Working from home - a philosophy

Recently, there was a very interesting conversation on one of our Sun internal aliases about working from home. The conversation resulted from a link to this article: http://www.networkworld.com/news/2007/011707-telecommute-career.html. The conversation initially centered on two key questions (and then, as open conversations often do, branched from there). The two key questions were: 1. Does full-time telecommuting hinder an employee's ability to get their work done? 2. Does full-time telecommuting hinder an employee's opportunities for advancement? Sun has had a work from home program for several years, and we have taken some of our learnings from that program into the larger community (see http://www.sun.com/service/openwork/). I was one of the "early adopters" who actually worked from home before the formal program was in place. From my perspective, working from home has a lot of advantages to the employee and to the company. I was somewhat surprised to see that not everyone shares my opinion. I'm not going to rehash the entire conversation, but it made me think a bit about what we do and how we do it. To answer question #1, in my experience, working from home enables me to be more effective at my job. Why? Aside from the obvious time-and-cost savings in not having to commute to an office, I actually am better able to focus when I am at home because I don't have people "dropping by to chat." Of course, depending on your job, people dropping by to chat might be a requirement. And, when you work from home, you miss those essential "hallway conversations." Yet, on the other hand, many project teams are now dispersed geopgraphically so those "hallway conversations" have become less essential than they once were. I also must admit that it is nice to be able to play music while working without having to worry about bothering my cubicle mates. In response to question #2, the answer is not so straightforward. I have been fortunate to be in a career path that has worked well as a full-time remote employee. I have had several promotions, and am now at a point where I have very few places to go unless I either go into management or change career paths. This would have been true regardless of my work-from-home status. In some career paths, it is difficult to do the job "from home." I suspect, for example, that is would be rather difficult to work with hardware if you were not physically located near the appropriate fabrication facilities. And, some management tasks might be difficult to do remotely (although my manager very effectively manages several employees that are located around the world). In general, I think the question of career progression is really left up to the individual. Whether you are in the physical office or are working from home, do your job well. Meet your goals, learn new skills, and "play well with others." If you do a good job consistently, you will be recognized for it.

Posted at 01:40PM May 10, 2007 by jcinfoblog in General  |  Comments[4]