I've been working from home for about two years now. At first, I thought it was fantastic -- my commute was about 20 feet, I could wear sweat pants all day, got to work at my own schedule, usually late at night, etc., etc. However, I've got to be completely honest: I MISS PEOPLE. There's a lot to be said for human interaction during the day, and I can't wait until I move back to an office. The other problem I've discovered is that since my work is my home, I can never escape it. I wake up, it's there, I go to sleep, it's there -- I find that because it surrounds me constantly, I'm always working.
I think an ideal schedule might be to work from home 2 days a week.
So, having read all of this, the question that I haven't seen raised yet is this: What are ideal working conditions for net workers (programmers, engineers, sysadmins, etc.)? I'm specifically talking about situations where geek types have to work with non-geek types (i.e. the marketers and business people).
What would your ideal job be? A lot of engineers I know would tell me that they would want to work for a company with only engineers, where they get to work on whatever they want, at their own pace. Sounds good to me. The thing is, though, that methodology doesn't leave a lot of room for actual 'business' -- who's gonna sell the product?
It seems to me that since both types of people are necessary for any given company, the most important thing to keep in mind is that (theoretically) everyone should have a level of respect for the jobs that other people do. Now, I know that there are many companies that have completely bloated staffs in one direction or another, and in every barrel you get a couple of dead fish. But I'm talking about an ideal situation here: if you were the founder of a startup that had decent funding and a really cool product, what kind of environment would you create where everyone necessary would be happy and get along?
I raise this point because I've been struggling with this very issue lately. I'm an programmer/geek at heart who's been working on a startup. Once I start hiring people, my main concern (I really mean what I'm about to say) is that the people I hire enjoy what they do and feel like they are being treated fairly and contributing to the success of themselves and the company. Everyone, which includes the marketers and financial people, not just engineers.
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I've been working from home for about two years now. At first, I thought it was fantastic -- my commute was about 20 feet, I could wear sweat pants all day, got to work at my own schedule, usually late at night, etc., etc. However, I've got to be completely honest: I MISS PEOPLE. There's a lot to be said for human interaction during the day, and I can't wait until I move back to an office. The other problem I've discovered is that since my work is my home, I can never escape it. I wake up, it's there, I go to sleep, it's there -- I find that because it surrounds me constantly, I'm always working.
I think an ideal schedule might be to work from home 2 days a week.
So, having read all of this, the question that I haven't seen raised yet is this: What are ideal working conditions for net workers (programmers, engineers, sysadmins, etc.)? I'm specifically talking about situations where geek types have to work with non-geek types (i.e. the marketers and business people).
What would your ideal job be? A lot of engineers I know would tell me that they would want to work for a company with only engineers, where they get to work on whatever they want, at their own pace. Sounds good to me. The thing is, though, that methodology doesn't leave a lot of room for actual 'business' -- who's gonna sell the product?
It seems to me that since both types of people are necessary for any given company, the most important thing to keep in mind is that (theoretically) everyone should have a level of respect for the jobs that other people do. Now, I know that there are many companies that have completely bloated staffs in one direction or another, and in every barrel you get a couple of dead fish. But I'm talking about an ideal situation here: if you were the founder of a startup that had decent funding and a really cool product, what kind of environment would you create where everyone necessary would be happy and get along?
I raise this point because I've been struggling with this very issue lately. I'm an programmer/geek at heart who's been working on a startup. Once I start hiring people, my main concern (I really mean what I'm about to say) is that the people I hire enjoy what they do and feel like they are being treated fairly and contributing to the success of themselves and the company. Everyone, which includes the marketers and financial people, not just engineers.
I'd love to hear thoughts on this.