A Fifth of Telecommuters Work Less Than An Hour Per Day
theregister.co.uk
A Fifth of Telecommuters Work Less Than An Hour Per Day
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Re: A Fifth of Telecommuters Work Less Than An Hour Per Day
#2I'm quite sure a large number of people working in an office are truly productive only an hour per day as well. The only difference is what gets in the way of real work.
Re: A Fifth of Telecommuters Work Less Than An Hour Per Day
#3This article seems to conflate "works less than eight hours a day" with "doesn't get the job done." I would expect somebody who doesn't have the distractions of an office or the pressure to appear busy for eight hours regardless of actual workload might get things done faster.
Also, a lot of telecommuters are either intermittent workers (e.g. freelancers) or part-timers, so it's unsurprising that a significant number don't average many hours a day.
Re: A Fifth of Telecommuters Work Less Than An Hour Per Day
#4And somehow we manage to outperform our office counterparts. PG talks about how some people can produce 10-100x more than others and that those who produce 100x should start their own companies. The idea is that you will be rewarded for your huge productivity with huge rewards. The flip side of this is that you could work a normal job from home and work 1-20% of normal job hours and make a decent wage with tons of free time.
Re: A Fifth of Telecommuters Work Less Than An Hour Per Day
#5I really think they should define 'work'. Creative work is much different than, say, assembly of radios. A lot happens when you're away from the computer.
Re: A Fifth of Telecommuters Work Less Than An Hour Per Day
#6I'm quite sure a large number of people working in an office are truly productive only an hour per day as well. The only difference is what gets in the way of real work.
Absolutely. While "Office Space" and "Dilbert" are parodies, they are based on a lot of real-life scenarios. Some days I end up spending the day answering the phone/email/IM or attending meetings that interrupt my programming work.
Re: A Fifth of Telecommuters Work Less Than An Hour Per Day
#7I'm quite sure a large number of people working in an office are truly productive only an hour per day as well. The only difference is what gets in the way of real work.
I'd say 1-2hours of productive work a day is quite common (it fits with my current experience). The difference is when you're working at home you don't have to pretend to be working. So when you've got no work to do you don't have to pretend to read a document. You can go for walk, do the dishes, play with your kids, work on side-project/ learn a new language. Same productivity, happier worker.
Re: A Fifth of Telecommuters Work Less Than An Hour Per Day
#8Note - this isn't "20% of full-time telecommuters are skiving off". Some might be, others might telecommute 1 day a week and use that to do their chores (which might be sanctioned by their manager). Some are freelancers who are effectively unemployed. Others are self-employed, and procrastinating. Some might be students, who have a part-time job they do from home. Some might be full-time mothers, who do the odd job on Mechanical Turk.
Re: A Fifth of Telecommuters Work Less Than An Hour Per Day
#9"I'd say in a given week, I probably only do about 15 minutes of real, actual work."
Re: A Fifth of Telecommuters Work Less Than An Hour Per Day
#10Shouldn't productivity be measured in number of things done where each "thing" is multiplied by a number that represents the difficulty of the task divided by the time taken to do it?
If hours are the chief measurement, then you can stretch things out to make it take more time. I'm sure this is happening in businesses the world over anyway.