Telecommuting Can Be Bad For Those Who Don't

SirLurksAlot writes "An article up on Ars Technica reports on a study of telecommuting from the point of view of those who show up at the office every day. The study discovered that telecommuting can have adverse effects on the office-bound. Researcher Timothy Golden 'found that in-office employees took less satisfaction in their jobs and felt less of a relationship and obligation to their company as the number of telecommuting coworkers grew. In-office employees in his study became disappointed at having fewer and weaker relationships. They also got frustrated at a perceived increase in workload and difficulties that telecommuting can present to finishing projects and building strong working relationships.'" The article notes that telecommuting is "not an exact science." Some good insights in the discussion forum too.

Comments

I agree with this

[PCM2]

I've seen it in action. It also seems pretty intuitive. Working as a bunch of like-minded, geographically disperse individuals does not seem as likely to inspire morale and productivity as "working as a team" -- meaning you see the people every day, you meet with the people face to face, you drop by their desks when you have questions, and so on.

The question is, what can this tell us about how to successfully manage community-based open source projects?

Re:I agree with this

[Anonymous Coward]

Moving work overseas causes the same type of disconnection for those left behind. As work moves to India some of my company's offices have become ghost towns. Email and conference calls aren't enough to help junior people along or to diffuse the occasional interpersonal frustration like some social interaction would.

Re:I agree with this

[autocracy]

I can say... pay them and then will code.

Re:I agree with this

[Seumas]

As someone who has been telecommuting for about a decade, let me give my thoughts:

Yes, if you don't get to telecommute, you may feel bad. I'm sorry. I feel bad when other people get huge pay raises that I don't get or when they get various forms of family leave for their own personal choices that I don't have or when the big-whigs get to fly around in the corporate jet and I have to spend two hours each way in commute. Life isn't fair and isn't always even.

I put in a lot of time working, simply because I have everything at my fingers here that I would have in the office, except I can put in extra hours any time of day or night that I want. I don't have to spend two or four hours commuting, either. I don't spend long periods of time chatting around the water cooler, either.

There are people who work hard and are productive and those who are not. Whether it's in an office or in a home office is not relevant.

Where I work, it wouldn't much matter wherever I conducted my business. Even if I work in the office, I am 1500 miles away from people on my team on the west coast and 1500 miles away from my boss and other people on my team who are on the east coast. Also, some of my team are in India. My colleagues and other people in the company that I deal with on a daily basis are spread throughout the world. West coast. Midwest. East coast. India. China. South America. Australia. Throughout the UK. Singapore.

The benefits to me are that I do not have to commute or sit in an uncomfortable office all day. The benefits to my company are that I can afford and am willing to put in far more time than I ever would before. For instance, I just put in a full week and today is one of my days off. I spent almost the entire day working. I won't be paid for it. I won't get anything out of it. I simply felt that we had a lot of things to get done and I could be of some benefit to my colleagues by helping out with the work load. I would not have bothered to shower, dress, go across the city to get to the office and spend all day in a noisy busy environment with people poking their heads over my cubicle walls. I think a lot of people would be more likely to adopt the "outside of 9-5 is MY time" philosophy and duck out the front door the moment the clock strikes 5pm than they would be if they could telecommute.

Again, that isn't most people. I'm just saying that is how some would react. In my experience - at least at my company - we have very dedicated people in every area regardless of how or where they work.

I also offer the company the added benefit that I am less upset when they don't had out pay raises for various reasons. After all, telecommuting does compensate for such things to a degree (though not infinitely, of course). And more than anything, I offer my company not only more work hours of my own accord, but faster response. When we are short-handed or otherwise have emergencies, they have the option of trying to get someone by phone or pager and ask them to get themselves together and come into the office. That could take a couple hours. Aside form the time they put in once they're there, it could involve three or four hours round trip. Or they could ping me and I can be working within a minute. From home.

I know that not all companies are globally distributed like mine, so they may have different experiences. I've simply found that we are spread about that whether I'm at a desk in the office or at a desk at home is irrelevant to the experience. After all, I've seen my boss in person twice in eight years. But I talk to him almost every day, thanks to email, phone and company-wide IM. And when one of our colleagues had a sad death in the family, the condolences were just as real and meaningful by those of us across the country as those sitting next to him and we were all eager to help cover him while he was gone for weeks to deal with the loss and everyone was equally concerned about him when he returned. Being across a desk from him or across two timezones from him was irrelevant.

Re:I agree with this

[Anonymous Coward]

As someone who has been telecommuting for about a decade, let me give my thoughts...

...or when the big-whigs get to fly around in the corporate jet and I have to spend two hours each way in commute... You need to find a computer closer to home;-)

Re:I agree with this

[robbiedo]

If you empower people with the right tools, such as Microsoft Communicator, Live Meeting 2007, and conference calling with video to bridge the space gap, the negatives of telecommuting can largely be bridged by bringing dispersed troops back together. For all you open source/linux types, please substitute your comparable tools because I know not what they are.

Re:I agree with this

[Rogerborg]

You don't work with contractors a lot, do you?

First they commit their code, then you pay them.

Re:I agree with this

[Rogerborg]

The bad news for Omni Mega Hypercorp is that people like you with great work ethics don't have kids. I on the other hand am shiftless but fruitful, and my lazy offspring are going to micromanage you all the way to your grave.

Re:I agree with this

[Seumas]

Perceptive. I am 30, have no children, want no children and tend to only have relationships with women who agree.

Erm. Agree not to want children, that is. Not agree to the relationship.

Uh. Well, they agree to the relationship, too, obviously.

Yeah, mod me +5 creepy.

Re:I agree with this

[Rogerborg]

For future reference, the giveaway wasn't the obvious free time that you have, it's that you didn't use the workload as an excuse to get the hell out of the house for another day. Kids are so rewarding, in very. Short. Doses.

Re:I agree with this

[hemp]

Of course, everyone seems to forget - if you can telecommute, your job can be easily outsourced!

Re:I agree with this

[Seumas]

Not necessarily. People who take orders at McDonald's drive through can't do the job from home, yet their jobs are being outsourced to call centers. Perhaps it varies from business to business and I do have my own frequent fears of being outsourced, but being in the office wouldn't change that. I don't think many jobs are safe from being outsourced (either overseas or domestically), so . . .

Re:I agree with this

[autocracy]

Don't ask me how the y became an n. They're not exactly next to each other...

Re:I agree with this

[Money for Nothin']

Great, yet-another intelligent (I assume, given your non-AC status on /. - I know, it's no guarantee, but aside from the trolls, the least that can be said of /. is that there aren't many mouth-breathers here) person who doesn't want kids. Are you trying to ensure the transition from fiction to non-fiction of the movie Idiocracy?

Re:I agree with this

[Gr8Apes]

They're only 30. They have at least another 10 years to change their minds. I know of at least 3 instances where that has happened to people with the exact same thoughts. All now have 1 child each.

Re:I agree with this

[_Hellfire_]

First they commit their code, then you pay them.

In America, first you write the code, then you get the money, then you get the women!

Re:I agree with this

[loki_tiwaz]

i think that what is going on is that the people who want to stay at home are the type of people who tend to be the subjects of the hen-pecks of office politics. the morale goes down because the peckers suddenly don't have anyone to pick on anymore. productivity goes down in the office because the real workers don't like being picked on by the lazy social-oriented types whose primary interest in being in the office is being part of a sordid little pecking order, rather than actually working.

as for managing projects, the true factors powering it is personal interest and talent, nothing to do with this imaginary 'leadership' nonsense. it is an egotistical illusion that humans do anything for anyone but themselves, or that anyone can control anyone else. this is how we are now at this situation where the majority of webservers are running on open-source software, and the fastest growing corporations in the world honour diversity and self-expression. control is an illusion, even on the microcosmic scale of the individual the ego is just an explanation for the unconscious motivations, after the fact.

Re:I agree with this

[Maxo-Texas]

This is a good point-- except in about 3-4 years american programmers will be at the same salary as overseas salaries-- and it will be a good one too.

At my company the estimate is that the next contract with infosys they will be more expensive than local resources.

Re:I agree with this

[Fael]

I have never understood the sense behind the insult "mouth-breather", which seems to have gained quite a lot of undue traction. Is it considered less uncouth to spray dried nuggets of mucous at your conversational partners than to breath filthy mouth air at them? For that matter, why is mouth air considered less savory than nose air? In which orifice would you rather put your tongue (positing third-party orifices, of course)?

Frankly, if the incessant chattering of humankind was occasionally interrupted by a few deep breaths through the mouth, the world would be a better place.

Re:I agree with this

[Anonymous Coward]

retarded people often have difficulty keeping their mouthes shut when breathing. The term mouth-breather as an insult is because of this link...

Re:I agree with this

[ddig83]

No, No!

First they commit the code, then you build it, then you have the users test and sign off, THEN you pay them.

Too many 'oh we must have a different jdk version' or 'but we thought JBOSS and WebSphere would behave the same' mistakes have taught me this.

Re:I agree with this

[zanaxagoras]

I on the other hand am shiftless but fruitful, and my lazy offspring are going to micromanage you all the way to your grave. Incorrect. The offspring of those to whom your job was outsourced will be doing that.

Re:I agree with this

[Anonymous Coward]

On the other hand, this is often a trait of people who have narrow nasal cavities. They can choose to either get their nasal cavity "drilled" in order for it to provide enough airflow, or they can occasionally breath through their mouth to receive their required oxygenation. In my personal experience, people with this trait are generally just as smart, or smarter than those without. This is also similar for people who suffer from allergies as well.

Re:I agree with this

[Simon Brooke]

First they commit their code, then you pay them.

In America, first you write the code, then you get the money, then you get the women!

Don't be silly. Geeks don't get women!

Re:I agree with this

[The One and Only]

What, you think eugenics is some type of social responsibility, and that clever people have a duty to breed with each other?

Re:I agree with this

[Rogerborg]

Pah, engineers. My kids will be middle management. There will always be on-site middle management: who else will suck up and lie to the senior managers?

Re:I agree with this

[The_reformant]

Yeah, mod me +5 creepy.

Why is creepy a positive mod?

Re:I agree with this

[armb]

Though "my kid is sick, I'll be working from home today" is more productive than "my kid is sick, I can't come into the office so I won't be able to work today".

Re:I agree with this

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok lets do some first order logic.

(A) If you can telecommute, your job can be easily outsourced!
(B) People who take orders at McDonald's drive through can't do the job from home, yet their jobs are being outsourced to call centers.

Both can be true without contradiction.

Or to put it with less words, the statements are equivalent to these:

(A) for every job: can_telecommute( job ) => easily_outsourced( job )
(B) there exists a job with: !can_telecommute( job ) and easily_outsourced( job )

For a job with: !can_telecommute( job ) the statement (A) always holds true, because it does not put any restrictions on them.

To show a contradiction you have to form a statement like

(C) there exists a job with: can_telecommute( job ) and !easily_outsourced( job )

Re:I agree with this

[Stormcrow309]

No, you put them on a cost plus plus pay scheme and pay them based off of project phasing. Then, since I work at a hospital, part them out after they are done.

Re:I agree with this

[Jaysyn]

I used to worry about that too until I had to clean up CAD work done by various Indian "outsourcers". It probably took me just as long to fix the designs as it would have to redraft them.

Re:I agree with this

[labeth]

And what, exactly, is wrong with it being "my time" after 5PM? If I already spend a third of my day working, why should I be expected to put in more than that? You may perceive it as a lack of work ethic, but realize also that you are putting undo pressure on people who do have personal lives or obligations that would keep them from spending three or four extra hours at the computer, plugging away at something that could easily be left to the next day without any real detriment. Before someone makes assumptions (particularly because I'm female), I am not saying this as an angry parent whose child-related obligations get in the way of their career success-- like you, I have no interest in children (although I could certainly see how someone who does choose that lifestyle might be a little bitter). But really, working so many long hours is detrimental to your health and sanity-- it's a buzzword, but "work/life balance" does have its place.

Re:I agree with this

[Anonymous Coward]

Working as a team? Hating as a team too. There are so many people in the office that are ok to communicate with electronically, but are total buttwads in real life. This makes being in the office detrimental to work, as seeing their faces and being near them makes people puke.

Re:I agree with this

[kionel]

As a person who telecommuted from 1997-2006, I concur completely.

Unfortunately, in my neck of the woods at least, telecommuting seems to have become a bad word. Workers who once had the option of working 2-3 days a week from home have now been demanded to come into the office. Off-site workers have been transferred off projects and into projects closer to their geographic location, or let go entirely. To even ask to work from home for legitimate reasons ("My kids are sick, and I'd like to be near them if they need me, but will get my work done,") is suddenly blasphemous.

As near as I can see, there is zero business reason for this move. Instead, new management -- often from outside of the IT or engineering field -- has stepped into squash "waste". It doesn't matter that our productivity has dropped into a hole. It doesn't matter that contractors and employees have fled the place (sadly, only to find that other companies in my area seem to be adopting this stance). Nope, all that matters is that they have their worker bees in front of them to see them buzzing away.

My guess, sadly, is that businesses have taken a negative attitude towards telecommuting as one last backlash against the "good ol' days" of the tech boom. As one who had his butt kissed as an engineer during that time, I'm intensely aware of the hostility that me and mine receive from leadership now.

Of course, as fuel prices go up, this might become a moot point.

Oh, who am I kidding? We're just drones, right? We live to serve.

Sadly, I absolutely know of individuals in corporate leadership who think exactly like that.

Let's hope that changes soon.

Re:I agree with this

[sjvn]

> "working as a team" -- meaning you see the people every day, you meet with the people face to face, you drop by their desks when you have questions, and so on.

And, how is this productive? When I'm in the office, People drop by to chat... when I'm trying to get work done. People stop to ask questions, which then turn into half-an-hour conversations about how the Giants beat the Cowboys. Etc. Etc.

OK, so there's a lot of good comes from being social. OTOH, at a home office, I'm 'social' on IM and e-mail: when I have time for it. At the office, I have to be social even if I do have deadlines looming.

For me, at least, I am far more productive at a home office, than I ever would be in the business office. And, more to the point, my 'team' gets more production from me.

Your workage may vary.

Steven

Re:I agree with this

[mrhandstand]

Could be because +5 creepy seems like a common M.O around here ;-)

Re:I agree with this

[BVis]

I also offer the company the added benefit that I am less upset when they don't had out pay raises for various reasons.

You realize, of course, that if you allow your employer to get away with this, soon it will become standard practice to deny telecommuters raises as a matter of policy. NEVER accept a lower raise for anything other than performance. Where you work should not impact your compensation; what you DO should impact your compensation.

Think about it. You say that you are able to put in more hours from home than you would in an office. One can infer from that that you are putting in more hours than your office-bound co-workers, as you don't have the burden of a commute. Why would you not deserve as big a raise (if not bigger) than those who are arguably doing less work?

Re:I agree with this

[eiapoce]

In motherfucking Italy:

You sign contract
Produce the code
Wait to send a legal term invoice
Resort to a lawyer
Menace a Suit
Get the money if the committer didn't file for bankruptcy yet.

Or otherwise:
Get racomendation from corrupted politician
Subcontract the code
Get big cash from the government
Shutdown the project, keep the money, give share to politician.

Re:I agree with this

[clam666]

I know I never felt better until I started telecommuting.

I didn't even have permission, I just stopped showing up all the time. Our company finally got VPN so us slaves could work an extra 20 on the weekends, so I strategically started timing emails to be sent at 6:30am, 8:00pm, and other odd times. I used the time honored technique of finishing all the work early in the project, then acting like I was busting my ass for weeks on it at all hours. My sucker coworkers were turning things in early so they could get the reward of more work assignments, whereas I spent my time acting stressed and overworked while reading slashdot.

Because I had been sending all my status reports and such at weird hours, natually I would either show up later, or leave earlier, or any number of things to condition clueless management into not questioning since, because email has a 1-to-1 correlation to work, I was a 12 hour a day work machine so being home wasn't a problem.

Soon I dropped Fridays and Mondays more and more frequently and started increasing the email, conference call, and IM frequency of my "work" to keep the info flowing. A few strategically timed "sick" days that I "worked" from home cemented my obvious high work ething in management's meat-space, and I was barely showing up for one day a week.

I was enjoying doing nothing, especially when I decided to get cell network card so I could "work" from the car, Universal Studios, bars, strip clubs, and such but, and I will admit this, I felt I wasn't getting all I could out of work, such as that all necessary exposure to new technologies, new techniques, etc.

The solution was to get another job to fill my free time. I didn't want to violate some mystical employment contract (although I didn't have one, but I'm sure they'd frown on this), so I subcontracted through a shell corporation to, ironically, one of their competitors. I figured I was getting laid off at job "A" because they were having a meltdown (they were heavy in sub-prime holdings) so having a backup a few weeks early would be smart. Because of the confusing changes in management and dropped projects, I pretty much started ignoring all work requests (but emailed and conferenced called religiously).

Naturally, since I never showed up nor did any work I got a raise and was not part of the repeated layoffs. A few shifts in management made my work habits an assumed work allowance for me.

Next week, I will have been working for my employer and their competitor for one year straight. My favorite part was when my contract employer offered me an extra 20 hours a week (60 total) of overtime near the end of last year to finish some work early for them. My greatest joy was when my contract employer "B" gave my RSA SecureID so I could start telecommuting on the weekends.

Between the two of them (and the asian stock market) I have no debt and just bought my first house for cash a few weeks ago. Now I no longer have to work for either employer and bank every dollar in long term investments. I could go be a Wallmart greeter for the next 60 years. God bless America.

I attempted to get all my coworkers to telecommute, work from home, spend some time with the kids, and none of them would do it. Apparently all that "social networking" and in-the-box thinking was working for them.

Re:I agree with this

[jdjbuffalo]

While it's certainly good to be more responsive and be able to help out in a pinch when work needs to be done, it sounds like you're tied to your desk more than you like to admit. Your company has a pretty sweet heart deal with you. You work from home which reduces cost overhead per employee, you work a near full day on your days off, you work more hours than your expected, and you rarely want/ask for a raise. I'd hire you too, when I can get the work of 1.5 - 2 people for the pay of 80% of one normal worker.

Working for free without any compensation (whether it's time-and-a-half, bonuses, comp. time, vacation) is never a good idea. Businesses will abuse that with whoever they can because it's a great deal for them. If you've got a team of 5 people that do that you could get by without hiring a 6th person by just adding some more work on all 5 of the people that don't care if they lose a couple hours of their personal time.

Unfortunately, once you dig yourself into this hole in a company, especially if you are working remote, it's often impossible to get out of without leaving for another company and establishing the proper boundaries from the start.

Re:I agree with this

[Knara]

I don't mind kids so long as I don't have to raise them :D

Re:I agree with this

[servognome]

Don't be silly. Geeks don't get women!

Don't be silly, this is slashdot. Everybody knows that women = inflatable dolls

Re:I agree with this

[ivan256]

As someone who has been telecommuting for about a decade, let me give my thoughts:

As somebody who has been telecommuting for more than a decade, don't you think you're probably seriously out of touch with how the guys back at the office feel about the matter?

Since you felt it necessary to trot out the same old stereotypical arguments about why you're just as/more productive than the guys in the office, aren't you basically confirming this story to the best of your ability?

Re:I agree with this

[dlanod]

The great news for Omni Mega Hypercorp is that people like him don't have kids. Think of all the extra time they get out of him because they never hear any of the following:

• "My kid is sick and I need to take them to the doctor."
• "My kid is sick and I need to stay home to take care of them."
• "I need to leave early to pick my kid up from childcare."
• "I'm going to be in late today because I need to drop my kid off to school/talk to his teacher/whatever."

Most businesses would love childless workers, I'm sure.

Re:I agree with this

[Brad Eleven]

Nothing is wrong with it at all--but your employer would prefer that you give more and more time in exchange for your salary.

OP said, "Hey, I telecommute, and I do great work. I'm way more productive than my colleagues in the office, and I don't like the office environment."

TFA said, "People who work with telecommuters [or overseas colleagues] tend to resent the people who aren't in the office, e.g., What's so special about them that they don't have to put up with all of the crap that I do just to be in the office?"

Your post is an extension of the point of the article: People in office resent telecommuters, probably because they wish they could telecommute, too.

Re:I agree with this

[ohmpossum]

And will you be having a fry with that?

Re:I agree with this

[nite0wl]

I also have been telecommuting for more than ten years and heartily agree with Seumas' comments. One point not mentioned is the fact that the opposite (feeling left out of the team, weak, etc.) can happen to those who telecommute. You have to be an independent person who can work with minimal or no supervision, in order to succeed in a global work environment. This means that one has to make an extra effort to help team members "remember" you exist while telecommuting from some remote location. This is not too difficult these days with all of the technological advancements in place to help do that!

If I wasn't that sort of person, there's no way I could handle having my team spread out over several continents and timezones. The thing people who telecommute may miss out on is the "watercooler talk" or "kaffeeklatsch time", where talk may turn to non-work-related topics or rumors on the company grapevine. Quite frankly, I don't really miss that too much, since there are always ways to get the dirt on what's happening from the rumor mill if you really want it!

The bottom line for me is that I would not be able to hold the job I do with all of its benefits if I wasn't able to telecommute. The cost and time of traveling to and from work (110 miles r/t) would be financially prohibitive to me, and I'd end up having to take a different job that would probably be for less pay and benefits so I'd be closer with less travel.

The bottom line for my company is that I save them money by telecommuting, rather than occupying real estate space in a building somewhere. It is cheaper for the company to pay for all of the logistics and equipment to set my workspace up to handle remote work than it is to pay the current per sq. ft rate in the Chicago 'burbs for every employee. The company doesn't feel there's a problem with this setup, and you can believe if it didn't work, they'd yank me back to a cubicle so fast my head would spin. Therefore, it goes without saying that for ten years, the company has benefitted / saved money by letting me telecommute.

I just wish (and would have thought) that more companies would have embraced telecommuting by this date. Old ways die hard, and it may be another generation must pass out of the workforce before it truly becomes reality.

- nite0wl

Re:I agree with this

[Omnifarious]

With Open Source, I get that team feel via IM and IRC. I think more companies should adopt internal IM servers and use them consistently.

Re:I agree with this

[Money for Nothin']

No, I'm opposed to any sort of forced eugenics, e.g. particularly China's "1 child" policy (I've yet to catch the Malthusian bug), or the sort practiced from the 1930s until the 1970s in Sweden (in which some 60,000 people - often homeless men - were forcibly sterilized by the government).

That said, call me an elitist, but -- there are a *lot* of bad parents out there. They are people who - because they do a poor job taking care of their children, who introduce people into the world who, by some combination of genetics and upbringing, become a drag on our culture and our economy - should not be having children. See also Britney Spears, and probably the trailer park from which she hails... There are a lot of inner-city ghetto-dwellers and rural trailer-trash who can't take care of the kids they keep having because even as adults, they are completely irresponsible. They produce kids who then become a drag on the rest of us: they show up in crime statistics, they yield poor service in the labor force, they mock (if not, more aggressively, thwart) attempts at intellectual culture, which retards all forms of progress.

My strongly-libertarian instincts of the past are slowly giving-way to notions of testing people to roughly gauge whether somebody is capable of competently managing the responsibilities that come along with the rights and liberties we typically assign them... Americans who don't have at least a very vague idea of what most of each of the Amendments on the U.S. Bill of Rights should not be permitted to vote. People who are mentally ill and have criminal records should not be permitted to buy firearms (likewise, citizens should not be barred from owning military-grade weapons (except WMDs, IMO) if they so choose, if they can pass the same tests of competency and controls over said arms that the military demands of its soldiers and organization). At least we test people for ability to drive on public roadways - though even there, the bar is pretty low. And therein lies the problem of a "responsibility-tested culture of liberty" -- who decides the test? What standards are sufficient? Can the tests be perfectly objective? What if the tests are poorly-written - can those who fail it still have a say in changing the test, if need be?

I would never outright ban anybody from enjoying any conceivable freedom which does not infringe upon the freedom of others (example: there's no reason an adult should be unfree to smoke or drink themselves stupid in the comfort of their own home, if they want to). The trouble is where there are social interactions -- that freedom of one actor unavoidably alters the outcome of another actor's (such as when said drunk person gets in a car and drives on the road with other drivers). That is where testing comes into play (mandatory breathalyzers built into cars, perhaps? e.g. alcohol sensors in the steering wheel which sample the driver's body moisture)...

Re:I agree with this

[NateTech]

How about this -- two thoughts...

1. You can replace yourselves. Any more kids than that, there are financial penalties.
2. Stop giving parents tax breaks for having ANY kids.

That'd make a big enough dent in things.

Perhaps looking at it the wrong way?

[ricebowl]

I can't help but suspect that the whole low morale issue is created by those in the office feeling that they're not being treated so well as those who get to work from home in their pyjamas, and, as a result, resenting that they have to be in the office.

Generally with this sort of study (along the lines of 'ZOMG! Office workers costing billions by surfing Facebook!') the sponsors of the study are, coincidentally I'm sure, selling a 'solution' to the problem. So I'm kinda curious as to the intent of the study, the hypothesis that was examined and the assumptions/biases made as a result.

Re:Perhaps looking at it the wrong way?

[Icarus1919]

Well, you could always just RTFA rather than speculating, but I suppose that's just naive of me.

Re:Perhaps looking at it the wrong way?

[ricebowl]

Well, you could always just RTFA rather than speculating, but I suppose that's just naive of me.

Hey, there's social rules and peer-pressure to consider. This is Slashdot, man; and here you're suggesting I could RTFA..? I'd be a laughing stock... ;)

Re:Perhaps looking at it the wrong way?

[yintercept]

/. needs to do a scientific poll to tell us how many people who are reading /. at the moment are "pretending to work at the office" and how many are "pretending to be working" while telecommuting. They might also have a Cowboy Neal style question for those who are actually reading /. on their own time.

Re:Perhaps looking at it the wrong way?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is Slashdot, man...I'd be a laughing stock... ;)

That already describes most of us, whether or not we RTFA.

Re:Perhaps looking at it the wrong way?

[Seumas]

This sort of study is the same reason we end up calling everyone an "engineer". The guy who picks up your garbage is a sanitation engineer and the pizza boy is a food services transportation engineer and the mailman is a printed communications engineer. I'm sure the low-paid secretary or office admin would like to be in the position of everyone else in the office who makes more money and has a more prestigious title, just like those people would like to be telecommuting.

Also, a lot of people I know COULD telecommute but do not want to. That's their prerogative. Nothing wrong with that. But your personal choice shouldn't be inflicted on everyone else who is as or more productive and are able to work remotely. As someone who witnessed a two-hour long nerf-war in the office last time I dropped in, I am completely thankful I work from home where my largest distraction is the hum of the air conditioner and the case of coke zero in the dorm fridge next to my desk.

Re:Perhaps looking at it the wrong way?

[R2.0]

"I can't help but suspect that the whole low morale issue is created by those in the office feeling that they're not being treated so well as those who get to work from home in their pyjamas, and, as a result, resenting that they have to be in the office."

I think it's a little more complex than that. There's a guy in the Purchasing department who handles almost all my contracts. He telecommutes 2 days/week and his schedule seems kind of random. But since he forwards his phone and responds to emails, it's pretty transparent - until I need him to actually DO something. See, he doesn't take all of his office home with him, just the computer. So if I have something urgent come up, he can't help me. Period.

So now, not only am I irritated and delayed, but the guy that sits across from him in the office is pissed. Why, you ask? Because if it can't wait the until the first guy gets back, I go upstairs and drop it on his coworkers desk. So now his coworker is doing his job.

Is it supposed to work that way? No. Does it work that way in real life? Yes. And isn't that the root cause of stress - that things don't work the way they are supposed to?

Re:Perhaps looking at it the wrong way?

[Alpha830RulZ]

As well as how many of us are working at 9:30 at night, watching something run and reading /.

Re:Perhaps looking at it the wrong way?

[bladesjester]

As someone who witnessed a two-hour long nerf-war in the office last time I dropped in, I am completely thankful I work from home where my largest distraction is the hum of the air conditioner and the case of coke zero in the dorm fridge next to my desk.

There is something to be said for those kinds of distractions provided they don't happen *all* of the time - they are a great team building exercise. This is especially true in stressful or creative environments.

Even discounting the fact that you're working with them now and cohesive teams tend to do better quality work and have a higher chance of projects succeeding, remember that the people you are working with now can be your key to different jobs in the future.

Socializing is important.

We're social creatures whether we like to admit it or not. Play time is important for a lot of things (including bonding), and, if you're in an office, you're spending 8 hours a day with these people.

Re:Perhaps looking at it the wrong way?

[Asic Eng]

In my team we all have the option to work from home occassionally. I do it, and so do my colleagues - and I enjoy being able to have lunch with my wife, work undisturbed and all that. However I also know the other side: when most of us are in the office for some meeting or discussion and one person is not there. Conference calls always strike me as dramatically less efficient than face-to-face meetings: you don't get to read the other person's mood, you can't quickly sketch something on the whiteboard, you need to speak loudly so the conference phone picks up the signal, the other person is hard to understand, there is background noise from their kids or dog ... Such conference calls always put a lot more stress on people than normal meetings do.

I think that lot of these problems could be overcome or reduced by investing in the proper tools: get better speaker phones, have better computing infrastructure with whiteboard software, have video conferencing etc. However the frustration which people feel when others are telecommuting is real, and it's not necessarily the office people's fault.

Re:Perhaps looking at it the wrong way?

[Hognoxious]

Conference calls always strike me as dramatically less efficient than face-to-face meetings

I hate them. I'm not a big fan of doing things over the phone anyway - I prefer there to be a written record so if (when) they change their minds there's a proof. Plus, it's easier to lie over the phone - this is a major problem when many of the participants are mendacious, scheming little pillocks like they are here.

Also, I suspect that people don't really prepare properly for them like they would for a face to face meeting; perhaps because you can hide embarrassment easier over the phone, too.

Re:Perhaps looking at it the wrong way?

[Skyshadow]

I think it's a little more complex than that. There's a guy in the Purchasing department who handles almost all my contracts. He telecommutes 2 days/week and his schedule seems kind of random. But since he forwards his phone and responds to emails, it's pretty transparent - until I need him to actually DO something. See, he doesn't take all of his office home with him, just the computer. So if I have something urgent come up, he can't help me. Period.

It sounds like you have the same issues as I do with my telecommuters. It's not that fact that they telecommute that's the issue, but rather that they don't telecommute properly. I mean, if you or I were to sit down and think of requirements for people we'd allow to telecommute, I'm betting that we'd come up with a shocking number of common-sense things that we don't see routinely in practice at either of our companies. For instance, all of these seem like reasonable requirements for someone allowed to telecommute:
- Telecommuters should have the same phone number regardless of what day it is.
- Telecommuters should be available during business hours.
- Telecommuters should have all equipment they need at home.

I pick out these three, because these are issues I've run into just in the last week:
- "Hi, I got your message. I can only be reached via email Thursday and Friday. So, about that system being down..."
- "I don't work regular hours, I like to work 4-midnight. So, I need a three hour meeting with your team, does 7-10 PM work?"
- "Oh, I can't do that today. I don't have a scanner here at home."

The problem in these situations isn't the telecommuting per se, but ultimately the poor management of the telecommuters. Unfortunately, 'poor management' is a fairly common issue, and in practice telecommuting just allows them to screw up even more.

Re:Perhaps looking at it the wrong way?

[Loquacious00]

I think that what you're saying here is true ... in one way. That is, from the perspective of someone who works in the office sometimes and telecommuntes sometimes. For those of us who telecommute on a regular basis (ie: we don't have an office to go to, or leave our stuff in) the argument is different though. I switched from working full time in the office, to telecommuting one day a week, to telecommuting full time (when I moved states and there was no office in the state I moved to). Telecommuting full time has it's advantages - I can wake up at 8 and be at work at 8:15; I don't have to wear a clean shirt; I can eat my breakfast while checking my emails; I can dash down to the shop for milk whenever I want; I can work in my pyjamas; the list goes on. But there is also disadvantages - most every full time telecommuter I know will put in extra hours either late at night or early in the morning - in the case of overseas phone calls, sometimes at 1 or 2am. This is not recognised, because no one knows we're doing it (let's face it, they're all asleep). It can be hard sometimes to stay motivated and on-topic when there's no one (co-workers, managers or otherwise) hanging over your shoulder, especially when the grass needs mowing, the washing needs hanging out and how lovely would it be to go and sit in the sunroom with a book? The main problem, and it has been said on this thread already, is that the grass is greener. The non-telecommuters want to wear their pyjamas to work, and the telecommuters want to have someone to talk to from time to time.

Best Team I Ever Worked On Telecommuted

[tjstork]

The best team I ever worked on telecommuted. We were working on a new internet thingy back in the day when everything on the internet was new, and there were about a half dozen or so developers, working on a couple of spiffy new Sun boxes via telnet over ssh. It was a blast. Moral on the team was high, and we often burned the midnight oil simply to see this thing get built, and becuase our fearless leader was a genuine visionary. We communicated via email and comments in code and rcs. Then we would do weekly statuses via a conference call, but for the most part, we kept in touch via email and it worked like a champ.

We were the black project, Dave's crazy thing... building an internet service model in an organization that didn't even really see that much of a need for even computers from the get go. It was a tremendous amount of work but also a great deal of fun. It was a genuinely wonderful experience for me. We had a colorful team, filled with a bunch of just super people, and that's what really matters. If you've got good people, you are going to have a good team almost regardless of whether they are in the office or not.

Re:Best Team I Ever Worked On Telecommuted

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh, no. SSH didn't exist when everything on the Internet was new - asymmetric cryptography for key exchange didn't become popular until early-to-mid 90s and SSH was designed in 1995. Hell, by the time you're talking about even the New York Times was babbling about this "World Wide Web" thing and Internet access was trivial to find.

People who were actually working on things when "everything on the Internet" (ARPAnet) "was new" have been on for at least twice that long. Hell, I bet you never even had to deal with UUCP mail or had to scramble to find how in the hell you could find a turist account at a University that happened to have finally hooked up to the ARPAnet.

Re:Best Team I Ever Worked On Telecommuted

[ShieldW0lf]

Conference calling either through one of the many 1-800 conference calling numbers or through Skype goes a long way towards making things more human in my experience. If you have a one hour chat every week to catch up and use email and instant messaging to fill in the gaps, that one hour makes a big difference even if you don't know what you ought to be talking about.

Teleworking works better for problems that you can and do structure around very sharply defined areas of responsibility and a great deal of autonomy within them. People that like to micromanage or projects where you need to overlap several people in the same problem domain, they don't work so well.

When you can break a project into a bunch of pieces and have expressed "contracts" with each other about how your chunk is going to mesh with their chunk, everyone can do what they know best, with relative autonomy, in parallel. These are the types of situations where teleworking shines.

Re:Best Team I Ever Worked On Telecommuted

[QuantumG]

You're so right, you've called the bastard. SSH was so damn rare all the way up until OpenSSH became a reality in 1999 that most everyone still telneted everywhere. Hell, people even used rsh on a regular basis up until 2000. Only around late 2000 did Linux distros start shipping with telnet and rsh disabled by default.. and they were considered the odd freaks.

Re:Best Team I Ever Worked On Telecommuted

[Anonymous Coward]

Testify, brother! I sure don't miss having to carry around S/Key OTPs (or S/Key calculators) to protect passwords.

Re:Best Team I Ever Worked On Telecommuted

[Anonymous Coward]

> back in the day when everything on the internet was new, ... over ssh.

I have to call bullshit on this. Ssh did not exist when everything on the internet was new. You're off by decades there, dude.

Re:Best Team I Ever Worked On Telecommuted

[Anonymous Coward]

via telnet over ssh

That's like, countries like and such, and the Iraq

Re:Best Team I Ever Worked On Telecommuted

[Anonymous Coward]

Were you a team of guns for hire, or were you part of the organization? What happened to the team after the task/project ended?

It seems to me there is a big difference between a pick-up team working a "special" project, and folks working day in, day out on a long term activity.

Re:Best Team I Ever Worked On Telecommuted

[Anubis350]

working on a couple of spiffy new Sun boxes via telnet over ssh

Say what? I do not think you typed what you meant to type, 'cause man, if you did... you're doing it wrong and I feel sorry for those poor, poor sun boxes. :-p

Re:Best Team I Ever Worked On Telecommuted

[tjstork]

You're so right, you've called the bastard. SSH was so damn rare all the way up until OpenSSH became a reality in 1999

You have to understand that our network admin, and also the project designer for the initial releases, designed an entire phone network for his primary job. He was the best infrastructure guy I'd ever seen, ever. So in terms of *nix stuff, a lot of what we did was pretty cutting edge. Hell, original back end database was MSQL (if you remember that prior to MySQL). We found MySQL and switched to that, and I think that was their version 3.22. From there, we went to Oracle 8.

The period that I discussed was from 1998 - 2000, and for a big chunk of that time, yes, I was using ssh. Our network guy used hummingbird x-clients, but I was already 10 years of Windows under my belt and I wanted to see how things in the unix world worked from the command line.

Re:Best Team I Ever Worked On Telecommuted

[tjstork]

Say what? I do not think you typed what you meant to type, 'cause man, if you did... you're doing it wrong and I feel sorry for those poor, poor sun boxes.

There were a lot of complicated reasons for this. Oh, the only X client for my windows box cost a bunch of money, then, I was a long time Windows programmer on my first go around with Unix and I honestly was unimpressed with what I'd seen in Unix GUIs.

But above all, honestly, the whole "primitive" thing just appealed to me immensely, and, I was already used to TTY style from before. I saw Unix command line as a sort of a -super DOS- and I really loved it, and still do. I really came to love bash. Super network guy set up bash on my account. Originally I was doing C++ on Windows and crossing over to Unix, just ftping stuff up, but over time I found myself doing as much in vi as I would for quick changes in Visual Studio.

Re:Best Team I Ever Worked On Telecommuted

[QuantumG]

I'd believe you but what you actually said was "spiffy new Sun boxes via telnet over ssh" which is just such an impossible combination that you're obviously making it up.

Re:Best Team I Ever Worked On Telecommuted

[tjstork]

I have to call bullshit on this. Ssh did not exist when everything on the internet was new. You're off by decades there, dude.

My god, am I the only geek able to think poetically? "Everything on the internet was new" was meant to describe the open ended and optimistic spirit that characterized the last great computer boom of 1997 - 2000. It's not a description of a chronology, but of the spirit of the times.

Sure, some technologies were out there, but in that latter part of the 1990s was when a lot of things fell into place. You had working browsers, working web servers, perl was mature and C++ was usable. G++ was a decent enough C++ compiler. The basic infrastructure worked. But, there weren't that many cool applications for it and the whole world felt wide open.

Re:Best Team I Ever Worked On Telecommuted

[Anonymous Coward]

It was "way back in the day" but you had ssh...wow, you really are a trailblazer.

Re:Best Team I Ever Worked On Telecommuted

[tjstork]

I'd believe you but what you actually said was "spiffy new Sun boxes via telnet over ssh" which is just such an impossible combination that you're obviously making it up.

What's impossible? I have ssh client.. on my Windows PC at home and at work. It had a copy of some giganto key. Then, I also had a telnet client on my Windows PC. I did some port fowarding thingamajig on the ssh, so that telnet ran through it to a Sun workstation.

Re:Best Team I Ever Worked On Telecommuted

[tjstork]

In fact, I was doing this over a dialup connection. Oh I remember that. I PPP'd to my local provider, and I rejoiced when I finally got my 128K DSL line.

Re:Best Team I Ever Worked On Telecommuted

[QuantumG]

You did ssh port forwarding.. in 1998, to a Sun box. Uh huh. And exactly what SSH server were you running on this box? I ask because in 1998 the only SSH servers available were proprietary, and not available for Sun machines.. or they didn't have ssh port forwarding..

Look, I'm not the only person who's bullshit detector has gone off here. Never mind the fact that you've redefined your definition of "when the Internet was young" to 1998-2000 which is, in itself, laughable, but now you're trying to claim you used technology that wasn't even around at the time you yourself specify. Either your memory is really hazy or you're just lying, so give it up.

Re:Best Team I Ever Worked On Telecommuted

[tjstork]

Never mind the fact that you've redefined your definition of "when the Internet was young" to 1998-2000 which is, in itself, laughable,

No, you are the one that read when the internet was young into 1980's or something like that, and you are too stubborn to admit that you completely misread the original post, where it was an obvious metaphorical reference. I mean, when you read someone talking about youth as if "the world was new", do you go and automatically assume that they are lying because they couldn't possibly have been alive 4.5 billion years ago.

Re:Best Team I Ever Worked On Telecommuted

[tjstork]

Never mind the fact that you've redefined your definition of "when the Internet was young" to 1998-2000

When someone says, "that's as old as the hills.", do you rock autistically back and forth with your little helmet on, saying, "well, they didn't even have transistors 200 million years ago" ? I mean to be critical, but what's laughable is that you completely missed a whole romantic tone of an article and have so locked yourself into an assumption that "internet new == 1980" that you disregard everything else. You missed that whole "new == youth, innocence, wonder" thing that the whole planet had going on. Yeah, ssh didn't exist in 1998, so what. It was 10 years ago and I might be off a year. I got ssh sometime during the life of the project and before that we did everything in the plain over a different port that we snuck and opened up in the main corp firewall so we could work from home. It was a completely different time back then, as I said, back when the internet was new...

Re:Best Team I Ever Worked On Telecommuted

[QuantumG]

hehe, whatever man.

You're just lucky you didn't pick a pre-1995 time frame, that would have been especially funny. "I was using the ssh before the protocol was even written!!"

Anyway, good luck with whatever you're doing these days.

Re:Best Team I Ever Worked On Telecommuted

[Anonymous Coward]

OK. Understand that many of us were working on the Internet (ARPANet) before you were using Windows.

Re:Best Team I Ever Worked On Telecommuted

[QuantumG]

I think the lady doth protest too much.

Re:Best Team I Ever Worked On Telecommuted

[ArsonSmith]

Why's that? I've used ssh-pppd VPNs and then telneted over that vpn before.

Re:Best Team I Ever Worked On Telecommuted

[Anonymous Coward]

My god, am I the only geek able to think poetically? "Everything on the internet was new" was meant to describe the open ended and optimistic spirit that characterized the last great computer boom of 1997 - 2000. It's not a description of a chronology, but of the spirit of the times.

No, you're just wrong. By that time all of the really difficult heavy lifting had been done and it was time for the profiteers to move it. "The optimistic spirit" was, "how can we make a profit off of the infrastructure that was built for public good?" God, every loser fan-boy who could write a little bit of web perl was having money showered upon them, while the people who did the hard work without profit motive at the country's Universities were left behind.

Sure, some technologies were out there, but in that latter part of the 1990s was when a lot of things fell into place. You had working browsers, working web servers, perl was mature and C++ was usable. G++ was a decent enough C++ compiler. The basic infrastructure worked. But, there weren't that many cool applications for it and the whole world felt wide open.

This is what those of us who had been around well past a decade at that point now refer to as, "the middle of the end" (4 years after the beginning of the end, "Eternal September"). There were no longer significant barriers to keep the unwashed hordes off of our nice shiny geeks' paradise - the Mongols were at the gates.

Everybody thinks that the Internet was new when they got on it. They're usually wrong, and the Internet they know is usually a very different thing than it was before, say, 1990. It was 1992 when I saw my first "The Internet is full. Go home." shirt at an IETF meeting.

Re:Best Team I Ever Worked On Telecommuted

[tjstork]

I think the lady doth protest too much

What lady are you talking about? There's no lady? You must be making it up. You are obviously not telling the truth! Besides, Shakespeare has been dead for more than a few hundred years. Completely irrelevant!

Re:Best Team I Ever Worked On Telecommuted

[tjstork]

Not at all. I was using the internet before then, as a way to move around university computers, but, honestly, I thought it sucked compared to online services such as Compuserve. Compuserve forums were great, and in a lot of ways, you had a much better crowd then the general internet.

It was the world wide web that made the internet. Before that, it was crap. TCP/IP is a big fat heavy protocol for if you just wanted to dial up via a dumb terminal application and send email and upload a few files.

Re:Best Team I Ever Worked On Telecommuted

[Anonymous Coward]

You might be missing a chromosome, but you are certainly missing two of something else.

Re:Best Team I Ever Worked On Telecommuted

[jc42]

We were working on a new internet thingy back in the day when everything on the internet was new, and there were about a half dozen or so developers, working on a couple of spiffy new Sun boxes via telnet over ssh.

So, where were you working back in 1982, where you had Sun boxes and ssh?

Curious minds want to know ...

(Lots of us back then were already getting nervous about telnetting over the public Internet. We all knew that telnet sent user ids and passwords in the clear, and we all had line monitors that would show us the text in the packets. The security implications were obvious. I think most of us were disappointed that we couldn't get our hands on an encrypting version of telnet even in 1984. So if you had ssh then, someone was holding out on us. ;-)

Re:Best Team I Ever Worked On Telecommuted

[Anonymous Coward]

When someone says, "that's as old as the hills.", do you rock autistically back and forth with your little helmet on, saying, "well, they didn't even have transistors 200 million years ago" ?

No, but when someone says "When Apple was young" to mean when they bought their first Mac five years ago, you can bet that they're gonna hear about it.

Re:Best Team I Ever Worked On Telecommuted

[Anubis350]

fair enough, was tired and wasn't really thinking about it.

Re:Best Team I Ever Worked On Telecommuted

[tjstork]

No, but when someone says "When Apple was young" to mean when they bought their first Mac five years ago, you can bet that they're gonna hear about it.

The internet was a second rate network until around 1995, if not later. The web browser and server made the internet what it is today. Before that it was boring. If you wanted to have the benefits of what the internet is today, you would use a commercial service like CompuServe or gasp, America Online or do you remember, the old MSN?

Re:"Telecommuters" are typically lazy

[end15]

Can an admin delete the ac troll?

You think that's bad?

[gandhi_2]

Imagine how people will feel when they find out half of their "co-workers" are just shell scripts.

Re:You think that's bad?

[vux984]

Heh, women's behavior resemble perl scripts already.

The key difference being the perl scripts made sense to somebody, at least once, for a little while...

Re:You think that's bad?

[cortesoft]

I know a bot. Her name is Anna. Anna is her name. http://youtube.com/watch?v=bpRRVS1ci40

Re:You think that's bad?

[Seumas]

Especially my perl scripts, which have even less documentation than a woman.

Re:You think that's bad?

[Anonymous Coward]

just shell scripts I'm a shell script, you insensitive clod!

Re:You think that's bad?

[Random_Goblin]

would you like to talk about half of their "co-workers" are just shell scripts?

Re:You think that's bad?

[mike2R]

I'm a shell script, you insensitive clod!

- Did you come to me because you are a shell script, me insensitive clod?

Re:You think that's bad?

[Mr. Underbridge]

Imagine how people will feel when they find out half of their "co-workers" are just shell scripts.

You tell my boss that I put in 1 hour of work a day setting up shell scripts that run for the other 7, while still getting more done than most of my coworkers, and I'll punch you in your ass.

Christ, they'd probably promote the script and put it in charge of me, then where would I be?

Re:You think that's bad?

[mrzaph0d]

yep. and if a perl script complains too much, you can turn off warnings and strict..

Re:You think that's bad?

[Anonymous Coward]

>>Heh, women's behavior resemble perl scripts already.

>The key difference being the perl scripts made sense to somebody, at least once, for a little while...

The real difference is that behind every perl script, there was logic - be it often ill-formed and poorly executed; behind every woman's behavior there's just a whole lotta crazy....

As an non-social nerd with a touch of the autism,

[FatSean]

I must say that the in-person relationships are over-rated. If I'm really crunching on some problem, I don't want you stopping by to say hello and distracting me. Send me an IM if it is urgent, or an email if it isn't. Ad-hoc conference calls fill in the gaps if the scheduled meetings aren't going to be timely enough for a given issue. Shit, I've been on disperse teams for years, and sometimes I've never even seen a team-mate outside of their headshot on the company whitepages site.

I like working with my teammates, and don't mind a little small talk, but really...I'm here to make money not friends. The fact that I enjoy the work is a plus, but it's not super important to me. My home-time is spent doing things that most 'middle Americans' would find scary or offensive so I really don't want to mix my work/home lives.

Replies are missing the point

[White Flame]

Read TFS (or TFA) again! This is NOT showing problems of telecommuters, it is showing problems of those who do not. It's saying that those who work in the office get worse as others start telecommuting, and that "the health, life, and work benefits for those who can telecommute are undeniable".

Re:Replies are missing the point

[colonslash]

You are exactly right. Telecommuting is great. I couldn't agree more.

Re:Replies are missing the point

[Anonymous Coward]

Not missing the point at all!!! If they keep talking about those who stay at the office, and they cry like Hillary, we will have to leave our work at home, drive 2 hours of commute, get pissed to the office, and listen to all the stupid chit-chat of the hot accounting and sales chicks. So, instead of have 12 productive hours of telecommute, we will lose 7 stupid hours just acting as we were doing something really important while we listen to music on the Internet.
What they could do, if the hot accounting and sales chicks are missing me so badly, is to send the girls to stay with me on my bedroom everyday from 9 to 5. Preferentially on very tinny bikinis, and perhaps with some baby oil, or whipped cream...

Re:Replies are missing the point

[nauvillain]

Some colleagues of mine would hate to telecommute, for the simple reason that they go to the office to be able to chat, have a social experience...They aren't the most efficient, obviously. I want to telecommute 1 or 2 days per week because I grow frustrated of these long hours in my car, stuck in traffic.
Being happy as an employee should count, but in case of conflicting opinions, efficiency should also be taken into account.

Re:Replies are missing the point

[Anonymous Coward]

If you read the line that the study focused on the employers in the office, it is not very surprising that the study does not show problems of telecommuters.

Makes sense to me

[MBCook]

Everywhere I've worked, there have been a few people who, if they started telecommuting, would make my life easier. The people you flat out just don't like, get annoyed by, etc.

But that's always a small minority. There is the person or people I don't want to have to deal with, the people I really like and would really miss, then everyone else. While I would be quite disappointed if some of the people I really liked stopped coming in (and since I'm in IT I think they would be some of the people most likely to use the option). Depending on the size of the group, losing a person or two in the "no strong feelings" category may or may not be noticed. But even if they aren't people that I spend much time with, as there were fewer and fewer of them I'd definitely start to miss them.

There are some ways you could make it work. Let them only have one telecommute day per week, and schedule them so a different group is off each day. But as more and more people go (especially percentage wise in a non-huge office) I could really see it having an effect on me (who isn't telecommuting). Heck, as a fellow telecommuter, I could see it still having an effect on me.

It's great, if you can get it.

[auroran]

Several of my friends from work have the ability and option to telecommute.
Unfortunately, due to the nature of my job it is not possible. I have to be in the office for when I'm needed to be there.
I work in one of several smaller locations that has just myself and another person in each building.
Those that can telecommute have their offices in the "corporate mega tower" in downtown and it doesn't really matter where they are.

Response from a sometimes telecommuter

[Quiet_Desperation]

Tough shit unless you want to drive me to work. :-P

Benefits are certainly a mixed bag...

[ChoppedBroccoli]

As a new-grad entering the workforce I have mixed feelings over telecommuting.

The first 2-5 years of your employment can be a crucial component to the success of the rest of your career. I get the feeling that you most definitely want to be coming to work everyday. Certainly you may change tracks, jobs, or even fields down the road, but the business/social skills that you'll learn and more importantly, the relationships you will develop are very important and seem impossible to foster over the phone or a video conference. Spending time at your company's office means you are working, eating, and socializing (work and recreational) with your peers. You will undoubtedly discuss your interests both related and unrelated to your job that may lead to hundreds of different possibilites. For example, during a lunch break at the office with your friend you may have a discussion on a common interest technology that could lead to a startup. Or during an on-campus softball break you may find that a peer has a common interest or contacts in a different field altogether. Let alone the 'hands-on' communication needed to complete software projects, how in the world are you going to make these relationships and get these contacts when you are at home during the work week?

I'm not arguing that you can't be successful at your job telecommuting; certainly telecommuting may be beneficial for the truly brilliant people who can produce great code or make a sale to a client from the comfort of the home, but if you are that brilliant, imagine how much your peers would benefit from having you around more often to pick your brain?

Certainly for more veteran people who have 3 kids and live far from work, telecommuting can be a blessing and that is where telecommuting should be applied; experienced individuals who already have excellent communication skills and extensive experience in the industry. The benefits of increased productivity and the positive environmental impact are great positives.

As for disgruntled non-telecommuting employees left behind at work: I think a company that properly uses telecommuting has some sort of obligation to employees that don't telecommute to improve their office experience. The company should be saving a good amount of money from reduced operating expenses because fewer employees are on campus and increased productivity from those who telecommute. Certainly some of this savings should be put to use for those who still commute to work; improve their work experience by having more benefits on campus; drinks, food, recreation, and public transportation or company shuttles. Certainly these services should be simpler to implement on campus if more employees telecommute and would certainly be appreciated by those who still come to work.

Re:Benefits are certainly a mixed bag...

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly. I have found that telecommuting is great... but because people don't know a telecommuter as well as Joe down the hall, peer evalutions will be more unforgiving, and if management does not telecommute, they are likely to promote the in-office workers they see in the flesh on a daily basis.

Re:Benefits are certainly a mixed bag...

[davesays]

I don't think that is really fair to say. My wife telecommutes. We live far too from her work for her to commute. She is an excellent employee, and her boss would do a great deal not to have her quit. All said and done, if you are telecommuting there are a few other things to consider. Your employer no longer needs a parking space for you, a physical space for you, they do not need to heat or cool your space, or provide you with light, or electricity for your computer, or water for your bathroom or breaks. *You supply all that out of your pocket!* You save the money on the commute, but it doesn't net out. In most other facets of business the people who make/save the company big bucks get rewarded. My wife misses her team, and she is able to continue working there when it would otherwise be very difficult, and she doesn't have to commute. But she is one of the few they trust to work from home and is saving them big bucks. Why shouldn't she be rewarded? db

Re:Benefits are certainly a mixed bag...

[QuantumG]

I think you have no career prospects because of your excessive use of bold.

Re:Benefits are certainly a mixed bag...

[ChoppedBroccoli]

Sorry if my post came out the wrong way. It sounds like your wife IS the ideal candidate for telecommunication. She is good at what she does, already has a good relationship with her boss, and is saving both herself and the company a lot of money and resources (and being environment friendly). I think that is great.

My post was more geared at new employees and people early in their careers; I think some decent amount of facetime during the beginning of a career and for new-hires is probably a good thing in the long run and sometimes people overlook that.

As for the last part of my post (which I accidently made entirely bold), it was more geared at those who don't telecommute. Both the telecommuter and the company save a lot of money and resources; it makes sense that if a large amount of people telecommute, then a small bit of the large amount of money saved would be well served providing some very small and inexpensive perks for the employees who are able to make it to the office. Nothing big...just stuff like food, drinks, and transportation (simple things so life can be made easier for everyone).

Re:Benefits are certainly a mixed bag...

[ChoppedBroccoli]

Hehe...can't argue with that. I guess I didn't close a tag, DOH! Although this just goes to show that some formatted ASCII characters on a screen reflects little about the person behind it :)

Re:Benefits are certainly a mixed bag...

[Sefi915]

The company should be saving a good amount of money from reduced operating expenses because fewer employees are on campus and increased productivity from those who telecommute. Certainly some of this savings should be put to use for those who still commute to work; improve their work experience by having more benefits on campus; drinks, food, recreation, and public transportation or company shuttles. Certainly these services should be simpler to implement on campus if more employees telecommute and would certainly be appreciated by those who still come to work. Certainly we notice how new you are to the whole "corporate world."

You know where that monetary savings goes? The VP's pocket.

"Look, El Pres, I saved 15% on my car insurance by switching to the Lizard, and whoa, check out this bottom line! I've got a third of my saps working from home. The office is quiet, we don't spend money on the snack machine, coffee, and heck, we don't even need to pay to get those three toilets on the west side fixed."
"Hai, you are so kewl, more money for j00!"

I think a company that properly uses telecommuting has some sort of obligation to employees that don't telecommute to improve their office experience. Soon, you too will be absolved of your optimistic, fresh ideas, and be consumed into Dilbertville.

Re:Benefits are certainly a mixed bag...

[Zarf]

The first 2-5 years of your employment can be a crucial component to the success of the rest of your career. I'm doomed.

Re:Benefits are certainly a mixed bag...

[Drogo007]

"but if you are that brilliant, imagine how much your peers would benefit from having you around more often to pick your brain?" Ok, let's postulate I'm some brilliant guy that can work from home but I've been asked to work from the office so I can also mentor the three noobs on my team. Let's say those noobs will each ask me a question, on average, once every two hours. Each question will take on average 10 minutes to satisfactorily explain. So those who can benefit from my experience are only taking 30 minutes out of every 120, right? But what about those studies that show that it takes around 20 minutes to get up to speed after each interruption? No those three noobs are eating 90 minutes out of every 120. And you can bet the local chatty Kathy will interrupt me a couple times a day, my boss will poke his head in "for just a sec" to ask me a question, so on and so forth. Now, just because I've been asked to make myself available to these three noobs to answer their questions at the office, I have essentially zero productive time each day. So they're paying me "brilliant guy" salary and getting next to no work out of me. While I'm not the brilliant guy mentioned in this example, the lead dev on the project I'm QA for is. And tasks that are his alone because they involve time-sensitive changes to deep architecture are consistently late because he's consulted on more or less everything that happens on this project so he has very little time left over to put his head down and work - except on the days he gives up and telecommutes.

Re:Benefits are certainly a mixed bag...

[bangthegong]

Have to agree with you here - and not just for new entrants to the job market, but when I am new to a job I only will work from home once a week or so until I get situated and know the others in the office. In an office environment where desks are first come, first served, that can take a few months of coming into the office to get to know everybody, since they only come into the office when they need to. I'm in technical sales, and work on a distributed team where our weekly team conference call is critical. I've seen it both ways - done poorly, and done well. When it's done well you really do get the team atmosphere even though it is over the phone, and maybe an annual meeting in person. I think the main issue is that managers have to ensure that those who are tied to the office because of their job function get to collaborate and be as much a part of the team as those who telecommute. So just like we telecommuters have to have a good plan to keep the lines of communication and team building open, office workers have to have the same focus and make a similar effort. Regardless of in-office or remote, if you don't make the effort to have a cohesive team, you won't have one.

Re:Benefits are certainly a mixed bag...

[CrazyTalk]

"Campus"? "Company Shuttles"? You don't work for Microsoft, do you?

Re:Benefits are certainly a mixed bag...

[snakeophelia]

Funny you mention the 2 - 5 year thing. My company recently implemented telecommuting and it is working very well. Not a lot of complaints from those who don't get to do it, because our company instituted a blanket rule - you have to have been there at least three years and have satisfactory performance reviews to do the telecommuting. This kind of rule gets rid of the grumbling that would happen if newbies were allowed to work from home and senior people weren't, or if more people in one area or with one type of job were allowed to work from home. As my boss says, if you aren't doing your job, I'll notice. If you are doing it, I don't care if you're in your pajamas.

Re:Benefits are certainly a mixed bag...

[Beliskner]

The first 2-5 years of your employment can be a crucial component to the success of the rest of your career. I get the feeling that you most definitely want to be coming to work everyday. Certainly you may change tracks, jobs, or even fields down the road, but the business/social skills that you'll learn and more importantly, the relationships you will develop are very important and seem impossible to foster over the phone or a video conference. Spending time at your company's office means you are working, eating, and socializing (work and recreational) with your peers.

Oh my God, you truly are fresh aren't you. Socialise with your friends from Uni. Coworkers will teach you the job and can help, but if you're a dev, most of the information is on the Internet, and trust me, spending time with coworkers just makes you feel, "Geez, these guys are incompetent" most of the time. I'm lucky to have not so dumb coworkers, but it doesn't affect my job, I don't pour my heart out to them because if their career is in the firing line, guess what - they're gonna tell the manager all your secrets. One of my coworkers didn't tell anybody his wife was pregnant until 1 month before she gave birth! Relaxed conversation is only with people who are outside of your "sphere of command" otherwise the relationship is quite formal. I work at one of the big 4 IT companies.

But young padwan learner, I think perhaps the only way to learn these things is to learn from experience, and it is best to get that young when your secrets affect only you, and not your girlfriend or whatever who you'll meet later, to avoid situations where your wife comes into the office and a coworker suddenly chooses this as an appropriate time to say, "Thanks for recommending that dating website to me, oh oops who's this?" So you want to learn politics. Enjoy!

self-selected bunch

[purplelocust]

It seems like those who are permitted to telecommute tend to be those who have shown they are responsible people who can contribute meaningfully without actually coming in. If you look at the remainings, it's no surprise that they are a grumpy lot about the overall state of affairs. It's not that everyone who telecommutes is a self-motivated creative genius, and that everyone who doesn't is a goofoff who needs constant supervision, but if there is some kind of connection, it would show up sharply in a study like this one.

Re:self-selected bunch

[SerenaStargazer]

Agree with the comment about telecommuters being more responsible. I don't telecommute, but I have the option to work from home on an as-needed basis - when it will allow me to be more productive. For example, if I've got to extract an dorganise data from a large database, I can get it done twice as fast at home than in the office, where I would have to deal with phone interruptions, people coming by with questions, etc. On the other hand, when it comes to analysing and reporting on that data, I can provide a richer output if I can use information from colleagues who have expertise in subjects that I don't have expertise in - so that's when I come into the office and talk to people. I don't work in IT, but I think the principle is the same in any industry - the "privilege" of telecommuting is given to those who know use it to be more productive and will use it for that.

Re:health-benefits story of telecomuting

[Anonymous Coward]

I enjoyed the "[News]" touch. It's the little things that matter most!

Re:As an non-social nerd with a touch of the autis

[Amorymeltzer]

Not being in the office is plenty distracting. Your standard cubicle and coworkers has a lot less to offer than something like your own home, especially far from supervision. Most annoying people walking by will probably learn after being asked once or twice to only stop by if it's important. I've always seen the personal interactions being far superior to some slight decrease in productivity.

Stuck in the office because everyone else ran away

[Mr.Spaz]

The general idea I take away from reading this article: The needy, politics-playing, "face-to-face" types that require a rigid schedule lest they have to manage their own time are feeling abandoned and unwanted when people flee the office to get away from them and actually get some work done. "We're not a *team* anymore! It's far to clear who's actually doing work here while I piss away my time in the office! I need you back here to help dilute the scrutiny I am receiving!"

It seems like a bitter opinion and it is. Corpolitics and the need to regiment and formalize everyday activities that had little to do with the task at hand drove me out of the industry and have kept me away. It is no wonder that other studies have shown people to be happier, more productive workers when they escape the micro-managerial tyrants and sycophantic coworkers that routinely bog down the average office workday. That this study shows that those left behind are sad pandas when everyone else takes their toys and goes home rather than play with them is no surprise.

Re:As an non-social nerd with a touch of the autis

[Anonymous Coward]

And my wife doesnt know I have a job.

Telecommunicating redistributes types of work!

[compumike]

If somebody were to take a look at a company that implemented telecommuting, and took a big step back to look at the big picture, there's one big thing that will stand out: the kinds of work that various employees (including those "left behind in the office") do will change because of telecommuting.

With the way that telecommuting has taken hold, it's often the case that the work that needs to be done by department XYZ hasn't changed... but that there are some things that are difficult from remote offices. This means that those parts of the new telecommuter's job will have to be moved to an in-office employee. So yes, it makes sense that telecommuting comes with this price.

The real question is whether companies use telecommuting as a reason to change processes, such that it isn't just redistributing work, but changing the nature of the work itself. Since this article just refers to a single company, it's pretty clear that they haven't thought about redefining processes -- just reassigning work and locations. But hopefully more companies are as they move down this road.

--
Educational microcontroller kits for the digital generation.

Re:Telecommunicating redistributes types of work!

[Anonymous Coward]

I ordered one of those nerdkits. It didn't arrive and they wouldn't give my money back. Scam.

Re:Telecommunicating redistributes types of work!

[OldeClegg]

Yep. It's a business challenge of the best type.

Telecommuting does make the importance of actual management more obvious. When they can no longer rely on the inefficient stroll-around-the-cubes 'management' technique, then the working out of work systems, schedules, and the things that managers really should be doing becomes very, very clear. I've been remote working for over a decade now myself, and I really like how it helps to clarify the bs.

In-office interaction? I'd prefer it out-of-office

[filbranden]

I would like to say that I've seen many companies where people work together 40 hours a week, see each other every day, talk all the time about work problems, are usually stressed up. But never meet outside of the job, be it for a beer on Friday after work hours, or for a weekend barbecue. Is that the interaction people miss when telecommuting?

I think it's way more productive to have people working from home on the daily basis, but meeting regularly (bi-weekly, monthly) to do something fun, be it go to a bar, do some group sports, anyway, some bonding activities. I'm sure that's much better than the day-to-day stressed up routine of the office.

"My home time...doing...scary...things...."

[Anonymous Coward]

So you're a freelance assassin too? I occasionally help out with rendition and some waterboarding on th side, but the hits are my main bread and butter.

Re:Asperger's is bullshit. You DO NOT have "autism

[Anonymous Coward]

First, lets see your medical degree.

Agreed on the in-person relationships

[Weaselmancer]

At the company I work for, our main office is on the other coast. We're a splinter office (well an acquisition really) of about a dozen guys. The guys on the coast really don't have any idea where I'm at anyways. I've done several projects and never even seen the other guys on the team. I email them status and code, they email me requests.

And that's true at the office I'm in too when the project is in-house. Had a guy two cubes down from me get added to my project, and he had to ask me my name. He had forgotten. We still got things done though, once he remembered who I was.

Point is, I've worked a lot with people I've never seen while sitting in my cube. If I was at home, I honestly think people wouldn't even know, much less care. Meet your deadlines and you've done your part. And I do. I only go in to the office most times just because it's expected of me. It doesn't really help in any way.

It needs to be done right

[MikeRT]

Telecommuting works great if you have a few trusted employees. One of the developers on a team I used to work on about 8 months ago had to commute from about 45 minutes away to get into the office. He telecommuted a lot when he felt like. Our manager bent (more like broke, later on) the rules so that he didn't have to add 1.5 hours to his commute. My coworker and I literally lived down the street from our new office. Why should we be allowed to telecommute? Seriously, we lucked out such that we could walk about 10-20 minutes away from our apartments to get to the office on a bad day.

I think it all depends on three things:

1) How far away does the employee live
2) How well can you trust them to do their work
3) Can they do all of their work from home, and if not, will the come in and do what they can't in the office

Telecommuting ought to be a privilege, not a right. Part of the reason my company ended up having a general policy of ending telecommuting was the abuse. Too little work was getting done by most of the telecommuters.

Re:It needs to be done right

[hemp]

I think it all depends on three things:

1) How far away does the employee live

I don't think how far away an employee lives should enter into it at all. I have worked with several colleges who have insisted on telecommuting/coming late/leaving early because they 'live so far away'. I always ask them - didn't you know where the office was? When you came in to interview didn't you pay attention to how far away you lived?

If a long commute was a problem, why did you take the job??

Re:It needs to be done right

[oahazmatt]

I think it all depends on three things:

1) How far away does the employee live
2) How well can you trust them to do their work
3) Can they do all of their work from home, and if not, will the come in and do what they can't in the office In my experience, with my job (I work for a large telecom's internal support desk) 1 & 3 are never factored in. We have people who work three hours away from the nearest office and refuse to come in. It's a great deal of fun when they've been using cached logins and get dropped from a domain, or when their PC just dies and they need to coordinate for days with our field support.

Re:It needs to be done right

[Cro Magnon]

2) How well can you trust them to do their work

Meh! I'd be just as trustworthy from home as I am at the office.

Re:As an non-social nerd with a touch of the autis

[garcia]

I like working with my teammates, and don't mind a little small talk, but really...I'm here to make money not friends. The fact that I enjoy the work is a plus, but it's not super important to me. My home-time is spent doing things that most 'middle Americans' would find scary or offensive so I really don't want to mix my work/home lives.

I don't have autism and I'm not anti-social and I have absolutely no interest in making friends at work (I have discouraged it on Slashdot at least twice before). I'm there to get a job done and go the fuck home and spend time with my wife, dog and our friends that don't give a fuck about what we did at work.

I don't have any hobbies that make "Middle Americans" (I assume I'm one) uncomfortable but I honestly believe you work your shift and you go home. Once you're home you don't talk about work, you don't worry about work, and you certainly don't concern yourself with what you're going to be doing tomorrow.

Work isn't important enough to care about it that much. Do your job to the best of your ability and go home. Too many people have it backwards -- worrying about work at day and all night.

Re:As an non-social nerd with a touch of the autis

[Anonymous Coward]

I've done it both ways. I think the success of telecommuting depends on the individual. My personal experience in working in an office isn't that great.

Even if someone isn't sticking their head over the fuzzy cubical for a chat, the local conversations are quite distracting. At home however, I find it easy to get huge amounts of work done. I'm an early riser, so I'm up and working around 5am. By the time others hit the office, I've already got half a days work done. I've got my list of things to design/debug/build, and I work the list. We have weekly meetings. I don't feel distant at all.

As far as having face to face meetings goes....we've sometimes called off or postponed these types of meetings, as the conference calls were enough and getting together would have been a waste of time. I wonder if it's the mix of people. I have nothing but respect for the others I work with, they're very professional. Everyone just wants to create progress.

I guess it helps to be a workaholic too... ;-)

Our telecommuters work from Bangalore

[heroine]

The Bangalore workers get 30% raises & own houses. The Silicon Valley workers struggle to keep up with rent inflation & don't get raises. So there probably is some dissatisfaction.

Re:Our telecommuters work from Bangalore

[JPLemme]

Even without 30% raises etc, having a significant portion of the staff in India hurts worker happiness in the office. First the timezone differences, the communication difficulties, and the cultural issues undermine cohesion. Then the US workers start to complain openly about their Indian co-workers who aren't there (or even awake) to defend themselves. But since the workers in India are there because US management wants it that way, the US workers get punished for not being team players. The relationship can work, but it's not easy and ideally requires a lot of time in airplanes to make sure that people know each other as people rather than as "stupid Arun in Bangalore".

And I'm sure that the Indian workers suffer from these things even more than the US workers do. The guy in the cubicle next to me usually can see when I'm busy and understands why I might be ignoring him or giving him slapped-together work. Arun in Bangalore just sees that I send him crappy specs and won't respond to his pleas for clarification. If management would let him talk directly to the users or manage some of these projects he knows he could do a better job than the lazy US-based workers.

Re:Our telecommuters work from Bangalore

[zanaxagoras]

...and yet outsourcing continues to be considered a valid option, despite all the shortcomings pointed out.

Re:Our telecommuters work from Bangalore

[Curmudgeonlyoldbloke]

For no other reason that it's significantly cheaper. What corporations do is dictated by money, and no amount of wishing will change that.

Despite some correction, the cost of living in the US (particularly Silicon Valley) is going to be significantly higher than the likes of Bangalore for the foreseeable future. The only way to compete is to do a better job - speaking the language as a native rather than a second language is a start.

Re:Asperger's is bullshit. You DO NOT have "autism

[Anonymous Coward]

I've got two medical degrees. Grandparent poster was 99% right, actually.

Re:"Telecommuters" are typically lazy

[Lehk228]

you must be new here.

I think he has acute impingment of the funny bone.

[FatSean]

I figured my use of the archaic phrasing "A touch of the..." would clue you in, but I don't think I have autism or Asperger's or any of that shit. In fact, nothing pisses me off more than the genetically defective parents who try to pass off blame for their brain-damaged child on important immunization programs.*

* This too was a joke...nobody has proven that autism is hereditary in nature.

I've got a room in the house that is my office.

[FatSean]

I find that if I leave my personal computer off, then I am not tempted by Civ4. Civ4 is by FAR the biggest threat to my work productivity.

Re:I've got a room in the house that is my office.

[todd1000]

I think not. look at your /. UID ;-)

Re:I've got a room in the house that is my office.

[jdjbuffalo]

Civ 4 is a drain on my productivity whether I go into work or telecommute. For one, I'm always thinking about what I'm going to do next and the most damaging is staying up until 3am saying "just one more turn" for 5 hours...

Can't (intuitively) aggree

[pembo13]

The more I see people the more I tend not to wish to see them. I think i would generally prefer an IRC office than a traditional slaves in the workhouse office.

Re:As an non-social nerd with a touch of the autis

[Rogerborg]

Damn skippy. I don't even think about work when I'm in the office. Fuck them, they'll smartsize my headcount in a heartbeat the moment that they think it'll add ten cents to next quarter's bottom line, so I'm getting my retaliation in preemptively. Curiously, the more I slack off, the more they over-value my skills. Making this post probably put another $100 on next year's salary.

I'm part of the vast left-wing conspiracy.

[FatSean]

I specialize in making good upstanding religious families, who had 6 kids on one meager income, subsidize government lube for low-income orgy-and-abortion parties through the tax code.

I agree with this-Downloadable relationships.

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe we can learn the nature of social relationships and how to replicate the experience online? Technology is improving all the time. It's about time we learned how to put all the pieces together into a whole that will get something worthwhile accomplished.

Introverts and extraverts

[Degrees]

I do sysadmin work in a space with three other guys; three of us are introverts (mostly), and one of us is an extrovert (largely). It's not easy.

Seems to me, the article talks about the effect telecommuting had on the extrovert. Well, sure. I can absolutely see where the lack of an audience is going to be a total bummer for the extrovert.

But us introverts say a prayer of thanks when the telecommute offer comes in.

The study is probably a little bit skewed, in that extroverts want to come to work, so that they do get their audience. When offered the telecommute, the extroverts probably turned it down.... Yes, they were left behind. And sure, they may be more lonely now. But given my 'druthers, I'd rather the extroverts work in Sales.

Re:Introverts and extraverts

[bladesjester]

The thing is that it isn't necessarily a matter of introverts and extroverts though there are places where that is indeed the case.

I've found that, in a lot of situations, people working around each other do better work than they do working alone because they tend to rub off on each other. They pick up things from each other - be it random pieces of useful information, the desire to learn something, or a more positive attitude about the day (unfortunately, the opposite is also true. One downer can suck the life out of everyone).

The important thing is to have a team that has good cohesion. They should compliment each other in skill sets and personalities. When you have that (and, unfortunately, it isn't always that common), you have a group that is a heck of a lot better than the people are by themselves and they all benefit from it, as does the company.

As far as introversion and extroversion goes, I guess I'm somewhere in the middle. I'm comfortable in pretty much any social situation (everything from goth clubs to formal dinners) but I like my time alone as well (usually at the lake or walking in the woods).

Re:Introverts and extraverts

[Degrees]

You are 100% correct that the important thing is to have a team that has good cohesion. And I can see where your point about proximity providing cross-training is beneficial to everyone.

TFA comes to the conclusion that the telecommuters ought to be brought back into the office once in a while, so that the left-behinders don't feel so left-behind.

But for me, I'm certain that I could get more work done if I didn't have the distractions caused by our extrovert being visited by other extroverts. I'd be happy to throw that extra time into updating our documentation wiki, or doing a webex to explain the latest changes to our production systems.

Ultimately, I find our close-proximity to be a drain, and the collaboration benefit to be minimal. The cohesion isn't there; so I'd rather throw myself into being the super-sysadmin. I think that my extrovert co-worker probably doesn't get much from me as far as technical skill. I'm sure I make a much better (social) sounding board than tech-info database.

So dragging me back into the office, just so my extrovert co-worker has someone to regale with stories would slowly make me angry, I think.

Re:Introverts and extraverts

[bladesjester]

I can see how that would be aggravating. Having conflicting personalities on a team can be a real pain.

However, I would advocate pulling the telecommuters back into work on occasion for a different reason - socializing and networking (no, not the computer kind). I know that may sound weird, but it's important. You should get to know and interact with the people you work around for a few reasons.

* It often improves your visibility, which is a positive thing when it comes time for raises, etc and often improves your chances of not being the one who gets downsized when things get rough. Otherwise, you're just a faceless part of the system and a lot of bosses operate on the visibility principle - if they don't see you, you either aren't important or you aren't doing your job.

* It helps members of your team, and fellow employees in the company outside of your immediate team, to feel more like a team. For some people that's important. I'll admit that there are times that I really want to feel a connection with the people I work with (there are, of course, times I want to hide as well, but you'll have that).

* Your connections at work can help you long after you leave the company. Most vacancies are filled though referrals, not through resume submissions. The reason getting to know and interact with your peers is important in this case is that people tend to want people they know/like to succeed and they'll help you get there.

* Sometimes it really is easier to transmit information in 5 minutes in person than it is in a much longer period of time via phone, email, etc even if you don't realize you're doing it. People are inspired by the weirdest things and sometimes we really do just need a sounding board to get our thoughts out (heck, I remember a story of one tech support team that had a stuffed bear users had to tell their problems to before going to a tech. Apparently it cut down on incidents dramatically because it weeded out a lot of the "duh" cases when people realized their own answers by simply stating the problem out loud).

* As counterintuitive as it may seem, sometimes work isn't about just doing the job. Sometimes the more important part of it is the personal factor, and you lose a lot of that when telecommuting. Even for a sysadmin.

As far as your extroverted co-worker driving you nuts with stories, try talking with him about it. Politely and calmly. It often does wonders.

Re:As an non-social nerd with a touch of the autis

[Seumas]

Well, as a telecommuter, I can say that work is the best part of my week and day and I enjoy spending my free time working and I consider non-work related activities to be a nuisance. I've never taken a vacation and usually have to be forced to take any time off at all. I don't care much about people, though I get along with them and like my coworkers (and have made what I would consider to be friends that I've worked with over the many years). But the fact is that I enjoy integrating my life and my work as much as possible and telecommuting makes it that much more possible.

Of course, the thing is that making work that important in my life is MY choice and MY option. Other people don't have to do that. And if there are people who prefer the physical separation of the two, then so be it.

Re:As an non-social nerd with a touch of the autis

[RobinH]

Work isn't important enough to care about it that much. Do your job to the best of your ability and go home. Too many people have it backwards -- worrying about work at day and all night.

That seems to be the attitude of most people I run into outside of work, and I certainly respect their wishes.

However, after the first 5 years of work I had the opportunity to move to a new city and get a new job. I did a bit of goal planning and soul searching and really started asking what I wanted to do with my life. I started making career decisions based on doing more of what I get excited about and less of what I dislike, even though it meant passing up opportunities for promotions and raises.

You know what? It worked. I love my job now, and can't imagine not wanting to go into work in the morning. I have a bad day maybe 1 out of 10 now, rather than 2 out of 3 like before. Of course, I have to be very careful and guarded if someone asks me what I do at work or I'm liable to get overly detailed. Most people only ask out of courtesy. However, on the rare occasion that I connect with guys like me, it can be fun to geek out and talk about work.

So it really depends on your point of view. If you don't find your job fulfilling or it stresses you out, then you need to leave it at work when you go home. On the other hand if your job is as interesting to you as a hobby, why not let the good parts come home with you? I leave the stress (and email) at the office, but I regularly read up on new technologies, etc., at home when I get a chance. There's still lots of time for family and other parts of your life (since having a hobby becomes somewhat redundant).

Has spam taught us nothing?

[Anonymous Coward]

"As much as I hate censorship, I think anything with the word "nigger" should be rejected by the lameness filter, at least temporarily."
So you're saying you would rather see:

• ni66er
• |\|IGGER
• n1gger
• N1GG3R

Probably someone just lost their job and they're lashing out, it's best to ignore them - like i'm doing;-)
(They'll be s/nigger/jew/a next week anyway.)

The grass is always greener + why I do office work

[rjamestaylor]

Those not $SITUATON are disgruntled against those who $SITUATION.

Anyway... I worked remotely, telecommuting, since 1996. Eventually I went full-time telecommuting -- even when I would come to "the office" I would be in a conference room, lunch area, etc., free to sit where I wished and work how/when i wanted (unless there was a specific meeting in progress). Last year I went to work in an office to do shift work as a system admin for a hosting company. Love it.

I still work on little projects and am planning that "big project" in my spare time, but my *work* is 10 hours a day, four days a week AT THE OFFICE.

It's a freeing change for me.

One day (well, over several years) I realized that the problem with me working at home or away from the office is that whenever I was home or away from the office I would work. Even when traveling 1500 miles for Thanksgiving...I worked 10 to 12 hour days.

Stupid.

So, because I'm a workaholic, I only drink, er, work, at specified times in specified places. Sure, I may have a single "email check-in" session at home, but no prolonged working. If I need to cover a co-workers' shift, I go in to the office (if possible). No more working at home alone. Work, for some, is intoxicating.

Obligatory 300 misquote

[Captain Sarcastic]

Slashdot Newbie: You did not actually read the article? This is madness!

Old-school Slashdotter: This... is... SLASHDOT! [kicks Newbie into Pit of Death]

Morale is probably #1

[rastoboy29]

I've definitely seen a nosedive in morale among colleagues who are arbitrarily forbidden from telecommuting.  The argument from on high was that Joe could telecommute because he "needed to", while the other guys just "want to".  Nice.

Re:Morale is probably #1

[ivan256]

That's the same type of thing as when you get a pile of work dumped on you because a co-worker has to drop everything to take care of their kids and you don't have any... So congratulations, you get his/her shit-work.

Many telecommuters don't realize/admit that some of what makes their telecommuting so nice for them are the little annoyances that get passed on to their office-dwelling co-workers because they're not around. If you point them out though, the rabid telecommuters will come out of the woodwork to defend themselves lest they lose their sweet gig.

Re:As an non-social nerd with a touch of the autis

[martin-boundary]

Have you thought about asking to get paid in some other currency? You might have to post a lot more comments on slashdot this year just to stay even :)

Uneven Work Distribution

[PPH]

I can see the problems, particularly if the boss isn't very good at assigning work equitably. The telecommuters will get the big projects, where they can work undisturbed. Those left behind will end up handling all the B.S that tends to roll through the office on a moment's notice.

Incompetent management aggravates the situation by failing to protect the office staff from disturbances and trivial tasks. Worse yet, some bad managers are the source of such disturbances, grabbing the nearest person to handle undesirable tasks. This results in resentment from the office employees.

Re:Uneven Work Distribution

[josepha48]

There is also the problem of management playing favoritism and letting certain employees work at home and others not. While most places make it merit based, some are not. Also some jobs require people to be in the office and doing meetings and things like that, and while some can be done via telecommuting, sometimes face to face is more effective.

Then there is the case where remote employees get to do whatever they want and get away with slipping deadlines and all sorts of excuses because management does not know enough about the issues, which while it can happen in the office, you are more likely to see someone surfing the web and not getting things done in the office then someone at home playing wow.

Re:The grass is always greener + why I do office w

[Seumas]

I think the important point to draw from this whole discussion is that not every person possesses the same talents and note very person reaches their peak productivity or self-satisfaction in the same environment. Some people prefer a very hard separation between home and work and prefer the additional perception of social experiences in an office environment while others feel they personally benefit more from the freedom, flexibility, moderate autonomy and solitude of telecommuting.

As long as one group doesn't try to force the other out of their situation, I don't see that there should be a problem. Someone's morale or jealousy over someone *else's* work environment or situation is not a reasonable justification from iron-fisting everyone into the same pattern. Whether or not they are productive (and perhaps happy) is.

I will tell you right now that telecommuting is a big part of why I love my job. I have turned down other positions in the company and offers from other companies over the year that started off with a lot more money than I make now, but I appreciate the people I work with (even remotely) and the option to telecommute more than an extra $10k-$20k. That's a premium loyalty all while saving the same company on expenses (they don't pay for my bandwidth, phone, office space, etc).

Re:Stuck in the office because everyone else ran a

[bahwi]

That could not have been said better. I agree completely. I always telecommute because I just do consulting for a few people. They had me come in before and it was all politics and absolutely ridiculous. In-person meetings were about charisma more than what the meetings were about.

N=1, how scientific

[GoatRavisher]

Wow a sample of 240 professional employees from an unnamed medium-sized company. One can definitely see a pattern.

Yes, it is a kind of jealousy or envy

[NotQuiteReal]

I've experienced the same thing both as a telecommuter, and as a consultant.

I think the size of the organization has a lot to do with it. The larger the company, the more deadwood there is. Those are the people we are talking about.

Small places can't afford slackers, depending on the business model they could be a 100% virtual company (i.e. all telecommuters).

Larger, more established places tend to attract pointy haired bosses, 9-5'er clock-punchers and others just doing the minimum to skim by. They are the ones most likely to be left behind, and also the most likely to be the whiners.

There are many clock-punchers in life. Most are either implicitly or explicitly are uneasy around those that get stuff done. It is not a surprise that they envy telecommuters, who by their very nature, are more likely to be the achievers.

Re:In-office interaction? I'd prefer it out-of-off

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you nuts? I like my coworkers fine, but I don't want to hang out with them. The young ones are just kids, and some of the older ones are kinda odd.

I mean, one of them has to be 50+ and still lives with his parents. His mommy makes him a sandwich every day. I should hang with these people?

Nailed it! quite correct

[Anonymous Coward]

You took the words out of my mouth. The people who get shit done do more when you leave them alone. The parasites left at the office feel adrift.

it's our time now.

[Anonymous Coward]

look everywhere. we have your women. soon we will have the white house. it's our time now.

Re:Stuck in the office because everyone else ran a

[zifferent]

You hit the nail squarely on the head. As an employee that works at a business that has had a tendency to liberally allow work from home for all it's employees when necessary. I prefer going in to work mostly because access to network resources are closer and faster (I do a lot of remote desktops across the Internet to random places in the US) and partly because I live so close that it's only about a 5 minute walk down the street and I can't generally justify working from home. Unfortunately, the people left behind are the scheming, whispering kind of people that like to complain about anything and everything amongst themselves about how everyone else in the company is lazy but them and how they carry the company upon their poor broken backs (man, that kind of banter gets tiring.) The truth is that when they aren't visiting each other and carrying on they are visiting each other and shooting the breeze. I can't imagine them getting stuff done. Very accurate stuff indeed! Thank you sir Spaz you have made my evening.

Re:As an non-social nerd with a touch of the autis

[Anonymous Coward]

My home-time is spent doing things that most 'middle Americans' would find scary or offensive so I really don't want to mix my work/home lives.

What are you, a sociopath or something? Do you have a young girl-child tied up in your bedroom, whacked out on sedatives, to rape and torture at will?

If not, then what the hell are you talking about? "Edgy" porn? Rubbing your two-inch stub with a cheese grater while singing opera? Fantasizing about your neighbors' bloody entrails?

What could you, an autistic Slashdot drone, possibly do that would be scary? Other than getting naked for the shower every other fortnight, that is.

"The hills are alive with the sound of penile friction!" FatSean shrieked as he attempted to scrub the crusty semen stains from his jungle-like expanse of pubic hair. "My bonnie lies over the ocean! My bonnie lies over the seaaaaaaaa! My bonnie has a fat pussyyyyy... I like to watch her peeeeeee!"

"Seanie, what's that racket?" his wizened grandmother screeched from the top of the stairs. She leaned on her cane and stretched her ear towards the bathroom door. "Are ye slappin' your man-gland?"

"N-n-no, Grammy!" FatSean sputtered as his soap-covered retard-hand rubbed furiously at his tiny bipper. "Please don't make me walk around with a clothespin clamped on my thinger again!"

Grammy raised her cane and pounded feebly on the door with it. "Then don't ye be spilling your rancid seed in m'shower ag'in!" She cackled merrily and jammed the end of the cane into her desiccated twat. "Ohhhhhhhhh!" she moaned as her hip shattered. She fell to the ground in a tangle of osteoporosis-limbs. "Help me, Seanie!"

"Grammy!" FatSean knew his grandmother was in trouble, but he was so close to the eruption of lumpy semen that he had to see it through to the end. With a shuddering moan, his entire flab-body undulated like a walrus, and three pints of green cum splatted uselessly against the shower curtain. He scooped some into his hairy palm and ran from the bathroom.

"Help me up, you useless pile of man-meat!" Grammy said from the floor, writhing around in orgasmic agony. The cane was still plugged up inside of her.

"I'm comin'!" FatSean reached down and forced his hand into his grandmother's mouth, dumping his rat-come deep within her throat. She gagged furiously and bit down on his fingers, causing blood to spurt against her sharpened dentures.

"Oh shit! Now I have AIDS!" she screamed, and died. FatSean fucked her corpse.

Re:As an non-social nerd with a touch of the autis

[aeoo]

There is a lot of truth in what you say. If you work slavishly then people think you are powerless and do it out of desperation, in the manner of begging. For example, if you work 12 hours it is because you believe your 8 hours is not good enough, so you have to compensate for your shit skills by working more along the lines of "well I am not that productive per hour, so let me work more hours in desperate hopes that my employer will notice me and at least refrain from firing me, or at least put me in the back of the line when firing." It's a fear-based, victim, loser mentality. And funny enough, if you stop doing it, people value you more. If you kill yourself for the company, you get fired with the rest of the workaholic office flotsam.

It's the exact same dynamic that exists between men and women. Men who are desperate for women and who bend over backward to please women are despised by women. Women hate the "nice guy". And the corps hate the "nice employee" too for the same reason.

I know this from experience. When I was "nice", I got zero respect and my only reward was an ever-increasing workload and responsibility with the ever decreasing decision making power. So if something ever went wrong it was my fault, even though I had no decision making power to do it better or even just plain differently. I was a nervous wreck on hastening to take my place 6ft under with no other motivation besides fear. When I realized how pathetic that was, for me and for others around me (even for the corp itself), I changed and never looked back. I'd rather die free than be a slave.

Re:As an non-social nerd with a touch of the autis

[bronney]

I must applause you sir. This is exactly the attitude I take towards work.

However in my experience I see 2 kinds of people that would bring their work home and think about it even when they're sleeping:

1. He does not have hobbies, dogs, wife, car, shows he wanted to catch on TV, no prison break, nothing. Thinking about work gives him meaning and an existence.

2. He is messed up on prioritizing his life. He has a dog, a wife, a car, TNG to watch, but he chose to think about work and ignore all the other things because he thinks work pays the bills. Work sustain his house and dogs. Work keeps the family alive and therefore work gives life. It's like working 24/7 sustaining that Ferrari that you'll never have enough time to drive until you're 60 and can't see no more to drive it.

Depending on types of industry, if I am in the servicing or innovative sector, I wouldn't want to hire anyone like that. If you're just sewing jeans, maybe. But think about the "livelihood" this guy will bring to the team.

all offices suck

[Anonymous Coward]

I must say that the in-person relationships are over-rated. Amen to that. In the office I grudgingly inhabit, there are lots of folks who absolutely insist on face time, meetings, and endless hours of mindless chit-chat in order to feel like 'family' or a 'team' or some such bullshit. These people are the also the most ineffective, inefficient wallflowers you can imagine. They will wait two weeks for a scheduled meeting to tell you about a concern they have instead of simply firing off a quick email - because email is too 'impersonal'. They will drag ten people into a room to discuss minutia that could and should be swept under the run by one or two people - because like an uninvited party guest anyone and everyone is somehow a 'stakeholder' (read: gruesome whoring pretenders full of hubris with nothing better to do).

None of this is to imply that work doesn't require collaboration, teamwork, etc. But office environments generally do nothing but encourage vapid social disfunction. Watch Linus. He knows how to run a project. Where is the board room (gasp!)? What about the weekly scheduled meetings (Oh NOOOoooo!)? The only meetings I'm aware of are the ones where you see the team assembled in the Netherlands or someplace so they can all get trashed and celebrate their accomplishments together once in a while. Otherwise, if you have something to say, don't say it in a meeting and deny it later - write it to an archived mail list. Use git or git out. People who know how to use technology well really are more efficient and productive. So why do most businesses still insist on clinging to outdated modalities? Because they are run by folks who are functionally illiterate.

Office workers should feel left out. They are inefficient needy anachronisms.

Re:I think he has acute impingment of the funny bo

[Anonymous Coward]

A lot more evidence pointing towards a genetic cause for autism than immunizations. But that's mostly because there is no evidence pointing the finger at immunizations.

Where's Farks "Obvious" Tag When You Need It?

[iCharles]

Seriously!

Lets look at it from another POV

[zerofish22]

Being a long time telecommuter and in-office worker, and managing telecommuting teams, telecommuting could be considered no different than asking "where are the sales guys" prior to or even during the shift to more people telecommuting. The fact is that going to an office does not make a person more productive, just more visible and likely less productive. I n todays society the question is "Do I or "can I be an effective telecommuter, or virtual team member" And be productive and feel good at the end of the day?

Re:Stuck in the office because everyone else ran a

[TelecommutingJournal]

Agreed. I was beginning to think I might be the only one with a realistic view until I saw SlashDot's coverage and the comments made above by Mr.Spaz, Bahwi and Zifferent (along with some of the others here). http://telecommutingjournal.com/2008/01/the-grass-is-always-greener/

Re:As an non-social nerd with a touch of the autis

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds like you've really found your calling. Keep dispensing the valuable advice and may we all end up just like you!

Re:The grass is always greener + why I do office w

[thynk]

I work remote and it's been a life saver. I'm a quasi-single father and being able to work from home and take lunch to pick them up for the afternoon carpool (she does the morning car pool) is great. I'm home and here for them. The plus of this is as a contractor, I don't get vacation time, so when we travel, as long as I can get onto the net, I can travel. I can say that since we have such a tight team, those who commute the office several days a week have no issues with those who work remote. We chat via internal IM or via yahoo even when not on shift, just to be social (no, none of us have lives most of the time).

I too am noticing that it feels like I'm ALWAYS at work, but seems that I won't be doing it forever. To prove another in this thread, I learned that they are cutting all the US contractors from my team by Q3 of this year. It's still in the "somewhat confirmed rumor" so our teams have some time to react, I guess it will be a nice change of pace to "go to work" instead of "logging on".

er.. so?

[aldousd666]

"Being employed considered harmful to the egos of those who are not!"

"Wealth makes poor people feel bad!"

"Food considered demoralizing to the starving."

"Being smart considered embarrassing to those who aren't."

Duh.

Re:er.. so?

[aadvancedGIR]

"Being smart considered embarrassing to those who aren't."

Well, that one is so obvious it's got to be wrong.

Re:As an non-social nerd with a touch of the autis

[Panaflex]

Dude.. that's so office space! LOL

But absolutely true... Except for one caveat: cool new stuff. If you're making cool new stuff and showing it off, I find good rapport pretty easy.

Re:As an non-social nerd with a touch of the autis

[ballwall]

3. He chose a job that involves things he *likes* to do and therefore there isn't much of a distinction between work and play. (My personal favorite option).

As an non-social nerd with a touch of Love

[Anonymous Coward]

"Work isn't important enough to care about it that much. Do your job to the best of your ability and go home. Too many people have it backwards -- worrying about work at day and all night."

Yeah those "doing it for the love" people have it all wrong.

"I don't have autism and I'm not anti-social and I have absolutely no interest in making friends at work (I have discouraged it on Slashdot at least twice before)."

You've been propositioned while browsing slashdot from work?

"I don't have any hobbies that make "Middle Americans" (I assume I'm one) uncomfortable but I honestly believe you work your shift and you go home. Once you're home you don't talk about work, you don't worry about work, and you certainly don't concern yourself with what you're going to be doing tomorrow."

Stayed away from the Ask Slashdot: "What if you were president" section, didn't you?

Traditionaly

[WoollyMittens]

I thought it was most efficient to keep the slaves chained to their desk.

Re:Traditionaly

[Goffee71]

Tele-commuters can't go down the pub and bitch with the other drones... this is why I prefer to slog miles into London and see and meet people rather than sit at home (which I could do in my job) and only get a feel for what's going on by mail, IM and phone... Sure its nice to have a day under the duvet/in the garden with your laptop but that doesn't beat the smile from a receptionist, lunch with friends, watching the office's 'Stressed Eric' lose it... being in on the gossip must rate at least 10% of most people's job satisfaction. Something most of these reports ignore and, to be honest, the author doesn't sound like a corporate bunny anyway

Re:Traditionaly

[Anonymous Coward]

only if you are black!

Re:As an non-social nerd with a touch of the autis

[mwvdlee]

Next to an enjoyable private life, I try to enjoy my professional life as well.
Actively blocking work friendships just seems idiotic to me.
Why would it be impossible for somebody you met at work to ever become a friend? Are they really that fundamentally different from the friends you already have? You work there, so unless your friend are completely unlike yourself, why couldn't they?

Re:As an non-social nerd with a touch of the autis

[bronney]

Completely agreed, but will our theoretical physicist Bob (you have to love it to do it) bring home his work and share with his dog that has zero interests in the subject? Or will he stay in the lab 16 hours a day and only feed the dog to keep it alive?

The question remains. Heck there are even family businesses where all family members work together. But when little timmy want to watch a clip of Transformers, will daddy bother him with a reminder to buy more corn for tomorrow?

No matter how much you love your work, when you're skiing or driving (or reading your love ones bed time stories), don't think about it.

Re:As an non-social nerd with a touch of the autis

[The One and Only]

Isn't 40-50 hours a week enough though? I mean, of all the things I enjoy doing I can't imagine devoting more than that much time to them on average.

you ain't in the office you ain't work'n

[Grampaw Willie]

"working from home" my @$$

Re:In-office interaction? I'd prefer it out-of-off

[aadvancedGIR]

Everytime I was into an out of office "bonding activities", it was organised by management and ultimately revolved around office politics. You definitely can't enjoy meeting your coworkers outside work when your main concious though is to not going postal on those weasels.

then there are those who ruin it ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Case in point, someone was allowed to telecommute 3 times a week
when he moved from a 10 minute walk to work to a 2 hour drive.

1. Not being home during work hours. Home phone not answered,
        try his cell, and it would be apparent that he was in his car.

2. Tiling his bathroom during work.

3. Being allowed to "bank" in-office time, which is silly.

4. The capper was taking a trip to Las Vegas with the family
        and not treating it as vacation time.

Now the company doesn't like telecommuting at ALL.

-- todd --

Re:As an non-social nerd with a touch of the autis

[coop247]

Amen brother. Those people working 12 hour days will be the first ones fired when they move the work to India, mostly because they showed up 2 hours before us. They will re-org/outsource/fire you without breaking a sweat, so you're the sucker if your slavishly working all the time.

Re:As an non-social nerd with a touch of the autis

[gauauu]

I definitely agree with not wanting to take the stress of work home, but what's wrong with making friends at work? Isn't it more enjoyable to have friends there when you have to go to work? Would you rather spend 8 hours every day with people you like, or people you don't like?

Re:Stuck in the office because everyone else ran a

[GauteL]

"The general idea I take away from reading this article: The needy, politics-playing, "face-to-face" types that require a rigid schedule lest they have to manage their own time are feeling abandoned and unwanted when people flee the office to get away from them and actually get some work done."

What a bitter and twisted attitude to have. Some people like going into work because they enjoy the office socialising and feel isolated if they are to stay at home. To brand all people as "needy" and "politics-playing" is just bullshit.

I spent about 2 years of my PhD, mostly alone in my office and this made me feel isolated and mildly depressed. I now enjoy having co-workers around me, I enjoy the office banter and I enjoy having a chat with people over lunch.

Children

[mrops]

Well, children do make a difference. My work style did not change significantly when I got married about 5 years ago, however it has completely changed after my kid. He is 15 months and more than both my wife and I can handle.

Kid may have different effect on different people, some don't want kids for various reasons.

For me, my kid's birth resolved a very important question for me, notice how I did not say "answered" but "resolved". The question is philosophical, "What is my purpose in life?" After his birth, I am not looking for that answer.

For the same reason, I don't do 80hr work week, nor do I want a 20% raise every year. I somehow am contended with his existence in my life. I feel "purpose in life" doesn't need to be answered anymore.

Is this somehow built into my genes, is this a result of how humans evolved. I don't know and I don't care.

Weird, but I like it!

Re:Children

[chuckT]

Nah, it's not in your genes, you're just too tired to give a shit.

Oh, and happy too, of course.

Chuck

Re:Children

[omfglearntoplay]

Kids are cool. Your own kid(s) is(are) extra cool. Got one myself... about a year old. One of the best parts is seeing how they perceive the world and learn. It's freaky how humans learn so much with apparently not much instinct dictating what/how they learn.

In other words

[Joebert]

The people who never really produce anything on their own, instead manipulating others to do their work for them & taking credit for that work, can't do that with less people around.

Relationships...

[rant64]

In-office employees in his study became disappointed at having fewer and weaker relationships.

This would be exactly why some people would get more work done when not at the office. Not everybody is waiting for some semi-personal work relationship and I personally can't put up with prolonged chit-chat.

Re:As an non-social nerd with a touch of the autis

[Oriumpor]

There's an insanity that I like to call "climbing the ladder" some people try it, and few people (as I've found) in IT do it very well.

Working 12 hours a day is all well and good if you can swing it, you're not doing it because you have to (overtime pay - taxes = crap.) You're doing it because it increases your knowledgebase, gives you on the job training and gets you visibility.

The bosses I like to work for, are there a little before I am, and leave just after I do... They are there to shovel the shit from all the smartsizing and reorganizing that's come before them. I'm there to figure out all the archaic shit that hamsterlike horders of information before me kept to themselves just before being smartsized.

If you learn enough about the infrastructure, software, and hardware required to keep the business running, you are invaluable, and if you are invaluable there's more projects for you to work on then time in the day...

That, and you have to take a slashdot break occasionally to wind down, especially since the likelihood of actually having a real lunch gets increasingly smaller as the clock ticks closer to noon... A global economy means there's always someone somewhere who isn't on lunch who needs your help.

I don't think the replies are missing the point

[mymaxx]

The PHB is going to interpret the article as needing to reduce telecommuting. Why? The PHB loves the office environment and office relationships. He's not going to see the benefits, he's going to see the part about deteriorating office relationships (i.e. micromanagement).

Tubes? We made our own pipes. From lead.

[Hognoxious]

What do you mean, when it was new? I just got one in my inbox!

watching the end of the reign of extroverts

[superwiz]

Warms my heart. We might finally have organizations that will let people rise and fall based on their ability to create rather than based on their ability to be slick.

Re:As an non-social nerd with a touch of the autis

[deadweight]

Funniest thing I have read all month! ROFLMAO Really - exactly what is this dude up to? If I had to guess it would be nonstop whacking combined with 1 shower/week.

Re:Telecommuting: bad for NIGGERS

[Anonymous Coward]

Forget to click 'Post Anonymously' pv2b?

Have a look at his posting record and you won't see any other post like the above.

He just outed himself as a racist.

Re:As an non-social nerd with a touch of the autis

[RobinH]

A stay at home parent likely spends much more than 50 hours per week parenting. Most wouldn't give up parenting either (I'm not saying it makes them happy, but they consider it important). I could imagine a person whose work is quite important might consider it worthy of more than 50 hours per week.

I also know a chef (in training) who cooks all day at work, then cooks for his family. He loves to cook.

What about a carpenter who is building his own garage? He probably spends more than 50 hours each week doing carpentry.

I happen to like automating things. Thankfully that's my job too... The trick is to leave the stuff you DON'T like at the office.

Communication

[redmid17]

I think what a lot of people are missing is the simple practice and repetition of communicating that you get by just being at the office. I'm a senior right now and the big thing every company I interview with is the ability to communicate effectively (and usually concisely).

Yes, I realize that coworkers bugging you and talk at the watercool might seem like time wasters, and they might well be. If you can't afford these to get in your way, then by all means avoid them. Not to knock telecommuting, but these everyday interactions with people you might not know as well as your wife and kids or roommates puts you in a situation where you can practice being able to communicate. Practice leads at least to consistency, if not proficiency (GIGO not withstanding), that companies have indicated they desire.

Let me go ahead and shameless quote my favorite show, "The Office":

"In the end, life and business are about human connections, and computers are about trying to murder you in a lake. To me the choice is easy"

Granted, the last part doesn't have much to do with the issue at hand (I just love that part of the quote), but most people would rather have someone show up in person -- be it a coworker, client, or boss. It gives a tangible presence to something that a lot of people feel comforted by. You can do a conference call, a chat room, or even a forum like slashdot. It gives a tangible presence to something that a lot of people feel comforted by. Telecommuting can save a lot of money and is a very attractive option to a lot of people. Myself, I'll go ahead, be ambitious, and show up to work every day.

The old Woddy Allen spiel, "The secret of success is simply showing up," is true to a large extent. All other things equal, would you rather hire someone who consistently shows up to work and has proven their ability to communicate in person with others or a frequent telecommuter who has good communication skills but doesn't know the general atmosphere of the office?

Re:As an non-social nerd with a touch of the autis

[greyhueofdoubt]

Some of us really enjoy our work. Some of us have jobs with interesting problems that we would be happy to try to solve on our own time, and we do. Maybe it's because I'm on salary, but I do bring my work home with me some times, and I think that it enriches my work and home life. If you do something for half of your waking hours, I think that it SHOULD be important to you. I'm sorry that you have a crappy job that you don't care about. I've had jobs like that, too. The good news for me is that my hobby extends into my job (and not the other way around).

-b

Telecommuting

[forgoil]

Is kinda what a lot of Open Source projects seems to do:)

Maybe cram-weeks would be a good thing for these people. Once ever second month for a week they all come in and work like crazy, and the rest of the time they can don the slippers. I'd kinda like working like that myself. Oh well, to be a millionaire and be able to code whatever I want:)

Re:OPEN LETTER TO TEXAS SLASHDOTTERS

[Anonymous Coward]

Is this about football? I thought that was just a "sport" for closeted homosexuals who liked to wear tight pants and huddle together before reaching through each others' legs to play with balls. Then slap each other on the ass in congratulations. A lot of the "plays" seem to revolve around "finding the hole" too.

pros and cons of telecommuting

[thunderdolt]

Pro (work from my study): 1) My study doesn't care if I show up naked, drunk, and with a hard-on. 2) I can surf for porno in between compilations and test runs. 3) Sex with co-workers is allowed there. 4) The only gas I have to use is the kind I pass. 5) Don't have to look at my ugly boss (and out-of-sight out-of-mind kind of thing). 6) Can use a hacked up eliza program to spin your boss in circles in chat while you finish that movie you were watching. Con: 1) No live good looking co-workers (you have to meet them somewhere) 2) If I keep showing up like #1 (Pro), typing with three thumbs is distracting even if you are only using one hand... 3) Don't don't have anyone around to watch their face when your +20 hit points stealth fart hits. 4) Don't get to open fire on the asshole that cuts you off on the freeway. 5) Don't get to flip off your boss when his back is turned (much more satisfying in person than to a computer screen) 6) Don't get to see Christy when she walks by in one of her too-small sweaters.