I think it is also important for in-office workers be allowed to telecommute when needed. Having that flexibility offers a lot of freedom as there are times where you need to be out of the office but can still work. I currently have a family situation where I try and be at my parents' home a week a month and having the option to work from there has been a huge help. It is definitely a big factor in why I would stick around in my current job for a while at least.
Want to attract top tech talent? Offer telecommuting
61–70 of 182 posts
Re: Want to attract top tech talent? Offer telecommuting
#62Earlier quoted context omitted.
The keywords in your post are these: "Strong Procedures". Most startups/tech companies don't necessary have that.
Many of the people involved have been involved in other operations before. "Strong procedures" should be a prerequisite for funding (for those seeking funding), no?
You're really being optimistic.
Re: Want to attract top tech talent? Offer telecommuting
#63I see several comments saying more companies should be hiring remote workers, building their culture to support it, and why aren't they doing it? It's interesting to see the numbers in this article. What's remarkable is that, even after two years of flattish compensation, technology professionals are willing to sacrifice $7,800 on average to work from home The article speaks as if this is a huge amount, but as a chun…
That's not a huge amount. Say you have a mere half-hour commute = 1 hour a day x 250 working days a year, your $7800 turns into $31.20 an hour for the most boring work you'll ever do - even a truck driver usually gets to see different scenery from day to day. And that's if you manage to live a mere half-hour from work, which in any major city is seriously unlikely. If you're good at tech, why would you take a second…
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Re: Want to attract top tech talent? Offer telecommuting
#64I routinely have people begging me to work for them, but probably 4 in 5 clam up when I specify that -- while I'm happy to spend as much time with them as necessary to get the specs and make everyone comfortable -- I will not sit in their office to do the programming. I can not, for the life of me, understand why that is such a sticking point with so many people. Fortunately I have enough people who are willing to wo…
also, they can't keep an eye on you to see that you're not slacking off on company time (the horror of it all!)
Re: Want to attract top tech talent? Offer telecommuting
#65I have failed to understand why someone in India can do my job, but telecommuting is still frowned upon.
I suppose for the premium amount you are being paid, as compared to the Indian worker, being physically present is a requisite. I cannot say, I disagree with the logic myself.
Paying a premium so we can play butts-in-seats and management can feel like they're tending properly to the cube farm...
Re: Want to attract top tech talent? Offer telecommuting
#66Posting another thought here. I have a suspicion that there's enough people in the SF area (and a couple of the the other "big" markets) that will actively fight against telecommuting, specifically because it will lower wages in those areas. As someone else posted, yes, I understand the value of a team being in the same room. But that value comes at a premium price, and it's one which may not always be worth paying.…
how does that work? the people paying the salaries would surely love to get someone who can do the same work for less, and the people receiving the salaries aren't the ones who make the decision as to whether a new hire can telecommute or not.
Re: Want to attract top tech talent? Offer telecommuting
#67I see several comments saying more companies should be hiring remote workers, building their culture to support it, and why aren't they doing it? It's interesting to see the numbers in this article. What's remarkable is that, even after two years of flattish compensation, technology professionals are willing to sacrifice $7,800 on average to work from home The article speaks as if this is a huge amount, but as a chun…
That's not a huge amount. Say you have a mere half-hour commute = 1 hour a day x 250 working days a year, your $7800 turns into $31.20 an hour for the most boring work you'll ever do - even a truck driver usually gets to see different scenery from day to day. And that's if you manage to live a mere half-hour from work, which in any major city is seriously unlikely. If you're good at tech, why would you take a second…
I agree, but the comment was turning the table around and looking at it from the employer's perspective.
If enough employees continue to be willing to commute for a mere 5-15% more in salary, then employers will continue to, quite rationally, pay them to do so.
Re: Want to attract top tech talent? Offer telecommuting
#68I see several comments saying more companies should be hiring remote workers, building their culture to support it, and why aren't they doing it? It's interesting to see the numbers in this article. What's remarkable is that, even after two years of flattish compensation, technology professionals are willing to sacrifice $7,800 on average to work from home The article speaks as if this is a huge amount, but as a chun…
Depending where you're trying to bring developers to, I think you might have to offer even more than that. Maybe if your business is in the Valley, Portland, Seattle, NYC, Chicago, you can find developers willing to come in to the office for a $10k/yr premium over telecommuting positions. But in some less popular parts of the USA talent is much thinner on the ground, and I think you might have to offer even higher compensation to get your pick of the best local people and/or to get people to relocate to your second tier city. (And of course relocating your company to the Bay Area is going to cost "a lot," to put it mildly.)
Re: Want to attract top tech talent? Offer telecommuting
#69My advice would be, talent /= experience. I'm sick and tired of companies being super picky because I don't know their technology stack or maybe just one element, they don't even offer a technical test these days. I wont learn Cassandra or Scala because they are popular on super-webscale sites, I did, though, learn Haskell, Node, MongoDB, Redis, Python, Ruby, not because they teach that in college. I think that tells…
One less to compete against... :)
I know Scala, Cassandra and Hadoop, execute across all of the SDLC, as well as just flat out code, and available I might add. Telecommute only.
Re: Want to attract top tech talent? Offer telecommuting
#70I see several comments saying more companies should be hiring remote workers, building their culture to support it, and why aren't they doing it? It's interesting to see the numbers in this article. What's remarkable is that, even after two years of flattish compensation, technology professionals are willing to sacrifice $7,800 on average to work from home The article speaks as if this is a huge amount, but as a chun…
It's also worth keeping in mind that if you commute 20 miles to work and get 25 mpg, that's more than $1600 per year on gas, so the cut is not quite as big as it looks (though it is still there).
And if you have a family you might get by owning a single car instead of two. I used to live within walking distance of work and we had one car for two years. That's a huge savings.