Mark Goodge wrote:
On Tue, 01 Jan 2008 11:13:52 +0000, The Natural Philosopher put finger
to keyboard and typed:

Mark Goodge wrote:
On Tue, 1 Jan 2008 10:05:57 +0000, Roland Perry put finger to keyboard
and typed:

In message e.net, at
09:20:43 on Tue, 1 Jan 2008, Mark Goodge
remarked:
Even estate agents coudlk work better from home.
They still need to visit the properties.
And are a typical example of what I might call "overhearing-ware", which
makes most offices I've worked in (none in a sales capacity, that's just
an example) hugely more productive.

You overhear your colleague on the phone (or in person) to a buyer, and
deduce quite a lot about what they are talking about. And it rings a
bell with you, so you wander over and say - "why not suggest this
property, it's sounds like it's just what they want".
That's a very good point.

Also, one thing that seems to be missed by many advocates of
telecommuting is that most people actually prefer to work in social
groups. And, because that's how they prefer to work, that's how
they're most productive when working.
Er, no.

Thats how they can spend their time chatting and 'having meetings'
instead of actually working.

Now you're deliberately being silly.

Not at all. My best engineers used to request they do software work at
home 'because everyone is constantly chartering in here and I can't
concentratre'


Of COURSE they prefer it!

Work is mostly essentially boring: Thats why you pay to have it done.


It seems to me that a lot of the
very strong advocates for increased teleworking are those who
themselves fall into the minority of people who don't like spending
much time with others.
They actually prefer to spend it WORKING.

Or reading Usenet, or making themselves coffee, or watching TV, or
buying stuff on eBay, or going for a walk.

At least some of that is better than gossip about the latest reality TV
show.

And if they are working task based, when they do the work is no concern
of mine.

Teleworkers are just as likely to skive as office workers. They just
skive in different ways.


It never failed to amzae me how often one got pulled up for being ten
minutes late, and never rewarded by staying 2 hours after time.

Or how much work I used to do staring out of the window visualising the
next bit I was going to design and commit to paper. MOST of what I now
do, is conceived and clarified while throwing sticks for the slobberador.


It's almost a cliche that the IT community is
populated by people with poor interpersonal and social networking
skills and who prefer the company of a computer screen to other
humans. So it's not surprising to find a significant number of Usenet
users (who also tend to fall in that demographic) having
over-optimistic opinions of how easy it would be to convert many jobs
to teleworking.

Possibly.

Definitely.

What self confidence....
Mark