Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Want to attract top tech talent? Offer telecommuting

management.fortune.cnn.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 182 posts

Re: Want to attract top tech talent? Offer telecommuting

#71

Post by jdp23 »

zem wrote: post #64
jordanb wrote: post #51

I 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!)

agreed, I think lack of trust (or alternatively the desire for the illusion of control) is a huge barrier for a lot of managers and organizations

Re: Want to attract top tech talent? Offer telecommuting

#72

Post by random42 »

cosgroveb wrote: post #65
random42 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

I cant say anything for your management, but my management (actually my immediate boss), is very reasonable. Being a developer himself, he understands what programmers need to be productive. He allows remote work, time to time. In time is as late as 11:30 AM (which is also just because, we have standup that time). In all, a very reasonable person to work for/with/under, who believes in not micro-managing people.

However, co-locating has its own benefits, and I suppose thats why he does not hire remote workers (for permanent positions). We have hired remote contractors in the past, and they worked fine to good, but it required lot of effort on collaborating.

Re: Want to attract top tech talent? Offer telecommuting

#74

Post by jshen »

zem wrote: post #64
jordanb wrote: post #51

I 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!)

But they rarely are able to tell if I'm slacking off in the office either. They can't tell the difference between me working on their code or my own fun side projects.

Re: Want to attract top tech talent? Offer telecommuting

#75

Post by jasonkester »

I've been working a remote contract these last 6 month, and one thing that surprises me is how I bill a lot less hours than I would if I were on site.

If I boot up in the morning, spend 30 minutes trying to get into something, fail and end up back here on HN, I don't bill any time. If I did the same thing sitting in a cube, I'd get paid for it.

The end result is that the client gets a much better deal by having me off site. Works great for me too, since I can justify billing out at a higher rate that reflects the fact that they get essentially all my productive time for the week, and nothing else. Everybody wins.

As an added bonus, if I really can't get started in a morning, I can bail and go bouldering for the day and not feel guilty about it. The bizarro world salaried version of me would spend that same day sitting in a cubicle secretly playing video games on the clock.

Re: Want to attract top tech talent? Offer telecommuting

#76

Post by udp »

edw519 wrote: post #41

In the past 4 hours I have exchanged ones and zeros with people and computers in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Florida, Arizona, California, Germany, Singapore, and India. And got 3 "office days" worth of work done. And I haven't even brushed my teeth yet. :-) You know what telecommuters say, "Once you've deployed a killer app in your pajamas, you can never go back."

Don't you find it gets a bit lonely after a while?

I've been working as a full-time programmer from home for about a year and a half now, and it's beginning to get a bit weird. Aside from not having physical coworkers, I don't leave work, go home and do something else, because work is always all around me. There's this never-ending pattern of 9-5 quickly becoming 2 PM - 8 AM, until I finally pull an all nighter and it resets.

It doesn't help that I'm 100% passionate about what I do...!

Re: Want to attract top tech talent? Offer telecommuting

#77

Post by akmiller »

drblast wrote: post #70
chc wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

On top of that you usually can cut out quite a bit on child care costs.

I left a job I had for 5 years that allowed me to telecommute for contracting where I was expected to be in the office but made about 160% of what my full time salary was. After about a year of that I returned to my previous job and much lower salary to get the benefit of telecommuting once again.

With a family, the benefits of telecommuting (at least to me) are just far to valuable.

Re: Want to attract top tech talent? Offer telecommuting

#78

Post by bphogan »

mgarfias wrote: post #57
bphogan wrote: post #14

I would love to do more remote work, but then I hear horror stories about people having problems not being around people. Feelings of isolation set in after a couple of months, and people end up going to a gig where they are around people. To those doing remote work, is this common?

I've been telecommuting for almost six years now and the thought of going back to an office is terrifying. I would end spending 2+ hours in traffic, be separated from the things that matter to me most (wife, 2yro, two German shepherds) that also provide a bit of refresher when things aren't going well. Good luck playing ball with your dog in an office. Having been at an all-telecommute shop i can say that we ended up…

That's a bit of a worry for me... if you are having those 10pm conversations, how do you draw a line between work and life?

Re: Want to attract top tech talent? Offer telecommuting

#79

Post by Harkins »

Anecdote: I've been traveling for the last three months, but most of my network is in Chicago. I hear from recruiters and hiring managers every couple days and, despite the consensus that Chicago has a "developer crisis" (to use the words of an Obtiva blog post), every single job has onsite only.

Re: Want to attract top tech talent? Offer telecommuting

#80

Post by steve-howard »

udp wrote: post #76
edw519 wrote: post #41

In the past 4 hours I have exchanged ones and zeros with people and computers in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Florida, Arizona, California, Germany, Singapore, and India. And got 3 "office days" worth of work done. And I haven't even brushed my teeth yet. :-) You know what telecommuters say, "Once you've deployed a killer app in your pajamas, you can never go back."

Don't you find it gets a bit lonely after a while? I've been working as a full-time programmer from home for about a year and a half now, and it's beginning to get a bit weird. Aside from not having physical coworkers, I don't leave work, go home and do something else, because work is always all around me. There's this never-ending pattern of 9-5 quickly becoming 2 PM - 8 AM, until I finally pull an all nighter and i…

I almost never _have_ to go into work (though my boss has requested that I spend some time there because others tend to need me for things), but the thought of being alone for a whole day gets me out the door. I love what I do, but people are interesting too.
Post reply on HN