Your Sunday Morning Jet Noise
4 hours ago
Monday, November 10, 2014
Working on-line
Anybody out there working from home on-line? Do you like it? Is is worse than going into work?
Some of my friends and family have the option to work from home. Their experience seems to run from having a lot of freedom to every minute of on-line time being monitored. Some people seem to do pretty much what they want, when they want. As long as the work gets done the boss doesn't care how it happens.
Then there are those who have software than monitors every minute that they are on-line. If they take twenty minutes to pick up their kid from school, their cell phone will ring asking why they are not at their computer. That's terrible. Fortunately the program is pretty easy to hack. If the company isn't going to treat the worker with respect, the worker has every right to game the system.
Nobody I know is currently doing all their work from home. Some people only get to work on-line now and then. On the high end are people who's work life is split 50/50 between the office and home.
Some of my friends used to work completely on-line. Those jobs are now gone. Some of the companies have gone out of business, others have tightened their work rules.
A lot of folks tell me they'd love to work on-line, but can't find anything that pays real money. Sadly, on-line work appears to be a race to the bottom. If someone in India or Malaysia can do the job for less, that's where the work goes.
Remember the promise of the Internet that claimed all we'd need in the future is a good connection and we could work anywhere? Rarely has it worked out that way. Perhaps the only ones who are making a good living at it have very unique skills not easily duplicated. The day of the telecommuter has yet to come.
-Sixbears
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The only full online jobs that I've heard of have all been telemarketing jobs, and they DO monitor your time. Plus, it's STILL just stealing money from the poor and giving it to the rich.
ReplyDeleteThat's not the bright shiny future we were promised, isn't it?
DeleteI spent the last part of my working career working for myself. Although I would go to a customer's location to gather information for a project, I would do all the work at home. For every hour spent on site I spent weeks glued to my home office. I have been known to work weekends and holidays, even Christmas. When I had a project, I worked on it until it was complete.
ReplyDeleteYou, Dizzy, appear to be a rare success. I'm guessing your skills were fairly unique.
Deletemy bro. and his wife work at home- medical billing for a local hospital. they make good money and as long as the amount of work per month is completed they can do what they like with their time. it seems to be a matter of speed and efficiency , not hours spent.
ReplyDeletehowever, my nephew went to college for qa certain computer field in which jobs were plentiful in his area when he started. by the time he graduated about ten years ago all those jobs were in india.
my mum called to ask where i thought he could get a job.
i told her a lot of americans are moving to india. she said stop kidding. i said i'm not kidding!!
nephew is still not working in his field but he has finally found a job, and a part time job for weekends.
deb h.
I've met people who do medical transcription on-line. They seem to put in an awful lot of late night hours. Not sure how that works out per hour. However, they are living on a boat, so there's that.
DeleteMy neighbor works from home as a medical transcriptionist for the local hospital. She works days and is paid very well. She loves it and uses a computer that ties into the hospital that records her time. She has been working from home for 8 years and wouldn't want to go back to being in an office all day.
ReplyDeleteLooks like medical related things and engineering are two fields that can be done on-line for decent pay.
DeleteA friend of mine does editing for online stuff, magazines and websites, and also editing for books, all from home. Her schedule is her own, but she a work-a-holic. My husband can work from home occasionally, but feels he concentrates better in the office. When he does work from home, aside from conference calls, his schedule is his own. I would feel awful being monitored in my own home.
ReplyDelete