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If you had the option of teleworking from home and earning a very good income (100K/year) would you do it, or would you prefer to come into the office each day?
I imagine it could get a bit lonely for a single person working from home. The office environment might be more advantageous, just based on the social element. Your thoughts?
I work from home full-time and I love it more than I ever thought I would. I love having the freedom to work whenever I want, as long as I get in 8 hours within an 11 hour time frame. I love sitting here in my robe, and not hearing annoying co-workers. I love blasting music if I want, getting up and eating whenever I want, etc. etc.
I do not miss anyone from the office. I have social interaction with family and friends during the day or evening.
Same here. I don't really care about the people I work with, even the ones I get along with okay. Everyone acts so fake around each other, and having to constantly make fake pleasantries and wear a fake smile around people I don't really care about gets old. I always feel like I'm acting at work.
Like you, I value social interaction with family and friends, people who mean something to me, not co-workers.
Most of my commute is walking (only about 10 minutes of my commute is by train), so that doesn't bother me. I work with a good group of people, and my computer at work runs better and I have two screens. I'm able to get more done at the office than at home.
I love to work remotely. I can work anywhere. For $100k? Ha, hell yeah! But, for that amount, I'll do either option you suggest. I can do either option. Right now, I do both. About 3-4 days in office, the other days, anywhere I choose. I'm in sales. Everything I do is on my computer. I rarely deal with people in person. Its nearly always conversation by email, phone, or fax and Skype for various face to face meetings. Its great. No geographical obstacles whatsoever.
I prefer working remotely. I have done 100% remote and a combination for about a decade already. Looking back, I don't miss commuting or office politics. Yes, working from home can be isolating, but you can balance that out on your own. Spending all the time in traffic/commuting is the #1 reason I like working from home. I like being distant from co-workers as I tend to be shy and introverted. I prefer to have my friends not connected with my work for a variety of reasons. Overall, it is just more professional to keep most anything really personal away from work, remote or not. I don't like buying nice clothes either. I prefer to dress casual and from home, you can wear whatever you want.
From the employer's perspective, I do think not having the face time in the office does matter to a degree for the full time remote worker. Your co-workers only know you from your work and nothing really about you since you are not there in person with them. I think in this respect you are more expendable than the ones who are at the office most of the time. I suspect a few of those same co-workers get jealous of the remote workers. So in some respects (often unseen to fully remote workers), you may have less leverage than you think when are not there in person.
This all depends on the employer...but the general trend would be that if your IM icon is up you are fair game to harass. That is why you work your 8-10 on a consistent schedule and log yourself off after. Some employers are great, some are not, and the not ones will absolutely take advantage of you, both in the office and while telecommuting from home. This is more of a problem with business as opposed to telecommuting.
Many companies, one of I worked for, have "virtual" workforces where there is no main office, or the main office might be the owner and a hr rep/secretary with the rest of the workforce telecommutes from all over the US. So for some businesses working at the office may not even be an option.
I see telecommuting as a growing trend for many classes of knowledge workers. Companies don't have to pay for the overhead of an office, which is a big money drain. The "cloud", though I don't trust it all that much, allows a lot of IT functions like server maintenance to become invisible, video and chat apps make communication a lot easier. And there are other ways to communicate like using 3D avatars that are just getting going that often confer a feeling of place just like facetime does, or at least coming closer to that then video or audio chat alone. As an employer employees don't have to move or be in your city, so you have access to a much greater talent pool. Also as businesses tend to look at a lot of employees as a commodity, virtual employees are much easier to dispose of when a business is done with them. No tearful goodbyes, just auto deposit the last check, have the HR rep give a call, and cut off access for the x-employee to the system. Done. That icon is now grey for a week and then it disappears. Some of the more nefarious business types will like that.
I'm not saying telecommuting is a good or bad thing, in my experience it is mixed. I am saying I expect to see it more for it.
You may certainly have very valid points above, to be sure. All I really know IME personally at the place I work for is, there is an unwritten rule and expectation that if someone Teleworks, s/he is automatically expected to check and answer e-mail, and/or do work outside of standard business hours. This is especially true with managers, but also for rank-and-file, non-managerial employees. Don't get me wrong -- I understand that there are valid times and emergency situations where extra hours may legitimately be needed (and I have in fact myself worked many extra hours, over the years), but where I draw the line is, and while I am willing to work extra hours if needed, I will *only* do so in the office, not at home. For me, work is work and home is home; I do not mix the two. Never have and never will. If I am at work, I am at work, but if I am at home, that is a completely different story. That is why I do not want a work laptop or a Blackberry, do not want to Telework, or anything of that sort -- to me, they are all nothing more than an electronic leash, and represent an infringement on my own family/personal time.
I have absolutely gained weight since I started telecommuting. I also eat higher quality lunches - but maybe too many snacks :-D
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