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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)?
Up until recently I was an independent software development contractor. In the beginning of my career, I was working from home on semi isolated components, and I really hated it. It's very hard to concentrate on anything with all the distractions, you can't talk to anyone (even if it's just bitching about something), you don't get to know what's going on in the company, and when you have as small an apartment as I had back then, it's very hard to "switch off" from work after work, because in my case, my desk and bed were in the same room, and that makes it hard to "switch".
Add to that the obvious problem of constant distractions... but then, you get those in the office, too ;)
If a train station is a place where a train stops, what's a workstation?
You've been modded troll, but this is pretty much accurate.
It's also not a win/win, and here's why:
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.
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.
3) Skype does not make communication with coworkers a snap. It imparts a major cognitive overhead.
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.
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.
I used to live 90+ minutes away from a previous job... I worked from home 3 days each week, then came in for two. On the days I drove, yeah it meant 3 hours of driving... but plus side, most of that drive was by myself while whizzing through the twisty roads of the Oregon Coastal Range, and having the time to myself with a stack of good music and *nobody* impinging on that time due to crap cell coverage? That was kind of nice.
Mind you, I had no kids at the house and I lived on the beach at the time, so working from home was a snap - no distractions at all. I made up for the hallway conversations with IM and impromptu huddles over the phone. The days I drove in were packed with meetings (on top of the usual phone/webex conversations), so I got approximately no keyboard time those days. I'd call it a wash though, but mostly because my employer at the time was over-siloed and under-efficient; their glassdoor ratings were and are rightfully in the toilet if that helps.
But, that aside, working from home has the following benefits:
* time alone: you can set a huge block of time aside, shut the world out, and get shit done.
* boss says you gotta work late? No problem, just a sec': " Hey babe? I gotta spend a bit more time on this today; I'll just eat in here until it's done..."
* if you live in a scenic area, just step outside and work in an awesome setting.
* as long as the webcams don't see it, put whatever the hell you want up on your walls.
* pajamas! Well, eventually you get sick of doing that and dress for work anyway, but I did kind of enjoy wearing a dress shirt over cargo shorts.
It has the following drawbacks:
* office politics: when you're remote, you don't overhear those little snatches of conversation, see expressions, and get those subtle signals that would indicate something you may want to act on, so you find yourself blindsided - often.
* culture: you often find that you slowly slip out of the company's culture, which leaves you at a disadvantage as time passes. It also means that you miss out on connecting with co-workers at any meaningful level beyond giving and getting information.
* visibility: being gone leaves you lower on the priority list for promotions, advancements, special projects, etc. because 'Out of sight, out of mind'.
* quick gathering of critical information: at work, you can see if someone's there, get what you need if they're not über busy, then get back at it. Remotely, you have to wait for a response by email, IM, whatever... and they will ignore you just as much as you tend to ignore them.
* power went out at home? Better go into the office anyway. There were a couple of times when the little coastal town I lived in lost power (once at a very inconvenient time - a Saturday evening that we had a go-live scheduled) and had to haul ass to the nearest town with both power and usable wifi (and in that one case all the way into the office.) Happens more often than you think, because apparently residential power has a lower priority (and way less redundancy) than commercial, eh?
* self-discipline: sometimes, it's a royal bitch to make yourself focus on work when all you really want to do is kick over the the gaming rig and fart around a bit online... and at home, who's gonna know? It takes a special personality trait to get started on time and stick to it (and more importantly, know when to call it a day).
All said, there's a lot of factors I left out, and it all depends on you, your employer, and what you do for a living.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
One of the things I've run into dealing with groups in India might be cultural, but it certainly can get in the way. Everyone has a job, it's strictly defined, and rarely does anyone do something that is not explicitly in their job, especially if it's explicitly in someone else's job. When it's in nobody's job, a manager can get it added to someone's job, but that seems to take a lot of discussion over who is the most appropriate person to do it, which can cause further delays. In one frustrating case, simply disabling a line in snmpd.conf to stop "public" from being an accepted community string took days to figure out whose job it was, even though several people had sudo access and could have made and documented the change.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.