February 21, 2014 at 8:37 am
BigAl (2/20/2014)
Steve: Thanks for the editorial! Amen! Disconnect every now and then! And I agree/have had similar experience as many of the posters here. I've always striven to live close to "the office" - i.e. walking distance <3 miles - but that "Hawaii" idea is sounding better and better all the time! And more feasible! Thanks again!
yw and good luck on the Hawaii plan.
😛
February 21, 2014 at 8:52 am
So I guess I have to reply to this since it seems like such a fantasy to people. I am the guy who's company lets us work from home.
I have worked from Florida because I was there for two weeks and had only one week of vacation. I have a co worker who's wife has more vacation than he and they take a Hawaii vacation every year where he works a couple days from the hotel but gets to enjoy Hawaii when he is off work. Another co worker has family in Chicago so they went to Chicago for a month last summer and he did his work week from Chicago and took every Friday vacation so he had a month worth of three day weekends with family in Chicago.
We accomplished a huge data converstion and consolidation project that spanned 7 months while working from all these locations. It is not a fantasy it can be a reality if the mind set of being in an office changes. If I can stream a stupid cat video from You Tube I can stream a web camera meeting with the other developers.
We have co workers who have moved to other parts of the country, more than one time in some cases, and still can keep their job and all the perks that those years of service provide. The company gets to keep the intellectual property and investment in an employee. You don't have to lose that employee that knows all the company systems if they need to move.
My grand daughter got me some new pajama bottoms for Christmas and I said "Look, new work clothes". It is possible and can be productive.
February 21, 2014 at 8:53 am
Steve Jones - SSC Editor (2/21/2014)
BigAl (2/20/2014)
Steve: Thanks for the editorial! Amen! Disconnect every now and then! And I agree/have had similar experience as many of the posters here. I've always striven to live close to "the office" - i.e. walking distance <3 miles - but that "Hawaii" idea is sounding better and better all the time! And more feasible! Thanks again!yw and good luck on the Hawaii plan.
😛
When you have to deal with the extreme cold or the blizzard conditions on the drive into the office or on the way home, or both. It really makes you want to make that Hawaii dream a reality.
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we travel not to escape life but for life not to escape us
Don't fear failure, fear regret.
February 21, 2014 at 8:59 am
bob_balok (2/21/2014)
So I guess I have to reply to this since it seems like such a fantasy to people. I am the guy who's company lets us work from home.I have worked from Florida because I was there for two weeks and had only one week of vacation. I have a co worker who's wife has more vacation than he and they take a Hawaii vacation every year where he works a couple days from the hotel but gets to enjoy Hawaii when he is off work. Another co worker has family in Chicago so they went to Chicago for a month last summer and he did his work week from Chicago and took every Friday vacation so he had a month worth of three day weekends with family in Chicago.
We accomplished a huge data converstion and consolidation project that spanned 7 months while working from all these locations. It is not a fantasy it can be a reality if the mind set of being in an office changes. If I can stream a stupid cat video from You Tube I can stream a web camera meeting with the other developers.
We have co workers who have moved to other parts of the country, more than one time in some cases, and still can keep their job and all the perks that those years of service provide. The company gets to keep the intellectual property and investment in an employee. You don't have to lose that employee that knows all the company systems if they need to move.
My grand daughter got me some new pajama bottoms for Christmas and I said "Look, new work clothes". It is possible and can be productive.
You got the ideal set up here Bob, congrats. I only wish my company could take that same attitude. That's the issue, the company letting you do that, opposed to the workers wanting to do it.
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we travel not to escape life but for life not to escape us
Don't fear failure, fear regret.
February 21, 2014 at 9:09 am
bob_balok (2/21/2014)
My grand daughter got me some new pajama bottoms for Christmas and I said "Look, new work clothes". It is possible and can be productive.
My laundry bill has dropped significantly as well.
The number of days I would have had to call off, or dump money into an un-reimbursed hotel room to make it to work this year has dropped to zero.
My job is changing, so I will have to go to Canada for several weeks of training. (That I can't do that remotely too is another question, but ...) The whole idea of remote work is finally changing as the whole broadband infrastructure is building up.
There are some jobs that just can't be done remotely, such as physical server setup, but even that can be scheduled so the sys admin and techs only have to be physically on site on rare occasion.
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Jim P.
A little bit of this and a little byte of that can cause bloatware.
October 20, 2017 at 3:10 pm
... It is great that you can fix a problem at your kid's soccer game or dance recital, but it's also important that you attend and enjoy those events.
... However if you leave the office early, get to the game, and get some work done before the action starts, that's good.... However if you leave the office early, get to the game, and get some work done before the action starts, that's good.
...
Unless I someday have the ability to RDP from my mobile device into a gateway machine or production server, it's unlikely I'll be able to "fix a problem" from a soccer game or dance recital. Fortunately I'm on off-hours rotation with several other people, so not really an issue.
"Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise. Instead, seek what they sought." - Matsuo Basho
October 20, 2017 at 3:25 pm
Maybe some day I will find that position that lets me work from home. Most likely that will be called retirement.
October 25, 2017 at 5:51 pm
I've been used to the idea of working from home (but not doing it myself) since I joined ICL in 1971 (a few years after I'd turned from mathematician into a computer guy). We had people all over the place (including the Orkneys, which is a pretty extreme distance from the office). The company (some years before I joined it) had decided it wanted to keep some of its female talent who wanted to be at home to raise a family, but by my time it wasn't tied to gender. I discovered (when one of my people wanted to resign in 1972 to have and bring up her baby) that I was expected to make an estimate of whether she could work remotely and if so put her in contact with our remote working management people - it was regarded as absolutely normal, and managers even at a rather junior level like mine were expected to promote it.
Now we have vastly better cdata communications capacity from home to work, so in theory it should be much easier. In the mid 2000s I would work from home quite regularly, after all my job was split between Chennai and London but there was no bigger communication problem from either my house in Spain or the one in NW England than there was from Chennai or from London - in fact I had more people working for me in Chennai (where I spent about 108 days per year in 6 18 day chunks) than I had in my official working location in London (where I spent quite a bit more time). So in say 2006 with modern broadband things were vastly easier that they were in the early 1970s.
I expect it to get still better. I will be easier and easier to work remotely. There'll still be a necessity for getting into the office now and again (video conference is all very well, but taking someone out to lunch to talk about work can't be done remotely), but I hope that most employers will realise that lots of remote working is acceptable..
Tom
October 25, 2017 at 8:14 pm
I just see too many job posting that state upfront, no telecommute available.
I like the company where I work, just a 10 minute commute at this time. Even then I would love to work from home so I only go in when I really need to for meetings, or maybe even just 1 or 2 days a week. I don't see it happening. I am just waiting until circumstances change and perhaps I will then find a company willing to hire me working remotely.
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