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."

Comments

It might do if you want to progress further

[LiquidCoooled]

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.

Re:It might do if you want to progress further

[asliarun]

I have a slightly different view on this, and not necessarily the opposite of yours. I actually LIKE the fact that my work life is clearly separated from my personal life. My previous job gave me a laptop, free home connectivity, and official permission to "work from home" a day a week. My new job has given me a workstation. Surprisingly, I'm enjoying the fact that I don't carry my work (laptop) home every day (even if I wouldn't have opened my laptop at home). It enables me to mentally "switch off" the instant I leave my office. So, even though I end up working slightly longer hours, I'm mentally at work ONLY when I'm physically at work.

Best of all, the fact that I cannot "work from home" forces me to be extra disciplined during my work-day, and I make sure that I prioritize my tasks and complete all my important tasks before I head for home. Admittedly, this is a generalization and may not be true for everyone, but it works for me.

Conversely, if I went back home at 6 sharp (because I had the ability to carry my work home) and still had some pending work for the day, I would never be able to truly unwind at home until the pending work has been completed. A beer tastes way better when you're tired and satisfied.

Re:It might do if you want to progress further

[hoover]

Conversely, if I went back home at 6 sharp (because I had the ability to carry my work home) and still had some pending work for the day, I would never be able to truly unwind at home until the pending work has been completed. A beer tastes way better when you're tired and satisfied.

Nothing beats a good physical workout after a day in the office, be it cycling home from work, Karate or even sex (I know, this is /. ;-)

This isn't data. Sheesh.

[Grendel Drago]

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...

Frame of reference issue....

[ivan256]

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.

Live to Work or Work to Live?

[bill_mcgonigle]

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.

What does "progress" mean?

[EmbeddedJanitor]

I telecommute, as well as doing contract work - often for people I have never seen, which is extreme telecommuting. I have been offered management positions but I have turned them down, opartly because I don';t want to be a manager and also partly because I believe you can't manage effectively if you are remote from most workers. If you consider management as progress, then yes it should be a problem. I think you need to be in the office every day to be an effective manager (management by walking around and all that).

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.

Re:What does "progress" mean?

[AuMatar]

Eh, I'd say being able to hold a whiteboard conversation with ones peers is extremely convenient. Or the ability to talk to the guy who wrote the code you're fixing right now, rather than wait a few hours on an email. Or show someone a bug in person, to show how its happening. You don't need to be in the office 9-5 daily, but a half days overlap 2 or 3 days a week is very helpful.

Re:What does "progress" mean?

[Fordiman]

Well, that may be true, but straw man is straw man; your personal account includes variables that can't be accounted for.

What I mean is this: Using a game-statistical model, with various directions of advancement, and attributes like skill, office presence (ie: not telecommuting), charisma, and such, it may be provable that, all other things being equal, having an office presence provides social connectivity, allowing the player to advance more easily in his chosen direction.

In cases where the player's other stats are higher, this may be irrelevant - he is more able to move on his own merit, and thus doesn't need the 'social grease'. Additionally, it may be showable that having a periodic office presence has significant advantages over having none, but a continuous office presence may have little advantage over a periodic one.

Of course, the game dynamic changes for a contractor versus a firm-static employee; the contracter lives more on reputation than on social contact, and thus has little need for face-to-face meetings. Meanwhile, the firm-static employee's advancement is eased by the ability to personally impress his superiors and coworkers - his good reputation is formed from good social interaction.

Moving further on, the impact of an office presence on a player's career would be inversely related to the percent of the firm that telecommutes - ie: the greater number of people without an office presence, the less likely it would be that having none would impact an individual's career. People would be used to it, and would very likely have a greater capacity for forming social contacts and personal respect for others via e-mail, phone, or other remote communication means.

So, will telecommuting kill your career? If you're good at what you do, not likely. If it's only most of the time, not likely. If you're a contracter and not an employee, not likely. If your firm is primarily telecommuted, not likely.

You, my good man, appear to be all three, so I'd say your 'player' would lay in a boundary condition in this 'game'. I don't mean to invalidate your position and experience, but to generalize a system and perhaps explain your relative position in it - that is, creating an statistical game doesn't bear directly on reality, but serves only to direct research and hypothesis (which in turn refine the game).

Does any of that sound about right?

Re:All telecommuters take note

[PoderOmega]

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.

Re:It makes sense....in some situations.

[kale77in]

That said, in companies where employees are managed by individuals that are not skilled in the art of their employees (take IT, for instance), then there's the risk of being perceived as not working as hard.

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:

• Small misunderstandings can accumulate in the manager's mind. If you're not there, you don't pick up on small attitude changes.
• Email and IM can generate misunderstandings that would not occur in a normal conversation.
• You're an intangible: upper management may question why they're subsidizing your apparent holiday, and your boss may not be able to persuade them otherwise.
• You may discover and solve technical problems, but management, who never had to experience the existence of the problem, may not appreciate teh scope of this.
• When you're onsite and miss a deadline, they may have seen you working consistently at it, and have no issue with your commitment -- they're as likely to just shrug and assume the deadline wasn't well thought through. When you're not there, it's anyone's guess what they'll think.

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.)

Re:All telecommuters take note

[greg1104]

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.

It does me.

[PopeRatzo]

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.

Which only works for a small company

[Moraelin]

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.

Re:Which only works for a small company

[Original Replica]

there are whole weeks when they're hardly actually needed.

So, they can be outsourced no problem, right? That might interfere with their advancement.

Re:Not necessarily a straw man

[Fordiman]

'1. It's as if "may be provable" turned into "already proven" somewhere along the way, and I don't see any such proof. '

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 ... Quality of life, for example, is something that [is achieved] by knowing when to ... just have a life."

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 ... I don't think you can automatically assume that if one is better served by more networking, the other will too."

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