Telecommuting availability (was Re: US Professional issues)

["Eric J. Ray" <ejray -at- RAYCOMM -dot- COM>]

At 11:42 AM 10/15/98 -0700, Amy G. Peacock wrote:
>I wonder if once you have done the telecommute thing it would be
>easier to get a telecommuting job? (Kind of a twist on the Catch
>22...) Do you become more trustworthy after proving that you can do
>the job without someone standing over you all the time?

Not measurably, no. With almost three continuous years of
exclusively telecommuting-ish work (one week onsite
since early 1996), including writing 11 books/editions,
various technical editing jobs, several pure writing gigs,
and over a year doing regular marcomm stuff for Digital,
you'd think that the telecommuting issues would be a moot
point. However, I'm not getting many interesting nibbles--
certainly far fewer than I would expect were I located in
the Silicon Valley.

I think Elna's right about the face-time preferences,
but there's an awful lot of skepticism right now about
people actually delivering what they promise (well-founded
in some cases), and requiring onsite presence is one way
that employers can get their comfort level higher.
(Not that I'd concede that onsite work is better or that
employers need worry less about onsite employees, but
having someone physically show up each day can get the
employer's blood pressure down considerably.)

I'd say a side issue, but related, is an incredible emphasis on
tools (more generally speaking, on quantifiable measures of
"suitability" to a given job) to the complete exclusion of all else.
Heck, I've even had a rejection letter from an _agency_ because
I didn't list Perl on my resume. (I'm a competant
Perl hacker--given a script, I can tweak it to do what
I need, but wouldn't call myself a Perl coder, so don't
list it on my resume.) However, given my other qualifications,
"you don't know Perl therefore we won't even keep your
resume on file in case something turns up" seems a little odd
to me.

However...given the experience that Deborah and I have
had with hiring people for non-tech writing positions
lately, I can certainly understand why many employers
would be more than a little skeptical of anything but
a mainstream applicant who would work in the office
just like everyone else.

How to get past the skepticism... I dunno. Suggestions
would be welcome.

Eric
(Yes, I'm still looking--resume available on request.)

*********************************************************************
Eric J. Ray                                        TECHWR-L Listowner
ejray -at- raycomm -dot- com                             http://www.raycomm.com/

Syndicated columnist: Rays on Computing
Technology Department Editor, _Technical Communication_
Co-author of _Unix Visual Quickstart Guide_, _Mastering HTML 4_,
_Dummies 101: HTML 4_, _HTML 4 for Dummies Quick Reference_, others.


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