Re: Telecommuting ( was: Do as I say, not as I do )

["William Sherman" <bsherman77 -at- embarqmail -dot- com>]

I attribute that to poor management.  If an on-site worker was to disappear 
from their desk or workstation for hours on end, the manager would have a 
talk with them.  Yet, many never check on their telecommuting workers. One 
place I worked used an instant messaging system that showed if you were on 
active or not, as the activity of the mouse or keyboard would show you there 
or away. Of course, if you were reading a printed document, the computer 
would idle enough to show you away. Still, it wouldn't be likely your 
computer to be idle an hour or two while reading like it would be if you 
were out running to the mall shopping or having a three hour lunch with 
friends or something similar.  Even doing other things, most still bump the 
mouse to check email.

And a simple IM to you would answer that. "Hey, how are you doing with that 
xxxx project?"

But I have seen a lot of different managers in a lot of different companies 
over the years, and an unfortunately large number manage by looking down an 
aisle to see if you are there, and nothing more. So a lot of on-site workers 
actually spend less time working on company projects than you would think. 
Just go look at many of the forums on the Internet. Are all these people 
working the night shift?

Still, I knew a guy who beat a system like that years ago. He taped a pager 
to the mouse, then paged the pager. Every five minutes, the pager would 
vibrate and activate the mouse. His computer at work showed him on all night 
long one night while he was home. He did it just because there was a bet he 
couldn't beat it.

I worked with one guy who worked a flex schedule of 5:30 am to 1 pm and took 
an hour lunch. He did it for 3 years. You tell me who was managing him.

The reality is workers will find ways to beat the system, but it can be 
reliable enough with a little common sense to make it work. I had one job 
that every day at 3, I had to leave for about 45 minutes to pick up the kids 
at school. Of course, my manager knew because I told her, and she saw I 
worked from around 8:30 am to 6 pm every day, an occasionally longer when 
having meetings with the team in India. I didn't get lunch at noon as 
typically there were meetings between 11 and 2.  And I only once missed a 
deadline, due to the team two days before the release getting into an 
argument among themselves on what the software really did, which conflicted 
with what they had previously told me, so my manager decided to freeze our 
release of the doc until we had correct information from the team.




----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Gene Kim-Eng" <techwr -at- genek -dot- com>
To: <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com>
Sent: Thursday, February 21, 2013 4:04 PM
Subject: Re: Telecommuting ( was: Do as I say, not as I do )