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Flexible Working Good, But Mistrusted
usefool writes "iTNews has a report commissioned by Toshiba Australia, which stated flexible working (the ability for people to work from whatever place offers the greatest suitability and productivity for the employee and their employer) offers up to six times the level of return through the cost savings associated with fewer overheads, parking, technology and recruitment and training costs. However it is perceived as difficult to monitor and supervise, therefore not always practised by employers."
Of course they can't be trusted, they are from australia!
So we have something that's massivly economically feasable, but it would pull some control out of the hands of the bourgeoisie. I wonder why this bothers "managers".
:: shrug ::
Maybe because they're afraid we'll figure out we don't need them.
Yes, I know this is a simple and almost disingenuous statement and the language is clear cut "us and them."
~Anztac
For the employees, this sounds like a rocking idea (well, really, it is). You'd not have to worry about traffic, parking, or the noisy bastard in the cube next to you. BUT, the technology enabling employees to work from home is the exact same technology that enables outsourcing of that same employees work across oceans.
For employers, they are untrusting of their at home employees because they cannot run task over them all day, making sure they're getting their work done, etc. BUT, this same paranoia is probably helping to keep these same managers from outsourcing the same work over the same fears.
So, put this all together - if an untrusting manager tries out the work from home approach, and finds that it does indeed cut costs as well as have the same (or greater) output, then why not cut costs a little more by using cheaper employees across an ocean?
Personally... I think that once managers (and employees for that matter) are able to grasp the idea of working from home, it will revolutionize the work place. I can do a hell of a lot more work in 6 hours at home then I can in 8 hours at the office (well, 8 hours + 1.5 hours of commuting, so 9.5 hours of "work"). The employers could save bank by letting me work from home, and only coming in on a day or two a week for face to face meetings by letting someone(s) else use my cube the other 4 days a week. I also personally believe that outsourcing will garner some really bad press sooner rather then later, scaring off many businesses from the practice. Don't believe me? Ask your local hospital =)
"1984" was ment to be a warning, not a guidebook. You hear that Kim Jong-il!? BushCo?!
Oops! Here's the wurkin' clicky - A tough lesson on medical privacy Pakistani transcriber threatens UCSF over back pay
"1984" was ment to be a warning, not a guidebook. You hear that Kim Jong-il!? BushCo?!
Now when they outsource your job to India, you dont have to be escorted into the parking lot.
When it gets down to it-talking trade balances here-once we've brain-drained all our technology into other countries, once things have evened out, they're making cars in Bolivia and microwave ovens in Tadzhikistan and selling them here-once our edge in natural resources has been made irrelevant by giant Hong Kong ships and dirigibles that can ship North Dakota all the way to New Zealand for a nickel-once the Invisible Hand has taken all those historical inequities and smeared them out into a broad global layer of what a Pakistani brickmaker would consider to be prosperity-y'know what? There's only four things we do better than anyone else:
music
movies
microcode (software)
high-speed pizza delivery
-- Neal Stephenson, Snow Crash.
May we never see th
I've been doing hard-core "turn the knobs to 11" XP for a while now, and I feel quite the same feeling as this... We've proven that we can offer bug-free code, on time, every time, in a manner that allows new employees to come up to speed in days as opposed to weeks, but still, it just "feels" wrong to most management that the increased productivity is completely ignored...
It doesn't matter that we've gon from 6 month release cycles of mostly bug-fixes to one week cycles of new features, nor that we've gone down from two or three critical bugs a week to a total of TWO medium level bugs in two years. Those numbers are meaningless to the upper eschelons... but having two programmers working at the same machine, now THAT's a definite "problem area" that they feel needs to be addressed.
"Your superior intellect is no match for our puny weapons!"
Both my last job and my current job allow me to work from home. I come into the office when I have a meeting, or go to a client's office when needed. Otherwise, I sit at home. I don't even have my own desk at work.
I get more work done not having to stare at a gray or beige cubicle all day, I can crank up the tunes, and if I get sick of sitting at home, I can go to a cool coffee shop and get things done.
A couple of my friends do the work from home thing also for two different, but very large american corporations. They both love it. They get their work done more quickly, and they don't have to deal with traffic.
Probably one of the greatest things about being able to work from home is that you can also get things done that are not work related, like wait around for a repair person, let the cleaning in, pay your bills, etc. I know this would sound to an employer like you were goofing off, but there is some downtime when you are waiting for a phone call or email so you can continue what you are working on, or when you've finished your work for the day and are waiting for something else to come up.
I no longer spend every waking minute of my day "getting stuff done." I spend my 8-10 hour day doing work for my employer and getting menial tasks done, and when I'm done at 5 or 6, I relax. My stress level has dropped like a rock, I no longer feel like I don't have enough time to live my life, and consequently, I'm likely more productive since I've just stopped worrying about things that I don't have time to do. The article a couple of days ago about stress causing $300 billion to employers every year is spot on, and a good way to solve this problem is to allow employees to work from home.
If an employer finds that people aren't doing their job when working from home, either make them come into the office, or fire them and hire someone more responsible.
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This may seem a contrary view, but I did (and do) telecommuting for a government agency. I find it saves the taxpayer money, but costs _me_ more.
See, I have a little counter/clock. I tap 'start when I work', and 'stop' when I step away from my desk (to get a drink, to do a personal call, to check the mail, to play games on my personal-use PC, et cetera).
So in 8 hours of clock time, I only tally up maybe 5 hours of billable time. My paycheck is less, but my employer is getting a bargain because he's only paying for honest actual-work time.
Problem for me is, if I was onsite, coffee breaks and chatting with people and playing a quick solitaire game wouldn't be seen as amiss, and I'd get paid for those hours!
The theory is 'few people are really productive for a straight 8 hours, so some distraction is useful for the thinking process'. And further, networking with colleagues casually _does_ reap benefits in later work (whereas dithering at home is always useless for work).
But if you're telecommuting and tracking work-versus-play honestly, you don't get the freebie perks of being onsite.
That said, I don't mind stiffing myself because I don't have the stress of thinking, "I'm not productive today!" If I'm not productive, I'm not paid. That's a good thing, but it's kind of contrary to the "9-5 grind".
So the question of whether _you_ should telecommute is, do you prefer to have a job, or to work? If you just want a job, telecommuting will result in less pay. If you're more project oriented and enjoy your work, though, telecommuting is great-- the pay is less but so is the stress, and the flexibility is great.
Or, you can be like too many people and just charge each day regardless of whether you did project work or not, but we won't go there...
A.
I own a company with my fiancee, we've been working from home for a few years.
I really enjoy it. I can sing loudly, jump up and down and scream at my code, or hack obsessively for 36 hours in a row.
We have clients in four countries and the variety keeps me interested and continually improving.
Our overhead is much much lower because we live in a very small (low rent, inexpensive food, etc) town in Sweden and our clients are mostly located in the high population density areas of Europe.
I suspect that the ultimate in flexible working is where companies range in size from one to eight people, with four being the best size.
I believe a good company works like a good jazz band, you're always improvising the next solution, so it's best to have team (band) members you know and trust.
I suspect that a company of one hundred people would be more efficient as many separate partner companies of two to six. 'Corporate reorganization' would still happen, but in that case it would show up in the changing business relations between those many units.
Think of Conway's Life applied to business.
I believe this would dramatically improve the agility of businesses.
Any feedback on these ideas?
Shae Erisson - ScannedInAvian.com
I work in an office and talk to almost no one in person. In fact there's been many days when the only conversation I had was over IM with people in the same office, which is exactly what I would be doing at home, only I would know that my employer wasn't reading my conversations.
Once managers actually get the idea, guess who will be the first to want to work from home?
In areas where it's allowed, I've seen managers rather keen on the idea, since they can delegate everything paper-related to their assistant. It's actually easier for them, than for regular employees.
But then they'll realize just how replaceable they are(just send the executive assistant to manager school, and cut the manager out of the equation, for cheaper!)
I've been working from home the majority of the time for the past 3+ years. It works out for my company because we are small and there is no overhead cost for a phyiscal office location. When we need a conference room for a planning meeting best done in person, we rent it out, but the majority of the time things can be taken care of over the phone and email.
The thing is, it works out great for me, I eliminate the expense of gas, time caught in traffic, and pay less for auto insurance. Works out great for my employer because I can be more rested, less stressed, and even under a critical deadline, I can have laundry running in the background so I'm able to work more hours. If I can't sleep or am just bored, I can get something productive done.
The benefits are significant, and the trust portion doesn't have to be a big issue. Each day or so, I set goals of what needs to be accomplished. I then either get it done or not. If not, then it is easy to see I wasn't working (aside from normal things that come up occasionally). And as far as setting too easy of goals, well there are co-workers and my past performance. If my goals are not up to par it can be easy to see there too.
I have heard all the arguments pro/con already posted, and all those yet to be posted. So what do we, as those of us interested in promoting 'flexiblity' and 'work-at-home' hours to our bosses?
Should we get paid per 'project module' completed?
How do we deal with bug fixes, where it takes 5 minutes to fix the bug, but 5 days to track the critter down?
Are 'rush' jobs, worth more?
How do we become somehow measurable/accountable/whatever to not only the bosses (there's always more than one, get over it) and your peers?
In other words the objections and fears raised may or may not be based on something real, but the fact these fears DO EXIST, makes them a road-block to selling the bosses/peers on the idea.
For most people, however, I think they would take advantage of it and work less. Not to impugn the fine folks who replied above, but in my personal experience most employees exhibit the 'Lake Wobegone' effect, where everyone is in the top 50% of diligence. The truth is, time and time again, I have seen people abuse loose scheduling. Where I am right now, our team of 4 is able to come and go as they please, as long as they do 40 hours. Guess what? I am the first one here and the last one to leave every day. This is not an isolated occurrence. I experienced similar issues throughout my career.
Additionally, I agree with an above poster that if you can do your job from home, then make sure you have plenty of savings, because they may find that having someone do your work remotely works out a little too well.
Computerworld Today 9/9/04
Companies are already finding that their intellectual property is getting stolen, and their lawyers don't know the legal turf well enough to be able to enforce their contracts.
The other bad news about outsourcing is that savings are at best, about 20% for anything more complex than putting a Nike sneaker together. While the hourly rate is lower overseas, the cost of building infrastructure, workarounds where one can't build infrastructure, coordinating work across timezones, etc. become much more significant.
IMHO, offshoring is just another Bad Idea in the form of a management fad. Remember Theory X? Theory Y?
I think the fad will run its course, but the damages to business in outsourcing companies (e.g. kids in school are already avoiding IT / tech courses on the basis that the jobs aren't there) may take a generation to fix, and some Fortune 500 companies doing "bet the company" projects with outshoring won't survive the fad.
But the CEOs will get golden parachutes, so all will be OK in the end.
Tech Public Policy stuff
The only way I'd go back to an office would be for a lot more money or for a change to go back into building new technology.
But this isn't for everybody.
Tech Public Policy stuff