work from home advice

[timj219]

I have a job decision I have to make soon. I'm hoping some of you may have some insight for me. My current job is going away. I have to make a choice between a couple alternatives.
One is my current job but working for a new company. Systems Administrator supporting a local hospital and sometimes being leveraged to help out other hospitals remotely. The job means being on site most days and working from home two to five days per month.
The second is a work from home job doing similar work but for companies all over the country - concentrated in the northeast for now.

There are lots of differences between the jobs and I will have to consider all aspects but here is the question I hope somebody can answer for me:
Do these work from home jobs always end up being offshored to india or indonesia in the end? I like the idea of working from home but it occurs to me that if I can do the job from rural upstate NY, how long will it be before some bright bulb in mgmt decides somebody in Mumbai can do it just as easily for 1/3 the salary? Anybody have any experience with this kind of thing?

[bsmokin]

In my experience as a software engineer the likelihood of a job getting off shored depends on a couple of key things:

1. How much 'communication' plays into the success of a role.

Even if you're remote, if you are required to communicate effectively and fairly often, this will protect you somewhat. In other words, if you are often involved in requirements gathering, user feedback loops, etc., then this protects you. Communication effectiveness and frequency still come into play when remote... it's just in the way of phone calls and emails, vs. face-to-face. If you expect to be just sitting behind the keyboard remotely with little to no communication (even remote), then your position is prime candidate for outsourcing.

2. Effectiveness and quality of management

Even if you are key to a team / project's success, including the communication aspect, a bad manager may still see you as expendable and try and outsource your position anyway in a cost-cutting effort. This is unfortunate, but seems to happen all too often.


Hope this helps a little in making your decision.... Good Luck!

[CigarNut]

To add on to the above -- make sure you keep your management and your customers what you are doing for them every time you fix a problem, help a user, or update the system or an application. Make sure that everyone knows of your value. Send weekly status reports with both a summary and details. When you are communicating this information be sure to be clear, concise and articulate -- something that you don't often find in overseas help.

It does not hurt if you customers send an email or call your management to pass on their thanks.

Working from home is different -- make sure that you do just that. Set up a home office area that is for work. Don't play there, just work there. Make sure that you are putting in more than the minimum time and effort required of you. You need to be very diligent about this.

Finally, make sure you get regular face time with your management, and if possible some of your customers. The more they see you as a person rather than just a voice on the phone or text in an email, the more real a person you become. It's harder to let go of a person than it is a nameless, faceless entity...

[tsolomon]

I know several companies that support staff working from remote locations. Some of these were the result of closing small offices and setting up the staff to work from home as they value the skills of those people. The ability to use IP telephony to provide the employee with an office phone at their home location is another feature that's a big plus. Most of these people work in support rolls where a phone and a laptop are pretty much all you need. In many cases it allows for support 24x7 and keeps the talent happy and working for the company.

[timj219]

Thanks for the responses. The communications issue makes sense. And it will make my decision easier. If close communication and coordination with stakeholders and project managers is going to be an essential part of the job then I will feel more secure accepting it.

I've been able to work from home at times on my present job and I am usually more effective there than when I go to the office so I'm not too worried that I'll lose focus doing it full time. You are right about setting aside a place and adequate time. Fortunately the work I do is mostly project based (and that will be even more true of the work from home job) so scheduling is very flexible and I don't actually have to sit in my home office from 9-5. Like I ever only work 8 hours anyway :)