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Does Telecommuting Make You Invisible?
jfruhlinger writes "Telecommuting provides many joys, including the ability to stay in your pajamas all day and the chance to work with a cat on your lap. But it does have some major drawbacks, perhaps none so serious as the fact that, if your co-workers are for the most part in an office, they can forget you exist — which means you don't get credit for your work as you deserve."
But in a word: yes.
-- I ignore anonymous replies to my comments and postings.
The question is, does the benefit of working from home offset that? Visibility is important to some, not so much to others. It all depends on your plan or lack of it.
Personally, I think a lack of visibility can only help me!
Um... ok.
Flexible bare-metal recovery for Linux/UNIX
are inconsequential (pretty much moots) or your managers are incompetent.
Bukowski said it. I believe it. That settles it.
Until your do something wrong.
As a telecommuter that lives in Oregon and works for a company in California full time I telecommute from my home office. Taking aside the needed disciplines of staying focused, you need some office protocol disciplines too. For one, we do weekly department head meetings and weekly staff meetings with a video conference set up or at minimum audio conference, and we all talk about what we are working on and what our goals are. This helps everyone know what everyone else is doing. I also send at least one week each email to all the people I've been doing projects that effect them, or need to stay on top and just ask if I've been able to make things work as they expect and if there are any other items they need or would like. This keeps them in contact with me. I also do a weekly meeting with my director and we discuss projects and goals. And finally I try to take at least 6 trips a year to the actual office staying through a week on each of those trips. I usually do more like 9 to 10 trips and sometimes stay a week and a half. I actually hate that part, living out of a hotel room sucks, but it's a small price to pay for having no commute time and being able to work in my pajamas. And you have to sometimes keep pushing for all those meetings and trips as the office will tend to let them slip otherwise. :)
wrong story bro.
As someone who just made several hundred dollars while lounging around in key west, I can safely say that the trade off is well worth it.
At the company I work at we don't have much of the software necessary to track the performance of employees. When I got promoted I got a nice big cube in a corner, away from everyone else. Very soon after getting moved I started getting accused of not being on the phones, not doing my work, blah blah blah. It aggravated me to no end, I was screaming mad about it, but that didn't help.
I did eventually solve my visibility issue.
The solution was chocolate.
I now keep a candy jar in my cube and have let everyone know they can come by my cube at anytime and help themselves. All complaints have ceased.
Don't know something? Look it up. Still don't know? Then ask.
It depends.
The world is made by those who show up for the job.
Credit is very nice, but at the end of the day it is getting the job done that matters. If you are good at what you do then that will usually be recognised. You will be a valued team member. If for some reason though a company fails to appreciate your efforts and you feel hard done by, then it is time to move elsewhere. They will suffer the consequences in due course, but that is their problem.
I am a telecommuter. I negotiated 80%/20%, i.e. I come into the office 150 miles away once a week. The purpose is to schedule meetings on projects, attend a weekly team meeting, and it gives the opportunity to mingle and see my coworkers.
That arrangement really helps. In addition, I use software that routes my phone extension to my home office (so people don't have to keep my phone# on a post it), I use Yahoo IM for chats, and of course email.
The point is, if you are a telecommuter, make yourself accessible at any time that you would be if you were in the office. If things are quiet for an extended period, make an effort to touch base with your immediate team (speaking from the perspective of a software developer here). Does anyone need me to pitch in on anything? Send a link to a funny or interesting article.
Generally my work is so busy and requires so much collaboration that it creates the necessary visibility, but just be sure you aren't making it difficult to be contacted and embrace the discussions, even mundane ones unless it gets out of hand.
In software dev, also have your screen ready to share for discussion (myriad of choices). I find that helps to collaborate and be more visible to my colleagues.
Invisibility is great when you can telecommute to two or more different jobs where you are invisible, yet still paid. It's important to find inefficient large companies where managers are more interested in having headcount than great productivity. Then you can just invisible along at your multiple jobs.
WTF? I'm not invisible when I'm on call at 2am. Doesn't even make sense. By that logic when I'm on call I should just shut off the ringer and get a good nights sleep, after all, supposedly that's invisible.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
I used to drive 3+ hours a day to 'be in the office' with my peers. I'd work extra to bring improvements for the team to fruition, since we weren't allowed to do them as part of 'work'. I didn't get credit then, so I couldn't get less credit from home. After I told them I'd be in the office one day a week, I still only had interaction with my peers one out of three days in the office. My employer has a terrible track record for recognition. My congratulations on 10 years of employment: was an email sent almost a year late.
If you like having no creative input, if you enjoy toiling in obscurity, if you enjoy petty bosses who poo-poo your ideas only to bring them up as their own 6 months later, work for the government.
--
Don't get me wrong: I know interaction is a two way street. I used to put in the effort to be TEAM oriented. Unfortunately, the team doesn't actually work together (we each get our own projects) so the effort was unrecognized and wasted.
If i could work from home every day i wouldn't care about who got the credit for my work.
I work from home every now and then (more often, recently). Last year, I wrote my own rules for working from home. Are there any other solid ones I should include?
Colin Dean Go a year without DRM
...or not so, the "Businesses" icon attached to this story is a telecommuter.
Most of my co-workers are in Manila, Mumbai and Buenos Aires... I'm mean really who in their right mind would want to live in Tulsa, OK or Des Moines IA?!?!?
If telecommuting means you're not interacting with co-workers and being 'seen', then yes, you might become invisible and/or deemed irrelevant. It also might mean you are.
Both my wife and I work from home lately, as the contract I work on is across country and her job went to telecommute-only a couple of years ago. I'm in conference calls, email threads, planning meetings, and all sorts of things all the time. My wife is on the phone a good chunk of the day as well as countless emails and IMs with people.
If you are doing your job in a corner, never interacting with people, and it becomes possible that people forget you exist ... well, maybe that's not the fault of telecommuting. I've worked in offices where there are people who nobody really knows what they do, who they report to, or what their role is -- it's possible to be invisible in the office too, and in my experience if nobody knows who you are and what you do then maybe you're just putting in time and waiting until someone realizes they don't know what they pay you for.
Not saying telecommuting is for everyone, or that it fixes everything ... but I've been doing it for over a year, and it's not like anybody on the project I'm working on doesn't know who I am. They may have only met me face to face a handful of times ... but between email and phone calls, I'm hardly invisible. Quite the opposite, in fact since I was kind of the technical lead.
What kind of job can you even be doing that doesn't call for interaction with your co-workers? If you're regularly doing the kinds of things that normal people do, there's no reason for you to disappear as a teleworker.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Yeah, you won't get credit for good work, but you would get more than the fair share of the blame when things go wrong, and in the end it will average out. Wait. There seems to be catch here somewhere.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Perhaps somebody who works from home used a euphemism you aren't familiar with?
Many people dream of working from home; but I don't know anybody who dreams of working in an office. I wonder why.
I honestly think "visibility" becomes a moot point when you work from home. If you have the good fortune to be able to work from home, I think you are doing it precisely because invisibility from the office scene is what you seek. I wouldn't really care about promotion or getting all the credit if I had that wonderful perk available to me. I have a friend that works from home and he continues to get recognition for what he does but he doesn't care. The reward is in the ability to work from home.
Telecommuters are definitely invisible. I can go to work naked and no one ever says anything about it!
Ive been working remotely most of the time since 1998.
When does the boss take me out to lunch with the team? Never.
A beer after work on Fridays? Nope.
Project tshirts? Nada.
Don't think telecommuting is paradise. It's not.
Request your free CD of my piano music.
Seriously, no one sees me when I'm here as it is, why would anyone notice if I'm at home (or Tahiti for that matter) as long as stuff they ask me to do gets done?
You can be forgotton in the office as well! Wasn't there a news article a while back where an office worked died in the office , and wasn't noticed for several days.
"For every expert, there is an equal and opposite expert"
If you are trying to climb the corporate ladder, the more "visible" you are the better. You want management to think of you -- and often. Get up and walk around, up and down the hall, make smalltalk (this is crucial), and try to make yourself a permanent icon. Your work performance, dare I say, isn't nearly as important as your social skills.
On the other hand, if you are destined to be stuck in dead-end job for the rest of your life (like me) -- for whatever reason -- then it would be pointless to burden yourself with all of the above. Do the exact opposite. Avoid social contact. Make sure they know you did the job, and then disappear. (The ladder-climbing types will love you for this -- they don't like competition.) Consider your work nothing but a paycheck, and subtract every minute you spend on it from your real life.
Sounds negative, doesn't it? Welcome to the real world.
In addition to a good office protocol to include phone conferences and the like having a good personality helps in having people remember you. If your friendly in nature people will remember that and it helps keep you in contact as your more likely to be called/call or communicate in mail or IM.
There are many cues people pick up from even the simplest of communication, it does not hurt to ask people why they don't acknowledge your items if it corrects a problem.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
If you can telecommute to work, so can someone else in another country who will do your job for cheaper.
Put your fingerprints all over everything you do and the accusations of invisibility will disappear. No one can argue that you're not pulling your weight if you have documentation and change logs with your name all over them.
Occasionally living proof of the Ballmer peak.
If telecommuting is common in the company, then visibility is hardly a concern. People in the hierarchy get trained to look for results, not presence.
If you are the only person who is remote, then it can present more of an issue.
Seriously, the solution seems obvious. Telecommute some days (if you're allowed to), but make an appearance at least once a week, have lunch and/or meetings with with people (especially your boss) to keep you in the loop, and keep you and your work visible to them.
I've been working at home 80% of the time for the past couple of years. While I've been able to get a great deal of quality work done, and the company has a very distributed workforce (thus there is a great infrastructure for people working from home or elsewhere/anywhere), you learn over time that working from home isn't as great as it sounds... Yes, I don't have to use an alarm clock. Yes, I can work in my pajamas and shower at lunchtime... But I also miss out on a lot of the design/architecture discussions that take place ramdomly throughout the day. There's also a mental factor - there's no satisfaction to "getting home" after a long day of work. As crazy as that sounds, when my work day is done I get up from my office room and utilize the rest of the house, but sometimes it feels as though a human being NEEDS the horrible commute and discomfort during the daytime to actually appreciate the rest of the day.
I have an office and yes I work from home. My office is 67 miles from my home so in the end it saves me a lot of money to only go into the office once a week. As for visibility I see people when I am in the office and socialize at the water cooler but don't work directly with any of them. I guess it all comes down to the structure of the enterprise you work in. Supporting applications for an enterprise where 100% of your users are scattered in offices across the country really doesn't give you an opportunity to shake a lot of hands.
I've telecommuted before, one day a week, and I found that my presence as a valuable employee was diminished. Things would happen at the office that I couldn't be a part of. My contributions to the team were less evident - especially that immeasurable contribution you make when you participate in discussions and help your peers. If you are competing with your peers for advancement (or simply to keep your job) then you shouldn't be working from home. If you are satisfied with your current role and pay rate, then it's a good deal.
Telecommuting provides many joys, including the ability to stay in your pajamas all day and the chance to work with a cat on your lap.
Does anyone else find the two listed "perks" of telecommuting extremely unappealing?
Actually it's the national TLD for the Christmas Islands (where the bungee-jumping tribes are)...I'm trying to confirm the goasecifity of it now but it looks like it's getting Slashdotted.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
I telecommute full time for my job which I enjoy working for the past 7 years. Mainly because the work is challenging. I work from home because of geography not because of lifestyle. Anyone who seriously works from home will tell you the biggest CON is not dealing with people in person (feels isolating after a while) and staying in that home office chair all day long.
The key is to plan periodic visits so that everyone knows you are alive and contributing. Otherwise over time people get the opinion "what do you do?" and you will not just be invisible... you could get fired. Having to show in a casual way that you are bringing in money for the group (in a contract, or some application) works too. In the tech industry many people work hard and seeing someone work from home has a negative connotation that is not easy to overcome if you don't so periodic visits, show value to the group, or stay in constant contact.
Like others have said you have to be disciplined to wake-up, put in the hours, and take it seriously since it is work after all. We use instant messaging to say where you are and what your doing. That has a big positive psychological effect. Phone calls and video chat help a lot too. No, there are no pajamas with coffee mornings, the moment you're on a conference call and someone wants to do video, it will be so awkward to reject, you'll know why you get dressed to work at home.
Telecommuting works for our company very well and I think it is mutually beneficial.
so that I can forget my co-workers exist.
In my experience, if you show up on e-mail lists and teleconferences, you are considered active, but "inhuman" in the sense that people no longer have idea on what *exactly* are you doing, what's your supposed workload, and so on. So instead of human resource, you become just a resource, a gray eminence that lives only in electronic form.
I have been at a new job, primarily doing it remotely when possible for half a year now, and typically my only on-site jaunts will be to customer premises. As such, I'm not too often at the office.
Solution: HD-level videoconferencing. Since I can partake in meetings with 50" screens at the office end, my presence is not only felt, but it's rather imposing :). (My home has smaller, desktop videophone). The HD quality *is* necessary - if you appear as bunch of DCT blocks used by older systems, the effect is not much beyond normal (voice) teleconference.
Anyway, consider possibilities of video for remote participation.
A buddy of mine has been "invisible" for 5 years and skipped all the downsizing. His direct report was let go and he still get's a check every 2 weeks. he has no idea who he is supposed to report to for the past 18 months, and had heard NOTHING from the main office, so he simply does his job and collects the checks. the company cellphone and VPN accounts still work, and HR still is paying him and covering insurance.
Being invisible is a good thing at times.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
I've telecommuted for IBM for over 3 years. Lots of benefits but the biggest negative seems diminished job growth (as if it wasn't hard enough at IBM).
Do we really need to revisit the following?
1) out of sight = out of mind
2) anything that can be done remotely can be outsourced / commoditized
Why is this newsworthy again? Has something changed in the last 15 years?
Unless you can control your managers' competence, you'd better at least control their perception of your contributions.
I'm a software developer working remotely from home for many years now. About a year ago, between 2 and 4pm, I received several "congratulations" by e-mail. I was confused. Turns out they had a special lunch meeting in the board room where I was awarded a prize for some work I'd completed earlier in the year. Problem is, no-one remembered to invite me to the meeting, and while several people were on the conference line, no-one thought to ask if I was on the line.
I'd still rather work from home versus commuting to a cube farm, but note it does present some challenges since people can easily forget to include you in meetings, decisions, conversations, etc.
Routine hygiene goes completely out the door as does the need to wear clothes.
True Story: Office cabin in the garden; hot summers day; house on the market. Sitting naked working away, the real estate agent turns up with a bunch of people looking to buy the house. After that I always kept an emergency pair of shorts in the cabin. :)
I can assure you that it's not goatse. I just tuned the Apache settings, too, so it shouldn't be getting as hammered now.
Colin Dean Go a year without DRM
One of the main problems for us was that "can I call this guy if I know he's at home?".
Our company (read: me) did initiate Microsoft Lync as our main chat/call/conferencing tool. To us, this program has been a fantastic tool for getting presence info. If the guy is available then just call him. We have also incorporated our mobile phones into Lync, as our Mobile service provider sports this. This means that we can see "Mobile phone active" when we check the status of our colleagues, and the status is then set to Busy as well. Also, it synchronizes status to meetings in Exchange calendar for the users, giving info to others about their availability.
This presence info seem to be the key for contacting people commuting. It's simple: you never know what people are up to. It's that simple. Being included at home is hard. But easier if people know if you are available.
I guess you could use other tools as well, however none of them would do all that Lync do at present time.
I see now that I've written a somewhat commercial for Lync now, but I really do not care as it's been very helpful to us.
But I think it has more to do with the way I work.
I'm a "productive burst" kind of developer. I can't just sit and develop all day long. My productivity goes in bursts. And because telecommuting allows me to get rid of the "chaff" that builds up in my life (like laundry, for example, why, yes, I can design software while sorting my whites from my colors, thank you very much), freeing me up to really make good use of my time when I'm in front of the computer (i.e., I'm not mentally churning on some stupid personal task). So when telecommuting, I'm very very productive and that is demonstrated in the level of work I am able to get done as a result.
Some of the commenters do have a point, though, that if you're mediocre, you're perceived as a goofball. If you're good, you're perceived as mediocre, etc. You get a sort of "telecommute bump-down" in perceived competence. That may be partly the managers' fault (as has been pointed out). But I think as a teleworker, you have a responsibility to make sure the work you do is visible. If you're not able to demonstrate that, maybe you're not as good as you think (sorry to break it to you).
But all in all, my work speaks for itself. And yours should too. If you can't demonstrate productivity when telecommuting, you shouldn't do it. Go on into the office, huddle around the water cooler and talk smack about the boss like all the other sheep. Go on, now. Get! :-)
... they can forget you exist - which means you don't get credit for your work as you deserve.
They can, sure, but they're going to have to go out of their way to do it with me. email to manager & team lead: "Yo boss. I found and fixed another massive bug in $yada. All the logging the thing's been doing for the last decade is worthless. Oh, and it'll now work seamlessly with all our data centres anywhere in the world." It can also help a lot if $yada is something that everybody else is afraid to touch for fear of breaking it.
Communication is key.
To be able to avoid all the BS team meetings, interruptions from colleagues and managers, United Way recruiting drives, the waste of gas while marooned in parking lots on commuter routes twice daily, ... Priceless!
"Tongue tied and twisted, just an Earth bound misfit
Sounds good as long as I can forget everybody else exists too!
Entirely depends on the person, position, department, company, etc. I work on a team that is almost entirely telecommuters. Last I checked, me, the new guy, working from home, was being highly praised and his work being held up as example of how to be on our team. However I have a friend who works very hard from home and never received recognition... ever. Its all YMMV depending on the above criteria IMHO.
If you're constantly on the critical path and delivering than this is not an issue. It's when your work submissions are easily lost amongst all the other submissions that you should worry. Bottom line: take on recognizable work and you'll be recognized.
It's not a goatse, I checked it. And yes, I held up my tie in front of my eyes just in case it was.
No, that link you posted to a web comic we've all seen a hundred times is not "obligatory."
Telecommuting doesn't make me invisible; my invisibility cloak does.
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
I am impressed by the lack of comments about cats. So, here we go!
Since I do extra shifts at home after dinner, I get the chance to have one or more cats on my lap while I work. It's awesome in the winter!
The joy of being a business owner!!
IMHO, the key phrase here is, "...if your co-workers are for the most part in an office..." This isn't a big deal at all at my employer where > 50% of my team/department telecommutes. At that point, it becomes part of the corporate culture, and there is infrastructure and expectations to support the distributed work-force.
No it's not.
Is the off been remote since 1998.
Request your free CD of my piano music.
I telecommute 50% of my time. This gives me enough physical presence at my work office to be "hands on" with my coworkers and attend meetings that are difficult to teleconference in.
I agree that by telecommuting you do run the risk of missing promotion opportunities since you won't be within the "whisper net" that's in place in all office environments.
Also people who telecommute at 100% regardless of the consequences don't have much weight with management. Their inflexibility makes them less than ideal for most promotions and they run the risk of being too expensive to keep at their current position. Supervisors do take willingness to make the effort to drive to work as a factor in deciding promotions; Not to mention most opportunities for promotion requires a physical presence at the office.
I have notice a trend in the employers around me (most of my coworkers are subcontractors) that telecommuting is losing much of its luster. Telecommuting used to be encouraged as a method to reduce office space requirements and resources but now it's being discouraged and only granted for special circumstances.
These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
It depends. I work as a Citrix admin for a company with a ton of small, remote locations. I telecommute a few times a week, and will probably do so more often going into 2012. Point being, in IT land, telecommuting can actually expand your notoriety. People working remotely - and there are many - typically come directly to me instead of our helpdesk.
Given a smaller team where one is the only IT resource, telecommuting makes no difference; coworkers never understood what one did in the first place.
The real issue with telecommuting: one is always at work. Employers like to leverage this unfortunately.
Anything is possible given time and money.
I came into a company, via acquisition, that was just launching a major telecommuting program. Nearly all of the IT employees ended up working from home. The people on my team worked all over the country and at the beginning one was even in the UK. I spent almost 2 years working from home.
In retrospect, there was much good and some bad. The good was obvious: No need to get dressed, beyond shorts or denims, and half the time no need to shower or shave. I just rolled out of bed, made some coffee, threw on whatever clothes were on the floor - and if they were a little stinky from wearing for a few days, who cares - and went to our detached garage where the "office" was to work.
Staying focused is a challenge, especially at first. It's "easy" to goof off when no one is looking over your shoulder. Yes there were weekly meetings for the group via teleconference and we went through our projects list and where we were with each one but if you were flaking it was pretty easy to skim over your lack of progress. I think at one point I got so bad with flaking on some projects that my boss finally called me on it, but it took a while - 3 or 4 months - to really see that.
The bad was ironically also that I was so close to home. Being married with 3 small children who at the time were homeschooled and 10 feet away from the garage was a pretty bad recipe. Kids would come out somewhat frequently - after a while though they finally got the message that daddy was working - and I got pretty good with the mute button. Having a wife who has health challenges is also an issue because then I'm also called upon to do a lot more during the day - for example, make lunches for everyone, clean up poopy diapers, and even occasionally discipline the kids - just because I'm so close. Had the kids gone to school I likely would have been called upon to drop them off and pick them up.
The bad was the garage-office. Most of the time it was too hot or too cold. Summer time I had to just go into the house because it was so bad. If it's 106 outside the garage is probably 110-112. And, if it's 40-50 outside, then the metal garage door is like a freezer door. So I'm either bundling up or have a fan blowing on my face with as little clothing as possible. We had a granny flat above the garage which I could have used for an office - in fact, that would have been the PERFECT office - however most of the time we were renting it so that was a non-starter.
The bad was also that I never really got to know my colleagues very well, never really got to be adopted into the company culture. Most of the guys worked in the offices with each other before everyone started working at home. They knew each other, joked around, had fun together. Coming in purely from an acquired company then to start working from home 99% of the time after we were integrated into the company I always felt like an outsider.
The most obvious part of the invisibility factor was when I'd go back very occasionally - probably once every 3-4 months - to the office where I used to work daily before the company was acquired. When I'd see the people I worked with daily before they were shocked to see me - they always thought I was no longer with the company. "Nope, just working from home most of the time" I'd always say. "Oh, hmm... that must be nice" was always the answer. To them I really was invisible. But then they didn't drive performance reviews for me, at all, so their opinions on my telecommuting didn't matter at all.
Now I live about 10 minutes across town from where I work. It's not fair to even call it a commute. I can bike here in about 30 minutes. No need to get on the freeway. It's about as ideal as it can be, given I have just enough distance from home to not get called up on with great frequency from the family - but then I'm not too far if they do need me - but I also don't have to spend half my day dragging myself to work and back on a long commute, which I've done before and it's absolutely, terribly miserable (I would DREAM about telecommuting when I was sitting on those car-clogged freeways, going nowhere, especially on Fridays).
It can absolutely be a problem and I think this has been demonstrated many times in the past.
However, the problem I've encountered over the years isn't from your average employee telecommuting, it's management telecommuting. Your average designer or programmer can happily sit at home and still get their job done, all they need is a good understanding of what has to be done. But managers need to be available and closely involved in the process, because if they're not, what's really the point of even keeping them employed?
And yet, it's everyone from project managers all the way on up to high level directors who most consistently partake in telecommuting. I've worked with countless project managers who come in to the office for a few hours, spend the entire time catching up because they have to rush back home. In quite a few cases I've found myself managing my own project, dealing with clients directly, rendering that manager redundant. But even worse are the higher ups. I've come across numerous clients who've got people who make themselves essential to the process but work from home a couple of days a week. I use the term "work" loosely as it's apparent they're just dicking around all day. And yet the company is stuck accommodating these jerks suffering stalled processes because they're not available to make decisions. And when they do decide to turn up at the office suddenly they're big saviors.
It's a huge peeve of mine. Especially since everyone else is basically stuck doing their jobs for them. It's at a point where I sometimes feel like corporate America is welfare for the upper middle class.
I take pride in my work, and I do my utter best delivering the best quality and I must say I succeed in that. I succeed in that in such a way that I don't screw up. But that's exactly how people forget about you. You have morons who screw up, big panic and then be a hero for fixing the problem they caused in the first place. From everything that crawls I've seen the worst kinds in corporate IT. It's infested with it.
Browsing the web in your pajamas with a cat on your lap makes you invisible. If you do your job people will know it. I telecommute and wfh 2-3 days a week. To worsen things, my team is actually about 9 states away, so that even when I go to the office I do not see them.
But I work, volunteer for projects, and jump on irc whenever there is a serious issue in the evening or on the weekend. I am not invisible because I work to make sure people know I am around, doing my job, working tickets in the q, and helping with the same inglorious crap that everyone has to deal with.
They're actually usually pretty much against having people on their team in remote offices because they can't keep and eye on and easily communicate with them; but having worked with them closely for almost three years and proving myself I was invited to move over, which I jumped at.
On the same token, there are remotees in other locations and people often wonder what they're doing all day...
The solution is to set up monitors all over the company campus, showing your face, evil overlord style. You could have more presence than actually being present.
I have worked as the world's longest distance telecommuter, with a 50,000 mile one way traceroute and 900ms latency.
I also work for an industry-leading software company, where I can't telecommute even one day a week, where my office is only a half hour away. Zero physical presence is required in my current job; it is all advice, modeling and research.
I have spent six years of my professional 20 year IT career working from home or remote locations. Not being "visible" may have hurt me. Whereas, since 2000, most of my jobs have been the disposable contractor type, I don't see this as being especially relevant. My hourly wage has been much more a factor of career hindrance than my ass warming an central office chair.
In my current management scheme, "they" (the pointy haired bosses) have irrational fear of telepresence. Never mind the benefits that could be reaped through leveraging the strength of a remote workforce. They are caught in aged methodology. The comment above about sociopathic underpeformers gaming the system is especially true in my work environment. Couple this with a workforce who would prefer to chat text with you rather than talk face to face four feet away. Being 10,000 miles away, or only 10, would do nothing to make this dynamic any worse. However, the threat of physical violence is increased in a workplace where retards slack and go unnoticed, while hard workers are burdened with more of the load.
I will happily sacrifice 10-15% of my salary (which with benefits as an FTW run northward of six figures) for the opportunity to work from the location of my choice, with a 24 hour in-seat performance rider. In 2012, it is asinine to expect digital knowledge workers to perform as a mill worker from 1899. We're growing this technology to make things better. Eat your own damn dog food and make it so, you fat f*&ks from a bygone age!
I telecommuted for awhile and it was a weird experience. I worked for the company on-site for years then telecommute for a year or so. You don't realize how much you learn from hallway meetings and just being around your co-workers. When out of sight people forget to even CC you on email. Most info I got late and from meeting notes emailed to me. What was strange my boss had my workstation in the floor next to my desk and I remote'd into it. When I would talk to him he knew what I was up to because he would see my monitor. So out of site does mean out of mind for telecommuting.
On personal note work and my life became one. My computer room and bedroom were same room so I pretty much worked around the clock. The only time I wasn't working was when I would go out to eat. Work benefited, but it got to me eventually.
These days I prefer working from home a day or two a week and on-site the rest of the time. That is most productive to me.
I telecommute 1 or 2 days per week, moreso 1 day now, but overally I think that it really doesn't matter as long as you motivate yourself to incorporate what you want to learn and what is valuable to you and gives you opportunities later on. Once you can incorporate those habits into your daily work routine then your motivation to enhance yourself while empowering yourself to do good work will show. If someone is promoted over you because they rubbed shoulders with the manager then that's fine, because you have taken the time to build skills that can be leveraged elsewhere. Productivity generally lags execution meaning that the hours you spent building the perfect system do not show because people expect it to be up and running, and it is; however, if you ever leave and changes are made the same cannot be said at that point. So bottom-line is that do the work for you and learn how to incorporate your curiosity into your work...if that doesn't work then maybe you should just telecommute and enjoy the time at home while you search for another position.
However no one would see my comment.
I've been telecommuting for the last 2 years, and nobody forgets I'm around or what I'm working on, because we use Scrum. Every day we have a short (~10 mins) stand-up meeting, where everyone says what they did yesterday, what they're planning to do today, and whether they have any roadblocks. Because of this, everyone is more or less in the loop.
I do miss out on some of the water cooler discussions .. but on the other hand I probably get an extra hour or two of productive time per day.
False Alarm, not a grotesque stretched out anus.
Evenweb is the new domain for all your stretched out anus hosting purposes.
If you use the issue management system properly (if you have one!) then you will show up with everyone else.
When anyone wants to know what you've been doing - just point them to your report from the issue management system.
Even use it is a journal for progress on long issues - then it's a public record of what you do and what would be broken if you weren't there.
Real men work naked!
I only work one day from home a week and I miss out on a lot. I find that I have to pester people far more often to get updates about projects or issues.
People in the office aren't be acknowledged for what they are doing neither; at best the person being interrupted by their boss asking if they are working, gets to point out what they are doing.
And the answer was yes, in my case. I ended up moving back to the city the office was located in, 2,000km from where I like to call home and where I telecommuted from, and now live here again going to the office, paying nearly twice what I was in rent and other living expenses. The alternative was to languish and fade away into obscurity.. I felt I needed to come back as I was regularly getting mindless projects. Now that I'm back, I'm working on exciting projects again. *shrug* Also, health and productivity were suffering as I rarely left the house as the line between working-for-the-man and me-time blurred.
I'd like to try and strike a balance but the distance factor of where I'd like to be (i.e. where family and friends are) and where work is, makes that difficult. I find it terribly boring to work from home, which I have the option of doing, and just go into the office anyway day after day, so long as I'm here.
Look at open source projects like the linux kernel. People all over the world, everything done via email and similiar. It can work.
If you don't meet people face to face, you can stay visible through other means. Communicate with people daily. If there is a culture for "over the lunch communication" then you should show up now and then, on a weekly basis.
On the other hand, extensive telecommuting could work the other way too. See how long you can hold 5 paying jobs simultaneously without getting noticed. Sure, you might seem a little slow, but if they aren't looking for someone to fire right now...
I call my "credit for my work" my "paycheck", perhaps they're expecting too much from their jobs?
Sig withheld to protect the innocent.
I'm not wearing any pants
It gripped her hand gently. 'Regret is for humans,' it said.
I work in a cubicle and everyone knows I am there since they hear me eating my chips and crackers all day long......
This is your boss, if you are so worried about you job then quick dicking around on Slash and get back to work or I will make you invisible, PERMANENTLY.
This sig is not paradoxical or ironic.
So your company is not doing well and has to cut back. Do you really want to stick around and deal with the bigger workload left behind by the people cut? Do you really want to work for a company that can't manage its own resources to the point that they are willing to cut jobs to be able to pay their CEO's bonus?
You should look at a Layoff like that as being given first class seating on the lifeboats of the Titanic. If your talented and have great skills and are able to market yourself you have nothing to worry about. You probably will even get some severance as well which can easily equal "double pay" if your able to bounce back quickly. If your marginal to poor and don't interview get ready to kiss some middle level manager backside and try to continue your dysfunctional employment relationship.
WTF? I'm not invisible when I'm on call at 2am. Doesn't even make sense. By that logic when I'm on call I should just shut off the ringer and get a good nights sleep, after all, supposedly that's invisible.
You are only visible to people when they need you. If you're not available when they need you, they assume that you're always unavailable. You think people are thinking about YOU when they're asleep at 2AM? And when they -are- in distress at 2AM and you answer a call, you think the pressing thought in their mind is that you were there, and not the problem they're experiencing that's freaking them the fuck out at 2AfuckingM? Why would they be impressed that you're doing the job that you're being paid to do -- afterall, if they're calling you at 2AM, they're in the middle of doing their own job; you want special kudos? People are self-centered, and Information Technology is thankless; it's not going to change, and you'll be happier if you just accept it, even if it's not fair.
well, almost... i think i've seen my boss three times over the last two years, and i write my own annual evaluation because nobody else knows what i'm doing. my connection to the corporate mothership is negligible, so i avoid the inevitable office politics (and attendant promotion opportunities - alas!). as long as the client keeps paying the bills, corporate is reasonably happy to leave me alone.
Never seemed to affect Charlie, at least as far as his Angels were concerned!
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
one problem is when you are doing things for many people. If you are in the office people can see you doing things for others, if you are not there to be seen they simply assume you're doing nothing unless you're doing something for them.
Nullius in verba
I am sorry but my last job that was not true.
In fact the telecommuters were more visible because they were uninvolved in the corporate politics.
So they were never precieved as a threat, and when the layoffs started they all kept their jobs.
TeTalon
You are either a part of the problem, or a part of the solution, which are you.
I've been telecommuting for the past two years, and in that time I've received a promotion from developer to project lead, a generous raise, and the largest bonus I've received so far. Two other telecommuters on my team have also received promotions. My company has a fair promotion process that is based on skills, experience, project success, and leadership. Physical proximity has little bearing.
I don't telecommute for convenience reasons, however. My (consulting-type) company supports many projects/customers around the globe, and staff are frequently rotated and get to choose which projects to work on, not limited by geography.
I telecommute because my entire team is remote from my home office, either working in multiple branch offices across the company, or telecommuting themselves. It's actually _easier_ to stay visible and in touch with my coworkers by focusing on them, as opposed to what is going on in my home office. Communication issues are resolved by keeping in constant touch via voice/video/text telecommuting software. With multiple in-person get togethers per year, it really is no different from working in the office.
So, I'm really quite baffled, my experience hasn't been anything like those reported.
It is well known that IT staff are hated. If you telecommute you are only known for the tasks you perform. Which can be valued. If you are invisible at a personal level, no one develops feelings about you except for an abstract understanding of the value you add. This also frees you of concerns about office politics, which gives you time to perform additional work.
Democracy Now! - your daily, uncensored, corporate-free
Because that is exactly what I want.
My name appears in the comments of well crafted code, in svn, and in Redmine where the issues and feature requests consistently get knocked out on time. My customers see high quality work, and know who did it.
That is all the recognition I need. If I get laid off because I am not playing politics, so be it. I am good. I can get another job at will. I have a years salary in the bank. Aside from that if it doesn't involve my family, or to a lesser extent my hobbies, I don't give a shit.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
...if you write malware for a living!
Where I work, the telecommuters are far from invisible ... the problem they run into is that the person in charge assumes the telecommuters have nothing to do and have plenty of time to handle the extra work that pops up on a given day. So, the minute an unexpected task needs to be done, it's time to shovel it onto the telecommuters.
Actually, it's not just the telecommuters, it's the people in the office, too.
Anonymous Coward for a reason.
I've been telecommuting for a year, and:
>When does the boss take me out to lunch with the team?
Whenever I'm in town, which averages one week per calendar quarter or so.
> A beer after work on Fridays?
See above.
> Project tshirts?
These get mailed to me, or held until the next time I'm in town.
Maybe the problem is that your co-workers and management aren't willing to put forth the effort to make sure you feel like part of the team.
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I don't see it happening
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
I do almost all my projects completely on my own. I'm lucky if my clients devote more effort to their specs than tossing some chicken entrails on the back of a used envelope then mailing it to me.
I'm sick to death of consulting. Until I can get a perm job I do most of my work from wifi spots so I can be around the rest of humanity.
Request your free CD of my piano music.
Content of the link:
Some simple rules for working from home
2010 April 29 2128
Working from home when you normally work in an office can change of pace for a day or two. Some offices can be filled with distractions such as co-workers with questions, background noise, and random fires needing your extinguishing attention.
However, working at home presents its own set of distractions which could detract from your productivity: family at home, nagging chores, different background noises, and a whole new set of random fires needing your extinguishing attention.
When I work from home, or from anyone other than the office, I follow a few rules to keep me productive and sane.
Family: I’m not home, I’m at work. It’s important for family to recognize that you can’t stop what you’re doing to go help them with something for a half an hour. If you have small children, operate normally as if you weren’t there. If a part of staying home is to avoid having to pay a babysitter, then try to get the kids doing something which will keep them busy while you work.
Claim your space. Having a workspace is very important. I have a computer desk at my apartment, but I make space on it by moving my desktop computer’s input peripherals so I can put my work laptop on it. When I work from my parents’ house, I take over a quarter of their dining room table. When I work from my uncle’s house, I take over an whole table in the guest bedroom.
Discipline yourself. I don’t even turn on my desktop computer when I work from home. My personal laptop has a lot of work stuff on it, and I use it at work, too, so it is of course acceptable to use it. If I turn on the desktop, I will inevitably end up playing games or tweaking something; there goes my productivity. Likewise, I work on my desk, upstairs and away from the TV, lest I be drawn to daytime TV (shudder) or my beckoning PS3 with Netflix. Remember, you’re still on company time.
Use mute when using a speakerphone. I frequently participate in conference calls. I know that my coworkers and business partners don’t want to hear the wild chainsaws of a tree trimming crew outside, or my girlfriend’s music downstairs. Likewise, it’s distracting to hear baby cries, television, or anything else which detracts from a call and thereby likely extends it.
Seek compensation. When you’re out of the office, you’re likely to use your landline or mobile phone to dial into conference calls or call the office. If you’re using mobile minutes or data, or calling long distance on a landline, you’re within your rights to ask to be reimbursed for that time.
Set your side goals. Remember that because you’re at home, you might have a few extra minutes here and there to maybe put a load of laundry in or some other task which doesn’t take but a minute with long waits in between. However, don’t let these detract from your primary task: your job.
Take breaks. Don’t forget to take occasional breaks, just like you would at the office. Go grab something healthy from the fridge. Go for a walk around the block. Go kiss your significant other.
Stay productive. Being productive should always be your number one rule. You must prove and continue to show that working from home is a winning proposition for both you and your employer, and that you can be trusted to accomplish the tasks set out for you while out of the office.
Are there any other rules? I may have omitted one of my own, or you may have others to add.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.
Immersive remote colaboration is the key. It is telecommuting killer app. When you play MMOGs, you and your co-players identify with your avatars. You feel as if they are human, provided enough gestures are communicable. Sure, someone could still accuse you on company telemeetings that you are a bot, but they can't prove it unless you fail Turing test.
Plus, everyone gets to have good gamer machines "for work".
Leeeeeeeeeeeeeroy Jenkins and you are not invisible any more!
I have telecommuted 3/5 days each week for almost 6 years at the same company, here are a few observations:
- be in the office the same days each week so that people know where/when to find your face
- make your work visible, send status reports in even if they are not asked for
- speak up on a call, if you have nothing to contribute then make jokes, use humor but make sure your voice is heard
- when you are in the office, work hard
- make sure folks see you online in instant messenger when your are at home
KK4SFV
Your manager and team mates are not the problem. They will know and appreciate the work you contribute and daily interaction irrespective of location.
It is your manager's manager (and above) that is the problem. To him you are only a number, he has no idea or interest in what you do. He likes to see bums on seat to match the cost of the department salaries. If you are not in the office for some "facetime" at your desk, canteen or in the corridor, he has no qualms in overriding your manager when praise, promotion, lay offs, or new project members are to be selected.
Hopefully you have a strong manager or similar that can fight your battle. Many wont.
My other Sig is very funny.
Personal experience: While working at a major computer company, (1) I picked up projects that others (who worked in the Austin HQ), failed to complete. I quickly fixed them and got them done. (2) I also picked up projects that others either refused to do or did not agree with the parameters. I got those projects done also. (3) I initated innovative techniques that others adopted. (4) I did these extra projects while maintaining my regular job tasks. But, when it came time to cut staff and off-shore the jobs...I was let go, while those who clearly did not meet expectations were kept on. The moral of this story: If you are in the office, you can work the personal network, smile at the boss (no matter how imcompetent the boob is), and keep your job. Working at home is too risky these days.