December 7, 2015 at 6:16 am
This past summer I left a job at a major food manufacturing corporation to work for a governmental agency non-profit and took a $20-25K per year pay cut. But I am much happier as at the old job I was a senior programmer who went into operations as a warehouse supervisor (as this company unwisely decided to outsource 80% of IT) and worked 13 hour days and weekends. Sure, the money was excellent but at the cost of my sanity and family life. And now I am back to a regular 8 hour workday and back to doing what I love most and that is develop programs. AND I am helping those who help others instead of working to make a large worldwide corporation more money. The cut in pay was well worth the career move. And I have that option here at my new job to remote in and work from home, but most of the time must be spent here in the office
December 7, 2015 at 6:29 am
I am split on this matter. When not faced with a stream of meetings or interruptions, I am far more productive at the office. I have a dedicated workspace, with dual monitors, both bigger than I have at home. And I am at work, to work. There is no distraction of pets, or TV, or chores, or anything else.
Plus, like people said, work is for work, and home is for the rest. A good separation (emergencies aside) is a key component of a good work/life balance.
What I don't get is people taking a pay cut to work remote. Aren't they saving the company money by providing their own hardware, electricity, heating, space, etc.
December 7, 2015 at 7:29 am
lbrister (12/29/2010)
I just ended a 10 year stint of working from home; both for an employer the first 4 years and for myself the past 6 years. There are plus's and minuses.Major Plus,
The ability to focus without interruption
No commute time
Minus's
Work is always "right there"
Generally worked an extra 8-10 hours a week
Added stress to produce.
For an employer - They generally are leery of whether you're actually working
For myself - Getting paid on time always an issue.
10 months ago, with some trepidation I returned to the Corporate scene as a Sr Developer for a company. But an excellent company that had actually sought me out. I never "applied" for the job.
In the right environment the security of an "office" job can be great. I'm valued, treated with respect, and have better "face to face" time with Executive Management so there's less of a chance of misunderstandings. I look forward to coming to work..and when I leave for the day...I leave the work behind as well.
That last statement sums it up for me. Leave work at work and enjoy your time away.
December 7, 2015 at 8:49 am
One of the articles' points struck me quite forcefully.
Why would you take a pay cut to work at home?
1. If you are more productive, the company should be willing to pay you more for more work done.
2. If you work at home, then the company either does not have to set up an office for you, or does not have to pay all of the costs (assuming the company will pay for some of them).
Meanwhile you have to pay for setting up an area at home for your office.
It sounds like a great deal for the company: they don't have to pay for as much office space, and they don't have to pay as much for labour.
I suppose if it actually is more desirable to work at home, then the number of possible competitors for your job might increase, giving the company more leverage in compensation negotiations, but this I think assumes a lot.
December 7, 2015 at 11:58 am
I like a mixture of both. My only issue with the remote office is the issue with bigger companies where there is already a gap in the communication due to other offices. Having remote workers within your location may increase the communication gap between your local co-workers too.
December 7, 2015 at 1:30 pm
jay-h (12/29/2010)
Don't forget: any job that can be done from home can be done from a 'low cost country'
Sure - Stephen King's next novel has been outsourced to Bangalore. 😛
December 8, 2015 at 3:10 am
cs_troyk (12/7/2015)
jay-h (12/29/2010)
Don't forget: any job that can be done from home can be done from a 'low cost country'Sure - Stephen King's next novel has been outsourced to Bangalore. 😛
It may be worth pointing out that this is not because these countries do not produce excellent IT practitioners just that those who work for the consultancies are rarely the top of their class, never seem to be provided training nor support and are only encouraged to do the minimum to allow billing.
Gaz
-- Stop your grinnin' and drop your linen...they're everywhere!!!
December 8, 2015 at 3:39 am
For one company I gave up working from home trying to get a project completed in time, as there were more interruptions than in the office. They expected the emails to be answered quicker, colleagues were phoning more frequently (every 10-20 minutes), and the PM (aka PHB) wanted more progress emails. After a few days of this and management doing nothing, I went back to sitting in the office to get interrupted there. Of course the project missed the deadline and the cost to the company £300K +.
Other places it was amazing how much can be done at times. Really does depend on the company and the support they give
December 8, 2015 at 3:31 pm
I spend about 30%-40% of my work hours occupied with meta-work, mainly project planning, email, professional development and networking. I could do most of this at home, and in fact end up doing quite a lot of it during off hours, which could easily translate into a couple of days per week teleworking.
The problem with that is I like to mix the meta-work up with my work-work as it gives me a break from the hard focus needed for the more technical aspects of my work-work. And while it's nice to have the option to work from home if I have to be home for some reason, I have a reasonable commute and a good team environment so mainly I look forward to going to the office.
December 11, 2015 at 2:16 pm
Whether you're more or less productive working away from the office depends on what stage of the project lifecycle your team is in. Working from home can be productive when the requirements are clearly defined and you're heads down on a coding sprint. However, in the early requirements gathering, design, and prototyping stages of a project, when you need daily collaboration with other team members, it's a terrible idea. It's less efficient during QA stage, but less of an issue for post production support. If you are primarily a production support DBA, and your typical day at the office is spent in the server room communicating via email, then whether you base your operations from a home office permanently may not matter one way or the other.
In my new job, our office has an open floor plan inspired by what Google has been doing, and I'd say it's very productive. At least for me, working from home can put me in a low energy frame of mind, so it helps to be working in close proximity with fellow team members and other related IT teams.
"Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise. Instead, seek what they sought." - Matsuo Basho
December 14, 2015 at 7:14 pm
Steve Jones - SSC Editor (12/29/2010)
jay holovacs (12/29/2010)
Don't forget: any job that can be done from home can be done from a 'low cost country'I'd highly disagree with this. Just because it can be done from home most of the time, does not mean it can always be done. Think DR? Think face to face meetings. They can be conquered over time from another country, but for ad hoc items, you might like the ability to pull someone together next week for a day. That's not likely to happen often from the other side of the world or even another country.
I think I disagree, Steve. The comms technology available to us now is pretty good, and copes well with those situtions. At one time my normal office was in London, I lived either 180 miles away or a couple of thousand miles away depending on time of year, my developers were mostly in Chennai (five and a half thousand miles away), and the systems I had to keep alive were scattered around the world, from Barbados in the West to Mumbai in the East (as were my ops support people); but I could work out of my London office, or from home near Manchester, or from my other home in Puerto del Carmen (a couple of thousand miles away), or from the office in Chennai and still cope with all the urgent interactions (including for example disaster recovery for a system in Mumbai when I was in Puerto del Carmen, and disaster recovery for a system in Dubai when I was in London - what's remote access is for, after all - and meetings involving people in UK, Spain (me), India, and Dubai (that's where remote conferencing could be useful). Admittedly I spent about quarter of my time in Chennai but the 11 hour flight between London and Chennai (and 11 hours back) six times a year was a nice opportunity to catch up on sleep. So I don't see any difficulty with working from one country to another, although of course government policies (such as stealing data at the borders) may make it more difficult in for some places (and the UK may be going to become such a place, as it looks as if the current UK government is set on changing the laws to permit it to emulate yours in that respect).
Tom
December 14, 2015 at 7:56 pm
David.Poole (12/29/2010)
I think the whole "can be done cheaper in a low cost country" is a case of perception vs reality. The problem comes when it is the perception of the decision makers and you can bet your sweet life any metrics will be skewed in favour of proving the point.
Actually there is a right way of doing something in a low-cost country, and a wrong way - and maybe something that falls between the two as well.
If you set up a subsidiary company in the low cost country, recruit competent people to work for it, pay people decent wages (not wages inflated beyone reasonable local levels, but not slave labour wages either), treat the people decently, and get them involved in delivery, sustomer relations, and so on so that they feel they are genuinely part of the company and will benefit from doing a good job than just some means of avoiding paying decent wages back at home you are likely to find that they really do do it cheaper and maybe even do it better (because they are impressed by being treated decently). Of course this is difficult if you don't have someone with real knowledge of the country.
On the other hand, if you go and find some outfit set up to exploit the cheapness of local labour and sell it to you, and pay no attention to the people (except to the managers you have to deal with) you are probably going to be unlucky - the managers and owners will only care about their profit, their employees will have no motivation to see your problems as theirs, and perhaps the owners will be intending to rip you off.
The in-between situation is where the company you contract with is a genuine company not set up just to rip off people trying to get access to the low costs, but also not terribly interested in doing a good job for you because it has it's pwn work to keep it going and definitely interested in making as much out of you as it can. You'll probably get some good technical work out of such an arrangement, but you also get some absolute rubbish and a lot of hassle and you'll find that there's no committment to decent quality control and no concern for how the stuff they put out will damage your reputation if you don't do really thorough validation (although that validation was in the contract they'll have skimped it as much as they can). In cases like that the technical people you are paying for are usually pretty good, it's the management above them that screw things up for you.
I have first hand experience of the first and the third end results described above (and it was deciding to throw in the towel on the third one that led us to the first one - which is where we should have gone in the first place). I don't have personal experience of the second (total disaster) result, but have several friends who do.
I think it's fair to say that most people who try to outsource complex technical projects to cheap countries don't know what theyare doing and walk straight into the arms of the sort of bandits who are setting up scenario 2 on my list; and even people who are well experienced in international agreements and operations can fall into the trap of scenario 3.
Tom
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