Live data from Hacker News

A Fifth of Telecommuters Work Less Than An Hour Per Day

theregister.co.uk

21–30 of 60 posts

Re: A Fifth of Telecommuters Work Less Than An Hour Per Day

#22
post #13
post #3

This 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…

From my experience, a day of working from home is about as productive as working a week at the office.

As long as you don't have to respond to email, chats, calls or other questions and don't have to talk to anyone at the office.

Re: A Fifth of Telecommuters Work Less Than An Hour Per Day

#24
post #16
post #12

With telecommuting, amount of time worked != amount of work completed. Chances are, that hour they're actually working at home is getting the equivalent of 8 hours of traditional work-in-an-office work done.

Are there really work environments so distracting that 8 hours in the office equals 1 hour at home? That seems crazy. If so, there's is something seriously messed up at that office. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for telecommuting and did a 100% telecommuting gig for 3 years straight, but there's no way to get a days work done in 1 hour.

I'd say it's unfortunately accurate.

Re: A Fifth of Telecommuters Work Less Than An Hour Per Day

#27
post #13
post #3

This 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…

From my experience, a day of working from home is about as productive as working a week at the office.

Interesting, I would say depends highly on what you are doing, and how self motivated you are. With certain tasks, I feel a day in the office is as productive as a week from home. I also found it weird that everyone jumped on the efficiency bandwagon. I actually know people who work from home, and there are definitely a sufficient number of them who do very little productive work in a given day (not that it is necessarily different in an office).

Re: A Fifth of Telecommuters Work Less Than An Hour Per Day

#28
post #26
post #9

"I'd say in a given week, I probably only do about 15 minutes of real, actual work ."

And that movie was pre-facebook, he was not wasting time on the internet.

Office Space released: 1999.

Size of the Internet[1] in 1999: "Estimates the publicly indexable Web at 800 million pages, 6 terabytes of text data on 2.8 million servers as of February 1999."[2]

Snowclone of a credit-card advertising campaign: Worthless.

[1] back when it was still a proper noun.

[2] Steve Lawrence and C. Lee Giles. "Accessibility and Distribution of Information on the Web," Nature 400(6740): 107-109, July 8, 1999

Re: A Fifth of Telecommuters Work Less Than An Hour Per Day

#30
post #25

As long as you get paid by the hour you should work those hours, be it at the office or at home. If you don't want to get paid by the hour, become a contractor and do fixed price jobs.

Or be paid a salary whilst working in an overtime-exempt position.
Post reply on HN