July 28, 2011 at 7:30 am
Ninja's_RGR'us (7/28/2011)
Michael Valentine Jones (7/28/2011)
I have had people on my team that are full time work from home for the last 10 years, and I am happy with the situation.We are considering and probably will go to having the entire team work from home full time.
I'm in!
Where do I sign. 😉
And me and me
Adam Zacks-------------------------------------------Be Nice, Or Leave
July 28, 2011 at 7:35 am
Schadenfreude-Mei (7/28/2011)
Ninja's_RGR'us (7/28/2011)
Michael Valentine Jones (7/28/2011)
I have had people on my team that are full time work from home for the last 10 years, and I am happy with the situation.We are considering and probably will go to having the entire team work from home full time.
I'm in!
Where do I sign. 😉
And me and me
This is ONE place where points DO matter 😀 :smooooth:
July 28, 2011 at 7:39 am
brownhound (7/28/2011)
I've never had any success getting authorized to telecommute as a regular practice. I've had it allowed on occasion, but it's never been a policy. In fact, it's always the policy issue that is raised as a barrier. I get the "We don't have a policy on that." or "We'd have to create a policy."At my current job, I was told informally that I could (for special circumstances), but I can't do it all the time. "If you do it all the time, they [the company] want to know why they can't just ship your job to India." Yes, for real. Apparently it's okay for Indians to telecommute...just not me.
To work from home, your company needs to have the infrastructure to support it.
Do you have a VPN server with the appropriate client software installed?
Do all the laptops have appropriate encryption on them?
Can you really work from home. Do you meet with customers? Are you responsible for the hardware too? Do you need to physically configure your servers?
Do you give presentations? Do you have the capability to conference call 20-30 people from home? Do you have the necessary screen sharing software like Microsoft Office Live Meeting?
July 28, 2011 at 7:50 am
Do you have a VPN server with the appropriate client software installed?
Do all the laptops have appropriate encryption on them?
Can you really work from home. Do you meet with customers? Are you responsible for the hardware too? Do you need to physically configure your servers?
Do you give presentations? Do you have the capability to conference call 20-30 people from home? Do you have the necessary screen sharing software like Microsoft Office Live Meeting?
Yep, have VPN - do all my server work from my kitchen table in the evenings, because it has to be done off hours, so seems to work well enough for those situations (read: they have no problem with my off-hours work being done from home.) I have no physical access to servers.
I do not meet with customers. I talk to customers on the phone, email, IM, and pcAnywhere - I NEVER see a customer face-to-face.
I do not give presentations or train people, so no conference call, but Live Meeting is an option I have available, if I actually needed it.
Even if I did do presentations, etc., I'd have no problem coming in for that. The reality is that there is NO reason that I can't do 99% of what I do from home.
July 28, 2011 at 7:54 am
I've been fortunate to work for a company that hires competent, trustworthy people, and put a telecommuting policy in place many years ago. I used to work one day a week from home, and find it's very productive (I had a room with a door...) 😀
Several of my co-workers telecommute multiple days of the week, and the policy isn't just for IT; we have processors that come in once or twice a week to pick up paperwork or go to meetings, and telecommute the rest of the time.
You have to prove yourself at work FIRST, of course, and the privilege can be revoked at any time.
I now telecommute full time, since I moved to a state that does not have a branch office. I miss the daily interaction with some of my team members, however since I'm on a distributed team with people in different states there are people I work with that I have never met in person. Emails and phone calls work fine for getting the job done.
I don't have kids, just cats and a partner, and find I'm MORE productive at home - fewer "drive by" conversations to interrupt me, so it's easier to stay focused. It's funny how people with a problem will interrupt you in person, but will resolve the problem themselves if they need to pick up the phone to call you... :hehe:
Steph Brown
July 28, 2011 at 8:09 am
Another option is working four-10 hour days.
Questions:
How do you answer your phone? Hello, or the name of the company you work for? Do you have a separate phone line for your work? Who pays for the phone?
You obviously need internet access to work from home. Who pays for that?
Do you create reports with proprietary information? How do you deliver that safely?
If you need office supplies (i.e., paper, toner) can you expense that?
How do you use your interoffice mail system when working from home?
Do you need to fax documents? Do you have a fax machine at home?
By the way, not all routers support VPN. Be careful when you purchase one.
If you need a computer repair, will the tech visit your home?
July 28, 2011 at 8:11 am
cengland0 (7/28/2011)
brownhound (7/28/2011)
I've never had any success getting authorized to telecommute as a regular practice. I've had it allowed on occasion, but it's never been a policy. In fact, it's always the policy issue that is raised as a barrier. I get the "We don't have a policy on that." or "We'd have to create a policy."At my current job, I was told informally that I could (for special circumstances), but I can't do it all the time. "If you do it all the time, they [the company] want to know why they can't just ship your job to India." Yes, for real. Apparently it's okay for Indians to telecommute...just not me.
To work from home, your company needs to have the infrastructure to support it.
Do you have a VPN server with the appropriate client software installed?
Do all the laptops have appropriate encryption on them?
Can you really work from home. Do you meet with customers? Are you responsible for the hardware too? Do you need to physically configure your servers?
Do you give presentations? Do you have the capability to conference call 20-30 people from home? Do you have the necessary screen sharing software like Microsoft Office Live Meeting?
I think you hit it on the head with this list. Culture aside, you cannot telecommute effectively without these items. I worked for a company where the remote connections were not very good and productivity suffered when working from home. Because of this, I had to work twice as long to get the same amount of work done and the business saw it as being less productive. They were generally old fashioned too and tended to treat you differently if you were not physically there. Face time was a big deal even though IT did most of their work behind the scenes. We rarely met with customers and communicated mainly via email, phone and IM. Non IT staff and management liked to drop by your desk and some would get irritated if you were not there for face to face questions. So even though telecommuting was allowed somewhat, it was actually frowned upon and few took advantage of it.
As others have mentioned, even with a good infrastructure and tools, you still have to work a little harder to prove to the company that telecommuting is a good option. I personally love working from home because I can usually focus more with less distractions and it gives me the flexibility to run out to appointments, eat a real lunch at home, do laundry while waiting on a process, etc. I also save on gas. Downside is that I tend to work longer hours. sometimes to make up for breaks taken during the day but mostly because I have a hard time stopping. When you are in an office and you see everyone packing up to go home, you start thinking that you should do the same. When I am at home I get sucked into my work and it will be late in the evening before I realize that I need to stop. So the company is actually getting more out of me when I work from home. I am pretty okay with that although my wife doesn't appreciate the late nights.
Since most of my team is spread across the US, there are very few people that I work with locally anyway so telecommuting makes even more sense in my position.
July 28, 2011 at 8:26 am
Kenneth Wymore (7/28/2011)
Face time was a big deal even though IT did most of their work behind the scenes. We rarely met with customers and communicated mainly via email, phone and IM. Non IT staff and management liked to drop by your desk and some would get irritated if you were not there for face to face questions.
Now that's funny because since 2004, I have not met my bosses. I've spoken over the phone but have never seen him face to face. He's in a completely different state than me and I do not travel. I just got a new boss recently and haven't met him either.
July 28, 2011 at 8:55 am
Sometimes being able to go talk to someone in person is just easier to do. There are times, for example, when I start to type an email, but decide it's best to just get up and go show my coworker what I'm talking about. Sometimes we need to see a picture.
So if my boss needs to mark up, say, a report and send it to me if I was working on remotely, what tool would be best to use? MS Paint is OK (even the .NET version), but you have to hand-draw arrows. If your boss isn't a developer, what's the best way to communicate something that is more graphical in nature? I see that as a potential hurdle.
The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge. - Stephen Hawking
July 28, 2011 at 8:56 am
I telecommute 3-4 days a week. I havent taken a sick day in years. If I am not feeling well, I just work from home. My boss is in England and most of the people I work with are located outside of my office, so no body really cares. Naturally none of my servers are in our office so there is never a need for me to be in the office except to socialize with non team members.
I save over $25 a day in gas, tolls, lunch etc and 90 minutes travel time a day.
My boss doesnt seem to mind, I work longer hours and get more done. Good for the company and good for me.
Raymond Laubert
Exceptional DBA of 2009 Finalist
MCT, MCDBA, MCITP:SQL 2005 Admin,
MCSE, OCP:10g
July 28, 2011 at 8:58 am
When I first saw the title of your editoral, I had to laugh. No, I can't telecommute; at least not in my current position. It's not even open to debat. The business of the department that I work for is primarily assessment and counseling of people with addictions. Since the counselors cannot telecommute, no one can; period. But perhaps, in some future job, I'll be able to.
Kindest Regards, Rod Connect with me on LinkedIn.
July 28, 2011 at 9:01 am
mtillman-921105 (7/28/2011)
Sometimes being able to go talk to someone in person is just easier to do. There are times, for example, when I start to type an email, but decide it's best to just get up and go show my coworker what I'm talking about. Sometimes we need to see a picture.
What would you say if I told you when someone calls me and wants me to do something, I tell them I'll do it but that they need to submit their request to me through email. I don't do things due to a verbal conversation. I've been burned before and now use the email for CYA material.
July 28, 2011 at 9:08 am
cengland0 (7/28/2011)
What would you say if I told you when someone calls me and wants me to do something, I tell them I'll do it but that they need to submit their request to me through email. I don't do things due to a verbal conversation. I've been burned before and now use the email for CYA material.
Yes, I can see that, but how are complex ideas communicated? Sometimes a marked-up picture is best. But the tools I see, that are easy to use, aren't that great. Most of my work is given to me with marked up reports to show the end-result of what they want. But I wouldn't want my boss to have to fire up and use a full-fledge graphics program like PowerPoint just to add some text and arrows for example.
EDIT:spelling and gammer
The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge. - Stephen Hawking
July 28, 2011 at 9:18 am
My team usually uses Windows Live Communicator and we do screen sharing while on a conference call to visually walk through more complex items. I will say that there are times that a whiteboard would be more effective though. When we travel for team meetings, a good amount of time is spent whiteboarding ideas and we try to get a lot of high level design work done at those meetings. The rest of the time, marked up reports in Excel, screen sharing and the occasional screen shot in an email tend to take care of things.
July 28, 2011 at 9:25 am
Kenneth Wymore (7/28/2011)
My team usually uses Windows Live Communicator and we do screen sharing while on a conference call to visually walk through more complex items. I will say that there are times that a whiteboard would be more effective though. When we travel for team meetings, a good amount of time is spent whiteboarding ideas and we try to get a lot of high level design work done at those meetings. The rest of the time, marked up reports in Excel, screen sharing and the occasional screen shot in an email tend to take care of things.
Thank you Kenneth, those are good suggestions. Now that you've mentioned it, we would probably use Excel and screen shots a lot.
The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge. - Stephen Hawking
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