Does Telecommuting Make You Invisible? 275
jfruhlinger writes "Telecommuting provides many joys, including the ability to stay in your pajamas all day and the chance to work with a cat on your lap. But it does have some major drawbacks, perhaps none so serious as the fact that, if your co-workers are for the most part in an office, they can forget you exist — which means you don't get credit for your work as you deserve."
I think we've been over this before (Score:5, Insightful)
There is probably truth to that. (Score:5, Insightful)
The question is, does the benefit of working from home offset that? Visibility is important to some, not so much to others. It all depends on your plan or lack of it.
Personally, I think a lack of visibility can only help me!
Only and issue where your contributions (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Only and issue where your contributions (Score:5, Insightful)
or your managers are incompetent.
Mod this up. Being there isn't going to keep the CEO's idiot nephew from grabbing credit for your project.
Expanded answer (Score:4, Insightful)
It depends.
Make an effort to be visible (Score:5, Insightful)
I am a telecommuter. I negotiated 80%/20%, i.e. I come into the office 150 miles away once a week. The purpose is to schedule meetings on projects, attend a weekly team meeting, and it gives the opportunity to mingle and see my coworkers.
That arrangement really helps. In addition, I use software that routes my phone extension to my home office (so people don't have to keep my phone# on a post it), I use Yahoo IM for chats, and of course email.
The point is, if you are a telecommuter, make yourself accessible at any time that you would be if you were in the office. If things are quiet for an extended period, make an effort to touch base with your immediate team (speaking from the perspective of a software developer here). Does anyone need me to pitch in on anything? Send a link to a funny or interesting article.
Generally my work is so busy and requires so much collaboration that it creates the necessary visibility, but just be sure you aren't making it difficult to be contacted and embrace the discussions, even mundane ones unless it gets out of hand.
In software dev, also have your screen ready to share for discussion (myriad of choices). I find that helps to collaborate and be more visible to my colleagues.
Rules/tips (Score:4, Insightful)
I work from home every now and then (more often, recently). Last year, I wrote my own rules for working from home [cad.cx]. Are there any other solid ones I should include?
Re:There is probably truth to that. (Score:5, Insightful)
WTF? (Score:5, Insightful)
If telecommuting means you're not interacting with co-workers and being 'seen', then yes, you might become invisible and/or deemed irrelevant. It also might mean you are.
Both my wife and I work from home lately, as the contract I work on is across country and her job went to telecommute-only a couple of years ago. I'm in conference calls, email threads, planning meetings, and all sorts of things all the time. My wife is on the phone a good chunk of the day as well as countless emails and IMs with people.
If you are doing your job in a corner, never interacting with people, and it becomes possible that people forget you exist ... well, maybe that's not the fault of telecommuting. I've worked in offices where there are people who nobody really knows what they do, who they report to, or what their role is -- it's possible to be invisible in the office too, and in my experience if nobody knows who you are and what you do then maybe you're just putting in time and waiting until someone realizes they don't know what they pay you for.
Not saying telecommuting is for everyone, or that it fixes everything ... but I've been doing it for over a year, and it's not like anybody on the project I'm working on doesn't know who I am. They may have only met me face to face a handful of times ... but between email and phone calls, I'm hardly invisible. Quite the opposite, in fact since I was kind of the technical lead.
What kind of job can you even be doing that doesn't call for interaction with your co-workers? If you're regularly doing the kinds of things that normal people do, there's no reason for you to disappear as a teleworker.
Re:There is probably truth to that. (Score:5, Insightful)
I was at a company that allowed telecommuting (and in fact promoted it) but never opted to do so (mainly because I don't have a good quiet space to work from home -- kids and all). Marginal and average workers who worked from home were thought of as "goofing off" and having "reduced productivity". Above average workers were thought of as just average. Those that telecommuted but continued to come in to the office three or four days a week (using the hotel cubes) didn't receive this stigma. Those that worked in the office were seen as more productive because they were visible.
So, yeah, they were "invisible"......which doesn't matter except for during key times -- layoffs, raises/promotions, and project assignment (you want the good ones, right?). But, for those that were skating by, being invisible isn't that big of a deal.
Re:There is probably truth to that. (Score:5, Insightful)
Until the department manager is asked to name people to downsize, nobody in the room remembers the last useful thing you did, and you don't even hear rumors that you should make the case for yourself, since you don't have lunch with your co-workers.
A lot of important information is exchanged over lunch and coffee.
Re:There is probably truth to that. (Score:2, Insightful)
That's easy, it's the fuckup that everyone has to deal with every day. The real worry is that you have a B player who gets seen every day and an equally good B player who telecommutes; then the work-from-home guy is screwed.
Telecommuting sucks the infinite Wang (Score:4, Insightful)
Ive been working remotely most of the time since 1998.
When does the boss take me out to lunch with the team? Never.
A beer after work on Fridays? Nope.
Project tshirts? Nada.
Don't think telecommuting is paradise. It's not.
Re:Credit is not everything (Score:5, Insightful)
"Credit is very nice, at the end of the day it is getting the job done that matters"
Maybe to the owners and shareholders but not for anyone else. Having worked under both good and bad managers, and now in a position of leading my own team, I have to say you'd be crazy to ignore this. The worst case is not people leaving your company. The worst case is turning great employees into average employees.
Re:Telecommuting sucks the infinite Wang (Score:5, Insightful)
I've worked in the (same) office since 1997 and I don't get lunch, beers, or t-shirts either.
I do, however, get to sit in traffic for 40 to 60 minutes a day.
Re:Visibility is an issue for all (Score:5, Insightful)
It has been said before here on Slashdot (Score:5, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:There is probably truth to that. (Score:5, Insightful)
Unless the perception is that the 'C' Player is an 'A' Player and the 'B' player is actually an 'F' because he "never does anything".
I knew a few 'D' Players who were treated like they were some sort of bad ass ninjas, just because nobody in charge had any clue how to evaluate them or their work... and the few people who did realize it were less visible and thus got totally ignored.
Ever met a sociopath? You would be shocked at how far just a little charm will take you, especially in the eyes of non-technical people who can't call you on your BS.
Re:There is probably truth to that. (Score:5, Insightful)
Yup, all the deals and decisions are made in the hallway.
It's True (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I think we've been over this before (Score:4, Insightful)
But making my cat happier is worth it, I live to serve.
Re:Expanded answer (Score:1, Insightful)
People won't think about you if you aren't there... unless of course you don't do your work. And even that isn't a guarantee these days. It is like IT, no one cares if you are there unless something goes wrong. And at those times, if the powers that be can't get to you in a way that is convenient to them, they will find someone who is better able to accommodate them.
Rephrase that: If the copier's jammed, or the PHB forgot that you have to hold the Etch-a-Sketch upside down and shake it to "clear" it, or they've forgotten the password to their favorite porn site, then the PHB wants someone waiting outside their door so that they are there in 30 seconds or less. But they never want to pay for that level of service, and the bean-counters never see IT as anything but a "cost center" rather than "essential infrastructure."
Oh, and don't forget: their "gifted nephew", the autistic freak who spends all day playing Call of Duty and is the one who showed Uncle PHB how to get on all those porn sites in the first place, can "fix it in 30 seconds and knows how to set up a home network which can't be that different from our corporate network so why do I pay you people anyways?"
Re:There is probably truth to that. (Score:3, Insightful)
I'd tend to agree with this. Try having a manager who clearly checks out (no email responsiveness, no productivity) when working from home. Then, when you're remote, he's assuming that you are goofing off as much as he would.
It can be worth it, and it can work. Emails turn a bit spammy (roping too many people into a conversation), and status reports matter more than they should. Most managers don't know what engineers do, so their only indication that you're doing work is that you are there, preferably for long hours, preferably visibly busy.
Good software engineers are inherently lazy looking. They don't spray out a bunch of lines of code and then busily fix hundreds of bugs. They consider a good plan of attack, write clear, concise code, and fix very few bugs (because they have very few). This is lost on almost all managers in the tech industry.
This goes double when working remote.
Re:Expanded answer (Score:5, Insightful)
I think it still takes a company with a culture of telecommuting, or even outsourcing, for that to work. If you're the only one telecommuting on your team, and the company doesn't have operations overseas, or outsource anything, then it's much different.
I collect my work-credits on the 7th and 22nd (Score:1, Insightful)
I call my "credit for my work" my "paycheck", perhaps they're expecting too much from their jobs?