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> I'm in the middle of writing a proposal/whitepaper in an attempt to =
> convince management that I can do this job just as well, or better, =
> without wasting a couple hours each day fighting my way through the =
> looney bin they call a freeway here.
Wow. After reading the other posts on this topic from yesterday, I'm struck
again by how blessed I am with my current job. I telecommute 100%. I've been
with the company for 20 months, now. In that time, I have moved from a 2.5 hour
drive from my workplace to across the country (I just bought a house near
Charleston, SC). I was told when I started that I would travel in for
semi-annual or quarterly meetings on-site, though I haven't been on-site in
about a year (at the company headquarters, that is...I *have* traveled to two
engineers' houses for a few days each to discuss the a product).
The company was quite progressive when it first started up, about 10 years ago.
Our product requires very specialized skills and knowledge (our products
interface with 7 mainframe DBMSs in different mainframe environments), so it
was forced to let the very specialized engineers work from wherever they were.
We have about 50% of our staff in telecommuting locations. If I remember right,
we have programmers in Wisconsin, Massachusetts, Oregon, California, Tennessee,
and admin folks in Illinois. The salespeople are even more spread out.
I've been told unofficially that a 6-hour workday is considered adequate,
because you save 2 hours of wasted chit-chat time a day (though, oddly enough,
they seem to encourage calling each other just *to* chit-chat!). But, I've also
been told that they don't care if I "...work only 2 hours a day, as long as [I]
meet the deadlines." (Which I always have, to date.) I actually do work 8 hour
days, despite what I've been told, but I even get to choose which 8 hours. We
had an engineer who chose to work from about midnight to 10 a.m. He didn't even
typically make it to our weekly phone-in meetings, but would report privately
to the chief architect, who would report for him.
Um...now that I look at what I've listed here, I realize that it's all very
anecdotal, and doesn't provide any information that could really be used to
help you get your management to agree to a telecommuting arrangement, but it at
least lets you know that there *are* some successful 100% telecommuters. At
times, I do miss going into a workplace, but the benefits *so* outweigh the
drawbacks that I never even *think* about looking for something else.
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