What's your thoughts on military "telecommuting?"

Isn't that what drone pilots do?  Oh for the day an 11B can telecomute.  I might reenlist from my xbox that day.

My wife and I live in rural Alaska, on the Kenai River. We both telecommute. We previously lived in Oregon, where we had a business which primarily worked on Alaskan projects. I've had home office based business in addition to other jobs for the last 6 years. It's often a good way to get a startup off to a solid financial start by cutting or sharing overhead. I believe the success of telecommuting is dependent on several things but there are many benefits as well. The nature of your business has to be one which is conducive to telecommuting also. Here's a few things which help in a home office situation:

Your office needs to be set apart, it should be a place where you go to work. Clear it of distractions, and make sure that family understands that when you're in the office with the door closed....you aren't to be disturbed. I've found that clients and co-workers don't take you serious...and can even get resentful when they find out you are working from home. In our previous home we converted our back family room into an office space because it was a separate wing of the house. Everything in that space was work related. It helps you to get into "work" mode. We even took our son to daycare in the morning, and returned to the office.

Setting up office hours is helpful. Going to work....is helpful also. Get up, shower, make coffee, GET DRESSED, then walk to your office. It's about a mindset. Productivity is vital to telecommuting. You are going to be expected by your employer to be MORE productive working from home.

This go around...up in Alaska, my wife has sectioned off a portion of our master bedroom suite to be her office. She loves working with a panoramic view of the river. It's also insulated from the rest of the house, so it's quiet. We have a 2 year old son, we take turns being "on-call" or primary, for watching him while working.We're saving over $1K a month in daycare expenses. I love it. My office is downstairs, but still has a view of the river. We're 45 minutes from the closest small town. We generally go to town once a week. Amazon provides most of what we need, and our weekly town run supplies the rest. I make my own hours, and my vehicle fuel bill has gone from nearly $1K a month down to $150. While I get dressed daily, I don't have to wear slacks & a tie (though I actually miss that), my clothing and laundry bills have dropped drastically. It allows us to live in a larger place.

There is definitely a stigma that surrounds working from home though....its assumed by many that you sit around, sleeping until 10, wear pajamas, watch tv and screw around. When my wife first started...she did just that. I had to step in and instill some discipline, which shot her productivity through the roof. She likes the big paychecks, so she's much more self disciplined now.

Watercooler talk takes on a whole different dynamic...but my office partner still steals the last of the coffee and doesn't make a new pot. Office politics spill over into home....lol. At least I don't have to worry about a sex harassment charge from my office partner.

I could do 99% of my job from home. I drive to work to mainly answer emails.

I telecommute almost every day! First I go do PT around 0600, then I go in to the office from 0800-1700 or 1800. Then the Army graciously lets me telecommute from the time I get home until I go to bed - checking the mail, putting out fires. I'm all for that kind of telecommuting! (Except not really because I sort of like my family too). =)

I consider myself pretty open-minded about many things, but I just cannot get my head around anyone in uniform telecommuting as a standard way of doing business.&nbsp; Don't get me wrong, I believe telecommuting has practical applications, for example during bad weather, kid's are sick, you are out for extended periods of time for whatever reason, but that's about as far as my mind will allow this topic to go. If you physically do not have to be present and you can work alone via laptop and telephone, then you should either be a civilian government employee or high-end, lone-wolf spook.&nbsp; Either way, you should be a General Schedule wage earner and not a "Sarge" or "Sir".&nbsp;&nbsp; Maybe I'm old fashioned, by for my money, the U.S. Military is a team sport and this team wears uniforms and we all show-up for work.<br>

Have done it for over 5 years now.....technology being what it is today makes it not only possible, but highly efficient and effective.  I "sit" over the shoulder of those I help, seeing exactly what they see when they see it.  It is far better than sitting next to them after a one hour drive or 10 hour flight.  I "work" alongside people in Australia, Japan, Indonesia, Philippines, China, Korea, New Zeland, Taiwan, US, Brazil, South Africa, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Thailand, Viet Nam and countless others.  In any given week, at least 5-6 countries.

Best: I go to the office once or twice a year.....just so they know I am still alive.

After retirement, I became a contractor.  Many of my contracts involved working remotely or "telecommuting".  Basically there are responsibilities, deadlines, meetings etc...  I have found that I must have a specific location at home for me to do my work.  Sometimes I have a company computer, and occasionally, I use my own.  When using my own, I need to ensure that it is of sufficient capability to do what is required.  Currently, I travel to my work location, and when necessary, I work from home.  Sometimes I have had to be on a 3 a.m. conference call.  And, I have discovered that I need to have my phone "hotspot" enabled.  So, my experience is:  Make sure that I meet my responsibilities, deadlines, and meetings.

I had to telecommute a few times because the traffic was so bad that by the time I got to work it would have been time to go. So why waste time and fuel sitting in traffic when I can work from home and just save the SIPR work for the next day. But I don't see the Army doing this regularly, only for special circumstances.

The vast majority of government work is done on secured networks and it would be a logistical nightmare to "telecommute" since every connection and home computer must pass the DoD STIG's, this would mean you can't install any program that is not DoD authorized - Ever! Then there are encryption standdards and the overhead of having that many VPN connections, if something happens to your connection or computer that would mean an IT or Computer Tech would have to drive to your house to fix the issue.

Take the Navy for instance - they just upgraded to Windows 7, that would mean your Windows 8 computer is not authorized on DoN networks.

I don't ever see this as being a possibility...sorry.

You almost have to here at Fort Bliss. Automation equipment is scarce and every minute detail about computer stuff is tasked to the garrison NEC and computer accounts take like a month to get. So when we first got back to complete all our tasks we had to send people home to work from there. My company was a ghost town.