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Experiences and Realities of an Homesourced IT Worker
toygeek writes "Some companies have small corporate offices with a few desks and some basic staff, and the balance of their staff works from home. I have worked for two companies that have home-sourced their staffing. I wish to take you through my journey in working from home in the IT world and share some facts that I've accumulated along the way."
Work from home is a trap. I would only consider working from home if my employer is me. Work from home blurs the lines between home life and work life to the point where you are always on call. I work 40hrs a week as a software developer and sys admin. The rest of the time in my week is mine.
Great to know you've for a name for your hand.
work while living out in the countryside. I'd put a pretty high value on that myself. Good luck to you!
Are you a foreigner taught in India-British slum English? Learn to be a American and get it right!
I'm an iOS developer (and used to do OS X) who has worked at home for over 2 decades now. I did have one year where the new boss wanted me in the office. (I upgraded bosses via the resume route eventually.) And I once was laid off because I refused to move halfway across the country (new boss wanted me sitting there.) You need discipline to not blur the line between home and work. For me that means regular hours and an office with a door that shuts. Once place I lived even had the office in a studio that was attached but I needed to go outside to get to it. I loved it. Family also knows what working means and treats it as such. I wouldn't change it for anything.
$20/hr ... So much for that high paying job.
$20/hr is not a high-paying job anymore, (unless you're comparing it to stocking shelves at the discount store, which you shouldn't).
about the guy who was homeschooled, then got a college degree online, then got a job working from home, then got a place in the suburbs with a study where he could work and workout equipment so he wouldn't have to go to a gym.
Interesting. I usually pretend to have sex when a telemarketer calls.
Yes, it may be kinda embarrassing, but then again, I didn't ask him to call, so why should I care for his well being?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
1998-2004: worked from home as a freelancer; 2004-2007: full-time job working from home (the company didn't even have an office in the country where I was living at the time); 2007-present: after transferring to my employer's home country, have continued to work from home whenever I feel like it (which is most of the time).
Somebody would have to give me a LOT of money before I'd agreed to be forced to work in an office 40 hours/week again.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
1) Money savings by not eating out. Where I work most people I see eat out either in the company cafeteria or off campus. I estimate would be about $10/day, or $160/month. Which could be about an insurance payment or a wifi plan. Personally I only eat out about twice a month as a treat, right after payday. Otherwise it is normally leftovers and sandwiches. Working from home you just walk over to the fridge.
2) Free gym membership! Get some weights or an exercise bike. Then take a break over lunch and work out.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
Obligatory: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=co_DNpTMKXk
A large component of my job is working from home and my experiences are entirely the same as Ryan's. I often start 'work' as soon as I wake up while sipping my morning coffee and before I know it the day is over at 6 PM and I've worked through what regular people think of as breaks, hopefully having snacked at some point in between. There are entire weeks of week days where I don't leave the house for no explainable reason other than I have no reason to and I'm tired. Similarly to Ryan, I have to remind myself to shower for the benefit of people I may encounter throughout the day and wear clean clothes.
There is the benefit of saving gas, avoiding car maintenance, less time involved in a commute and the convenience of having access to things like juicers or blenders for a healthy bite to eat when I think about it. I can also change throughout the day as the weather changes and that's always convenient. However since I'm in a seasonal climate there are additional energy costs that would be absorbed by an employer.
I suppose additional benefits include the ability to loudly listen to whatever music I like if I'm not actively voice communicating and I suppose I'm less likely to die in a car accident.
The question is, is this a big deal that seriously affects the quality of my life? No, not really, there are also pros and cons about working in an environment with more structure and the time I save in avoiding a commute, I could make it up at an office with less personal distractions. I wouldn't say one way is better or worse than the other for me, they're just different.
Another great thing about working from home: no more traffic jams and computers left on in the office...I wake up and walk down stairs, exuding 0 green house emmisions and only usually turn on my laptop and speakers, consuming (on average) around 200kwh. Driving to office usually starts and ends me in a traffic jam for a total of 2 hours a day (another bonus, time back from commuting), producing some grand number of metric tons of CO2 a year, top that with all of the office lighting used becuase building managers don't believe in sunlight, and number of devices left on in the office and the number of GH gases quickly rises...I'm a huge advocate for work from home (where feasible and manageable, which is most software engineering positions)
If your job can be done from home, it can be done from India.
I just started WFH in April after 13 years doing L2 support for enterprise storage equipment. The team I came from was, to be totally honest, really great to work for. We had a great manager (the same one) the entire time up until he retired in April, and there was nothing wrong with his replacement other than being a little green. We were a tight-knit group with little turnover (which is good, as it took about 2 years of OTJ to train somebody new), and most of us worked from home rarely, even though our manager encouraged us to do so at least once a week if we were so inclined; the nature of the work (solving new, unique, and subtle ways customers found to break our stuff) involved a lot of collaboration and whiteboarding that would have been nearly impossible remotely. Lots of eavesdropping over the cube walls and hearing a co-worker describe a problem that vaguely resembles one you just fixed five months ago. I left not out of any deep-seated problem, but rather it was time for me to move my career forward; I had no complaints about my pay or anything, but there was no way for me to advance, as there was an engineer senior to me (and just as good) next in line for the team-lead position.
My new team (pre-sales DR architecture) is spread out all over, and only one even bothers with a desk to go to. While we all get along, and chat on the phone and over IM all the time (I'm on the phone for 3-4 hours every day), it's not nearly the same. With the new job, the work definitely comes and goes in spurts, so the flexible work hours are a plus; sometimes I take a long lunch and clock-punch right at five, and others I have to work a long day to get a sales proposal rolled out in time. I miss carpooling with my wife (20 minute commute), and I miss shooting the $hit with my coworkers.
I need to do better job finishing the setup of my home office, so I have a "real" place to work besides the kitchen table or the screened-in porch (namely, I need a whiteboard and bigger monitor.) I need to be better about getting dressed in actual clothes in the AM instead of when it's time to leave the house next. I could get myself a cube assigned by my employer at my former site (probably the same cube I left if I wanted it) but it's just not the same hanging around your former co-workers if you are now doing a completely different job (not to mention I'd probably routinely get asked for my advice there.)
In the end, I won't say it's better or worse, but it IS very different. My new job works better from home than the office, and my old one was better done in the office.
Mondays - in the office. Face time. Dept meetings.
Tuesdays through Fridays - telecommute from home.
Tools work provided: laptop, VPN RSA dongle, cell phone.
Tools I provided: DSL, home network (netgear router connected to the DSL), desk, chair.
Love it! Allows me to sleep in till 8:15am, then walk to work PC, boot it, and start my workday at 8:30a. I do not have to drive to and from work. Saves a tank of gasoline a week, and wear-and-tear on the car. No worries about fwy traffic, car accidents, or road rage making me late to work.
Also allows me to be home, working, when the kids get home from school. Money savings there, too, by not having to have them in after-school daycare. Money savings not having to eat out, can eat what is in the fridge.
Stress is lower, too. No having to hear nonconsensual gossip or phone calls from co-workers in office cubes around me. Do not have to wear 'office attire', and usually wear t-shirts and shorts at home. Can play music I like, as loud as I like, as long as I am not on a work phone call. Can use my network to listen to youtube, or surf the web on my non-work PC while I work, no worries about triggering IT alert that I am accessing non-sanctioned websites, as for that I am not using work's network or PC.
Caveat: a person has to have a strong work ethic, and make sure to get the work done, and even do extra work, to keep boss 'happy' that you are deserving to be allowed to be a telecommuter. I always pick up work phone in first or second ring. I always work an extra hour a day, minimum (I never work under 45hrs a week).
Uh, Linux geek since 1999.
I did freelance for over a year once I learned enough programming to quit my day job. I would find a job that took 2-6 weeks and work like crazy and then take 1-2 off, go to events, meet people, and look for more work (I highly recommend if you're not full-time "home-sourced," you find some job that pays enough regularly so you are not constantly worried about rent between jobs.). The greatest part is you can travel and work, and I think every developer with a yearning for adventure should try it. We're at a period where this is possible, but it may not last forever.
Eventually, I plateaued. It's hard to learn new tools, techniques when you are also relying on yourself for survival. I am also self-taught and did not know how to go beyond using Wordpress/Drupal/other CMS's. I shopped around and found a great team that has helped me learn how to be a better programmer and also how to start a company. It's been a year and I've got what I wanted and would like to start my own team/partnership now.
It is true that telecommuting can hinder networking with people in water-cooler/cigarette breaks.
For the company I work for, a very large healthcare, the offices are all distributed nationally, no no real chance at face time with those units, even if I was in the office every day.
Not probably as good a substitute, but we end up using instant messaging a lot and get to do a bit of social networking that way, like in the old dot-com days.
Uh, Linux geek since 1999.
One is your electricity. Your computer is probably minimal but if you live in non-temperate zones, your heating or cooling will be running while you are there. Expect a higher electricity bill.
Pets. Nothing like an excited large parrot yelling at the top of his lungs to generate fun questions on a conference call.
While you may not have a boss physically watching over your shoulder, expect some sort of software metrics to gauge your " productivity ".
Still, working from home beats the hell out of the daily commute, and the health benefits from not being forced to work beside the idiot who comes to work sick because taking sick time looks bad :/
I currently work in I.T. for a company that is fairly flexible about my working from home. Truthfully, the biggest issues with it are the more subtle things. Since many of the people I do support for have to be in the office the vast majority of the time, there's that psychological issue where they don't see me, so they begin to feel like I don't put in as much time/effort as they do. (And by the same token, I eventually start feeling a sense of guilt or concern that I'll get perceived that way if I don't make an appearance sometimes, despite there really being no pressing reason to spend money on the gas to drive 45 minutes into work and back again.)
The "always on call" thing is definitely a problem, especially since there are only a few of us working in I.T. supporting around 150 users in multiple time zones. If one of us is on vacation, you can bet on getting at least a few calls or emails about "need it now" issues happening after you should really be done for the day. But I don't find it's any worse working from home than in the office? Either way, people are going to put in their requests whenever they need to and you either see it on a PC at home or on a PC at work, or on your smartphone while you're out someplace. If you don't push back a bit ,saying "This time is now MY time... so I'll just ignore this one until tomorrow.", then yes - you're caught in a trap. But it's a trap you allowed yourself to get locked into....
After a decade of working in the social work / child welfare world, I got headhunted by a smallish software company that noticed I was using some technical solutions I made up on my own to solve some of the issues I had with structural/process gaps in the landscape of the job ... a wiki of social services providers here, a small app that visually mapped out family risk factors there, simple stuff. They hired me as a proto-Business Analyst - they needed a guy with industry intel with a little technical background.
I started working from home, three years ago, with about a third of the year being business travel to customer's locations to elicit specifications/requirements/best-place-to-get-a-sandwich. The other 2/3rds I'm at home, authoring, following thru - you know the deal.
The first three months were "WOO HOO I CAN MAKE DOLLARS IN MAH PAJAMAS!" mixed in with "OMGWTF IS A BUSINESS ANALYST??" Very tough time, that was.. didn't really know anything about the world (universe[metaverse]) of software projects, and i had a lot to learn (still do!)
The next three months were spent figuring out how to ensure there was a clear distinction between work-me and not-work-me.
Some advice I initially thought was hare-brained was stuff like "get in your car and drive around the block, or get a coffee, before "going to work", or "dress like you're at the office." These and may others were surprisingly effective.
It's /very/ easy to fall into the trap of gradually slipping into "Always at home = "Always at work.. Having a place in your home that is ONLY ONLY ONLY for work is very important. Being able to tell your employer that you vanish at 5pm, and will reappear at 8am the next workday is dicey, but very important.. one recalls the story of the frog in the pot of water, as the temperature is turned up..
Fighting distractions is a constant battle. I originally scoffed at those applications that one installs to 'cripple' the machine into only doing workish things.. but I've been considering them a lot lately.
If you can, book a week each month to set up shop at the company's physical office. Getting folks to have a face to the name will pay off tremendously later (unless you're miserable at social situations), and you can use that time to remind yourself what working in an office is like: you'll be more grateful for the home office, and also take a little of the energy and pace of the work-office home with you.
I raed where he used the Zim Wiki application to take notes and keep other information. The drawback to it is that the data files are all local and the app is not network aware.
That problem is easily solved by the use of Dropbox. I have that installed on all 5 computers I use and Zim is installed locally and directed to the data in my Dropbox folder. Problem solved, plus automatic multiple backups.
The article is rather light on the cons of working at home. I have been self-employed for 7 years consulting for my ex-employer. Over the years I've come across various pitfalls of being paid hourly, such as:
My goal was 6 hours a day of work, and it was difficult most days to fill this amount. I got crazy after 6 years, and am now renting an inexpensive office space. It's a much better environment for many reasons, and the additional hours I can put in per month makes it pay for itself within a day. I have an office mate, and even though he works in a different field, it makes a difference having someone else around. It has been great being able to work in a real office environment, and I'm a more cheerful person as a result. Lessons learned the hard way.
Come on editors, that should be "a Homesourced IT Worker". There should be an "a" before a consonant sound and an "an" before a vowel sound. Just google it, here's an example.
Bitter and proud of it.
as someone who works from home, wanted to add to two of the points:
1) commuting - it doesn't just save you $$ in fuel & vehicle maintenance - for me, personally, the major advantage is the YEARS out of your life it saves you in completely unproductive, often stressful, time - mostly waiting... waiting for traffic, waiting for a train or bus, waiting, waiting, waiting...
2) family life - this is arguably the MOST important aspect of working from home, beyond just getting out of your bathrobe and leaving your house occasionally. there is a trap you can fall into - especially if you are your own boss - of basically being "unavailable" to your family, with whom you share your home, because you are "working"
if you have (young) kids, you walk a fine line between "I'm here for you" and "don't bother me right now" - you don't want to cultivate the kind of environment where your loved ones feel like they need to make an appointment to get some attention...
At the first job, pay was good, benefits were ok, and work paid for my phone, unlimited data plan, and a high end laptop, with a docking station and a big monitor, and loads of licenced commercial software including a $10,000 GIS platform. We used Skype chat a lot, both video and audio, and email. There was a monthly newsletter and an annual meeting where everybody was on site for a couple of days. Of course because they had an office and offered me an on site job and I chose WFH I didn't get to deduct my home office expenses because it was at my convenience, not my employer's. Economically I think it was sort of a wash. The reasons I left had nothing to do with working from home. All the tradeoffs mentined exist. For me it works.
For the last year or so I've been working as an independant consulting out of my home office. I can deduct more stuff but I also have to buy all my own equipment, my own insurance, etc. Plenty has been said about independant contracting that doesn't bear repeating here.
The biggest issue for me is filtering out the distractions created by my family and overcoming monotony. It's hard to explain to a rambunctious two year old why they can't bang on daddy's office door. Days go by and I don't leave the house. And it's been tough to explain to my wife why I need to be able to talk a walk without taking the kids with me. "But you work from home!" "Yes, until 5pm I am working, even if I go for a walk." Engineers need to go for walks sometimes.
-73, de n1ywb
www.n1ywb.com
For perspective, it use to be illegal in Chicago to work from home, even a programmer. That was around 1980. I've worked at home, initially illegally, writing software. For me, the best thing about working at home is not working at home. I like to work in cafes, libraries and such. The WiFi onslaught of early 2000's liberated me to use the Internet outside of home. The web allowed me to work and travel most anywhere. I'm out of my basement and harvesting my oysters. I've always had the ability to focus on task completion. YMMV.
I used to work for Dell Services (used to be Perot Systems). So I can't speak for all of Dell, but we had alot of people working from home and alot of people in remote offices. We had people all over the country. People working from home is not any different than us contacting the SAs in Texas while we were in Virginia. I cannot speak to how Dell corporate operates, but this group had alot of experience with remote people. It worked well. However, it takes the RIGHT people and the right management.
Some tidbits
1. Everyone needs to be on IM. Its critical. You can't produce without it.
2. Staff needs to be proactive and different people need different assignments. You can't have work from home and remote people who just sit there.
3. Need to have weekly meetings. So everyone can say what they are doing. Your manager needs control of this. These would go really long. A small number of people would monopolize most of the time discussing what they are doing. I think its because they are paranoid people will think they are not working at home. My manager was not very good at managing this. Everyone worked, but people were afraid their work would not be seen.
4. Everyone needs Cell phones and there needs to be a spreadsheet with everyone's number. Always carry it. No excuses.
5. Staff will notice when other people don't work. you need the right people and the right management for this to happen. However, in that environment the staff will inform management when a consensus of 'get this guy out of here' gets done. Management needs to eliminate people the staff wants gone. We don't want to work harder because someone is clearly not doing anything. In many places people won't say anything and it won't work in that situation. Your peers know if you are working. This is a 'team' and it is obvious.
6. Document what you do. We didn't do a good job of this. I think a wiki would work well also.
7. plenty of conference lines and webmeetings: People will need to set up conference or webmeetings on the fly. if they have to wait for them, it kills performance. company saves alot on office space so this can be afforded.
8. systems thinking: This goes with proactive. Dont break other peoples stuff and go 'well my stuff works'. Its bad enough when someone down the hall does it. Its way worse when everyone is remote. People who dont 'get' this need to go. The staff needs to feel empowered to tell management to get rid of people like this.
I dont think this can work everywhere. I don't think most people know how to manage this or are pro-active enough to for this to work. You can do 1 or 2 people doing it. They did this for a long time where I worked before. People would switch projects and just work from home since its cheaper than flying them somewhere. They also save money on office space. It was in the culture. I can't stress enough that the staff needs to feel empowered to assess their co-workers. I can't tell you how annoying it is to have remote people who are NOT responsive and you need them. People who don't really do their work and you have to work harder. They have to go. You can't work with them. This has to come from the staff. You don't have to be a 'rockstar'. You have to actually work and be considerate of your peers. I have been on IM chats where we get a consensus on someone who is pissing alot of us off and we went to management to get rid of this person. Person goes through HR warnings, etc... then is typically gone. We are not being mean, but I don't want to work until 11 pm to make up for someone who takes 3 days to respond to me (repeatedly). They have to just get out. Its not hard to be considerate of co-workers.
If not done correctly remote people will destroy productivity. Most of it is personality and a big chunk of it is the right kind of management. I think if you are going to switch to a remote work environment, it needs to be slowly phased in so people can feel it out. Dell did it primarily to save money on office space. That being said, my office was less than 6 miles away and I preferred to drive into work everyday. I don't like being couped up at home. It was pretty empty. I was in the office more often than my manager. I just chose to do it. It didn't bother me.
I'm more productive when working from home. Much less distraction from coworkers, and much happier working while being able to listen to the radio station of my choosing. And one of the biggest benefits for me has been the exercise. When I was in corporate America, I had to drive an hour through rush hour twice a day (to work and back) and never had time to exercise. When I switched to working from home, I used the time I got back to exercise and started routinely riding my bike at least 15 miles each morning. And since I don't have to worry about staying workplace-presentable and sweat-free, sometimes during my lunch break I even skip the meal and just do an aerobic routine right in front of my computer while watching one of the many available for free on YouTube. I've lost 25 lbs since the day I started working from home.
I'm in a job search at the moment, and pretty much every time I raise the possibility of working remotely (hellish commute for any jobs in nearest big city) I can hear my resume hitting the circular file over the phone. Most workplaces do not value employees as the asset that they are, but instead view them as walking cost centers who work as little as possible not out of valuing their time appropriately, but out of spite for their employer. The first rule of managing costs is know what is going on with the things that cost you money, and most short-sighted employers interpret that to mean "breathe down their necks to intimidate them into working harder than they should for the money we're paying them."
Some employers are enlightened and make it work, others see a request to work remotely as sandbagging and an excuse to goof off instead of working. These places only think you're working if your butt is in the seat where they can see it.
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
out of 15 years of paid IT work I have gotten 2 working from home, I got more done in those 2 years than the rest combined, I feel like every employer who holds back on that for worry that you will be less productive is burning that many orders of magnitude of cash, the waste of always working in an office you commute to cannot be overstated, reversing this could completely end global warming.
when I worked from home i was the only employee, the owner lived about a mile away and periodically we would have face to face meetings at his home office, we went on marketing trips, met with clients etc... as soon as it was time to add more employees he felt compelled to get an office, even though it was only a block from my apartment at the time, thus saving all the commute problems and even the cost of lunch issue, productivity sank, at first it made me anxious, then i realized that it only sank back to normal everyday productive office worker level.
it wasn't until many years later that I was able to figure out why, having some work from home arrangements for snow days here and there, arguing to switch to such a situation again, researching the subject, the cost savings to the company (minimum 10k per employee in hard costs alone) nearly no sick days and the productivity gains (min 20% was found in a number of tests).
they why is quite simple: even though you are a salaried knowledge worker, ie: you actually DO get paid to think, when you work in an office that has set hours you are actually being compensated for being in a particular place for a set period of time and during that time it is critical that not only are you there but that you always LOOK busy, in the back of your mind, no matter how good of a worker you are, how diligent you worry that if you stop to uh think, which is what you get paid to do, that right then eyes closed, face pointing at the ceiling brow furrowed your boss will come by and figure you are a complete slacker who needs more to do. This creates a feedback loop, what can I do that will look very much like work all the time to make sure I don't get in trouble for not looking like I'm working. you also tend to short your personal needs (like going to the bathroom) to make sure you get to work on time and skip things like dental appointments for fear of being seen as gone from the office too much.
when you primarily work from home everything is exactly the opposite, however early you 'get to work' however late you stay and however busy you might look the boss is only going to see 2 things: your responsiveness to phone calls and emails and your bottom line productivity, in truth working from home was much much harder, if i spent 3 days busting my ass on a solution and found that I had gone down a complete dead end and had to start over, i was screwed out of that time, by a certain client driven deadline a solution had to be completed that worked and worked well. on top of that in my case, if i screwed up very much at all it wasn't just my boss being pissed or maybe getting rid of me, if I didn't deliver great solutions over and over every week throughout the year without fail the tiny company would have gone under and fast, so there was great pressure but there was also great reward and this is where it gets weird.
after about 6 months of this I found a lot of this key stuff, mindset change about time, place and productivity and I got to where I would spend about 2 hours a day physically at my keyboard doing what most people would call real work. at first I thought ha ha, i've cheated the system! but then it dawned on me, to this day as an IT worker, i AM on call 24/7 in one fashion or another and on top of that I am working ALL THE TIME, if there is an incomplete project on my plate (always) i'm thinking about it, at dinner, in the shower, at the park, driving through the countryside with my family, i'm workin for the man 24/7 (yes i wake up in the middle of the night with head slapper solutions) the only time i'm not really doing that is when i'm at the office, loo
I remember something similar where my then (now ex) girlfriend was feeling pretty damn frisky while I was in the middle of doing some on-call work on a Saturday afternoon. Well things started happening and unfortunately at that point I had to call one of our data centre guys to eyeball something for me. I kept on the phone and tried to keep a straight face, all while there was some reverse cowgirl happening at my desk. Funny enough I managed to not cut the call short and we both burst out laughing the instant I got off the phone.
Frivolities were paused at that point until I completed my work and then we could continue on uninterrupted.
Life is like a box of chocolates, you never know when your gonna get food poisoning.