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 Photo by Bill Wagner / InBusiness
After years of wearing ties to work, this is about as dressy as telecommuter Dell Burner gets, but an even better part about working from home is the flexible work schedule that lets him spend more time with his family.
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Telecommuters phone it in
Friday, March 21, 2008 4:47 PM PDT
By Erik Olson / InBusiness
Printable version
E-mail this articleDell Burner’s shirt is untucked, he’s sporting sandals and sweats, and he’s just finished a business meeting in rural Kelso about IBM’s plans to improve its Web searching software.
It’s a Tuesday afternoon. This is Burner’s normal attire for his job as a technical writer for IBM, and the rest of his team doesn’t mind.
That’s because they’re spread across the country and can’t see him. One presenter is in Durham, N.C., another is stationed in Costa Mesa, Calif., and the rest are at IBM’s branch headquarters in San Jose, Calif.
Burner is a telecommuter who works from his home north of Kelso every day.
“The dirty secret of this work is that you don’t have to shower, you don’t have to shave, and you can wear sweat pants,” the 51-year-old said.
Burner is one of the growing number of workers who have ditched their daily drive to work for a short walk to the office down the hall from their bedrooms.
In 2006, 12.4 million American workers were allowed to telecommute to work at least one day a week — a 63 percent increase since 2004, according to WorldatWork, an association of human resource professionals.
Including the self-employed, nearly 29 million people in the nation worked from home in 2006, according to WorldatWork.
The reasons for the shift away from the traditional office vary. Some workers are trying to cut their drive time through increasingly congested traffic. Greater access to high-speed broadband Internet makes communication with co-workers easier. And more companies are offering telecommuting as an incentive to keep good employees.
Burner didn’t start out as a telecommuter. A 16-year veteran reporter and editor at The Daily News, Burner left journalism in 1999 to earn a master’s degree in technical writing. He works as part of a team who translate complicated techie speak into everyday language software users can understand.
Burner moved with his wife, Beth, to Northern California to take the job at IBM in 2002. Burner kept the house he built in 1992 on Lenora Drive to rent out.
After more than four years in Silicon Valley, the price of housing prompted the move back home, Burner said. He was tired of paying the $2,500 a month to rent a house, and he and Beth didn’t want to shell out the $600,000 to buy a home in that area.
He applied for a transfer to Raleigh, N.C., and that’s when his boss at IBM gave him the option to telecommute. The lone stipulation: Burner has to foot the $750 bill for the quarterly, week-long trips back to the San Jose branch.
The advantages of working from home for Burner are multiple. His schedule is much more flexible, even though he works roughly the same 50 hours per week.
An early riser, he can usually get a couple hours of work done in the morning before sharing breakfast with his 6-year-old daughter, Emily.
He keeps in constant communication with his colleagues via instant messaging on his laptop computer, which he finds more direct and to the point than some of the idle chit-chat common to every office.
But it’s not for everyone, and telecommuting has its drawbacks. Burner misses the interaction with his colleagues, whether for unplanned lunches in the cafeteria or a quick catch-up conversation in the hall.
Also, telecommuters need to be responsible for completing their work on their own with little supervision, he said.
“You have to be disciplined. There’s nobody watching over your shoulder, so you have to be self-motivated to get what you need to get done,” Burner said.
Tucked in the corner of his spacious home, Burner’s office has a simple layout. His computer, telephone and family pictures sit on his desk. A tall bookshelf stands at one wall, and a soft tan couch sits along the other to accommodate visitors.
On the back wall hang 17 crayon drawings, a display of some of Emily’s finest work. Some of those drawings hung in Burner’s old office in San Jose, but it’s more special at home, he said.
“She can walk in the room and put it on the wall for you.”
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