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Re: Securing long-distance contract assignments

Subject: Re: Securing long-distance contract assignments
From: John Garison <john -at- garisons -dot- com>
To: "Tariel, Lauren R" <lt34 -at- saclink -dot- csus -dot- edu>
Date: Thu, 11 Jan 2007 16:22:52 -0500

I've been lucky since I hung out my freelancer shingle to get contracts that allow me to work remotely. Being in southern Vermont, there's not a whole lot of local opportunities, and those that are tend to want to pay local (as in low) wages.

But I've done a documentation project for a company that's a couple or three hour drive away. I went down for a day-long session to get a demo, meet the developers and QA folk, and to get their systems guy to install the VPN client on my laptop. I picked up a CD or three and got whatever tools they wanted me to use loaded, and trundled on back home. I made a lot of phone calls, did a lot of IMing, attended conference call meetings, and connected to one of their servers to get access to daily builds of their application, and in three weeks I delivered a rough version of an online help system that was able to be linked seamlessly into their product. Another three weeks and we shipped V1.0 on time and completely documented. All remotely.

All I can say is that, in this day and age, I can do from my home office everything I could do in a regular office other than go down and poke my head over someones' cubicle wall ... and I can get someone else to do that for me if it's really necessary.

My 2¢,

John Garison




Tariel, Lauren R wrote:

Hey Ken,
I have thoughts, but sometimes my line of reasoning can take a turn to the unusual. As far as the "telecommuting Technical Writer" is concerned, companies, in my experience, are very opposed to the idea. I have been pitched contracts and the recruiter will clearly state that there is no telecommuting when I never suggest that I want to discuss the subject.
I think that a lot of what is happening here, is that many employers are still feeling the burn of the dot-com fiasco where employees would "work" from home and get paid well for it. Employers either discovered or heard rumors that no work was completed, so now managers want to watch people to make sure that they are actually working. I had a contract where I was specifically required to review a contractor's documentation to verify that another contractor actually produced a decent product. So I think that telecommuting is rather frowned upon because telecommuters cannot be micro-managed.
I think a better approach for how to work from home is to think link like an outsourcee. India handles a lot of outsourcing needs and they do not work on-site for the companies that they support in other countries. Outsourcers look to companies that can satisfy their needs without on-site management, e.g.: http://www.outsourceyourlife.com/archives/2005_04.html. Since you have your own company, you might want to set yourself up as an outsourcee and present yourself as a self-managed company rather than a high-risk telecommuter.
Gaining success in the field outsourcing would require you to follow the path of the outsourcer, see where they get their work, and call that your competition. Business requires beating the competition. Once you know who outsourcers are looking for, then you can be that "source." Whether or not you telecommute, will depend on how you want to manage yourself. You will also have the marketing advantage of saying that an outsourcer that uses your services is supporting a US company.
Lauren


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References:
Misc: Writing warnings: From: Geoff Hart
Securing long-distance contract assignments: From: Poshedly, Ken
RE: Securing long-distance contract assignments: From: Tariel, Lauren R

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