire someone much cheaper who's in the office so I can watch over them.)
• Improved productivity (Don't really care how much work per unit of time you are able to put out as long as the work gets done.)
• Increased motivation (You want motivation? Be at your desk by 8:00 or you're fired. How's that for motivation?)

Advantages for society:

• Reduced traffic congestion (Congestion? Hmm. I've never heard my driver complain about any congestion.)
• Reduction in total travel and therefore pollution (How does this make money for the company? Besides you must have missed the memo about car-pooling. Now your commute is 2-1/2 hours... each way.)

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 (And we cannot even begin to explain to you how important this is to managers.)
• Internet connectivity (mine currently limited to 56Kb) (That's funny. We've had excellent connectivity since the company provided those T1 lines.)

So if you're having trouble getting approval to work from home. You might be running into these attitudes.

Have a nice day!

Company culture

[tbee]

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).

One major stumbling block

[Tablizer]

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.

Telecommute in NYC

[kmilani2134]

I moved to NYC seven years ago and decided at that time that I would take my time here to set myself for the possibility of telecommuting on a full time basis, once I decided to move to a cheaper, less urban location.

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.

Do consulting at home by phone

[Skapare]

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.