RE: "face time" at the office

["Melissa Nelson" <melmis36 -at- hotmail -dot- com>]

"he states, however, that the extra effort required to do so is large, and
is only succeeding insofar as the rest of the team is willing to extend
themselves to ensure good communication."

This is such a good point! My last contract position allowed me to work at 
home when their office moved about six or seven weeks before the end of my 
contract. Unfortunately, getting any communication from my boss at the time 
was impossible and I ended up having to drive into the office to talk to him 
a lot. This took up all my time and I was not getting anything accomplished, 
so I ended up taking my laptop and placing it in an empty cube and just 
working there. After a couple of days he figured it out and promised to be 
better...but by then I just decided to spend the last remaining weeks 
commuting to the office. Fortunately, it was summer and the office was on 
the harbor and I could take the laptop outside when I wanted to...so it was 
worth the commute! :)

Melissa
















>From: "John Rosberg" <jrosberg -at- interwoven -dot- com>
>To: "Nancy Allison" <maker -at- verizon -dot- net>,"Janice Gelb" 
><Janice -dot- Gelb -at- Sun -dot- COM>, <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com>
>Subject: RE: "face time" at the office
>Date: Fri, 29 Jun 2007 08:23:33 -0500
>
>I think Nancy's hit the nail on the head -- one of our best writers
>works almost completely remotely, and is succeeding admirably -- he
>states, however, that the extra effort required to do so is large, and
>is only succeeding insofar as the rest of the team is willing to extend
>themselves to ensure good communication.
>
>Homo Sapiens are social creatures (thought most technical writers may be
>the exception that proves the rule), and the amount of decisions made,
>designs hatched, features added and subtracted regarding projects (in
>the software development world, at least) is very large indeed -- while
>good project management CAN overcome this tendency, it doesn't take much
>to leave a remote working without a clue, and working in a manner that
>just doesn't support the overall effort.
>
>This, of course, is no the fault of the remote employee, but it is
>something that has to be managed.
>
>rosberg
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Nancy Allison [mailto:maker -at- verizon -dot- net]
>Sent: Wednesday, June 27, 2007 4:34 PM
>To: Janice Gelb; techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
>Subject: Re: "face time" at the office
>
>What Janice says is so, so true.
>
>Although I love the freedom to work from home -- and as a contractor I
>make it clear that that is what I prefer -- I have to admit that the one
>time I recently worked at a place that required everyone to be on site
>-- man, it was GREAT. In terms of getting answers in Real Time --
>everyone was somewhere in the building unless their jobs took them on
>the road, or they were home sick. I could get answers within minutes,
>usually.
>
>Think of the old idea of Management by Walking Around. I don't think
>there's a better way for managers to find out what's going on and
>recognize problems early, and we're losing it as teams disperse across
>towns, states, and continents.
>
>I also worked at a place that had many small meeting rooms scattered
>around every floor. It was routine to bump into someone, get to talking
>about an issue, duck into a conference room and resolve the question on
>the spot. Each meeting room had at least one whiteboard, too, so if an
>engineer needed to sketch something out for me, he or she could.
>(Ironically, the company was outsourcing like mad. Its office design
>upheld one philosophy; its bean counters another. Guess which won out!)
>
>That kind of spontaneity and directness is lost completely when people
>work from home.
>
>--Nancy
>
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