The Telecommuter Manifesto

There are many different types of jobs that fit the generic definition of telecommuting.  In the strictest sense, simply working from home doesn’t make you a telecommuter since your not “commuting.”  Even still, some people who work from home can relate to many of the same issues as telecommuters.  As such, I like to count them among my target audience as well.

That being said, I generally consider someone a telecommuter if they perform their job from a remote location.  This doesn’t necessarily mean that work is performed from home.  I started thinking of myself as a telecommuter as soon as I started working on assignments for a remote division at my company.  Even though I still went to the office, for all other intents and purposes, I was a telecommuter.

Though I now work exclusively from home (my company office is 1,000 miles away) I still consider those first experiences as telecommuting.  With the spike in gas prices in the summer of 2008, many office workers started working from home a few days a week and likely considered themselves telecommuters as well.

Other definitions of telecommuters include everyone who can separate the work that they do from the place they do it.  Is Scott Adams a telecommuter?  I doubt he has any restrictions on where he draws Dilbert, so I would say that he is a telecommuter.

It’s interesting to note that the amount of time spent working or the types of tasks performed aren’t part of the definition.  So whether you’re drawing cartoons or writing a syndicated column a few hours a week, or coding algorithms or performing data entry for hours on end, you too may be a telecommuter.  It’s not what you do, it’s where you do it.