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Study: Austin ranks highly among telecommute-friendly cities
According to the survey, Austin ranks 7th out of 36 cities as one of the best for remote working (the top 10 cities are listed at the bottom of this entry). We spoke to Mark Kornegay, a sales director for Microsoft’s South Central District who talked about the survey’s findings. Kornegay is himself a telecommuter and much of his sales staff of about 90 works remotely.
He says the biggest advantage to, say, working on Lake Travis and conducting meetings online or by cell is avoiding traffic. “There’s cost savings,” he said. “I don’t burn up gas. I don’t deal with traffic coming from northwest. I don’t deal with any of that when I work remotely and I see increased productivity.”
The survey results specific to Austin show that 80 percent of those surveyed prefer to work from home, away from the office, but only 43 percent of their employers are “Supportive of remote working arrangements” and 59 percent work at companies that don’t have a formal policy for telecommuting.
Kornegay, whose company is trying to sell its technology services to companies that can take advantage of software like Sharepoint as well as messaging tools in Windows software, says the survey is part of a way to raise awareness about the advantages of telecommuting. He thinks that as more of our lives are lived through smart phones and social media, that not enough people are using it to get out of the office.
“Probably 10 or 15 years ago, you or I would not be conducting meetings on our cell phones in places we normally wouldn’t be able to conduct a meeting. It’s not a matter of not having the technology,” he said.
Kornegay, a former lawyer, says that the expectation for telecommuting policies at companies are rising as more Millennial (or, if you prefer, “Gen Y”) employees enter the workforce.
Kornegay and I have something in common — we both generally try to work from home on Fridays, sometimes more often if we’re able. At Microsoft, employees who don’t have have a physical office are reimbursed for home work-area costs.
Speaking from experience, I can tell you it’s essential to have a good, reliable computer at home, preferably one that’s as fast or faster than what you use at work. You also need a good, reliable and fast Internet connection and a workspace free from distractions. (Mine is upstairs in its own room, away from the kitchen, living room TV and laundry room.)
Do you telecommute? Tell us about your experiences and habits in the comments. I’m always curious to hear how people work.
Top U.S. cities for telecommuting, Microsoft / 7th Sense survey:
- Boston
- Raleigh-Durham (Fayetteville), N.C.
- Atlanta
- Denver
- Kansas City, Mo.
- Richmond, Va.
- Austin
- New York
- Sacramento
- Portland, Ore.
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Comments
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By Don
August 5, 2010 5:18 PM | Link to this
Why don't you talk to IBM who has invited in Austin since '67 with thousands of employees in No Austin when it was only farms, not the Domain.
By M1EK
August 5, 2010 3:59 PM | Link to this
The challenge is that among software developers, the group that SHOULD be the MOST able to telecommute, the fad of Scrum (and other variants of so-called agile processes) have taken over - and practically eliminate the possibility of telecommuting by insisting on daily in-person meetings and the concomittant physical planning artifacts (post-it notes on walls instead of using software to manage processes).