Anyone hiring at the moment?

[Richard Foley]

Yep, definitely: good people make good jobs, and bad people make bad jobs.  
Or, in other words, you can still enjoy, and succeed at, a bad job so long as 
you have good people, but not the other way around.  Also, if you're working 
remote only rarely, and then people are breathing down your neck, they're 
probably not trusting you as a professional to get the job done.  That's not 
the right atmosphere for a solid working relationship.

What's crucial to making remote working work, is communication.  A decent 
spec. (short but accurate), and reasonable milestones, followed by 
communication and mutual feedback.  Sounds like a pipe-dream, in the office 
or out, doesn't it ?-)  It can happen though, you just have to strive for it.

I don't think for a moment that remote working suits everybody either, some 
folk need the people-contact and the razzmataz of office life, not me.  Maybe 
I'm just an anti-social git.  Also, unless I live near work, (which I don't 
usually), remote working means I get to spend quality time with my family, at 
least some of the time, and to me that's very important.  I don't live to 
work.

ps. I didn't mean to criticize booking.com in any particular way with my 
remarks, I've never worked for them, I was simply taking a swipe at 
(project?) managers in general and their seeming inability to think outside 
the box.  JFTR.

pps. and back on topic: I'll also be looking for a new contract in the new 
year, and am hoping to find a, at least partially, remote one.  Hand 
on 'phone, and fingers crossed...

--
Richard Foley
Ciao - shorter than aufwiedersehen

http://www.rfi.net/

On Tuesday 22 September 2009 10:24:04 James Laver wrote:
> On 22 Sep 2009, at 09:05, Richard Foley wrote:
> 
> > What, relocate to Amsterdam, whatever for?  Without investigation,  
> > I'd be
> > prepared to bet that booking.com does most of it's "booking" online,
> > remotely.  So almost the entire client base is remote, all  
> > transactions
> > completed online, it's entire business model is remote.  Except the
> > workers...
> 
> Having been to interview at booking and been offered the job, I very  
> nearly took it. It seemed like a wonderful place to work, with people  
> who knew what they were doing.
> 
> > Mostly, I come in to work in Rotterdam every other week to
> > show my face so that the project managers can see that I appear to be
> > working.  I'm being a bit unfair to my current employer here,  
> > because I CAN
> > work remotely half the time, but this doesn't excuse my still having  
> > to sit
> > at my desk like a bozo the other half of the time.  That the work is  
> > still
> > completed, more efficiently and with milestones reached, when I am  
> > not in the
> > office does not seem to register with most managers, as they appear  
> > to need
> > to see head counts sitting at desks rather than having work  
> > completed on
> > schedule.  It's not a results driven industry we're working in, it's  
> > a people
> > counting and mini-empire building industry.  Sigh...
> 
> Only at one company was I able to work from home and that was only  
> very occasionally. It suffered the same breathing-down-necks situation  
> you describe, and that certainly didn't get code written any faster.
> 
> Short answer is that interview is your time to evaluate the company as  
> well as for them to evaluate you. If you're having an interview at  
> 9am, how many people are in (flexi-time)? How often do people seem to  
> get up to make coffee (I contracted at a place where permies were  
> afraid to make coffee for fear of raising the boss's ire)? Is the  
> office horribly open plan and nasty if you have to work on site? Do  
> the managers actually seem to have clue or are they going to piss you  
> off? Generally do you get a gut feeling about the company?
> 
> If it doesn't feel right, just say no. I've dodged more a few bullets  
> because of this (and friends who've wound up taking those bullets have  
> said how much it sucks).
> 
> --James
>