Slashdot Mirror
Work No Longer a Place but an Activity
r.future writes "A story that I found over on MobileBeta that talks about how now technology such as broadband, and WiFi are becoming more and more common place. People can (and I believe may one day be required) to work at home. Here's a small clip from the story: 'According to a recent AT&T survey conducted by the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), 80% of companies worldwide expect to have employees who telework by 2005, up from 54% in 2003. The International Telework Association & Council (ITAC) recently reported the number of home-based teleworkers in the US grew 63.2% between 1999 and 2003.'"
how much work I'd actually get done at home. I bet many people would get more stuff done, but my ps2 being in such close proximity to my work station may cause more trouble than its worth.
East Coast Brewers
Do they mean "moving jobs offshore telework" or "americans on call 24 hours a day" telework?
Either way it sounds hellish to me. I like my days off too much.
Most sales, marketing, executive and other customer facing jobs have been like this for years. Also, things like "hoteling" of office space predicted this a long time ago.
Commercial square footage is expensive, and employees who want window offices instead of internal cubes are more likely to get them in their own homes.
But good luck getting that home-office tax deduction...
It seems to me that innovations I have seen in the academic world 15-20 years ago are coming to the "real world" everyday : use of computers to predict lot of stuff, doing your own wordprocessing, the Internet and e-mail, working from home with modems..This justifies giving money to apparently useless research.
Google passes Turing test : see my journal
Gnome: A never ending quest to make unix friendly to people who don't want unix and excruciating for those that do.
I'm tele-unemployed.
If your job can be done from home, it can be done from India, or China, or Mexico.
I don't have anything against job assignments that allow some telecommuting, but if you think your job can be both safe, and something you can do from home, you need to find a different line of work.
Teleworking will happen when there's enough communications infrastructure in place to have a high definition, or at least good quality, video feed to the employee at home. Until this can happen it will be too difficult to get things done outside of a personal working environment.
Really though, the kick for all of this will be gasoline prices 2-4x what they are now. It's insane to spend the amount of time most people do commuting, it's a huge loss of productivity overall. There is a culture of mistrust that won't change until it absolutely has to.
You can always (try) to work for yourself, too..
..don't panic
What is drastically needed is a portable and secure linux distribution for these people. IT departments can't control what goes on with personal home PCs and it would be nice to leverage that existing hardware. So what ends up happening is that a laptop is supplied for these people and then there is an additional level of complexity for the telecommuter.
If a Knoppix-like, bootable linux distro came with a robust VPN client, antivirus, etc... I could see a big market. Heck, I'm even afraid to simply check things like my bank account from PCs that aren't my own, anymore. If I could carry a secured, bootable OS, then I'd be a little happier.
Life is the leading cause of death in America.
tech is not the major factor IMHO that lets us work form home. It's just providing the means. The key here is that we do less and less handwork, and more and more brainwork as manual labour gets offshored & outsourced.
In 250 years or so, the entire population of the earth will work in callcenters & administration, with robots doing all labour...
When will I end this grieving ? When will my future begin ?
For instance: doctors, firefighters, police (they'd need donut delivery at the doorstep to telecommute).
Why is it every time some new technology is mentionned, the first use is to make people work more? What happened to the concept of a 'labor-saving device'? How come we are surrounded by machines and have to work more than any other generation in history?
How come I have to listen to management telling us how productive we all are, but I have less money than my parents?
WHERE is all this production? Why do we have to work so much? Why are people still poor?
While I don't really like the dress code that is typical of work (thus I love my Intel internship), the office environment isn't replaceable. Even if I like what I am doing for work, distractions at home purely cost the company money. Distractions at work, on the other hand, largely provide to the company. At the very least the distraction is a team effort.
Now maybe it's just because of where I'm working right now but just about the whole day is about work. We're always talking about what we're doing, what we've learned, and what not to do, during any 'distraction'. During lunch I may learn how to get around a problem I am having because I'm communicating with different people than I directly work with.
Anyway I don't think I can explain well without running on about one thing or another; however I am confident that getting even a solid 8 hours of work done at home will be less productive than a half a day or work, and a half of day of distractions at the office. And you'll never get 8 hours of solid work at home without fretting over something.
- rent
- electricity
- property tax
If all of the people in an internet comapny were forced to work at home then companies like google would save 10-15% a year. Google for example has over 1900 staff and huge open facilities to accomondate them, that is a large cost, that in the future many companies won;t be able to bear, especially startup companies.I have to agree that it is certainly becoming easier to work remotely. When I moved to North Carolina in January, my previous job kept me on board. I can easily VPN to them, authenticate to the network and get all of my shared drives, and, because we use Cisco's IP Phone, have a local Tampa number in Charlotte, NC that I answer with my computer. Except for the fact that my cubicle is empty down there, you would have no idea I was even gone.
In my present position we use as many tools as possible to facilitate being able to work from home if so desired (like Source OffSite, our bugtracker on a public facing address, etc), but the best part is that there is no requirement we work from home. If I come up with an idea on how to solve some issue at 11pm at night, I can hop on, check out the code and make the changes.
The hardest part for me about working from home is (as another poster mentioned) the distractions. We just moved into a house where I was able to grab a bedroom and turn it into an office, so at least I can close the door if need be, but if you have a hard time seperating yourself out from that, working at home is only going to make things more difficult for you.
Random Musings
maybe not. You are forgetting that first off, a boss has no control over someone working from home. Productivity, already hurt by internet access at every workstation, will fall, especially when Montel is on.
You also have many jobs where being at home is not an advantage, like if you have to meet clients. I work in a homebuilding company and we have customers coming in daily to view options, do financing, and the to close on the home. All things that need a central office.
Finally, there is the issue of security. Do you really want your Accounting or other information being passed over the internet? Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know about VPNs and IPSec, but that doesn't make it secure, just harder to crack.
There are some areas that can, and will, move to a more decentralized model. IT in general can work well this way many times (net admin, coding, etc), but don't think that it will work for all other sectors of the economy.
Was that night on the marge of Lake LaBarge I cremated Sam McGee...
The great part is that rural communities with substantially lower living costs could end up the biggest beneficiaries. Workers able to take advantage of the trend could finally move out of higher cost areas into these communities. The workers expenses drop, so they could lower their salaries as an incentive for their company to allow it. With new cash from taxes, these communities could dramatically improve their infrastructure (schools, roads, etc) without necessarily having the problems of a metropolis.
The downside is that if I can do my job from home with only occassional face to face work meetings, as soon as the software is available to truely make those f2f visits virtual (and no, none of the current software is truely good enough yet), the competition for my type of work will increase dramatically.
Bring it on. :-)
Commuting is becoming such a problem (re: LA traffic) that it might be faaar more productive for people to work at home than to commute. It'd also be more environmentally friendly.
Especially for people in the tech business.
telework solves the outsourcing problem
because I could be at home in Redmond, working
for a company in India, subcontracted by
a company in Redmond!
end of worries.
..is rather fading on my part. Sure it works the first month, and maby the second, but after a while I miss someone to talk to and someone to share and discuss problems with. So I work a couple of days each week in a store just to get some company, and that works great! :)
With teleworking on the rise, companies need more than ever a secure working environment for their outsourced employees. While doctors have often outsourced dictation typing, this is much less dangerous from a data protection standpoint than if Ford would allow their engineers to work at home.
A primary concern will be preventing hacking, etc. A VPN may be sufficient to transport the data securely between the home-office and the company, but there is no guarantee that it will be safe on the employee's computer. Companies can prevent a lot of attacks by installing a good firewall. But it is virtually impossible to require the tech staff to monitor all offsite installations.
I work mainly in banking, developping custom applications. I'll be the last one that is going to do his job at home. Oh, I damn well could, I only need email my devbox and some kind of access to the backend (over VPN it must be doable). However, no bank is going to do this. At least not in my country where banks are required to have their IT infrastructure in-house. Besides, they are so paranoid about security breaches (understandable) that they probably won't give anyone outside the bank a VPN connection to their network. You might after all steal customer data or so...
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
It's a quote I first heard at school a decade ago.
"Hell is not a place, but a state of mind."
They say the frog in the pot never notices the water getting hotter as the fire is oh so slowly turned up....
Ah, the work-is-heaven neoliberal propaganda cinches down another notch on the proles.....
eat shiat and bark at the moon
Forget working at home and outsourcing. In the future a robot can do the work.
Myself, I'll be a member of the newly emerging leisure class.
I work from home roughly 1/2 the time, and drive in to the office the other half. It is *ideal*. When home, I get fewer interrupts, can multitask (e.g. catch up on email during phone conferences where my input is needed for only a portion of the meeting), and generally am about 1.5X more productive. Plus, coding with my music up and the dog curled at my feet makes for a happy me. OTOH when I do go in, I maintain social/personal relationships, get enough of the hallway chats and facetime w folks to preserve my "presence" in the workplace, and feel somewhat more connected to the office per se. I wouldn't want it any other way. /anecdote
My boss (tech director) feels the same way about my schedule, and everyone's happy.
La via sola al paradiso incommincia nel inferno
There is a downside to this, though. When programmers hear their company allowing telecommuting, they think of working in their pajamas during normal working hours. Companies often have something completely different in mind...
Companies view telecommuting not as working from home instead of coming to work, but rather, as working from home in addition to coming to work. There are firms which expect their employees not only to work a full 8 hour day at the office, but log on and work from home after office hours. Because the employee isn't at the employer's "place of business", the employer believes they owe the employee no additional compensation for those extra hours.
And unfortunately, employees who convince their employer they need not be physically present to do their job find their jobs outsourced to other countries. Thus, telecommuting can never completely replace the office for the average American worker.
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
This trend is merely a return to the past. The entire "going to the office" or "going to the factory" concept rose with the urbanization and industrialization of civilization. Go back more than a couple of hundred years and I'd bet you will find that most people had very little worklife-familylife separation. People lived on the farms that they worked on or you lived above their shop. People worked with their parents, children, and extended family. If their livelihood had a problem in the middle of the night or on the weekend, they dealt with it. That why we have so many surnames that are careers (e.g., Carpenter, Smith, Baker, Farmer, etc.)
It's not the current blurring of work and life that is a fluke, it was the recent past's separation of work and life that was the odd phenomenon.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
My wife and I recently relocated to another state because I took a new job, and the company she works for let her keep her position but work from our new house. I know that's not that common yet, but with the availability of technologies like broadband, scanners, VPN, conference calls, and NetMeeting, her job experience really isn't that different from what it was when she was "in the office". The only real change is the lack of face-to-face social contact. Only time will tell the impact of that.
And as to how much work does she get done from home? Somehow, she manages to get her all of her "company" work done, gets a chance to rest, and even does the laundry. Boy, am I lucky or what?!?
My mom always said, "Jim, you're 1 in a million." Given the current population, there are 7000 of me. God help us all!
From
Honey, I'm home!
To
Honey, I'm done with my activity!
"All great things are simple & expressed in a single word: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope." --Churchill
Worked in an office. Then worked at home for two years. Then went back to the office. Pretty soon we will all go back home. All the same company. I think that it is just whats hot, or what will save money short term. Or what the latest Overlords feel we need to do.
This is no different than watching companies consolidate computer data centres, then ditribute them, over and over. At least that makes us money.
The same could be said for outsourcing, lord knows we have seen that go back and forth too.
I've tried full-time teleworking and it was a disaster - being in the same room as your colleges from time to time is nearly essential, for me at least.
On the other hand the occasional day away from them can be a very productive day, free of interruption, and more productive for avoiding the stress of commuting.
If I were the Mayor of London I'd be doing everything I could to encourage London businesses to introduce partial teleworking, so as to reduce the load on the transport system. It's about the only way left to deal with London's transport capacity problems.
Xenu loves you!
I dont think my boss would be too impressed with me turning up for a meeting, putting a dictaphone on his desk, and going sitting at the back to rest my eyes.
liqbase
From personal experience, the biggest drawback is not being able meet other single eligible coworkers. After all many average and below average folk have met there spouses through work. *sigh
Has a whole section on the problem of replicating the informal interaction that brings so much to the work envrionment.
Were I more than a lone programmer, I would need that. As it is, low overhead and a pants optional dress code keep me at home.
Of course, in order to require you to work at home, the company has to subsidize your broadband connection. No telecommuter will have to pay for their home connection -- just like health insurance, right? Part of the package!
But since the company owns your broadband connection, they can assert control over it. Betcha they audit every website you cruise, and betcha they insert a netnanny proxy with a Victorian attitude. Goodbye P2P, goodbye IRC.
When employers become de facto ISPs, with "group rates" from cable companies and telcos -- that'll be the end of cheap broadband for individuals. Again, just like health insurance. If you want real Internet access without strings, you'll pay through the nose. I imagine that most people will accept what they get for "free".
This has been covered in /. so much in the past, one more time can't hurt;
The whole 'working from home' thing is a complete myth. The *ONLY* people who actually get to work from home is CXOs and their buddies. Anyone working at the bottom of the food chain (90% of any company's employees) gets told that they can't work from home.
*EVERY* company I work for *SAY* they want people to work from home, but what they actually mean is that *THE BOSSES* want to work from home, while all the worker bees sit patiently and quietly in their cubicals/open plan offices, working busily, because they can't TRUST worker bees not to slack off when they work from home - hell, the honcho's all slack off, so if everyone in the company worked from home, nothing would get done!
And guess who fills out all the surveys that 'measures' this so-called surge in 'working from home'? You guessed it: The honchos.
I really doubt that I'll ever get the opportunity to work from home in any meaningful capacity in my working life, ever. I don't think with the increase of WiFi or ADSL or Bluetooth or whatever is going to increase the chances of worker bees actually getting to sit at home and work for 90% of their time.
Oh, sure, you can work from home *WHEN YOU ARE SICK*.
Either those statistics are wrong, or america is way behind the times. I don't know of a single person that telecommutes for their job. I would love to do it, but how realistic is it? I'm a mechanical engineer, and my other two co-workers have broadband at home, and most businesses have T-1, so technically with the right software we could eliminate human interaction by using whiteboards, webcams, email, etc. However, it seems like companies are run by CEO's that have grown up in an office envoirnment, and even though it economically makes more sense, it's hard to convince them it's a better way to run a business. It's not just office space we're talking about, it's heating/cooling, lights, power, computer hardware. That all adds up to cost. I mean my computer at home is just sitting around doing nothing while I'm at work.
I guess the ploy to make myself morbidly obese in order to take advantage of a loophole in the benefits in order to work from home was a bit premature?
D'oh!
I am currently moving out of the head office. My head office is in PA, but I have decided to move to Sacramento, CA. My skills are very much in demand, so my boss is considering sending me my work there. As a civil engineering draftsman, familiarity with my co-workers, cheap 36" scans, broadband, and my ability to supply and support my own very expensive engineering software make me a very attractive home worker. WOO FREAKIN HOO CALIFORNIA HERE I COME!!!!
However, most of my clients want me in the plant. In manufacturing, 90% of the job is just showing up.
This is good, because you can't work in the plant from India...
Until the plant gets moved to India.
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, it doesn't go away." - Philip K. Dick
That is why when you start working from home you need to set up an "office". Whether it is an actual separate room or at least an area where you have your work stuff. I have found it to be helpful to keep that area clear of non work related stuff.
r kshop3. htm
There are several other key things to do when working from home...
Follow the same routine that you would when you physically go to work.
Get dressed.
Get some coffee (or your normal morning drink and/or some breakfast).
As a side note, I find that on the days I work from home I eat breakfast more often and I choose more healthy breakfast foods.
Working from home takes some discipline but I find that when I do work from home I get more work done as there are not so many "walk-up". Ie, co-workers stopping to chat and/or co-workers using me as their reference guide for their current client issue.
In my current position it could be done 100% from anywhere there is a broadband link and cell phone reception. I only telework two days a week as I still like to show my face in the office. There are also some meetings that we have that I like to have a physical presence at as well. It is much more effective IMO when you are making an "angry face" in a meeting then when you do it over the phone. Granted you can learn how to voice your anger at your project possibly being under funded or whatever but it is easier to show your emotions physically then verbally.
(I prefer telework to telecommute as it puts the emphasis on "work", instead of a side benefit of not having to commute).
For more information on telework and proposing it to your boss/company check out this link.
http://www.telecommute.org/telework/1999wo
I find it very amusing that all these people who say they are more productive working at home, are wasting time reading and posting on Slashdot! That can't be very productive.
The only thing that is yours, is your soul; everything else is borrowed.
They call it telework because you spend so much time in front of the telly?
"I telework on a reclining chair with a beer in one hand?"
I wonder if NBC will have a "teleworking" primetime.
i never understand why some people are happy to work at home, it blurs the distinction between your time and the company's time to the extent where there may no longer be a distinction.
I can see one drawback about working from home: The ability to be "at work" so quickly, you wind up working extra hours without compensation.
If someone's an engineer, or programmer, and there's some problem that needs immediate attention, it's easier, and maybe too easy, to pad down to the office, flip on the computer, and put in a few extra hours in addition to your regular time. Then, when the regular "start time" rolls around, your still expected to be there, since you have the "ease" of telecommuting.
I did engineering for a company that had remote access. It wasn't unusual for people to work all day (8 hours), then go home and put in a few extra hours, to fix problems they couldn't during the day.
With telecommuting, I can see management wondering why employees can't work their full hours, and when the employee says: "I was up all night fixing XYZ" management responds:"Yea, but your working from home, you don't have to commute, so you should be available at regular hours too, since you've got it so easy."
There's absolutely nothing I do at work that I couldn't do at home unless there is a hardware failure. And that happens maybe once or twice a year. Plus I'd save about 70 miles a day driving and more importantly at least 1.5 hours a day driving.
Being in various Internet-related and enabled businesses over the past 10 years, I've lived on the "work from home" cutting edge.
Working from home is something that only 1 in 10 people does well enough to justify the practice. The other 9 out of 10 people are simply not able to focus on work as well as when they're in an office environment.
When people are left to their own devices, they just don't get much done. At home there are too many distractions like TV, the laundry, video games, etc.
Why are you letting these clowns ruin our country?
IIRC: Tax codes require dedicated office space used ONLY for home office work. Guess I can not claim the 4 sq foot of my couch as an office unless I do not use it any other time. (Apparently you need to prove this 100% work use or they "getcha")
:)
Even when you can claim it... you get a percentage of expenses VS your total square footage. Anybody with enough space to spare in their house is not likely to get a good percentage of expenses.
Still if you have a large basement you do not use... (33-50% of you expenses...)
Good luck, just remember follow the law to the letter and they can't do jack
I am a developer and spend a lot of time programming, but a big part of my job is interacting with other people. It's not too difficult to get someone who can code something up, but there is a lot of value in being able to communicate with co-workers, business associates, and application users. The business knowledge and communications with other employees is what makes a normal employee worth a lot more to the company. These things just don't work the same from home. At my company we regularly send people to other countries to meet with developers, customers, and users. Technically this can be done over the phone, but it just doesn't work the same. This is probably also the main reason that a lot of American tech workers still have jobs.... but that's another discussion that's already been beat to death here.
because your boss cannot suddently appear in your cubicle while you're <insert your favorite non-productive habit>.
I am a product manager responsible for a web application. Our office is seriously OUT OF ROOM and rather than rent office space across the street, I volunteered to work from home. I thought this would be great, but in practice, it has not been.
.. and stay for two or three hours. Weekends are just another work day too.
I find it too distracting to be both at home and at work 24 hours a day. It allows me to pop out of bed and be at work which is GREAT and I can recieve a FedEx package or run an errand no problem, but I am also able to just pop in the office after dinner
But there are other issues that make me less productive. Though I try to stay focused, small things like unloading the dishwasher yield to larger things like mowing the yard. And when my wife is at home, it is even more distracting because I don't get to spend much time with her.
Then...there's Slashdot!
I only came here to do two things; kick some ass, and drink some beer...looks like we're almost out of beer.
well, if you knew about the "real" world, you would know that, for instance, finite elements computations of structure rigidity is now generalized to CAD programs, when in the 1960s it was only academic.
I was besides pointing out that I saw maybe 15-20 years ago academics doing their own wordprocessing and working from home with modems, when even engineers were not doing it at the time.
If you get your work done, who cares whether you're at home/playing Half-Life/surfing the web? Granted, web filters are necessary because of harassment litigation and potential "illegal" activity ... but other than that, I see no reason to restrict employee activity. And that extends to allowing them to work at home, too.
Works is no longer a place but an activity.
Unless you read Slashdot, in which case it's just a bemusingly alien concept.
... that I've ever even applied to work for has endorsed telecommuting. I was laid off so many times in the last five years that I've actually interviewed for probably 40 jobs in that time. Every time I've ever asked about telecommuting, the employer's objection has been that having employees work from home daily adds a health insurance liability they cannot afford to carry. They're afraid of employees sitting at slouchy chairs with bad keyboards for a month, then filing claims for carpal tunnel problems and chiropractic work. They're afraid of employees using their less-than-industrially cleaned bathrooms and slipping on their own uncarpeted floors.
I read about telecommuting as the wave of future employment at least three times every single year. Not one employer I've ever spoken to in eleven years in the workforce would touch it with a ten foot pole.
-j
I remember hearing Tim Costello (Australian social activist, lawyer, pastor) speak here in Sydney a few years ago. He said two amusing things:
1. He and his wife had been at Uni in the 70's, and recently talked about how they all believed then that in 20 years the biggest problems we'd have would be working out what to do with all the leisure time created by technology (you know the stuff...).
2. (Off-topic, but also amusing) That morning he'd been in Melbourne speaking at his church, and afterward had given two elderly ladies a lift home. They were two sisters now aged in their nineties. When they heard he was flying up to Sydney that afternoon, they recalled "Ah, we went to Sydney once" and it turned out that they were there in their late teens. "We understand," they said, "that it's a lot better now that they have the bridge there."
Breakfast is really vital when you work from home, because it helps relax you for the day so you are not distracted.
... when the line between home and work is so blurred as to be unrecognizable? Overwork and stress have been on the rise in the modern world for several years, how will still having to work when we return to our collective castles affect how we function as individuals? I believe that while telecommuting is a good idea now, sometime in the future (I'm thinking 60 or so years) it's going to have to be regulated. Most people come home to relax and relieve stress. If they have to come home and continue to encounter all the little annoyances that gets them riled up at work, it can't be anything but bad for their stress, morale, and health. THe higher stress as a result may or may not have an effect on the population, but eventually it will go too far and people will start to do things like have heart attacks at an early age, bringing in government regulation to "Save" the populace after the problem becomes unsolvable.
Maybe, you will need to invite them over for lunch so they can check up on your work.
Excellent point. Distractions at home can be numerous, and everyone knows it, especially pointy-haired bosses. Which raises all kinds of scary questions, like how will bosses keep tabs on how much work an employee is actually doing? Those "World's Smallest Camera!" ads come to mind.
/. about privacy matters.
And yes, I realize that many people are already working from home now, but it's still not the majority. Once (if?) it becomes as such, I bet we'll be seeing even more posts on
<insert witty linux comment here>
We've got a developer who only shows up about every other day, though I think terms like "working from home" were applied to the activity retroactively.
sic transit gloria mundi
with all the useless documents I'm asked to write, I've found a new name for my work:
Vowel Movement
Telecommuting is great for workers but it's a wash for business unless workers put in extra time at home. Workers don't have to waste time sitting in traffic. They don't endure the stress of the commute every day or the expense. For the community, less cars on the road means less traffic congestion and less air pollution. But employers don't reap so many benefits. Many don't trust their employees to work. They worry the employee will sleep or work on home improvement projects rather than work. So many employers set it up to be used as a suppliment rather than a substitute so the worker can do overtime from home. Add to that the vulnerability of such work to offshoring and it isn't hard to understand why telecommuting hasn't taken off.
Wansu, th' chinese sailor
Employers don't give a hoot whether work gets done, they will keep a lazy worker who shows up on time over a latecomer who produces more units. As long as you LOOK like you are working, you don't need to produce anything. If a telecommuter is not visible by cttv or webcam then he cannot be seen to be working and therefore management doesn't like it.
They whose government reduces their essential liberties for temporary security, receive neither liberty nor security.
That would be good in a lot of respects. At my last job, I couldn't get my employeer to buy the right desk/chair combo for me. At home I have exactly the combo that I need. At my current job, I can't play music out loud and stuff like that.
It's just more comfortable to be at home. Although it can be distracting. But less distracting than other employees coming back to your cube all the time to talk about nonsense.
My company won't let us telecommute. In fact, those who have been telecommuting as an experiment, have been notified that they will have office space made available within the next few years.
Here are the issues they give for nixing telecommuting:
1. The company wants to be able to find you when they need to (of course, the pager they force me to wear, and my cell phone don't count...)
2. The company doesn't want to have to equip your home office, and lose administrative control over your work machine (which is funny because they require me to VPN into the network - which I do using my linux box - outside of normal business hours when things break down...they aren't worrying about it then when they are begging me to fix the problem).
3. The productivity of the whole group will be improved due to being able to meet with your peers at the job (riiiight! I am most productive when I come in early or leave late, or VPN in - those hours when no one is here to interrupt me. Additionally, 99% of my business communication takes place via email and instant messaging. The rest of the so-called 'communication' is BS and gossip that drags productivity down).
It is really a matter of trust. Does your company trust you to do the right thing when you are out of their sight, or only when in the unblinking view of the security cameras?
Lodragan Draoidh
The more you explain it, the more I don't understand it. - Mark Twain
But not everyone. And even not every IT person can work from home. I am a help desk technician, and it would be difficult for me to work from home without the law firm going through the expense of putting in a second phone line and broadband, and then programming their phone system to call my second line when a user dials the help desk extension. I'd probably also want them to install a computer that had all of the firm software on it, instead of using my personal computer.
Or, they can do what they do now, and pay a small fee for a parking space. You do the math.
-jls
Techno-pagan
>> People can (and I believe may one day be required) to work at home.
Absolutely right! In the current era of cutting costs until you get something (everything!) for nothing, it makes no sense to pay for premises when you can make your employees pay for them.
Astro
From my experiences, I got more work done telecommuting. It has its downside though. If you work from home, then you are always, effectively, at work and its just soooooo easy to work a little bit longer. You never get the easy separation between work and home as work = home. So your work can loom over you constantly because its right there...in the next room, and that deadline is approaching. So instead of being able to go home and have a physical and mental separation from the workplace, you're stuck at work all the time.
Conversely, there are still plenty of bosses stuck in the past who think if they can't eyeball you, then you must be screwing off and they resist telecommuting for that reason alone.
In my oppinion humans are too social of creatures and when we get isolated in our home offices it takes away that socialization that does happen, and can affect work. You might get depressed or lazy. We need the social interaction and I do dread the day that everyone is, or a vast majority of people are isolated in their homes.
Work place is one of the prime places also to find a spouse. With more isolation there will be less kids being produced to take over the world. Puts us at a disadvantage, next thing you know we will be owned by Gorillas and Monkeys.
Its the dream of every Denverite to be able to work from some mountain retreat. However, you are lucky to get 28K in most places. Dont even say braodband.
The Economist [economist.com - free] has an article in last week's edition about how phones are replacing cars [economist.com - suggar daddy required] and how this is "a good thing."
Full article text:
"PARKS beautifully", boasts an advertising hoarding for the XDA II, above a glimpse of its sleek silver lines. "Responsive to every turn", declares another poster. Yet these ads, seen recently in London, are selling not a car, but an advanced kind of mobile phone. Maybe that should not be a surprise. Using automotive imagery to sell a handset makes a lot of sense for, in many respects, mobile phones are replacing cars.
Phones are now the dominant technology with which young people, and urban youth in particular, now define themselves. What sort of phone you carry and how you customise it says a great deal about you, just as the choice of car did for a previous generation. In today's congested cities, you can no longer make a statement by pulling up outside a bar in a particular kind of car. Instead, you make a similar statement by displaying your mobile phone, with its carefully chosen ringtone, screen logo and slip cover. Mobile phones, like cars, are fashion items: in both cases, people buy new ones far more often than is actually necessary. Both are social technologies that bring people together; for teenagers, both act as symbols of independence. And cars and phones alike promote freedom and mobility, with unexpected social consequences.
The design of both cars and phones started off being defined by something that was no longer there. Cars were originally horseless carriages, and early models looked suitably carriage-like; only later did car designers realise that cars could be almost any shape they wanted to make them. Similarly, mobile phones used to look much like the push-button type of fixed-line phones, only without the wire. But now they come in a bewildering range of strange shapes and sizes.
Less visibly, as the structure of the mobile-phone industry changes, it increasingly resembles that of the car industry (see article). Handset-makers, like carmakers, build some models themselves and outsource the design and manufacturing of others. Specialist firms supply particular sub-assemblies in both industries. Outwardly different products are built on a handful of common underlying "platforms" in both industries, to reduce costs. In each case, branding and design are becoming more important as the underlying technology becomes increasingly interchangeable. In phones, as previously happened in cars, established western companies are facing stiff competition from nimbler Asian firms. Small wonder then that Nokia, the world's largest handset-maker, recruited its design chief, Frank Nuovo, from BMW.
That mobile phones are taking on many of the social functions of cars is to be welcomed. While it is a laudable goal that everyone on earth should someday have a mobile phone, cars' ubiquity produces mixed feelings. They are a horribly inefficient mode of transport--why move a ton of metal around in order to transport a few bags of groceries?--and they cause pollution, in the form of particulates and nasty gases. A chirping handset is a much greener form of self-expression than an old banger. It may irritate but it is safe. In the hands of a drunk driver, a car becomes a deadly weapon. That is not true of a phone (though terrorists recently rigged mobile phones to trigger bombs in Madrid). Despite concern that radiation from phones and masts causes health problems, there is no clear evidence of harm, and similar worries about power lines and computer screens proved unfounded. Less pollution, less traffic, fewer alcohol-related deaths and injuries: the switch from cars to phones cannot happen soon enough.
but a state of mind.
"Can there be a Klein bottle that is an efficient and effective beer pitcher?"
I am all for it. Think about it, i can sit and program nude finally! I am sure that i can program a script to make it look like i am working....heh
-Pizentios
So much so that my entire organization was recently ordered to officially request a change of status from "mobile employee" to "work@home".
When I joined the company seven years ago, many people still had offices or assigned cubes, but the company was in the process of transitioning to a "hoteling" approach. The idea was, officially, that anyone could work anywhere, but it took time for that to sink into the culture. Even though you could work from home, the unspoken rule was that it was important that no one be able to *tell* you were working from home. No dogs barking or kids yelling in the background while you were on a conference call, and no complaining about large e-mail attachments because you were on dialup.
With the passage of time, things have changed. It's uncommon to get on an internal conference call and not hear domestic noises in the background, and complaints about large attachments are met with "Well, why don't you get DSL?" rather than "Well why aren't you in the office?". The company pays for Internet and phone service at home, of course.
The practical meaning, to the employee, of a change from "mobile" to "work@home" is practically nil, but it really is significant. IBM maintains mobile cubicles in nearly every office, and the amount of space reserved for that purpose is determined by the mobile employee population. Although work@home employees can use mobile space if they need to, none is allocated for them. This means that at any given time, the vast majority of work@home employees *must* be working outside the office, because there is no space for them!
The effect on IBM's office facilities has been very visible. For example, I'm affiliated with IBM's office in Salt Lake City, Utah. The IBM building in Salt Lake is a rambling five-story affair, and was once almost completely filled with IBM employees. I think IBM used three full floors. When I joined the company, it was reduced to a single floor. Shortly afterwards, the space was cut to half of the top floor. A couple of years later, it was reduced again to one quarter of the top floor. And if you go into the office on any given day today you'll see that most of that space is empty, so I expect a further reduction within a couple of years.
At present, administrative staff work in the office full-time, but I don't think that will last. Most secretaries and receptionists can work from home. There's no need for anyone to run the mail room if all correspondence is sent directly to the relevant home address (right now there's a guy in the mail room who spends a lot of his time forwarding stuff). Five years from now, most IBM offices will consist of nothing more than conference rooms; places to meet when phone calls don't cut it.
The next step beyond that, of course, will be do *outsource* those conference facilities, thereby sharing the costs with other companies who do the same thing.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
While most everyone would agree that that there are good and bad points to working at home (working nekkid, or working at odd hours), it is also important to remember the good and bad points to being constrained to an in-office environment
There are distractions everywhere; your self-discipline will see you through them. However, at home, you lack the "social presence" that is found with the in-office environment. If you work out of office, people may see the fruits of your labour, but they could mis-place their admiration of the person. Maybe the team leader will get more attention, since they are in the office, coordinating the work of both local and remote users.
Being in the office means that it's easier to 'toot your own horn' and stand up for your successes. It's not just what you do, but you must 'appear' to do it well. People need to >b>see you succeed (or see you being successful) in order for them to perceive you as a success.
So, remote-work or telecommuting should be balanced with working in the office. You could run the risk of sacrificing long-term job/career goals for the sake of short-term work/task goals.
I telecommute part-time. My employer is about 4 hours away from where I currently reside. When I was first hired on, I moved out there, and got the job done. I but I quickly realized I didn't need to be there. I'm a software developer (the only developer) for a very small company, and i'd often be the only person in the office. I'm *much* happier being closer to my friends/family/loved ones, so i now split my time between the two cities, using my work laptop and my own broadband connection and cellphone to get the job done when i'm not in the office. I make enough to afford to live in both places, and I consider the extra cost the price of happiness. If i didn't want to do it, I wouldn't have to, I could be in the office full time if need be.
I realize this situation wouldn't work for most companies, but it does work for us, and i'm happy with it. However, I actually find it harder to be motivated at home. It's easier to be distracted with errands, laundry, and other daytime activities, or to just sleep in occasionally. I'm not usually home during the evenings, so it's very rare that i work excessive hours extending past the dinner hour.
Put the burden of protecting the data on the employee, let THEM pay to keep the data safe and carry the burden if it is lost or compromised (and let people like me immediately benefit from their Linux knowledge). Eventually, companies will figure out that there really is no other way to ensure their data is safe (in a non-dumb terminal environment).
Anyway, it gets to the point that the difference between employee and consultant really gets blurred. You get someone with more freedom in how they complete their tasks than a regular employee but with more job security than a consultant. Not bad. . .
Sdelat' Ameriku velikoy Snova!
With some things you might be right. But, I work for a small company that is growing rapidly. We provide "broadband support" for customers of small cable companies. We are an insourcing company (as opposed to the companies who are outsourcing their tech support to us).
Here's the suprising concept: we're based in the U.S., not in India or Mexico. Ironically, there's talk of customers in other countries.
Our current building is quickly running out of cubical space. Solution? Work from home! Now I just need to find a way to pitch it to the execs...
"i never understand why some people are happy to work at home"
Some of the handicapped are delighted to have the opportunity to work from home.
Even though the "rules" are hardly friendly (VPN requiring explicit access to each server and port, slow bureaucracy for additions and changes, no remote control access allowed to work desktop and thus software, etc.), it has been fantastic to periodically work days or weeks from home over a VPN via SecurID.
And despite many comments here, I'm not a manager or CEO, nor am I in India ;)
If we're talking professionals, at home work could work out, but I know the average joe office worker wouldn't be very productive if he/she doesn't have someone looking over their shoulder. People are lazy! If they can goof off, they will.
15 Years ago was 1989.
I should hope people were doing their own word processing by then, considering WordStar and WordPerfect had both been out for years.
For many years now I have thought that environmentalists; in fact, every urbanite who has had to deal with traffic jams and sprawl, have been somewhat misguided in their attempts to solve traffic, fuel, and pollution problems, by suggesting expensive solutions involving light-rail, busing, or other forms of mass transit.
Instead, they should be focusing on how businesses can be encouraged to get employees to telecommute.
It's not for everybody, but I'll wager that 20% or more of the nation's work force could probably work just as well out of their homes.
Telecommuters don't pollute, don't waste gas, don't cause traffic jams, don't have traffic accidents. The savings to local governments and individuals could be enormous. Businesses save too because they need less office space and therefore expend less energy heating, cooling, and maintaining that space.
Proverbs 21:19
Actually, the blending of personal life and work is probably the traditional way of working: farming, shepherding, crafts, etc.
The notion of having to go to a separate, specially designed building to do your work became the standard and norm with the industrial revolution and with businesses that weren't owned by the people who worked there anymore.
I don't see either way as being necessarily better or worse. In the past, the choice was driven by economic necessity and infrastructure. We may have a little more choice in the matter today, and that's probably good.
Having worked for Microsoft, and other big companies, I don't know why they haven't utilized bruadband more for their developers and testers. Most of the work done doesn't require physical presence at a job site.
Weekly meetings at a job site, or video conferencing would work just as well as the system currently in place.
These companies could save millions on building expenses, utilities, heating and cooling, etc.
ALl it would require is for these companies to pay for the broadband connections and related expenses (they do this at the worksite anyway), send the necessary hardware to the employee's home (they provide the hardware anyway) and let the employee pay for their electric, heating and cooling and food, etc (most people have to pay these expenses anyway).
Then companies like Microsoft can cut back on the "campus" and have a handful of buildings used for administrative tasks, meetings, and those few groups that do need to be "at the office" (like R&D).
VPN is secure with the latest in encryption technology, broadband is 1.5 m (or more), cellphones, vid-cams, and other things are easy to use and cheep.
I would prefer to work from home, and I know millions of others who would too...
How are matters dealing with money dealt with?
/.ers have mentioned that they work on laptops belonging to their work, and/or have employer-paid DSL lines and cell phones. But what about costs associated with the workplace? Currently, employers pay for office space, utilities, janitors, security measures (ID cards, security personnell), etc.
Some
Will employers re-imburse at-home workers for these costs? Or should it be the responsibility of the worker to provide the workplace and bear the costs associated with it? For example, if I work from home, will my employer cover the costs of setting aside a workplace in my home, and reimburse me for the electricity I use when working? What about heating or cooling my workspace? How can such costs be separated from the costs involved in maintaing my home?
You can make an analogy to a clothing factory vs. piecemeal work: the clothing factory provides the materials, lighting, sewing machines, fabric upfront, and in peicemeal work the worker provides all this (with exception of the fabric) and only gets paid after each piece of clothing is sewn.
Unless factors like these are taken care of, telecommuting seems like a bad deal for many employees.
"Righteous speed demon and trust fund party darling of justice"
I think you've unintentionally hit on the reason why telecommunting wasn't as big a hit as it could be. The fact that most of manage-ment would have found that they weren't really necessary Yeah there was the fear of loss of control, but behind that fear was the reality. Funny thing is with the bottom falling out of the economy, they still ended up on the unemployment line. Telecommuting doesn't always need broadband to work, and it has been available as an option even before "outsourcing" entered our vocabulary, or the later excuse of "we can't find the talent we need, bring on the HB-1's". There's also the "personality" issue that people have been mentioning so far. Two things: one how do people know if they're cut out for it, if they never even get the chance (kind of like a regular office)? Two people can and do change. How they presently behave at work doesn't mean they willl behave identically telecommuting.
I think you're making the mistake of hindsight. While a lot of third-world companies do have very capable people. that hasn't always been true, and neither have they had the benefit of an infrastructure to support their capabilities. The thing with telecommuting is that THEY NEVER EVEN TRIED. It was always a bunch of excuses, even though telecommuting has been possible for several decades (no you DON'T need broadband). Could the jobs have gone overseas, even after mass adoption of telecommuting? Possibly, but we'll never know because THEY NEVER EVEN TRIED.
Let me see, the last time I tried to work from home...
:)
8am-9am: Watch daytime TV in a useless attempt to avoid starting to do some real work
9am: Baby wakes up
9am-9:30am: Change, Dress and Feed baby
9:31am: Dog decides he needs the bathroom
9:31am: Dog #2 decides he needs to go as well
9:32am: Dog #2 has an "accident". Clean accident up.
9:45am-11:45am: Chase baby around the house, saving his life several times as he tries to connect himself to the mains electrical supply. He doesn't see why this isn't funny.
12pm: Decide, what the heck, it's lunchtime. We both eat.
12:05pm: Just as I'm settling down to eat, both dogs need the bathroom again.
12:06pm: Clean Dog #2's second "accident" of the day up
12:06pm: Baby dumps food over himself. Chaos ensues as both dogs try to get all the food that fell on the floor.
12:30pm: Give up and call the babysitter.
That's one of my quieter days...
Oooh buzzwords "telecommute" "work from home" - how exiting!
Reality check, friends.
If you can work at home, anyone else can do your job overseas with a lower salary and possibly, with far fewer distractions.
Be happy about your work place, your PHB, your commute, your cubicle and all the other trappings of traditional employment. It may be more fleeting than you think.
Telecommuting or telework would be very good for me since I would be able to split time between Colorado and Indiana and get more time with my son.
Here are some of the benefits I see with telecommuting
Most jobs are in large cities and being able to live someplace where the cost of living is cheaper such as a rural area
Live in two different places such as for example, Florida or Arizona in the Winter and Colorado, Minnesota, Montana, Idaho in the Summer when it is too hot in the Sunbelt
Get time with children who live in a different state with an ex-spouse
Miss out on rush hour traffic and its problems such as accidents, traffic tickets and increased insurance premiums along with wear & tear on your car
Company can save $$$$ on office space rent, cost of phones
CORedneck
ASDF
Just completed a research proposal into this very topic. Luminaries in the area like Patricia Mokhtarian and others have well documented the issues like:
Management style/structure
Workplace distractions
Home distractions
Employee desire for social interactions
Employee desire for visibility for promotion
Gender differences (which strongly impact motivation of telecommuting)
Geographic location
The point is, this is likely to remain a very specialized option which the employee and employer agree to allow under certain conditions and for only certain individuals. This >50% thing is ridiculous in light of existing issues.
Working from home is a lonely lonely thing. Western society is already turning into a personal-space fortress, this just makes it worse. You also end up working extreme hours; its hard to separate work from home, and you end up just getting stuck doing work-shit well into what should be personal time.
I've been working from home for most of the last 4 years and its a big relief finally having an office to work from, even if my office-mates aren't my work-mates. Sure working from home is convenient, at times, but the majority of people still need a structured social environment to meet people and being social beings, this is all so very very important to help with becoming a happy human-worm-person.
_
\\/ are accustomed' - First Lensman
... that most people don't really DO anything.
Neocons are a subset of the neoliberals. Neoliberalism is an old idea. Neocons basically represent the faction of the GOP (and some Dems) that want to rule the Mideast with an iron hand. You might say that necons basically represent the religious or hardcore neoliberals in the USA who are strongly in favor of using the military.
Neoliberalism is the core of American politics. And neoliberalism has been a long tradition in the USA. The USA Constitution is neoliberal.
Both Democratic and GOP parties are staunchly neoliberal, but the GOP is more so.
The nations that are farthest away from neoliberalism are the quasisocialist countries (there are only one or maybe 2 truly socialist countries). Norway is pretty far away from neoliberalism. England is closer to true neoliberalism than France or the Netherlands. A strong welfare state is anathema to neoliberals.
Neoliberalism is centered around looking out for the rights of property and wealth.
Neoliberalism has nothing to do with American liberals, such as Rep. Dennis Kucinich, Cynthia McKinney, et al.
Kerry, BTW, is NOT a liberal. He is a neoliberal.
eat shiat and bark at the moon
You've obviously never had a job you *enjoyed*.
I spend time at home doing things for work because my work is interesting, and I believe it has a meaningful impact. I also work on other things at home, and I dare say I've even spent a few hours at the office working on various side projects.
In the end, I do what I need to do to get things done; my work week averages about 40 hours a week, and I'm the most productive person in my department by far. Its not just a job, its part of "what I do".
Admittedly, I'm lucky (small, effective, and intelligent management team; job I enjoy doing), but I'm sure I'm not completely alone in that. What I'LL never understand is why some people are happy to spend 40 hours a week doing something mindnumbing or hateful, no matter WHERE you end up doing it.
What about the toddlers?
No way in hell I can work for home unless I outsource my 3yo.
I think the original title was "Outsourceable" -- that's meaningful, since just because something is "outsourceable" doesn't mean that job will disapear from the US economy.
In fact, I'm amazed not to have seen here the most obvious argument I can think of with regard to telecommuting and outsourcing, which is:
It is telecommuting that will let workers within the US compete with all those outsourcing companies outside the US. This could be elaborated, but I think the principle should be obvious.
There is no way in hell I can cheaply or efficiently enough while I am located in corporate cube-farm to compete with an individual who can do a similar task while connected via cable modem/web cam/voice link from a mud hut in a third world country.
OTOH, If I am in my own tar-paper shack, wearing my rags i dug out of the landfill, I might still be able to make enough telecommuting to pay for the ferrari, since I no longer have to maintain an pretense of "corporate image". In my experience, the cost of remaining onsite (which is usually in another state from where I live) is a very large percentage of my rate. If I were allowed to work from my own, broadband connected location, I could make myself much more affordable to the corps who seem to want whatever the hell it is that makes me so valuable they are will to dump all that cash on me just to have me warm a chair in a dingy cuby a thousand miles from home. ... which is where I seem to spend most of my time.
I'd be willing to bet I could feed a 3rd world family of 8 for a week or two on what the companies spends to have me onsite for one over-night. You could create 2 outsourced jobs in India or Mexio out of what the corp would save by letting me work offsite/at home/whatever...
The thing I don't understand is why the corps I have to deal with seem far more interested in spending the money to jerk me around all over the country, than in saving that money to line their own greedy little corporate coffers. ...
Bah. I've been trying to get or create a "telecommute" position for almost 10 years now, and all it's gotten me is tighter OTJ restrictions and no broadband at home. I no longer believe there will be any significant move to telecommuting in the US. The corps will continue to spend until their broke, then all the jobs will go overseas. Apparently that's what they teach in MBA school; most engineers are not short-sighted to implement that kind the idiocyu the infests corporate Amerika in the 21st Century...
"The Internet is made of cats."
At my workplace, the word came down that telecommuting was allowed. Following this order, lower-level managers, who still measure work by the amount of hours the cubicle is occupied, made a rule that no one could telecommute...except managers. Funny how that works...
Yesterday I went to a different site where I had no cubicle. I forwarded my cubicle phone to my work cellphone and my work email to my Linux laptop via Citrix. The serial console to the server I was working on, in the dark, dirty basement, I forwarded via a terminal server to the laptop as well.
Then I went outside, enjoyed the nice weather, and paid no attention to either my laptop or my phone. :)
There's no sig like this sig anywhere near this sig, so this must be the sig.
I can't stand it! Typos! Well, this bears repeating anyway...
There is no way in hell I can work cheaply or efficiently enough to compete while I am located in corporate cube-farm, while my competition is an individual who can do a similar task while connected via cable modem/web cam/voice link from a mud hut in a third world country.
In my experience, the cost of remaining onsite (which is usually in another state from where I live) is a very large percentage of my rate. If I were allowed to work from my own, broadband-connected location, I could make myself much more affordable to the corps who seem to want whatever-the-hell it is that seems to make me so valuable that they are willing to dump all that cash on me just to get me to a chair in a dingy cube in a noisy building a thousand miles from home, which is where I seem to spend most of my time.
[Also, if I were working from home, I wouldn't get caught having to hastily click the "Submit" button without previewing when The Boss walks into the cube unexpectedly]
"The Internet is made of cats."
In a perfect world, where people care about outcomes rather than unimportant crap ...
I can dream!
I've been working from home for years as a full time employee, and I'm a project manager, too. A few things that others have pointed out that I'd like to add on:
1. It's not for everyone. Social gadflies will hate it (at first), no water cooler. But once more people start doing it I know local communities will be strengthened by this trend. I know more people in my hometown than at the main office.
2. Separate your work area from your life. Put your office someplace you (or your spouse) can close off. I mean, so you're not tempted to work late or weekends.
3. Work becomes more goal based rather than hourly seat warming. This may be why many teleworkers claim to be more productive. If you finish early, more power to you. Take a mental break or push for that promotion. The downside, it's easier to work late and weekends. But, for me it all equals out.
4. All I need is a phone and high speed connection. IM, email, FTP and FedEx does the rest. We never use video conf, and voice over IM however inexpensive is painful without a headset.
5. I live/work in BFE where land is cheap and the view is great, not some prairie dog tech farm.
Cheers!
Just posting a new comment to an old article. I guess 14 days is the cutoff.