I telecommute every day and have for a few years now. I have some paper documentation, but very little and it’s not necesary. I’ve worked on three accounts since I started working from home and have only met one boss, one time. I work with people all over the world. The hardest part is maneuvering through the accents on a conference call. Yesterday I had a Chinese man, a French man, a German man and a Brazilian man all on the same call. Couple that international experience with my hearing deficit and…well…I’m just glad I have instant messaging or I’d never be able to do this job!
I think we’ll see more and more WFH jobs in the next 10 years. It’s great!
I do one or two days a week. - plus if I have to get kids to the dentist, the dog to the vet, the commute will be bad due to weather - basically anytime.
Its strange. It takes a certain discipline to not spend the day doing “home stuff” - my house is messier than my office and my personal stuff overlaps into my work stuff. Plus its easier for work stuff to overlap into personal stuff. Its a nice perk and I’m glad I get to do it. But if they asked me to give up my cube at work permanently, I could do it, but I would want to.
No. Much of my work can be done through e-mail and fax, but a large part of my job involves meeting with students, and I need to be on campus for that.
Right now I only go into the office three days a week. The only thing I miss is access to our stock art collection that we don’t keep online. I have a 2 hour commute and this saves a ton in fuel and time. I’m slowly working my way up to 4 days of telecommuting per week. The ability to get on a roll and plow through work is amazing.
Also, I find that I work more than 8-9 hours because I like what I do and I’m already home. I get into the junkie mindset, “I can stop anytime I want… I really can.” Unlike at work where I worry about leaving in time to beat rush hour.
There’s nothing like walking your dog during lunch hour.
I write technical documentation and I’m in the process of trying to convince the company I work for to let me telecommute since I’m moving away. My hope is that they let me do it as a salaried employee, but I think what is more likely is that they’ll have me as a contractor/freelancer so they don’t have to offer everyone else the same option. They are also pretty sensitive about outsiders getting access to engineering drawings so that might be a road block.
I also am a remote employee, I work from home and the “office” is in San Jose and New York City. I may travel to NYC or San Jose once a quarter for team meetings. My position does require me to travel a bit, to client sites for presentations/meetings. Usually these are not more than 1-day trips.
I love it but I find most of my friends have an unrealistic view of “working from home”. There are definite perks, as most people in this thread have pointed out. There are down sides too:
Networking - It is difficult to build relationships with management that can help advance your career. It is also difficult to build relationships with peers like engineers, product mgmt people, etc., that are critical to being successful in my role. I also miss the social aspects of an office job, whether it be football pools, happy hours, team lunches, etc.
Discipline - I do think it is a bit more difficult to be disciplined when working from home. Heck, I’m posting this on the Dope and not worried about my boss walking into my cubicle anymore!
Hours - I find I work far more hours per week when I work in a telecommute environment. They may not be sequential hours, but more hours per day. As someone else in the thread mentioned, you never leave work. It is always right there where you eat, sleep, and socialize.
I could work from home occasionally, but I couldn’t easily telecommute 100% of the time. I write embedded firmware and I need too much equipment to test my stuff.
Anyway, I’m afraid I wouldn’t get anything done at home. There are too many books and other distractions there. Having internet access at work is bad enough. I need a reasonably rigid schedule or I start getting lazy.
I telecommute a couple days a week, and intend to ratchet it up in the very near future. As a software developer, I can do everything that doesn’t involve hands-on fiddling with machines from home. I’ve found, to my surprise, that I’m much more efficient when working from home.
I really only need to show up when I need to exchange information that’s too complicated for an email or phone call. Also, there is a social aspect to the workplace that I wouldn’t want to shrivel away. But mostly, I can do without the two hours of commuting on toll roads every day for the privilege of sitting in a cubicle.
I really miss my smoking buddies and cute clothes. I see so many adorable outfits that I cannot justify buying because I have nowhere to wear them anymore .
Do you find that friends/family respect your telecommuting? Do they believe that you are “at work” even if the office is right down the hall from your bedroom?
I think I would miss the camaraderie and the gossip and the fun stuff. We do work, but sometimes I like to discuss TV shows and stuff with my co-workers.
Could do, but won’t. A large part of my job (aside from site inspections, construction management, safety work, teaching, interviews, traveling, etc.) could be done anywhere in the world where I have a laptop and net access. And I have the option to telecommute for some part of my job. HOWEVER, I’ve found that the office environment helps me focus much better, and that time at home is often less than half as productive as time in the office. While it sounds nice to sit on the patio and answer e-mails whilst sipping pina coladas, in reality I wouldn’t get enough work done to justify what they pay me.
Yeah, the pina coladas part - bad. TV in the house, bad. Laundry that needs to get done, bad. Little kids home, bad. Dog wanting to go out, bad.
At work, my distraction is an internet connection.
If I work from home, I am always dressed - unless I’m talking late night or early morning conference calls. Dressing is part of the discipline that turns it into a workday and not a day of pina coladas and rewatching Lord of the Rings.
I do that via sametime. It’s the next best thing to being there!
Re: friends and family, I rarely get a call to just sit and bullshit. They may call for a quick confirmation or what have you, but they learned very quickly that I can’t concentrate on a call when I’m carrying on multiple conversations online simultaneously. They usually say, “Call me when you have time” or they wait until after normal business hours.
Ain’t that the truth! I normally go the whole route: clothes, makeup, and hair. But the last month, with working 12-16 hours a day, I’m lucky if I get a bath in at lunchtime. It really sucks because I need to feel “worky” when I’m working.
Office manager here. I can do about 90% of my work by telecommuting. I do it occasionally, and have a deal in the winter months (November - March) that I can telecommute if the weather is particularly heinous here in NW NJ.
I could do it, as I have the same computer access at home that I have in the office, but I’d miss my headset and direct connection to the company phone system. The folks that I communicate with by phone could be anywhere, and I’m not interested in tying up the home phone with work. (Nor expensing individual calls).
The Butlerette also doesn’t understand that Daddy can’t play, even though he’s home. “But Daddy, you’re home, you must be playing!!! Tickle me… <giggle, run away, repeat>” My space isn’t set up for a seperate location that I could lock myself into.
I have worked from home, but find there are too many distractions to be useful. It’s easier to drive the 35 miles each way, even in a big snowstorm.
I telecommute and I love it. I’m a compuer programmer, and I connect to my office by VPN. My family is sometimes distracting, but I don’t mind making it up in longer hours. I love getting to watch my kids grow up. Judging from my last performance review, my overall productivity doesn’t suffer.
Surprisingly enough, my friends/family adjusted quite well. Then again, I don’t have a huge social circle, and Mr. Athena works at home, too, so it’s not like we had to train hundreds of people.
It helps that I’m a sullen bastard who would go weeks between in-person socializing if I could get away with it. Hell is other people, to me and Sartre. Plus, this is what the Straight Dope is for.
OK, I have a question for the other telecommuters: Am I the only one out there who finds working at home easier, discipline-wise, than working in an office? Seems to me that when I get into an office, I’m immediately struck by the I-wanna-go-home jitters. I’m always watching the clock, figuring out the next moment that I can GET OUT.
Put me at home, I have none of that. I’ll happily sit at the computer all day, even if there’s dishes to be done, clothes to be washed, etc. Honestly, being at my computer is more fun than anything else in the house, and chances are that if I’m at my computer, I’ll do whatever work comes in. I never have had problems working at home. Offices, though… all those people, yammering about all that stuff, meetings, distractions, wanting to go home, I don’t get anything done!
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<giggle, run away, repeat>” My space isn’t set up for a seperate location that I could lock myself into.