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.