463 W. 5th, Colville, WA 99114
(509) 684-2588

Comments from Dan Miller
Telecommuter from Ferry County
August 2001

1. Why do you live in Ferry County? What prompted your move from Washington’s Westside?
I was born and raised in Ferry County, I used to think Colville was overpopulated until I moved to the west side!!!My plan was always to move back when I retired from IBM.  I left in the first place to find "gainful" employment that could develop into a career, and provide some sort of stable income and retirement so that I didn't have to work until I died as I had seen many people do in this community.

2. What do you do?
My specialty has been Mainframe and Banking system hardware maintenance,basically, I was a hardware technician.  Now you would think that would be something that would require hands on to be able to perform.  My official title now is "Remote Large Systems Hardware Specialist", what that means is that I have all the manuals and technical expertise to assist field technicians to diagnose and repair difficult problems and hardware failures. So when afield technician has a problem, he calls an 800 number in Atlanta Georgia,that call is then routed to a application that allows myself and about 6 others that are set up in a Support Center in Charlotte N.C. to see it and reroute it to ourselves.  We then help them over the phone, document what the problem and the fix were, and if it is a pervasive problem, we write a technical tip on it so that the information is available to everyone who has access to that application.

3. How do you do your work?
Sometimes very slowly, as far as follow up reports etc. The phone work is the same as if I were sitting with the group in Charlotte, but in order to use email, and some of our other reporting systems, I have to use a local ISP, I then have an encryption that allows me to pass through to the company"intranet", from there I can do almost anything that I need to,however large files etc are a pain, because the fastest I can connect herein Ferry County is about 24K, and that is exaggerating, because actual throughput is much less.  Basically I use the phone to walk people through troubleshooting the problem and do productive work, and then I use the internet to do all my "nonproductive" work!!

4. How long have you worked for IBM and what were the contributing factors involved in your being able to relocate?
I have worked for IBM for 20 years this month. I started at age 19.  I quickly worked through the ranks and became a specialist in my field at a relatively young age.  About 2 years ago, I got fed up with living on the "coast"... actually Enumclaw then. And I decided it was time to start accelerating my transition back home.  I had worked for this “Support Group” out of Charlotte back in 1992, and decided to see if I could convince the manager to let me try it remote. After a lot of finagling, I was allowed to "pilot" the program, but they were a little skeptical, that was 2 1/2 years ago.  They are still leery of "modem cowboys", and it is decided on a case-by-case basis as to whether or not they allow it. There have been others that have tried to do the same thing, but were denied.  My situation was different than most, as they wished to retain me, so I was allowed to move here.

5.  The biggest factor for large companies allowing telecommuting seems to be attitude, and productivity. The biggest detriment is the lack of reliable high-speed internet access in remote areas. Companies are not willing to spend "Green Dollars" above and beyond what it would cost them to have an employee in an office or in a metropolitan area.

Dan Miller
IBM Hardware Specialist

Please contact Sue Meyer at RITC for more information