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WSJ: There's An 'Inexorable' Trend Towards Working Remotely (foxbusiness.com)
The Wall Street Journal reports that the trend towards remote working "is inexorable" in America's labor force, with 43% of workers now doing at least some of their work from home (up from 39% in 2012), and 20% now working entirely from home (up from 15%). An anonymous reader writes:
Besides lowering an employer's rent, telecommuting also makes employees happier, which helps with both recruiting and retention according to the Journal. Automattic, maker of WordPress, is able to have an almost entirely remote workforce of 558 employees spread across more than 50 countries. But it depends on getting the right set of tools. Automattic uses Slack for conversations, Zoom for videoconferences, "and its own internal system of threaded conversations for documenting everyone's work and for major decisions." One of the company's "happiness engineers" even says online communicaton has created "radical transparency," since it's possible to read and search through internal communcations. Just remember that not every job can work remotely, according to Dell's chief human resources officer. "Engineering, leadership, R&D, sales and customer support -- those are roles that don't lend themselves very well to remote work."
It'd be interesting to hear the experiences of Slashdot's readers. Anyone want to share their own experiences with working remotely -- or of working with remote co-workers?
It'd be interesting to hear the experiences of Slashdot's readers. Anyone want to share their own experiences with working remotely -- or of working with remote co-workers?
I really like coming in to the office.
I like the social aspect. I like the morning coffee on the roof terrace, I like the free breakfast, free lunch, just the amazing food, and seeing the people you work with face to face.
But am I more productive in the office? FUCK NO.
All the distractions and annoying people, I am 100% more productive when I work from home. But it' just more lonely, and I miss out on the free food. So I choose to go in. It's also good exercise walking to the office.
You can tell how powerful someone is by the magnitude of the crime they can commit and be able to get away with.
and a few more companies who have decided that remote working is evil and they need to see everyone in the office every day just to make sure they are not slacking.
And in other news,
Buggy whip makers have reported an increase in orders from IT companies.
My last employer decided that people had to be in the office 5 days a week. That office was a 2hr journey each way. The writing was on the wall. I took early retirement. 6 months later all those left were laid off and the whole IT department offshored to India. Things did not go well and I was asked to go back. I might have said yes but the 'thou shalt not work from home' edict was still in force. I said nope.
This.
It's almost like I go to the office when I know I have no deadlines hanging over my head to hang out with the other guys...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I find that when I work remotely I end up just posting random bs on slashdot all day. Don't get me wrong - I get the minimum amount of work done to not get fired, but I don't exactly get recognized either. Usually I exaggerate simple things and think everyone believes me. I feel in the back of my head my boss probably knows more than I do and sees through my bullshit. He still lets me do this - maybe because he himself doesn't care, or it's a seat that needs to be filled, and honestly at this low tier of skill, there aren't a lot of good resources available - they'd be doing something else if they were good. Anywise - for people like me - working from home completely destroys our already not so great productivity. People better than me, especially on this site - I don't really know. Out of my peers I'm pretty much at the top of the food chain. They're not slashdotters though, and they don't have CS degrees. They're mostly blue-collar C-students who read CDW catalogs and know different electronic trinckets, but nothing about actual electronics. I'm really the only one who's reached the slashdot level of nerdness, and thanks to the remote work, I don't get fired for being here all day.
Smaller companies designed for a large percentage of their critical employees being offsite can work great. This also has the advantage of being very contractor friendly...however, expectations have to be set and in person meetings should be used when possible to build better teamwork. This system works better for older employees.
On the other hand, I've seen that the bigger the business, the more difficult it is to sustain a telecommuting culture. At the very least, you end up with a system where those who are onsite tend to slowly be promoted and replace those who are offsite. Employees that are junior and needing mentoring also benefit more from being onsite. And, unless management really pushes a telecommuting culture, or has a firm policy that every works x% onsite/y% offsite - being offsite is just too risky for long term career growth of senior staff.
I'm a senior software engineer. I work from home because I'd otherwise have a 20 hour commute! The small company I work with has trouble finding qualified people where they are - and few will relocate to go there - so remote working was a necessity...and we embrace that.
When I worked in an open office - (which I hated) we still chatted over Skype and email. I still chat over Skype and email. Technical communications don't suffer too much - but a really good replacement for a whiteboard (with audio and text chat) would really be wonderful. Random connections in the break room are missing - but because all tech discussions go via engineering Skype sessions, we are all able to see all conversations and everything is archived - which is actually vastly better than face-to-face. My productivity is definitely way up.
On the plus side, I can have lunch with my wife every day - and that 15 second commute gives me back an entire hour out of every day. It's as if my life were 10% longer.
My wife wanted to spend a week visiting her family - and I didn't particularly want to take vacation time off work to do it - so plan A was for her to go alone...but then it struck us..."Work from home" is really "Work from anywhere" - so we tossed my computer and a couple of monitors into the back of the car drove - during the day, I could still work - during the evenings and over the weekend, I could put in an appearance. Win/win! This is suddenly a very liberating thing!
We did a bit of rearranging at home - so I have an office, with a door I can shut and a desk that can be as cluttered or as clean as I like. We installed a coffee machine and a soda fridge and a snack/office-supply closet...so there are less temptations to take random breaks or for people at home to interrupt me. When I'm "at work" people know not to interrupt me.
I wasn't sure how I would like this - but I'd say that it's turning out OK.
www.sjbaker.org
Using time and resources to make employees who could just as well work from home come sit in an office is the very opposite of productive.
Exactly... The typical business districts in major cities are expensive, both to locate your office there and to live within reasonable commuting distance... Plus the time spent commuting is utterly wasted and provides no benefit to anyone.
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The biggest benefit that I found in working at home was how it effectively shortened my work day.
I saved between 1 and 2 hours per day by not commuting and having the option of stopping for just a few minutes to have lunch was also a big time saver.
My days went from 10-11 to 8-8.5 hours.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano