working from home

[Jim GM4DHJ ...]

how did people work from home before personal computers?......and those that do now should get out and get a proper job don't you think?

[williamwright]

How do you define 'a proper job'?

Bill

[Harry Bloomfield, Esq.]

Jim GM4DHJ ... formulated on Tuesday :

They can't there is a shortage of fuel.

[alan_m]

In my younger days it was always management working from home on a regular basis. No-one else was allowed to do it.

In the last 20 years of my career I possibly could have done a lot (electronic design) work from home but possibly would have been less productive if it had been 100% as ideas to solve tough problems could often be obtained with an ad-hoc informal chat with someone from another team. Possibly in my job a 60/30% split would have been about right (60% in front of a computer at home).

Towards the end of my career the company did operate a flexible working hours policy with a 3 hour window for starting and finishing. Most people took Friday afternoon off having made up the hours on other days. Flexible working did just about make commuting bearable. Other organisations on the same industrial estate had fixed working hours and if I finished at the same time it could add 30 minutes to my journey time :(

[Owain Lastname]

Copy or audio typing on typewriters.

Or they did other home-based work like sewing, assembly, packing etc.

Owain

[The Natural Philosopher]

yes. My mother did that for years - two of them in a room banging away on a manual typewriter collating summaries of insurance dockets for international shipping.

Neither copy nor audio - more writing summaries of documents in a prescribed format.

Back in the day used to do electronics assembly in the home - issue girls with soldering iron and parts and boards and pay for *working* boards.

Lot of Clive Sinclair's stuff was made that way. On the cheap. Other forms did subassembly work, like making a truck lighting unit out of the parts and boxing it. All piece work.

Then there is sewing - many seamstresses sub out top e.g. upholstery and curtain making firms.

yes. It is a good way to work if done well. Mums with kids could work any time the kids were at school or in bed, and they only got paid for stuff that tested out, so they soon learned how to do it right.

It got so automatic I've seen em watching corrie and stuffing a PCB at the same time

[Jim GM4DHJ ...]

weaving here in Paisley

[whisky-dave]

Yes my grandmather made fluffy balls called pom poms by the dozen for 'pin money' in the 1960s think she got about 1d (old money) for a dozen or so, someone came along gave her the wool and collected the finished pom poms think they were for curtains, blankets, hats.

[Jim.GM4DHJ ...]

befre the big mills came .....

[Jim GM4DHJ ...]

[Brian Gaff (Sofa]

Well, the issue here is that too many obviously suggest home workers are all shirking, which is far from the case in fact. As long as the old guard persist, no innovation will happen. In them old days we used telephones, something that seems to be an alien concept for many companies these days, as they grow increasingly uncontactable for human to human chats. Brian

[Jim GM4DHJ ...]

that is just computer work from home rubbish.... I was meaning REAL jobs ...

[Roland Perry]

In message <siuomt$8cr$ [e-mail], at 10:53:33 on Tue, 28 Sep

2021, Jim GM4DHJ ... [e-mail] remarked:

I worked from home from 1983 on and off (also some of my electronics designers and programmers) and the only reason we had personal computers was because we were in the computer industry. They weren't networked, or a means to communicate with people outside the home.

The main way we communicated was by post or FAX (documents), and phones (voice).

There was very little practical difference between working from home and in an office or whatever, other than it being a bit further to walk/drive if one wanted to meet face to face.

It wasn't until the mid-90's and the Internet moving into the mass market (via ISPs such as Demon and UKOnline) that computers became a tool other than to write software on, or do word processing for documents we then either posted or FAXed.

[The Natural Philosopher]

yes. Homeworking in a tightly coupled way became possible the moment you had a modem - before even the internet, but it was a very tekky thing to do. Post the internet it became a doddle.

But loose coupled homeworking has existed for decades. Any job that doesn't require onsite access to capital equipment or face to face contact with customers

You cant manufacture a Jaguar at home, but you can make a Jaguar car seat cover on an industrial sewing machine.

Or a veneered dashboard with some basic woodworking tools

[Jim GM4DHJ ...]

yes that kind of thing ...

[nightjar]

My father bred budgies and tropical fish for his cousin's pet shop, combining hobbies and home working.

[Andrew]

Harris Tweed is still woven in many homes, isn't it ?

[Owain Lastname]

I remember a friend of my parents doing budgies for a while. He went from one money-losing hobby to another.

Owain

[Owain Lastname]

It is woven in homes, but I don't know how many weavers there are.

The definition of Harris Tweed contained in the Harris Tweed Act 1993 clearly defines Harris Tweed as a tweed which ?

(a) has been handwoven by the islanders at their homes in the Outer Hebrides, finished in the Outer Hebrides, and made from pure virgin wool dyed and spun in the Outer Hebrides;

Owain

[Max Demian]

Making lampshades. Hand addressing envelopes. Selling goods via catalogues like Betterware is sort of home working. Only one step below multilevel marketing scams like 60 Minute Money/Herbalife. Do they still exist? if not, I'm sure there are others as bad.