Fleeting thought: "Hey, telecommuting rocks!" Does it?

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

I just had a fleeting thought: Telecommuting hasgot to be the coolest way to go to work . . . ever!

So, here’s the scoop: This morning, I rolled out of bed and walked over to my ‘war room’ to start working on a web-based, take home test for class. Then I got to thinking.

I’m a busy guy at the office; basically I’m an ‘air traffic controller’ for various crises that "have to be brought to the General and Colonel’s attention NOW!" 95% of the tasks I need to “bring to their attention” are either PowerPoint slides, spreadsheets, or Word documents/memos that I fix at my little cubicle. Beyond that, there are some other web applications I log into and edit/approve. With all of these tasks, I farm them out to different divisions in the directorate via e-mail traffic (even though I’d like to go to MS Sharepoint or some other function). [sub] Note: this actually happens, at least once a week.[/sub]

We have a [sh*thead of a] secretary who ought to be handling the customer service and scheduling–and just taking the generic phone calls. But that’s a Pit thread all in and of itself. She [it] can handle the customer service. I can handle the ‘traffic control’.

Bottom line is, that despite the fact I coddle the secretary along (firing civil service employees damn near takes an act of Congress), 99% of what I do at work, I can do from the desktop tower I post this thread from. I also have a laptop with Office 2007 that I can probably do more with. From what I have seen, my cousin did corporate scheduling for a major hotel chain from home. I continually bring home work with me, complete it, and e-mail it into the office to myself.

Despite the military requirement to actually be present at work, I think I could do my job from the home office. My question to y’all is this: Do any Dopers work from home/telecommute? I suspect quite a few do. What are your pros and cons? It’s not like I feel the desire to simply go to work in my underwear (I’m not right now. Relax. It’s okay.) but it’s the environment. I would think I can control that business traffic much better at home. If I had to have a meeting, I could go into the office. If I needed blueprints or drawings printed out, I theoretically could front the cost of a plotter ('spensive!), print 'em out, and work on 'em on my giant table in the garage. In short, I’m flexible, and think I could do it if I worked in the private sector. One definitive plus, I wouldn’t be filtered out from the Dope anymore. . .

So, those of you that do work from home, how’s it working out for you?

Tripler
Man, a fleeting thought never got my thinking so excited. :smiley:

2

I work from home a lot of the time, just not my home. I go to the shop load my truck go thru my paperwork and hit the road.

3

If I’m too sick to go to work, I’ll log in from home and do stuff. That way, I still get paid (I’m a contractor). I love it.

4

It does and it doesn’t.

It’s nice to take a meeting in pajamas or to watch TV while you code.

What I find though is that there is no dividing line between ‘my time’ and ‘work time’ and I end up working a hell of a lot longer when I work from home, so I realize at like 21:00 that I’m still working and I’ve missed Bones again.

5

It works fairly well for me. I started my biz about 7 years ago, working out of a home office (I leased a downtown office a couple years ago too, but that’s another story). The crucial thing for me is to stay focused while at the home office - no 'net surfing, no constant snacking etc.- but yeah, it’s the best thing I ever did.

6

When I graduated from college, my friend and I started a business that pretty much destined us both to work at our own homes. We’ve been at it for 6 years now, so in my post-college professional life, “telecommuting” is the only thing I know. Only difference from what you want to do and what we do is that neither of us is dialing in to some central office, or answering to some higher bosses.

That being said…it works just fine for me. After 6 years it’s no big deal at all for me to have a routine that involves being “at” work. I get up, take care of the dog, get some food/drink, go to my office and here I am. I can either eat lunch at my desk or at my kitchen table. Works ends at 5 (most days). AFTER 5 is when I shower and get dressed and go out into the world. I don’t find myself wandering off to watch TV or take a nap or anything.

It gets sort of lonely, but since everyone at my company “telecommutes” we’re all hooked up together with instant messaging. So I “talk” to them during the day. You do need to consider what special tools you might need at home - in my case, a fax machine, in your case a plotter - and decide who pays for what, you or the company.

The biggest obstacle I have found with working at home is not training myself to be disciplined at home, it’s training everyone I know to realize that while yes, I am at home, but I am not free to chat/visit/do errands. I am at WORK, it just happens to be at home. I am being paid to be here at my desk from 9 to 5, not sitting around waiting for someone to come have coffee. I think it took me about 4 years to get everyone in tune with that idea. It’s still hard for people to grasp.

But otherwise, working from home can’t be beat!

7

I do it occasionally, typically working on a big programming or analysis project or perhaps preparing talks. My work-supplied laptop and VPN access work seamlessly enough that I can do these things about equally well in either location.

I can concentrate at home in ways that sometimes keep failing at work due to interruptions. But if I close my office door it’s usually OK.

I enjoy face to face contact at work and never know when something will come up that I will need to be there for.

All in all, it works well occasionally, and having the option is very useful. I can’t think of anything big that is generally wrong with it. But I don’t think I’d like to do it more than maybe a day a week, because being at the office provides a kind of awareness and group participation that is useful in its own right.

8

I tried telecommuting and it was a disaster for me. It turns out that I need the social contact and external schedule at the office. Living alone, without family close by, I quickly lost my orientation, went off the rails, and ended up doing nothing.

That doesn’t mean that I can’t occasionally log in from home during a storm, say, but it’s the exception, rather than the rule.

9

It was offered at my office last year and I considered doing it but ultimately decided not to for the reasons **Sunspace **wrote about. I’m a lazy recluse with few friends to begin with, I don’t need to make it worse by only having to leave my house to get groceries.

10

Telecommuting since May.

I totally love it. I thought I might miss having an environment of coworkers around. Nope.

I have massive freedom from corporate inanity, all that Dilbert / Office stuff. Very very little of it can get to me through the emails.

I’ve always been a “set your own priorities and take responsibility for making the right things happen” kind of person.

I’ve got a nice office with a comfortable office chair (not an Aeron but a solid 5-wheeler with multiple adjustment / tilt, padding, attractive black), 3 screens and a nice keyboard, DSL with a Sprint datacard for emergency backup if DSL goes down, decent desk, great beautiful mahogany file cabinet; and yet a bed, my own music on big speakers, my own kitchen, and complete privacy.

11

I do from time to time during inclimate weather, or when I have a personal appointment that will take most of my day. (I live an hour from my office, so if I miss a few hours, the driv sucks up the rest) The idea of a working from home was tossed around a while back, but I don’t think I would do it.

The reason is that our company has a pretty bad way of connecting from home, so the lag makes even a simple task take nearly twice as long. Thus, my productivity is down, and my frustration level is up. I do, however, dream of working from home someday.

12

I work from home doing full time medical transcription, and I personally love it. It can be hard to motivate sometimes, but for the most part I work the same hours each day, hold myself to a higher standard that what is required for quantity of work, and generally do very well. I love not having to be presentable to anyone but me. I love that if I didn’t sleep well the night before and really want to, I can take a nap for 20 minutes on my break. I love being able to throw in some wash while I work.

I keep a very definite time line between work/self time, so I don’t have that issue. I basically clock in and out and if it’s not a work hour, I don’t work, so that helps.

13

I’m a management systems auditor, so about 70% of the time I’m at a customer site and the other 30% I telecommute. I do go into the office but not much.

It has its pros and it has its cons. On the pro side, I’m far more productive at home; I get up, get the baby up and stuff, and it’s time to work. I don’t waste an hour commuting, can eat lunch quickly and healthily, don’t have to wear business clothes, and I’m not distracted by anything. I can crank up some music and just go at at.

On the other hand, there ARE some things that can’t be done effectively by E-mail. I find a lot of my co-workers aren’t very good at writing E-mails, or else just don’t want to make decisions, so I’ll carefully put together a coherent, succint E-mail that lays out an issue and calls for a specific type of answer or decision, and get something back that doesn’t convey anything, like “ok that sounds good.”

I also can’t socialize with people if I’m not there, which is important. It may be a hassle in terms of raw productivity but it’s important in terms of marketing myself to the company as a friendly guy, which always pays off when you need a favor.

14

I’ve been working from home the vast majority of the past 22 years* doing court transcription, and I love it. I’ve developed far more self-discipline than I ever thought I’d be able to, but also appreciate the flexibility of not punching someone else’s clock. Being a natural night owl, some of my most productive hours are actually not during the day, when the phone is ringing, the dogs need to get fed and go out and come back in and go out and etc., and errands need to be run when the stores aren’t crowded; instead, I find that between 11 pm and 2 am is ideal. Everybody else is asleep, no phones, no errands, nothing even remotely interesting on TV, no distractions of any kind. I can get more productive work done in those three hours than I can all day.

So I’ve gradually worked out a schedule that works for me, since my deadlines are usually days or weeks not, not right this minute (although I occasionally have those, but fortunately not too often). I sleep in a bit, get up and feel rested, and work until early to mid afternoon; then I take the dogs out to play, run errands, schedule doctor or dentist appointments, etc. And then I take a break till mid evening so I can watch a little TV, or if there’s nothing on go straight back to work after Jeopardy, and work until 2 am.

For me, the drawbacks are that I do tend to work more hours than I would in an office, and there are days when I just don’t wanna work and there’s nothing and nobody available to make me. But the drawbacks are far outweighed by the benefits – working to my own circadian rhythms, taking breaks when I want to, taking days off whenever I feel like it.

It’s not for everybody, but it’s definitely for me.

*I only worked in an office when Papa Tiger was under threat of layoff and we needed backup benefits. I went back to working at home the instant I could, though!

15

I work from home.

Pros: Flexible schedule, do what I want, work naked, work at odd hours, have sex at work with self or others. Going postal would only harm self. I imagine it would make it easier to work drunk or high.

Cons: Cabin fever, having to motivate oneself rather than be motivated, lack of structure, lack of the peppiness inherent to getting out of the house.

16

I used to work from home and I miss it a lot, but the reality is that I practically became a hermit when I was telecommuting. I rarely got dressed if I didn’t have to, spent far too much time in front of my computer even when my husband was home, etc.

However, now that we have a kid and there are a lot more household duties (I actually have to keep the place clean for him otherwise he’ll get hurt, sick or I’ll lose him in the mound of clutter), I wish I could work from home since I was really efficient when I’d work from home. That freed me to do a lot more around the house than I have time for now.

17

I do at least one day a week, sometimes more.

I like having the option, but I prefer to keep my work/home life separate. It can be easy to both work too much or work too little.

18

I’d telecommute in a heartbeat. My partner works for IBM, which has been a leader in telecommuting. He works from home almost every day.

The long drive is the worst part of my job.

19

I work exclusively from home, also as a medical transcriptionist. From a psychological standpoint, it’s probably the worst possible situation for someone like me, the poster child for social phobia, but it has a lot of benefits. I don’t have to own clothing I don’t like, I don’t have to wear shoes, my commute takes 17.3 seconds, and I can talk to myself without repercussions. The negative side is that some employers tend to believe that because you’re being “allowed” to work at home, you should grant them concessions as far as pay scale, benefits, and so forth. If I didn’t save approximately $300/month in gas by working at home, I could not afford to do it, and I almost never get a vacation.

Given the choice between doing what I do now in an office or at home, I’d definitely choose to work at home. However, given the choice between doing something I really enjoy doing in an office or doing my present work at home, I’d go for the former.

20

Mr. Athena and I both telecommute, and I think we’d both have a really hard time going back to an office. He’s been doing it full time for going on 8 years now, and I’ve been doing it for about five, but for ~1.5 of those years I had a local job with a local office that I spent about half my time at.

I definitely prefer telecommuting. For one, I get a LOT more done at home. People always have this picture of telecommuters lazing about, not really working. No one ever seems to realize that just because people are in an office doesn’t mean they’re working. I used to hate going into the local office because inevitably people would wander into my office and start telling me about their weekend, or I’d head to the conference room for a meeting where the first 20 minutes were spent socializing, or that long-winded guy would catch me in the hallway and there goes 30 minutes. Or the network would go out, and we have to wait for the network guys to come fix it because noone else knows where the key to the server room is. From my perspective, there’s a multitude of ways that the typical office worker figures out how not to work.

At home, I’m either working or I’m not. If I go yammer with Mr. Athena for an hour, I have to do an extra hour of work. There’s no one bugging me about their weekend, and dealing with that asshole co-worker is a lot easier since he’s always a phone call or email away, not in your office pissing you off.

Speaking of offices, I’m very particular about where I spend my day. I want my 40 hours a week to be spent in a pleasant environment, not a cube where I can only see a window if I stand up and strain my neck. I work best in a quiet environment, and if there’s coworkers around, I need a door I can shut.

I especially like having my dog in my lap while I work.

Like ZipperJJ says, the biggest “discipline” thing I’ve had to deal with is people who think that I’m home therefore I’m available. I have just about everyone trained at this point, though, so it’s no big deal. Also, her point on routine is true for me, too. I don’t get up and take a shower before I head out to work; I work all day, then shower and get dressed if I’m heading out for the evening.

What else? Obviously it helps to be an anti-social introvert; I don’t miss the “social aspects” of an office in the least. In fact, that’s a big plus for me - I don’t have to socialize with people I, for the most part, don’t like. Dealing with coworkers who can’t write good emails is difficult, but I don’t have many of them at the moment. Occasionally it’d be nice to be able to get everyone in a conference room to discuss something or other, but it’s not that much worse to do it via conference calls and IMs.

Overall, to answer the OP, yes, telecommuting does rock.