wmartin (07/29/82)
There are current government work-at-home programs; the only one I know anything about is a prototype one here at my agency -- the USArmy Development and Readiness Command Automated Logistics Management Systems Activity (USArmy DARCOM ALMSA for short). We have two categories of work-at-home personnel -- handicapped and regular. There is one handicapped individual, paraplegic in a wheelchair; he does his work on a microcomputer or on a dial-up terminal at home during normal business hours and comes in once a week. (He gave up an amount of subsistence equal to his salary to become a productive worker once again.) The regualr employees have leased lines and workstations in their homes, and perform their work during non-prime time, accessing the contractor host computers over the ARPANET. These were current employees who volunteered for the program, and all seem to be happy with the arrangement. (One turned down a promotion in order to stay in the program.) They either work an eight-hour chunk of time at night or in the evening, or split their shift into two chunks. These are all programmers, who also do documentation and document production on these facilities. They are now operating under the Augment/NLS environment, but are in the process of moving to a UNIX environment. We've had some local publicity on the WAH (Work-At-Home) program; one of the local TV news teams did a feature on the handicapped WAH individual, I think in relation to a series on handicaps. There are lots of nit-picking legal issues involved; there are questions related to liability, workmen's compensation, supervisory controls, productivity demonstration, etc. That's why this is still a prototype program, even though our top management is strongly behind it. The Headquarters legal staff has to be convinced that all difficulties have been overcome. I, too, would like to see contributions on the net from anyone who works at home (other than self-employed) as their normal workday. (Forgot to mention above -- the regular WAH personnel come in once every two weeks, unless training or other special requirements interrupt their WAH schedules.) Regards, Will Martin
dennis (07/31/82)
I've been working at home for several months now, not because of any management program, but because office space around here is pretty tight, and the air conditioning at the office has been notably absent. I'm involved with a fairly large project using the IBM PC, and have one at home with all the goodies I need to work. I have no such regularly structured hours for it, as Will's prople do, and I only show up at my boss's office when there's a meeting or some such that demands my presence. All in all, I regard it as a very positive thing; I can keep my own hours, and can easily stop work and watch Star Trek (twice a day here) or M*A*S*H (four times a day, plus prime time) (no, I don't watch them ALL). Since it's all standalone (except for reading my mail and news via a terminal program that was my first effort, IBM's offering being worthless), I don't even need a dedicated phone line. Also, I've recently gotten married, and working at home enables me to be with my wife all day; we get along well being together all the time. The space requirements at home are not great; I have a desk covered with hardware and printouts, and a printer on a small table next to the desk, and a bookshelf filled with those damned IBM PC manuals (at last count, 15 of them). I'm on a monthly wage (ie, no time cards), and my paycheck is deposited directly to my bank, so those things don't require me to go to the office. I've always been a loner as a programmer; the couple of times I entered into a team programming project, I got too irritated with the other members to work easily with them (I refuse to allocate blame; I know I'm pretty fussy about things that may or may not matter). I heartily recommend it, and hope I can continue to work in this way.
mark (07/31/82)
I work at home one day a week (group policy) and also in spare time nights and weekends. I think it's a big win because I don't get interrupted by phone calls, people coming in, and office mates, so I get lots more done. (This situation may change once we have children running around.) It's hard to concentrate on something hairy when you're interrupted all the time. I'd like to hear from someone what the tax situation is. Presumably there are lots of people out there who have been working at home for a number of years under similar circumstances. Assuming that I keep one bedroom of my house exclusively for a home office, and I work at home part of the time by employer policy, do I have to meet some other conditions to qualify? In computing what fraction of my home is my office, if I go by rooms, which rooms do I have to count? (E.g. just bedrooms, living, dining, family, kitchen, or do I also have to count bathrooms, hallways, basement, etc?) What about depreciation - can one claim depreciation on the appropriate fraction of the home, and if so, how is it typically done? (I don't claim to understand the process, but it seemed to me you could depreciate over 4 years using sum-of-the-years-digits and get 1/3 of the fraction of the value of the house as the first year deduction - am I missing something?) Does the fact that the house really appreciates enter in somewhere? I know this isn't tax time, but I'm trying to plan ahead. Mark
mclure@sri-unix (08/01/82)
#R:brl-bmd:-28500:sri-unix:7300001:000:1236 sri-unix!mclure Jul 30 22:44:00 1982 For all of you interested in "tele-commuting", I recommend Toffler's THE THIRD WAVE, and its chapter "The Electronic Cottage". As far as I'm concerned, Toffler is a real soothsayer in that chapter. I've been a tele-commuter for the last 3 years. In my case it's fairly trivial to go to work. I live a block from SRI and spend 3-4 hours per day at the office and the rest of the time (and a lot more) at home. However, even if I didn't live so close, I doubt that this division of time would change very much. However, I can see how tele-commuting might not be everyone's cup of tea. Some married folks yearn to "get away" from unpleasant home environments. Others might find the office environment better suited to working on a computer if it requires frequent high-bandwidth interaction with co-worker. Electronic mail often just isn't fast enough! But for programmers, I think tele-commuting is a gigantic win if they have quiet surroundings and find the noise of offices distracting. The things I appreciate about working at home are: 1) no noise 2) good music 3) good food 4) other activities during lapses in programming Because of these, I can work at a single task much longer than if I'm at the office. Stuart
smb (08/01/82)
I don't find working at home to be an unmixed blessing. For one thing, it's often too easy to get distracted by things like my SF collection. If I'm not in the mood to work on something that *must* be done, being at home can be the worst thing for the project. More importantly, when I'm working at home constantly I get lonely. I don't find 'mail' to be a subsitute for face-to-face conversation, either professionally or socially. I need the informal personal interactions to keep me functional, and a terminal just doesn't cut it. (To be sure, when the net is down for a few days I miss my contacts with all you folks out there in network land as well.) --Steve
ecn-pa.scott (08/02/82)
Those interested in working at home might find the following book interesting. The thesis of several of the contributing authors is that a *lot* of the time spent by scientists and engineers (you can decide which one you are!) is in communication. Most of that is spent in informal dialog with colleagues. There are often very complex communication networks among members of working groups, and certain members act as gateways between groups. All in all, it makes for very interesting reading. They *didn't* consider time spent doing exactly what you are doing now, i.e. time spent on a computer terminal reading news. Maybe news acts as a substitute for some of the informal communication. Any thoughts on the value of shooting the breeze as part of your job? The book is: Communication among scientists and engineers. Heath Lexington Books 1970 501.4/C737 (at Purdue, at least) OCLC #97550 Scott Deerwester Purdue University Libraries
cak (08/03/82)
Another good reference for people interested in "tele-commuting" and general speculation on our future with networks is "The Network Nation", by Turoff and Hiltz. Chris Kent, Purdue CS
goldfarb (08/04/82)
Some responses to my working at home query were mailed to me directly so I thought I'd share them with the net. ======================================================================== I work for a small software house here in Philadelphia in software development. I've been working here for two years. From the beginning they had a policy of providing technical types with home terminals (we have a VAX/11/780/VMS system). My first child was born around the time I started working, and my wife's part-time job was scheduled to begin three weeks after the baby was born. So I asked if I could stay home two days a week, to look after the baby while my wife was at work. Given the company's flextime policy, and given that 90% of my work was done sitting at a terminal, I argued that there was little reason for me to actually come in to the office. My managers agreed to a trial. Well, two years later, I'm still working at home two days a week. I'm still the only person in the company who has this arrangement. One of my co-worker's wife is expecting in October, but he hasn't expressed any interest as yet in working at home. Another colleague would like such an arrangement when she starts her family. I've found that on days I work at home, I often get more done since when I work, I really work (instead of BSing with the gang). It has been a tremendous help to my wife, and I feel I am a full partner in raising my son and (new-born) daughter. I have had four different managers since I started this arrangement (things move quickly in small companies) and not one of them has expressed any complaints or doubts about the arrangement. Unfortunately, our company has been going down the tubes recently, and we were just bought out by a large conglomerate. They have promised not to upset current work-environment policies. I hope they keep their word. ========================================================================== I work at the ITT Programming Technology Center in Stratford, CT. In our group (a research outfit), we can work at home anytime we like, as long as we don't miss vital meetings, etc. We have even been given terminals, modems, and dedicated phone lines for use at home (ITT picks up the tab for everything). Sure is nice - I'd recommend it to anyone who can convince the management... ============================================================================ Well, I haven't been keeping up with DEC internal policies for the last few years, but I do know that the "work-at-home" policy has *always* been in effect for programmers. I have quite a few friends in software development for DEC working on 8's, 11's, 10's, 20's. Many of them have been there since the PDP-8 was the hot machine (i.e. pre-11 days). One of the attractions of working there has always been that DEC is extremely lax in work requirements. They merely insist that you get the job done. Furthermore, they have been so lax that some of the folks I know there tried to see how long they could get away with doing absolutely nothing. I believe it went for a few months before someone realized what was up. Perhaps the major source of the trouble is that nearly everyone at DEC is a manager -- all chiefs, no Indians. Where did you hear of a new policy being initiated?? I'd like to know what it is. ============================================================================== As far as Sytek (Silicon Gulch, California) is concerned, while people are supposed to show up (at whatever hours they choose, as long as they can still interact with others with whom they must work and get their work done), occasional working at home days are acceptable. In my case, I live 37 miles (one-way) from work and will sometimes not come in but work from home (using dialin lines for computer access and then downloading/uploading things to/from my home micro system). We have most all our equipment on a broadband-cable local network (LocalNet, which we manufacture), by dialing in to it, I can still run development systems, various test equipment, etc. as well as our Unix systems.