Telecommuting: Reality and Myths
by Tom Bajoras, co-founder
There's a huge amount of information online about the advantages and disadvantages of telecommuting. Type in "telecommuting advantages" or "telecommuting disadvantages" into Google, and you'll get over 1100 results. Casually browsing some of these articles, I get the sense that many of them are theoretical, written by people who have no real experience with telecommuting. Anyone can ask themselves "what might the advantages (or disadvantages) of telecommuting be?" and most people would come up with obvious advantages such as "I don't have to dress nice (or dress at all)" or "it's good for the environment, because I don't have to drive to work," or disadvantages such as "it might be hard to get any work done with all the distractions at home" or "it might be harder to communicate with my coworkers."
Art & Logic has been deeply committed to telecommuting for over 18 years. Ever since the company was founded in early 1991, the majority of our workforce has been telecommuting full-time. We currently have 65 developers spread throughout the U.S. and Canada. Our office in Pasadena has only a small staff. After 18 years, we're in a pretty good position to talk about what telecommuting is really like, or at least what it's been like for us. Presumably much of what we've learned can be applied to other companies who are just now beginning to experiment with telecommuting.
It turns out that there are some surprises. Some of what one might guess is great about telecommuting turns out to be not so great, and some of what you thought would be hard about telecommuting turns out to be surprisingly easy. In short, the advantages and disadvantages aren't all what you expected them to be. Let's examine some of the claims made about the advantages and disadvantages to see if we can distinguish reality from myth.
Claim: Telecommuting workers are better at what they do.
Status: Yes, but not for the reasons you might think.
Telecommuting doesn't automatically make you better at what you do. In fact, the same worker in a traditional office, suddenly converted into a telecommuting worker, may or may not find themself more productive. It depends on the worker. Some people might find distractions at home unbearable, or they might be unable to collaborate effectively in an environment without face-to-face communication, or they might just be too lonely (many people depend on work to provide a sense of a community). But other people might find home to have less distractions than the office (less gossip around the water cooler, less paper airplane battles, shorter lunch breaks), and some people actually communicate better by e-mail. But since most companies recruit people on the basis of how well they work in office environments, the odds are not in favor of the same people thriving in a telecommuting environment, at least not without retraining.
Art & Logic's recruiting process is designed to find people who work well in a telecommuting environment. Since communication skills (especially written skills) are critical, our recruiting process evaluates communication skills just as much as programming skills. Other skills that must be carefully evaluated include time management, social skills, and the ability to multi-task effectively.
Telecommuting companies like Art & Logic can hire the best people, no matter where they live. If our developers had to work in our office, we'd be limited to hiring only in the Los Angeles area. But some of the best programmers don't live in Los Angeles and don't want to (or can't) move there. Since we can hire anywhere in the U.S. or Canada, we can "cast a very wide net" and then raise the bar very high so that very few people get in. The result is a team of the highest quality people that can be found anywhere.
This last effect only benefits companies committed to nationwide telecommuting. Many companies, when they say "telecommuting" just mean people all within driving distance from the office but staying home. Recruiting for a team of stay-at-home commuters has no advantage in its access to a larger talent pool.
Another surprising reason that telecommuters are better workers is that they, on the average, are more experienced. People at a telecommuting company don't have to find a new job every time their life circumstances require them to move. There are many reasons why someone might want to move aside from needing or wanting to find a new job; for example:
This allows projects to be staffed by people who have worked at Art & Logic for a long time and are used to working together.
Lastly, we have a saying, which is "happy workers are good workers, and telecommuting workers are happy." Happy developers are good developers, because they think clearly, are motivated to work hard, are more creative, and spend less time complaining or daydreaming or looking for a new job. And telecommuting developers are happy developers, because:
Claim: Telecommuting is not just good for our developers and for our clients; it's also good for the world.
Status: Yes, and for even more reasons than you might think!
Usually when people make this claim, they're thinking of conserving energy resources. Obviously telecommuters use less gasoline in their cars, and companies with a lot of telecommuters can have smaller offices, which means lower energy usage in the office. In fact, a 2007 study commissioned by the Consumer Electronics Association showed that a telecommuter used almost 850 gallons of gasoline less each year. The study went on to claim that telecommuting at that time was saving enough energy to power 1 million households in the United States.
But telecommuting is good for the earth in ways besides polluting less by burning fossil fuels to run cars or generate electricity. Less cars means less highway maintenance (which in turn requires fuel and energy) and less land used for parking lots.
Less driving means less traffic-related injuries and death. (Thousands of people are killed every year while traveling to and from work.)
Telecommuting's benefits to the world go beyond just protecting the environment; there are also subtle but powerful benefits to society as a whole.
By keeping people in their local communities, people have more of a chance to get to know each other. Telecommuting workers are more available for participation in community organizations. Sadly, many commuting workers, in contrast, leave their neighborhood each morning, drive an hour to another part of town where they have no involvement at all, then drive back to their own neighborhood, where they isolate themselves inside their homes. People don't know the names of their next door neighbors, because communication can be avoided on the way to and from the car at the start and end of the day.
Telecommuting also gives people more time with their families. Parents are able to see their children off to school or take a break from their work to participate in their child's activities, or to take care of extended family members who are ill or aging.
Telecommuting increases job opportunities for persons with health problems or disabilities, since in most cases such people have already invested in customizing their home office environment for their special needs.
By strengthening the family, telecommuting invests in its own future. The children of these families grow up to be productive members of society, many of whom naturally seek out telecommuting opportunities since they grew up in a home with telecommuting parents.
Claim: Since people aren't in the office with you, how can you know if they're really working?
Status: Just plain silly.
Of course you can know if they're working... because the work gets done! This question is based on a fundamentally false understanding of the relationship between telecommuting workers and their employers. Art & Logic's developers aren't just "out there somewhere" given a project while we wait until two minutes before the project deadline to ask them if they've finished it. Each project has a project manager; the manager manages a task list, assigns tasks to developers, and verifies that tasks are finished correctly, on time, and on budget. Tasks are usually defined to be not larger than 8 hours, so not more than a day can go by without the project manager knowing that a task hasn't been completed.
Secondly, this question implies that developers would prefer not to be working. The truth is that programmers love to program, and Art & Logic developers love working on Art & Logic projects. They have no reason not to work. They enjoy working, and of course they get paid to do so. (Programmers often joke that they get paid for what they would be doing even if they weren't getting paid to do it.)
Ironically, in many offices people sit around talking about what was on TV last night or surfing the web instead of working, but at least in that case you know that no work is getting done, because you can see the workers not working.
Claim: I can't entrust my company's project to someone I've never met.
Status: Huh?
But of course you can meet us! We'd be happy to meet with you at our office, or at your office, or anywhere else. It just means that whoever you're meeting with might need to travel to get to the meeting.
There's even the possibility that wherever you are, a developer might live near you, which makes it more, not less, likely that you can meet someone.
Claim: Telecommuting saves money.
Status: It depends.
This was the argument in favor of telecommuting most often heard in the early days of telecommuting. There are good reasons why it's not heard as often anymore. On the surface, it would seem to make sense that a company can save money by having a smaller office (less rent, utility bills, office supplies) But in reality you'll mostly just be exchanging one set of costs for another. There can be a significant investment in tools and processes that enable a telecommuting company to operate efficiently. This is not something to be underestimated. A telecommuting company is not the same thing as a nontelecommuting one, with the only difference being that the workers are at home. In fact, if you just tell workers to stay home next month, you'll find out if your company is ready for telecommuting. It requires different tools, processes, management structure, and an overall different attitude.
As mentioned above, it takes a very well designed recruiting process to build an effective telecommuting workforce. That process is costly. It involves flying people to interviews, managing job ads all over the country, a multi-stage qualification process, and very deliberate training and orientation. All of it is labor-intensive. With nationwide telecommuting there are additional costs to comply with labor laws in multiple states, administering benefits, and handling different state income taxes.
To make telecommuting truly effective, a company needs to invest in a different kind of infrastructure. Internal e-mail systems and business automation software are not just luxuries; they are absolutely essential.
Knowledge at Art & Logic doesn't get communicated through random meetings in hallways; everything is very deliberate. We've been forced to become an intensely self-aware organization. All processes are documented thoroughly, and processes even exist to monitor processes.
All project-related communication is stored and organized on our workgroup server. Along with our standardized coding and project management practices, this makes it easy for people to join a project at any point. This allows project teams to grow, shrink, or otherwise change in response to the changing needs of a project.
Once an infrastructure is in place to enable telecommuting, it means that workers who are away from their home office can be just as much at work as if they were at their usual place of working, as long as they have access to that infrastructure. So, workers who need to (or want to) be in a different location temporarily (an airport, at a doctor's office, at a car service facility, in a coffee shop) can continue working.
Claim: Telecommuting is just a passing fad.
Status: There is no evidence to support this.
Telecommuting is here to stay, and it's just going to become more and more common. Consider these statistics (from WorldatWork Telework Trendlines):
As more companies implement full-time telecommuting positions, potential employees will increasingly demand it. Given a choice between two jobs, many candidates (at least 35% if the statistics are accurate) will tend to favor the one that allows telecommuting. Companies that don't offer telecommuting will lose out on good talent, especially on young, up-and-coming, technically savvy talent who are the most comfortable with online communities.
As more and more companies get on the telecommuting bandwagon, real information about it hopefully will replace the theoretical knowledge that is available now. Of course, having done this already for 18 years, Art & Logic will be in an even better position to understand the more subtle aspects of telecommuting in the future. So, some of the things that I don't know yet... well, just ask me again in another 18 years, and hopefully by then I'll know.
There's a huge amount of information online about the advantages and disadvantages of telecommuting. Type in "telecommuting advantages" or "telecommuting disadvantages" into Google, and you'll get over 1100 results. Casually browsing some of these articles, I get the sense that many of them are theoretical, written by people who have no real experience with telecommuting. Anyone can ask themselves "what might the advantages (or disadvantages) of telecommuting be?" and most people would come up with obvious advantages such as "I don't have to dress nice (or dress at all)" or "it's good for the environment, because I don't have to drive to work," or disadvantages such as "it might be hard to get any work done with all the distractions at home" or "it might be harder to communicate with my coworkers."
Art & Logic has been deeply committed to telecommuting for over 18 years. Ever since the company was founded in early 1991, the majority of our workforce has been telecommuting full-time. We currently have 65 developers spread throughout the U.S. and Canada. Our office in Pasadena has only a small staff. After 18 years, we're in a pretty good position to talk about what telecommuting is really like, or at least what it's been like for us. Presumably much of what we've learned can be applied to other companies who are just now beginning to experiment with telecommuting.
It turns out that there are some surprises. Some of what one might guess is great about telecommuting turns out to be not so great, and some of what you thought would be hard about telecommuting turns out to be surprisingly easy. In short, the advantages and disadvantages aren't all what you expected them to be. Let's examine some of the claims made about the advantages and disadvantages to see if we can distinguish reality from myth.
* * *
Claim: Telecommuting workers are better at what they do.
Status: Yes, but not for the reasons you might think.
Telecommuting doesn't automatically make you better at what you do. In fact, the same worker in a traditional office, suddenly converted into a telecommuting worker, may or may not find themself more productive. It depends on the worker. Some people might find distractions at home unbearable, or they might be unable to collaborate effectively in an environment without face-to-face communication, or they might just be too lonely (many people depend on work to provide a sense of a community). But other people might find home to have less distractions than the office (less gossip around the water cooler, less paper airplane battles, shorter lunch breaks), and some people actually communicate better by e-mail. But since most companies recruit people on the basis of how well they work in office environments, the odds are not in favor of the same people thriving in a telecommuting environment, at least not without retraining.
Art & Logic's recruiting process is designed to find people who work well in a telecommuting environment. Since communication skills (especially written skills) are critical, our recruiting process evaluates communication skills just as much as programming skills. Other skills that must be carefully evaluated include time management, social skills, and the ability to multi-task effectively.
Telecommuting companies like Art & Logic can hire the best people, no matter where they live. If our developers had to work in our office, we'd be limited to hiring only in the Los Angeles area. But some of the best programmers don't live in Los Angeles and don't want to (or can't) move there. Since we can hire anywhere in the U.S. or Canada, we can "cast a very wide net" and then raise the bar very high so that very few people get in. The result is a team of the highest quality people that can be found anywhere.
This last effect only benefits companies committed to nationwide telecommuting. Many companies, when they say "telecommuting" just mean people all within driving distance from the office but staying home. Recruiting for a team of stay-at-home commuters has no advantage in its access to a larger talent pool.
Another surprising reason that telecommuters are better workers is that they, on the average, are more experienced. People at a telecommuting company don't have to find a new job every time their life circumstances require them to move. There are many reasons why someone might want to move aside from needing or wanting to find a new job; for example:
- someone's spouse changes jobs, requiring a relocation
- someone marries or starts dating someone who is in another location
- someone wants to move to where their kids will be safer or will have access to better schools
- someone wants to move to somewhere more affordable (perhaps they want to buy a house, or the size of their family is increasing)
This allows projects to be staffed by people who have worked at Art & Logic for a long time and are used to working together.
Lastly, we have a saying, which is "happy workers are good workers, and telecommuting workers are happy." Happy developers are good developers, because they think clearly, are motivated to work hard, are more creative, and spend less time complaining or daydreaming or looking for a new job. And telecommuting developers are happy developers, because:
- they are able to create their ideal work environment without interfering with the freedom of coworkers to do likewise (for example, one person likes to work with loud background music, while another person prefers to work in silence)
- they are able to live where they want to live
- they have more time to spend with their families or pursuing personal interests
- they don't have the stress of sitting in traffic
- they spend less on transportation (gasoline, car maintenance, car insurance)
- they can exercise more and eat healthier
* * *
Claim: Telecommuting is not just good for our developers and for our clients; it's also good for the world.
Status: Yes, and for even more reasons than you might think!
Usually when people make this claim, they're thinking of conserving energy resources. Obviously telecommuters use less gasoline in their cars, and companies with a lot of telecommuters can have smaller offices, which means lower energy usage in the office. In fact, a 2007 study commissioned by the Consumer Electronics Association showed that a telecommuter used almost 850 gallons of gasoline less each year. The study went on to claim that telecommuting at that time was saving enough energy to power 1 million households in the United States.
But telecommuting is good for the earth in ways besides polluting less by burning fossil fuels to run cars or generate electricity. Less cars means less highway maintenance (which in turn requires fuel and energy) and less land used for parking lots.
Less driving means less traffic-related injuries and death. (Thousands of people are killed every year while traveling to and from work.)
Telecommuting's benefits to the world go beyond just protecting the environment; there are also subtle but powerful benefits to society as a whole.
By keeping people in their local communities, people have more of a chance to get to know each other. Telecommuting workers are more available for participation in community organizations. Sadly, many commuting workers, in contrast, leave their neighborhood each morning, drive an hour to another part of town where they have no involvement at all, then drive back to their own neighborhood, where they isolate themselves inside their homes. People don't know the names of their next door neighbors, because communication can be avoided on the way to and from the car at the start and end of the day.
Telecommuting also gives people more time with their families. Parents are able to see their children off to school or take a break from their work to participate in their child's activities, or to take care of extended family members who are ill or aging.
Telecommuting increases job opportunities for persons with health problems or disabilities, since in most cases such people have already invested in customizing their home office environment for their special needs.
By strengthening the family, telecommuting invests in its own future. The children of these families grow up to be productive members of society, many of whom naturally seek out telecommuting opportunities since they grew up in a home with telecommuting parents.
* * *
Claim: Since people aren't in the office with you, how can you know if they're really working?
Status: Just plain silly.
Of course you can know if they're working... because the work gets done! This question is based on a fundamentally false understanding of the relationship between telecommuting workers and their employers. Art & Logic's developers aren't just "out there somewhere" given a project while we wait until two minutes before the project deadline to ask them if they've finished it. Each project has a project manager; the manager manages a task list, assigns tasks to developers, and verifies that tasks are finished correctly, on time, and on budget. Tasks are usually defined to be not larger than 8 hours, so not more than a day can go by without the project manager knowing that a task hasn't been completed.
Secondly, this question implies that developers would prefer not to be working. The truth is that programmers love to program, and Art & Logic developers love working on Art & Logic projects. They have no reason not to work. They enjoy working, and of course they get paid to do so. (Programmers often joke that they get paid for what they would be doing even if they weren't getting paid to do it.)
Ironically, in many offices people sit around talking about what was on TV last night or surfing the web instead of working, but at least in that case you know that no work is getting done, because you can see the workers not working.
* * *
Claim: I can't entrust my company's project to someone I've never met.
Status: Huh?
But of course you can meet us! We'd be happy to meet with you at our office, or at your office, or anywhere else. It just means that whoever you're meeting with might need to travel to get to the meeting.
There's even the possibility that wherever you are, a developer might live near you, which makes it more, not less, likely that you can meet someone.
* * *
Claim: Telecommuting saves money.
Status: It depends.
This was the argument in favor of telecommuting most often heard in the early days of telecommuting. There are good reasons why it's not heard as often anymore. On the surface, it would seem to make sense that a company can save money by having a smaller office (less rent, utility bills, office supplies) But in reality you'll mostly just be exchanging one set of costs for another. There can be a significant investment in tools and processes that enable a telecommuting company to operate efficiently. This is not something to be underestimated. A telecommuting company is not the same thing as a nontelecommuting one, with the only difference being that the workers are at home. In fact, if you just tell workers to stay home next month, you'll find out if your company is ready for telecommuting. It requires different tools, processes, management structure, and an overall different attitude.
As mentioned above, it takes a very well designed recruiting process to build an effective telecommuting workforce. That process is costly. It involves flying people to interviews, managing job ads all over the country, a multi-stage qualification process, and very deliberate training and orientation. All of it is labor-intensive. With nationwide telecommuting there are additional costs to comply with labor laws in multiple states, administering benefits, and handling different state income taxes.
To make telecommuting truly effective, a company needs to invest in a different kind of infrastructure. Internal e-mail systems and business automation software are not just luxuries; they are absolutely essential.
Knowledge at Art & Logic doesn't get communicated through random meetings in hallways; everything is very deliberate. We've been forced to become an intensely self-aware organization. All processes are documented thoroughly, and processes even exist to monitor processes.
All project-related communication is stored and organized on our workgroup server. Along with our standardized coding and project management practices, this makes it easy for people to join a project at any point. This allows project teams to grow, shrink, or otherwise change in response to the changing needs of a project.
Once an infrastructure is in place to enable telecommuting, it means that workers who are away from their home office can be just as much at work as if they were at their usual place of working, as long as they have access to that infrastructure. So, workers who need to (or want to) be in a different location temporarily (an airport, at a doctor's office, at a car service facility, in a coffee shop) can continue working.
* * *
Claim: Telecommuting is just a passing fad.
Status: There is no evidence to support this.
Telecommuting is here to stay, and it's just going to become more and more common. Consider these statistics (from WorldatWork Telework Trendlines):
- The number of Americans who telecommute at least one day per month was 12.4 million in 2006, 17.2 million in 2008. Currently, there are about 5 million Americans who telecommute everyday.
- In 2009, 38% of people who do not currently telecommute said that at least part of their job could be done from home.
- When asked about their interest in working from home, 35% were very interested, and only 21% said they were not at all interested.
As more companies implement full-time telecommuting positions, potential employees will increasingly demand it. Given a choice between two jobs, many candidates (at least 35% if the statistics are accurate) will tend to favor the one that allows telecommuting. Companies that don't offer telecommuting will lose out on good talent, especially on young, up-and-coming, technically savvy talent who are the most comfortable with online communities.
As more and more companies get on the telecommuting bandwagon, real information about it hopefully will replace the theoretical knowledge that is available now. Of course, having done this already for 18 years, Art & Logic will be in an even better position to understand the more subtle aspects of telecommuting in the future. So, some of the things that I don't know yet... well, just ask me again in another 18 years, and hopefully by then I'll know.
posted by James at
3:29 PM
<< Home