Haha, cloud computing!
Want to attract top tech talent? Offer telecommuting
111–120 of 182 posts
Re: Want to attract top tech talent? Offer telecommuting
#112Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why can't you sell your house? Your house has already decreased in value, not accounting for the loss in your books doesn't make it more valuable.
No, but if you sell your house you need to come up with the difference between what you sell it for and the amount still owing on it in cash, don't you?
Or you're still on the hook for the balance of the mortgage, depending on your terms. Either way, you're in a very unpleasant situation.
Re: Want to attract top tech talent? Offer telecommuting
#113Earlier quoted context omitted.
Wow. That's a statistic that doesn't get reported nearly enough. It puts an entirely different spin on the unemployment rate.
It could probably afford to be aired in the "is college a waste of time and money?" threads which crop up here every day too.
I doubt it, the correlation does not imply causation.
My hunch is that the people graduating from college are the kind of people that would find it easier to find a job anyway.
Re: Want to attract top tech talent? Offer telecommuting
#114I think I may be in the minority, but I don't think people are thinking of the consequences of this telecommuting push. I like the fact that there is a place where I do work and where I live. I do not want these two places to be the same. Much for the same reason people don't put a television in the bedroom. The bedroom is for sleeping, the living room is for TV. I find that with the remote people I need to work with…
> If everyone starts becoming remote, then what's the point of having an office? If enough companies come to the same conclusion, what's the point in owning a building (from the eyes of a real estate guy). And ultimately, what's the point of having big office parks and so on and on. That's a lot of land and lot of capital at stake if this ever actually took off.
It'll be put to other uses. That's how capitalism works my friend. What do you think happened to all those old factories and warehouses in big cities? People live in them now.
Re: Want to attract top tech talent? Offer telecommuting
#115Earlier quoted context omitted.
Care to share the reason why?
I figured working from home would be great for the first month, and then I would start going mad. And when I asked who was going to pay for my chair, desk and computer, and who would pay the heating, lighting, ADSL and air-conditioning ... it looked like I was going to be out of pocket too.
In Australia you the employee can get a tax deduction for work expenses. If you work from home you can claim partial rent, partial electricity bills, partial internet and so on.
Whereas if the employer pays for these things, they may have to levy a Fringe Benefits Tax on the value of the payments at the top marginal tax rate.
In total dollars it is sometimes cheaper to bump the salary and let the employee actually do the taxman dance.
Of course, I am not a lawyer, not a tax accountant and I don't work for the ATO. Seek advice, YMMV etc.
Re: Want to attract top tech talent? Offer telecommuting
#116Re: Want to attract top tech talent? Offer telecommuting
#117Earlier 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?
Yeah, not really. Strong procedures are frequently a hinderance at that size, so they just don't get put in place.
Re: Want to attract top tech talent? Offer telecommuting
#118In 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…
> Don't you find it gets a bit lonely after a while?
At work we spend 80% of the day pairing over voip and SSH. It's ironic because I moved from California to Seattle because I got tired of telecommuting all by my lonesome from down there, but these days with pairing it doesn't bother me at all.
Re: Want to attract top tech talent? Offer telecommuting
#119Earlier quoted context omitted.
Care to share the reason why?
I figured working from home would be great for the first month, and then I would start going mad. And when I asked who was going to pay for my chair, desk and computer, and who would pay the heating, lighting, ADSL and air-conditioning ... it looked like I was going to be out of pocket too.
> I figured working from home would be great for the first month, and then I would start going mad.
Why not quit after the first month then?
Re: Want to attract top tech talent? Offer telecommuting
#120I 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…
It's a sticking point because being virtual is much different than being co-located, especially when only one member is virtual. If you don't have the experience in managing or working with a virtual group, you're going to be reluctant to get into it.
Aside from some good anecdotal pieces here, research shows that communications are the critical factor of successful telecommuting. Trust is based on communications, and you can't work effectively in an organization without trust.