Not unless you’ve absolutely lost your mind! OK – I’ll be serious. Look – I’ve worked with remote developers (don’t get me started on dodgy plumbers fleecing me right in the same house) remotely for years and I can honestly say it’s made my life an ABSOLUTE LIVING HELL. Why? Because as I write this I have just paid – up front I might add DotSqauares £330 of my hard-earned cash – a web development company (who in the main are not bad as development companies go) that has assigned me 1 developer for 2 days.
Why did I book 2 days? Because the task at hand involves editing a few lines of code and will take a day at most – a fast developer a couple of hours – so I know from experience once he has worked on the other jobs he’s doing at the same time, made several calls home, had lunch and surfed the Internet – he’ll need that time to do my work. And listen – it’s pretty much always the same story – yes there have been 1 or 2 more conscientious developers who have worked the hours I paid them – but in general – are you kidding?! I have learned the hard way why getting a developer to your house is nigh-on impossible.
Now all this changes if people are in the same office – yes they can hide behind a screen for hours doing nothing – but ultimately developers must do their bit in the chain and not only that… everyone else in the chain can see they are a useless slacker and they won’t get that promotion and pay rise if the work is seen by the rest of the team to be crap because their shoddy work broke the whole project. They want to be SEEN to do a good job – trust me developers have pride in their work when other people are looking. And so if developers are working in a team remotely it can work fine. But if you work on your own and have 1 or 2 people working remotely – absolute nightmare I find myself in every day! And folks try to help with quaint ideas like – get another developer – or your management style is bad. No – people do nothing if they are given an inch they will take a mile.
Anyway – as I sat here pondering once again this idea I keep hearing that folks do more work when they work from home (this guy and all the others work remotely not in an office – and if they did my argument is the same since they are remote from me and I cannot see them working – it suddenly dawned on me; has the world gone absolutely mad? If it didn’t sound so off the wall I might be tempted to think China has succeeded in a massive plot to ruin our economy on several levels by getting us all out of offices and living in fear at home and our kids out of school. I mean this is incredible to think that people will be saying – hey it’s a great idea for my staff to work from home – I can monitor the hours they are online for and bla bla. Look – let’s get real – long term I’ll tell you what this will do; it will RUIN an already ruined economy and here’s the reason I’m sorry to have to say this; Jesus told us in no uncertain terms that people – men – are NOT honest as a rule. Not only do they tell fibs to others – worse is they fib to themselves. All I can say is that if people are really doing more work from home that they were doing at work – they were obviously doing *** all at work.
There – that’s my opinion. And of course – there are always conscientious people that this won’t apply to – I am one – but I’ll admit – it’s in large part because I believe GOD see everything I do. So if someone pay me money to do a job – I’d better do it. Heaven help any companies that think this is a good idea – unless there is one thing driving those people to work – something like saving the world, or you work for the utopian globalist g00gle machine, or you’re trying to bring down orange man bad – or some other deeply meaningful project that all your leftist staff believe in because they never lived in a real socialist state – then I CAN see it working. The freedom may be a positive boost to work harder but for general 9-5-ers – not a hope in hell.
I have written this entire article (admittedly it’s not good) waiting for my developer to add a few lines of code for ‘task 1’ and he has already moved onto task 2 (I’ve tested task 1 – adding a line of code and that failed but I have’t told him yet). And he’s going to; “let me know when it’s all done.” Yea right – pull the other one. I might also add he has told me he has done several hours of work already over the last two days free! OK – so how did he do that when I changed the server root password as I do after every work session? He clearly forgot and I haven’t mentioned it to him as I was curious as to wether he’d remember. God bless him.
The invoices are NEVER late
I should say there was ONE task he did very well and efficiently; he asked at the end of a terrible week where we got very little done and hardly contacted me or responded to me over Skype (costing me £700+ quid ouch!) – if I could write him a sparkling review for his boss. And he kept pinging and buzzing me until I’d written it – and get this; HE WANTED TO REVIEW IT BEFORE I SUBMITTED IT?!!!!! Heaven help this world. One more thing – he was right at my Skype door yesterday nice and early and I thought – oh he’s brushing up on his conscientiousness – but no – he was reminding me I must pay the invoice advance or “he can’t open my task manager” (which he doesn’t need as I emailed him the tasks last night which I discovered he failed to read) – as if I’d forget to pay. One more thing – when I contacted his manager on a ‘separate’ Skype line – my developer was right there in the background and they closed ranks faster than you could say “you haven’t tested it and its not working!”
I love God, Christ, The Bible. art, painting, playing music, improvising music, guitar (first instrument), drumming (not very good at it:), and anything musical or art related. Quick note – my articles are usually spun off in minutes so forgive any errors – hopefully you get the essence of the article and I’ll pick up mistakes later. If you want to write of 101ChristianMagazine and inspire and edify Christians with articles on faith, general news, hobbies or anything that interests you email me at: epgb101@gmail.com:)
