Mr. Jeeves and I are planning on moving to Boston sometime this summer so that I can start grad school. The Mr. works for a largish company here in LA as an e-commerce manager. His job is highly doable from remote, and as soon as we found out about grad school he started talking to his boss, the VP of Retail about making it a tellecommuting position. The few things that he has to be in the office for only happen once or twice a quarter, and are held both here in LA and in NY, which is an easy train ride down from Boston.
The VP of Retail really likes Mr. Jeeves and said that there would be no problem, after all the parent company has lots of telecommuting workers. They started working out the details, and it looked like it would be great! And after all, this would only be for about a year, until I finish my M.Eng.
Well, Idiot reactionary CFO found out about the plan today, and nixed it, saying that no-one that worked for his company would telecommute.
So a big fuck you to the CFO. Mr. Jeeves has already decided that he doesn’t want to stay here without me, so he will be looking for jobs in Boston. It is going to make this move a little more difficult, but its going to happen anyway. You are going to lose a great e-commerce manager, and will probably have to hire 2-3 people to replace him, since good luck finding someone that meets your requirements and can program as well.
This is a surprise? Typical management. I argued for years that if you get qualified and honest people to work for you ,working at home makes great sense. Office space is expensive. You would save secretarial ,lighting,heating etc . costs. Management just does not want to give up their apparent control.
I’ve seen this one before. He’ll leave, they’ll realize that they’re fucked and then they’ll have him come back as a consultant at a much higher rate of pay.
Yeah, it pisses me off that even though the parent company encourages telecommuting, and the VP that Mr. Jeeves reports to was good with it, it’s one reactionary asshole who can derail everything.
Yeah, the VP apparently already mentioned it. The problem is that the rate would have to be quite a bit higher to cover self-employment taxes, and more importantly healthcare. But that might be the best solution, since we only want to stay in Boston for one year.
Production is stopped and a former employee is called in to fix the machine. He walks around the machine for five minutes and taps the machine with a hammer. The machine works and production starts back up. He hands the owner the bill for $10,000 and says this is what you owe me. The owner says “I’m not paying you $10,00 to walk around five minutes and tap the machine with a hammer.” The former employee says “No, you’re paying me $10,000 to know where to tap the machine with a hammer.”
Many dudes who are in charge at the highest level are older and to them “work”= chained to the desk. I had the exact problem with one MGR. They are not being an asshole, they simply can’t grok the concept.
Unfortunately, one of the problems comes down to rules about treating employees in certain categories the same, so if they let one responsible person telecommute, it’s very difficult not to allow everyone else in a similar position telecommute as well. It would be great if it were possible to get an entire staff of responsible, self-motivated employees who could be trusted to work without supervision, but the mix is usually more diverse, and it only takes one screw-off (who is also usually the first to demand that they be allowed to work from home if the company lets Mr. Jeeves do it) to shut it down for everyone.
Pity - it’s happened to me. Five people were allowed to work their own schedule. Four turned in great work and met deadlines, one person jerked around. Soon all five are back to working 8-5 under general supervision again.
I can do the vast majority of my job from home, and do it far more effectively (without interruptions, ringing phones etc) to boot. Luckily, I have an immediate boss who has discovered the same thing and lets me work from home occasionally. It remains occasionally because it is after all, still only 2008 and I don’t want to push my luck. sigh
I gotta say that I’m very impressed y’all were willing to put your money where your mouth is and leave the damn place. We see so many pittings by people who bitch and moan about how terrible things are on their job, while making no effort to put up or ship out. Good on you and yours, Jeeves!
I’m not disputing that can’t happen, but what I’ve seen happen more is he leaves, the ex-company knows it’s screwed and forces all the others who stay behind to work mandatory unpaid overtime to replace him, the company muddles on until finally, after much loss of morale and much abuse of the office staff, someone eventually rises to the occasion and replaces him. I’ve very, very often been the person in the position of “so and so left to make more money, you can add their job onto what you do, right? Just a few more hours a week, right? We’ll make it up to you - trust us.”
And I’ll add this - my company’s experience with telecommuting has been mixed. Like Mrs. Cake said - most of the people can do the work, but when you get the person who doesn’t, it’s less of an HR hassle to just end the policy for everyone and punish the innocent. Welcome the litigation-terrified corporate 2000’s.
If the issue is not having any employee telecommute, simply have your husband work with them to be a consultant for a year. He can take a year ‘sabbatical’. HR should be able to come up with a dollar number that is equivalent to his salary, for which he consults for the company, doing the same job. When you’re ready to move back, he comes off his ‘sabbatical’ and becomes an employee again.
If what’s really hanging things up is the title ‘employee’, then this should work. If the CFO is simply a moron (don’t discount this possibility), then too bad for them.
Hi everyone, sorry that I haven’t been in to update. A lot has happened since I first posted this.
The first weekend in April, we went to Boston for MIT’s open house. Mr. Jeeves also managed to arrange an interview with another company for a director of e-commerce position. He interviewed, they liked him, and they gave him an offer. He had promised his immediate boss a chance to respond when he got an offer, so he went to him.
Well that stirred the ant’s nest. There was no budging on him remaining an employee and telecommuting, but suddenly a very lucrative consulting contract appeared. Before turning the other offer down, Mr. Jeeves extracted a consulting contract from his current employers, for a minimum 6 months, but most likely will be longer.
He has decided to take the offer, and he is going to attempt to get more clients and make a business out of e-commerce marketing consulting. In fact, thats what he will be mostly be doing, turning over the day to day operation to a new employee that they are interviewing for now. He will also be doing an interesting project with their international sales and marketing.
So in the end, it all worked out. After we move to Boston, he has a guaranteed 6 months of employment, at quite a handsome premium, even after you factor in health insurance and taxes. If he hasn’t recruited more clients by then, and his contract isn’t renewed in month 5 (He gets 1 month notice before it can be terminated) then he will look for a job. But I think that that won’t be a problem, and he is going to be a great entrepreneur. (I might be a little biased though.)
Thanks for the help and support! Thats why I love the teeming millions!
Oh, and Danalan, that was the first thing they offered, but the mister actually negotiated them quite higher Of course, it helps that he had a better offer in hand.
Oh, and the official reason/excuse is not control but that they don’t have a business presence in Massachusettes. Is that a valid concern?
I’m an “offsite” employee working in the client’s office. My employer is several states away. The contract is coming to an end and I have a job for about another year or so. If my company wins the bid for the new contract, fine, nothing changes. If my company doesn’t win the bid, then my choices are 1) move out of state (don’t wanna), 2) be unemployed 3) negotiate telecommuting gig with my current company.
I read all telecommuting threads with great interest. I hope my situation turns out as well as yours has!
It’s possible, and I’ve seen my company deal with similar things, but impossible to say unless someone here knew an awful lot more about his business than you should ever consider sharing on a message board or with people online in general.
Of course, it helps that he had a better offer in hand.