Bill, Your point #1 is one well made, however, I think that some positions could be designated as "telecommutable" and not have issues with EEOC or any other regulatory agency. Then the whiners can just be told "no" and the HR dept doesn't have to worry about repercussions. Heck, if they get ticked off and leave, then the company will probably be better off without them anyway. Who wants a whiner working for them anyway?
As for point 2, I would make the argument that any kind of collaboration that is needed on any application development project can be done remotely. You do not need to be 'face to face' with anyone (regardless of who is involved with the project) and even if you do, just use video conferencing, webcams, etc. The internet lends itself to collaboration and if a company is willing to spend the money on the collaborative tools, then a higher productivity will result because when you are getting together 'in person' for meetings, there is a lot of unproductive stuff that ends up happening anyway. I would argue here that the issue is CHANGE....meetings of 10 people on a design project could be a thing of the past if the right tools are used. I can't tell you how many meetings were wasted, and how much time was wasted when I was in an on-site team. I am a hundred times more productive working remotely and I can meet with anyone by e-mail, IM, phone, chat, web cam conference, or even web presentations and whiteboarding if necessary. All the tools are out there, it is simply an issue of a paradigm shift for hiring managers (and their managers, and their managers, all the way up the pole). I think this is the point Rob was trying to make, not so much that they don't 'trust' their remote employees, but that they just gotta get it through their heads that things are different. Consider when the first computer was used in the office place. Can you imagine the resistance to 'trusting' all of our documents to something electronic? Now, we hardly print anything now adays (unless you are in an industry that still doesn't trust computers, like the legal industry!) :) Dave -----Original Message----- From: McCabe, Bill [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, December 20, 2006 12:32 PM To: CF-Jobs-Talk Subject: RE: Where are the Los Angeles Developers? Well, that's not always true. There's a couple major reasons that some companies frown on telecommuting: 1) From HR's perspective, believe me, if you do it for one person, you have to let EVERYONE telecommute at least a portion of the time. This is of course an enormous headache and too many people have ruined it by not legitimiately working from home. Once the floodgates open, productivity plummets. If you can get away with some doing it and others not (without complaining to mgt or HR) then go for it. 2) Like I told Pete, what seems like a position that lends itself well to telecommmuting (Web Development), in certain environments like ours, it is far too collaborative. Our position would have this person meeting cross functionally w/ Marketing and too many other groups so having that person here on site lends far more value. While people assume companies want to restrict telecommuting simply to "keep tabs" or be difficult is not really fair. There are sound business reasons for requiring on-site work, at least for full-timers. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| Create robust enterprise, web RIAs. Upgrade & integrate Adobe Coldfusion MX7 with Flex 2 http://ad.doubleclick.net/clk;56760587;14748456;a?http://www.adobe.com/products/coldfusion/flex2/?sdid=LVNU Archive: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/CF-Jobs-Talk/message.cfm/messageid:3214 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/CF-Jobs-Talk/subscribe.cfm Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/unsubscribe.cfm?user=11502.10531.11
