Now-a-days I am working from home most of the week.
Half my development team is in Shanghai and the other half is in Kiev,Ukraine. My business owners are in Los Angeles and Singapore. My product manager colleagues are spread around LA and Kiev. My boss lives in San Diego and commutes to LA 3-4 days a week. So why go to office when most work is done via emails/skype and phone?
Plusses: Save commute time, petrol money and the environment
Minuses: 6AM and 9PM working hours, no water cooler gossip, increased housework (elagu intlone vuntavu ga)
10 comments:
Some people have it all their way.
1. 6am &9 pm working hours--anyway you are up and relaxing at home-so it does not matter.
2. What if there is no water cooler gossip--You have SKYPE!
3. House work--more for your sake than IS and ADITYA's I'm sure.
4. Save commute time and fly more.
5.Save petrol money and burn aviation fuel.
6. Save environment -- May be!
It is a dream job, that is what it is. Will get more details as to this intriguing remote management model when we meet.
Krupa additional minuses :)
-constant guilt of 'Am I working enough to compensate not working at office'
-'Let me work hard otherwise they may think I am slacking at home'
-you will see so much house hold work at home when you do WFH (oh this curtain needs to be washed...I never saw this cob web before)
-Additional work of answering phone calls at home.
-just because you are at home you feel 'let me cook one more kura'
-'I should never have "Away" status on IM' (come on you need bio breaks at least!!)
All in all- I feel work-from-home is taxing and difficult. The higher your self conscience is tougher it gets to work from home.
Gosh, I wish there is editing of comments......Typos irk me to no end, I find my grammar mistakes myself (unless Adi is sitting next to me, in which case he will point them out - ala his grandpa as amma says )and I hate this stupid auto correct.
Fixed comments:
@Nanna, there is no substitute for Watercooler gossip. If you chat on skype, its written down. Cardinal rule of gossip, never write it down :-) Talking on skype/phone is just not the same!!!
Yes on the airline fuel, but the plane will fly regardless of my flying.....
@Poonam, nanna is right on the housework part!!!! I don't do a whole lot at home. But that's the advantage of having a cook, not having a lot of stuff at home and living in America where it's relatively dust free. The twice a week cleaning of Nabeela and the bi-weekly cleaners' work is mostly enough. The exceptions are all the clothes / books strewn about by Aditya. But I am training him to cleanup after himself, something I failed to do with SSV and IS.....
Re: the guilt part. I must say that is definitely one of the good things in the Technology industry, where results are counted. As long as I am delivering on the project ( and believe me everyone will know if you are not delivering ), people don't really care. But I caveat that with the following.
In the short run, it's probably enough for your job. However, in the long run, it would definitely hurt your career options to continuously work from home, as a lot happens based on who you know in addition to what you do and there is no substitue for personal interactions for this purpose.
For now, it works great, as it is summer holidays for Aditya and this allows me to spend more time with him. My next project is going to be working with a Bay Area partner, so I am sure things will change then.
It is a dream job, that is what it is.
@Krupa: Why not try this?-- Go to comments--Trash your Typo ridden one, You will be asked to confirm--Select the old comment, copy and paste into an editor like notepad or word, delete the comment forever, edit your pasted comment, come back and post a VERY CORRECT one-Voila!
As if anybody cares!!
Of course you do!!
Exactly what I did, except stupid Firefox, which did not let me delete the old comment. I am going to try and delete now.
Grr..found one more typo but too tired to fix it. So there!!!
Nothing wrong with Firefox, which happens to be my default browser. Some error at your end. Again, who cares for a few typos when we all make them.
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