Not Just At Home

  • Comments posted to this topic are about the item Not Just At Home

  • I agree. Being a DBA I have a wireless laptop and check email and do some work at home plus being on-call 24 X 7 365. Personally I'd like it if we'd work in the office four days a week and have one day a week work from home. The idea was talked about with Senior Management but so far no action.

  • Your are absolutely wright. Telecommuting should not be the rave for the future, but, should be common place today. Effective managers are more concerned with what you accomplish, not where the work is accomplished. I believe a lot of managers are afraid that they might not be needed if telecommuting is a success. And in some cases they are wright for companies that are really top heavy.

    Telecommuting actually provides more benefits than you have described. For our country, if telecommuting was done on a larger scale, the amount of gasoline consumed would go down drastically meaning less dependence on foreign oil. I'm sure alot of our money to buy oil from Saudi Arabia filters into the wrong hands and is being used against us over in Araq. So, in effect we as a nation are sponsoring the folks that we are fighting against. The CEO's of large companies could reduce their overhead with regards to less management, reduction in building expense(employees could share cubicles when coming to the office). I don't think there is a valid excuse for not allowing people who can telecommute(meaning connectivity via the computer) to telecommute. I really think the Federal Government could give out incentives to private companies through grants and tax reductions for companies that allow a certain percentage of their employees to telecommute. I really believe that most private companies would change their tune about telecommuting "in a heartbeat" if the Federal Government would do such a thing. That's why I think our country is really not serious about reducing our dependency on foreign oil.

  • Er... Steve, that should read "happiness" with 2 p's and "makes" instead of "amkes", right? 😉

    As much as I wouldn't mind telecommuting from home, I'm not sure about telecommuting from a Starbucks or another public location. Although there are security measures that can be taken for protecting data over a public network, I'd still be leery about people around me coming by to see what I'm working on. But telecommuting definitely offers the benefits you mention.

  • A few months ago, President Bush said he wanted to reduce fossil fuel consumption by 20%. That could be easy - work from home just one day a week!! Unfortunately, I now work in the health care industry, and our institution's human resourses department just won't approve it. I think it's because there are so many people in the organization that could not take advantage of it -- nurses, doctors and a lot of their support staff. Our department head even went so far as to interview other similar institutions to see if their IT departments allow limited work-from-home opportunities, and sadly, they all said, "No"!

    I find it frustrating because I have been working from home since 1990 and find I am MORE productive because I'm not interrupted and I can really focus and get into the "zone". And I really do want to cut back significantly on my gasoline consumption and time spent commuting.

  • My current company has been experimenting with virtual desktops which could help reduce costs even more -- it just assumes that people have a PC at home already 🙂 We can get several virtual desktops onto one server for a lower cost than purchasing the equivalent number of laptops or desktops. Then from home, we install a VPN client on our home PC and create a remote desktop connection to our virtual desktop. This doesn't help working from Starbucks unless you have your own laptop thouigh 😉

  • Doh, I thought I corrected those typos. Must not have saved it in my ID -10-T moment :w00t:

  • Don't wait for the Federal Government to pass an incentive; they are waaaay too slow. You can have a bigger impact at the state level. Washington (the state, not the district) already has a Commuter Trip Reduction plan, at least we have it in the Puget Sound area. We actually fill out a survey every year about how we commute to work in an average week.

    At my company, telecommuting is an option once you've been here for 6 months (the standard probationary period). We have workers who telecommute up to 4 days a week, and it's not just IT people - it's claims processors, and customer service reps. Heck, if you can route a call to India, you sure should be able to route it 20 miles down the road!

    We could use a better infrastructure for telecommuting; I think there might be some cost savings we could experience, but I'm not up to date on all the options (not my area of expertise). However since we're running out of physical space as the company grows, it would make budgetary sense to have more telecommuters and shared cubicles; hardware and software are usually cheaper than firmware! 😛


    Here there be dragons...,

    Steph Brown

  • Carla Wilson (10/10/2007)


    A few months ago, President Bush said he wanted to reduce fossil fuel consumption by 20%. That could be easy - work from home just one day a week!! Unfortunately, I now work in the health care industry, and our institution's human resourses department just won't approve it. I think it's because there are so many people in the organization that could not take advantage of it -- nurses, doctors and a lot of their support staff. Our department head even went so far as to interview other similar institutions to see if their IT departments allow limited work-from-home opportunities, and sadly, they all said, "No"!

    I hate the "equity" argument - I find it usually gets trotted out when it's just something mgmt just doesn't want to do. Most don't get paged the way we do (we used to get paged more than most doctors in my organization, since there were 2400 of them and 12 of us); most don't get paged at all. Funny - that argument didn't work so well when we asked whether they were treating doctor pay for on-call work the same way as ours: since equity is "king" - the same argument ought to apply everywhere after all...

    I got tired of fighting that war - so I've found somewhere new that actually appreciates my efforts. And - allows for telecommuting. Fancy that:)

    ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Your lack of planning does not constitute an emergency on my part...unless you're my manager...or a director and above...or a really loud-spoken end-user..All right - what was my emergency again?

  • I currently can and do remotely log on to either work or fix problems. Still can't push a button though the screen but can nearly do everything else.

    But, with the company's acquisition earlier this year and the pending conversion to the new-to-us (but older technology) system, remote access is not supported nor allowed.

    I will miss that ability. :crying:

    And so will the salesman and other key staff that work on the road or from home when there is not enough daylight to complete their tasks.

  • My last job was 95% telecommuting. For me, that was actually a little too much. I found that I missed the interaction with the other team members. (Of course, that could be solved with proper setup of online sessions.)

    Now I'm working as a consultant and have a varying mix of in-office and telecommute work time. As long as I get the job done, nobody really cares where I am. In fact, my next assignment may very well be part telecommuting, part commuting to the opposite coast. Now how's that for extremes?

    The key is knowing your strengths and weaknesses (as in everything else) and finding the right balance for you and your work.

  • I am a consultant so of course I don't run into the resistance to remote work the way employees do. I recently moved my business to North Carolina and work out of my Home Office almost exclusively although I occasionally travel to client sites. Under normal circumstances I use remote desktop to remote in to all my clients.

    I use TrueCrypt to set up mountable encrypted drives on my laptop, and I use it to store all sensitive data that I need to carry. I use VPN where provided by the client. Some small shops do not have the experience to get VPN set up so I use Hamachi (the free version) to set up a tunnel between my laptop and the system I remote desktop into on those clients who do not have VPN set up for me. I then use Comodo personal firewall to protect my laptop, in fact I run it on all of my systems even at the office when I am behind the hardware firewall.

    TrueCrypt, Hamachi and Comodo are all dead easy to set up and use. I set up a system at my home office with Hamachi and use a Hamachi VPN tunnel to get there when I am on the road. I can use Remote Desktop on my systems at home to do secure browsing (over a Hamachi VPN Tunnel) while on the road or in public.

    And yes, I get so much more done working at a home office. Having no commute saves an immense amount of time and gasoline. While I don't always work more hours in a day, they are more effective hours. I am also able to wedge in time with my son and daughter, even 10 or 15 minutes here and there during "the work day" so that it just feels like I am home more. I can attend school meetings and do many of the other things that are almost impossible if you have to "go to work" at an office somewhere.

    jwcolby54

  • John,

    We use Hamachi at End to End training to connect remotely. I admit that I was a little worried about security with that project, but it's worked well and no issues so far. My partner loves it!

    A few links:

    Hamichi Wikipedia

    Steve Gibson's Review (#18)

  • About six months ago work from home was taken away from me and my staff. So, as the editorial said, I don't check my email or monitor the network's health outside of working hours any more. (After all, if I can't work from home when it's convenient for me, then I won't just because it's convenient for my employer.) And the productivity of my staff has declined quite a lot. Imagine that!

    I'm looking for a telecommuting-friendly job now.

    So long, and thanks for all the fish,

    Russell Shilling, MCDBA, MCSA 2K3, MCSE 2K3

  • I don't blame you for looking for other work. The telecommuting option seems to be a plus for everyone effected(reduction of dependency on foreign oil, the need for less building space to house employees and other overhead associated with having a building, etc. etc). Like I said in my original reply, if tax credits and grants were given to

    businesses based off a certain percentage of the work force telecommuting, companies and state governments

    would do this in a "heartbeat". That's why I don't think any of our politicans are really interested in the reduction

    of our dependency on foreign oil. Samething goes for the evironmentalists, they don't pitch this telecommuting

    thing either! One things for sure you can't trust politicans(democrat or republican).

    Good luck finding a telecommuting job.

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