Archive for Remote Work
The High Cost of Travel – Good for Telecommuting Trends?
Posted by: | CommentsWe moved from Calgary, Alberta, Canada to Sackville, New Brunswick in June 2010 and finally sold our house in March 2011. It took 9 months to sell so I guess the economy isn’t that great. So I just had to book flights, hotel and rental car for a few days while we move stuff out of our house.
The return flight for 2 people was about $2,000, the hotel is over $100 per night and the rental is a few hundred dollars. The flights in particular are a lot more than they were a few years ago, probably in part due to higher fuel prices. There were no WestJet flights on Saturday out of Moncton and most of the flights leave at 6:30am. Plus there are no direct flights to Calgary, so we will be stopping in Toronto on the way. Needless to say flying has become an expensive, annoying pain in the butt, and I haven’t even talked about US security pat downs!
When I travel for an IT contract I either charge an increased hourly fee or add the travel costs (flight, hotel, car rental, meals) to the invoice. So the client ends up paying more money which is bad, right?
With all this annoyance and cost I hope that employers will start to take advantage of all the available technology such as Webex (for virtual meetings, desktop sharing), Skype (basically free long distance, desktop sharing, video chats), VPN connections (for secure connection to network) and of course email and phone.
It’s Not All About the Money
Posted by: | CommentsMy wife forwarded me an email from the wildlife rehabilitation society (where she volunteers), telling me someone had a found a baby robin outside their home. There was a hole in the nest and it had fallen out. 2 other babies had died. So since I was working from home, I offered to pick up the robin and take it to the rehab society. They get lots of calls during this spring season since there are lots of babies being born!
When I arrived at the woman’s home, she let me in to see the robin she had found. It was really small and in a box. She had been feeding it baby food and it seemed okay. She was sad to see it go, but I took it to the rehab society where it could get proper care. As soon as I peeked my head into the box, it stuck its neck out and mouth open wanting food. It gave me a glimpse of how stressful a mother robin’s job is!
I just checked up on the robin and it’s doing well! Another benefit of working from home, and doing something really meaningful to me.
Ask and You Shall Receive
Posted by: | CommentsI’ve talked about asking for what you want in the past, such as in my e-book but I’ve even outdone myself lately! I thought I would share it with you all. I’m coming up to the end of my latest contract (after extending a couple times) and decided I want to move on to more interesting projects. The client also posted a position that would replace part of what I do. I’ve been working for for about a year without a break on this project and am in need of some vacation time. But since I realized they might have some issues with having someone else take over my job, I offered the following: I can be available for phone calls with a 1-2 hour response time for a minimum of 20 hours per month (any less and they will still pay for the 20 hours). And the rate (which is already pretty high as you know) was more than 50% higher since I will be ‘on call’. This will be for the summer months at this point. One key point is that I was offering to help them out without any attachment to the result. I was fine either way, the decision was totally up to them. Since their replacement was fairly junior they thought it would be beneficial to them. This arrangement is another consequence of finding a niche market, which I also talk about often. If your skills can be easily found elsewhere, it is less likely they will be as willing to accept some of these proposals.
Even though this will cut into my vacation time, it’s a pretty sweet deal since I can go for a 2 month summer vacation and be able to make some extra cash without having to use my computer, go to an office or be responsible for the day to day running of the environments.
Lately I’ve been getting used to working from home via VPN and am pretty much going to focus on only being available for remote development. The beauty of this is that I can work anywhere where there is an internet connection. Can anyone say “Hawaii”.