I had been planning for a while to write a series of articles about my experiences with telecommuting. Prompted by Cal Evans blog post about remote developers I decided it was time.
My current position as a “software engineer” for XML Team Solutions is a 100% telecommuting job. In fact, all of us telecommute:
- I’m in Milton (about 40 minutes or so west of Toronto)
- two in Toronto
- one in Sauble Beach, Ontario, Canada (a small town on the eastern shores of Lake Huron)
- one in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada
- one in Beverly Hills, California, USA
- one Connecticut, USA
Now, when you have a company where none of your fellow employees works in the same city, let alone the same country, you quickly find out what the key issue really is: trust. If you don’t trust that the people who work with are professional enough to GET SHIT DONE then telecommuting will not work. It really is that simple. I’ve met my boss in person a grand total of 3 times. Sure, there have been some video chats and phone calls but we’ve only actually been together on three occasions: our corporate retreat just after I got hired, once to attend a trade show in Florida, and once just recently to attend a trade show in Pittsburgh. Unlike a lot of people, I do not dread meeting my boss. 
Look, I know that some people who manage developers are convinced that if they were to allow telecommuting on a regular basis that people would instead spend time screwing around instead of getting work done. This attitude is unfortunately very common. Even more disappointing are the people who *do* screw around when telecommuting instead of actually working. I guess they don’t realize how it’s hurting their chances of doing it going forward.
The “command-and-control” management style that seems to be applied at some software companies creates an adversarial relationship between employees and employer. By forcing you to come into an office to work every day, it is a not-so-subtle message that you are not trusted to get things done without supervision. I’ve been through this in my own professional career, and sometimes this attitude is warranted. If you’ve had the misfortune of having (or working with) a group of employees more interested in goofing off than doing the job that the business requires, then you know what I’m talking about here. However, I’m more interested in the idea of the value of trust in telecommuting and hiring employees that you can trust to get work done.
Now before you start dismissing what I’m saying here, I understand that there is usually a really good reason to have all your developers in one place other than you want to keep an eye on them: meetings. But then again, don’t people have conference calls all the time? Or is there something about collaborative developer work that people think does not work with telecommuters? In my next installment I will talk about what I think are the critical tools for managing collaboration amongst telecommuting developers.
Tags: telecommuting
I am also a 100% telecommute developer.
My boss is in Toronto. I’m 2 hours from Toronto. Our only other developer is in Mumbai (9am here is 6:30pm there).
For me, “remoteness” is not nearly as big an issue as timezones.
For a while, I had a real disconnect with our guy in Mumbai. Now I start my day with an 8am Skype meeting (this is at the very end of his day). We sync up on what’s been done overnight, and what will be done by tomorrow. If we miss this meeting, everything starts falling apart.
On the topic of productivity: I find I work MORE as a telecommuter, because my work is *always* just 10 feet away. I’m lucky to have a girlfriend who’ll pull me away from it when she notices that I haven’t left the screen in a long time
[...] and are wanting to promote yourself as someone who can work as a remote employee, you might want to read this post (the first of a series) from Chris Hartjes on telecommuting. My current position as a [...]
[...] and are wanting to promote yourself as someone who can work as a remote employee, you might want to read this post (the first of a series) from Chris Hartjes on telecommuting. My current position as a [...]
I think that if you’re serious there are no problems related to telecommute. You work in the office, you work from home in the same way. I’m five minutes far from my office but I could do all from home, in the near future I’m going to talk about that to my employer, I hope the get this
[...] you haven’t already read them, Check out these two posts from Chris Hartjes on telecommuting. So You Want To Telecommute? Part 1 – Building Trust So You Want To Telecommute? Part 2 – Accountability So You Want To Telecommute? Part 3 – [...]
[...] (This is the 4th part in series about my experiences as a telecommuting developer. For more info, check out part 3, part 2, and part 1) [...]
There’s been a lot of research done on managing ideologies. In the western world, from 1900 and upwards, you had two basic ideologies (and obviously some gray area in between) named X and Y by researchers. Ideology X states that workers are slackers that will try very hard not to work and hence need to be micromanaged – otherwise they will simply not do any work. Ideology Y states that people actually want to work and if you give them the chance, that’s exactly what they’ll do. Hence, don’t micromanage, trust people.
One of the interesting aspects of managing is that whichever strategy you choose it will act as a self-fulfilling prophecy: treat people like dirt and they’ll start acting that way. Treat people as great co-workers and they’ll start to think that way.
So what you say about trust in telecommuting makes a whole lot of sense: if you do not trust your workers (ideology X) you would have to micromanage them. This means spending a lot of resources monitoring someone – much more if that person is telecommuting. So from an ideology X managers point of view, telecommuting is a no-go.
Regards
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[...] SO YOU WANT TO TELECOMMUTE? PART 1 – BUILDING TRUST [...]