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Ask Slashdot: How Do You Find Jobs That Offer Working From Home?
jez9999 writes: I'm a software developer in the UK, and I've found that it's very rare (maybe 5% of the time) to find an employer that will even consider any working from home, let alone for the majority of the time. I see it as a win-win; you're able to work in the home environment you are most productive in, and you can use the time you would've been commuting to work a bit longer for the employer. Not only that, but you're not adding to road congestion either. Skype, etc. make communication with coworkers a snap these days. So how do you go about finding homeworking jobs? Is it better to demand it from the get-go, or wait a few months and then ask for it? Is it more common than 5% of jobs in the US (in which case I guess it's a cultural thing the UK needs to catch up with)?
One trick I learned just recently: Tell them at the interview, that you got another offer, and you have to think about which one is better for you.
Then they'll ask what the final decision critera will be, and then you tell them "well, at the other company, I will be working from home.".
In my case that got them to say "well, home-office is not a problem at all, as long as you show up for the meetings" :-)
good luck!
andi
Generally? You don't.
The trend is away from this for software developer positions, unless you are willing to do contract work. There are several major things driving this right now:
(1) The employer doesn't have to allow it in order to be able to recruit talent, so they don't. A lot of managers engage in "management by walking around", and you are unlikely to get one of these types to sign off.
(2) Stacked ranking. If you're not in the office, and not "seen as being a strong contributor by your nominal coworkers, you'll get ranked poorly, and you will be the first person "PIP'ed" (Performance Improvement Program), and, if there are layoffs, you get to be near the top of the list.
(3) If they don't care where you are working from, be pretty sure that the job isn't going to be landing in a country with expensive labor, like the U.K., the U.S., and so on; if they are going to take on a remote worker, it's not going to be from your neck of the woods.
(4) Employer culture is considered important; if you want to have an employer, expect to come into the office so that they can culturally indoctrinate you. Yahoo laid off all their remote employees over this, and it's been the trend at Google, Apple, Facebook, Twitter, and so on. This is somewhat part and parcel with the stacked ranking, but it's the other side of the coin.
$ curl http://job.list/ | egrep -i 'from home | homeworking'
Working remotely in a software team: simply does not work!
o_O
You mean .... like the loosely organized software team that has developed the Linux kernel hasn't worked out?
If a train station is a place where a train stops, what's a workstation?
Firstly to say I am not arguing against what you said. I do however want to add to point 4.
Getting employee buy-in is important. An employee that is engaged, that believes he has a higher purpose than just working for this company will put more effort and pride into his work. In theory higher quality and more work is the result.
This internal marketing helps employee retention as well as getting many of them to do more for no additional pay because they are committed and feel it is their duty.
Most new employees will eat this up and feel they are part of a larger group, a wider family, with a purpose beyond just plain old Monday work. After a period of time people, being smart, wisen up and read between the lines if they have not already. then the "engagement" becomes a game of pretending. Managers pretend to be engaged and pursue engagement activities (that include making sure no one works from home) and employees pretend to be engage and embrace the "culture" as a valued framework.
Many companies will cite Yahoo's experience and many managers will see it as "proof" of something. I believe it all boils down to the employee in question.
Most employees will be very concerned that they may be viewed as not doing much if they are working from home and will often do more "just to make sure". but perception is the name of the game. If your manager thinks people that wear jeans are not serious about work well...we know what happens if a candidate shows up to an interview in jeans.
As a society we are still a bit far off the holy grail of working from home. The old way of thinking is still prevalent and despite having the technology this way of thinking is holding us back as a society. Imagine the cost savings if you did not have to provide your employees with environmentally controlled facilities and giant office spaces. Imagine how much traffic will be saved if 50% of us do not have to actually be physically at work.
Personally I find working from home easier. I can sleep more and have an environment that I enjoy and helps me concentrate. I don't need a manager to interrupt me as he reads through his emails or colleagues playing music wanting to gossip over coffee or deal with the less than gourmet food on offer.
In conclusion I think that a person wanting to work from home needs to find the right employer and that is where the real challenge lies. Most do not advertise that you can work from home so it's still a matter of finding out manually. It's one of the questions I'd ask of a future employer.
A 'singular oddity' is an event that cannot be explained and only happens when you are alone.
The same thing applies in an office environment, only instead of one wife you now have 50 colleagues who want help with this and that (often not work related), or just want to chat about the weather...
Many people are single, or have wives/girlfriends who also work and aren't at home during the day.
The other thing is being able to prioritise distractions... If someone sends you an email asking for something, you can wait until you're finished whatever you're currently concentrating on, but if they walk up to your desk or call you then it forces you to immediately stop what your doing to respond to them... This can be very troublesome if you're trying to concentrate.
My job has a mix of home working, office working, and working in client's offices... I find i get a LOT less done if i'm working in our office, partly because of the distractions and partly because it's just a terrible office with bad seating, bad desks, broken climate control etc.
Client offices are a different story, as most of the people there don't know you there are usually much fewer distractions, although the actual conditions can vary... If it's quiet and comfortable then i can get a lot more done there, if it's noisy and/or uncomfortable then a lot less gets done.
That said i still think home working is better overall at least for me, if only because of the time and inconvenience saved on travel... There are more and more businesses being crammed into a small area in most cities and expecting people to all work at the same time, this creates massive congestion on all travel routes at certain hours, and results in inefficient over capacity at other times. I find it utterly ridiculous how they insist on so many people travelling to the same area at the same time, things should be far more spread out.
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homeworking jobs? Is it better to demand it from the get-go
I doubt there's a company in the land that would recruit an unknown, straight off the street, give them a salaried post and let them work 100% from home.
For a start, there's no guarantee you wouldn't just goof around for the 6 months or so it would take for them to realise you're a lazy freeloader and then go through the process of firing you (sacking people in the UK and the rest of Europe is a long-drawn out process: employees have rights). Second, they'd have to install a load of kit in your house which would take time and you'd also have little or no "induction" into the company, your boss, the goals and culture.
So on the occasions where I have worked for places that do have home working: either as perk for trusted employees or as a cost-saving measure for the one that seriously messed up its estate management, it's not something you go "demanding" and definitely not from the start - or "get-go" in your language.
Finally, home working has many, many disadvantages. Apart from being isolated, you become an invisible part of the team - and therefore disposable. You never interact with your work-mates and never get to hear "grapevine" stuff, like where the promotion opportunities are. Neither does your boss "see" you, so you never bond and can easily get passed over for pay rises or interesting projects. Some people also find they instead of working, they spend all day with their face in the fridge and pile on the pounds.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
How about a commute that's easily over 1.5 hours each way every day? Sitting still on highway 95 at 4:00 in the afternoon is about as far away from a brain clearing exercise as I can imagine. There's nothing better I'd rather do than literally waste 3+ hours a day with the other worker bees.
Tell that to:
Automattic
Mozilla
GitHub
Basecamp (formerly 37signals) (who even wrote a book about how great remote working can be)
along with a myriad of other companies who work either entirely remotely, or have very liberal policies around remote working.
Most, if not all of whom, can be considered to be quite successful within their field.
It's a lot easier to tell someone at work to go away because you are busy, and there is a clear escalation path if they don't.
It is not, however, easier to tell someone at work to shut up because their noise is distracting you, and there is frequently no escalation path on that. Open-plan office and "talk out loud whenevr you like" are by design. Headphones often don't fully shut out the noise and are just a distraction in themselves.
== Jez ==
Do you miss Firefox? Try Pale Moon.
Obviously you haven't ever tried to get anything moderately complex done in India. In my experience that never goes well.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Basically, working at home is not in any way good for the company, and it's usually not good for the employee at all, so most companies won't let you do it.
Modded to 5 completely without citation and from what I assume is mostly conjecture. Nice job.
1) Most people are not most productive at home. In fact, most people are significantly less productive at home due to many more distractions around them.
I have seen this first hand. IBM came into our company, hired all of us and then sent everyone home to telecommute. About 1/3 of the people could not cope and got fired; Your statement seems to imply that people are inherently incapable of working remotely, which is complete crap. It's a learned behaviour. The other 2/3 of my colleagues and I went on to have lengthy productive tenures at IBM (without seeing an office or each other for up to 6-10 years at a time).
2) Commuting (at least relatively short commutes) has been shown to be a good way of clearing your brain, and getting it into or out of work mode. It doesn't really hurt productivity unless you're doing it for hours.
Citation please? I'll settle for an anecdote.
While this may be a way of "clearing your brain", "getting into the zone", or whatever you call it: It's a learned routine that tells your brain "it's time for work". You do this when working remotely as well. You get a routine in place that get's your mind ready for work (even when you work at home, it's very important).
3) Skype does not make communication with coworkers a snap. It imparts a major cognitive overhead.
Cognitive overhead? If operating Skype is too difficult or a cognitive overhead for you, then yes you will need to remain on-site to flip the burgers and operate the fryer.
While I personally don't like Skype I feel that a telephone call is just as effective as an in person meeting (except I can't punch someone in the face... I'll let you decide if that's a positive or negative).
4) Communication does not just come down to a few meetings a week that could (with more effort) be done via Skype. By working at home you remove any chance of corridor conversations, which typically, are by far the most productive communication in an office.
Again I'm going to have to ask for a study that says "corridor conversations" are more productive.
How many of you attend 15 minute meetings that regularly sprawl into an hour?
"Corridor conversations" happen all the time when you work remote: Believe it or not working remotely I've been able to establish close personal relationships with people I've never met in person, yet talk to on a daily basis (just shoot the shit for a couple minutes before or after a meeting).
The fact is trucking people and resources to a central point for a few hours a day only to then have a mass exodus in the evening is not sustainable. There are more drivers getting on the roads than getting off. We can't build lanes in big cities fast enough. People are going to have to go home.
I know that in my field (Software/Systems Engineering) people aren't all that social in the first place (everyone has their headphones on all day). Nothing I do requires me, my peers or our management to be located in any specific place. All of the tools required to do my job fit in a backpack and can be easily afforded by me if required.
I've been on-site the last 5 years (after a 12 year stretch remotely) and the co-workers I talk to are fairly miserable having to commute and then sit around in a sterile office environment. I see so many people that think because they show up to warm a chair everyday yet fail to produce anything meaningful they can hold a job (and they're mostly correct). When you telecommute the employer usually has strict expectations you need to meet (it's sink or swim).
The only people I know that really push for the 'on site' mentality in my field
Sounds like your company hires second-rate people. I work from home all the time and I will not rest if anyone is depending on me for anything. It's called professionalism.
So I guess I agree.. if your employees need constant supervision then you need them in eye's reach.