What do Crossover, Space, and NASA have in common?
Remote work and freelancing is literally a centuries-old story. But its modern variety, known as telecommuting, is, of course, much younger, and the NASA space agency is most relevant to its birth. In general, the day of cosmonautics in 2018 is an excellent occasion to tell about the history of remote work.
In the 1960s, the “author” of the definition of telecommuting teleworking, Jack Nilles, worked as an engineer at NASA. Often he thought about how uncomfortable it was to get to work every day. As a result, he began to investigate this issue after leaving the agency.
Nilles in 1973 led a team of researchers from the University of Southern California and received a grant from the US National Science Foundation. The University had many contacts from business. The guinea pig became an insurance company, to whose representatives this idea seemed somewhat insane, as Nilles himself said. But it was important for the company to reduce staff turnover - a third of the state had to be hired every year. Basically it seemed the staff who were engaged in data entry into the database. The second problem was the high cost of real estate in Los Angeles, and the company wanted to find areas cheaper.
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In order for people to work from home, then too high costs were required: telephone bills for data transmission over 300 baud modems would eat up all the savings on this project. But the exit was cheap individual offices where employees could get on a bicycle or on foot. The data were driven into minicomputers, then transferred to a local machine that loads them into the mainframe at the head office a couple of times a day or at night.
The productivity of workers rose by 18%, the turnover rate began to tend to zero, and the cost of the work area decreased. The successful project was originally called the Telecommunications-Transportation Tradeoff Project - that is, “Compromise between telecommunications and transport” and, to make it more harmonious, Niels proposed the concept of Telecommuting. It happened exactly 45 years ago, in 1973.
Initially, the main goal was not satellite offices, but remote work of people from home or from any other place. The emergence of personal computers spurred this trend. Just then computers were too expensive. In 1975, IBM launched the portable PC 5100, a 25-pound machine costing $ 20,000, which translates to US dollars for the current day and exceeds $ 90,000.
In 1976, Apple 1 assembled by Steve Wozniak in the garage could be bought for $ 666.66, about $ 3,000 today, and the Apple II that replaced it a year later cost from $ 1,300 to $ 2,600 - $ 5,399 and $ 11,000, respectively, taking into account inflation today .
Thanks to the “boom” of personal computers, as early as 1984, 8.2% of American families had a computer at home, and by 1993 - 22.9%. Not only equipment manufacturers, but also software companies, specifically Microsoft, which worked for some time under the slogan “a personal computer in every house and on every table”, contributed a lot to the similar distribution of personal computers. All this prepared people for the next stage - the emergence of the World Wide Web.
But to ensure this "boom" they had to become more affordable in terms of price. The first home computer, which costs less than $ 600, was the TRS-80, which sold Radio Shack. The picture below is advertised by Isaac Asimov. Then there were several popular models from Atari, which sold more than two million pieces from 1979 to 1985.
The more accessible computers and communications became, the more companies could afford to work with employees remotely. In 1980, 2.3% of the entire work force in the United States worked remotely every day, and now this figure is 25%. But here, in many respects, is the “fault” of mobile devices, which allow to carry out part of the work at any time.
In the late 1970s, Frank Skiff, the head of the special committee for economic development of the United States, continued the work of Nilses and proposed the term flexiplace, a flexible workplace. “Millions of Americans go to work five days a week, most often on cars and buses, and these movements explain a significant part of the country's gasoline consumption, traffic jams and air pollution, which is the main source of mental and physical stress,” wrote Skiff in The article "Work from home saves gasoline" in the Washington Post in 1979. The popularization of telework, as some experts believe, began with this article.
In the 1980s, Nilles continued to study telework, and Frank Skiff began to introduce teleworking as part of a government program in government ministries and departments. One of these departments was NASA. In May 1994, a NASA contractor compiled a report on the study “Remote work (work-from-home) at the Research Center. J. Lewis. As part of a pilot project, several NASA employees were sent home, equipped with computers and forced to stop going to work.
“There is absolutely no technological reason for which someone could not read this report from home. There is also no reason why many people who should report to management should also be in the same place. One of the main reasons for remote work is its convenience. Japanese firms, for example, use satellite offices around Tokyo to reduce the number of workers moving around the city. It is easier for companies to hire and retain good employees, ”the authors of the study say about remote work.
The authors of the study noted that working from home helps to reduce the amount of harmful emissions from cars, unloads public transport, helps companies comply with environmental legislation.
And one of the most important reasons - remote work allows you to keep the best employees, if they can not go to the office because of illness or pregnancy. Companies get the opportunity to hire the best specialists from anywhere in the world without thinking about geographic obstacles.
Remote work: Pros and Cons. Telecommuting (Work -at-Home) at NASA Lewis Research Center. A source
At NASA, there are thousands of employees around the world, the agency promotes remote work in the framework of the Work From Anywhere program. Any employee can communicate with the supervisor on the possibility of working outside the office constantly or at least partially.
Among the employees working remotely, you can name people engaged in scientific research in one of the remote offices - on the International Space Station, where cosmonauts and astronauts from several countries gathered. At an altitude of 400 kilometers above sea level, they conduct a dialogue with the Earth and maintain accounts in social networks, although the connection there is not very fast.
The Internet, which grew out of a project by the US Department of Defense called ARPANET, by 1994 spread to the rest of the world. And the world already had tools for work - personal computers. The next step was mobility with smartphones and tablets in the late 2010s.
According to a survey of 15,000 adult US citizens, in 2016, 43% of them at least sometimes worked outside the office ... But one of the main factors is the development of technology. If in 1973 it was economically unprofitable to put a terminal at home for an employee, in the 1990s, with the cheaper computers, the advent of the Internet, this became possible. Today, there are a lot of collaboration tools like Slack, and Internet penetration reached 73% in Russia, 97% in Japan, 87% in the USA, and 34% in India, which allows you to work from almost anywhere in the world.
Additional impetus is given by state initiatives. In Japan, at the state level, they support remote work, and local companies are creating new tools like this cute OriHime robot. “I feel the atmosphere of the office as if I was there,” says one of the remote employees. The robot allows you to see the office and chat with colleagues.
As of September 2016, 13.3% of companies in Japan worked with remote employees, another 3.3% planned to use this model. The Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications of Japan noted that companies in which teleworking is practiced are, on average, 1.6 times more productive than others.
According to one of the latest studies conducted in the United States, the average annual income of remote employees is $ 4,000 higher than that of others, and the percentage of men and women is approximately equal. In remote work and cons, which, for example, in 1993, said the authors of the study for NASA. This lack of boundaries between personal life and work, which is especially important because of the popularity of instant messengers, less interaction with colleagues and more opportunities to escape from work because of family members, but these problems are solved by the workers themselves.
Nilles continues to advise companies on the topic of teleworking now.
In the 1960s, the “author” of the definition of telecommuting teleworking, Jack Nilles, worked as an engineer at NASA. Often he thought about how uncomfortable it was to get to work every day. As a result, he began to investigate this issue after leaving the agency.
The need to form the first remote work processes arose in the USA as a response to several factors. First, the 1973 Oil Crisis , also known as the “oil embargo”. If we put aside politics, then the United States simply refused to supply oil. US President Richard Nixon urged Americans to save, save fuel and use cars less often. Increased gasoline prices. Secondly, in 1967, the United States Congress passed the “Clean Air Act” , tightening control over car emissions. For many years, Americans went to work in offices located in the city center, without thinking about the environmental consequences.It was only about plans to work from home — at that time there were no personal computers in every home, and the ARPANET network had just crossed the Atlantic Ocean, uniting scientists from different continents. Initially, it was intended to create a system that allows some employees to be located not in the main office, but in a satellite office not far from home. The main interest was to reduce the way to work.
Nilles in 1973 led a team of researchers from the University of Southern California and received a grant from the US National Science Foundation. The University had many contacts from business. The guinea pig became an insurance company, to whose representatives this idea seemed somewhat insane, as Nilles himself said. But it was important for the company to reduce staff turnover - a third of the state had to be hired every year. Basically it seemed the staff who were engaged in data entry into the database. The second problem was the high cost of real estate in Los Angeles, and the company wanted to find areas cheaper.
')
In order for people to work from home, then too high costs were required: telephone bills for data transmission over 300 baud modems would eat up all the savings on this project. But the exit was cheap individual offices where employees could get on a bicycle or on foot. The data were driven into minicomputers, then transferred to a local machine that loads them into the mainframe at the head office a couple of times a day or at night.
The productivity of workers rose by 18%, the turnover rate began to tend to zero, and the cost of the work area decreased. The successful project was originally called the Telecommunications-Transportation Tradeoff Project - that is, “Compromise between telecommunications and transport” and, to make it more harmonious, Niels proposed the concept of Telecommuting. It happened exactly 45 years ago, in 1973.
Initially, the main goal was not satellite offices, but remote work of people from home or from any other place. The emergence of personal computers spurred this trend. Just then computers were too expensive. In 1975, IBM launched the portable PC 5100, a 25-pound machine costing $ 20,000, which translates to US dollars for the current day and exceeds $ 90,000.
In 1976, Apple 1 assembled by Steve Wozniak in the garage could be bought for $ 666.66, about $ 3,000 today, and the Apple II that replaced it a year later cost from $ 1,300 to $ 2,600 - $ 5,399 and $ 11,000, respectively, taking into account inflation today .
Thanks to the “boom” of personal computers, as early as 1984, 8.2% of American families had a computer at home, and by 1993 - 22.9%. Not only equipment manufacturers, but also software companies, specifically Microsoft, which worked for some time under the slogan “a personal computer in every house and on every table”, contributed a lot to the similar distribution of personal computers. All this prepared people for the next stage - the emergence of the World Wide Web.
But to ensure this "boom" they had to become more affordable in terms of price. The first home computer, which costs less than $ 600, was the TRS-80, which sold Radio Shack. The picture below is advertised by Isaac Asimov. Then there were several popular models from Atari, which sold more than two million pieces from 1979 to 1985.
The more accessible computers and communications became, the more companies could afford to work with employees remotely. In 1980, 2.3% of the entire work force in the United States worked remotely every day, and now this figure is 25%. But here, in many respects, is the “fault” of mobile devices, which allow to carry out part of the work at any time.
In the late 1970s, Frank Skiff, the head of the special committee for economic development of the United States, continued the work of Nilses and proposed the term flexiplace, a flexible workplace. “Millions of Americans go to work five days a week, most often on cars and buses, and these movements explain a significant part of the country's gasoline consumption, traffic jams and air pollution, which is the main source of mental and physical stress,” wrote Skiff in The article "Work from home saves gasoline" in the Washington Post in 1979. The popularization of telework, as some experts believe, began with this article.
In the 1980s, Nilles continued to study telework, and Frank Skiff began to introduce teleworking as part of a government program in government ministries and departments. One of these departments was NASA. In May 1994, a NASA contractor compiled a report on the study “Remote work (work-from-home) at the Research Center. J. Lewis. As part of a pilot project, several NASA employees were sent home, equipped with computers and forced to stop going to work.
“There is absolutely no technological reason for which someone could not read this report from home. There is also no reason why many people who should report to management should also be in the same place. One of the main reasons for remote work is its convenience. Japanese firms, for example, use satellite offices around Tokyo to reduce the number of workers moving around the city. It is easier for companies to hire and retain good employees, ”the authors of the study say about remote work.
The authors of the study noted that working from home helps to reduce the amount of harmful emissions from cars, unloads public transport, helps companies comply with environmental legislation.
And one of the most important reasons - remote work allows you to keep the best employees, if they can not go to the office because of illness or pregnancy. Companies get the opportunity to hire the best specialists from anywhere in the world without thinking about geographic obstacles.
Remote work: Pros and Cons. Telecommuting (Work -at-Home) at NASA Lewis Research Center. A source
At NASA, there are thousands of employees around the world, the agency promotes remote work in the framework of the Work From Anywhere program. Any employee can communicate with the supervisor on the possibility of working outside the office constantly or at least partially.
Among the employees working remotely, you can name people engaged in scientific research in one of the remote offices - on the International Space Station, where cosmonauts and astronauts from several countries gathered. At an altitude of 400 kilometers above sea level, they conduct a dialogue with the Earth and maintain accounts in social networks, although the connection there is not very fast.
The Internet, which grew out of a project by the US Department of Defense called ARPANET, by 1994 spread to the rest of the world. And the world already had tools for work - personal computers. The next step was mobility with smartphones and tablets in the late 2010s.
According to a survey of 15,000 adult US citizens, in 2016, 43% of them at least sometimes worked outside the office ... But one of the main factors is the development of technology. If in 1973 it was economically unprofitable to put a terminal at home for an employee, in the 1990s, with the cheaper computers, the advent of the Internet, this became possible. Today, there are a lot of collaboration tools like Slack, and Internet penetration reached 73% in Russia, 97% in Japan, 87% in the USA, and 34% in India, which allows you to work from almost anywhere in the world.
Additional impetus is given by state initiatives. In Japan, at the state level, they support remote work, and local companies are creating new tools like this cute OriHime robot. “I feel the atmosphere of the office as if I was there,” says one of the remote employees. The robot allows you to see the office and chat with colleagues.
As of September 2016, 13.3% of companies in Japan worked with remote employees, another 3.3% planned to use this model. The Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications of Japan noted that companies in which teleworking is practiced are, on average, 1.6 times more productive than others.
According to one of the latest studies conducted in the United States, the average annual income of remote employees is $ 4,000 higher than that of others, and the percentage of men and women is approximately equal. In remote work and cons, which, for example, in 1993, said the authors of the study for NASA. This lack of boundaries between personal life and work, which is especially important because of the popularity of instant messengers, less interaction with colleagues and more opportunities to escape from work because of family members, but these problems are solved by the workers themselves.
Nilles continues to advise companies on the topic of teleworking now.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/353356/
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