Depends on your definition of "nice".
I'm perfectly OK with the fact that when I look out the window here in my
office, the skyline is mostly National Forest. Not many places in DC
have that going for them....
It often strikes me as incredibly ironic that companies which *would
not exist* were it not for the Internet are among the most resistant
to the simple, obvious concept that telecommuting allows them to hire
the best and brightest regardless of geography.
Telecommuting should not be a rare exception: it should be the default.
And "corporate headquarters" should be as small and inexpensive as possible,
staffed (in person) only by a handful of people -- if even that. Asking
net admins to do stupid, wasteful, expensive things like "commute 3 hours
a day" and "live in areas with ridiculously inflated housing prices" is a
good way to filter *out* the employees one would most like to have.
---rsk
Rich,
In principal I agree, and I've said this many times, for years I've
telecommuted myself, mostly effectively. I'd work much longer hours, but
not always worked as efficiently during all of those hours. When I started
my own company, with $$ be in short supply like all start ups I I planned
to have as many folks telecommute as possible. In some cases it worked
out, in others it was a terrible failure. Maybe it was my hiring choices,
maybe it was being a bad "manager" but without people in the office it was
harder to tell. Also with "most" people under one roof now, I also see the
on going information sharing that isn't as possible with a mostly remote
office.
-jim
Hi Rich,
It's hard to manage telecommuters. Any manager can see whether or not
you're at your desk, but gauging your work output and assessing
whether it's happening at an appropriate rate is actually pretty
challenging.
This is especially true of systems administration where the ideal
output of your efforts is that nothing is observed to have happened --
you prevented all problems from escalating to where they became
visible. So not only does your manager have to be really good at
management, he has to understand your work well enough to assess the
quality and quantity of your results too.
In other words, you may be asking more of your manager than you're
willing to ask of yourself. Generally speaking, you're more valuable
to a company if that equation is the other way around.
Regards,
Bill Herrin
Automattic (WordPress) works like that.
There's a book about it.
http://www.amazon.com/The-Year-Without-Pants-WordPress-com/dp/1118660633
j
Joly MacFie wrote:
Telecommuting should not be a rare exception: it should be the default.
And "corporate headquarters" should be as small and inexpensive as
possible,
staffed (in person) only by a handful of people -- if even that.Automattic (WordPress) works like that.
There's a book about it.
Amazon.com
Funny thing. A place I'm working now (not as a sysadmin, though) builds intelligent transportation systems for buses (dispatch systems, passenger information, and the like) - half of us are spread all over the place. A lot of us live pretty far from the home office, and spend most of our time working from home; then there are all the folks on the road doing sales; and the deployment teams working on-site at customer locations. About the only folks who are actually in the office a lot are the design engineers and the folks who build hardware.
Works pretty well - though proposals get kind of interesting (which is what I mostly do these days). The problem isn't so much remoteness (email, audio bridges, and webex work well enough) - it's finding blocks of time for meetings - everyone is juggling too many things - kind of organizational ADHD. Personally, I think there's a lot to be said for actually having everybody in the same physical place - makes those impromptu hallway conversations a lot easier.
Cheers,
Miles
Something like 40% of IBM'ers telecommute, saving IBM $2.9B (if you
believe some PR). And IBM is about as large and bloated, report
heavy, mgmt heavy, conference call heavy, that a company can get. 
-Jim P.
One day, hopefully, telecommuting really takes off [...]
It often strikes me as incredibly ironic that companies which *would
not exist* were it not for the Internet are among the most resistant
to the simple, obvious concept that telecommuting allows them to hire
the best and brightest regardless of geography.Hi Rich,
It's hard to manage
There, I fixed it for you.
Mike
Having done about every conceivable combination, I think the sweet spot
is, unsurprisingly, somewhere in between. Telecommuting is great if you need
a lot of undisturbed time, but it's horrible if you need interaction with coworkers.
So for me, at least (primarily a dev type) having an intersection in the middle
of the day a couple days a week at least is the best balance.
That said, I think that part of this might be solved with technology somehow.
A big problem, IMO, is that we use tech much too formally in that meetings
get scheduled instead of just interrupting somebody at their desk which often
blows things way out of proportion to their actual import, and worse delays
resolving issues.
Maybe the webrtc stuff will help this by making ad hoc communication trivial
and pervasive and wrest it from the hands of these bloated, overwrought
conferencing-as-business-model abominations we have to deal with.
Mike
It's worth noting that working at max efficiency is often not even the
best thing for a company. This has been known for years [1], but most
companies don't put it into practice.
[1] http://www.amazon.com/The-Principles-Product-Development-Flow/dp/1935401009
> Telecommuting should not be a rare exception: it should be the default.
> And "corporate headquarters" should be as small and inexpensive as
> possible,
> staffed (in person) only by a handful of people -- if even that.
>Automattic (WordPress) works like that.
There's a book about it.
Amazon.com
Yes, and the book title is not at all misleading! However there's a few key
differences between Automattic and your regular company. First is that
we're flat, so there's no employees to manage (ie: you manage your own
workload). Second is that we dont do meetings. Period.
Overall, I think remote working can be successful, however you need a few
things in place:
1. More efficient information sharing system than meetings (*cough* blogs).
2. Flat to almost flat structure.
3. Senior hires who can manage their own workloads and not be dependant on
a "big boss" to dole out work.
There's still some issues that need to be worked out (Timezones, the bane
of my existence!), however the benefit of being location agnostic HUGELY
outweighs petty fights over the office thermostat, office politics and
being forced to recruit from a localised talent pool.
The downside is that being located in a different region than you're buying
your equipment means that you get stiffed on vendor lunches 
/Ruairi