I have been doing this for four years now. From my experience I have found the following:
1. You need a seperate room that is the office, and not used for anything else. Period.
2. You need to be disciplined about putting in at least 8 hours a day.
3. Bath, shave, etc. each day as if you are going into the office. You do not have to put on the tie, etc. but at least look respectable enough, in case visitors come to the house.
4. Set limits with the kids. They are not to disturb you during working hours. Period.
5. Always get more work done than the boss would expect you to get done at the office.
6. Use the phone. The phone is your lifeline and a ongoing sales tool to convince the boss of the benefit of your telecommute.
7. Use email religiously. If I am going to take a staggered lunch, say from 11:30 - 12:30 instead of 12:00 to 1:00. I will email everyone I believe needs to know, that I am taking the staggered lunch.
8. Try to participate in any propject conference calls. Use this opportunity to banter with other project members. Be prepared.
9. Get a Cordless phone with a headset and some range. This way if you are away from the room you call a office, you can still answer the phone. This gives the people at the office and customers the sense that you are always available. There is nothing that starts rumors faster than not being able to get ahold of someone who is telecommuting.
10. Get call waiting and call forwarding. This once again gives the caller the sense that you are always available.
11. Remember this is for your and your families benefit. The company percieves they are giving something up (ie control). Show them and your boss that you are not a HR headache.
Lets face it, the telcos here in the states do such a poor job at upgrading and maintaining their infrastructure, that they are well behind a lot of others in the world. They would rather try to sell me call waiting, caller-id, or any of the other marginally exciting technologies, than try to fix the antiquated systems they have. Why ? They don't have to do any work, and recieve an income to boot.
In my area, I had tried for 4 years to get the local telco to get some sort of high speed access to my residence (I was down to begging for ISDN), no way. They had no future plans to make even ISDN happen. Last year cable access came to town, and I kissed the telco goodbye (and removed the second line), and have never regretted it. Still a year later, the local telco can not get high speed access to the residences in town. I guess they do not want that business ?
Now they continally call me about wanting me to buy this lame service or that lame addon. No way ! I finallly had to ask them to take me off their call list. What a shame. They don't get it, do they.
Now we have the wireless fiasco. Visiting Hong Kong a couple of years ago, I was amazed that everyone had a cell phone. They were everywhere. In the airport, I could hear all kinds of tones, bells, etc. going off from all the cell phones. Wow, I thought, this place is crazy about cell phones. I asked around and found out that it is acutally cheaper to have a cell phone than to have a desk phone in Hong Kong. Now is that a novel idea ! I wish the US telcos would just price the cell access the same as the wall phones.
These bacteria, being advanced as they are, have evolved into lawyers and descended upon the state of Florida. News reports have greatly overestimated their abilities though. They seem to have problems with propagating their species, since the only thing they seem concerned about is pregnant 'chads' and how they should be counted. They do have a sense of humor, and most of the world, except the members of the two major parties in the US, are laughing at the daily media circus they keep feeding.
I have a copy of MS Office 97 Professional. I have had it for 4 years. I have not updated to the new versions. Why ? Because the newer versions do not offer any compelling reason to update. I mainly use Word and Access. Powerpoint is for managers who can't articulate without the use of visual aids. Excel is not very usefull outside of number crunching. Word is very limited when the number of pages in a document go above 100, or you start pasting pictures in the document. Access is a neat little tool, that is a wiz-bang for home and SO users, but that is all. It is refreshing to see that they only want to target home and SO users. I can see my mom trying to figure out once a year if she really needs Access to keep track of her recipies (at a overinflated rate), or she just pulls out the 3x5 card box, and uses what is most familiar.
I wonder, under their new model, how much it would of cost me to use Word, Excel, and Access for 48 months. Probably a lot more than what the CD cost me in the first place.
Mr. Moody makes a breif and yet interesting point about the bug-track database. It seems as he does one thing well and that is to quote statistics and then not normalize the statistics he is quoting. As typical of most news reports, there is no background material, no rational analysis, and the quoted data is not put into perspective. I have no idea who he is or what his credentials are. Wow, he did some research and wrote a couple of books. In conclusion, my 8th grade daughter could of came up with this story, and her english teacher would of gave her a 'C' grade.
Yes, they can tell lies, and quoting them leads to more lies. Taking the different development models and business structures into account, I would think that it beehoves M$ to fix the easy bugs faster. Of course, they are not open to the widespread peer review that code released to the public domain is, and I believe taht is part of the bug refix problem.
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I have been doing this for four years now. From my experience I have found the following:
1. You need a seperate room that is the office, and not used for anything else. Period.
2. You need to be disciplined about putting in at least 8 hours a day.
3. Bath, shave, etc. each day as if you are going into the office. You do not have to put on the tie, etc. but at least look respectable enough, in case visitors come to the house.
4. Set limits with the kids. They are not to disturb you during working hours. Period.
5. Always get more work done than the boss would expect you to get done at the office.
6. Use the phone. The phone is your lifeline and a ongoing sales tool to convince the boss of the benefit of your telecommute.
7. Use email religiously. If I am going to take a staggered lunch, say from 11:30 - 12:30 instead of 12:00 to 1:00. I will email everyone I believe needs to know, that I am taking the staggered lunch.
8. Try to participate in any propject conference calls. Use this opportunity to banter with other project members. Be prepared.
9. Get a Cordless phone with a headset and some range. This way if you are away from the room you call a office, you can still answer the phone. This gives the people at the office and customers the sense that you are always available. There is nothing that starts rumors faster than not being able to get ahold of someone who is telecommuting.
10. Get call waiting and call forwarding. This once again gives the caller the sense that you are always available.
11. Remember this is for your and your families benefit. The company percieves they are giving something up (ie control). Show them and your boss that you are not a HR headache.
Lets face it, the telcos here in the states do such a poor job at upgrading and maintaining their infrastructure, that they are well behind a lot of others in the world. They would rather try to sell me call waiting, caller-id, or any of the other marginally exciting technologies, than try to fix the antiquated systems they have. Why ? They don't have to do any work, and recieve an income to boot.
In my area, I had tried for 4 years to get the local telco to get some sort of high speed access to my residence (I was down to begging for ISDN), no way. They had no future plans to make even ISDN happen. Last year cable access came to town, and I kissed the telco goodbye (and removed the second line), and have never regretted it. Still a year later, the local telco can not get high speed access to the residences in town. I guess they do not want that business ?
Now they continally call me about wanting me to buy this lame service or that lame addon. No way ! I finallly had to ask them to take me off their call list. What a shame. They don't get it, do they.
Now we have the wireless fiasco. Visiting Hong Kong a couple of years ago, I was amazed that everyone had a cell phone. They were everywhere. In the airport, I could hear all kinds of tones, bells, etc. going off from all the cell phones. Wow, I thought, this place is crazy about cell phones. I asked around and found out that it is acutally cheaper to have a cell phone than to have a desk phone in Hong Kong. Now is that a novel idea ! I wish the US telcos would just price the cell access the same as the wall phones.
The games are more exciting, the fans actually like to be there, the prices are cheap, the stadiums are better, and you get some fresh air.
My brother was told by a lawyer, that the companies that craft these non-compete agreements can not prosecute you, or have a hard time doing it.
These bacteria, being advanced as they are, have evolved into lawyers and descended upon the state of Florida. News reports have greatly overestimated their abilities though. They seem to have problems with propagating their species, since the only thing they seem concerned about is pregnant 'chads' and how they should be counted. They do have a sense of humor, and most of the world, except the members of the two major parties in the US, are laughing at the daily media circus they keep feeding.
I have a copy of MS Office 97 Professional. I have had it for 4 years. I have not updated to the new versions. Why ? Because the newer versions do not offer any compelling reason to update. I mainly use Word and Access. Powerpoint is for managers who can't articulate without the use of visual aids. Excel is not very usefull outside of number crunching. Word is very limited when the number of pages in a document go above 100, or you start pasting pictures in the document. Access is a neat little tool, that is a wiz-bang for home and SO users, but that is all. It is refreshing to see that they only want to target home and SO users. I can see my mom trying to figure out once a year if she really needs Access to keep track of her recipies (at a overinflated rate), or she just pulls out the 3x5 card box, and uses what is most familiar. I wonder, under their new model, how much it would of cost me to use Word, Excel, and Access for 48 months. Probably a lot more than what the CD cost me in the first place.
Eventually the 'A' students will end up working for the 'B' and 'C' students. Grades mean squat, attitude and aptitude are what count !!
Mr. Moody makes a breif and yet interesting point about the bug-track database. It seems as he does one thing well and that is to quote statistics and then not normalize the statistics he is quoting. As typical of most news reports, there is no background material, no rational analysis, and the quoted data is not put into perspective. I have no idea who he is or what his credentials are. Wow, he did some research and wrote a couple of books. In conclusion, my 8th grade daughter could of came up with this story, and her english teacher would of gave her a 'C' grade.
It would crash at the mere mention of having to do something this complicated !
Yes, they can tell lies, and quoting them leads to more lies. Taking the different development models and business structures into account, I would think that it beehoves M$ to fix the easy bugs faster. Of course, they are not open to the widespread peer review that code released to the public domain is, and I believe taht is part of the bug refix problem.