I'm Stella Commute, and I Approve This Sentiment

From U.S. News and World Report*, a fine blog post advocating that all political parties get behind supporting telecommuting through tax breaks for companies that promote telecommuting to their employees.

The Federal government is already doing a lot to promote telecommuting -- primarily because they are headquartered in one of the great traffic hells of the world, Washington, DC. But pushing telecommuting hard to places outside the Beltway is a great thing to do.

Oh, and work on passing the Telecommuting Tax Fairness Act, too, so that telecommuters aren't wantonly taxed by every state that might somehow lay claim to their incomes.

* Were there ever two separate magazines, U.S. News, and another publication World Report, that combined to become U.S. News and World Report, or is it just a terrible terrible publication name? Also, I've discovered the secret identity of one of my favorite bloggers, Evil HR Lady -- it's the person who wrote the post I've linked to here. Cool.

Whose Responible, Indeed

I promised John Ellsberry that I would wear this Fabulous Whose Responible? t-shirt every opportunity I had to be photographed, and I'm pleased that last night's second place finish at Geeks Who Drink was one of those occasions.

Blog O'sphere Dreams

Okay, what does it mean when you have a dream in which another blogger (whom you've never met, mind you) is featured? Because I had a dream in which Laurie Ruettimann of Punk Rock HR and I were camping.

So, I don't camp. I have never met Laurie Ruettimann. And why would my subconscious be working on such things?

Whatever.

Comcast Worries

I've been following this Comcast nonsense about punishing broadband users who go over 250GB upstream a month. I've got to be honest with you, I have no idea what my upstream bandwidth usage is, but it seems like 250GB is a huge amount. I've also looked into ways to measure my bandwidth usage at my router using SNMP, but this GigaOM article got me thinking that it kind of doesn't matter what I measure.

Because Comcast can just calculate my usage any way they want, and they can cut me off any time they want, too. And then I can't work at all whilst I appeal their decision and take my SNMP logs to their offices and stand outside and cry.

And that's a bummer. Because I really need to work. Like everyday. Not just when Comcast deems me a non-excessive user. Sigh.

I hate monopolies.

Why Working Five Days a Week is a Good Idea for Telecommuters

There is a lot of talk these days about four day work weeks, mostly as a way to help your employees conserve gas. And apparently, if you give everyone Friday off, you, the employer, probably save money on cooling/lighting/all that other stuff that goes on in your Real Office. (Although I think that's kind of dumb from a customer service viewpoint, you didn't ask me.)

I think if you're a full-time telecommuter, however, you should work five days a week. The most important reason to do this is because everyone back in the Real Office already thinks you're a total slacker who works a lot less hard than everyone else.

I know. You're not a total slacker. You get more done every day than the Real Office folks do in a day and a half. I'm not asking what you do, I'm telling you what they think. And they think you're not working that hard.

Another reason to work five days is to take advantage of the extra productivity. You are probably working from home in part because a lot of your work can be done without a huge amount of in-person interaction. Why wouldn't you kick out the jams as much as possible, even if other people are goofing off?

And one more thing: there are lots of advantages you have that your Real Office compatriots can't take advantage of. You know what they are: the ability to fold laundry whilst attending dull meetings on the periphery of your responsibilities, the luxury of a warm cat on your lap, the joy of not looking at cubicle walls all day. It is only reasonable that there might be some Real Office benefits that you cannot partake of: bad coffee, cubicle walls, and yes, four day work weeks.

Listen, I'm not trying to be a jerk about this. (I don't have to try - I'm an expert jerk. Ha ha.) But for those of us who are both shut-ins and full-time, real employees, the appearance of being extra-exemplary is important. You have to ask yourself this important question: do you really need a four-day work week? The answer is probably not. You're already saving as much gas as is humanly possible -- what more do you want, people?

Let your Real Office colleagues have some fun.

Telecommuting Questions

From the website ITBusiness Canada, this article raises a number of key management questions that any employer should consider as they plan their telecommuting program. The good news? Almost all of these questions can be resolved with good planning and good tools in place. The big issues they raise: collaboration, performance, and access. All of these are big problems in hastily slapped together telecommuting programs, but can be readily dealt with if you take a little time.

Take access problems, for instance: Real Office workers may feel as though they can't bother people who are working at home because they're not sure if the telecommuter is actually working at the same time as everyone else in the office is. And how easy is this to solve? Super easy. Just put this sentence in your telecommuting policy (you have one, right?): "All employees are expected to keep routine office hours that meet the staffing needs of their department, unit, or work group."

See how easy that is? Even if you're working at a ROWE "no rules-just right" environment, as a manager you can say, "Gee, guys, I really need to have someone here to provide service to our customers between 10 and 6, because that's when people want the thing we do."

You still have to manage. Sorry.

Interesting Telecommuting Legal Ruling

This is an interesting question: if you telecommute from one state and your employer is in another state, how does it work if you become unemployed? This note on a recent NY state court of appeals ruling is thought-inducing. It seems to my (non-lawyerly) reading to indicate that you are eligible for unemployment benefits in the state where you work, not where your company is located.

Interesting, indeed, given that New York State wants to tax your income in the state where your employer is located, rather than letting the state you work in have its share of your income. Huh.

I don't get it.

Stella's Going on Vacation

I know what you're thinking: vacation from what, lady? You sit around your house in slippers all day and you get paid good money to perform assorted mayhem on the web. How exactly do you get more relaxed than that?

Well, I intend to find out, so don't look for any postings on Monday or Tuesday, dear readers.

Back To School: A Boon for Telecommuters

Don't get me wrong: I do not take care of my children during the day whilst working. I'm not "working at home", I'm working, and as a general rule, my job description does not include parenting.

Once my workday is done, naturally I'm on the mommy tip, making sandwiches and the like. But during the day, I am not here. Seriously. Don't ask.

When school is out, the little kid still goes to preschool, but the big one really is big -- twelve. She's quite old enough to make sandwiches, go swimming, take a bike ride around our quiet neighborhood, and so on. But somehow just having her around all summer takes away just a little bit from my focus.

Today I put my finger on it: having someone around the house who is really in the local timezone rather than in my otherworldy East Coast existence is really distracting at a psychic level. It hit me as I made pasta with pinenuts and romano cheese today at ten in the morning. Without a pre-teen lounging around sluggishly in her pajamas, it was easy to stay in my East Coast mindset.

I know, it's a little deranged. But this is how it works for me.

I've Said It Before

...and I will say it again. Right now, in fact: I have got to learn how to slow down when doing conference calls. It is the hardest thing in the world, but it's really important, and here is why: When you are in a face-to-face meeting, the other party can read your body language and see you nodding in agreement before you say, "Right, right!" in assent.

Absent those non-verbal cues, saying, "Right, right!" at the end of the other person's sentence can seem like you are trying to rush them along. The other people on the line don't have the luxury of reading your face, posture, and all that other good stuff. And you might come off as an impatient jerk. Which I hope I don't. But I could see where I might.

So, I'm making a note to my self: CHILL. THE. F*CK. OUT.

More About Telecommuting Monitoring

I wrote last week about oDesk (a tool that lets contractees check in on their contractors during their billable hours to make sure they're doing billable work). Now I'd like to share with you from IT Business Edge, this blog post that explains oDesk and some other monitoring tools that the more suspicious amongst us might want to use.

Interesting...I wonder about using these for all computer-based employees, really. People can be running eBay side businesses from their cubes just like the shut-in might be.

I'm just sayin'

Consider Cancer Conquered

Or at least Sandia Peak has been conquered. Cancer may take a few more years, but thanks to your support, Stella is proud to say that we've done a little bit to fund cancer research and patient education. THANK YOU!

More details: it was definitely a long walk. It turns out that six and a half miles straight uphill moving from 9,000 to 11,000 feet is the kind of thing your body notices. Most especially your feet will let you know that you've done something a little out of the ordinary. But no matter, it was a beautiful day, and walking through the Cibola National Forest was a treat.

Getting Started in Videoconferencing

I've seen some really cool telepresence stuff profiled on various sites (and some kind of goofy stuff, too). But the fact is that most people don't need a high-end rig for the day-to-day videoconferencing that is the bread and butter of most telecommuters.

This article from ComputerWorld has some great tips for getting started with videoconferencing without going nuts with the hardware. Having personally done most of the things the article notes (including tearing through a variety of IM clients that support video, headsets galore, firewall tweaks, and router mayhem), I can attest to the veracity of the tips in the piece.

Don't get me wrong: high-end telepresence definitely has its place. I think for far-flung job interviews and high impact communications, you want as many pixels as you can throw at a screen. I just have found that in my regular workday, people mostly want to be assured that I have clothes on and that I seem to be paying attention to them.

And I'm not sitting on a beach somewhere and I just forgot to tell them about my relocation to the Bahamas.

Online Customer Service Experience

It is so rare that you have a good customer service experience, particularly in the era of hosted services where everything is in the cloud somewhere. But Stella feels compelled to tell you about a great experience I just had with GoToMeeting and the nice folks at Citrix.

Last month, I had a scheduled training session using GoToMeeting. There were a number of people signed up, I was rolling out a new service and I really wanted to make a good impression. People were able to connect to my meeting online, but the phone bridge was unavailable. Dead. Busy signal. So we had to cancel the training.

Worse yet, for many of the folks in the session this was their first chance to interact with me virtually and it came off as flaky and unworkable.

I called GoToMeeting customer support and discovered that they knew about the switch problem, but hadn't notified people who had meetings scheduled. To which I replied, "Seriously? You couldn't send an email? You couldn't put a notice about network availability in my GoToMeeting login area? Really?" I was a little flabbergasted, and so I sent them a feedback email to express my incredulity.

Yesterday, I got a nice, written by a person (or a very eloquent robot) email response apologizing for the outage and the poor notification, noting that they're looking at ways to prevent the problem and let users know about problems sooner, and they credited my whole month's subscription fee.

Here I was thinking about switching over to Microsoft's MeetMeNow. No way. I'm sticking with GoToMeeting!

Telecommuting Tips

Finally, some useful advice about telecommuting: this heads up from the Cali and Jody blog has some really funny tips for successful telecommuting. I particularly like the suggestion to surveil the office to gather fodder for gossip about how people are dressed inappropriately. I've been trying to get my boss to turn his webcam out toward the parking lot for this very purpose.

My tip for telecommuting success: start a home office happy hour tradition, wherein you stop working on a Friday afternoon at three and drink at home alone. You should pick up your kitten when he wants to run around, thus recreating the unwanted touching atmosphere that colors so many happy hours.

Fun!