When do we get to stay home? 2

[SpiritOfLennon]

Several years ago as I was entering work after filling my head at school and college, it was widely recognised that within a few years we would all be working at home. Now several years later and with all the necessary technology to allow me to do this, I still find that clients are unwilling to accept that I can work just as effectively from home. I have a proven track record in the industry of achieving results so it can't be that they think I will sit at home and play computer games and yet they insist that I join the early morning rush, sometimes travelling for hours through bad weather and paying one of the worlds highest gas prices. On arriving at work I am quite often left to me own devices to carry out work that I have and I sit wondering why I bothered with the drive. I live in England and would be interested to here how people in other countries see this issue. Is it just the UK, are you all sat at home smiling, busy with your work. When does anyone else feel a change may come and what may provoke it? SOL
"If I'm talking c**p, I'm probably p****d"

 

[iSeriesCodePoet]

Sorry, I think most of us still have to take that trek to work every day. I have the option in inclimate weather to work from home, but in most cases, I am stuck at work. Mike Wills
RPG Programmer (but learning Java)

"I am bad at math because God forgot to include math.h into my program!"

 

[ErikZ]

Personally, I need the work enviroment. I find ways to automate repetitive office jobs and the more I talk to the end users, the better.

Getting out to work also forces me to get out and socialize more. Otherwise I'd stay home all the time. Not healthy.

 

[iza]

i think it depends on the conditions
what i mean is that i live in paris (france), and as we are suppose to have all facilities to go to work in any conditions, i can dream for years before having a chance to work at home
now i used to live in the alps (still in france !), and there, in some places, those that are either hard to reach (especially in winter when there's a lot of snow) or very poorly equiped, many people (in the computer field) do actually work from home, or even better, from a place that belongs to the city/the community (but NOT to a single company), and that is fully equiped. People from any company can go & work in those place.
So i think we're not working from home yet because we don't really need it - as soon as we'll need it you'll see you can
i wish i could avoid taking the underground, i wish i could work at any time, i wish i was home right now and still working .... guess i'll have to move back in the south then ))

 

[Kspade]

what i would like to see is companied offering,typing and other computer related jobs, that can be performed from home, no traveling nessessary, not even for applications or interviews. there is a LOT of things that can be done ofsite and emailed in or even upladed to a corperate web server. all they need to do ia advertize such employment opertunities over the internet, have an online application, b4 "hiring" confirm that the info on the app is correct, perform background checks, then email, or "goodness forbid, snail mail)a welcome letter that outlines what they need to do then send them work loads for the employee to perform. is this too hard? can there be that many loopholes or will this cause profit loss?, they might be able to get away with paying the home user less wages because the transportation maintinance issue is eliminated. I don't suffer from insanity, I enjoy every moment of it.

 

[turnipman]

I read an article that said something like 70% of workers telecommute. I've only known the wife of one guy I worked with who telecommuted. Turns out the company that did the research said if you made even 1 phone call to your office, you were telecomutting. So much for statistics.

I think I need the office environment as stated above. But it would sure be nice to even work from home 1 or 2 days a week. Since I am a programmer I would only need a connection to my company's computer and do the same work.

And with so much e-mail and chats it would be very easy to keep in touch with anyone and everyone in your office when you are home. :

 

[jeannine]

We have several people in our IT department (including myself) that telecommute, but only about one day a week. Some do it on a regular basis, others (like me) work from home when other circumstances dictate - such as a sick kid. Our employer recognizes that in these situations, they can allow us to work from home, or we can just stay home and not contribute anything at all that day. It seems the biggest problem with other companies allowing this is trust - they're not sure they can trust their employees to be as productive at home. It seems to me that if the work gets done efficiently and accurately, a good manager can recognize the work's being done without having to see our face at our desk every day.

 

[RLHarris]

I have my time split between several different clients. I work at a home office that is separate from my house. I also will be on site when a project or assignment calls for it.

The downside is that I have turned down projects with great potential because they would consume too many additional hours, which I've been through before. (My old joke was "I became self employed to work at home, but it wasn't supposed to be after a full day somewhere else.&quot

Working at home can be distracting. There are always a lot of personal errands, calls, etc. Sometimes I still end up working into the wee hours just to catch up on non-productive time during the day. Usually it's hardest during the transition - going from an on-site project to a work at home project. But it really is great to be at home, and the coffee's better. Robert Harris
Communications Advantage

http://www.communicationsadvantage.com

 

[BeckahC]

I would love to work at home....unfortunately if I work from home, it's still considered a day off....

Hope everyone has a Happy and Healthy Holidays and New Year! BeckahC

 

[MikeLacey]

I work at home about 1/2 the time, the rest I'm either in the office or on customer site.

The upside is that I get to see a lot more of our little boy (George, 2 1/2).

The downside is I get to see a lot more of our little boy (George, 2 1/2) <wry smile> He's very helpful... Mike
michael.j.lacey@ntlworld.com
Email welcome if you're in a hurry or something -- but post in tek-tips as well please, and I will post my reply here as well.

 

[Guest_imported]

I want to work and ern money

 

[jexster]

I can see the up side and down side to this on the up side you would get to spend more time with your family this would allow you to put any information in the system at any given time there would be no comuting and your employer would have a reduction on the company bills less utilites if no ones there.But on the down side like it has been stated you may not be as productive at home becuse theres no one there to watch over you to make sure you get the work done and a employer cant really trust people on this becuse there financial gains depends on you whcih means if you decide to slack off it will affect everyone at work.And you know they would hate it if they couldnt see what your downloading come on they have to have something to do all day to look busy.

 

[myselftheelf]

Hey SOL, I do work from home about 50% of the time. I still have my office at work, but it seems that when I get called in at night, it's just easier to stay in my pj's and dial-in. The only drawback I hate about working from home, is that there are no high-speed internet providers offering service in my area. THIS BITES! If I want to surf the web from home, well, I don't. Going from a 45meg pipe, to a 42k dial-up connection, STINKS. It irritates me.

 

[thelabguy]

I think that if they actually let me just dial in to work... I'd probably turn in to a lazy(er) version of myself, sleeping until I felt like it, and pretty much doing as I please. I do have the luxury of dialing up while in nothing but my undies when the pager goes off in middle of the night, but other than that we're all expected to be there bright and early, just to sit in a cubical and log on to a remote server.

Such is life in IT

 

[MikeLacey]

Hmmm <wry smile> it does need a certain change in approach. Mike
______________________________________________________________________
&quot;Experience is the comb that Nature gives us after we are bald.&quot;

Is that a haiku?
I never could get the hang
of writing those things.

 

[garwain]

The only thing that is preventing me from working from home 90% of the time is bandwidth. If I could get a cable or DSL connection at my house, and the company upgrades from a 1megabit DSL to a 3megabit connection, I'll hardly ever leave my house! I often work on webpages from home. I'll get the database set up properly for my changes then the next couple of days will be spent in my home office uploading the pages to the server, however when it comes to writing software that requires a connection to our database I currently don't have the choice (well I could VPN to the server, but I can't stand the waiting while recordsets crawl over the line at 4kb/s...)

 

[Albion]

You know why you can't work from home? Because they can't... &quot;Why should that IT guy get to work in his PJs when I have to put on this god forsaken suit and drive 70 miles a day. No, if I have to drive to work, so does he.&quot;

-al

 

[hattie]

I have been self-employed on a freelance basis since 1997. Since that time I have lived in South Lincs and Norfolk, miles from anywhere really. I reckon to spend an average of 1 day a month on client sites.

I don't see why you all complain, it's not that hard, you just have to have the balls to do it your way.

My clients actually like me working from home. Most of them are so busy they want a self starting resourceful person who can get on with it without pestering them or anyone else in the office.

And just in case your wondering, yes I do have a wife, two kids and a mortgage.

 

[GlenJohnson]

I have the option to tunnel in and do things from home and I do occasionally. My biggest problem is my dial up is soooo slow from home. I check my personal e-mail at work because of the faster access, and they don't mind. Glen A. Johnson
Microsoft Certified Professional
gjohn76351@msn.com
&quot;A pleasant illusion is better than a harsh reality.&quot;
Christian Nevell Bovee 1820-1904, US author.

 

[PTCruiserII]

Paperless office, teleworking, no-wax floors, .NET