Re: Need working-at-home advice

[Dan Brinegar <vr2link -at- VR2LINK -dot- COM>]

On Tue, 20 Apr 1999, Bob Morrisette <writer1 -at- SABU -dot- EBAY -dot- SUN -dot- COM> wrote:

>I'll be working at home 4 days a week soon and this is new to me.

>How do you stay away from the refrigerator and TV?
>I know - will power.
>

TV's in the other room, fridge at home is closer to my workstation than the
pop machine or coffee pot at the plant so it evens out.


>Does your boss expect more (or less) output?
>

About the same -- during the best at-home gigs we got tons more done till
we realized we were all working 18 - 20 hours a day... we still got more
done restricting ourselves to "regular" work hours because we didn't have a
long commute to deal with (or recover from 8-).

Sometimes, tho, when having trouble with something it's more difficult to
communicate the severity of the trouble via email (especially if the person
you're trying to reach only checks email every few hours ;-)

It is, however, impossible to be micro-managed at home (and nobody can see
ya pitching a fit over attempted micromanagement if yer at home ;-D

>My contacts with SMEs are now mostly by phone or e-mail,
>but I wonder if they will work with me the same knowing
>that I am at home.
>

Some SMEs are inaccessible whether they're in the next cube or twenty miles
away; then there have been others I could only get via phone or email
anyway...  I haven't noticed that my telecommuting made any difference in
their attitudes....

>I expect to be doing a lot of editing. I've always preferred
>to edit hard copy and wonder if screen editing is practical.
>

I was more motivated to edit on-screen when it was *me* paying for
printer-paper ;-)

>Do your co-workers treat you any differently?
>

Nah, they were usually telecommuting as well...

>Any other advice and pitfalls to avoid will be much
>appreciated.
>

It was "wayyyy too easy to slack off" when things got really slow... and it
was wayyy too easy to work too long... and when the  "office" number rings
to your home number, the calls from european customers ring right thru at
2am...
(My German is pretty bad anyway, the German I can manage to speak coming
out of a dead sleep is even worse: all the more so when the customer is
speaking Dutch ;-)

While on-campus one might not think it unusual to spend most of the day
searching for one particular person: after a while on "Internet time"
waiting two hours for a response from Boss or SME seems intolerable (they
can't just duck into yer cube and say "off to a sales call now! Back in a
few hours!" so sometimes ya just dont know 8-)

The biggest difference for me was the lack of "background info" I'd
normally overhear in an office... and some customers couldn't get their
heads around the fact that I can't just tap someone on the shoulder to get
'em to pick up the phone...

I've worked at home most of the last two/three years, and then worked an
on-site job 36 miles away... working at home is *much* better...  no
throwing my back out changing  a tire, no wondering if I was gonna be this
sick over the next hour in the car...  While telecommuting I took only
three sick days in about nine months.

-------------------------------------------------------------
Dan Brinegar   Information Developer/Research Droid

"Leveraging Institutional Memory through Contextual
Digital Asymptotic Approximations of Application Processes
suited to utilization by Information-Constrained,
Self-Actualizing Non-Technologists."

vr2link "at" vr2link.com   CCDB Vr2Link
http://www.vr2link.com     Performance S u p p o r t Svcs.

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