I know some companies around the world aren't that happy with employees working from home, the problem with this concept is - to my opinion - the word "Home". If you change it to Remote Office, or anything like that, for sure it will sound better to some managers. I have seen some people having success when requesting working "remotely".
I work remotely when I get a chance, and, since I already did it for some time, when I compared the results, they are pretty much the same. However, when I work from home, I have my own "home office", which means, I get the privacy I need to perform as good as I do in the office or even better. When I say better is because my mind is focused on the work I have to do and not the the traffic on my way home, the weather, the colleague in the next door speaking on the phone, and all those distracting things in certain environments.
On the bad side, the only thing I can miss is the fact of interacting with people Face to Face. In this case, I know some people going to work from Starbucks, Barnes and Noble and others. In the extreme case you feel so lonely, get a dog ! My dog Mikey stays with me under my desk while I am working.
I talked this morning to a friend in Brazil and he mentioned he is now working from home 100% of his time which I think is great, specially because the remote work wasn't fully accepted in LATAM. When I moved to the US 2006, I only worked from home 3 or 4 times because I was on vacations and they needed me to do something, not because I could stay home and work.
The Work @ Home will grow up to a point where you will be able to work remotely not just locally, also geographically speaking. Indian companies are already doing it, IBM does it; but at some point - you, as a person, will work for a company in the US and you will live in your own country.
The work environment's world is not flat now but it will be....
The other fact is: If I work from home I am successful ?
My answer to this is YES.
Just one example: many successful IBM Employees (you all know who they are) work from home all the time and travel when requested or if requested.
I remember this guy who went to Venezuela a few years ago for a training, he works for IBM @ Austin and lives in front of the beach in Central America (Honduras I think). There is also this guy from IBM Germany who live 6 months in Europe and 6 months in Miami, FL.
They are all respected IT Architects o whatever their positions is, but the point is, if you are well organized, you like what you do and you're a good professional - it won't matter where you work from.
Thursday, February 21, 2008
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4 comments:
I like this post. I've been contemplating do the same thing on my blog but not sure how my company would feel about it.
My Dog, Bailey, snores under my desk. Tough to explain to the customer sometimes.
I don't work from home now, but I have to support multiple customers sometimes and I don't feel good being at Customer A and using their resources (not time, I mean network, space, etc) while I am supporting Customer B, those days I will stay in my home office.
Mikey doesn't bark ! Just plays around with his toys and sleeps.
How successful you are largely depends on the nature of your job and what you define as success. You probably have heard Woody Allen's quote: "80% of success is showing up". Take your current project... Could you do it all from home? Absolutely. Would you have been successful at completing the task defined in the original SOW? Yes. Would you still be working there and have another person working with you? Probably not.
And I disagree about the IBM. I think the culture of working from home has been detrimental to its culture.
@3
IBM has done a great job having people working remotely and when you say it has been detrimental I think you are talking about a different IBM.
I am a consultant and I work from home for some cutomers, and, most of them actually ask me to work remotely.
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