Working Remotely

[HavocXphere]

Aren't you married?!

Nope. Secretary is there for work stuff not other stuff.

 

[Sodan]

okay

let's see here

Benefits of working from home
* Less intrusion into your life from busybody bosses
* don't have to put up with co-workers disgusting habits
* don't have to put up with noise at work from inconsiderate QA/Testers
* don't have to smell other people's "cat vomit" lunch
* Far less risk of being spied upon at work

Concerns about working from home


* Work/life balance separation issues
* Disturbances and distractions
* Power and ADSL outages
* Aircon
* Have to use your own equipment often
* Pay for the bandwidth used out your own pocket in other words no compensation for the overheads incurred, so the benefit is somewhat negated
* Difficulty in getting assistance
* Resentment from management, often this working from home thing is the first thing to be blamed when there's a productivity issue.

Under benefits, you forgot the huge benefits of:
* not having to sit in traffic working up to a murder-rage
* monetary saving on no travelling
* time saving on no travelling

The time & money saved more than makes up for using your own equipment, buying your own aircon, paying for your own bandwidth + internet & power failover solutions.

Difficulty in getting help depends on how the company is set up: if they're geared towards working remotely, there'll already be a good solution in place to address this. However, it's possible that junior employees might suffer a bit.

Work/life balances and distractions, however, I agree are real potential problems, and, IMHO, would require some firm management from the employee.

Nope. Secretary is there for work stuff not other stuff.

Ohhhh, kay. See, you didn't explain that before.

 

[krycor]

I think it depends on how well managed & run the company is.. if good then yes.. otherwise no.. in SA I don't think this works most of the time as companies often are not set up like this. Newer start ups are though and the savings make for an attractive proposition for experienced staff.

 

[Solarion]

Do any of you guys work from home? Like as your own business doing programming?

 

[DA-LION-619]

Do any of you guys work from home? Like as your own business doing programming?

Not my own business. But I work from anywhere, I'm not obligated to work hours but I'm generally available.

Also contracting out now, gaining some exposure to working in a office with a team and experiencing a whole new devops experience.

 

[bizy]

In the world of IT - work is not where you are, its what you do !!!!

lol

But seriously speaking, the guys that dnt need to be meeting and talking to people (because the sales reps and project co ordinators do that OR because all communication is via email) there is no need for them to be in the office.

I run a small hosting company and offer 24/7 email support. My techs and support agents are not in my office

 

[HavocXphere]

Ohhhh, kay. See, you didn't explain that before.

Didn't think it needed explaining.

 

[rward]

Do any of you guys work from home? Like as your own business doing programming?

I'm currently working for myself, from home, doing web dev.
I've been doing this for the past 2 years and before that had something with friends of mine, also working from a home office (lasted 2 years).

You get days where you get a lot done and you get days where you pop out for a quick breakfast at 9am and get back in the late evening after having breakfast, watching a movie, having lunch some with friends, going climbing for the afternoon and grabbing some beers afterwards.

Usually I'll be checking emails every so often throughout a day like that and if anything Urgent comes up then I may break off and go deal with it else I'd carry on enjoying the day. The work I was supposed to do I do in the evening until just after midnight.

Being able to do that is why I want to be working from home and not have to be in an office from 8 until 5.

 

[Necropolis]

I work remotely from time to time.

Like today - traffic was really crap - phoned the boss, asked if I can work from home and he was happy with that.

There's nothing that I cannot do from home for work so it doesn't make much of a difference either way.