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The Telecommuting Thread

How to save energy through both societal and individual actions.

The Telecommuting Thread

Unread postby ennui2 » Wed 25 Nov 2015, 16:15:36

From here:

http://www.inc.com/magazine/201512/shei ... -team.html

Ignore the silly robotic rolling laptops in this article for a moment and focus on the statistics.

Working From Home

The Data on Distance
•80 to 90 percent of the U.S. work force would like to work remotely at least part time.
•38 percent of U.S. employers allow some employees to work remotely on a regular basis.
•Almost 3 percent of U.S. workers work remotely at times--up from 1.5% in 2005.
•In 2014, 50 percent of U.S. workers had jobs compatible with some remote work. That's a 103 percent increase since 2005.


This reinforces my mild-crash (as far as oil shocks go) doomer narrative, that corporate cultural inertia is one of the biggest causes of energy waste, by forcing a whopping 50 percent of the US workforce to commute for jobs that really do not require it. An attitudinal shift in corporate policy is all that is needed to save a tremendous amount of gasoline.

No carpooling or EVs necessary if people just stay home.

(article submitted by my while...working from home)
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Re: The Telecommuting Thread

Unread postby Pops » Wed 25 Nov 2015, 17:17:58

I became a partner in a small ad shop in '95. Sometime after the web got rolling I predicted that one day we (our employees) would all work from home and the office would disappear. We'd wear loungin PJs all day and don "suit-dickeys" for tele-conferences. And we could do it from anywhere, the video producer could be in Boston, me in Colorado, the radio guy in Florida - as long as we had local reps and cameramen.

I was pretty well right, turns out we each do indeed work from home, just like I predicted, but not only did the office disappear, so did the company!

By 2020, 50% of employees are forecast to be freelancers.

There are upsides and down in any situation. I'm also posting on my own time, which means I'm not earning any money.
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Re: The Telecommuting Thread

Unread postby careinke » Wed 25 Nov 2015, 17:39:24

My sister, two nieces, and a future daughter in law (hopefully) all telecommute to work for major companies. One niece had her preschool kids watched over by her mom, who was paid for the child care by her company.

My future DIL was even trained using teleconferencing right from home.

This could also be applied to education. Public schools are a 19th century invention to train people to work in factories. So outdated it is sad.
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Re: The Telecommuting Thread

Unread postby Scrub Puller » Wed 25 Nov 2015, 18:49:49

Yair . . .

I agree with the telecommuting for those few who can do it . . . .but there are people who actually have to work.

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Re: The Telecommuting Thread

Unread postby ennui2 » Wed 25 Nov 2015, 19:14:46

"there are people who actually have to work."

What's that supposed to mean? If you don't dig ditches or serve up Happy Meals for a living you aren't working?

You wouldn't be able to post on this thread without people who sit in front of computers for a living.

And I think you're comment about "few" is some form of envy. This is the information economy and lots of people including the lower-end of the pay-scale do work that doesn't technically require physical presence, right down to indian call-centers that can route a call anywhere.
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Re: The Telecommuting Thread

Unread postby ennui2 » Wed 25 Nov 2015, 20:23:01

careinke wrote:Public schools are a 19th century invention to train people to work in factories. So outdated it is sad.


I disagree with this pot-shot towards public education, although I know there's a strong strain of home-schooling impulse among doomers. As far as saving energy goes, keeping kids home rather than sending them down the street, even on a bus, is a non-issue.
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Re: The Telecommuting Thread

Unread postby Outcast_Searcher » Wed 25 Nov 2015, 21:26:10

That work at home is feasible for certain jobs, for example computer based jobs based on brainpower, with the aid of a PC and a phone for communication, no doubt is true.

In my mind, part of the problem is perception, and part of the problem is competent management is needed who can reliably MEASURE the productivity of the knowledge-worker employee based on what they produce -- without seeing them on a daily basis.

The final half of my career at IBM, largely a computer company, I saw management of the mainframe I/T workforce for both developement and systems programming go from a competent group of folks who knew what people produced (and generally rewarded competence and productivity) -- to mostly marketing types with nary a CLUE, who based everything on perception of whether they thought people were gung-ho, smiled, said the right things at meetings, etc -- and as a result, technical computer people learned that what they produced had LITTLE to do with how they were compensated, and most of the best people left.

I have to wonder how long it will take for management to evolve to where companies will consider knowledge-based jobs to be reliably measurable -- and thus make working at home a non-issue.
Given the track record of the perma-doomer blogs, I wouldn't bet a fast crash doomer's money on their predictions.
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Re: The Telecommuting Thread

Unread postby ennui2 » Thu 26 Nov 2015, 10:08:45

The statistics I posted indicate that right now workers already WANT to work from home, and they know full well their jobs COULD be done from home. They often do that in the course of overtime and the blurring of on and off hours. And this is during a time with CHEAP gas. So I think if you stack, let's say, $4-5/gal gas prices on top of that, eventually it will back employers into a corner where they really have no way to argue for holding onto a traditional commuter/cubicle workforce other than simple cultural inertia. How that will play out is, if there's any competition for talent (and there currently is quite a bit of it), then one company will realize that offering telecommuting is an attractive perk. Once employers sense an exodus from cubicle jobs to telecommuter jobs, they will be forced to adapt or die.

Of course, you could make the argument that when gas gets that expensive the economy will tank, therefore putting a lot of people out of work, creating a glut of talent, thus making it easier to find skilled people.

So there is this crossover where mass behavioral adaptation could reduce oil consumption, moderating prices, but high prices may be necessary to induce the change in the first place.

But the universal constant is this irrational clinging to an antiquated business tradition which doesn't make sense in the 21st century.

It could be that this change starts happening on its own without the pressure of gas prices, though, because gas prices or not, nobody likes wasting time in rush-hour traffic. I think this is part of the reason why people want self-driving cars, so they can take their eyes off the road and do something else during the dead-time of their commute, because people are just too busy to waste that kind of time. I can't tell you how many phone conversations I've had with my boss when he was either driving to or from the office. The car is already becoming another office and it is insane that we feel the need to show up for the sake of showing up when we already do so much real work outside of the office.
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Re: The Telecommuting Thread

Unread postby Newfie » Thu 26 Nov 2015, 10:53:41

A few months ago I heard an NPR piece discussing telecommuting. Don't recall who did the survey.

The gist of the piece was years ago folks though telecommuting would be a boon to folks who could not commute: disabled, part timers, working mothers, etc. that it would make it easier for these mobility restricted folks to get into the market place.

The observed data suggested that the folks actually doing the telecommuting were high functioning people with an existing job, they were using telecommuting to EXTEND THEIR WORK DAY. So they would go home and work in the evening.

So rather than expanding the work pool it has worked to concentrate available work into the hands of those that already have it.

My personal observation at my company is mixed. There are a lot of folks who work at home, because the company gets rid of office costs, shifting that to the employee. There are also a lot who have no real office, they are flying several days a week, working 60 to 80 hours a week. Middle management.

The clients seem to expect this kind of behaviour. It is common to receive client demands right before a holiday with a due date right after. Happened this week. We have been negotiating a job for a year. Tuesday at 3pm we received an email requiring significant redesign, computer simulation runs, with a response no later than 10am Monday. Final negotiations 10am Tursday. Luckily for us our partner responsible has overseas engineering staff that does not celebrate Thanksgiving. No so for our competition. :lol:

I have seen, more than once, a client issue a large and complicated RFP the week befor (or of) Christmas with a due date immediately after New Years. One year I spent the entire Christmas holiday, including my vacation time, helping my Wife respond to a City mandated policy submittal that ended up being a few hundred pages.

Not exactly "telecommuting" but it does point to how the division between work and home, be it place or time, is dissolving.

FWIW, in our retirement both of us will be continuing to work on some part time basis, she with regular hours, I will be on call, or "casual" as they call it. But it will all be over the phone, from our boat.
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Re: The Telecommuting Thread

Unread postby Pops » Thu 26 Nov 2015, 11:15:50

I found the same Newf.
At first I thought Fed Ex was just tits because it shaved a couple of days off the schedule so I got a day or two extra to send art,
then clients adjusted once I did it faster in an "emergency",
then I thought digital prepress was bitchin because I had a whole 'nother week!
then clients adjusted once I did it faster in an "emergency",
Then I thought art delivery via the internet was hot because I could do changes right up until presstime
then clients adjusted once I did it faster in an "emergency",

The only reason they don't actually believe they CAN get it yesterday is I haven't yet done it in an "emergency".
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Re: The Telecommuting Thread

Unread postby Newfie » Thu 26 Nov 2015, 11:54:14

Yeah, human nature? But also I think the concept of responding to an "emergency" makes us feel good, gives us a rush, self validation.

Back to the basic premise of this thread I completely agree that there is a great deal, including telecommuting, we could do to lessen our ff usage. Telecommuting is a great idea and I promote it at work. Yet I find resistance. I can set up a WebEx and share screens as easily as setting up a conference call. But folks seldom do it. They will sit there and read stuff back and forth to one another and never establish a link!

We are lavish I our ff use, squandering it everywhere. This is a strong argument in favor of a slow crash. We can adjust, economize, ease our way down.

I'm still wary of the fast crash through some Black Swan because I'm convienced that the world trade systems have become overly complicated.
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Re: The Telecommuting Thread

Unread postby ennui2 » Fri 27 Nov 2015, 09:13:03

Newfie wrote:The gist of the piece was years ago folks though telecommuting would be a boon to folks who could not commute: disabled, part timers, working mothers, etc. that it would make it easier for these mobility restricted folks to get into the market place.


My opinion is that telecommuting can reverse urbanization by allowing people to get decent paying white-collar jobs from anywhere, encouraging people to fan out into areas with lower cost-of-living. You'd have exurbs, but nobody would be commuting! Also, it has the potential to provide opportunity to rural America (insourcing).

If rural America weren't so poor, then the living conditions there would no longer be as unattractive to potential residents (unless you're a doomer looking for a doomstead). So it helps break the dysfunction of cities sucking all the best and brightest in, leaving behind the dregs.

The hypocrisy is that business is quick to outsource to the 3rd world in another timezone (where there is no physical connection to those doing the work) but reluctant to allow domestic employees to telecmomute.
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Re: The Telecommuting Thread

Unread postby Outcast_Searcher » Fri 27 Nov 2015, 13:15:21

ennui2 wrote:It could be that this change starts happening on its own without the pressure of gas prices, though, because gas prices or not, nobody likes wasting time in rush-hour traffic. I think this is part of the reason why people want self-driving cars, so they can take their eyes off the road and do something else during the dead-time of their commute, because people are just too busy to waste that kind of time.

Sounds right to me.

In '81 when I left college and began corporate office work full time, the number 1 reason I chose to live on the "poor" side of town real near work was to avoid about an hour a day of annoying and stressful additional commuting time (compared to the 5-10 minute commute I arranged for).

Another factor that seemed blindingly obvious/good about this to me at that time, after a decade with three oil "crises" and big spikes in prices, was the energy savings -- it was the principle of the thing. Too bad that well over three decades later that thinking hasn't caught on (much) in the US.

And the final factor, which seemed to me to make more sense as time went on was the dovetailing with frugality. In America, it's so sad and counterproductive to me that the tendency is to work more to spend more (and then work more years and hours to make up for that), instead of working more to (at least as a strong secondary reason) SAVE more, and earn the right to walk away from work (if one wishes) before one is likely too old to be healthy.

Since in America, the vast majority of people clearly don't favor frugality or (meaningful) energy savings in any serious way, hopefully the increasing awareness of the magnitude of the dangers of climate change will help push people/businesses into telecommuting. It would certainly help America reduce its carbon footprint massively.
Given the track record of the perma-doomer blogs, I wouldn't bet a fast crash doomer's money on their predictions.
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Re: The Telecommuting Thread

Unread postby Pops » Fri 27 Nov 2015, 15:28:14

ennui2 wrote:My opinion is that telecommuting can reverse urbanization by allowing people to get decent paying white-collar jobs from anywhere, encouraging people to fan out into areas with lower cost-of-living. You'd have exurbs, but nobody would be commuting! Also, it has the potential to provide opportunity to rural America (insourcing).


I agree. I started freelancing around 2002, is only took me a little while to realise I could do it from Mars and clients were fine with it. Telecommuting is simply location independence. I have a variety of connection options, if there is a signal I can get it and have used most.

But it is more. Cities are built around a local resource, whether it is farming, mining, power, transportation, what have you. Local resources are traded out to bring in what was traded-out elsewhere. Local services and production are built around that base of trade and become somewhat self-serving.

Employees are the basic unit of capitalism, at once the producer and consumer with the capitalist skimming some of the added value off the top as rent on his investment. Capitalists can only automate/outsource so far because at some point (maybe soon) they cut their consumers throats. Freelancers break that mold, they keep 100% of their added value, sharing nothing with the capitalist.

Telecommuting turns the system on it's ear. The telecommuter can be anywhere, desert isle, Kansas prairie, Colorado sidehill. HE is the resource traded to the outside. People like suburbia because they like the idea of being in "the country" rather than stacked cheek to jowl in a dense city. It is "sub" urban because it is still to a large extent an adjunct to the city. Telecommuting can indeed cut the tie.

I've thought sometimes that Popsburg would be set up as a telecommuters haven; maybe out on the plains, or maybe in Pops Gulch up near Steamboat somewhere. Fiber infrastructure, renewable power, community farm, free library.
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Re: The Telecommuting Thread

Unread postby Outcast_Searcher » Fri 27 Nov 2015, 15:55:45

Pops wrote:Employees are the basic unit of capitalism, at once the producer and consumer with the capitalist skimming some of the added value off the top as rent on his investment.

It seems that things should work this way, and it would be real nice if things DID work this way. For one thing, IMO, the freelancer is still a capitalist, but their brain is the primary source of capital, not $$ of equipment, etc. -- courtesy of modern technology.

The big and growing hitch I see is how for knowledge industries, companies are getting away more and more with paying the freelancers little or NOTHING, stating their benefit is the experience or name recognition they get.

Banks, Wall Street firms, and publishers, and music producers are common examples of this. People often work for free as students or very cheap as freelance reporters, in the name of supposed long term benefit. Nice cost saving setup for the company, if they can get away with it.

One of my favorites is the "crowdfunding" that the far left Huffington Post used to cover the important Micheal Brown story aftermath. So the left wing, "for the little guy" and "in favor of high minimum wages" is fine with this if the OTHER company is doing the paying. Dandy.

If companies are allowed to do this, I only see it spreading. By the way, Huffpo raised the money it needed to pay the salary in this case -- the key thing to me is it isn't paying the salary. Now, think of how "nice" it is for Wall Street firms and big banks to pay pittances and then demand hundred hour weeks from people starting out, for example.
Given the track record of the perma-doomer blogs, I wouldn't bet a fast crash doomer's money on their predictions.
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Re: The Telecommuting Thread

Unread postby Pops » Fri 27 Nov 2015, 16:39:07

Outcast_Searcher wrote:
Pops wrote:Employees are the basic unit of capitalism, at once the producer and consumer with the capitalist skimming some of the added value off the top as rent on his investment.

It seems that things should work this way, and it would be real nice if things DID work this way. For one thing, IMO, the freelancer is still a capitalist, but their brain is the primary source of capital, not $$ of equipment, etc. -- courtesy of modern technology.

Sure, as opposed to a socialist working for the state, a freelancer owns the means of production and sells it in an open market for private profit, pretty well the definition of capitalism. Not to draw too fine a line though, I think there is a difference between a me selling my own labor and me selling an employee's labor.

I've ranted about the "sharing" economy that has nothing to do with sharing.
I could also rant about the low pay and the loophole of tax free benefits like health insurance that the US clings to for some warped reason.

But it is also a rapidly evolving area and no surprise that the ownership is taking every advantage. Back in the first industrial revolution workers took it in the rear, kinda where the whole idea of socialism came from was the reaction to the abuse of workers. People like us reading here can not even fathom. Read just a little of Sinclair Lewis or Dickens for a taste.

I really think it is the second industrial revolution, the one that throws off the corporate personage, I mean really, what good is a corporation to the 99% of people who have to do something to earn a living? The revolution is not "information" - granted, what I do is communicate information but so did Ben Franklin for example, or thousands of generations of oral historians? The revolution is the media. It is virtual, digital.

So I think telecommuting is a part of that, eliminating the commute is an important part for the topic of the forum. But it also goes to a lot of other things we talk about here.
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Re: The Telecommuting Thread

Unread postby jedrider » Fri 27 Nov 2015, 16:41:51

Just wanted to portray my situation and I don't wish to get too specific.

In the software arena, telecommuting was initially pushed as a way of getting MORE work and LONGER hours out of employees. It also dovetailed nicely with out-sourcing of computer work and the push to go 24/7 on projects.

Many high-tech companies, AFAIK, allow one or two days for telecommuting, which makes a lot of sense actually.

I am near retirement and just flat-out refused to go into work. Everyone I dealt with was at the far reaches of continents anyway. It has worked for me. My wife leaves the house for her job and my kid is always at school and so I have a peaceful environment.

As a software person and knowing my species well, the company should have offered FREE food to keep us at the office.
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Re: The Telecommuting Thread

Unread postby AgentR11 » Fri 27 Nov 2015, 17:24:22

jedrider wrote:As a software person and knowing my species well, the company should have offered FREE food to keep us at the office.


They'd never run us off if there were an unlimited tap of skittles, m&ms, and coffee..
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Re: The Telecommuting Thread

Unread postby Newfie » Fri 27 Nov 2015, 21:52:47

My recent relation is that the upper management of my company (16,000 or so engineering types) doesn't really know or understand our business anymore. They know how to run a business, a generic business, cut corners, reduce overhead, skim every bit if fat, treat employees as a captive audience o sell crap to. They are very good at this. But they have no clue as to what our product is or how to make us more efficient in doing a project. Their idea of project management is a joke.

Unfortunately, it seems that is pretty typical of our competitors and our clients.
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