The Virtual Office
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When I was last looking for a job, I considered working for someRemote DBA firm since I could work at home and still be a DBA. It's still something I consider, though I'd hope I could get 10 or 20 clients that needed just a little work and do it myself from home. When I saw this debate on the virtual office, it made me think back to those jobs.
I've long been an advocate of telecommutting, either getting it approved in an interview or slowly working on managers over time. I do think that face to face time is important and there are nuances and body language that are important to building a strong team, but I don't think telecommuting rules this out. It means that you have to schedule trips to the office on a regular basis and you need to be sure that you are getting your work done on time.
Now this site runs as a virtual company. Brian, Andy, and myself all live in three different cities, across 2 states, and don't really have an office. The three of us have built this as a business using various laptops and PO boxes, and even rarely get together in person. That makes things difficult at times, but it's also been an interesting and fascinating journey.
I don't think that the virtual company is for everyone or that every company should implement it. But it is a tool, like any other we have in business, and shouldn't be discounted either. Use it in places it works and prevent it where it doesn't.
And if you want to try it, make a case for your boss. Set yourself up for success by taking steps to be sure you can get work done, you have a place to work, and you have a way to show that you're working. I wouldn't recommend it as a full time situation for most companies or employees, but I think it can be very effective 2-3 days a week.
Steve Jones
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Steve,
There is a lot to be said for working from home, and in most situations I would agree with you. Some of the things that a DBA may want to consider before trying to make this change would be:
Kids - Do you have kids that live at the house with you? You know those cute little things that suck the money out of your bank account every chance they get. A lot of times they don't understand that Mommy or Daddy is working and that is not the best time to chat with them.
Honey Do's - No I love my spouse as much as everyone else does. Ok, maybe more. but the point here is that I am sure that most of us have a list of things that we need or want to get done around the house. Make sure that work time is work time.
Hours - When you remove commute time and lunch time and just time away from your desk. The silence of working from home can make it very easy to forget what time it is. Next thing you know you have put in a 15 hour day. And now the kids are really missing you.
I guess what I am trying to say is more or less what Steve said. It can be done and it can be nice. But you have to make sure that you and your family are ready.
Chris Shaw
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As someone who has worked full time from home for the past 16 years (Yes, I'm self employed.), my observations:
1.) have a dedicated work area... Someplace where you can turn the lights out at night and 'go home'. It's WAY too easy for us to get tied up in projects and forget about simple family pleasures... Changing diapers, doing laundry, mowing the lawn... Oh, I forgot, I don't know how to do any of those things!
2.) Have an IP phone or distinctive ringing on your telephone so you can tell business calls from personal ones.
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Where I work we can get permission to work from home, especially if there's a critical suspense due. For instance, when I have had to write code to build something to meet a security audit requirement, I've been allowed to remote in. But typically the bank wants to see our bright, smiling faces. The bank places a lot of stock on going to talk to people face-to-face to eliminate communications issues. Which reminds me of a blog post from yesterday:
MVP Raymond Lewallen: Communication is key - why I was misunderstood
K. Brian Kelley
@kbriankelley -
My company allows and encourages telecommuting in many areas of the business - not just IT. Chris made some good points about preparing for working at home. And spouses can interrupt as much as kids can!
I work from home sporadically, since I live only 5 miles from work. I just push the "home stuff" down to one end of the desk to clear some space, and then I close the door. The understanding in my house is that when that door is closed, I'm "at work" (tho I occasionally have to remind someone).
Right now, I will choose to work from home when I need quiet time to work on a critical project. My cubicle at work is sometimes just too convenient for co-workers to pop into with a question; if I'm a phone call away some questions seem to become less important! The interruptions really decrease.
Which leads to the other side of telecommuting - sometimes co-workers don't want to "bother" you for important items. We remind people in our info-emails to call us with critical items, but hold non-critical issues until we return to the office. And email communication is encouraged, since it allows us to manage our time more effectively. It has worked very well for us, and I'm personally very glad we have it as an option.
Planning is a key to successful telecommuting policy, as well as the flexibility to adapt as needs change. Having a clear policy lets everyone know what is expected!
Here there be dragons...,Steph Brown
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I would like to see some research that on how much gas could be conserved if a significant percentage of office workers worked from home. I believe the savings would be huge. The environment would be spared a lot of pollution as well. In the energy crisis that we are in now, I don't know why this hasn't been part of a government study.
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I think there would be some gas savings, more it would be a personal savings for lots of people. As for the environment, avoiding those plane trips would save way more. If we could cut the airplane trips by 10% that's way more fuel and pollution than a far larger number of cars generate.
As far as working at home, you definitely need a space and you need to be able to move the kids/wife away from that space when you're working. I think being able to mow the lawn or take care of a personal chore during the day is ok, but you need to be sure you're getting work done, making up time, and balancing things despite being at home.
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All of these are good points for working at home. But I am the one that can never work from home. I get distracted very easy. Besides I don't want to spend 24 hours at my house. It is not that I don't love my family but I need other human interaction too. Going to the office to work is a way to know people and interact with people. When you work at home, you only call someone or email someone but most of the time is just for business. But if you work at the office, you can chit chat or go to lunch with your co-workers. How do you like working with all the people in a company but never know how they look like? Also body language is part of communication. The person can say 'Yes' on the phone but is so angry that he is throwing things all over his house. Maybe I am old fashion but I like to talk to people in person.
One of my friend loves to work at home because he wants to spend 24 hours with his family. His kids are home school, so he can have breakfast, lunch and dinner with them. He thinks email and phone call is good enough to get the work done and even maintain friendship. Do you like to have a friend that you can only contact by email and phone ? That is friendship ?!
I think I am out of the subject !
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I have plenty of friends and a very rich and active social life that has absolutely nothing to do with work.
My work associates are strictly that. I'm cordial but it is a business relationship. I neither want or need to have "friends" from work.
I've always wanted to work from home. Did it once for about 6 months and it was wonderful.
Yes, it can be tricky. Getting the SO to understand that work time needs to be work time (and not make phone calls, run errands, etc. time) can be difficult. But I'm much more comfortable and much better focused when I'm home.
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I recently moved to California and landed a DBA position pretty far from my house...my job is 70 miles away. I do plan on moving closer eventually, but for now my boss suggested I telecommute a few days a week to save on gas and it's working out great. As a DBA I really don't think it makes too much of a difference of whether you're working from your desk at work or from home. I can do everything I need to from home.
I telecommute Mondays and Fridays, coming into the office Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, since those are our heavy meeting days. I'm also on call on the weekends. I do find that I tend to work more on Monday's and Friday's since I have fewer distractions. I love the peace and quiet of being able to work from home- husband's usually at work, kids are at school and no one's knocking on my door to chit chat or ask how my weekend was.
A lot of dba duties need to be done during business hours especially if there’s a deadline or you have to work with other people, but some of the dba work can be done after hours which leaves me some time during the day if I do need to run a kid to the doctor, pick up the dry cleaning or do everyday errands. Sometimes staggering my hours between the day and evening does cause me to work more than the time I would've have if I had gone into the office, but I wouldn't change a thing.
Anita
Thanks!
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Just remember. The extent that you can and do work from home relates more or less directly to the extent you can be outsourced.
G. Milner
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I would like to get back to the economic benefit of this. Let's say that only 1 million office workers in the country worked virtually. If each of those employees spent 30 less dollars in gas per week (as I would), that would save 30 million dollars a month. Multiply that by 52 and the savings would be close to 2 billion dollars per year. I seriously wonder why politicians aren't on this one.
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Maybe in part because the oil and car industries put more money in their
pocketscampaign funds than do the people.
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Just curious, everyone seems to like to work at home. What will the world look like?
First the company doesn't need to get any office space, saves million of dollars. (Maybe they don't need to outsource anymore.) No one needs to drive to work, saves gas money, no traffice jam. No one sees their co-workers, company doesn't need to do any company activity, team building, leadership training or any training.... The city will be quiet. No need to worry the terrorists to bomb any building!
Maybe everyone should work at home. Nice !
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If you go beyond just DBAs and other IT workers, I imagine that there is a huge chunk of the workforce these days that fall into the category of "information workers." For most of these people, telecommuting for 1 or more days a week is actually practical - it could be done right now, with little or no added infrastructure or cost. Who knows, this might be 10%, 20% or more of the entire workforce that now commutes to work every day.
Imagine if we could cut back just 10% on the total number of car-miles travelled by automobile for commuting. The impact on gasoline and other forms of energy would be more than a 10% drop in consumption.
This is something the Federal, state, and local governments should be encouraging right now. Tax credits to employers based on person-days of commuting eliminated would be a good place to start.
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