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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.
work while living out in the countryside. I'd put a pretty high value on that myself. Good luck to you!
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).
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.
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.
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.
Actually no its just a typo more than anything. I thought I'd fixed it but because of the way Google's blogger service works, it got stuck in the URL that way and for some reason carried over into it when I submitted it to /. Isn't that odd.
Nobodies Prefect
Tidbits for Techs Technology Blog
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
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.
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.