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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 But Stanford Graduate School of Business professor Nicholas Bloom says requiring employees to be in the office is an outdated work tradition, set up during the Industrial Revolution.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.
Try it in any sort of collaborative job. I'm not saying it can't or doesn't work across the board. But blanket statements like this article tries to make are ridiculous.
At my job, I can work from home whenever I want, and several other co-workers do, but I choose to go into the office because the atmosphere is more conducive to getting work done. I can bounce ideas off the people around me, I'm not distracted by household events or pets and there's more of a sense of urgency for completing tasks, which helps me focus better.
Having kids or a nagging wife means you'd want to waste that 1h30m commuting, sit in a cubicle then waste another 1h30m coming back. For the rest of us, though, extra three hours of productivity or leisure makes such a massive difference that it's hard to find enough downsides.
Some of us go way over the edge -- especially if you can train your boss that's it ok to call you at 4am rather than at the crack of noon; those of us do work hard to maintain the public opinion on programmers :).
But if you require being on the clock, the employeer can get the best of both worlds for any child-less employee.
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
Please make it so.
I worked from home for the last 12 years (until I retired last year). I was far more productive not having to commute 40 miles up the M3/M25 (UK Motorways near London) every day. That's around 4 hours a day that I could never get back.
My Quality of Life was far better, didn't spend on commuting (apart from once every 2 weeks), my health was better.
Yes, I worked in a team. We used modern technology to keep in touch.
What's not to like eh?
It's almost like they're mainly interested in exploiting workers into replacement as fast as possible. Weird.
This has got to be very culturally sensitive. There's lots of social pressures in china that take time and energy away from just plain working. These go away somewhat when you can relax in your own home. Other countries with a more lax work ethic won't fare so well. I'm sure many people will try to game their employers in places with higher rates of corruption in general.
I also doubt this will work as well in places like Brazil, where work is very much a social experience. Being socially active with your co-workers is more than just prevalent; it's the norm. Many people won't give up that interaction. Not to mention an air-conditioned office beats an uncooled home.
On the one hand you take life too seriously, and on the other, you do not take playful existence seriously enough. Seth
I would hate to work from home. I like having a clear divide between work and home.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
...my boss doesn't care. And it's a god send because with more and more people living by themselves... the extra time you have to take care of errands is just so, so helpful. At least in my case.... because it's such a pain leaving after a long day at the office and realizing "damnit... I still need groceries... gotta go to the gym... my car needs an inspection". It's just nice to get that sh!t outta the way and still be able to get your work done.
I hope more companies review the benefits.
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.
I'm less productive at home.
Yes, I have the wife and kids- but also at work I have a nice large office that I can keep clean and clutter free- and that really helps me focus and concentrate.
At home I don't have a proper room set up as an office- we don't have any room spare. So the desk is just in a corner. It's a dumping ground for all sorts of junk. It's cluttered- and because my wife passes through it's not clean (I swear that woman just goes around dropping trash everywhere all day long- I do love her though lol).
So whereas I'm welcome to work from home occasionally, my house is too small and there's no comfortable spot for me to set up. Also, remote desktop to the office is slow as crap (yes I know other places have better solutions than remote desktop). The office for me is simply more comfortable. When I win the lottery (or the wife finishes college and starts working) and we can get a bigger house I may be able to claim a room that is just for me- and then I may work from home.
Right now- I hate working from home.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
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.
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Been working entirely from home for the past 3ish years, and I absolutely love it. No daily commute, so I don't start the work day already in a bad mood, not to mention the amount of money I save not having to buy gas all the time. Then there's the savings from eating lunch at home every day. It'd take a lot to convince me to go back into the office.
It's an interesting general statement, but a lot of it is going to depend on the people involved. I mean, I'm hardly the most responsible person in the world, and when I've worked from home in the past, I think I actually get less done. Sure, I'm not distracted by other people coming into the programmers' pen (keycard access to even get in to see the programmers here), but there's definitely a lot more in the way of distractions when I'm at home.
That being said, we can't work from home any more except in extreme cases, because one of the managers here got a giant case of the chapped ass when one of the programmers wasn't instantly available for whatever his demand du jour was.
Mr. Hu is not a ninja.
yeah first you complain that home has too many distractions and then you complain because there aren't enough distractions at home
take your meds
There's a lot of legitimacy ITFA. I agree WFH get's slandered in quite a few workplaces, but it's definitely NOT future looking technology. I really think a lot of the arguments of working-from-home-again topic revolves around that workplace's culture where it just hasn't caught up and views production, productivity and being productive can only happen behind the 4-walls of the brick-and-mortar.
Doing 100% WFH I think can be disastrous over time; there are not a plethora of people who are that motivated, self-starters and can prioritize and maintain their own tasks. I have seen a lot of folks just completely abuse WFH and it becomes untouchable privilege, and I think that's partly why the culture reverts back to being seen == getting work done. I hate to say it, but I will say a lot of people who want to WFH aren't viewing that as 'working-from-home' but as part of this entitled errand day or a 'relaxing day off' by doing just enough not to get fired. That's where it goes wrong IMHO. And WFH shouldn't be assumed, it should be earned because it is a privilege; you're not working for you, you're working for your company.
At the end of the day, I wouldn't go do 100% WFH anymore because I still believe that out of sight == out of mind. And you can have all the tech in the world (e.g. Skype, video/phone conference, yada yada) but it doesn't beat face-to-face relationships over time in the workforce. Let's not forget that there is a human element to all of this; I don't want to be devalued to a e-mail bit bucket who replies "done" back to requests and is nothing more than a chat alias name in a window.
"We found massive, massive improvement in performance -- a 13% improvement in performance from people working at home"
At my wife's company, the work-from-home employees have a higher productivity requirement than the office workers. It's a pain because the kind of work she does probably doesn't lend itself as well to the performance gains seen at other places. She's personally so much more productive than average that it doesn't matter to her, but other employees have struggled with it. She's also a total introvert so the arrangement works out perfectly for her.
Do you have ESP?
As in, companies usually only let you do this if you are a better employee. Higher level office workers and sales jobs are prime examples, not ditch diggers.
In other words, they are selected for the people most likely to earn more and be happier.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
Been telecommuting since about 2008.
Started out one day a week.
About 2010, went to full-time telecommute.
I'm the admin for the company's network and have everything set up so that I can do almost everything remotely.
And, if it comes to the worst, I can drive in for an emergency.
It's frickin' great!
The only thing is, you NEED to be able to self-start. Because being at home, there are lots of distractions.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
I know I would be happier telecommuting if it meant being able to migrate to someplace warm and sunny for the winter months. Being able to enjoy an endless summer would be an immense benefit.
I find that working from home is better than the office if you have very strong organization and communication skills. I do it. My managers do it. It works. If the managers and team leads have good communication skills, anyone under them that don't can be kept in line.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
If that's what makes you feel better. Been working from home since 2011 and my company is increasing it, not going back.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Lots of people are offered the chance to work from home. Those who are disciplined, and who actually work well and deliver results continue to be employed and allowed to work from home. The slackers get fired, and they find jobs where they need to be monitored constantly. Thus in the end, the sample of people who work from home is biased towards the survivors and it skews the results.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Personally I love working from home and do it whenever I can. I find that I have less distractions, I don't have to "dress up", and I don't miss the commute one bit. But I know others that don't care for it. Trying to work from the kitchen table with kids running around is no picnic.
You've got to have, at a minimum, a dedicated office space where you can close the door if necessary. A spare bedroom works just fine. A good headset for conference calls is a must. There is nothing worse than trying to decipher someone on a conference call with a crappy cellphone where every other word cuts out. And the dog is barking and the kids are screaming. When you're on a call, close the door, put on the headset. You will hear others better and they will hear you better.
Where I work we use Skype for IM, WebEx for video conferencing, and SharePoint for document collaboration. I'm not a huge SharePoint fan but collectively it works. The biggest issue is trust. The way I explain it to my team is that working from home is a perk. You don't have to partake but if you do there are certain expectations. Log on to Skype during business hours and check your email regularly. If you need to step out that's fine, just let me know where you are. Above all - get your shit done.
If I see a big drop in productivity or get even the slightest inkling that they are goofing off I have a conversation with them and make it clear that it had better stop. If it happens again, work from home is over for that employee. I haven't had a single team member violate the ground rules and our turnover is very low. When you treat people right they are happy and productive. Simple as that.
Have been 100% telecommute for the past two years.
I think it has been a win/win for myself and my Employer.
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse...
Uh, Linux geek since 1999.
And I love it. My daily commute is 20 meters from bedroom to study. Well, on some mornings I go drop off my daughter to daycare before starting work, depending on whether it's wife's turn or not.
I work as a consultant, mostly doing network architecture design, UC and similar stuff. Anyway, the company that actually pays me doesn't care about visiting office - I go there every few months to drop off receipts of travel expenses, attend christmas party and that's that. All other travel is to customer premises.
There is a weird trend. I've noticed that in how much driving my car gets. When I started; I drove just a bit under 40000km a year. Now I can barely reach 10000km. Gotta love it - less time spent behind the wheel.
The single biggest reason for this? Skype for Business (Microsoft Lync). These days it's pretty much everywhere. It used to be that I worked a lot from customer sites. Then it changes so that I came to first few meetings with the customers. And these days we do entire projects and sometimes never see "face-to-face" except over videoconferencing. Sales guys still go for actual visits to make the case, but after that it seems that fewer and fewer people care about your physical presence. The only actual work that has been done one site for last few projects has been physical hardware installations.
One other thing caused by Skype: Meetings *always* start on time. It used to be that if you booked a meeting from 2 PM to 4 PM, what happened was that people arrived at the premises at 2 PM. Then you gathered coffee, then tried to usher everyone to the conference room, set up laptops etc. You get to the real stuff starting at 2:30. Now - even when you are on-site there's *always* someone attending the meeting remotely, and he's already gotten the coffee and is ready to start. This causes the folks to be in the conference room and starting the meeting at 2:05 the latest.
Heck, I once attended a lecture where a guy was trying to give a presentation on a big overhead projector but it was broken. So, end result was that he just shared his presentation on Skype and everyone in the room just watched it on the laptop. Kind of pointless to attend.
The only exception to this rule is customers that have strict security requirements and provide no Internet access, but that's more or less understandable.
Happier Than Their Office-bound Counterparts! - better stop it now then.
Then there's the fact that you don't actually get to shoot the shit with anybody - who are you going to water cooler talk with? Yourself?
That's what internet forums like this are for. I work with a bunch of engineers and even here, I rarely get any quality conversation. People would rather talk about fishing boats than topics I have any interest in. On the internet, I can easily zero in on conversations I'm interested in, and it's far faster and more efficient, because talking is so damn slow and I read very quickly.
So many things around you to keep you distracted. Plus your wife and kids forgetting that you're supposed to be working
Not everyone has a wife and kids. Fewer and fewer people (esp. educated ones) are having kids at all these days.
I wish I had a work-from-home job. My house is generally quiet and peaceful. There's cats, but they usually sleep most of the day anyway. By contrast, work is chaotic and noisy, thanks to the open-plan offices that are all the rage these days. I can barely concentrate at all, and my work output is poor until late afternoon or evening when everyone finally goes home and I can finally get something done, until I'm too hungry and tired and want to leave. If I could, I'd probably set up a small office in my basement for the summertime since it's cool down there, and very quiet. Unfortunately, for my specialty (embedded), WfH jobs are ridiculously rare AFAICT. I guess I should have gone into web development because there seem to be tons of them in that sector.
Is this a viable path against age discrimination?
/.'ers tell me remote working is on the decline so it isn't a real option.
...
I tell myself sometimes I could toptal it once I turn 40 or so. Some
A buddy of mine runs a SW shop and it sounds like his clients just assume he's old and that he'll never want to meet in person.
I've often wondered if that is a large part of what remote working is. When you consider how rare it is for 45+ yr olds to get hired in SW and how weird and uncomfortable directors and hiring managers get about that
I've heard after 50 you can't really get any kind of work in SW. I'm 35, so kind of a 3rd party rooting for the veterans.
For several years before my retirement we has a widely diverse engineering team. Home base was Berkeley, California, but we had engineers in Seattle, Livermore, CA, Chicago, New York, Washington, D.C. and Iowa. One in each remote metro area except two near Chicago.
We used modern Internet based teleconferencing equipment and every engineer had a desktop system that showed the rest of the group. All were normally muted, but, if an issue arose that required group discussion (or discussion buy a part of the group), it happened very naturally and we quickly got used to it. We could drop off as needed when we needed to be left alone or had a visitor. It simply worked.
We designed, built, and managed one of the highest performance networks in the world and won numerous prizes for our efficiency. We built the first trans-continental Gig, N-by-10 Gig and N-by-100 Gig networks with the same team doing the design, implementation, and senior level operational support of the network with a team that grew over the years from 8 to 14 engineers. It might not have worked for larger teams, but for us, it was perfect. We could never have hired the top level talent we had of we had required that they all relocate to Berkeley.
Kevin Oberman, Network Engineer, Retired
Kraft Foods when it was still called that encouraged staff to work from home at least one day a week. After a few months someone in upper management decided that anyone working from home much not be contributing so they laid them all off.
Drones!
I did it for 1.5 years as a contractor for Cisco. I have disabilities like impediments, unable to drive, etc. It was perfect for me. I would totally do it again!
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
There are people who just lack the discipline to wfh. You appear to be one of them, and likely also have issues at work if someone's not keeping their eye on you (too much time at the water cooler for wardrich86, time to have a chat ....)
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
I told Google: "My only option is to telecommute..."
From Google this week:
"Thanks so much for following up and for the information. Unfortunately, Google is very much an in-office culture with little to no WFH. That's mainly because we invest so much in making Google a desirable place to be. As far as the work being interesting, I'm sure there is something here that would be attractive to you but without knowing your technology interests and career goals, that's hard to dive into. Let me know if you want to set up some time to discuss further or if you have any other questions. If not, feel free to keep my contact information if anything changes on your end. Google is still interested in you!"
isn't it about time they hired you on full time? If it's occasional work maybe not, but it sounds like your full time job.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
relationships are hard and most folks don't have enough money to make it work, so they're at each other's throats a lot. Heck, I've been on this earth 4 decades and every 10 of them like clockwork the asshats that run the show have tanked the economy, gotten off scott free and left the working stiffs high and dry. Given what most folks go through every 10 years it's no wonder they fight.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
I'm in senior management at a firm where coming into the office is basically optional. Everyone is welcome and has a desk and a PC, but people more or less manage their own work schedules and location.
We collaborate via Slack, GotoMeeting, and Altassian products. We exchange files via s3 buckets or, in a pinch, Dropbox. And now and then we also touch base by phone if someone is working somewhere with a slow connection.
We are very productive and have releases every couple of weeks. We're in SAAS, so there is a personnel and technology fit—naturally it wouldn't work if we were steps in a division of labor to manufacture watch movements or lots of our employees were technology-averse or something—but aside from physical limitations where people actually have to work on a *thing*, I don't see the problem.
N.B. when I joined the company in 2013 it was already like this. There are lots of co-workers that I know very well and have collaborated very closely with that I have never met face-to-face.
We often have meetings where half the people on the GotoMeeting are in their cars on speakerphone.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
If someone's remote, they need to be available. If they're routinely unavailable, they're gone. Problem solved.
See my post above—our entire company is routinely half out of the office and it's not that big a deal.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
that we have had regular release-process GTM sessions that have gone on for more or less entire workdays with people hopping on and off.
It works SO MUCH BETTER because everyone can see so-and-so's screen as they run scripts, manage infrastructure, whatever, and can coordinate their own activities on their other monitor.
In person, all ten people would be standing around so-and-so's monitor stretching their necks to see, or as people popped in and out for lunch or whatever, they'd invariably pull other team members away with them in herd mentality. At the very least, it's disruptive because of social norms—when someone leaves the room or the office, everyone has to wave goodbye to them.
On a GTM session, someone can just pop a "brb" into the chat window and drop off and nobody has to do anything.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
They save a fortune on expensive office space, and get a "massive" 13% improvement in productivity.
how much of that do they pass on to the workers? do they pay for the office space and equipment the worker provides?
and, no, the employees saving on travel time and expenses doesn't count as extra pay. That's free time the worker was sacrificing to their job, avoiding that sacrifice isn't a pay rise any more than moving closer to work is a pay rise.
I've spent a lot of time working from home over the years - most of my jobs for the last few decades have had at least part-time remote work (sysadmin, often at ISPs or similar). I mostly prefer it for several reasons (which are irrelevant here) and there are very few practical issues if your colleagues are capable of effective use of email and chat and other technologies. The biggest problem I found with telecommuting was that it blurs the line between work and non-work hours. If you're not careful, you can find yourself spending almost every waking hour at your desk fixing/tuning servers, writing code or analysing logs or doing system maintenance or whatever - that''s a LOT of unpaid hours.
Results that show working from home is great are usually a result of selection bias: currently, working from home is an *option* in *some* professions at *some* employers.
The default type of job is still the one that requires going to a workplace. Even where working from home is allowed or even encouraged, it is not required. Hence, most of the current work-at-home positions will be filled by people who prefer to work at home.
I'm personally grateful for IBM's shenanigans, since they succeeded in driving away a woman we just hired for our team. She's quite competent, and a great fit for our team and work-at-home culture.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
Not at all the case. I've just made myself some scripts so I can do my shit more efficiently than others to give me more down time.
Even if I didn't have a wife and kids, I'd still prefer an office. The change of scenery is nice, as is the ability to have a separate working and living space.
I understand that in theory, but in practice, working in an office is sheer misery for me, and I'd much rather work at home. At home, it's very quiet, and I can always set aside a separate room just for my main job and make that my "office". At normal offices, it's just so ridiculously loud and noisy and chaotic, that it's extremely hard for me to concentrate and actually get anything done. Noise-cancelling headphones don't work well either: they get rid of annoying drones like fan noise or A/C noise pretty well, but then I can hear people's stupid conversations even better, which isn't helpful to me at all. Worse, people will sneak up behind me and startle me when I'm wearing them. Also, having so much activity and movement in my field of view all the time is distracting, and it's extremely uncomfortable having people right behind me constantly too. I don't have any of these factors at home, where I can control my environment.
How other programmers manage to perform in the conditions I listed above, I really have no idea.
Yeah, that's fair. I work in with a team of fellow geeks, so it's normal for us all to be engaging in random off-topic banter. I'd say work is also my social life so it works for me.