Creating A Virtual Office? 71
Fubar asks: "My small company of 10 employees is considering letting our lease run out on our office space and is thinking about having everyone work from home (or wherever they want). I have been tasked with putting a plan together to provide voice and data connectivity to each employee. What sort of solutions have you implemented?"
I'm considering the following for providing voice service:
+ Order an extra analog line for each employee
+ Reimburse each employee for a second line on their cell phones
+ Host our current phone system in my home office, add a VoIP card and provide an endpoint for each employee
+ Use third-party VoIP hosting service"
What options have you used to create a virtual office, and what suggestions would might you give to anyone else attempting to do the same?
+ Order an extra analog line for each employee
+ Reimburse each employee for a second line on their cell phones
+ Host our current phone system in my home office, add a VoIP card and provide an endpoint for each employee
+ Use third-party VoIP hosting service"
Virtual Office in Second Life (Score:5, Funny)
Options? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Options? (Score:4, Insightful)
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And yet despite your anecdote virtually every collabratively made open source software continues to exist.
Re:Options? (Score:4, Insightful)
An employee must be either a co-owner of the business, or an angel, to efficiently work from home. I have employees who need constant supervision to work at the office even; at home they'd be surfing pr0n all day long - and you can't monitor them, and you can't prove anything. Hard to fire in such conditions; the employee may file a lawsuit against you and win - because it was *you* who set up the work this way.
Re:Options? (Score:5, Interesting)
When the expiration date is 10 business days away, the task becomes yellow colored. 5 days away, and it becomes red. 2 days, and you'll find it black colored. With this setting, it's really easy for our manager to visually check how the group is performing (we have groups ranging from 5 to 30 developers).
If you miss the deadline to often, your manager calls you up and sets a meeting to question your performance. Perform too poorly, and you're history
It looks simple, and it is. The developer can do whatever s/he wants, we really don't care, as long as her/his tasks are being dealt with AND our QA team isn't finding too many bugs on her/his implementations and fixes.
Oh, and in case you're wondering, we use (argh) Lotus Notes for task control.
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Productivity driven workload is what I want. I'm paid x amount you want this amount, fine no problem. I did it all in one week instead of four, I get three weeks off. You want me to do extra work, get lost you got your money's worth.
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Re:Options? (Score:5, Informative)
That software covers a real need, and there's no denying that.
That said, you loose a lot from cutting on the close contact between employees. In that regard, email is better than snail mail, chat is better than email, phone/VoIP is better than chat, video-chat is better than phone and close contact is better than all of them put together.
When considering team work/communication, the information transfer suffers a lot if you don't have close contact. I'm not sure if its the level of comfort you establish with day-to-day contact or trust in team members or whatever else, but I think working remotely only works as a last resort, or just as a short-term solution.
I've worked in an outsourcing company (writing software for some other company with managers on "the other side") and the contact was always somewhat forced, or it tended to become more forced in a few weeks without close contact. I've also been in three or four-way teleconferences with 10 to 20 people on each side in a separate conference room and its the same: there's a slight feeling of ... awkwardness (I guess) that creeps in; conversations are harder to follow, people tent to mute the phone on the other side and chat about something else as long as they don't have something immediate to say and so on ...
In the end, you loose on communication, on the volume of information you transfer and big-time on efficiency (its much more difficult and time and resource consuming to make a phone call/open a chat, than to turn your head to your colleagues and announce "Hey, I locked the sources for XYZ on my machine").
In conclusion, I'd consider working from home as a long term solution only as a last resort.
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Not a problem for me or a number of other employees within our company both in Europe and the US. Admittedly I do travel into the office 1 week out of 8, but I may not necessarily be there for the whole week it may only be a couple of days. I've been working from home for over 4 years. My trips to the office weren't always so organised and I could go months without popping in. Others will only rarely appear in the office.
Last year the company installed a VOIP system in the UK (the US already used one) whi
Exactly: Don't. (Score:2, Insightful)
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Re:Options? (Score:4, Informative)
The problem I've had is managers that refuse to work with employees that work remotely. If your management won't support it, you're screwed, period.
Just happened to me. I've been working at the same place for 8 years. Always worked 1-2 days from home. The last 3 years I've been working 3-4 days at home due to moving farther away from the office. Worked great. Not one co-worker has ever had a complaint. My past manager never had a complaint. People realized that when I worked from home, I tended to work 10-12 hour days, and better quality of work to boot.
Then 6 months ago, new manager. I now know that it was at the very moment he walked in the door that my time there was up, though I didn't realize it at the time. Doesn't matter how much I worked. Doesn't matter how much I produced. Doesn't matter that my work was high quality. Doesn't matter that not one co-worker had any problem working with me remotely. What matters is when you have an insecure control-freak of a manager. I got severed a few weeks ago. Reason given was that things weren't working out satisfactorily with my working situation. At least they were too stupid to think things through...ends up being termination without cause. (Not one single comment or mention of any problem with the arrangement over 8 entire years working there...and we had 2 peer and management reviews every year...you can't suddenly decide 'it's not working out and never was' after 8 years.)
If your management can't handle it, don't even think of trying. You WILL be looking for a job without a doubt if you do. But if you can find a mature and competent manager that isn't threatened by the people working for them...run with it by all means! Up until the last 6 months this was the best job I've ever had.
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My situation is that our office is in downtown St. Louis (part of a tax credit program to revitalize downtown) yet most of my staff live a half hour to the west. We each have a VOIP phone at home, use Jabber w/video conferencing, and we live close enough together that we can meet at homes or restaurants if we need "face time".
At bare minimum, this gives us a way to avoid rush hour traffic. It empowers each of us to have our own "office", albeit at home. We have meeting space downto
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I've telecommuted now for almost 8 years, from 2000 miles away from the office I used to work in. The team I was on used to be 14 people.
We are now down to two telecommuters.
A team of 14, reduced to 2. Literally. This is not an exaggeration, nor am I making shit up.
Costs to my company? One analog phone line, and I cover my internet access, which then uses a VPN to connect securely to my systems at work. I administer systems, write documentation, and every few months am pulled onto some other p
A suggestion (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:A suggestion (Score:5, Informative)
Maybe just downgrade the space to something like a meeting room you can rent a few times a week.
You should have (in my opinion) at least one physical meeting per week and one phone meeting per day to stay connected to your co-workers.
And you need a different approach to management. If you have a bad boss (as I did) you can get less information and feedback. Out of sight out of mind...
I'm looking forward to getting a desk and co-workers again, at a new job in a month.
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There's a middle... (Score:1)
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Meeting rooms in their libraries or other facilities that can be used for free or rented for a nominal fee.
Rooms with podiums, video projectors, and even computers that can be used or rented.
Small business support centers with specialized facilities and su
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I suppose if we can download Kung Pao Chicken, uploading a trash can shouldn't be much of a problem either.
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Easy way to do it. (Score:5, Insightful)
1. VoIP (something like Packet8) or company-paid cell phone, probably a nextel group plan. Actually, Skype conferencing should work good enough.
2. Workstations - Windows Server 2003 Terminal Services Server. Then you don't care about what their workstations are like and the environment is manageable so you have no backup headaches.
3. In-person lunches at least once a week. It can get really boring to work from home!
I implement virtual offices all the time, so feel free to contact me through my website.
Good luck.
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1. VoIP (something like Packet8) or company-paid cell phone, probably a nextel group plan. Actually, Skype conferencing should work good enough.
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Cell phones have their time and place, and I definitely appreciate how they enable me to go out for an hour (or three) during "normal" working hours without feeling like I am leaving my co-workers in the lurch.
However, the audio quality is such that it's no substitute for a proper phone in a quiet place. I don't particularly enjoy having conversations when the person at the other end is on a cell phone, because there's always lots of background noise and dropouts and robot-voice - especially in the USA wh
Terminal Services over random connection? (Score:2)
2. Workstations - Windows Server 2003 Terminal Services Server. Then you don't care about what their workstations are like and the environment is manageable so you have no backup headaches.
So you think that running Terminal services over some random cable/DSL/fois/Dial-up line to some random colo is a good idea, and tossing in Voip on the connection at the same time. hmm, interesting.
Is that your carefully considered choice for an all-remote office, or just the solution you give everybody?.
What the article submitter really needs are fat-daddy laptops, so that they can all meet at a Starbuck's once a week. Some may just consider reimbursing their employees for individual own purchases.
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The lease can't be that expensive (Score:5, Insightful)
By isolating people you make social workings of the company impossible. You can't have face to face meetings, you can't casually walk up to someone and sketch a diagram or two, you complicate things that don't have to be complicated. IMO, you will lose far more in productivity than you gain in giving up the office space. How many companies do that? Hardly any; even one-man companies often maintain an office which is their public face - where they have an address, where they meet visitors, where they make phone calls, where they are a business. And at home they are at home - relaxing, reading, having family etc. Mixing work and home is bad. It's even difficult to work at home, where other distractions are present.
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As someone who is working at home right this second -- albeit not as a regular arrangement, but just because I can't get into the office this week -- I have to second the loss of productivity. I feel like I'm out in my own little world... things go on without me, and I don't get informed of things like service outages. The only reason I know there are other co-workers out there is because I occasionally get an email asking me to call back a customer that called into the office.
That and I seem to find mysel
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A) YOU need self discipline to manage working remotely. No one can give that to you. If you have it, flaunt it. If not, don't even try. You'll be out of a job before you know it.
B) Your company needs to support remote workers if it is going to work at all. Communication is key. If your offices standard way of informing people about service outages is to walk down the hall telling people directly...things have to change. This is poor communication even with everyone in the same physical space, and c
Remote working (Score:5, Informative)
I wouldn't do it as many people remote work as goof off work. My experience is at most 25% of the people really work at home, and they are the ones absolutely passionate about what they do. Traits successful to work at home:
If the person can't demonstraight the above at the office, it will only become worse working at home.
So your major question should be are your staff suitable? My guess is some are, and many not. I am going through this with a consultant right now, he shows a low connect time, no results and is precisely a day away from being fired. Be prepared to do this for a lack of performance.
Switching to Home Offices may be a bad idea. (Score:4, Interesting)
Personally, I don't like having my whole office at home. In my case it's not about children or other sources of noises but I don't feel "at work" sitting in front of my PC. I would require a separate (and quite) working room to be productive.
Continuing with noises - if some employees have a quick question they'll call each other. This may be very disturbing.
Next, consider putting in cost for connectivity. Not only phone lines and a phone server, you will need a central VPN server to share files.
Then, think about security. You don't have any control about the employees PCs anymore. I could bet that there are an easy target for malware. Think about that the computers may be used by other people, like their kids. Don't wait for a "Cool I ownz sensitive data of that company - letz put on myspace to show how coolz I am!" to happen.
Last point is, where to meet up with customers? Tell them you not have an office and meet at Starbucks?
Seriously, have a look around for a cheaper office.
Social dynamics (Score:1)
Practically though, it requires a notable 'culture shift' which may be hard to accomplish.
You see, an office area, you have several people in the same area. They're talking, and interacting. And if you don't know something, then you ask, and it's ok within seconds. Simple things like 'who should I send this request to', or 'how do I get more tapes ordered for the backup servre'.
This doesn't happen any more if your employees are isolated. Now this isn'
my thoughts... (Score:2)
Management. Remote working is often not allowed because managers get scared that their employees have other things to do at home. At times/with certain persons they have a point. You can still check what they do with IM/video. Second you can ask them to spend the last 15 minutes of their day to write a small diary of th
Tools we use (Score:4, Informative)
Tech support uses it sometimes with remote control yielded by a customer (through their Java client) to check the reported problems with our apps and their system config. One can even look, with customer permission, in real time into remote threads (Dr. Watson style hex dumps), all windows (a la SDK Spy++), apps, dll's, memory heaps (layout and hex dumps). These latter low level features are usually done when tech support guy has to conference in a programmer into his tech support session to help out with some trickier problem. In 1990s, I used to travel to customer locations to do this kind of troubleshooting.
The open eleven steps to telecommuting (Score:5, Informative)
I have set up and supported remote sites and home based telecommuting. Listen to my advice, listen very carefully and save your sanity.
If your organization is large enough then it is likely that you will have a few older desktop PCs that have been or are due for replacement during an upgrade cycle. PCs that are inadequate for Microsoft XP and Office2003 are more than powerful enough for many current versions of Linux, especially for the role of server. Also second hand PCs with the required specifications are very cheaply acquired.
1) Find an older PC, at least a PII 300 with 256 MB memory, to set up as a headless ( no display or keyboard ) server and firewall. A simple web based interface ( or even an external hardware push button [linuxfocus.org] ) can be used by the local users to start/stop the server and internet connection. All other maintenance should be handled remotely via ssh, webmin [webmin.com] and VNC.
2) Install a second NIC or connect the modem directly to the server. Connection to the Internet should be through the server and connection to the Office should be through a VPN [openvpn.net] on the server. Use a dynamic IP service [google.com] for each site so you can remotely log on to the local server via ssh.
3) Install a new IDE hard drive in a 3.5" removable rack and tray. The drive should be than big enough for the operating system (Linux of course) and copies of some of the local desktop partitions. A telecommuter can shut down the server and bring in the drive during the day to resync and repair.
4) Install a DHCP demon on the local server to allocate local IP addresses, DNS and gateway settings. If the desktops are network boot capable then install TFTP to remotely boot and use Knoppix via PXE and the network [knoppix.net]. If the desktop OS is constantly crashing, or is infected by malware, the user can select PXE/network boot via the BIOS, and boot into Knoppix. The user can then be instructed over the phone to enable the ssh server to allow remote scan,repair and reimaging of the desktop partitions. The user can use the Knoppix desktop to continue working with full access to files while the the remote administrator fixes/reimages the drive in the background.( Consider hiring someone who knows how to customise Knoppix or another live Linux system for your setup )
5) Partition the desktops with as small as required C: partition ( or in the case of Linux the root partition ) for software. When software is install, use dd and netcat [rajeevnet.com] via live Knoppix to copy/clone a snapshot of the partition to the server. You can allocate the remaining free space as a persistent partition where documents are stored.
6) Install and enable remote VNC [google.com] service on all the platforms, but only allow incoming connections from the local server ( which is redirected over a SSH tunnel [nrao.edu] ).
7) For local backup, create share directories on the desktop accessible by the server. On the local server create loopback encrypted file systems, unmount and copy the images to the desktops shares in chunks, using redundancy if enough space is available on the desktops. Checksum ( MD5 is enough ) each piece.
8) If the network load to the Office is taking up all the available internet bandwidth or the connection is just too slow then install proxy servers [freshmeat.net] on the local server. You can also consider using a distributed filesystem ( OpenAFS [openafs.org] is still the best ) wi
TeamSpeak (Score:2)
Skype, broadband cards & cell phones (Score:2)
You might consider giving people broadband cards for their notebooks if they will be traveling or meeting together a lot.
Look at your needs before you do anything. (Score:3, Interesting)
Look as customer communication. How do your customers contact you, and if you go to a distributed environment, how will that affect your customers calling in? Do you have a receptionist who answers the phones?
Do most of your employees work in the office, or do they come in to work, but then go out to service their employees while spending only an hour or so in the office each day?
Do you and your employees live in the same area, or do you all spend 30-90 minutes each way driving in to work?
Do customers have the ability to talk directly to the employees? This may sound like a strange question, but not all companies want their employees to be contacted directly, and instead will have the people answering the main number take messages.
Being able to talk face to face with your employees on a regular basis is important here. You also won't be able to see if a new employee is doing things the right way or the wrong way if you let EVERYONE work from home. In some cases though, it makes sense to have SOME people who can work from home, but others who MUST show up at some sort of office.
Social interaction is overrated. :) (Score:2)
Since you're asking this on Slashdot, okay, maybe you've got some kind of vaguely traditional corporate concept, with business hours, a location, ongoing projects, and all that stuff. In which case, yeah, you probably do need to get together sometimes. And I don't think most products out there are going to scale well enough to do 10-way videoconferencing right now, so "face time" might be hard to get on-screen.
Of
My thoughts (Score:3, Interesting)
I serve many small local business, many who have some employees that work from from regularly or permenantly.
For telephone, the cell phone makes the most sense. Works anywhere and if you get all employees on the same carrier, you can get free mobile-to-mobile calls, thus reducing the amount of minutes everyone needs. See if you can put them all on a large family plan or something.
For data, DSL/cable at people's homes is great, but a step further would be internet via cell phone/Treo/Blackberry when they are mobile. If you get Blackberry's on one of the above plans, the tethering internet access is often included (some carriers). Depends if they will be sitting at their home "desks" all day or running around more.
Employees should still have company-provided computers. A huge huge problem is the kids of the employees getting on their home computers and messing things up (spyware, consumer apps, not running updates, etc). Kids have their computer, Mom and Dad have another password protected computer that kids do not use even if just for a second.
I would also recommend still having a server somewhere for backup and to ensure all of the company files are stored in one place. Novell's iFolder product is an excellent choice for getting files synced back to a server with little to no user interaction. It comes in their Open Workgroup Suite package (along with GroupWise for e-mail, etc, etc, the works.) They also have an open-sourced version of iFolder at http://www.ifolder.com/ [ifolder.com] but last I looked it was somewhat unstable.
You still will have to deal with tech support of everyone's PC (printing, drive crashes, all the regular stuff) so a remote control package that will traverse NAT would be helpful. UltraVNC has a reverse-VNC mode that will work in this way with the user just kicking off the connection and you taking it from there. Also, a software management type app would be nice for patching and software distrribution. Don't want to have to run to everyone's house to install a new program, etc, if possible. Novell's ZENWorks is aaaa decent general purpose management app and something like Shavlik is good for patching Windows boxes.
As others have mentioned, communication is key between employees. Encourage them to meet and/or use those cells phones a lot, especially if they have free mobile-t0-mobile calls they have no reason not to pick up the phone regularly.
The benefits can be great if done right. There's nothing like getting up and walking into the next room to be at work!
-m
So much anti-telecommuter FUD! WTF? (Score:2, Interesting)
Having been a telecommuter for five years, I think I have a pretty good perspective on the value proposition:
1. Employee retention. Employees that telecommute have cheap golden handcuffs. I could never go back to commuting to a fucking cube farm and, unfortunately, employers that offer telecommuting are few and far between (due to the luddite FUD like we saw on this topic).
2. Commuting is rediculous. I us
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And responding with pro-telecommuting FUD (especially when you make the common mistake of generalizing from your personal and specific subjective impressions and situation) is better exactly how?
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Commuting sucks - that's not FUD, that's a statement of fact.
I agree that the post was from my perspective, but I also feel that I have a pretty useful perspective on the problem considering my extensive telecommuting experience. What's yours?
First off VoIP is not a virtual office (Score:2)
easy (Score:2)
2. install a terminal server on it, IE LTSP type stuff, maybe VNC, maybe windoze box with terminal server. Also load up the usual web email etc, and also hook up a Jabber server.
3. install Asterisk [asterisk.org] on it
4. hire VoicePulse [voicepulse.com] to get it phone service
5. Get each worker an IP phone. For those that often work at home, use Snom or AAstra, Grandstream if you're cheap. For those that are always on their laptop use a softphone like EyeBeam or SJphone, or maybe a WiFi phone (make sure it has encrypti
Skype video (Score:2)
Working well here (Score:2)
The company where I used to work full-time (and now telecommute part-time) has gradually evolved in this direction. Today the "office" is one sublet room downtown with some servers in it. Someone goes in a couple times a week to collect the mail. She's the only one person who's even still in the same town; the rest of us have spread all over the place (for instance, I'm living 9500 miles away).
It was VoIP that really facilitated the diaspora. We thought about using Asterisk but decided that the cost-benef
Management Burden...... and, legal stuff (Score:1)
First, and most important: It's vital that managers are able to create and update real, honest production schedules. I've found that most middle managers in the traditional offices I've worked in are not able to do this. Instead, they use the interminable meetings, and annoying walk-around oversight. Good managers should be able to set goals and milestones, monitor progress toward them. To achie