RE: Long distance telecommuting

["Steve Read" <stephenread -at- earthlink -dot- net>]

> Now here's the story.  My company has been bought out recently, and pretty
> much everyone except Development moved down to San Diego to
> snuggle up with
> the parent company.  The rest of us stayed up here in L.A., land of our
> birth.

I'm longer distance than that. I told my company in San Francisco that I was
quitting to move to Denver. They said, "You might be moving, but you're not
quitting."

> (I may never have to put on shoes again)

Barefoot as we speak.

> So my question is this.  I'm a little uncertain about how well
> this is going
> to work, being so far out of physical contact for fairly long periods.  Do
> any of you long-distance telecommuters have any sage advice on how to make
> this work?

I'm still working my way into this situation. It's been about five weeks,
and we're all trying to figure out how to do it. I've made two trips so far,
and have another planned in a couple of weeks. One thing you must have is
the commitment from the development people while you're there. I'm fortunate
that they dedicate their time to me completely during our scheduled times
together. Unfortunately, I think frequent trips are unavoidable.

I have a laptop, and find that it's almost essential. I can type lots faster
than I can write, so it's great to get information into a file while I'm
talking to people. I can also connect to the LAN and pick up whatever files
I need.

Use the phone a lot. E-mail is nice, but it's no subsitute. We have two more
junior writers, and they call me all the time (and vice versa). I have a
regular phone call scheduled with my boss to keep up to date.

Steve Read