First, let’s agree on some definitions:
Telecommuter is someone who does not have to drive to her client and/or corporate office every day and can render her services while working from where she is, most often from home.
Telecommuting, as such, is working (most often) from home and connecting with the outside world (employer, clients) using advanced technologies and communication means like email, IM, VOIP, phone, ets.
A few more formal definitions we can get from Google search:
Telecommuter is a work-at-home computer user who connects to the corporate LAN backbone using remote access technologies. www.ohsu.edu/vcs/glossary/
Telecommuters spend at least part of their workday at home, using computers or other telecommunications equipment. Most telecommuters live on the fringe of large cities and in the suburbs and exurbs, in what is known as the “two-hour telecommuting ring”. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecommuter
Hardly there is a fine line between telecommuter and commuter.
If you have to drive to your work place every day and your boss gives you a 30 minute lecture for being 15 minutes late after you were stuck in traffic for an hour, then you most probably a commuter. However, if you make souvenirs at home and sell them on Ebay, you potentially can be considered a telecommuter.
The precise definition is less important than the concept of providing more flexibility to do your work or to do what you love doing from where you are versus from where your boss/your client is as long as you meet the requirements for the quality of service/product you deliver.
A list of telecommuting jobs would include: programmer, web-designer, pr, writer, copywriter, life coach, customer rep, lawyer, accountant, sales professional, ‘manager’. In other words, professions requiring mental work vs. physical work often are good candidates for telecommuting and require less frequent presense ‘on site’. Or, as Forbes Publisher, Rich Karlgaard, alludes: ‘If you think or sell for a living–perhaps the only two career options if you don’t want your income arbitraged to the level of Shanghai or Bangalore–then two office days are certainly enough‘.
One of the most recent trends related to telecommuting, which I have yet comprehended, is telemedicine. I have a hard time with a diagnosis rendered over the net/TV. But, I guess there are enough (lonely) people who, when they see on a TV screen a ‘doctor’, that is a person in a white doctor’s smock, stating a ‘cold’ diagnosis and prescribing vitamines, more sleep, and more frequent work-out, start feeling better because they received some attention. Attention can make wonders.
As we proceed, we will have more definitions, for now let’s continue our exploration.
