Working from a home office - Possible?

[Jessup3D]

I am a professional 3D visualization artist and I wanted to find out how many companies there are out there that work with telecommuters. I work for a great company now, but I would really like to have more time with my family and avoid the big daily commute (which can take over an hour depending on traffic... not to mention gas prices), and eventually relocate to be near relatives.

 

The current setup at the office where I work doesn't allow for working from home, even though I own all my own software licenses and have the tech savvy to make things work our of my home office. Are there companies that do architectural visualization with employees that telecommute or is the only way to do that to start your own business?

 

If there is a company with a good model for how they work over distance I'd love to get some info and see if the same ideas couldn't be implemented where I work currently.

[Jeff Mottle]

When I worked for Smoothe UK, I worked from home for 2 years. I also now work from home for VisMasters. It can be done, but the company has to be really commited to maintaining open lines of communication. It can get really frustrating quickly if that does not happen. There are also a lot of things that are difficult to do when you are not in the same office as your co-workers. You definetly take for granted how many 20-30 second conversations take place during any given day that collectively add up to a lot of knowledge you miss out on.

 

Also simple things like accessing network drives, special software licenses, access to render farms etc will all become much more difficult on the IT end. For example at VisMasters we have hardware VPNs on both ends that allow me to access our internal network. Now consider I don't do production anymore, but I do deal with a lot of files and I can tell you now it's VERY VERY slow. When I was with Smoothe it was even worse as it was VPN overseas. The IT people will need to open a lot of holes in their firewall and allow access to resources that normally they would prefer to leave "off the grid".

 

Also, working from home takes a lot of dedication. It's really easy to become distracted, especially if your goal is to be near family. Even though you work from home, once you are in your office (hopefully a seperate room with a door), that means no one should come in to bother you. There really needs to be that understanding.

 

There are a lot of little things you take for granted when you work in an office. It's definetly not impossible to work from home and obviously a lot of people do it, but it's very different from working from an office.

 

Also, if you value your life and time, you should put a lock on your door and when your done for the day, you lock the door and you don't go back. Given I work for VM and own CGA it's hard not to work all the time (8am to 2am almost every day, with break in between), but it VERY easy to never leave work if there is no physical seperation from you and your office.

[Justin Hunt]

Very true, a while ago I worked with someone out of his front room. It was too esy for him just to pop in room for a couple of hours in the evening after I left. Later he then accused me of not putting in the hours because he had been up all night, (what he was accutually doing I am yet to find out)

 

Now a days I run my own company from home, after hours. I give myself a strict deadline of 11pm then I must leave the room and only return in the morning. My wife used to complain all the time that I spent more time in the office than with her. Now she is used to it and complains if I am not working

 

It is possible to get it to work, but not easy. Especially if you do need to be in the loop with whats going on in the office. Also once clients get hold of your mobile and home numbers they will never leave you alone.

 

If you dont need constant access to the office network then it can work very well. You will need someone in the office available to send you files/info at a drop of a hat, otherwise alot of time can be lost waiting. Considering that our IT guys control servers in two different cities and one over seas the tecknology is there, but very expensive.

 

JHV

[wodewil]

Actually I work at home for big developing company - Verity Development. I've got full time job with some extra specific tasks as bonus. My boss authorized me to work at home because he understand when I explained him that I'll be more effectiv at home rather then in office. At home I can work even from 8am to 2pm and I dont feel tired at all because in fact its look like that I set up scene and hit render for testing... so now I've time to have a schower... smth with lighting isn't right set up again f9... prepering lunch for my lovely girl...he he, and so on and so on. Sometimes I need to go to the office to take some crit or new material ane explanations, advices, some inspirations. Last month I've created 45 images... but it is to fast and quality went down and my boss noticed it. And guess what! He told me to slow down because he want to have best quality!!! Amazing! I'm lucky Luke!

So my answer is : It is possible!

 

ps: thanks to CGarchitect and very thanks to Jeff for AVC. It helps me a lot!

[Jessup3D]

Thanks for all the input so far. I worked as a freelance artist for a while before I got into architectural vizualization, so I'm familiar with the routine of trying to get the work done with family wanting access to you all the time as well as with working way too many hours on occasion.

 

With my current possition, if I was to subtract the time for the commute to and from work and the time taken for lunches, I'd be home about 10 to 15 extra hours a week and I'd be saving about $150 a month in gas and insurance costs alone. The big trick with working for an employer, as mentioned earlier, is dealing with file transfers and access to textures and the like. If you go it alone, your resources are more limited, but your location is not.

 

Raising a family in a big city environment is doable, but if there's a way to do the same work in a more rural location that's what I'd rather do. I'm just curious how much of this industry is done in shops like the one I work for, how many are collections of remote individuals, and how many are independent contractors (not actual numbers, just rough estimates).

 

I hear a lot on both sides as far as independent contractors and smaller startup comanies go... it seems that for some folks they find a client or two and the rest just builds up on its own from referals and repeat business, and for others, they find it near impossible to find clients. It's tough to tell what sort of expectations you should have if you tried to start your own venture.

[Ernest Burden III]

if I was to subtract the time for the commute to and from work and the time taken for lunches, I'd be home about 10 to 15 extra hours a week

 

There's your first mistake. You'd be working those 'extra' 10 - 15 hours per week. Now, as a freelancer, those extra hours could mean extra money. But not as a salary man. Don't kid yourself. Less commute means more work. My commute is a flight of stairs. I work all the time.

 

Raising a family in a big city environment is doable, but if there's a way to do the same work in a more rural location that's what I'd rather do.

 

There are big cities in Arizona? The grass is always greener somewhere else. You can make the best of whatever you do if you work hard. But work-from-home is no nirvana. How do you know when you are home? A colleague of mine who has a rendering business pointed out that most of his clients don't even know where he lives. That's amazing to me. EVERY client of mine knows where I live, and although they rarely call me at 2AM, if they do, I feel obligated to take their call. Its because of them that I have a home at all.

 

I've been looking into working from a non-home studio, probably even as a part of someone else's larger studio. My wife has been supportive of this concept. When I told her I was a really nervous about joining the commuting public, the 'rat race', she simply said "yeah, but when you came home, you'd be home."

[Jessup3D]

Ernest - Thanks for the input, and no... I don't expect work from home to be nirvana (I used to work freelance, so I'm not unfamiliar with it). I was just wondering if going back to freelance work was my only option or if there were companies that hire remote employees for architectural visualization.

 

As for Arizona, it really doesn't have any big cities. Unless you count Phoenix with it's 4 million plus residents. Having lived in Los Angeles a number of years ago, I'd say it's very comprable but then again I don't know what you are thinking of when you talk about a big city. For me, hearing about a murder on the news every other night and the near daily deadly wecks on my traffic route is more than I prefer to subject my family to if it can be avoided.

 

I agree, you can make just about any situation work. The question is, which situation would you want to work if you have the choice? I'm just trying to see what choices are really there and which are functionally pipedreams.

[Justin Hunt]

Ernest Burden - why would you need to set up in a city when a small bit of office space locally work work just as well?

 

jhv

[kippu]

 

I've been looking into working from a non-home studio, probably even as a part of someone else's larger studio. My wife has been supportive of this concept. When I told her I was a really nervous about joining the commuting public, the 'rat race', she simply said "yeah, but when you came home, you'd be home."

 

 

this is so true ...when you work from home ...even if you get some free time and then you see your computer you are so tempted to go there and dabble a bit ...you just cannot draw the line between free time and work time ...

[Rendermedia]

I fell into working from home after being made redundant from my permanent job about 4 years ago, it just so happened that my fiancé at the time earned enough to keep us both going, I always fancied being self employed but had no idea about how to go about it.

 

I picked up yellow pages and rang around design agencies and asked them whether they used freelancers, I got lucky with 2% of the calls, and then picked up my first job,

 

4 years later with Workstations and a small renderfarm, and a 19 month old son it was time to go out and find myself an office as daily distractions got too much.

 

My wife now works 3 days a week and I work anywhere between 5 and 6 days a week with reasonable hours spent working each day,

 

Working from home you have to be disciplined for it to work. but I did miss the chats in the office, and sharing ideas and thoughts, The isolation can also creep in a bit (Jack Nicholson in the Shining) but that is where Forums like this come into their own, the only downside is that I had little or no work life balance as there was no cut off point between home and work, and it was so tempting to go back up stairs and check on rendering in the evening.

 

I now have an office on a business park and have other businesses around me and there is a certain degree of banter, or as much as you can get from Accountants, lawyers, and companies that sell slimming products, but I enjoy it all the same, work life balance is much better and there is a cut off point each day.

 

 

Regards

Mark

[Dave Buckley]

check out 'Tayrona' on here, she is a memeber who posts regularly, her 'estudio' is a home based studio as far as i gather, theres a number of people working, but they just communicate via computer from wherever they are in the south america. THere stuff looks pretty good too

 

http://www.gaestudio.com/