The Future of Knowledge Work
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I know most employees want to be able to see, touch, and probably strangle their DBAs. Or some of the time.
I saw this post on telecommuting and thought it was a little funny, though not realistic most of the time. I think this is the picture that most managers have in their head when someone asks if they can work at home. And there are probably people that would work like this.
I've been asked before if I thought it was a good idea, by both managers and employees trying to get approval for telecommuting, so I decided that would make a good poll this week.
Can you do your job as a telecommuter?
I mean really do the work. Not get things done, but do the job you do right now from a remote location. Meet the same obligations and responsibilities, get the same work done, and provide the same value to your employer.
I have to say that telecommuting is hard. It's an adjustment and not for everyone. Since I telecommute, I can't really answer, but if I go back to my last job in the corporate world, I'd say yes. I used to manage the production DBA team for Peoplesoft. I had ten people report to me, at least until my buddy Jon left for greener pastures and I was left with 9 people doing the work of 10.
Not such a bad situation except that 8 of my people were in Pleasanton, just east of Oakland, CA. The others were in Denver. So I got to fly to CA once a month and spend a week there to get to know my people. So for 3 weeks a month, I basically was a telecommuter for the CA people and one week a month I telecom muted to Denver.
Not to mention the 5-6 hours a day I was on the phone in meetings. Those alone would have made my job possible from any location where I could get cell service.
There's more to it than just being on the phone or writing the code. Collaboration in terms of sitting down with people and discussing things, learning to know each other so you can relate with each other, there are lots of things that cannot be replicated over email, a phone, or even a video conference. Lots of work requires face time in order to succeed.
Telecommuting is perfect for a DBA because we understand balance I think better than most other IT jobs. Almost everything to a DBA is a "it depends" answer because we learn to make tradeoffs constantly as part of our job in balancing performance, efficiency, maintainability of code, etc. The same thing happens in telecommuting. Home distractions are the tradeoff from co-workers who drop by your cube to chat. The lack of a commute is balanced against the difficulty in getting away from work. No social distractions at work balance against the loneliness of being home. And there are many more like these.
Working at home is definitely not for everyone. I think there are great advantages to telecommuting for those of us with families, but it's in many ways harder than just driving to work everyday. Think hard about it before you ask and be sure you can come back to the office if it doesn't work out.
Steve Jones
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I've got a pal that works as .NET developer at home four days in week and the last one he's going to London for revisions and meetings. He lives in Barcelona but his company is british. He earn as a good freelance british IT worker and enjoy of his high earnings in Spain.
Well in terms of tax, he can perfectly to obtain benefits regarding Spain. Although it's out of law.
Personally as Dba I can't do that. I need to separate my private life from the professional one. When I come to home I want to play with my little son. Working at home end burning me.
Although one day a week would be a good idea.
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I've definately been in a position where I could work from home before - but some roles don't lend themselves well to this. I work freelance so it depends on a role by role basis.
One role involved managing a large SQL Server environment for a global corp. In this case, being in the office or at home made little difference because all the SQL Servers were remote in any case and in it was very rare for there to be a need to be physically standing in front of the server itself.
One member of the team even moved to Germany, from the UK, and as a result worked permanently from home thereafter because there was no local office near to where she'd moved to.
That for me would be too much though. Although you pointed out that at home you get away from the social distractions in the office, I personally need such distractions. Not that I'm a lazy person and like to chat all day to colleagues but working from home too much would make me start to feel isolated after a while. As such, I'd opt to go into the office about twice a week just to make some contact with the outside world.
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All of our DBA's here have laptops with wireless cards. We goto meetings and are able to see problems/issues live. Also, if a family issue comes up, kids sick, water heater breaks, we can work from home for the day, come in late to see the kids off to school when the wife is sick, etc. Our boss is pretty laid back and we do this from time to time. Working solely from home is a great thought but, I would be distracted too much and would find it difficult being in Ohio that when the weather starts to get nice in May to stay at my desk and work all day.
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As a consultant/contractor, and primarily a developer but also DBA on some contracts and projects, I have some projects where I work primarily at home, and some where I work primarily at a client site's office. I find I can get more done working at home, but I get more work done directly to the task at the client site.
I find that when working at home, I do get distracted; not by unrelated stuff but I get off on tangents relating to the work. For instance, if I have a development issue or problem, I will usually spend more time researching and testing alternatives when working at home than I do at a client office. I have noticed this happens, but really can't put my finger on why. Sometimes it is because I lose track of time at home while deeply involved in an issue, while at the office a co-workers distraction or question interrupts the process and I give up on it if I have found at least a half-way good solution.
So, for me a least, it is a wash, and I let the client make the decision where I primarily work. In both cases, there are days that I will work at the other site. (e.g. While working primarily at home there are meetings and walkthrus to do at client site. And while working primarily at client site I will work on occasion at home due to other outside circumstance like a car repair or doctors appointment.)
Mark -
Another good one Steve!
My answer: yep - I can do this job anywhere in the world. It's the new nature of the disconnected workforce.
I understand and appreciate the sentiments expressed above. Working from home is different - that's all. It helps to have a room with a door - preferably a private office or den in the home so I can close that door and thereby instantiate some sort of physical barrier between myself and the remainder of the house - especially on conference calls. But that's more out of respect for my family than anything else.
Working remotely is awesome!
:{> Andy
Andy Leonard, Chief Data Engineer, Enterprise Data & Analytics
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In my previous job, I worked at home one day a week. I justified it to the boss that this would be the time that I cranked out code and made some real progress without distractions. I found that the distractions changed from people stopping in my office to looking out the window and seeing that the lawn needed to be mowed, so I can really relate to that blog entry.
I found the easiest way for me to deal with it was to set the alarm for the same time as a normal day and start working right away. If the lawn was distracting me, I would go out and take care of it and then get back to work.
I usually ended up "punching out" for the day later than I would if I actually went in to work.
I am not able to telecommute from my current job. Not sure if that is a good thing or not.
Regards,
Scott
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Currently in the middle of a three month work from home in my wife's country of origin. No major problems, less distractions, more flexibility of working hours, no commute, better kitchen for lunchtime.
Also more lonely and less likely to get favours out of colleagues and get a general feel for what is going on.
Presumably small children add to the distractions. Tell you in about a week!
Good for focusing on complex issues, learning, coding, troubleshooting.
Less good for company culture, general feeling for environment, direction etc.
Less team building done and bonus 'I know a great app/solution for that!' comments from nearby colleagues.
Wouldn't be possible without broadband and VPNs to client sites. International dial-up connections are a no-go area.
Richard
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Absolutely. We have setup a VPN system that lets me access every machine and process on the system. We use Skype regularly now to do conferences, training and demos. The only thing I would not be able to do would be physically interact with the hardware.
Since I drive 2 hours, round-trip each day this is especially appealing to me. Now that my kids are all teenagers and relatively self-sufficient I could easily do this.
I am lobbying very hard for 2 days a week right now.
There is Truth
It is easy to find but most of us don't want it once we find it. It sheds alot more light on us than we thought it would. -
I don't drink soda so early in the morning. The rest is on par. No, I DO successfully work from home once a week. It took me a few times to work up from maybe three hours to a productive eight hours on task.
But I'm a senior engineer and a mentor. My favorite part of my job is discussing (OK...sometimes debating) approaches to problems with my colleagues. Text-based communication won't work, and a phone call is too formal and thus a barrier. Some days I can't get back to my desk before being stopped by three different developers working three different systems. I love it.
That said, nothing compares to the freedom of fixing a production issue from the driveway at my daughter's piano lesson or my son's trumpet lesson. And my kids love being "rescued" from the bus to school. Sooner than imaginable they won't live at home anymore. They are treasures and I love just hearing them in the house...
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Every organization has a unique culture and internal political environment. If the organizational culture doesn't support telecommuting then the remote worker (no matter how significant on an org chart) may eventually find themselves out of the informal but critical organic F2F communication loops that facilitate action. Some can live with this and some can't.
I suspect though that many organizational cultures will become more accepting as fuel costs rise. Telecommuting is "greener" too. I would love to see some large-scale aggregate stats on energy expenditures of working at home vs physically commuting.
(Gotta get back to work now--Friday is my day to come in to the office)
Arlan W. Dean -
I currently telecommute half a day Tues-Fri and all day Saturday. The main problem I have is that too many co-workers are email challenged. We are an IT company but with customer service types etc I do make sure my emails are not overly long or technical.
Too often people ask me questions plainly answered in the first sentence of an email I already sent. This leads to phone calls or "face time" that shouldn't be needed.
I think that in many situations if you want to advance into management more office time and presence in physical meetings is required.
I may eventually ask to telecommute even more since I'm not particularly interested in being a "people manager." The price of gas will influence this.
My kids are grown and my wife does not telecommute so my only distractions are the occasional chicken getting into the garden. Being one of the few with full remote connectivity is leading to more calls for me to do database maintenance in the evening -- my wife is starting to complain about that.
Randy
Production DBA
Northern California
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"Telecommuting is perfect for a DBA because we understand balance I think better than most other IT jobs. Telecommuting is perfect for a DBA because we understand balance I think better than most other IT jobs. "
I don't understand why it was perfect for DBA. You understand balance than most IT jobs. What don't I understand as a developer vs a DBA? Can you explain to me a bit?
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Much more productive at home. Mostly because I'm physically comfortable. How many offices will pay for a $1000 recliner? When my skilled trades friends visit when I'm working, they're always jealous of being able to work in a reclined position. Not too many legal jobs you can do from a lying position. Sweet. There will alway be screw-offs, so telecommuting will never work for them, they need to be kept in a box and watched in order to get work from them. Those of us who get satisfaction from actually producing will always succeed at working from home. The hardest part of telecommuting is the communication part. A majority of managers are existentialist(sp?) and it can certainly hurt your career aspirations if you work from home. It's possible to succeed, but most companies forget about you if you work from home.
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I worked from home for a year and a half after moving to a different state to an area where there were no technology jobs. At first, it was great... no daily commute, and no co-workers bugging me.
I got a LOT of work done.
Then the work being assigned to me slowed down. No matter how much I tried to indicate that I was getting bored, I was getting the least interactive jobs because it was easiest to assign those to me. My contact with my co-workers got shorter and shorter, and it was hard to collaborate on any projects when I needed to work with developers.
I was able to keep my own self-discipline, but in the long run, the lack of possibilities for advancement and the fact that I missed being around people made it impossible for me to keep doing it, and I moved closer to LA to get a new job where I could work in the office.
I'd say that the best possible situation for me would be to work 1-3 days a week from home and the rest in the office where I can make sure that I can keep up my relationships with my team.
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