I am planning to ask my employer if I could switch to a full time telecommute setup.
I have been reading about how to do this and most people focus on how your productivity will improve and things along those lines.
One thing that I am sure will come up, that I'm not really prepared to rebut is:
"Some of the value I add to the company is being in the office to assist users and be hands-on if need be"
The amount of value I add in this way is subjective. I would say it is very rare that being in the office is useful. However I feel like from my employers point of view, its important even if it is relevant only 1% of the time.
How should I handle this aspect of my job when discussing the opportunity of working 100% remote?
I am a web developer in a company that is distributed around the world. Providing support to users is a responsibility of mine.
I work on a team of 10 people, and we are a little scattered. 5 (and my boss) in Japan, 1 in Germany, 4 here in Texas. So the idea of remote collaboration is already in place. But everyone is still in an office somewhere.
I want this arrangement because I will be moving out of state soon. i.e. Unable to come in to the office unless its a planned trip. If they refused my request I would have to resign my position.
My company doesn't do much telecommuting that I know of. We have offices all around the world so they have a lot of the stuff in place to connect the offices. Global LAN, VC, etc.