July 14, 2016 at 8:02 pm
Comments posted to this topic are about the item The Remote DBA
July 14, 2016 at 11:21 pm
With a few exceptions with regards to actual hardware I can do all my technical work remotely.
However do not underestimate the human factor. Much of communiction is non-verbal (the amount varies depending on the situation and the relationship between the parties) and this is not easily translatable into pure voice such as telephone or text such as email. While a good video conference system helps it's not as good as actually being there face to face.
July 15, 2016 at 12:32 am
Ditto on the human factor. This becomes ever more important when you reach more senior positions.
The point about working extra hours is well made. There's a challenge to achieve the necessary separation between work life and home life. Render unto Caesar and all that.
I don't wear the same clothes to the office that I do at home. There are no dress rules though I think a Mankini might be frowned upon. It's simply that when I take off my work clothes I feel I've stopped work........and can now get on with chores:crazy:
The heating, lighting and equipment costs of home work are mainly offset by the reduced commuting costs.
Security, if not using provided equipment is a concern.
Reliable broadband is an obvious must.
July 15, 2016 at 12:49 am
I started my new job working from home a couple of months ago. I have contracts to work x hours per company, but it is difficult to keep to the specified time. Email, Skype for business and phone is the order of communication and it works well. I only had one gotcha: When I tried to help the infrastructure guy and install SQL 2014 client via RDP. :blush:
5ilverFox
Consulting DBA / Developer
South Africa
July 15, 2016 at 1:30 am
Remote working has it's place for those kind of tasks that benefit from concentration and a lack of distraction. I wouldn't want to do it permanently, or even for most of the time. Face to face communication is very important, and can achieve more in a few minutes than hours of email or IM. Small tasks such as assigning user permissions, or helping developers solve bugs are far easier in person and help to build a team in an industry that has traditionally been people working in isolation.
July 15, 2016 at 1:49 am
It's only now 12 months since I started working in offices again, having spent the previous 4.5 years mostly working from home (I had one year where I spent just two days in the office!).
Benefits of working from home on that particular gig: The coffee is way better at home, the schedule was more flexible in terms of the hours worked (which did work out in their benefit, but...), nobody looked askance if I watch a few training videos while working, and I don't get "drive-by" interruptions.
The downsides were, as others have stated, the lack of face-to-face time; however, my colleagues were also WFH a significant amount of time thanks, in part, to an official edict from On High aimed to address the difficulties with the shortage of parking spaces...
However, much of this was possible because the company in question was enlightened. They provided decent-spec laptop and phone, the work was already remote inasmuch as the bulk of the kit I was looking after was in a data center 100+ miles away from the office, and the senior members of the team were similarly dispersed (me in Gloucester, the team boss in Reading, and my other boss in Texas). The boss wasn't worried about when the work got done as long as it *got* done. (Of course, the bulk of it had to happen between 10 & 4, being related to sales issues...) And, of course, the work I did wasn't predicated on being in an office. If I couldn't connect up to the office network, then they had bigger problems than those that I could solve.
The only real technical problems I had were with my broadband going down (a couple of times - tether the phone, and away we go) and (more regular) the power going out for an hour or so - but a UPS on the broadband router and a decent laptop battery meant I could work through those interruptions.
The personal issues. Well, life goes on in the house around you. I would get interrupted by the dogs when they decided it was time for walkies, which meant that I got out of the house most days anyway. And it meant that I was on hand when my mother was ill, and could be with her when she died last year.
So, on balance, working from home for me was a good thing. Now? Different job, very different environment. WFH works for some, but at the moment, I don't think it would be suitable for my role. Certainly not long-term! Anyway, this office is only about five miles from home. 🙂
Thomas Rushton
blog: https://thelonedba.wordpress.com
July 15, 2016 at 1:55 am
I guess a lot depends on whether you get more distractions at home or in the office, and also on your home commitments. My current employer has people located in around 20 offices in multiple countries and time zones. Remote communication is the norm, and management has an enlightened attitude towards working from home. I work at home on occasion, mostly when I need uninterrupted concentration time. Normally I prefer to work in the office and enjoy the company of my colleagues.
I particularly like having the freedom to work from home at short notice if I have a particular need to be there. It's much better to work from home around a tradesman's visit, say, than to have to sacrifice a day's holiday (especially if the tradesman doesn't turn up!)
July 15, 2016 at 2:01 am
I definitely think a mixture is the best way to go.
Remote can be great for experts as an additional tool but you pick up a heck of a lot from colleagues when you are learning your trade and most of that often comes from casual conversation related to struggles problems each person is having at work. Certainly I've seen myself overhear conversations and offer advice simply because I can see they haven't taken into consideration an obstacle I know more about. Likewise people step into my conversations at work with helpful advice when I might not be expecting it.
I would suggest that organisations should be working towards allowing people to do it. It is a major work bonus for things like family arrangements and I would have thought a relative inexpensive way to improve working arrangements for staff.
July 15, 2016 at 2:01 am
ThomasRushton (7/15/2016)
The coffee is way better at home
Priceless!! And in my case, the service. 😀
5ilverFox
Consulting DBA / Developer
South Africa
July 15, 2016 at 3:41 am
WFH doesn't work for me. I need the separation and the face time. I like the cycle ride to work too.
July 15, 2016 at 5:05 am
When my children were small, I had a mix-DBA-and-developer role, and they were cool about working from home.
It was brilliant that, when the babies/small kids were ill, and the nursery / pre-school called, I could close down my work, and walk out the door without hassle. The sick little one would go to bed and I would log in at home and carry on where I left off - if, indeed, I had been at the office and not at home anyway.
However, for all the reasons above (person-to-person contact, the chores staring at you, etc) I really don't like working at home: mostly because I like the social side of working in a team in an office, and because I like to separate my home and working lives (and ditto on social media: linked in for work, FB for home), perhaps it's the OCD side coming out.
As a coder, one of the biggest problems with working from home was remembering to do anything else. Once I was coding 'in the zone', if I'd left my phone upstairs, I would forget stuff... like the school run. The poor school secretary would ring me at 4pm (when I should have been there at 3.20pm) and say "Mrs Hood, are you going to collect these children..?!". In short, I found it can be difficult to manage everyone's expectations as well from home as it is to manage them from the office (you get more respect if you say you're at work).
Instead, I try to find roles that are close to home (which then means living in SE London rather than 'out in the sticks').
July 15, 2016 at 6:53 am
I work from home one day a week which is the right amount for me. I don't think I could handle working from home full time as I need to be around other people and get out of the house.
July 15, 2016 at 6:55 am
In my first IT job I did occasional days in the home office when I was working on specifications, database design, etc. The work all got typed up when I was back in the office (the company had secretaries then and didn't like developers' mm macros!). I think I was 100% more productive as it was pre-mobiles (we had a few half bricks around the company that could be borrowed for site visits). A few years later I was doing the same using a PC and modem set up.
In the next job it never happened for years as the MD had the view that if your jacket was not there you were not working - well when he was not in he was often not working which resulted in a directors' coup. A year after he went working from home increased as office space was reduced until I was only going in once or twice a month. However I missed the regular contact and was unaware that the company was in severe difficulties until too late! This job meant a train commute into London which is why working from home appealed.
Now I live only a short distance away from work but hope to go over to a degree of home working as later this year I am moving to part-time hours going towards a better work-life balance. 😎
July 15, 2016 at 7:01 am
The ability to do after-hours stuff from home is a god-send, no question. I live 30+ minutes from work, so being called in after hours is definitely non-trivial, especially for those 2 minute things.
Still, working from home has a number of suprizing limitations if you're talking about full time. My company supplies me a laptop, of course, but that's not sufficient for development work (at least in my case). I've been spoiled by having two (different resolution) monitors, the smallest of which is standard HD. At home I only have a single monitor, and to be honest RDT isn't that great on two monitors anyway, even if I had a matching setup.
The other need (for me) is a speaker phone. My cell has a semi-decent speaker phone but it's not the same as a nice desktop phone, which has a great mic and nice volume.
I have done development on a single RDT monitor, but even with HD resolution Visual Studio is pretty cramped, I've gotten spoiled by having a full-screen coding window and three full-sized dialog windows in the other monitor. Single screen feels like roughing it. 😛
Don't get me wrong, we've come light-years from the old days when it comes to being able to work remotely. But it's sort of like the man who complains he can beat his dog at chess 9 games out of 10...we're past the point of marveling the dog can play chess at all, now we're complaining about his skill!
July 15, 2016 at 7:21 am
I am another of those that would not work from home even if it were an option. There are too many tasks around the house that would distract me.
None of them are monumental like painting or sealing the driveway, rather they are mundane quickly done chores. Each one I could easily say "I'll just pause for a couple minutes and take care of X". Suddenly after eating lunch I'd notice that no work had been done yet because I just took "a few minutes" to do some chores. Worse yet is these kind of things always need done, such as the dishes or walking the dog.
No, count me as firmly in the go to the office camp.
Jim Washburn
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