Work From Home option in Job

HurlyBurly

Do many of ye developers work for companies who offer the option of working from home?

I do so myself a couple of days a week and find it essential to work/life balance - but I've come across very few other companies who offer the option. Is it not something that tech firms like?

komodosp

I can understand the distaste for having your employees work from home in fairness. I don't just mean the fear that you'll just flick on the telly (or let domestic chores get in the way) if you're at home, but I am sure bosses like the idea of being able to just talk to their employees face to face without having to get them on the phone or schedule meetings and such. I'm sure it's not great for teamwork to have your employees working from home, you can't just chatter back and forth or quickly call down to their office or something.

srsly78

I usually work from home in Dublin for London hedgefund. At the mo I'm over on 5 week business trip tho >.< It's a small company, and I work closely with my bosses all the time, whether remotely or on-site. Some of the other quants work from america. We are all in London for a "death march" now

amen

I can understand the distaste for having your employees work from home in fairness

Why ? I'm a developer. I can develop just as well from home as an office (in fact have even done it in a airport and on a plane for an emergency fix).

I don't just mean the fear that you'll just flick on the telly (or let domestic chores get in the way) if you're at home

You don't trust me to work at home but you trust me to write code that accessed your accounts, credit cards, trust me to keep your business running and secure.

but I am sure bosses like the idea of being able to just talk to their employees face to face without having to get them on the phone or schedule meetings and such

A lot of companies have geographically dispersed offices. They use the phone, email. My boss can as well. If its really urgent I'll come to the office.

Meetings should be planned as some information needs to be imparted, a design decision made etc.

I'm sure it's not great for teamwork to have your employees working from home, you can't just chatter back and forth or quickly call down to their office or something.

I love the constant interruptions when I'm coding hence why I like to work from home sometimes or what I am often more productive in the office before everyone comes in or is gone home.

At the end of the day I'm developer paid for results not piece work. As long as the work is done, it works, I am contactable why does it matter where I work?

komodosp

amen wrote: »

You don't trust me to work at home but you trust me to write code that accessed your accounts, credit cards, trust me to keep your business running and secure.

Don't take it personally, I'm sure you're a perfectly dilligent employee, but not everyone is. And they are different types of trust. There is a big difference between credit card fraud/embezzlement and taking a few extra breaks for various reasons. Most people would never do the former because it is a lot more immoral than the latter.

A lot of companies have geographically dispersed offices. They use the phone, email. My boss can as well. If its really urgent I'll come to the office. Meetings should be planned as some information needs to be imparted, a design decision made etc.

True, but a lot of companies have offices containing entire teams, and it's handier to be able to just speak your mind while thinking or discuss things rather than constantly be ringing each other / planning meetings. You also get to know each other.

I love the constant interruptions when I'm coding hence why I like to work from home sometimes or what I am often more productive in the office before everyone comes in or is gone home.

I take this is a mix of sarcasm and non-sarcasm... In any case, the boss may not sympathise with your need to be left alone, when s/he or other team members need something quickly done or clarification on something.

At the end of the day I'm developer paid for results not piece work. As long as the work is done, it works, I am contactable why does it matter where I work?

OK, I'm just saying that I understand if the boss doesn't feel the same way as you. For example, working on web design, and often team members can come over to me, point stuff out and we can work towards a change quickly. I'm just saying I can see the advantages with all being in one office.

BostonB

I've had the option a few times when I was contracting. Mainly because I wouldn't do the contract unless they allowed me to do, so as the commute was too long.

Other than that, hardly ever. Current job will let me work from home rarely, for things like bad weather, like the snow, etc.

azzeretti

I work from home 2 days a week and would hate to go back to the office fulltime. I find I communicate more with the people in the office when I am at home. We Skype for voice and IM and its pretty obvious (if the boss was that way inclined) to figure out if I am at the laptop or not by gauging the response time of the voice call or IM. I am doing it for about 3 years now and I don't think I have ever not been at the end of a message or call when the office needed me.

I know one support guy who recently moved, lock-stock, to Japan. He still works, 5 days a week, from Japan on Irish time.

A while ago we figured the company would saved tens of thousands a euro on rent, electricity, rates, insurance, heating etc if they got rid of the office. There was not one single reason we could think of for having an office! Not sure it will ever happen but everything can be moved into the cloud and people don't really need to be in the same room anymore especially with higher bandwidth connections and video calls.

Jim2007

HurlyBurly wrote: »

Do many of ye developers work for companies who offer the option of working from home?

I do so myself a couple of days a week and find it essential to work/life balance - but I've come across very few other companies who offer the option. Is it not something that tech firms like?

Well I work for a large Swiss bank, where they are currently implementing their new work concept, which is due to go live next year. The underlying assumption is that about 40% of the staff will be working out of the office at any given time, so their building up new infrastructure to support this idea and at the same time selling of city centre office locations, the projected savings will be about $25M per annum.

Jim.

Malice

In the last three places I worked, they all had a work remotely option so I'd be surprised to find companies that didn't offer it. While I'm not really a fan of working remotely it was a godsend in the last two winters to be able to see the ice and the snow and not risk having to drive.

BostonB

azzeretti wrote: »

.... I don't think I have ever not been at the end of a message or call when the office needed me...

You need to get out more...

Sparks

IBM have a fairly serious thing for the work-from-home approach (in Ireland at least). Given the age profile of the developers and sysadmins, it's a major boon - half the people in the office have young kids and working from home means that they save a lot on childcare and as long as the job gets done, nobody blinks. (Besides, when most of the people working in your area are in eight different time zones, "normal" office hours cease to be all that important).

It's the anti-startup mentality really. Instead of heroic antics with 30-hour coding sessions, you remember that we're human beings with lives outside of work and make arrangements to chase that "work life balance" thing everyone's on about - and the end result is that things work just as well as before, if not better.

azzeretti

BostonB wrote: »

You need to get out more...

Well, I mean during the hours that I suppose to be working!

Hellm0

I work from home pretty regularly, have completed entire projects without stepping foot inside the clients office. I've found that in development, so long as the work gets done, no one cares where you are.

Yahew

People can "meet" on IM. Meetings can be replaced with conference calls. There is no need to step in the office, except for beers after work. So I am in twice a week. On beers after work day. And pizza day.

Skrynesaver

I work for a company with an Irish HQ but a global workforce:
I work from home 2 days a week, and they are probably the most productive days in terms of code written, it's amazing what you can do when you've no interuptions. Days in the office however are better for collaboration, (sitting in at someone's desk and physically seeing what's not happening for them allow for better mentoring), and also in many ways better craic.

srsly78

It does have it's downsides. My desk gets very cluttered with ashtrays and whiskey bottles etc. Also neighbours complain about the loud music that starts at 9am :pac:

Evil Phil

I prefer a mix of both. Working from home a couple of days a week allows you to get things done without the usual office interruption but going into the office allows you to work next to team-mates and to escape the usual home interruptions. Regular office work keeps me motivated as well.

I know of one Irish company that doesn't have an office, the entire team works from home using a virtual pbx. They have meetings in each others houses or rent rooms if needed. It works for them and keeps costs way down - however they are all experienced mature people, with many years experience behind them.

iDigian

komodosp wrote: »

Don't take it personally, I'm sure you're a perfectly dilligent employee, but not everyone is. And they are different types of trust. There is a big difference between credit card fraud/embezzlement and taking a few extra breaks for various reasons. Most people would never do the former because it is a lot more immoral than the latter.



True, but a lot of companies have offices containing entire teams, and it's handier to be able to just speak your mind while thinking or discuss things rather than constantly be ringing each other / planning meetings. You also get to know each other.


I take this is a mix of sarcasm and non-sarcasm... In any case, the boss may not sympathise with your need to be left alone, when s/he or other team members need something quickly done or clarification on something.


OK, I'm just saying that I understand if the boss doesn't feel the same way as you. For example, working on web design, and often team members can come over to me, point stuff out and we can work towards a change quickly. I'm just saying I can see the advantages with all being in one office.

Without trying to sound awkward, and with the utmost respect, if there are sound project/development procedures in place then there should be very little interaction between boss/developer and any interaction between team members and web designers whereby something is suggested verbally that will be included in a project should be formalised and written down anyway in my opinion.

BostonB

That usually the problem. Places with proper systems and procedures in place for managing projects, have no way of tracking whats done at home, or want to micro manage it.

srsly78

Heheh I administer JIRA from home :pac:

iDigian

BostonB wrote: »

That usually the problem. Places with proper systems and procedures in place for managing projects, have no way of tracking whats done at home, or want to micro manage it.

I work from home quite a bit and I use the company Code repository which includes documentation. I check out the code, I check in the code for all to see. What other tracking do you need?

Sparks

You need other kinds of tracking, usually managed through ticket tracking systems and scrums.
Managers want yet more kinds of tracking, for things like morale, attitude and other stuff that is (a) hard to measure; (b) rarely measured properly; (c) almost never acted on well; and (d) everyone fakes as much as possible because of (a), (b) and (c) :pac:

iDigian

and a waffle tracker, one of those would be handy LOL

BostonB

iDigian wrote: »

I work from home quite a bit and I use the company Code repository which includes documentation. I check out the code, I check in the code for all to see. What other tracking do you need?

My point was place that don't do those kind of things, don't tend to allow working from home. You do and are allowed.

srsly78

There are places that don't use code repositories?

yop

Work from home for a Dublin company now for over a year and its working out sound.
I also work for a Mayo based company who have no office. Skype is great and mobile broadband is backup.

BostonB

srsly78 wrote: »

There are places that don't use code repositories?

Not use them, or use them badly. For example I can be 99% certain than when I get the latest version of the app I work on, it won't build. I'll have to walk around the office trying to find out who has partially checked in incomplete work, before I can get it working again. In 7 yrs I never seen any documentation on any new development or changes. The user manual/help file was out of date when I started, and its never been updated either. So if wasn't in the office I'd have no way of finding out issues. The response from emails and phone calls is so poor, as to be pointless. You have to corner someone in their office to get an answer to anything.

Working from home only is possible with projects you work on independently. Crazy, but there you go.

iDigian

iDigian wrote: »

I work from home quite a bit and I use the company Code repository which includes documentation. I check out the code, I check in the code for all to see. What other tracking do you need?

BostonB wrote: »

That usually the problem. Places with proper systems and procedures in place for managing projects, have no way of tracking whats done at home, or want to micro manage it.

BostonB wrote: »

My point was place that don't do those kind of things, don't tend to allow working from home. You do and are allowed.

My apologies nobody told me it was opposite day.

Hellm0

BostonB wrote: »

Not use them, or use them badly. For example I can be 99% certain than when I get the latest version of the app I work on, it won't build. I'll have to walk around the office trying to find out who has partially checked in incomplete work, before I can get it working again. In 7 yrs I never seen any documentation on any new development or changes. The user manual/help file was out of date when I started, and its never been updated either. So if wasn't in the office I'd have no way of finding out issues. The response from emails and phone calls is so poor, as to be pointless. You have to corner someone in their office to get an answer to anything.

Working from home only is possible with projects you work on independently. Crazy, but there you go.

I'd agree for the most part but I've work on several collaborative projects remotely(though not without problems).

Sparks

srsly78 wrote: »

There are places that don't use code repositories?

Dont.
Mention.
The.
War.

But yes, there are, and yes, they're a nightmare, and yes, horrible things happen, and yes, good devs quit from those places as fast as they're able to...

COYW

komodosp wrote: »

I can understand the distaste for having your employees work from home in fairness. I don't just mean the fear that you'll just flick on the telly (or let domestic chores get in the way) if you're at home

If the boss doesn't trust the employee to act responsibly when working from home then why would they keep them employed in their company?

Work from home myself sometimes and I have to admit that it is a godsend when you are writing code or trying to work through something detailed. A quiet environment where people can't come over to ask you questions every 2 minutes is essential when you are writing code.

BostonB

iDigian wrote: »

My apologies nobody told me it was opposite day.

You should have spotted the typo...

BostonB wrote: »

That usually the problem. Places withOUT proper systems and procedures in place for managing projects, have no way of tracking whats done at home, and/or they want to micro manage it.

My bad...

BostonB

Hellm0 wrote: »

I'd agree for the most part but I've work on several collaborative projects remotely(though not without problems).

I meant my current situation specially. Not in general for everyone. I've worked from home for other companies and contracts no problem.

G-Money

My company provides access to let people work from home however the people on my team don't really use it as a regular replacement for coming into the office. It's handy when the weather is bad like during the winter when we had all the snow and ice.

And to be honest, sometimes I feel like there are a lot less distractions at home. The amount of mobile phones I hear ringing and going off all day long in the office can become very annoying. There's also a lot of foot traffic and people talking loudly which I find quite distracting and I can find it very hard to concentrate.

At home things are a lot quieter so sometimes it's easier to focus.

Malice

Out of curiosity and because I don't think it really warrants its own thread, how many of you listen to music while working? Unless I'm on a call or talking to someone I'll nearly always have my headphones on. I find it does a good job of blocking out all the distracting office background noise.

Sparks

Sometimes. Mostly though, I just have a pair of Peltor Optime IIIs...

Evil Phil

Work from home, outsource your development to a company in India for 10% of your annual salary, play CoD all day.

I'm just saying ...

Yahew

Quite. The only issue there is giving the companies IP away, unless you can discretely package bits of code up.

Yes, I have thought about it.

E39MSport

60% WFH for me

was.deevey

Work from home, outsource your development to a company in India for 10% of your annual salary, play CoD all day.

I have outsourced some stuff to India / Pakistan in the past and for the most part ended in spending more dollar time "babysitting" and disputing the projects than I was getting paid in the first place.... I've pretty much stopped outsourcing any jobs that I know I can do myself.

Indian companies are not THAT cheap anymore either, I've found out stuck freelance western developers working for almost the same rates as some of the indian companies are charging, but at least with realistic delivery times and know that a Table is not something you put your coffee cup on.

croo

Many years ago I worked for a large multinational in the Netherlands. Their offices were so big that it caused huge traffic problems for the town in which it was based. While I was there they trialled a number of ways to address the problem and one trial they ran was to allow people to work from home. As I said this was many years ago and before the internet and not every role was considered but engineers and software developers were considered particularly good candidates, even thought they required a big investment on behalf [in hardware to kept them connected to the company network] of the company. Even after this investment they found that the vast majority of people were more productive from home. It seems when people came to the office the fact they were in the office counted as work, so 8 hours in the office equaled 8 hours of work. But, when they worked from home they tended to only count their productive time so the eight hours of work meant eight hours of productive hours for the company.

matrim

I've worked in jobs that give the option to work from home for one or two days a week (at most) and one downside about working from home can be your hardware. If you are in the office always you can have a nice powerful desktop, 2 monitors etc, while if you work from home sometimes, you'll need a laptop which isn't likely to be as powerful and is likely more expensive.

There's always remote desktop from your laptop to the powerful desktop but then that requires 2 pieces of kit and personally I don't like it as if there are connection issues on either side your productivity is ruined.

COYW

Malice wrote: »

Out of curiosity and because I don't think it really warrants its own thread, how many of you listen to music while working? Unless I'm on a call or talking to someone I'll nearly always have my headphones on. I find it does a good job of blocking out all the distracting office background noise.

In my last job, I used headphones a fair bit and it was great. To be fair, it was a pretty quiet office anyway. Current place is a lot more lively with lots of people yapping all day. At the start I put in my headphones to allow me to concentrate but remarks were passed that it was an ignorant thing to do, so I had to stop.

BostonB

The ignorant thing is to be yapping all day when people are trying to work. The odd chat is fine. But some people never stop. I use headphones a fair bit, I'm much more productive with them as I have no distractions.

As for working from home, I can do it for a while but I miss the social interaction of people at work. I remote into my desktop machine. The connection can be a bit slow. My UPC connection is pretty poor. The other side is tend to start much earlier if working from home. Even with small kids at home its far less distracting than the usual office buzz.

Malice

COYW wrote: »

remarks were passed that it was an ignorant thing to do, so I had to stop.

Wow, sounds like a lovely environment to work in. You have my sympathy. Surely it's far more ignorant to be "passing remarks" about a co-worker? If the music was so loud it was distracting people nearby and you couldn't hear your desk phone or something then maybe they'd have a case for telling you to turn it down. Otherwise surely it's none of anyone's business what you're doing once the work is getting done and you're not distracting anyone.

I remember a friend telling me before that they couldn't wear headphones because they shared floor space with sales people who were on the phone all day and got jealous when my friend put on headphone in an attempt to block out the incessant sales calls. His boss took the view that it wasn't fair on the other employees if the developers got "special treatment".

Evil Phil

Malice wrote: »

I remember a friend telling me before that they couldn't wear headphones because they shared floor space with sales people who were on the phone all day and got jealous when my friend put on headphone in an attempt to block out the incessant sales calls. His boss took the view that it wasn't fair on the other employees if the developers got "special treatment".

I was put on the floor with sales people many years ago, couldn't get a damn thing done with all the banter going on. Wrong place to seat a dev, but they listened to me and moved to another floor. Actually, they moved me into a store room for 2 weeks until a desk was free. The sales people thought this was hilarious, I actually managed to get some work done so I didn't mind. I was kind of funny.

Ludo

COYW wrote: »

In my last job, I used headphones a fair bit and it was great. To be fair, it was a pretty quiet office anyway. Current place is a lot more lively with lots of people yapping all day. At the start I put in my headphones to allow me to concentrate but remarks were passed that it was an ignorant thing to do, so I had to stop.

Jeez...I find that incredible. I couldn't work without having music on. I wear headphones a lot as does nearly everyone in all the development companies I have worked for.

As for working from home....I think it does work as long as the person is in the office at least a couple of days a week. I personally don't think someone working from home permanently when the rest of the team is in the office works that well. There is nothing like talking to people face to face and working through issues on a whiteboard etc etc. Online meetings work most of the time but not as well as everyone sitting down together.

The company I work for currently give the "architects" laptops rather than desktops as they are allowed work from home from time to time. During the last couple of cold weather snaps, the boss was nice enough to email them telling them to stay at home as it was too dangerous to drive...the rest of us plebs were expected to turn up in the office. Well screw that. I demanded VPN access and a laptop when I was due a new pc last month. They finally relented and gave in. Worked from home only twice since then while working on design/documentation and found it much better but I would still want to be in the office during development time.

jester77

My company are nice and flexible, they allowed me do remote office from Oz a good few times last year (gf was living there). But I prefer to be in the office, miss the banter plus our agile board is all sticky notes (old school ) so not so easy interact with it from the house