Working from home 3

[KutEng]

Considering how topical it is with the current global landscape, what's everyone's opinions on working from home in our industry?
Does anyone's employer successfully offer a work from home option?
How does it work?

I have heard in the past that it is very difficult for our profession to work from home... However, with all that has happened in the last few weeks, many big engineering firms have begun setting up staff to work from home

 

[GregLocock]

I've been working from home for 5 years now. I go into the office to get a new laptop, or meet a new manager, or drive some cars. That's only once a year or so. It's been an option for many years.

Cheers

Greg Locock


New here? Try reading these, they might help FAQ731-376

http://eng-tips.com/market.cfm?

 

[bridgebuster]

We've always had a work from home policy if the project one is assigned to can accommodate it. In the past, I've done it from time to time just to avoid my long commute to NYC. I just got assigned to a new project so I have to figure out how to make it work. As of this morning, there's limited bus service into the city but I need to go to the office to pick up my laptop.

 

[TheTick]

I've been WFH for 5 years now. I'm definitely more productive most of the time. Better for family.

WFH is augmented by monthly visits to clients and home office. Tech doesn't fully replace personal connection to people and projects.

 

[Stick.]

I could easily work from home if needed since I already do almost all of my work on the computer anyways; several of my coworkers already work from home a few days a week. The only things that might get tricky for me if I have to work from home is being forced to use a less ergonomic "desk" setup at home and not having a printer that can do 11x17 prints at home (I hate checking drawings on the computer screen).

 

[phamENG]

At the consulting firm where I used to work, it was a discouraged option. If you could be in the office, you were expected to be there. But the management was aware that the world has been changing for some time and made sure that everyone was equipped to telecommute if needed. "Need" could be traveling for business, staying home with a sick kid, or a global pandemic. But if one of those things weren't happening, you'd better be at your desk.

Now I work at an industrial site. 98% of the employees here are not capable of working remotely, so the blanket rule is not working remotely. There are a few members of middle management willing to stand up for the handful of professional employees and let it go for the same reasons as my last firm (we all have laptops and a VPN for business travel). But again, you'd better be on site if you can get yourself here safely.

 

[JohnRBaker]

If I had not retired four years ago, I would probably be working from home 100% during this crisis. About 80% of what I did could be done online. Even when I was working, I worked from home at least one day a week. That started-out when my wife's mother moved in with us after she had a stroke and my wife was forced into early retirement. I arraigned it with my boss to let me work from home on Fridays so that my wife could have a break. At that time my MIL's condition was such that all she really needed was someone in the house to make sure she didn't fall or something. Anyway, we eventually had to put her in a nursing home (she passed five years ago). Even after my wife didn't need coverage anymore, I continued to work from home on Fridays. It was great as that was always the worst commute, Friday afternoon, driving home.

We're lucky as we have a really good internet service (Cox Communications). I ran a speed test a few days ago and with my MacBook Pro hardwired to the cable modem, the download speed was 223 Mbps and upload was 11 Mbps. Even just hooked-up via WiFi, the download speed was 127 Mbps (upload speed was unchanged).

John R. Baker, P.E. (ret)
EX-Product 'Evangelist'
Irvine, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:

The secret of life is not finding someone to live with
It's finding someone you can't live without

 

[SuperSalad]

I'm in chemical manufacturing.

I have some projects I can work on from home. Most of those are projects I am behind on because I get so sidetracked by the day-to-day plant stuff everyday. This might be my chance to make some progress on those. If the work-from-home option becomes long term, I foresee running out of stuff I can do from home pretty quickly.

Andrew H.

http://www.MotoTribology.com

 

[bridgebuster]

I don't have an 11x17 printer either and I too prefer hard copies. A drawback for me is that our office network is usually slow and working remotely amplifies the problem. Most likely I'll be working home for the next few weeks, my better half has some respiratory problems, so I'll lug 20 pounds of drawings home tonight. On the positive side, there aren't any fixed working hours. If there's some nice weather I can powerwash the house and do some exterior painting during the day and do my regular work early morning and in the evening. As long as it adds up to 40 hours.

 

[phamENG]

For what it's worth, there are a few home printers out there that have gone to a wider format that allows for up to 13x19 prints, and the prices aren't too bad - especially if you're already in the market for a printer.

Here's one on sale: Link

 

[JohnRBaker]

Yes, I have one of those so-called 'B Size' printers, an Epson Stylus Photo R2000. I've only used it a couple of times for 11 X 17 prints. It's mostly used to print photos larger than 4 X 6 (I use a Canon Selphy CP900 die-sublimation printer for 4 X 6 photos) and Avery labels. The feature I use a lot on my Epson printer is the ability to directly print CD/DVD's. Our workhorse printer is an Epson WP-4540 (all in one, Print/Copy/FAX).

John R. Baker, P.E. (ret)
EX-Product 'Evangelist'
Irvine, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:

The secret of life is not finding someone to live with
It's finding someone you can't live without

 

[SteelPE]

Well, since I was laid off 8 years ago, I have always worked from home.

First thing I did was buy an 11x17 printer/scanner.... next thing I did was buy two monitors (I am running a 15" laptop with 2-29" monitors.... I wanted 3, but my laptop can't handle that..... stupid intel integrated graphics card). It has work well over the past 8 years. Only drawbacks to working from home is not being able to readily bounce ideas off someone, or having all technical references readily available.... well that is, if nobody is home with you. If others are in the house the same time you are that can be a huge distraction, one the company may not want you dealing with.

My old boss worked from home 2-3 days/ week for the 12 years I studied off of him. He would buy 3 copies of everything (1 for me, 1 for his office and 1 for his home office). He didn't care because he wasn't paying for it. He loved getting his hair cut at 10:30 am on some random weekday (would drive me nuts).

Companies better get used to the idea real fast. The problems we all face are not going away anytime soon.

 

[birneys]

I've been working 1 day a week from home for the last 2 1/2 years while working for national A/E firms in the building design sectors. There's always been some pushback from others in the office, likely the old-school mentality/fear that people won't work if their supervisor can't walk by and see what they're doing. My direct managers have always been more than happy with my performance, and most of my project teams can't tell the difference (i.e.-they don't realize I'm working remotely once a week unless I tell them). Zoom, Microsoft Teams, VPN access, etc. make it irrelevant in my opinion where I'm physically working. It takes more energy to communicate proactively with remote teams, and I've found there is a learning curve when you're trying to manage project teams. Keeping track of multiple projects and staying up to date on what your team is accomplishing takes more time than if you're in the same office. It's definitely possible to do it successfully. I just finished Construction Documents on a $14 million renovation project working remotely with the architectural and structural teams (within the same company, but different offices).

With the current pandemic, most of our 1000+ person company is going to be working remotely sooner rather than later. I'm 100% remote until everything calms down.

 

[bridgebuster]

We just an email from a regional manager stating you can work from home if your manager says it's OK. Meanwhile, this is the same company that requires us to take on-line training for how to get a good night's sleep.

 

[Stick.]

I just received an email from my manager saying to continue coming in to the office. The next email from them also stated that a meeting we have scheduled will be held on Skype rather than in person, even though we are all in the office during it, to "encourage social distancing".

 

[CWB1]

I have done a lot of work from home in the past but never for more than a few days at a time. My position and projects at the last two employers often dictated that I was the only member of an international team in the local office, and that I flex my schedule to attend meetings both early and late with folks in Europe or Asia so working from home made sense but I rarely did. I'm honestly not a fan of colleagues working from home full-time because there is a noticeable difference in their responsiveness and work quality. At one former employer our PMs actually used a 1.25x multiplier for scheduling their tasks, however management viewed working from home as both a reward and bargaining chip for employee retention and thus offsetting costs. My current position requires a ton of collaboration with folks in the surrounding cubes and shop so again, while I have the tools to work from home now, I prefer to be onsite.

 

[SuperSalad]

I'm going to try it tomorrow. I have a few days worth of computer-work on deck, so we'll see how it goes tomorrow. I'm going to isolate myself as much as I can, but my house isn't that big and there are three kids with no school at the moment to distract me. If it doesn't work out to be productive, I'll be back in the office on Thursday.

Andrew H.

http://www.MotoTribology.com

 

[miningman]

IMO,, this whole work from home thing has not been well thought out. A few years ago, I was offered a position in a corporate mining head office in Vancouver . Only an hour flight from my home base, but my boss explained, for what we are doing I really need you here. He footted all the hotel , meals and travel expenses so I was OK with that , working MOn-Fri.

So right now, what about all the guys pulling wrenches , drilling holes for explosives , hammering nails etc etc, and all their engineering type supervisors ?? Sure the technology is being developed , especially in large organizations , but in the medium term for mid sized organizations , somebody still has to get his hands dirty 10 hours a day.

And dont get me started on the logistics of operating in remote mining or O+G camps where 200-5000 men are living in very close proximity to each other.

 

[Stick.]

Since I can't really justify getting a new printer right now, I did some digging and Adobe Acrobat or Reader can tile large prints across multiple pages, which while not ideal, does let you print on a standard printer and tape it together. I just did a test run at the office and it looks doable, just make sure to check how many pages are going to print before printing. Before I shrunk it to 95% scale, it wanted to print on 6 pages instead of 2.

 

[phamENG]

miningman - varies by industry. OP is a structural engineer - I would assume design/consulting - so their industry is set up pretty well for it.

I'm between the two worlds. I'm doing design and project management on an industrial site. So I have enough work to keep me busy at home, but eventually I'll have to come back here to where the other several hundred folks are "getting their hands dirty" as you say. If our site has to shut down, 90% of our employees can't do their work from home and never will be able to.