Slashdot Mirror
Telecommuting Backlash
coondoggie writes to tell us that advocates of the telecommute have stood up against recent finger pointing based on recent telecommuter screw ups. One of the more notable screw up was the recent loss of many veteran's personal information by a VA employee. From the article: "Despite years of growing acceptance, telework still has such detractors. 'The No. 1 challenge is cultural inertia. It's motivating the middle managers, teaching them a new way of doing work,' O'Keeffe says. 'It's the Luddite mentality that we need to change.'"
I read the whole article, and I couldn't find any instance of "finger pointing" by companies, the press, or the government. Who, exactly, is pointing fingers? This sounds like an article about a non-issue, if you ask me. I understand that many telecommuters want to continue telecommuting, but the article provides no information as to who this nebulous group of "finger pointers" are, or even if they really exist.
Ive been telecommuting for over 5 years now and Im about to give up.
People are resistant on working in ways to accomodate telelcommuting. People will wait for me to visit the office..even if thats many weeks - rather than pick up the phone.
I also find that when people want to play politics - you are at a severe disadvantage when telecomuting.
Every time management changes you have to reconvince them its viable and I have decided over all that
Thats despite the fact that I work in an IT department for a large vibrant and successful company that prides itself on its forward thinking.
So after 5 years - Im giving up - not for technical reasons.. which I have been able to manage one way or another - but because the culture - even in IT is just not accepting of telecommuters and in fact disdvantages them.
Really, what is more important, saving the planet or a few million VA records. I think the number one reason to support telecommuting is so people can live in the area of their choosing and still earn a decent wage. Commuting is wasteful of both time and energy. I can't believe the sierra club and greenpeace don't push telecommuting more.
Find coupons in Greeley
What benefit do you gain from 3 layers of NAT and 2 proxies other than a ton of lag? A single well configured version of each should surely be sufficient.
Just taking a swag at it...
Home network
Corporate network, likely main corporate domain and/or remote access point.
Corporate subnet, likely his corporate sub-domain.
That's easily 3 NAT's and a couple proxies, only the first under his control.
Am I close?
I am a viral sig. Please copy me and help me spread. Thank you.
Of course how effective you can be as a telecommuter depends on your profession. I work in IT and have been working 100% telecommute for about 7 years and it has worked out just fine. I can get a lot more done with email and phone than I ever could with face-to-face meetings. I can put my thoughts together concisely in an email and avoid the smalltalk. I can also keep working while I'm listening in on a conference call (thanks to the mute button) and multitask more than one project at a time. It's not uncommon for me to work on a project with the project leader in Arkasas, the DBA in Missippi, the customer in Texas and the data center in Louisianna so the work environment is disparate anyway. Face-to-face is fine and beneficial for gaining the comfort level of the employer, but if you can gain their trust with solid results it really makes no difference. As a bonus, I'm able to charge cheaper rates because I don't have a lot on travel expenses.
Sometimes the light at the end of the tunnel is the headlight of an oncoming train.
One thing I notice is it allows people who don't volunteer to fade in the background... Guy I work with has the same title as me (network engineer) but has been doing it for 5 years longer and actually reports to another network engineer who then reports to my boss (if that makes sense). He doesn't volunteer to take projects so people forget about him and don't offer him projects. It really requires you to make an effot to be noticed. That said it's working ok for me but I make an effort to try and make contact with my boss every other day.