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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.'"
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...
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.
I'm in the odd sitution of working in my office (100 miles away from where I live), telecommuting from a sattelite office (15 miles away), or working from my house as my needs permit.
Curiously, I'm most productive at home, then at the sattelite office, and least productive in my actual office. I figure that's because people won't normally bother me while at home, but in my main office I have quite a bit of time eaten up by the pointy-haired bosses.
Considering that all that many of us need to work is 'net and phone, both of which are increasingly wireless, why should we be stuck in our dark little cubes all day?
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. :-)
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.
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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 was recently working on a team as an ASIC verification engineer. Our ASIC team was dispersed across 4 locations, east-coast and west-coast. Most of the west-coast folks were 'unassigned' meaning they didn't have real offices, most worked from home, or drop-in offices. As a result I had an opportunity to work from home quite a bit.
I found that one day a week was fine, and that I was more productive on that first day, but when it reached 2-3 days for the week, productivity dropped off, and it felt less like a job, and more like unemployment! I missed the interpersonal interaction even if most of it was not with my immediate team.
As far as the team goes -- it was a horrible experience. Tracking people down was a nightmare, meetings became completely useless since everyone was dialed-in (half of the time you couldn't hear anything, the other half you were asleep), communication became heavily dependent on e-mail which caused the response time to be 1-2 days for any issue. If I had to guess, I think our efficiency was dropped by 50-60%. If the cost of more engineers to overcome the inefficiency is less than the cost of real-estate it makes sense, but not if you can't tolerate longer product cycles or more engineering resource.
For a while I thought I could go live somewhere cheap and work remotely, but the question always turned to, "What do I do if I can't work with this company anymore?" How hard would it be to find a job, get trained, and integrate into a new team from a remote location?
I used to be a big fan of telecommuting, but now I would avoid it. I think having the option to work from home is good, say when it snows 4 feet, or you have to wait for the UPS guy or something, but I don't think I would want to be required to work from home.
Just my thoughts.