February 23, 2011 at 8:15 am
You can certainly use email, messaging, skype etc as well as the phone, but one huge obstacle I've seen is that way too many people just can't read and write effectively using things like email.
Perhaps they receive too many and it's hard to say if that is poor organizational skills or they are too busy and truly receive too many emails. It can be overcome but I've become a realist about email in particular.
Too often people read the first 3 words and then bounce a question back that was actually answered in the next sentence. Other complain about too much detail. Seems to me if you're in some part of the IT world you need to be able to read and write effectively on technical matters.
Those limitations are what cause many to desire "face time." Sure it's much easier to communicate and make yourself understood in a face-to-face meeting. But often it's just because people are unwilling or unable to deal with the written word. The real question is whether the pressures of commuting and buying expensive gasoline will outweigh the "productivity" achieved when everyone is on site.
February 23, 2011 at 8:25 am
This is a very timely article/topic. I've worked for the same company for many years, and have always taken public transit to get to work. Up until 2 years ago my commute was very nice - lastly only 35 minutes. However, we had to move to a new location and now my commute has gotten worse. It is as long as an hour and a half, one way. That's a real killer on my personal time as well as time with my family. I've brought up the topic, in the past, of telecommuting, and it has been shot down each time. Basically it is shot down because not everyone can telecommute, therefore (so the reasoning goes) no one should. I appreciate this topic, and hope to gain some new, useful and respectful arguments to try it again.
Kindest Regards, Rod Connect with me on LinkedIn.
February 23, 2011 at 8:43 am
Rod at work (2/23/2011)
...I've brought up the topic, in the past, of telecommuting, and it has been shot down each time. Basically it is shot down because not everyone can telecommute, therefore (so the reasoning goes) no one should. I appreciate this topic, and hope to gain some new, useful and respectful arguments to try it again.
Good luck with that. That's the same issue that shut down even discussion of a pilot project for occasional use (childcare emergency etc). Unfortunately since the objection is based on strong emotion rather than logic, logic has little chance of winning out.
...
-- FORTRAN manual for Xerox Computers --
February 23, 2011 at 8:51 am
Indianrock (2/23/2011)
You can certainly use email, messaging, skype etc as well as the phone, but one huge obstacle I've seen is that way too many people just can't read and write effectively using things like email.Perhaps they receive too many and it's hard to say if that is poor organizational skills or they are too busy and truly receive too many emails. It can be overcome but I've become a realist about email in particular.
Too often people read the first 3 words and then bounce a question back that was actually answered in the next sentence. Other complain about too much detail. Seems to me if you're in some part of the IT world you need to be able to read and write effectively on technical matters.
Those limitations are what cause many to desire "face time." Sure it's much easier to communicate and make yourself understood in a face-to-face meeting. But often it's just because people are unwilling or unable to deal with the written word. The real question is whether the pressures of commuting and buying expensive gasoline will outweigh the "productivity" achieved when everyone is on site.
As a father of two yound children, commuting 3 hours a day would not be sustainable. If I were you, I'd frankly either convice my current employer to allow telecommuting... or I'd find a new employer. That's exactly what your managers would do, and they should expect nothing less or more from you as well. Fortunately our profession is more flexible and fluid; we have more leverage and options.
"Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise. Instead, seek what they sought." - Matsuo Basho
February 23, 2011 at 9:23 am
Jeff Hamming (2/23/2011)
I generally work from home 2 days a week. My commute to the office is 1:15 - 1:30 each way. Since I consider door to door time as "working" and start my day working remotely at the time I normally leave for the office - my employer gets at least an extra 2:30 out of me on those days. Though, I will admit, that afternoon nap is tempting sometimes.;-)
My situation is nearly the same; telecommuting 2 days a week due to having an hour and a quarter ride each way.
As someone said, enjoy it while it lasts because managers can come and go along with their policies. Or new decisions get made at a department level. I used to not have this telecommuting right while a team next to us did. Now the policies have been switched :-D.
Our teams are so spread out anyway that even at the office there's only a couple of people whom I can benefit from having a F2F meeting.
Ken
February 23, 2011 at 12:36 pm
The mindset of most managers will never support this at most companies. Most managers I know need to know you are on site to verify you are working. That is reality.:-D
"Technology is a weird thing. It brings you great gifts with one hand, and it stabs you in the back with the other. ...:-D"
February 23, 2011 at 12:47 pm
TravisDBA (2/23/2011)
The mindset of most managers will never support this at most companies. Most managers I know need to know you are on site to verify you are working. That is reality.:-D
Companies have methods of monitoring IT empoyees who telecommunute to work, especially of you Remote Console through their VPN. For example, that Office Communicator applet used for instant messaging within the organization shows your status as 'Available', 'Away', 'In A Meeting', etc. based on monitoring activity on the desktop PC that you remote into. That all can be audited and logged for record keeping purposes. Even if team members don't use the instant messaging functionality, it's still running in the background. Also, when you connect to the internet (from your home PC) while logged into your company's VPN, your browsing is going through your company's firewall and that can be audited too. Of couse, many companies are also doing 360 degree reviews nowadays, where they interview fellow team members or other department members that you are (or at least should be) interacting with on a daily basis. They have plenty of ways of knowing when someone if off the grid.
"Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise. Instead, seek what they sought." - Matsuo Basho
February 23, 2011 at 4:05 pm
What if you are not allowed to tele-commute?
I recommend to take a 15 minutes break every 2 hours, including a 30 minutes break at lunch time.
What do you do during the break? Fast walk, situps or pushups, stretching your muscles, or even a jog. Your productivity will also increase. When you have a nagging problem, go for a jog or a fast walk. You will get an inspiration for a solution to the problem.
Stay away from your monitors on a regular basis. Nothing is more important than your health.
February 23, 2011 at 6:43 pm
Eric M Russell (2/23/2011)
TravisDBA (2/23/2011)
The mindset of most managers will never support this at most companies. Most managers I know need to know you are on site to verify you are working. That is reality.:-DCompanies have methods of monitoring IT empoyees who telecommunute to work, especially of you Remote Console through their VPN. For example, that Office Communicator applet used for instant messaging within the organization shows your status as 'Available', 'Away', 'In A Meeting', etc. based on monitoring activity on the desktop PC that you remote into. That all can be audited and logged for record keeping purposes. Even if team members don't use the instant messaging functionality, it's still running in the background. Also, when you connect to the internet (from your home PC) while logged into your company's VPN, your browsing is going through your company's firewall and that can be audited too. Of couse, many companies are also doing 360 degree reviews nowadays, where they interview fellow team members or other department members that you are (or at least should be) interacting with on a daily basis. They have plenty of ways of knowing when someone if off the grid.
For the most part, all of that monitoring is just as misguided as the need to see people sitting at desks. It misses the point. Unless you're talking about a waitress, someone working on an assembly line, etc., just because you can see someone "working" doesn't mean that anything useful is being done nor does the fact that you haven't a clue where they are or what they are doing mean that you aren't getting your money's worth. In IT the main measure of a worker's value is the quantity and quality of what they produce. If someone sits at their desk 12 hours a day but produces little of value, there's little reason to get enthused over all of the extra hours they are putting in. If I were an employer and found out that I had a worker who was doing great work and just as much as everyone else but was only working one hour a day and goofing off the rest of the time, I would probably give him a raise and try to give him enough work to keep him busy at least two hours a day. I might not even give him the extra work -- particularly if I thought it might annoy him enough that he'd look elsewhere. I might just keep that in reserve for when a project is behind schedule and some overtime is needed.
The talk in here about it being easier to walk over to someone's desk than having to deal with a telecommuter has some truth to it but it also misses the point a bit. If that desk you are walking over to is 20 feet away, that may be an efficient tactic. If it is four flights up or in another building in the office complex, maybe not. It also assumes that the person is at their desk when you want them and not in a meeting, at lunch, on a break, on vacation, home sick, or busy walking over to someone's desk. The sad thing is that, given the advances of technology, the toolset for interacting with remote workers ought to be rich enough that proximity offers little advantage, but for the most part it isn't and the better tools that have been developed aren't exactly ubiquitous.
I remember visiting a company in the 80's who sold an application my employer-at-the-time was thinking of purchasing. At that time our office, like most I knew, had no networks, no shared resources, and at most, telephones and memos for communications. This company, however, had a LAN and the office culture made heavy use of it. When someone needed something from someone else, they didn't walk to their desk -- they picked up the phone and asked them to send them the file/email/etc. or they just sent them an email and waited until they responded. I felt like i'd stepped into the future. It's sad that almost 30 years later we've ventured only a little beyond that.
Even with the tools, I think a change in mindset is needed. We should try to arrange our work such that we aren't constantly in need of instant collaboration. As I indicated above, even if we all sit in the same office, we don't generally get to count on instant collaboration. Asynchronous access is easy to achieve even with basic tools and with better tools arranging for synchronous-collaboration at mutually available times can work well even if the workers are halfway around the world from each other, but just as transcending time zones can make mutually-available times difficult, other factors can do so as well. Things work more efficiently if we can find ways of avoiding the need to have direct access so often.
February 23, 2011 at 8:37 pm
Butts in chairs <> productivity. I have seen plenty of people spending time talking with cube neighbors and not working.
The best measure if someone is working, on-site or off-site, really is looking at thier work. Are they getting the things done that they need to when it is needed> Are they consistently on schedule, ahead of schedule, or behind schedule? You don't need to be sitting in a cube to get your work done, unless you happen to be working on a contract where you are required to be on-site to complete the work, like some DOD/Government contracts.
February 24, 2011 at 5:27 am
The biggest road block to telecommutting are Managers/Boss'. It is a matter of control, for better or worse. I agree, you don't need to monitor folks...if they are getting the job done, reply to emails in a timely manner and are on schedule or ahead of schedule on projects, that is all tha matters. I also consider the case of a company that put thier quality of life for employees first. No designated work hours, allowing them to WFH, pick up kids from school, attend recitals, et al. Productivity SOARED! That is my kind of work place. Of course, there is the matter or responsible adults...not sure if younger workers understand that or not.
February 24, 2011 at 7:04 am
I know most seem to "love" this concept of face-to-face time, but generally as a DBA you are working on multiple items of work at once and you have to prioritize those items.
Now lets say a PM or BA or DEV comes over to you to get you to look at something, but that is not on the top of work items list or you are busy with something = DISTRACTION. One of the most annoying things I find working in an office environment. After helping them, you have retrace your steps and do additional work just to get back to where you were.
IMO that is just not efficient...
February 24, 2011 at 7:16 am
I, too, work in a place where telecommuting will never happen. There's a policy for it, but no one does it or even asks to. We know better. As a result, I'm going to retire the minute I am eligible. I'd be so much happier if I could telecommute a couple of times per week. I'd also work more years.
Luckily, I only live 10 minutes away. Rather than moving out to the burbs, I chose to live in a less fashionable section of town. I'm very happy with this decision.
Walking on breaks is a great idea and I do this. I don't have a window, so I need to get out and see the earth a couple of times a day.
February 24, 2011 at 8:09 am
jay holovacs (2/23/2011)
Rod at work (2/23/2011)
...I've brought up the topic, in the past, of telecommuting, and it has been shot down each time. Basically it is shot down because not everyone can telecommute, therefore (so the reasoning goes) no one should. I appreciate this topic, and hope to gain some new, useful and respectful arguments to try it again.Good luck with that. That's the same issue that shut down even discussion of a pilot project for occasional use (childcare emergency etc). Unfortunately since the objection is based on strong emotion rather than logic, logic has little chance of winning out.
Good point. I'll try to gather as much hard evidence as I can. And I'm not going to propose telecommuting each day; maybe just 2 days a week. But as you point out, it is an emotional issue, not really a logical one.
Kindest Regards, Rod Connect with me on LinkedIn.
February 24, 2011 at 10:05 am
joe in the falls (2/24/2011)
The biggest road block to telecommutting are Managers/Boss'.
Very true. So work on educating them and helping them to be better managers. Give them reasons to trust you, pass on articles that talk about the value from telecommuting.
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