Re: The telecommuting myth

[Diane Haugen <dhaugen -at- MEANS -dot- NET>]

At 10:52 AM -0500 07/05/99, Tim Altom wrote:

>I'd be suspicious of an employee who just wanted to telecommute,
>to be candid. Part of the fun of working for a company is the camaraderie
>and spark. Working at home is only half fulfilling, in my view. Being an
>employee should mean more than a mechanical duty; it should involve
>interaction.

Hmmm, Tim.  I don't often disagree with you, but on the issue of
telecommuting being only half-fullfilling, I would have to disagree, with a
couple of caveats.

Yes, most companies, especially large ones, won't consider telecommuting.
And yes, you do need to be in an office to keep up with the politics, which
includes whether the right people know you are making valuable
contributions or not.

But in truth, my few experiences with the corporate environment were the
really  boring ones.  What was worse, the office politics kept the problems
from being solved.  No one seemed to know who was really getting the work
done. Those in charge were nowhere near retirement age, and it was unlikely
the choice of replacements would have improved the situation anyway.

You enjoy hanging around the office.  I don't.  I think that's the real
issue here.  Some people like corporate life.  For those of us who have
little tolerance for corporate games, telecommuting at least allows us to
work at something we like without having to waste a significant part of our
life driving to work or sitting in a stiffling cubicle.

It seems to me sales people on the road most of the time who have an office
in their home have been telecommuting for years, but we just didn't call it
that.
What telecommuting really means is working for yourself and I don't see a
lot of difference in it than in doing contract work, except you're doing it
at home. Some people have the ability to manage this well and others do
not. I would say online communications and the internet have simply opened
a lot of doors to those of us who really dislike the corporate environment.


I suspect that in technical writing, the opportunities for telecommuting
may be more constrained because you may need to be at the office to use the
kind of software specified. Framemaker is not exactly your average desktop
software, although there may be telecommuters who do own their own copy. Or
companies are overly concerned about security.  On the other hand, the
opportunities in book publishing, editing, and design work, I suspect, are
much more wide open.

So it seems to me it isn't the telecommuting per se that's the problem, but
more likely a matter of what field you are trying to do the telecommuting
in. The field of technical writing may be, in some ways, more constrained
than others on this issue.


Diane

===============================================================
Diane Haugen
Whiskey Creek Document Design
<http://www.wcdd.com/index.html>

Editor,
Document Design <http://www.wcdd.com/dd/index.html>

Associate Editor,
Old House Chronicle <http://www.ece.nwu.edu/ohc/masthead.html>
===============================================================

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