Sahil Malik opines that “Telecommuting is ‘Hardly Working’”

I say Telecommuting is Hard Work. Period.

Let me give some background. A little over two years ago, for a variety of reasons, my wife and I made a decision to move from the Dallas area to Tulsa, OK. At the time I had a very good job working for a company in Dallas that I enjoyed very much, but, having made the decision to move, I set out to find a new job in the Tulsa area.

Knowing that my company had offices in Oklahoma, I decided that the first place I ought to check would be the company’s internal job postings to see what might be available. I happened to be doing this in my office at work when my boss comes strolling in to ask a question about this or that new whizbang feature I was working on. Unfortunate screen placement and a slow trigger finger due to too much mouse-clicking before the age of 30 ensured that my job hunt was on prime display.

After chest compressions and shock treatment to revive her from the heart attack this revelation caused, we sat down to talk and I informed her, calmly, that I was looking for a job in the Tulsa area because my wife and I were planning to move there in the next few months. She immediately told me to stop my search and that she would look into the option of telecommuting. A few conversations and a few days later, and it was settled. I was about to join the virtual workforce. I was excited!

I was in for a shock.

As an on-site worker, I was the “young whippersnapper”, the “geek”, that could always be found at the office working late and “had no life”. With my wife working night-shifts as a nurse, I was just as likely to be in the office as at home on any given evening. 

As a virtual worker, I was suddenly perceived as the guy working in his underwear and watching ESPN. People assumed, like Sahil, that since I didn’t have to come into an office, naturally I was “typing in [my] pajama, not having brushed in the morning, still with sleepy eyes.”

Fighting this perception is hard. Nevermind the fact that I shower and dress every morning just like I would if I were going into an office. When I tell people, anyone, that I telecommute, it’s always the same reaction – it’s usually something like, “ah, [wink] [wink], [nudge] [nudge], you work from home…must be nice!” – and I see it in their eyes. Underwear. ESPN.

To combat this perception that working virtually was ‘hardly working’, I found myself overcompensating. In my first year of telecommuting I probably averaged 60–70 hour work weeks. I was available morning, day, and night (and late night) to do almost any task. And with the short commute (er, walk) to my office, I found myself working weekends and holidays quite regularly. I have since scaled back to more reasonable hours – catching a nasty flu that takes 3 months to fully recover from because your body is so exhausted will force you to do that, but I still find myself being sucked into my office at odd times of day or night to tackle particular problems.

See, this is the thing. Most people assume that virtual workers will have a hard time weeding out the distractions of home life to concentrate on work. I’ve found just the opposite. It’s the distractions of work that tend to bleed into my now proximal home life, and it takes much more energy to keep these two areas in balance.

And this doesn’t even get into all the energy that must be spent to stay in the loop and make up for all  those side conversations that happen in hallways and bathrooms that people take for granted. Ok, maybe not bathrooms so much, but you get my drift. Drive-by conversations are not an option for virtual workers, so everything must be intentional. Staying connected takes deliberate effort and hard work on both sides – for the telecommuter and the telecommutees (manager, coworkers). Lots of hard work. Thankfully there are tools that make this easier – IM, Email, Video Conferencing, Phone, collaboration tools, etc….but nothing makes up for the face-to-face, which means Some Travel Required (i.e. more energy).

Now, mind you, I’m not complaining. Telecommuting is not a common practice in my company. There are hundreds, maybe thousands, of developers that work at the company, and I only know of one other full time virtual associate. So I feel very fortunate to work in a field that allows me to do most of my work from anywhere, and to have worked with and for people that have valued my contributions enough to permit me to do so. And it can be done. Successfully. As long as both sides are willing to forgo the perceptions and put in the work. Is it worth it? Well, for me, yes! For the company, that’s a question of ROI I suppose. My goal is to work my butt off and to make it worthwhile for them by making good (no, great) on that investment.

But there will always be those that can’t get past the underwear and ESPN perception.

Just know that I typed this while wearing a collared shirt and pants. And I only watch ESPN at night or on weekends – if I can pull myself away from work long enough, natch.