[quote=XBoxBoy][quote=deadzone][quote=XBoxBoy]In a crazy twist relevant to this thread, I found out today that about 1/3 of our development staff is working on a “side-project” in their “spare time” while working from home. Something they hope will allow them to quit and create their own startup company. Of course upper management knows nothing about this.
It’s a fascinating idea to me that maybe companies suddenly start loosing work from home employees because they’ve had enough time to pursue their start up dreams… Suddenly your employees are your competitors![/quote]
Doesn’t surprise me at all. Like I keep saying, this work at home concept is clearly unproductive and ripe for abuse. Management not having any visibility into their employees whereabouts is not sustainable. Anyone who thinks this can continue forever is in fantasy land.[/quote]
If you only look at it from the employer’s point of view I agree with you, but I’m fascinated with the idea that in the next year or two we could be seeing an explosion of new startups. These are people who used to think they needed to go to the office every day and work a job. Now they have been working from home for the last year and found they like it. The boss is making noise about getting people back into the office and these folks are thinking about an alternative to what they used to do. It could be really interesting to see this unfold.[/quote]
As a boss, if your workers are finding a way to get what you thought would take 40hrs/week to get done what they are getting done in 20hrs/week and moonlighting the rest of the 20hrs/week. That’s not their fault. That’s your fault and your poor management for giving them 40 hours to get it done when it only would take 20 hours…or that’s the fault of your shitty company that makes their workers waste 20 hours/week in useless meetings, when it only takes about 20 hours/week to do the real work.
I’ll be honest. Working from home, there were times many times I was dialed into “status meetings” that lasted hours while I was changing my oil, picking up my kid from school, dropping them off, or washing my car…My contribution was the standard 10 minute status update from mobileland, and the rest was listening to every other bean counter bloviate. If you have more than 5 people in a meeting and it lasts longer than 20 minutes, it’s, it’s going to be a waste of time. People check out at the 20minute mark and if you can’t get to the point within that window, the rest people will just be mentally masturbating. It’s going to be a waste of time. At the end of the meeting, there was no decision made that was any better than before the meeting. The only thing that was accomplished was my car was clean, an oil change was done, and my kids got to go see their friends or attend a school event without the need of juggling a carpool.
