Anyone Telecommute?

[ikarcuaso]

I work from home a couple days a week, but I'm planning to step that up to as much as four days a week (or more) very soon.

Given that, I want to minimize the logistical barriers to my accessibility. I basically want to make exchanging info with others as easy and seamless as possible and not have to use my location away from office as an excuse for not interacting with others or being more productive.

I currently use stuff like VPN, instant messaging, fax, call forwarding of my office extension to my home or cell phone, etc. Can anyone suggest other things I can use or do, intrusive or otherwise? Thanks.

[Sonic dB]

Depending on what business you are in, you may want to
set up an ftp to allow access to sharing files back and forth.
I use this all the time to share files with designers who work
for me on projects. Its a common link where you can upload
and download files freely...larger ones that are impossible to
email. I use Total Commander or my ftp account at Go Daddy.

[azasadny]

I telecommuted for 2 days a week for about 2 years and loved it. I do IT security, incident response, vulnerability assessment (ethical hacking) and computer forensics. It was very productive and career-enhancing. I just found out that I need to have a dedicated office space with no interruptions. Self-discipline and clearly defined objectives really helped, too!

[cstreit]

I've been working remotely for about 10 years now... One company on each coast.

Exchanging files/documents, etc.. is accomplished easily through the equipment that you currently have. The challenge is this... Some times there is no substitute to walking up and handing a guy something to get his attention.

Urgent situations can get fustrating because when you aren't there, your sense of urgency is not always clear (or important) to others.

Everything else can be scanned/faxed/e-mailed.

Your biggest barriers will be discipline and borders though. Discipline because there are a lot of distractions to help you procrastinate. The positive alternative is you can be a LOT more productive because you are relaxed and less interupted. Borders because now, you LIVE in the office. Pick a semi-formal start and shutdown time if you can.

[notfarnow]

I used to work from home 3 days a week. Call forwarding & VPN.

Upside: Very easy to dig into projects uninterrupted. You can really make a lot of headway without the typical office distractions, like chatter and people stopping by your desk. Great for peak workload times when you'd have to be kurt in the office and tell people you're too busy to chat.

Downside: You get out of tune with office dynamics & politics very quickly. I found I was focusing too much on my individual workload, and wasn't as aware of what was going on within my team and elsewhere in the company. You also lose all the context of who's stressed, who's getting divorced, who's mad at who etc… Surprising how important that stuff is. You work with people differently when you know what's going on in their lives.

I only work at home 1-2 a month now. Usually when I'm sick or when there is a project that needs 100% focus. I overfeed the dogs so they sleep a little more and make less racket.

[azasadny]

I like using the time I would have spent driving to/from work to be productive or taking the time at lunch to relax (and post here). I do agree that you can start to feel isolated from the office/staff/coworkers but that may be a good thing! Depends upon the job, company and nature of the work, I guess...

[JavaBrewer]

I work from home 1-2x a week over DSL and VPN. I easily get 2x more done in the course of a day doing this. Unless I'm tag team debugging with another engineer I turn off IM - too distracting.

+1 on the discipline though. On sunny days @ 1:00 pm the motorcycle calls my name...

[ikarcuaso]

Thanks for all the input.

In terms of sharing/exchanging documents, what I currently have in place seems to be more than sufficient. As far as distractions, as long as my workload is steady (and my plate rarely goes empty), getting off track hasn't been a problem.

I'm not so concerned with getting the attention of others or having matters addressed that I consider urgent. I really want to make sure that others do not see me as any less reliable or responsive because I work at home. And I don't want the logistics to impede on the productivity of anyone who depends on me and my work to get things done. I've seen this happen with others, and it's not a good thing.

The biggest challenge I've experienced is replicating the level of clarity, understanding and effective communication that is achieved when discussing/explaining/demonstrating certain things in person versus over the phone, online, via email, etc. For many items, this is not a problem, but for lengthy and/or more complicated subjects, I really want to eliminate anyone having to tell me that we'll go over something "when you're in the office". It's those things that lead to a loss in confidence resulting from one's physical absence.

Anyone have any suggestions or solutions that have worked for them in this regard? Thanks!

[VincentVega]

Schedule time in the office on a regular basis, if at all possible. I havent worked in an office for ~5 yrs and it took a while to learn nothing replaces face to face meetings.

ps. Try not to let your cell phone double as the alarm clock too often

[jluetjen]

Ditto what CStreit said.

- A healthy sense of guilt helps to keep you on track and working.
- In my case, my cell phone is my office phone, but I have an internet phone for faxes and international calls. It's not a great solution for faxes since the packeting seems to significantly lower the fax data quality which results in incomplete faxes. The good news is that very few places depend on faxes nowadays, but rather use Adobe acrobat for sending documents.

[ikarcuaso]

Originally posted by Chris Martin
...nothing replaces face to face meetings.

True dat. But does anyone use NetMeeting or some other web-based/software sol'n with any success (or not)?

Originally posted by jluetjen
- A healthy sense of guilt helps to keep you on track and working.
- In my case, my cell phone is my office phone, but I have an internet phone for faxes...

LOL, I just logged into the VPN, IM, email, etc., and what am I doing?

Although rarely used, I use eFax to receive faxes; arrives as an email attachment. Works fairly well.

Alright, better get my ass to work!