Slashdot Mirror
For Programmers, the Ultimate Office Perk is Avoiding the Office Entirely (qz.com)
From a report on Quartz: Over the past decade, designers and engineers have invented dozens of new tools to keep us connected to the office without actually going there. Unsurprisingly, those same engineers have been among the first to start using them in large numbers. More programmers are working from home than ever and, among the most experienced, some are even beginning to demand it. In 2015, an estimated 300,000 full-time employees in computer science jobs worked from home in the US. Although not the largest group of remote employees in absolute numbers, that's about 8% of all programmers, which is a significantly larger share than in any other job category, and well above the average for all jobs of just under 3%. [...] Programmers not only work from home more often than other employees, when they do they are more likely to work all day at home. From 2012 to 2015, the average full-time programmer who worked from home said they spent an average of five and a half hours doing so. That's an 92% increase in the average time spent at home from 2003 to 2005, and nearly double the average for all jobs.
One reason I avoid working from home is that I trust my coworkers in the office to let me work more than I trust my wife and my kids to let me work.
Proud neuron in the Slashdot hivemind since 2002.
...it can also be done from Bombay...
The name was changed 22 years ago...
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
...is that you?
I was in Burma at the time.
My worry is that if I took up the offer to work from home I'd start to hermit. I need the social time and to get out and be among other human beings, otherwise I fear I'd stay single forever.
In all honestly, this could also lead to some really bad programming considering if you never Interact with anyone it could result in you coding in a way that results in unmanageable code or something that won't work with a team. Besides, I actually like some office interaction now and then so I don't get completely locked into my own ideas and hobbies.
I like remote work because it allows me to work from anywhere. At least in theory, because this format isn't still too popular and there are lots of restrictions. For things like programming, I expect it to gradually become a widely accepted alternative.
Custom Solvers 2.0 = Alvaro Carballo Garcia = varocarbas.
Where I work, none of our programmers (of which I am one) are allowed to work from home any more except in cases of emergency. Mind you, it's a small company, and there's only three of us programmers here to begin with, and we're all on Slack and have fairly open lines of communication with each other.
But one of the bosses apparently gets a case of the chapped ass if he can't have a pointless meeting at the drop of a hat to go over something we've covered a handful of times already. So, anyone working from home is a direct affront to his micro-managing style. (This is the same guy who got upset that no one came in on July 4th last year when we were closed.)
Mr. Hu is not a ninja.
Pros: - less commute time - good for the environment - more flexibility - potentially higher productivity Cons: - Out of sight, out of mind is not good at layoff time - less social interaction - less professional interaction (maybe) Overall, I prefer to work from home, but since I have direct reports that I manage, I'm not allowed to do it full time. I do telecommute every friday though!
Brawndo: It's what plants crave!
The office is where you network. If you're a programmer you need to realize you have a shelf life of 40 years. If you haven't moved into management by then you're toast (unless you're a math genius, but you're not a programmer at that point, you're a mathematician who happens to program).
And give up on age discrimination lawsuits. Remember kiddos: It's not a law if it's not enforce.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
I, and my direct reports, would get so much more done if we didn't have meeting after meeting called by managers to check on our status and to berate us for not getting things done.
Things that improve your efficiency and effectiveness dramatically, are not perks. They are good sense on the side of the employer.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Why are you afraid of women in the workplace? Are you weaker than the so-called weaker sex, or do you just prefer the company of men?
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
.. obligatory https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
But Home can beat a creative, collaborative open space.
I feel like anything, a balance is best. Working from the office means less gets done overall. I have less opportunities to be heads down. We have an open office, so there are tons of distractions -- from people conversing, to simply walking my field of view and me reflexively looking up to see who it is. It IS nice for quick pow wows in person, getting ahold of people who haven't responded to your Hipchat/Hangouts messages in a timely manner, and socialization at lunch or after hours.
Working from home means you forget your social skills. You devolve in to a wolf man. In persona conflict resolution is never a thing, and it's all done over email or chat, which can muddy up a situation. Deodorant becomes optional. Hell, underpants become optional. For people with kids at home, there's that lack of understanding of why daddy or mommy can't play. There is also a huge risk of fucking off at home, and it takes discipline to keep your keel even, and not try to beat Final Fantasy 10 for the 15th time in a row.
For me I find the best balance at 3 days in, 2 days telecommute. YMMV of course.
Exactly. If you can work from home, you can hire some Asian programmers to do the work for you and enjoy retirement-like leisure time.
Some people already did in the past, I'm betting there are lots of them.
I'm afraid of women in the workplace because if I see breasts I won't be able to concentrate on my job.
Fortunately for me, I work from home so I can do my job without any distraction.
And now if you'll excuse me, I need a quick break. Maybe I'll load you-know-what websites...
I'd take "work whenever you want as long as you deliver the deliverables" flexible hours. I work a lot better when I'm allowed anti-social hours like "wake up at noon, start work at 5pm, work until around 3am the next day, jump directly into bed"
If you were in on the conspiracy you wouldn't need to ask that question.
I got my contract written as a minimum of two days a week WfH and wish I had demanded three! I have a nine-year-old boy who loves attention and a wife that does too ;) (how dare she! :P). But here are some basic steps to maintaining professionalism at home:
1) Closing door. I.e. an office.
2) People knock and await "come in" before entering unless it is a dire emergency. If it is not an emergency and they do not hear come in, then they can either knock again or come back later.
3) My office hours are just that. I need to spend time in my office which means no, I cannot help you build a Lego project, no I cannot help load the dish washer. When I take a break, I can help, but only then.
4) My family needs to keep the noise down.
5) IM always up and I try to respond almost immediately. If I cannot I mark myself as busy, if I am marked as available then I expect myself to respond in 60 seconds. This also includes soft phone, always on.
6) If there is a reason to be in the office I come in. I don't resist it. One SIT for a recent project made sense for me to be in the office, so for two weeks I came in, got SIT done and remediation and then back to my normal schedule.
I personally thrive working from home as my commute time generally becomes a part of my normal day. If I have tight project deadlines, I will tell my mgr. not to expect me in the office for a bit. I still attend meetings remotely, I still beat on project mgrs. to either open a Skype call or a conference line (no excuse not to, even people in the office sometimes take meetings from their desk so they can multitask).
Communications is the key and delivering what you promised on time is also the key. I collaborate with my fellow developers and we do so quite well and white boarding digitally is a lot nicer than a physical non-smart board.
Now there are people that do not do well working from home, they either do not get their work done or they become depressed with the lack of human contact. From my observations, I find those that do not work well from home (not the ones that get depressed with lack of human contact) have a pretty poor focus and planning skills in the office and outside of it. So you help them build that ability. You help them to use proper time management skills, you help them prioritize their workload and come up with a plan of attack for the day.
Being a contractor allows me to work from home 100% of the time. Which actually means working from wherever I want, without being tied to any physical location.
I spend months at a time at the family vacation home every summer. I've been casually looking for full-time employment with a 100% work-from-home company, but they're still pretty limited at this point.
My worry is that if I took up the offer to work from home I'd start to hermit.
If you really started lacking people you can always go work in a coffee shop, or better yet (much better) a shared working space.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I've worked from home exclusively as a c++ dev for almost 15 years. It's quite nice. I think I'd have a hard time with a commute now, but I wouldn't mind some coworkers to chat with now and then.
You have to have an office in the house, especially if you have kids/wife around. If you have a place where you work, you'll work when you're there. It's also quite easy to train family to know to leave you alone when you're in the office.
...in Siam. I'll send you an aeromail via the 4:30 auto-gyro.
Other areas like SQA testers. I loved my 1.5 years Cisco contract job to work from home because of my disabilities (e.g., can't drive, speak, hear, etc.). It was perfect!
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
I read that as "For Programmers, the Ultimate Office Perk is Avoiding MS Office Entirely" and nodded in agreement.
I worked for a big bank, and after a few internal shuffles, most of my team wasn't located where I lived, even though I lived where there was an office. I traveled once a month or so to the E. Coast where my teams were, and it was pretty good. In fact, I was able to move across the country to another state without much interruption at all to my job. In fact it helped because I was closer to the E. Coast so travel time was reduced as well as being a timezone closer for morning meetings!
I was usually working from 7 AM to 4:30 PM, with no real time for lunch because of overlapping meetings. Lots of meetings.
I have since left there, thankfully, and am at a much smaller company. I like the people I work with, and I do feel less isolated than before. I like coming into the office. But I wouldn't mind working from home again some day. You just need to have the right tools in place, a good work ethic, and it helps if everyone "gets" working with remote people.
Funny story - I joined one quarterly all-hands call via phone. It was apparently being held in a very large auditorium, several hundred in attendance. Typical big-company meeting of this type, some high-level talk from the exec, then he handed it off to others to give their spiels. One guy got speaking in person got on the mic, fumbled a bit with his introduction... then FROZE. Complete stage fright in front of 1000+ people in-person and on the phone. This was a pretty high-ranking guy in the company too who was no stranger to giving presentations. Then he collected himself, apologized, and said "I usually work from home, so I normally don't get to actually SEE this many people". Everyone laughed, then he laughed. That broke the tension, and he was fine after that and gave a pretty good presentation.
I know I have personally led calls of 100+ people, and behind a phone I am sure it is easier than in person.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
Once we have fired and replaced you, no problem. :)
The correct term is Native Southern Asians, you insensitive clod!
Freedom to fear. Freedom from thought. Freedom to kill.
I guess the War on Terror really is about freedom!
As a postgrad student I often worked from home. It meant I never got away from it. Now I deliberately don't have an internet connection at home or a smart phone, so when I leave work I am offline. Much better!
Can't even name their own city what they want, instead have to stick with a colonialist name devised by their overlords.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
They'll be quiet for the rest of their lives.
I get MORE work done at home than in the office. At home I don't get all the "walk up" "Help me!"'s. I can get through the hole day in the office and not have gotten a DAMN thing done. Working at home I get TONS done! I guess when you have tons of dumb asses in the office and your not IN the office they now have to FEND for themselves.
The Truth is a Virus!!!
I consciously stay at home because I trust my wife and my kids to encourage me to keep doing my work more than I trust myself from getting distracted while hitting on female coworkers in the office.
I've been working from home for almost 10 years now, with only occasional visits to the office.
I love it. I don't have people wandering by my desk and interrupting me, I don't have to deal with the constant noise (open floor plans are evil), no daily commute, I can cook a decent lunch, full control over heating/cooling, etc. Need to get in touch with co-workers? IM, email, conference calls, etc., plenty of ways to contact people if necessary. I get far more done at home than I ever could in the office.
The only reason I stay with my current employer is the work-at-home benefit.
I don't recommend it for people who can't stay on task or those with poorly behaved spouses / children. Your home office is an office, it is a work place and it needs to be treated as such.
Love sees no species.
If you're single, working from home can get lonely and monotonous and can make you feel like you're being a bit lazy. You can spice it up by going to cafes, but everyone else freelancing, studying, farting around has the same idea, so you may spend an hour hopping between coffee places trying to find a seat somewhere that also has an outlet you can use for power. Then, you're even more glued to your seat than you would be in an office and if you need to go to the bathroom, have to worry about taking your laptop with you and potentially losing your spot. If you want to grab lunch somewhere, same issue. You also may start to feel a bit guilty being there as other customers can't find seats and that you likely haven't bought anything since the coffee and bagel you bought when you first arrived. There are also likely going to be even more distractions than you would have in an office, such as friends chatting, other people sitting inches from you as the tables are paced right next to each other, customers constantly entering and leaving, etc.
I've been working from home for about two years now, I live in the middle of the Rocky Mountains and its been wonderful. I would say that this is one of the best benefits I've ever had. Our child is grown and out of the house, I do have four-legged children, but they are manageable. I hate living in the city, I've done it long enough; now I want to live out in the country, so my quality of live has improved.
I've been working from home for 10 years now, and the rule I set from the get-go is pretty simple: If you wouldn't phone or come and see me during office hours when I'm working at some remote location, then you shouldn't phone me during those same hours when I'm at home either.
When put into those simple terms, even dumb-fuck relatives get it. Anyone who can't follow this rule simply doesn't respect you or your time, which means you're under absolutely zero obligation to make yourself available to them anyway.
Hey, got time for a quick chat? Just wanted to check if you got that thing I sent you and run an idea past you. Sorry, looks like you're busy. Let's sit down when you get a chance. I'll put a time on the calendar for this afternoon, ok?