Should I telecommute?

Question

I recently moved from biking-distance from work to short-commute from work. I'd like to reduce the number of miles I drive and the hours in transit if I can.

My company allows me to telecommute, so I'm considering that as an option. But I'm concerned that it may limit my career development. (One of my colleagues telecommutes and I suspect her career being hampered because she isn't seen around the office.) Another concern is that I will be less productive since so much of the job involves communication with other programmers, system administrators and DBAs.

What has been your experience telecommuting?

Answer 1

I have been telecommuting for the past four years and I would not reccomend it. You do miss out on alot (opportunities, etc) by not being in the office. Productivity may not go down, but synergy will. Being on the phone is simply not the same as having a face to face conversation with someone, or being able to walk over to someones desk if you have a question. The thing I miss the most though is the socialization aspect of the office. Working alone all day every day can be damn lonely :)

Answer 2

I think it depends on your organization. Each organization behaves differently, I think that if the organization is slow to adapt new trends, the less approval you will receive from it.

Answer 3

What I did for a while was telecommute two days per week. I found that very productive and not at all damaging as I gathered information and opinions from coworkers from monday through wednesday and then thursday and friday usually got "in the zone" and really productive without the office noise.

Answer 4

I telecommuted for two years for my first employer. It was tough to stay focused at first (I'm ADHD) but I did learn to be productive through active self-discipline. Limit off-topic calls and emails, limit blog reading to off-hours, keep the TV off. Luckily my employer was very understanding, and gave me a little leeway while I transitioned. Also my productivity increased when I moved my computer into our spare room and turned it into an office - something I definitely recommend if you're considering telecommuting full-time.

As for career development - I haven't really noticed a difference. It's certainly possible that lack of physical self can have an impact, but I haven't seen that personally - this might be something to take up with HR, if you notice a significant problem.

Hope this helps.

Answer 5

If you can swing it, try it out one day a week and see if you even can. I did it for a bit and the distractions of home (8 year old son home from school by 3, 4 dogs, 5 cats) definitely had a bearing on my productivity.

Answer 6

It might be fashioned to Connecticut but it has some decent information for employees and employers on how to best determine if you SHOULD telecommute as well as ways to pitch the idea to your boss.

http://www.telecommutect.com/homeplate/home.php

Also since I already work in a split office (CT and WA), we have video cameras setup for meetings, along with IM and email capabilities.

Answer 7

Why not do both if you company will allow. I work from home 2 to 3 days a week, and I'm in the office the other days. My commute is about 40 miles each way, so I save a bunch of gas on the days I don't have to drive.

With a good, reliable broadband connection and a good VPN, I find I get a lot more done on my home days, as my preferred method of communicating is via email or IM.

Answer 8

I do not telecommute and I have no desire to at my present company. However some people where I work do telecommute a few days per week. They say that they get more work done at home than they do when they are at work. With IM, email, and phones there's not really a problem in communicating with them.

As far as I know, telecommuting does not limit the careers of the people doing it. But there is a downside in that management keeps very close tabs on what the telecommuters are working on.

Answer 9

As far as career advancement, that's almost entirely a function of how your company/division/group communicates. I've worked with groups that functioned entirely on IM and Email (even when offices were physically next to eachother) and others that relied mostly on face-to-face communication. In the former, telecommuting 9 out of 10 days is fine; in the latter, I'd do no more than 2/10.

To combat the perception that I was not working, I found that I had to be very responsive to emails, IM, and telephone...

As far as productivity, that's a very personal answer. Personally, I was more productive at home as I had fewer distractions, interruptions, and my internet connection is much faster (I am amazed at how much a slow internet connection hampers research). I took shorter lunches (ate at home) and was more relaxed from avoiding a commute.

If you choose to telecommute reguarly, make sure you have a good workstation, proper equipment (good quality ergo equipment), and a distraction free-environment. When someone calls you at home with a problem and they hear the TV and kids screaming into a phone, it makes them question whether you're really working....

Answer 10

If you're a fairly self motivated person and Telecommuting would increase your productivity, I say go for it. Plus, telecommuting opens up many opportunities outside of work. (Yes, there's more to life than work :)) The company I work for happens to rule, and they let me telecommute from another country, and so far it has worked out very well. It is an opportunity that I wouldn't have had if I hadn't chosen to telecommute. Cheers.

Answer 11

We have scrum meetings every other day and product development meetings once every sprint (@ 2 weeks for sprint). Working from home on one of those days is doable, however I gain more being face to face durring those meetings.

Other than those days which meetings are involved, I am hugely benifited by having one day a week at least where I work from home. I can shut out all the distractions, make my own coffee, make my own hot lunch, turn up or off the stereo with all my stuff.

And take a nap if i need one. Seriously. I have taken a nap working from home and written more code than if I had been in the office coding like a zombie.

Then again I have a 1hr comute, for 2hrs drive time each day. So you could say I have more time to give those days i stay home. I don't think it would be good for me to work from home all the time. But some of the time makes it great.

Side not: One thing to make sure you do is be More productive on those days you are home.

Answer 12

It depends on what you spend most of your time doing. Based on my experience, if you spend a lot of time doing "heads-down" coding work and/or you work on tasks where you are pretty independent and don't require a lot of collaboration, telecommuting is great. At a previous job I was pretty much the only coder and when I started working from home 3 out 5 days a week I got a lot more done, and was happy to loose the stress of a long commute every day.

But if you collaborate a lot with a larger team, it can also be very isolating and you can miss a lot of informal but valuable communications that may occur spontaneously in the office. Even working from home a couple of days a week at another job where I was part of a larger team didn't really work that well.

It can also cause resentment if other co-workers don't have the same option. Generally speaking, I wouldn't recommend doing it full time -- probably no more than a couple days a week max.

Answer 13

Well, there's three variants:

1. Telecommuting 100% (as in, there's no option at all to go into the office short of moving to a town where the company has an office.)

2. Telecommuting less than 100% (as in, you can go into the office one day, work from home the next)

3. Telecommuting by choice (i.e., you can go into the office but you choose not to - sort of a combination of the above)

About a year ago I switched jobs. My current job has me in an office, the one before had me 100% telecommuting for two years (there was a local office, they closed it, we all started working from home).

The #1 thing about Telecommuting is figure out whether or not it's for you. About a year in, I started to figure out that I wasn't liking it for various reasons but I figured I was just being stupid since - hey, "I GET TO WORK FROM HOME!" which for a whole lot of people is the holy grail. I figured there was something wrong with me.

Working from home has perks which are obvious - no commute, no boss breathing down your neck, a lot less office gossip, a lot less BS politics, a lot fewer BS meetings because some bigwig is in town, etc. This is to say nothing of all the work you can get done on side contracts since you save time by not driving to/from work and not being beat down afterwards. Some problems though...

• You never leave home. Like, you don't even have the excuse anymore. You can't drop something off at the post office on the way to work because you're not "going" to work. Where I live is like 20 minutes from everything in town so it took 2/3 of my lunch break to get anywhere and back, to say nothing of the time it takes to get the thing done.

• You never leave the office, ever, because the office is home. Unless you're just a meticulous individual with a flair for routine, it's easy to work on something until 7 PM at night to get it done simply because you don't have the people around you leaving to remind you it's time to go home.

• People you interact with who have to work in an office have the illusion that because you work from home you don't do real work, or that your work isn't as hard. Call it "housewife syndrome" - everyone thinks you have it easy (even if your job makes harder and makes more money than theirs does).

• Your social skills do retard a bit. I found myself loathing social situations. And if you're a geek like most of the people on this site (c'mon, admit it) this can be really bad.

• On some weird level you find yourself missing the commute. Sure, being in a car stuck in traffic every day sucks and eats lots of gasoline, but you get to hear the wacky morning DJ shows. You get to get out of the house. You get to see things change around you. Of course on the mornings when it's raining like crazy its kinda nice to be stuck in your house.

• Outside of near-death illnesses, you don't have an excuse not to work. That little cold that's just annoying but contagious? Get back to work - you've got no one to get sick, so no reason not to work. Freezing rain and everyone in an office situation gets to stay home? So do you - working.

So Telecommuting wasn't for me, and it took an extra year (and an unrelated layoff) to finally make me admit that I wanted out and back into a "regular" job. YMMV.

Answer 14

I've been working from home for 3 years now. I think the immediate problem that most people mention when they think about working from home is the being able to focus on work. However, you do become accustomed to this relatively quickly. The problem that then arises is that you never leave work, hence you never stop working. It becomes very hard to distinguish between being at work and your personal life after a while. If you don't have a spouse and/or kids, this is probably not a big deal. But, sitting in your office (and leaving the office and jumping on the laptop in front of the TV does not count as leaving the office, the spouse will still not be happy) all hours of the night just drives spouses crazy. This might just be me, but I have confirmed it with others that permanently work at home as well. You really have to make an effort to leave work in the home office and leave the home office at a reasonable hour.

Also, I do tend to miss an office atmosphere at times. I like the suggestions of spending some time at home and at the office, you can then get the best of both worlds.

Answer 15

We have quite a few devs telecommuting at my company and it has worked out well for the most part. Part of the reason is because our remote devs are all excellent at keeping contact through IM, video conferencing, and regular conf calls.

But this wouldn't work for everyone. If you go remote, you have to make a concerted effort to be noticed if you want to stay on the career path. If you're 20 or 200 miles away and no one has seen your face, it's very easy to disappear into the background noise and never be promoted or given any exciting opportunities.

Also avoid any temptation to save on childcare costs because you are now staying at home and can watch the kids. Its a full time job and will carry all the expectations of one. You wouldn't bring your kid into work every day and expect to get anything done, would you?

Answer 16

I have been telecommuting for 2 1/2 years and personally, I love it. The time gained by not commuting and the flexibility to be able to shift work around has really helped me. I love what I do so being productive isn't an issue and the money saved on gas and insurance is a nice bonus (I put less that 3000 miles on my car a year).

Career impact is unfortunately something you'll need to evaluate yourself though. My firm is pushing more and more people to telecommuting so it's not as much of an impact here.

You definitely miss out on the social aspects (lunch, dinner after work etc.) but I find a quick trip into the office 1-2 times per month takes care of that. Besides, I'd trade the social time for being able to have lunch with my family any day.

Answer 17

Telecommuting is a mixed bag. It takes discipline--both the discipline to do the work and the discipline to set it aside at the end of the day and have a life. I've been doing it half to nearly full time for about 15 years at 2 different employers. My suggestions:

• Have a home office--preferably a room, but at least a desk that is dedicated to work. You don't want work staring you in the face every time you turn around. It is very temptying to just take care of one more thing... You need to organize the supplies and reference materials--do you read manuals (paper copies) or print code listings? Where are you going to store that stuff? Get a good chair and have a desk so that you are comfortable--you are going to spend a lot of time there.

• Figure out the communication issues. We use IM a lot for quick questions. Email is better for things that you might want to reference later. Very few folks call me. They don't want to bother me at home. I regularly remind them that it is ok, I'm working just like they are. There are days when I don't talk to anyone all day.

• Figure out the management issues. How will you and your boss communicate? How much feedback do you need to know you are doing the right things? How will you get questions answered? Do you manage others? If so, how will you do that from a distance? I keep a diary file of what I have done and which my boss also has access to.

• Figure out a schedule. If you have the option of splitting your time between home and office does it have to be the same schedule each week or can you vary it depending on the tasks? I would do programming and unit testing at home, then do integration work at the office.

• Figure out how much structure your day needs--its very easy to fritter away the time.

I'm far more productive working at home than in the office. I've gotten very used to having complete control of my environment. But there is no social life at the office when you work at home. You need to cultivate the communication so you know what is going on. I usually show up at the office for a few hours each week, have a meeting with my boss, check in with folks that are involved in projects I'm working on, catch up on the gossip.

I love the flexibility of working at home. I live in the city so I can do errands on foot at lunch time, but there are days when I never leave the house. Sometimes I start and quit early, some days are long and others are short. I can stay with the flow and cut back on a less productive day.

The down-side is that it can be lonely and isolating. You can't wander over to a colleage and use them as a sounding board. There is always at least a little pressure to have something to show for your time as no one sees you working.

Give it a try and see if it works for you. If not, go back to the office.

Answer 18

Collecting some answers from various sources:

Communication

Since face to face communication is no longer an option, other forms of communication are very important, including telephone, instant messaging, and email. A telecommuting employee should respond very quickly to any form of communication. Frequent contact with on-site employees and co-workers is important. Don't go dark.

Face-to-Face Time

Having at least some in-person work is preferable to working remotely 100% of the time.

Collaboration Tools

Using good source control and issue tracking tools is even more critical in a tellecommuting environment.

Work Environment

• Have a structured work day, with a definite start and end time.
• Have a room or desk that is dedicated to work.

Drawbacks

• Social contact and team cohesiveness may suffer
• People who telecommute may be less likely to advance in the company: Network World article, CIO article

Answer 19

Really a mixture of all the answers above. It works for some and not for others. I am quite happy to work at home all alone. I get more done, there are less distractions, and I save both time commuting and gas/transportation fares.

You need to be discplined in two ways. One to know when to actually work. If you let your mind wander it's easy to be somewhere like here answering these questions instead of doing paid work. The other side to that is that you need to be disciplined enough to quit work too.

I try to encorage all my business contacts to use email when at all possible - there's a 'paper' trail for a start and it's less distracting. However I use Grand Central for my telephone needs, and have my friends and family routed to the magic jack number connected to my home phones, and my business contacts go to my skype line which is at my desk. When I've finished work and I'm not at my desk, I don't get bothered with clients all hours.

All in all, I don't miss the office environment, the traveling, or the BS.

I do visit some clients from time to time at their offices, but I'll concede I do spend a lot of time at home. Oh I save a shedload not buying coffees and lunch etc!

Answer 20

When I was in graduate school, my employer allowed me to telecommute one day a week. I chose a day when I had class in the evening to cut down my driving time. Admittedly, this was one day a week, not full-time. I was able to complete an MBA at night as well as substantial projects at work.

If you aren't around the office at all, I suppose that might keep you from getting more interesting assignments. It might also delay you getting promotions, but it depends on what criteria your employer has for moving people up.

From a productivity standpoint, I was often more efficient at home than I was in the office. Because I didn't have to commute 35-45 minutes, I could start working earlier. Being at home meant none of the interruptions you get with colleagues wandering by. I made an extra effort to get code checked in more regularly so progress was visible to my superiors. For keeping connected with programmers, sysadmins, and DBAs, instant messaging works quite well.

Your concerns about telecommuting are reasonable. I would strongly encourage you to take advantage of the offering. The less money spent on gasoline, the better it will be for you. Time spent commuting is time out of your life that you'd rather be spending other ways.

Answer 21

My old man has been telecommuting 80% of the time for close to 8 years now. When he first started back in 2000, I remember stopping by his place for lunch once. He was in the hot tub, on the cell phone. I asked, "Are you working?" He said, "Yeah, I'm in a conference call with 20 other people". 'Nuff said.