Slashdot Mirror
Work From Home People Earn More, Quit Less, and Are Happier Than Their Office-bound Counterparts (qz.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: Working from home gets a bad rap. Google the phrase and examine the results -- you'll see scams or low-level jobs, followed by links calling out "legitimate" virtual jobs. But Stanford Graduate School of Business professor Nicholas Bloom says requiring employees to be in the office is an outdated work tradition, set up during the Industrial Revolution. Such inflexibility ignores today's sophisticated communications methods and long commutes, and actually hurts firms and employees. "Working from home is a future-looking technology," Bloom told an audience during a conference, which took place in April. "I think it has enormous potential." To test his claim, Bloom studied China's largest travel agency, Ctrip. Headquartered in Shanghai, the company has 20,000 employees and a market capitalization of about $20 billion. The company's leaders -- conscious of how expensive real estate is in Shanghai -- were interested in the impact of working from home. Could they continue to grow while avoiding exorbitant office space costs? They solicited worker volunteers for a study in which half worked from home for nine months, coming into the office one day a week, and half worked only from the office. Bloom tracked these two groups for about two years. The results? "We found massive, massive improvement in performance -- a 13% improvement in performance from people working at home," Bloom says.
The viability of working from home depends a lot on the job, and on the particular phase of that job.
Taking my situation as an example: This week, I attended two physical meetings, but otherwise worked from home all week, because (aside from those two meetings), my current work is preparation that I am doing alone. This is great while it lasts, but it will stop in September, it will stop, because I'll be working with other people.
Some maybe general observations:
- Complex coordination - working out new ideas, or meeting with several people - just does not work well remotely. Face-to-face is a lot more efficient. In work-at-home phases, I still have 2-3 meetings a week.
- Even as a total introvert, I recognize that face-time with people is important. I sometimes go into the office for an afternoon "just because".
- If you are working remotely, it is essential to have appropriate messaging technology. The phone should only be used for urgent stuff, since it interrupts. I get maybe one or two calls per month. Email is king for anything non-urgent. Some sort of simple messaging fits comfortably in the middle: IRC or even SMS.
- Working from home takes a certain amount of discipline, and sometimes it still doesn't work. Yesterday morning was a disaster: I was interrupted for non-work things a zillion times, and basically lost the entire morning. The flexibility to mix in private things is nice, but sometimes it also sucks - I'll be working on the weekend to make up the lost time.
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
Work from home jobs are top tier. That's because you have to be self managed. It's not surprising the do better. They're already in a better position.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Everyone on the teams, work remotely, all across the US, and there is NO problem in getting things done.
This is all IT work. Servers are in data centers we hit remotely, we have teleconferences for meetings...IM for screen shares if needed.
It works great. No problems her, and yet...most of the folks I work with, I have no idea what they look like, or anything about them other than their voices.
Frankly, I LOVE this work mode. I do my job, I'm home for package deliveries (no more getting stolen off porch)...you can be doing things around the house even while on conference calls (yay for headsets)....
And my commute is a blistering walk across the hall from my bedroom to my office.
Frankly, I get MUCH more done at home these days, than I did in the office....and doing it as a contractor is great as that I get to bill for all hours worked.
Sure, I'm available more often...but I always get paid for it too.
Reminds, me, I need to check with my CPA to see if I can write off boxer shorts and t-shirts as work attire.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
But working from home all the time? I did that for a while, and even being an introvert, that drove me nuts. After a while you do miss the interaction at the office.
I work from home full time, have been doing it for years. I don't have the option of spending some days each week in the office, because the office is a thousand miles from me (I live in UT, the office is the Googleplex in Mountain View, CA).
I've tried a couple of solutions to the office interaction problem. I agree that you do miss it. The best one (not currently set up for issues of space and layout in the office) was an always-on video conference. We set up a VC station at an unused desk and just kept it logged in 24x7. I had another in my home office which I logged into when I started work in the morning and logged out of at the end of the day.
Most of the time I kept my side muted so they didn't have to hear the noises in my house, and I kept the volume low to reduce distraction, but I could still catch bits of interesting office conversations and join in, etc. I also waved hello to people when I noticed them walking by, etc. It worked quite well. I will get that set up again when conditions in the office permit. I still have the VC system in my office because that's how I do all of my meetings (all the conference rooms in the offices have VC setups).
My other method is occasional visits. I try to get to CA about every other month, usually for a week. My weeks there end up being wall to wall meetings, a fair number of them not with any specific agenda but just to hang out with various people for a while to see what's on their mind, and to share what I'm thinking about. Lots of lunch meetings, too. I also often socialize with my co-workers in the evenings. I've had dinner at several of their houses, with their families. One co-worker is interested in guns so we went shooting one afternoon. Another likes SCUBA, so we took a day and went down to Monterrey. And so on. All of this helps to build good personal relationships for when stuff gets stressful.
I find my on-site time draining because it's so much interaction. But I do it anyway because it does help.
One other thing I do is to carry on a lot of "water cooler" conversations via IM and, to a lesser extent, email, about both personal and professional topics. My first grandchild was born early this week, so I IM'd several of them and emailed the whole team. When I get frustrated or annoyed or unusually impressed by some bit of code or design work, I vent/celebrate via IM with one or two of them. Occasionally we rant about politics, etc.
I think this all works out great. I get to live where I want, have the flexibility that working from home provides (e.g. on Wednesday I skipped out for the afternoon to go see the new Spiderman movie with my sons), and I can use technology to satisfy my need for interaction with my colleagues. Not that I need that much interaction; I'm an introvert.
I'm a big fan of working from home. I actually did it for most of a decade at my previous employer (IBM) as well. You have to figure out how to make it work, but it's awesome. Work/life balance can be tricky for some people. Personally, I just don't draw a sharp line between "working" and "not working" but instead go back and forth between work and personal stuff throughout the day. Others do need that sharp division and have to set strict schedules for themselves. It works if you work it.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
I have worked from my home office for about 7 years there are a lot of advantages.
I get payed the same as those that work in the office although I don't have two 30-45 minute commutes so I save a lot on gas but even more because I only have one car. I would need second vehicle if I worked in an office. I'm probably saving at least $6,000/year in gas, wear and tear, insurance, and a payment on a second car.
I don't need to wear a tie and or dress business and I don't shave everyday either because you can't see me over the phone or voip. I don't buy a lot of new clothes like I did when I worked in the office I wear a lot of sweats or shorts and t-shirt.I don't eat out any where near as much because I can grab breakfast in the kitchen and eat it at my desk while going over my email first thing in the morning. I save probably 2.25 hours a day between time spent driving, and waiting to get breakfast from pick a place.
The spare bedroom I turned into my office is larger than most of the offices I've had in an actual office some where just cubicles, though it does mean I don't have a spare bedroom in the house.
I do have to pay for internet but honestly I would have it anyway... it used to be the largest account offered in my area 100mbps they offer 300mbps in my area now but I haven't felt the need to upgrade yet.
Why does any of that need to be face to face?
And 3 meetings a day? Generally a waste. I've never been in a meeting where everyone needed to be there, staring intently at the product manager or architect as he or she ummed and uhhed their way through a presentation of minimal importance to nearly everyone involved.
Plus, no easy way to recall that information, so it all gets sent out as an email after the meeting anyway.