Navoty

Saving time and money with the Internets

One thing that old-school employers often overlook is the location of their developers. While they dictate dress codes, email protocols, lunch hours, time off, it’s just a given that the workers should be in the office from (at least) 9-5, Monday through Friday. 

This has several costs. One of the obvious ones is office space. Another is employee time. Sure, you’re only making them work 40 hours a week, but they’re commuting for 20-90 minutes, each way, each day. That can be an extra 15 hours a week, and it’s not time relaxing. It’s usually sitting in traffic.

Beyond the time it costs employees, gas prices, toll prices, car maintenance, etc. all weigh in. So what you’re paying the employee for their time gets thinned out by commute costs.  

While it sounds like I’m just talking about regular workers, the same goes for consultants. We try to save money, both for ourselves and for our clients, by telecommuting extensively.

We’ve got an internal chat server (we use Campfire), a project management suite (Basecamp), subversion, religiously use IM, and when we really need to talk, we use Skype.

Occasionally there’s no way around going to a client site, but for everything else we try to avoid unnecessary travel. It’s expensive, and we think that we’re most productive where we’re comfortable - at home.