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Will Telecommuting Kill a Career?
coondoggie writes to mention that Network World has a piece taking a look at the effects of the telecommute on advancement within your career. From the article: "Over 60% of 1,320 global executives surveyed by executive search firm Korn/Ferry International said they believe that telecommuters are less likely to advance in their careers in comparison to employees working in traditional office settings. Company executives want face time with their employees, the study said."
Whilst it might slow down your progress if your goal (at that point) is progressing, it might actually be the intended target.
Getting to handle home life and work life and having time to relax and be yourself in the evenings might just be the drug some people seek.
liqbase
It's obvious that telecommutting kills job prospects if you want to move up the corporate ladder. If you telecommute, it becomes increasingly more difficult to prove to your superiors at work that you should belong in management. It doesn't matter which branch of the company you are in; if you can't prove you can belong in management, you're going to get stuck somewhere along the way.
This is a study? It's an opinion poll! Unless it's a longitudinal study comparing workers who elected to telecommute against those in similar positions who didn't, it's not an answer to the question posed in the article's title. Since when have executives been a reliable source for hard data of this kind? I know we sort of canonize the executive class in this country, but this is ridiculous...
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Executives have a very hard time seeing outside of their sphere of influence. If a telecommuting employee isn't promoted as much as they desire and deserve within a company, they will advance their career by changing jobs... It wouldn't matter if telecommuters never got a promotion. If they are both ambitious and deserving, they will still advance their career.
So what? I bet over 60% of global executives believed there were WMDs in Iraq, that Saddam Hussein had something to do with 9/11, that ENRON was a great company, and so on. Just because global executives believe something doesn't mean there's any truth to it. Sheesh, what a non-story.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
At the end of the day, people help those folks they know and are comfortable with. This means that if you don't have a good relationship with your boss - or his boss - then you're not really a serious contendor for a serious promotion. You might get a 7% increase in your salary at the end of the year, but your still the grunt who works 10 -15 hours a day making someone else look good.
If you want to climb the corporate ladder, turn off your computer and go into work. Right now. OK? No, no, stop - go in to work, you can reply there.
If you want to be independent, set your hours, spend more time with the kids, choose your employers and your work, or whatever, then by all means, go file for an LLC and get to work. It's hard and you'll probably earn less and get less sleep.
I've seen even the best employees who were teleworkers get let go before the mediocre folks who bitched at the water cooler, come lay-offs time, that's just the way it works, humans are social creatures. It's a bad 'career' option, but a good lifestyle choice.
Neither choice is right for everybody but it's good to honestly assess which is the right one for you.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
If you're a pure-play techie, then it does not matter. What does "progress" mean to a techie? It means being taken more seriously and doing more technical leadership stuff (architectural etc). In these positions I don't see that telecommuting poses any problems.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
For every post, there is an equal and opposite re-post.
It worked remarkably well. Communication between team members was actually better than on many teams that I've worked on in cube farms. When everyone is isolated, a consciousness develops that everyone needs to be very explicit about picking up the phone and calling each other to stay on the same page. In the cube farm, it's easy to become complacent about the fact that so-and-so has a cube two aisles over, and never go and talk to them.
The telecommuting job was wonderful in terms of being able to keep up an aggressive pace, sustainably. Adding up the time for the commute to and from the job I had had before it, plus getting ready in the morning before going to work, travel time out to eat at lunch, and so forth, an eight-hour work day generally took me around eleven hours or so. On my telecommuting job, I wound up working lots of ten hour days, yet felt like I was working less hard.
On the other hand, my current job involves agile development where everyone is together in a single project room, and that's just about as pleasant, and much more efficient in terms of delivering on time. And impossible to do by telecommuting....
When I hear people say things like this I have to wonder... if you can really make 50% somewhere else then what the heck are you doing?! Go get it! You said that this is a multimillion dollar company and not a church or a charity house, so why why why?! Are you just too lazy to interview for that 50% more? If it is because the company that would pay you 50% more won't let you telecommute, then it really isn't 50% more money, because that is a benefit you won't have.
There are other ways for things to go wrong. You can wind up on the 'do we really need these people?' list for many reasons:
Basically, I now take it as axiomatic that without 'face time', misunderstandings inevitably accumulate. I've found you can only set up telecommuting arrangements after working onsite for a while, and developing trust, and that it's easier in small companies, or when you're essentially contracting. But if the people who trust you change jobs for any reason, you're back in a precarious position, because you can't build relational trust reliably from a distance.
I'm presently in a fabulous situation whereby my boss drives near my house on his own way to work, so any work meetings we need also take place offsite. That maintains all the face-to-face communication we need, is great for my productivity (since I don't have to go *anywhere*), and gives him a good excuse to stay out of the office once or twice a week also. But it wouldn't work if I weren't (at minimum) in the same city.
(I can't comment on whether video conferencing can produce the required level of communication; I think it may; never tried it.)
managment think i do nothing
Then take a long vacation and prove them wrong.
to add to this insult, i did all this on a cut throat budget at a bargin price for them. my rate is 50% of what the next guy would charge.
When you come back, tell them you now have a better offer somewhere else, but since you're old friends you'd continue to work for them for double your current rate if they want to keep you. That will quickly make up for the money you lost from the time off, and if you're right they won't find anyone cheaper. People who are working for bargain rates rarely get any respect, telecommuter or not. Management thinks, "why, if they were really good, they'd charge more".
If they go for it, they should have new respect for you as a highly-paid professional who has significant value to the company that they missed when you were unavailable. If they don't buy it, you were wrong about your value to this company, and you can move on to another job where things may go better for you. Either way, your current problem is gone.
Liquid is right. Maybe some of us are less concerned about "advancing" than having time with our families and a high quality of life.
I can't exactly put my finger on the day and time I decided I didn't need to "move up" any more, but let me tell you, it was a liberating moment.
The funniest part of it is that immediately after the first time I turned down a "promotion" because I felt satisfied with my life as it was, coincided directly with the really good opportunities showing up. It almost seems like happiness and satisfaction are qualities that draw success. Instead of running after success, if you reach a point where you're not quite so hungry, so desperate, success starts coming after you, instead.
I've seen what ambitious, driven people look like. Take someone like Dick Cheney for example. Here's a guy who clawed his way to the top, literally. He's worked his way to a level of wealth and power most people only dream of, and his face is like a road-map of pain and desperation. I wouldn't want to be inside his head on the day he shuffles off this earth.
You are welcome on my lawn.
This article doesn't ring truer to anyone more than myself.
When I first started out in the corporate world, I thought everything was all about numbers: performance, profit, annual reviews. I decided to focus all my time and efforts on delivering the highest performance possible and doing the highest quality work possible. I actually had a belief I didn't need to play political games and the such and would be recognized and rewarded for my quality work. As such, when my company started offering a telecommuting like job, I jumped at the chance. I would be able to spend more time actually working, at home, rather than getting dressed up and driving into an office every day. I wouldn't have to make any efforts to get to know anyone, I wouldn't need to go out to lunch, and the kind of development I was doing was perfectly suited to working from home. Unlike most telecommuters, I don't have kids or really any distractions (less than a typical office), so it was a great environment to concentrate and really produce high quality work.
And produce great work I did. Not to toot my own horn, but I was the fire behind the development in my organization. I am a skilled programmer, and on top of that I went overboard. My home became my work place and I was home all the time. Why was I doing this? I was working for a mid sized company and I was confident that if I became absolutely essential and not only had my hand in everything -- but was top dog at a lot of projects -- I would be promoted up the chain to a great job. Even if I didn't stay with this company, I felt this was my ticket toward the upper echelons of profession.
The result of all this work? I did get much praise and appreciation and I was indispensable on our most important projects. Like the server room, most people in the company knew who I was but had never seen me. They knew me as the muscle that kept chugging away. I did get some perks, like a personal cash bonus from our CIO, a letter from our CEO, and a discretionary debit card I could use for personal expenses. I had butt loads of respect. I did go into the office and eventually my job style was more about 50/50 due to not much actual development anymore but management of a team of developers (80% of which worked 100% at the office).
When our CIO retired (nice guy, but just really detatched from today's tech in every sense of the word) I was sure I would be walking in the office bright and early. Most people thought I would. It was a logical choice, I had spent over 10 years of my life working for this company, I was just about the highest developer there having joined when the company was small and it was now midsize. I was making all the decisions that the CIO should have been making for several years and leading a team of developers. Our company was doing great, projects were completed, and I could actually see the fruits of my efforts.
So who did they pick? Someone I had only ever heard of in passing. He was an ok developer and a decent manager. He and I worked on a few projects but he was always loped off into a category with a few people working on x or doing x. What was the logic behind this decision? Well apparently, the guy was very likeable. He was in the office and making the rounds, more than I was. I also found out he took a lot of credit for things I really did, and that I can prove I did, and that everyone knew I did. But because I wasn't there when he was chatting up the executives and having "face time" to defend myself and show them just how smart and loyal I was to their faces, I might as well of not even done the work. It's quite true that they will believe whatever you tell them if they believe you, and most executives won't take the time to research.
In the end, they knew who I was and they wanted me right where I was, doing the same thing, forever. Rightfully so, it was making them a lot of money. Thinking back I should have probably just gone into the office like everyone else, put in 60% of the amount of effort I did, and then spent 10% more effor
I'm not telecommuting at the moment, and living fairly close to the office, I'm not really trying to anyway, but... somehow I'm not seeing that as so critical. I have co-workers who are here 3 days a week, and, honestly, there are whole weeks when they're hardly actually needed. You'll want _some_ face time, but I'm not sure that even 2-3 days a week are necessary every week.
Going around and asking in person only works that well for a small company anyway. For example here I ended up maintaining the truly awful code of someone whose office is now at the other end of the city. If I wanted to talk to him, I'd have to set an appointment and drive there, which probably isn't any better from the office than from home. In fact, from home I'd actually be closer to his office.
Half the time we _do_ use email anyway, and the other half we just reach for the phone. Why wouldn't it work just as well from home? And since everything is in the same CVS, if you need any clarifications, you can just tell the other guy which project, file and function or line number you're interested in. Having to actually go to another department and ask in person is person is more the exception when phone and email failed, rather than having a permanent exodus of people going to paint something on other people's whiteboards.
Ditto for guys whose code we use, or guys using our code. Heck, some of the frameworks I've had to work with were from companies not even in the same city, or the same country altogether. Some of the guys whose code is being maintained don't even work here any more.
All in all, while I don't deny that sometimes it _is_ an advantage, I see more value in having good and clearly defined architectures and interfaces. That will keep serving you well even when the whole original team moved on to other jobs. It's not a theoretical situation, we actually have one framework here where that's exactly what happened over time.
And when they didn't yet, knowing (or having a way to find out quickly) who to phone or email if you have questions. If the architecture and interfaces are well designed and documented, and you have competent people at both ends of the line, chances are there won't be a whole tome of an explanation you need, so telephone and email work just as well. And when someone new to it needs a more thorough crash course, an appointment can be arranged... which is exactly what we're doing right now anyway, even without telecommuting.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Well, a possible exception to this scenario is that some well-maintained systems can run unattended for a long time before some small details change enough to upset it. Current projects that go unfinished were unseen anyway and wouldn't be missed.
So he could take his leave and be unavailable when the realize they needed him 2 years ago.
It depends on the situation you're in and the company you work for. I do however think that if you telecommute, that you have to work a little bit harder to make sure managment "sees" what you are doing. As long as they know you're being productive you should be fine.
I've been telecommuting for about six months now. I worked at the office for a year, year and a half, before my family and I decided to move. The company actually asked me if I would be interested in telecommuting. Now I actually have two other programmers that I directly manage. It's a lot of work to manage remotely, but VPN, phone, internal IM, email, etc. help. You don't have the cooler time talk, so you have to make up for it in other ways. It's easy to let your guard down though.
With all that said, I do enjoy telecommuting. It gives me more time with my wife and son. I can sleep in until I have to get up and clock in for work, and then take my shower on my lunch break if I want. My day is a lot more flexible, and because of that I think I'm more productive. Communication is very important though. You can't be a black hole that people only hear from time to time, that's when telecommuting is dangerous.
... who know nothing or very little about software development and just have nothing else to do than eyeing their subordinates with disapproving looks or asking them about their status every 30 minutes or so? Of course they need their playground, telecommuting would take away the very reason of their existence. Sorry, this may sound extreme, but I've been bugged by such people some time ago.
diginferno
'1. It's as if "may be provable" turned into "already proven" somewhere along the way, and I don't see any such proof. '
... Quality of life, for example, is something that [is achieved] by knowing when to ... just have a life."
... I don't think you can automatically assume that if one is better served by more networking, the other will too."
Sorry, mate. This isn't academia, it's slashdot ^_^. I wrote that off the top of my head as a hypothetical model, not an implementable one. IE: you're trying to run pseudocode directly on hardware. Of course nothing in the statement assumes that things are proven. Should be a given in a hypothetical model. Especially one that states it, as you say, at the start.
'Topic: Not necessarily a straw man'
Assuming you're refering to what I called a straw man in the first pgph of my post, of course it's a straw man; it's a statement of subjective experience placed out as evidence to the contrary of a position. There's nothing wrong with it being a straw man argument, just that this case may or may not be a border condition, depending on the results of actual research.
'...pretty much means that you found one axis that is completely independent from the others, and you can maximize without touching the others, which tends to never be true.'
Granted, but that's how the model starts; constraints and such are added as the game is fleshed out with empirical data. Note that I said in no less than two places that it's the beginning of a model in which I hypothesized that it may be a border condition, not that I promoted such a thing as fact.
'As you undoubtedly know, min-maxing in an optimal solution in pretty much any space _can_, in fact, reduce the value on one axis, to gain more on another that matters more.'
Pretty 20-20 obvious, and thank you for positing it. Still, you'll note that it is far easier, in a work setting, to quip a joke or discuss a small matter with your co-workers if they're actually in the room with you, ie: you don't have to take time away from typing code to type an IM or email. You're right, though; there are limits to a person's multitasking ability, and only so many hours in the day. That should be reflected in the game.
"There are problems and factors which you seem to not even consider at all
Very true, but harder to quantify. Should I have determined QoL via hours of free time? How about an inverse coefficient based on commuting time? I'm not being sarcastic, just throwing out examples; what do you think the best quantification of QoL would be?
"As with any other min-maxing problem, you have to reduce X to get more on Y and Z, or reduce Y to get more of the other two."
As you stated before, the model is 'ill-defined', or as I like to say, 'green'. Exchanges such as this, and empirical research are needed to refine the model. The purpose of a green model is just to give ideas about how a system works, not to rigidly define it.
"Two solutions to two different problems can end up _very_ different
True, but that's the purpose of using game theory for such a model. Notice I didn't use 'advancement', but 'movement' in my original post. The idea is to determine whether the player is more able to change his position in the environment based on a number of variables, some or all of which may or may not be connected.
"For example, it seems to me that being a good programmer (and having a boss who can actually judge that) is alone very much enough."
Absolutely true! But I'll give you an example using a real game: Final Fantasy. It's equally possible to defeat a given monster if you're uber strong or uber magical, but it's also possible to do so if your character is well balanced. Similarly, it may be possible that the ability to network somewhat well can make up for, for example, being a merely mediocre coder. If that were the case, it may be the reason for the existence of so many mediocre programm
110100 1101000 1101000 1100110 0 1101111 1101000 1100011 1
>Face-to-face time is only really needed these
... I've worked remotely for weeks at a time from home and from foreign countries (while traveling for adoption, during family illnesses and tragedies, etc.). And I do freelance web programming on the side which is *all* remote. So I'm not speaking from total ignorance and inexperience here. I work pretty effectively remotely.
..." over the cube walls, etc.
>days for those who get some sort of warm, fuzzy
>reassurance from it.
It's still not the same.
Now, I do have some experience "telecommuting"
Nonetheless, when I stayed home for just a day recently from my day job (normally 100% in the office, cube worker), which just so happened to be the day we were frantically finishing testing some stuff and moving it to our live website, I was floored by how much of a pain communication was, by contrast. So much goes on "over the cube wall", so to speak, that I hadn't even realized. It's so beneficial to have all those electronic tools of communication that you mention *and* be able to stroll over, see what somebody is doing, call "does anybody know