Do you telecommute?

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Tamales
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Do you telecommute?

Post by Tamales »

How many of you non-retired folks telecommute some or all of your work week?

How long have you been doing it for?

I have been for a number of years, as have several colleagues, and it's very strange how every couple years, after some re-org or management change, there is a lingering threat that it will all be terminated for everyone. Do others experience that as well?
mikegerard
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Re: Do you telecommute?

Post by mikegerard »

Have been in the same boat since 2007.

I'm at a big corp that used to make pcs. About 2/3rds of our us population works remotely (some at client sites and some at home).

The company is committed to telecommuting. People are let go all the time.
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stevewolfe
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Re: Do you telecommute?

Post by stevewolfe »

Tamales wrote:How many of you non-retired folks telecommute some or all of your work week?

How long have you been doing it for?

I have been for a number of years, as have several colleagues, and it's very strange how every couple years, after some re-org or management change, there is a lingering threat that it will all be terminated for everyone. Do others experience that as well?
I have been telecommuting a day a week since the late 90's across two different companies. With my prior employer, I was as high as I could go in the organization and still have a 1 day a week telecommute benefit. Had I been promoted again, I'd have lost it. There were always rumors, around re-organizations or layoffs, that the benefit would be eliminated. It was frozen for a period of time except for folks grandfathered in. That didn't work well and it was reinstated at the grass roots level (e.g., individual managers managed it themselves to keep the peace within development teams).

Current employer hasn't been much on the rumor front, though they did also freeze new folks from joining the ranks of 1 day telecommute - and the same grass roots thing happened with managers silently working around the policy and letting new staff have the same benefit if they asked.

Personally, if you are getting your work done it doesn't matter where you do it the vast majority of the time. I've benefited from having strong, capable managers who see things the same way. Other folks weren't as lucky and had managers with the "if I can't see them they aren't working" attitude. Unfortunate.
Carson
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Re: Do you telecommute?

Post by Carson »

I have worked remotely in growing capacity for 12 years. I work at a megacorp in a business support for technology area. prior to my current role, there would be rumblings every so often about changing how often people were in or what levels they would be, etc... So yeah, I feel like that is common. I just say be vigilant and exemplary employee in the WFH and digital collaboration aspects.
HMan768
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Re: Do you telecommute?

Post by HMan768 »

I've been telecommuting for about 2 years from 2 different employers. It's amazing and I hope to never have to go to an office again - although I'm sure someday I will. In my current company I'm the only person in this time zone so I'm not concerned about it being changed. It's a different life but one that I love - especially in the summer. :D
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SmileyFace
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Re: Do you telecommute?

Post by SmileyFace »

I telecommute when not traveling for work (about 50%). I did have an office (or rather cubicle) at our local office and used to go in some days and work from home other but recently gave it up and my manager was glad I did (expenses for me having a spot where being charged to the department). I am now an official work-from-home employee which allows me to charge internet and other expenses to the company (which apparently is cheaper than the company giving me a spot at our local office). It also lets me read Bogleheads.org when on conference calls without anyone looking over my shoulder :happy
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Bammerman
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Re: Do you telecommute?

Post by Bammerman »

I began telecommuting only after retiring from full-time work to part-time (same USG employer). Some of it was satisfying because it also involved a lot of phone work -- in other words, I had a fair amount of actual (if voice-only) human contact. On some projects I had very little social interaction and that got to be a chore, because I'm a fairly sociable sort of guy. I enjoyed the flexibility that telecommuting allowed me quite a bit. I have to say that I missed seeing some of my colleagues. I also have to say that participating in a conference only via a telephone link makes the meetings sound even more stupid and time-wasting than they do in person!
ddurrett896
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Re: Do you telecommute?

Post by ddurrett896 »

After having a baby, I work from home half the week.
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nisiprius
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Re: Do you telecommute?

Post by nisiprius »

I telecommuted one day a week for several years during the late 1980s. Most of my work was done on time-shared VAX, using a character-oriented VT100 terminal. At work, we were connected at 9600 bps. At home, I only had a 1200 bps Hayes Smartmodem, but it worked pretty well.

Apple's MacTerminal software had the most lovingly faithful VT100 emulation I ever had the pleasure of using. Just about every communications software packaged claimed to do VT100 emulation, and most were loaded with features like macros etc. that MacTerminal lacked, but the VT100 emulation was usually lousy. Most did not emulate line-drawing, or double-wide characters. In fact, typically, with anything but MacTerminal, I had to use VT52 emulation because VT52's had a relatively small, crude set of escape sequences, and a host talking to a VT52 didn't try to use anything the emulator didn't know about. The VT100 had a rich set, and if the host thought it was talking to a VT100, it was a crapshoot as to whether the particular emulator actually emulated everything it used.

Not only was MacTerminal close to perfect, but the Mac keyboard of that day actually matched a VT100 keyboard almost perfectly.
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stoptothink
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Re: Do you telecommute?

Post by stoptothink »

Both my wife and I have a lot of flexibility in this respect, it's a blessing considering we have two very young children. The only person I report to travels 250+ days a year, I might see him two days a month, so he really doesn't care how much time I spend in the office as long as I am taking care of my responsibilities. It is more efficient for me to go into the office though because a lot of the projects I manage are close to my office and in the opposite direction of our home. My office also has one of the best corporate gyms I have ever seen, which is amazingly convenient for a competitive athlete. So, telecommuting is usually only 3-5 days a month.
mickens16
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Re: Do you telecommute?

Post by mickens16 »

I work 4, 10 hour shifts and telecommute 1 of those days. At this point I may never leave my position, even though I may end up losing money in the long term, as I would lose the opportunity for AWS and telecommute once per week.
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nisiprius
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Re: Do you telecommute?

Post by nisiprius »

I don't know if telecommuters are using Skype videocalls or anything similar, but I'm using them to learn a foreign language from a native-speaking teacher who lives far, far away--30 light-milliseconds. I am very impressed with how good videocalls are in communicating everything that doesn't get communicated by voice alone. I'd think this would really increase the quality of the telecommuting experience.

In 1964 I went to the New York World's Fair and talked to someone in Chicago via an AT&T PicturePhone. That's the same gadget Dr. Heywood Floyd uses in 2001: A Space Odyssey to talk to his daughter from the space station and promise to get her a bushbaby. (Note to self: find out what that was all about, bushbabies (galagos) are not popular pets in 2015).

At that time, PicturePhone calls had to be made from one of three national offices, booked in advance, and cost $25 an hour. I've never met anyone who ever used one in real life.
Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen and six, result happiness; Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery.
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leonidas
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Re: Do you telecommute?

Post by leonidas »

I have been telecommuting for about 8 years now. I do it 3 days a week and I find that I am very productive at home even though sometimes I feel that I miss out on the Camaraderie and face time with my co-workers. The big benefit it the time I save commuting since my job is in NYC and I live in South Jersey. On a good day, NJ Transit gets me to work and home in about 1 hour and 40 minutes each way. On a bad day....I don't want to think about it. Plus when I am home I take each of my kids to school and pick up the little guy afterwards and they seem to like that.
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Pajamas
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Re: Do you telecommute?

Post by Pajamas »

I worked in a position for several years in which I telecommuted. It is common to telecommute for that position. I usually went in to work in the office one day a week voluntarily just to see the people who chose not to telecommute, get out of the house, go to lunch, etc. I also found that day very useful work-wise for knowing what was going on and keeping good relationships with other departments, the department head, etc. Some of the other telecommuters would come in on the same day. Working in the office was much less efficient for me than working at home.

Then there was a reorganization and layoffs, not of me or my close colleagues, but the head of the department who had started the telecommuting was let go and my group was transferred to another chain of upper-level management.

The new people who were going to be in charge announced they would end telecommuting at the same time everything else was announced. They made a big deal out of ending telecommunicating, but gave no valid reason for ending it.

I left at the time of the regime change because ending telecommuting was just a symptom of the new people's need for absolute control and lack of respect for and appreciation of the employees. Others have left since then.

The phony reasons they gave for ending telecommuting became obviously phony quickly. It was really about a need for control and a lack of trust of the employees.

I won't work for an employer who doesn't respect and trust me.
Atilla
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Re: Do you telecommute?

Post by Atilla »

Yep, full time for many years now. I have a dedicated home office and a corner desk with two computers and three monitors.

I call it Mission Control. :sharebeer
Trev H
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Re: Do you telecommute?

Post by Trev H »

I have been working from a home office since 1997.

It is about 35 miles one way to my corp office and I usually end up "going in" 4-5 times a year.

My company does custom software for specific clients... and the large majority of our customer support group work from home offices. This has worked great for us. We have found that we retain employees much better, keeping that experience working for us... where prior to the work from home arrangement we would often hire someone new that would stick around 2-3 years and then leave. About the time you get them up to speed good, they left and went to work somewhere else.

No threats at all from Management on discontinuing it...

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stan1
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Re: Do you telecommute?

Post by stan1 »

As a supervisor I've had mixed results with employees telecommuting 1 or 2 days per week. Some are clearly very productive with results to prove it, others I suspect are playing Solitaire most of the time and checking email between games.
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cherijoh
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Re: Do you telecommute?

Post by cherijoh »

Tamales wrote:How many of you non-retired folks telecommute some or all of your work week?

How long have you been doing it for?

I have been for a number of years, as have several colleagues, and it's very strange how every couple years, after some re-org or management change, there is a lingering threat that it will all be terminated for everyone. Do others experience that as well?
I have been primarily telecommuting for over 3 years. My current manager is out of state, but I do have teammates that are local - although most also telecommute since only 1 of 4 first-level managers is local. I make an effort to attend any in-person meetings, since this seems to be a hot-button issue around telecommuting. So I end up at the office about 4 - 6 days per month on average.

I switched roles just before my old division cut off the ability to telecommute and brought everyone back into the office (unless they had no local teammates). Several former teammates with lengthy commutes pursued other employment opportunities when they were told they needed to come back to the office.

If I get the "back to the office" directive in the future, I would consider it as a signal to retire - which will happen sometime in the next few years anyway. The lack of a regular commute has kept me working longer than strictly necessary from a FI standpoint.
555
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Re: Do you telecommute?

Post by 555 »

I just stay home and pretend I'm doing work. :wink:
TravelGeek
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Re: Do you telecommute?

Post by TravelGeek »

stan1 wrote:As a supervisor I've had mixed results with employees telecommuting 1 or 2 days per week. Some are clearly very productive with results to prove it, others I suspect are playing Solitaire most of the time and checking email between games.
As a manager I have had mixed results with employees working from the office, too.

I recently switched from working in the office 99% of the time to 100% remote (moved to a different state, 100+ miles from the nearest office). I have a dedicated home office and so far feel more productive than in the office. The majority of my team members were already remote from me (different continents, even), so I am used to not monitoring people at their desks.

And yes, we use Skype-like video chat solutions quite a bit to keep in touch, in addition to more asynchronous or text-based solutions like email, chat rooms, ...
sfchris
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Re: Do you telecommute?

Post by sfchris »

I telecommute 4 days a week, and come into the office one day to make sure I have some face time with my very busy manager. My commute is 1.75 hr each way. There's only one manager in my entire organization who doesn't like telecommuters but he is the guy I might have to report to if my boss retires. So that kind of stresses me out thinking about it because I don't really want to change jobs this late in my career but I just don't think I can go back to commuting in every day and sitting in an office.
harrychan
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Re: Do you telecommute?

Post by harrychan »

Been telecommuting partially since 2003 and switched to full tc when they eliminated out local office around 2007. I got a call from the then director of HR asking if my team would lose our productivity if we lose our desks. Thinking it couldn't possibly be a trick question, I answered no. I have no threat of having it terminated as all of my team / staff are offshore. The threat of layoff is much greater. :/
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