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posted by martyb on Tuesday March 10 2020, @04:30PM   Printer-friendly
from the all-the-better-to-identify-what-can-be-outsourced? dept.

Dustin Kirkland has written a blog post about telecommuting for over two decades. He goes into a lot of detail about his particular setup. He closes asking what other people's remote offices look like and what, if anything, he missed.

In this post, I'm going to share a few of the benefits and best practices that I've discovered over the years, and I'll share with you a shopping list of hardware and products that I have come to love or depend on, over the years.

I worked in a variety of different roles -- software engineer, engineering manager, product manager, and executive (CTO, VP Product, Chief Product Officer) -- and with a couple of differet companies, big and small (IBM, Google, Canonical, Gazzang, and Apex). In fact, I was one of IBM's early work-from-home interns, as a college student in 2000, when my summer internship manager allowed me to continue working when I went back to campus, and I used the ATT Global Network dial-up VPN client to "upload" my code to IBM's servers.

If there's anything positive to be gained out of the COVID-19 virus life changes, I hope that working from home will become much more widely accepted and broadly practiced around the world, in jobs and industries where it's possible. Moreover, I hope that other jobs and industries will get even more creative and flexible with remote work arrangements, while maintaining work-life-balance, corporate security, and employee productivity.

See similar article at the BBC.

How much, if any, can you work from home? What tools are on your "gotta have it" list? What cautions, suggestions, and resources do you suggest for your fellow Soylentils?


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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Freeman on Tuesday March 10 2020, @04:38PM (6 children)

    by Freeman (732) on Tuesday March 10 2020, @04:38PM (#969154) Journal

    While a telecommute job would be nice, a telecommute job is a lot easier to ship overseas. Whereas a job that needs a warm body is still quite safe from that kind of thing for a while longer. So long as your physical presences isn't related to something that a robot could easily do or something that could be easily cut.

    --
    Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
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  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by RS3 on Tuesday March 10 2020, @06:37PM

    by RS3 (6367) on Tuesday March 10 2020, @06:37PM (#969200)

    Sounds good, but is only somewhat true. One of my current occasional jobs is IT/server admin. I do it mostly from home or wherever I can remote access. However, sometimes (rarely really) a reboot hangs, or HD dies, or machines need dust blown out, or change/upgrade something in hardware, or reconfigure Ethernet, build up new machine, etc. About a 15 mile drive if needed- not too bad most times of day.

    True, you could have remote people doing as much as they can, and some local grunts doing hands-on, but that would be pretty bad management. Might save $, but if something goes wrong, esp. with communication between remote and local workers, you could have a disaster.

    So it really depends on the specifics of the work, communication, criticality, etc.

    And talk to Boeing about managing local and remote software developers...

  • (Score: 2) by EJ on Tuesday March 10 2020, @06:46PM

    by EJ (2452) on Tuesday March 10 2020, @06:46PM (#969208)

    I disagree. A job that can be done 100% remotely still needs to be the type of job that can withstand social differences to be outsourced.

    If you telecommute, but live in the same city, your boss doesn't have to worry about an earthquake, tsunami, wildfire, or quarantine situation that only affects you.

    In my situation, I can telecommute often, but not always. That's the best of the scenarios, IMO. I'm only fifteen minutes from the office, and there are some situations where I have to come in to take care of things.

    Even if your job can be done 100% remotely, you may still have to deal with customers who want to work with someone local.

  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by driverless on Tuesday March 10 2020, @08:07PM

    by driverless (4770) on Tuesday March 10 2020, @08:07PM (#969252)

    Shit, the oatmeal sums it up in one cartoon [theoatmeal.com], see in particular "The Horrible". Hooba porkrind!

  • (Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday March 10 2020, @08:11PM

    by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday March 10 2020, @08:11PM (#969259)

    your physical presences isn't related to something

    Managers seem to prove their self worth via a half day of meetings per week. They don't want to get shipped to India any more than you do, so in person is "required". The commute is glorious without rush hour and its a fine excuse to go out for lunch.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 11 2020, @07:02AM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 11 2020, @07:02AM (#969532)

    Not really. The floor below me at work is now filled with warm bodies from India. Well, mostly India. So many of them are trying to get permanent jobs. They now have a bridging process. If this continues my country will be Indian. Even now they deliberately hire based on skin and country of origin to promote multicultural policies.

    What about my culture?

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 11 2020, @02:09PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 11 2020, @02:09PM (#969617)

      Don't worry. Just like you, your culture is being replaced.