

A Fifth of Telecommuters Work Less Than An Hour Per Day - mrsebastian
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/09/20/pjs_every_day/

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chc
This article seems to conflate "works less than eight hours a day" with
"doesn't get the job done." I would expect somebody who doesn't have the
distractions of an office or the pressure to appear busy for eight hours
regardless of actual workload might get things done faster.

Also, a lot of telecommuters are either intermittent workers (e.g.
freelancers) or part-timers, so it's unsurprising that a significant number
don't average many hours a day.

~~~
nimbix
From my experience, a day of working from home is about as productive as
working a week at the office.

~~~
div
It's not as black and white as that for me, but that definitely does happen.

I find working from home 2 out of 5 days to be great for my productivity,
while still being very available to colleagues.

~~~
sudont
Weekend hours without anyone else in the office is generally 2-3x (as measured
in a BPM database) as productive for me.

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mansr
I'm quite sure a large number of people working in an office are truly
productive only an hour per day as well. The only difference is what gets in
the way of real work.

~~~
hopeless
I'd say 1-2hours of productive work a day is quite common (it fits with my
current experience). The difference is when you're working at home you don't
have to pretend to be working. So when you've got no work to do you don't have
to pretend to read a document. You can go for walk, do the dishes, play with
your kids, work on side-project/ learn a new language. Same productivity,
happier worker.

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chops
"I'd say in a given week, I probably only do about 15 minutes of real, actual
_work_."

~~~
Goladus
And that movie was pre-facebook, he was not wasting time on the internet.

~~~
wavephorm
Yeah, the internet sure sucked before Facebook came along and added...
nothing.

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Goladus
I've been using the internet at work since 1997. But it was not nearly as
ubiquitous as it is now. "Surfing the web" was generally something people did
at home, on a 56k modem. A software engineer fixing the Y2K bug in bank
software probably didn't have much access, and probably didn't care a whole
lot anyway. Certainly, the movie made no mention of the internet.

And obviously facebook was merely an example. 1999 was pre-reddit, pre-
wikipedia, pre-digg, pre-hacker news, and pre-twitter. Yahoo had just bought
viaweb. Most of the people using the web today weren't using it in 1999, and
most of the pages, services, and content that exist today did not exist in
1999.

The point is that no matter how distracting the internet might be,
procrastination has always been an issue for developers.

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famousactress
This isn't journalism, it's useless garbage. The article assumes a clear bias
in the way it interprets the data and doesn't bother to ask any obvious
questions in hopes of explaining the numbers.

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lolabloladd32
And somehow we manage to outperform our office counterparts. PG talks about
how some people can produce 10-100x more than others and that those who
produce 100x should start their own companies. The idea is that you will be
rewarded for your huge productivity with huge rewards. The flip side of this
is that you could work a normal job from home and work 1-20% of normal job
hours and make a decent wage with tons of free time.

~~~
sneak
Or, if you're willing to omit a lot of personal details to your employer, one
could also work 2 or 3 jobs in parallel this way.

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corin_
_"Stay-at-home workers also said getting dressed for the day was far too
strenuous"_

As someone who has spent a few years working from home (but doesn't now),
that's a horrible assumption.

Sure, there were days when I'd be working in my boxers, but there were also
days when I would be wearing trousers and a shirt ready to go out for a
meeting. And when I wasn't properly dressed, it wasn't that it was
"strenuous", or even that I was lazy, it was a case of not needing to.

If I wasn't going to see anyone for a few hours after waking up, and I didn't
happen to feel like wearing much, why would I bother? Other times I did feel
like it and I was fully dressed even if I wasn't going to see anyone. That has
no relation to what work I did.

~~~
m0nastic
I definitely think it's a matter of someone's personal ritual.

I've been working from home for the past four years, and I have definitely
slipped into a habit of being lazy with my clothes/appearance.

I sit around the apartment in a pair of track pants 90% of the time (which
makes me look like either a washed-up, out of shape footballer, or possibly a
mobster), only putting on real clothes if I have to do something later that
night (and even then I don't get dressed like a real grownup until just before
I have to leave).

I also haven't gotten a haircut in about 8 months. I don't particularly like
long hair, I just haven't gotten around to it (in spite of the fact that the
ridiculous mane I have grown makes me look like one of the Thundercats).

In fact an observer might look as the way I live and conclude that I've been
in a horrible bout of depression for the past four years (doesn't put on
clothes, doesn't shave or deal with their hair, is a shut-in), but I can
attest that I'm quite pleased by this situation.

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gamble
I'm inclined to call this survey bullshit. There's no information available
about it, except a blurb at the very bottom of the infographic claiming that
it's from their survey of hiring manager. At best, it only tells you how lazy
hiring managers who use careerbuilder.com are when they work from home.

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nzonbi
How much telecommuters work, depends on each case. In my case, I have been
working from home for the last 7 years. I am highly motivated because I want
to maximize achievements in the rest of my life.

Mostly, I work in small teams with other remote friends, on fixed price
contracts and on my own projects. Fixed price contracts means that the faster
I can finish work, the more profitable it is, and the more time I get for my
own projects. For my that is a brutal incentive to get things done.

This is my current pattern. works for me, but may not work for others:

\- I don't watch TV, except occasionally while lunch. In general I don't like
TV.

\- 4 years since my last vacation. I hardly can forget about work.

\- I don't follow any daily routines. Typically work around 5 - 12 daily
hours, usually until late in the night. I find this way the more productive
for me. Overall, that translates to around 40 hours of fair intensity work per
week. I wish I could do more, but I have found that to be the sustainable
amount. Surpassing that, leads to burnout, and less productivity overall.

\- I take a few short breaks during work. A walk in the garden, cook something
simple, browse hacker news, etc. I have found that necessary to stay
productive. That seems to take over the occasional talks in a on-site work.
For example, I once did a project in odesk, with their invasive surveillance
system, and without taking breaks. Got a five star rating in the end. But the
experience was so dismal, that I almost decided to retire from programming. I
was often dreading every minute of work.

\- I maximize use of time. When I can't stand more work, I do 1-2 hours of
intense jogging. Or get out, take a walk at a pleasant place, take lunch at
some place, etc. In this way, I am always highly motivated in what I am doing.

\- I have found that I am very self sufficient. I used to need some hangout-
with-friends time, but I don't need that anymore. Now I mostly feel that as a
waste of time.

\- I work on weekends, and usually take the Mondays off. When I visit places,
I prefer to avoid the usual tumult of the weekends.

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wisty
Note - this isn't "20% of full-time telecommuters are skiving off". Some might
be, others might telecommute 1 day a week and use that to do their chores
(which might be sanctioned by their manager). Some are freelancers who are
effectively unemployed. Others are self-employed, and procrastinating. Some
might be students, who have a part-time job they do from home. Some might be
full-time mothers, who do the odd job on Mechanical Turk.

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nfm
As a comparison, I'd like to know the breakdown of hours of _actual work_ for
those who go in to the office every day.

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timjahn
With telecommuting, amount of time worked != amount of work completed.

Chances are, that hour they're actually working at home is getting the
equivalent of 8 hours of traditional work-in-an-office work done.

~~~
jbail
Are there really work environments so distracting that 8 hours in the office
equals 1 hour at home? That seems crazy. If so, there's is something seriously
messed up at that office.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for telecommuting and did a 100% telecommuting gig
for 3 years straight, but there's no way to get a days work done in 1 hour.

~~~
stricken
Yes, I work in an open plan office so because they can see me they think it's
OK to interrupt me whenever they feel like it. I'm in a room with the support
guys and testers so all their phone calls I get to hear. Especially
distracting if they're talking to a user about something I've worked on.
Sometimes I manage to space out and not hear it but then you look up and
people are staring at you "what do you think Bob?"

Headphones only go so far.

~~~
mkopinsky
I worked for about 6 months in an office with an open floor plan, and the
noise did get to me sometimes, but at those times I would undock my laptop and
find an empty desk in some other division where people didn't have conference
calls going on speakerphone. (BTW, hearing a conference call coming out of two
speakerphones - or hearing a person speaking to your left and then their voice
coming out of a speakerphone on your right half a second later - is perhaps
the most distracting thing ever.)

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mannicken
I really think they should define 'work'. Creative work is much different
than, say, assembly of radios. A lot happens when you're away from the
computer.

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kadabra9
Mentally, at least for me, it's too easy to fall into the trap of classifying
"work" as something that directly produces results....writing code, changing a
design etc.

When looked at it from that perspective, it's easy to feel that you/someone
are not doing a lot of "work", but often a lot of my time is spent on "work
about work".... answering emails, managing clients, or even just brainstorming
on a whiteboard / notebook. All of these are just as important to the end
result of a project but are easy to overlook in a day/week/month that is ruled
by deadlines, expectations, metrics, etc.

If I've got a telecommuter on my staff that gets shit done, but only works an
hour a day, more power to him.

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joss82
In the office, I'd be lucky to have a net work day of +1 hour.

Sometimes, friction and bad decisions can make you work -8 hours a day. Or
worse.

Also, for some people, definition of "work" in a big company is "presence".
So, that's obviously not fitting for a telecomuter.

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jff
Wow, a lot of you guys are getting really defensive here.

I can get some good work done at home, but only if I've remembered to bring
home all materials I need. And if I don't need to face-to-face with somebody.
And if there are no meetings scheduled for that day.

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devy_t
Good workers don't need to be managed but are self-directed by their own
desire to do a job well done and commitment they share with the vision of the
company.

There is tremendous value in coming in to the office to see your colleagues
face to face but sometimes not all work requires it. Perhaps these workers
finished their work early as I have often heard that telecommuters are far
more productive. If they didn't loop back with their managers then I would
question that relationship or the worker. I wouldn't attribute telecommuting
as a killer to productivity though.

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devy_t
Here is an interesting article that sees telecommuting as an increasing
phenomena:

<http://mashable.com/2011/09/17/work-from-home-infographi/>

Telecommuting reduces overhead cost (rent, utility, etc) and gas usages but
it's still important to maintain rapport with your team. Yay video
teleconferencing!

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umjames
Shouldn't productivity be measured in number of things done where each "thing"
is multiplied by a number that represents the difficulty of the task divided
by the time taken to do it?

If hours are the chief measurement, then you can stretch things out to make it
take more time. I'm sure this is happening in businesses the world over
anyway.

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Vivtek
Back when I worked contract at Eli Lilly, I knew a guy who _looked_ busy all
day long, but was doing nothing at all, as far as anybody else in the project
could tell.

If he'd been telecommuting and working less than an hour a day, nobody would
have noticed.

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mbesto
Couldn't there be some bias from the people that were polled? For example, I
love working from home, right? So of course I'm going to tell someone polling
me that I do a lot work from home.

Not saying that this is anecdotal...just sayin'.

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gaoshan
I bill less than 8 hours a day (normally) but I work that much. I just don't
feel like I should bill for what I call "stupid time" or getting stuck on
something that, were I faster and more knowledgable, would only take 1/3 the
time.

~~~
nasmorn
In this case I hope you also charge the fast and knowledgeable rate. Otherwise
you sell yourself short.

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0x12
As long as you get paid by the hour you should work those hours, be it at the
office or at home.

If you don't want to get paid by the hour, become a contractor and do fixed
price jobs.

~~~
shabble
Or be paid a salary whilst working in an overtime-exempt position.

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yason
I wouldn't care if my employees did five minutes of work at home per day as
long as they get things done in similar amounts compared to their peers.

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kreek
...but at least they're not stuck in a car/bus/train for two hours like those
who work less than and hour per day in the office.

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espressodude
Working at home require twice the discipline needed when you work at the
office. There are lots of distractions.

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nerd_in_rage
I thought about getting 2 jobs telecommuting: twice the pay for half the work.

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georgieporgie
I bet that if you measured actual, focused work time spent, this would be
roughly accurate of the average office-bound employee.

Edit: BTW, flagged for having basically no objective content at all.

