Re: Long distance telecommuting

["Elna Tymes" <etymes -at- lts -dot- com>]

"Secara, Maggie" wrote:

>  Do any of you long-distance telecommuters have any sage advice on how to make
> this work?

You've already received a couple of good responses on this topic, so I won't
repeat what they said.  However, having worked as a telecommuter on a number of
occasions, let me add a few things from my experience:

1.  Stay in touch.  If this means daily or weekly emailed status reports in a
particular format, fine. If it means checking in by phone a couple times a week,
fine. If it means going to see the developers every couple of weeks, fine.  You
will be considered part of the team if they know they can reach you, and you can
reach them, and everybody can be flexible about just how that's done.

2.  Set milestones and meet them.  With some people, there's a lingering
suspicion that "if I can't see you, you're not working."  Nothing disproves that
like delivering something on time and in good condition.

3. Ask for help as soon as you think you need it.  Don't put it off because you
don't want to bother the others, or because you think you can muddle through
without it, or out of some sense of guilt that, since you get to work in your
jammies, you should be able to handle all the problems yourself.

4.  If there are weekly (or so) staff meetings, make arrangements to attend by
phone. Most companies these days are set up to handle one or more team members
on a speaker phone, and just because you're playing solitaire while you're
listening to team members drone on doesn't mean you're not getting value from
the meeting.  These virtual meetings are a great way to get early warnings about
schedule slips, problems in development, or other "oh by the way" stuff.

Those things said, consider yourself very, very lucky to be able to
telecommute.  While I'm seeing more and more of it these days, it's still not
all that common in the industry.

Elna Tymes
Los Trancos Systems