#telecommuting

At 8:30 p.m. on 16 May 1916, John J. Carty banged his gavel at the Engineering Societies Building in New York City to call to order a meeting of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers. This was no ordinary gathering. The AIEE had decided to conduct a live national meeting connecting more than 5,000 attendees in eight cities across four time zones. More than a century before Zoom made virtual meetings a pedestrian experience, telephone lines linked auditoriums from coast to coast. AIEE members and guests in Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Denver, New York, Philadelphia, Salt Lake City, and San Francisco had telephone receivers at their seats so they could listen in.

It’s hard not to get worked up about something that seems so unfair and so shitty to the people who did their part to get Reddit to where they are today. It feels like using people in the worst possible way. It smells like hopeless inadequacy to subject your workers to such a huge life change based on such flimsy justification.

Every day I read a new article about some company whining about how hard it is to hire technical staff. Invariably it turns out that they’re only looking for people within a commuters distance of their office. I refuse to feel sorry for such companies.

So you've decided to work from home. As a rookie veteran of working without a traditional office for one year I'm here to tell you that it is the greatest and worst thing that can happen to your work life other—much like being transferred to a glitter-packing facility. What follows is a quick two minute guide of what you need to know before you take your pants off and turn up those old Hootie and the Blowfish albums.

On Tuesday morning I got to the office early and found this going on. It seemed like a video worthy moment, so here you go.

"On the SUSE Studio team, we had a “level playing field” rule for our weekly meetings. Even though a lot of us were clustered in Nürnberg, Germany, everyone dialed in to the meeting, putting every single person on an even footing. There’s no “local” and “remote.” Everyone has to speak clearly into the telephone. When we instituted this rule, we noticed the “remote” participants joining in the conversation a lot more often, and the calls went a lot smoother. This worked well for us. It might help you too. Let me know how it goes."

"One of the most difficult periods in any job is the first few weeks, while you are getting to know your team, the company and your new job. It can be a difficult time for any employee, but it can be even more difficult for employees who are working in remote offices or telecommuting. Getting to know the team and understanding the company culture are much more difficult when you aren’t sitting in the corporate office with the rest of your team. However, there are plenty of things that you can do as a remote employee, or as an employer of remote employees, to make that first week a little easier on everyone."

"Your employees will love it ... You can hire great people wherever you find them ... You will use better communication tools ... You can still be social ... Your offices will be more fun"

"I don’t know what the hell this remote person is doing, so I’m going to assume he’s stumbling around the house in his underwear." Been there, done that, still closed bugs and checked in code.

"As it has been mentioned before on this blog and will continue to be addressed, the single greatest hindrance for the remote revolution is simply tradition. With an influx of highly skilled information-ready workers who can present a compelling case for telecommuting, resistance will become increasingly difficult."

"But for a more local perspective, I thought I’d interview a telecommuter in our own community. There are all kinds of telecommuters out there, from moms that telecommute in the evenings so they can watch their kids, to workers who want a day of quiet time away from the office. Then are folks like Les Orchard (pictured here). Les lives in Michigan (Livonia to be exact) and telecommutes for Mozilla (located in California)."

"Not only do I telecommute, but my boss and department are back in Boston while I’m still out here in the Central San Joaquin Valley in California where I’ve got five generations of family living within a 30 mile radius. Right now, I just couldn’t i