Will I take a pay cut to telecommute full time? Well, that would depend on a lot of factors, really.
I have been working from home the past almost three years for a wonderful start-up. Before I joined them, I was working at a company I used to drive a long way to every morning in rush hour traffic, only to find crappy places to park cars where I'd risk getting my car bumped or scratched on any given day (lest I paid an unbelievable amount to park my car at some dedicated parking of a hotel nearby, as the company didn't provide parking). By the time I reached the office, I felt completely exhausted and tired. On the way back home, I struggled with the rush hour traffic again, taking anywhere from one to two or more hours to get home completely dead. It was peaceful inside the office, though, with air-cos on 24/7. I didn't have to worry about the sky-rocketing power bills or the ever increasing power cuts (I live in a country that is plagued with problems that make it impossible to get even basic necessites properly at times). However, I completely hated the workstations they had provided. CRT monitors! My eyes would bleed (and as I never miss the chance to bitch about it, they refused my requests to provide me with an LCD, asking me to get a doctor's recommendation letter that said that CRT cause strain on my eyes first). And of course, not to mention the fact that things in the city would turn sour every now and then, creating more problems during commuting safely back and forth.
In contrast to that, working from home has been a bliss. I have a nice set up at home in terms of my work environment. I had to however invest in a power backup generator for the times the power isn't available (which is a couple of hours every day if life is good for us). Because of the hot weather mostly here, I have to keep the air-co running on most times when I am working (because that is possibly the only way to stay sane while working, otherwise the heat gets to you badly). This eventually causes the power bill to go significantly up. The company does contribute, but I'd like them to do so more gratuitously. Of course, I also have to get a good Internet connection for work (Internet is still somewhat expensive over here). So, while the work is enjoyable, and I love working from home, these concerns do bother me all the time. I know that these won't really apply to everywhere or everyone, but for me, these are some of the factors that I weigh in when deciding whether it is better to telecommute. I have not had any issue with communications. We are mostly always on Skype and IM and IRC and of course over email. I think that if I didn't have to worry about the power-cuts, and could run the air-co all the time while working without feeling a little guilty or worried about the power bill, I would be much happier than I am right now.
Pakistan apparently has one of the largest WiMax deployment in the world. I have been a user of WiMax for over five months now, and been nothing but happy with it.
In my previous office, we wrote and deployed real-time, mission-critical applications the likes of core-banking middlewares and ATM controllers, to name a few. Once deployed and set live on live banking servers, generated logs from those applications were the only means of figuring out and debugging, when something went wrong, what went wrong, how, and when. In fact, it was standard procedure to follow for the banks' IT staff when reporting any problems they encountered to open a support ticket, and send in logs.
There is no easy and sure way to determine what in the application needs to be logged. Like many things with software development, it comes through experience. As the products matured over the years, we, back in the previous office, realised what the bare minimum set was in terms of what should be logged. And that naturally helped in developing a simple pattern for what needed to be logged when a diverse set of people added extensions to the applications in terms of modules, etc.
You have to be really really lucky to be able to sell a game idea alone. Ideas equate to zilch if you can't materialise them. And doing that is many, many times harder than conjuring up a brilliant idea.
You may try pitching your idea to publishers, VCs, or anywhere else you may like, and see where that gets you. But if you can produce something tangible as a proof of concept of that idea, and back up your pitch with that, you may have a running chance of making your odds considerably better. And if you have money to invest in people with expertise who can act on that idea, then, in my opinion, that is definitely the way to go.
yup, that's what i do. i have the similar problem of putting up weight while sitting all day long at home working. therefore, since the past three weeks, i have been waking up early in the morning to jog on and off for anywhere from thirty to forty-five minutes. i can already perceive the difference.
Slashdot Mirror
Well said. It is always very hard to resist any of those sins.
Will I take a pay cut to telecommute full time? Well, that would depend on a lot of factors, really.
I have been working from home the past almost three years for a wonderful start-up. Before I joined them, I was working at a company I used to drive a long way to every morning in rush hour traffic, only to find crappy places to park cars where I'd risk getting my car bumped or scratched on any given day (lest I paid an unbelievable amount to park my car at some dedicated parking of a hotel nearby, as the company didn't provide parking). By the time I reached the office, I felt completely exhausted and tired. On the way back home, I struggled with the rush hour traffic again, taking anywhere from one to two or more hours to get home completely dead. It was peaceful inside the office, though, with air-cos on 24/7. I didn't have to worry about the sky-rocketing power bills or the ever increasing power cuts (I live in a country that is plagued with problems that make it impossible to get even basic necessites properly at times). However, I completely hated the workstations they had provided. CRT monitors! My eyes would bleed (and as I never miss the chance to bitch about it, they refused my requests to provide me with an LCD, asking me to get a doctor's recommendation letter that said that CRT cause strain on my eyes first). And of course, not to mention the fact that things in the city would turn sour every now and then, creating more problems during commuting safely back and forth.
In contrast to that, working from home has been a bliss. I have a nice set up at home in terms of my work environment. I had to however invest in a power backup generator for the times the power isn't available (which is a couple of hours every day if life is good for us). Because of the hot weather mostly here, I have to keep the air-co running on most times when I am working (because that is possibly the only way to stay sane while working, otherwise the heat gets to you badly). This eventually causes the power bill to go significantly up. The company does contribute, but I'd like them to do so more gratuitously. Of course, I also have to get a good Internet connection for work (Internet is still somewhat expensive over here). So, while the work is enjoyable, and I love working from home, these concerns do bother me all the time. I know that these won't really apply to everywhere or everyone, but for me, these are some of the factors that I weigh in when deciding whether it is better to telecommute. I have not had any issue with communications. We are mostly always on Skype and IM and IRC and of course over email. I think that if I didn't have to worry about the power-cuts, and could run the air-co all the time while working without feeling a little guilty or worried about the power bill, I would be much happier than I am right now.
Pakistan apparently has one of the largest WiMax deployment in the world. I have been a user of WiMax for over five months now, and been nothing but happy with it.
In my previous office, we wrote and deployed real-time, mission-critical applications the likes of core-banking middlewares and ATM controllers, to name a few. Once deployed and set live on live banking servers, generated logs from those applications were the only means of figuring out and debugging, when something went wrong, what went wrong, how, and when. In fact, it was standard procedure to follow for the banks' IT staff when reporting any problems they encountered to open a support ticket, and send in logs.
There is no easy and sure way to determine what in the application needs to be logged. Like many things with software development, it comes through experience. As the products matured over the years, we, back in the previous office, realised what the bare minimum set was in terms of what should be logged. And that naturally helped in developing a simple pattern for what needed to be logged when a diverse set of people added extensions to the applications in terms of modules, etc.
You have to be really really lucky to be able to sell a game idea alone. Ideas equate to zilch if you can't materialise them. And doing that is many, many times harder than conjuring up a brilliant idea. You may try pitching your idea to publishers, VCs, or anywhere else you may like, and see where that gets you. But if you can produce something tangible as a proof of concept of that idea, and back up your pitch with that, you may have a running chance of making your odds considerably better. And if you have money to invest in people with expertise who can act on that idea, then, in my opinion, that is definitely the way to go.
yup, that's what i do. i have the similar problem of putting up weight while sitting all day long at home working. therefore, since the past three weeks, i have been waking up early in the morning to jog on and off for anywhere from thirty to forty-five minutes. i can already perceive the difference.