Ask Slashdot: Would You Take a Pay Cut To Telecommute?

coondoggie writes "IT pros want to telecommute — so much so that more than one-third of those surveyed by Dice.com said they would take a pay cut for the chance to work full time from home. In a survey conducted by the careers site, 35% of technology professionals said they would sacrifice up to 10% of their salaries for full-time telecommuting. The average tech pro was paid $79,384 last year, according to Dice's annual salary survey, which means a 10% pay cut is equivalent to $7,900 on average."

Comments

Yes

[fadethepolice]

When you factor in commute time, gas and car maintenance, the need for 2 cars for family ,child care and office politics it's definitely a pay raise.

Re:Yes

[LordNimon]

Why not? They're at school most of the day, and once home they spend the rest of the afternoon doing homework.

You obviously don't have children. Your plan only works if all children are at least 10 years old. I have a six-year-old, and there's no way he can entertain himself for three hours every day, unless he watches TV or plays video games the whole time.

Re:Yes

[bhagwad]

They should pay me to work from home! After all, if there's no need for a huge office and staff etc. they save a shitload of money

Re:Yes

[Strange Ranger]

Not sure I'm reading you right but fyi my 5 year old goes outside to play with the neighborhood kids throughout the 4 seasons. In winter they make snow forts, etc. They run and play through our typical suburban neighborhood all afternoon. I whistle when it's time for dinner. He also toasts his own waffles, and makes his own simple lunches (half day kindergarten) picks out his own clothes to wear, helps watch his little sister when I'm working at home, and generally has a lot of independence. He turns 6 this week. You say your kid is 7 and can't play outside by himself??
You really really need to check out FreeRangeKids.com. Do him a favor that will help him his whole life and go there now.

Re:Yes

[aminorex]

my experience has been that telecommuters fall into 3 categories: 20% are bums, and need to be fired. 5% are typical workers who like the flexibility. 75% are insanely ambitious and should be paid more, not less, because the time saved commuting goes directly into productivity, plus they never have to stop working, so they put in way more than full days.

Re:Yes

[n3r0.m4dski11z]

"typical suburban neighborhood" ... "You say your kid is 7 and can't play outside by himself??"

Do you even lock your doors? Do you realize that most cities are not like this, and statistically, most humans live in cities?

I dont think anyone who lives in the country has anything to worry about letting their kids play out side. You do realize you are the exception here dont you? Im not sure how it is in USA but here you need to be 12+ to be left home alone, legally. A kid playing in the parking lot of my condo tower is quite far away from my home indeed.

Do you think people want to live in cities? do you think they want to live in condos??? with a family? You are living a charmed life so dont be hating. hell you get to work from HOME...

Depends on company

[mlts]

In some companies, telecommuters tend to be forgotten about. This means that Jack Brown-Nose who comes in and does almost nothing will always be seen by the boss and keep an impression, while the co-workers who are at home actually working are invisible. End result: Jack tends to have an edge when it comes to promotions, or even keeping the job.

Careful what you wish for

[Anonymous Coward]

Pro tip: If your job can be done from your house, it can be done from India.

Re:Careful what you wish for

[man_of_mr_e]

So you're saying I could move to india after starting to telecommute? Sweet.

No

[Rurik]

You save money on time and logistics, but you also have to create a work area in your home. Certain organizations have sqft requirements. You also need to establish locked areas to hold files and documents. And, ultimately, you're no longer allowed to check-out. With a standard job you are expected to be responsive during your normal work hours (say 9--5:30). With telecommuting the work hours shift and you will easily find yourself on call 12 hours a day. Additionally, you lose camaraderie with your coworkers, a chance to hunker down and drive through projects faster, and possible extensive delays in communications.

Then factor in the possibility of children banging down the door to play, and the guilt you feel by having to shuffle them out to finish a project. Then a spouse who takes advantage of you "being there" for babysitting, phone calls, emotional chats, and I'd rather be at work during the day.

Not Me

[Greenisus]

I work for Rackspace full time from home, and I'm paid the same as I would be at the office. Whether I work from home or not is ultimately irrelevant, because the most important variable of all is loving your job. I work where I do because it is a truly amazing place to work.

That said, volunteering a pay cut is risky business. Your salary is a gauge of how much your company values you, so you should try to get as much as you possibly can.

A few things to keep in mind:

1. If you telecommute, it's also cheaper for the employer (less electricity, water, bandwidth, etc)
2. If you take a pay cut, any time you get a raise it's going to be less than it could have been, since most companies do raises as a percentage of your current salary
3. The downside of working exclusively from home is that it's easier to not get noticed. If you're not getting much face time with your peers, you better be doing some amazing work

Re:Sounds like they have the wrong priority

[Locke2005]

The problem is that most organization have no way of actually tracking productivity, so they pay people basically for being on site for X hours a day. Meaning that anybody who isn't filling a chair for X hours a day will be suspected of not pulling their own weight. Pay people for what they actually accomplish, instead of just for being there, and telecommuting looks a lot better.

In IT, there is another problem... ever try rebooting a server while logged into it remotely? Hint: All the connections go away the moment you reboot it. A lot of sites require that you either physically be on site, or take home with you thousands of dollars worth of equipment.

Re:Yes.. well... no.. but no but yes

[Locke2005]

On the bright side, if you telecommute you can be getting a blowjob while working at your computer! Try doing that at work! (I did... does anybody know of any companies hiring programmers in the Portland, Oregon area?)

Re:Sounds like they have the wrong priority

[Fallen Kell]

In IT, there is another problem... ever try rebooting a server while logged into it remotely? Hint: All the connections go away the moment you reboot it. A lot of sites require that you either physically be on site, or take home with you thousands of dollars worth of equipment.

Someone hasn't been keeping up with their enterprise grade equipment management. Just about every major vendor has a solution for this exact problem. I have over 500 servers at my work which I can shutdown, reboot, change BIOS settings, or fsck hard drives all remotely. Sun/Oracle has their ALOM/ILOM. Dell has the iDrac Enterprise. HP has their iLO. IBM has their Remote Management Agent.

Basically they are computers within the computer, with their own separate CPU, network, and OS, which lets you fully manage the production server by giving you the ability to show the console/display of the device send keyboad/mouse commands even at the pre-POST screen of the server itself (just like if you were physically at the keyboard/monitor attached to the system).

Re:not logical

[EdIII]

I can work in the buff and no one knows, except Slashdot I guess.

Unless you forget to turn off your webcam.

I had a glorious couple of months telecommuting till the "incident". There was some fall out, and psychological care needed for some in the conference room.

Later on, some people told me that watching me via webcam (when I knew it was on) was like watching evolution backwards. After a month and half they wondered if I just sat a semi-shaved ape in front of the monitor with a banana.

How will we communicate?

[burris]

I'd love to work at home but then how would I communicate with my co-workers?

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