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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...
Gnome: A never ending quest to make unix friendly to people who don't want unix and excruciating for those that do.
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.
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.
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.
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)
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.
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
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".
Face time with your colleagues isn't as essential or common as one might think if an effort is made.
On my current project (I've been on it about 4 years now), I've never even met my boss of around 17 months, only met my last boss twice when we both went to different meetings in the same city at the same time, and never have met most of my coworkers. We aren't even all teleworkers (just me in fact). Working remotely has many of the same problems of teleworking. What difference does it make where I am working if part of my team is in California, part in the MidWest, part in Texas, and part in New York?
That said, contact with colleagues can be maintained, but it takes training and a consistent effort. It means literally calling up your peers and talking with them on a semi-informal basis much like walking over to their cube and chatting. It also takes an effort on everyone's part to communicate better in email or similar methods. Regular conference calls are a must to ensure that everyone is on the same page on the project. There are business training courses available to help train people in teleworking, what preconditions must exist to make it a success and how to cope with it. How to make it work is similar to how to make a remote office situation work where your project team is all over the country.
"I may disagree with what you say, but I will defend unto the death your right to say it." -- Voltaire
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
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.
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?
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.
Breakfast is really vital when you work from home, because it helps relax you for the day so you are not distracted.
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.
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
Errrrrm, actually, no. They can "randomly" decide to audit you every year and make your life completely fucking miserable for multiple months on end, every year. I've seen this happen, to my parents to be exact, and it's not pretty.
A better plan is to figure out what the averages for your industry are on things like meal expenses, travel expenses, etc. etc. and claim just slightly above average, no matter what your actual accounts show. That way you're much less likely to trigger an audit at all, and if you do end up getting audited, getting the discrepancies to result in just a reassessment instead of massive fines is going to be far more likely, assuming you have the basic skill for dealing with government of being able to lie with a straight face about the dog eating your receipts and so forth.
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