Joly MacFie wrote:
On Sat, Jul 26, 2014 at 7:04 AM, Rich Kulawiec <rsk@gsp.org> wrote:
Telecommuting should not be a rare exception: it should be the default. And "corporate headquarters" should be as small and inexpensive as possible, staffed (in person) only by a handful of people -- if even that.
Automattic (WordPress) works like that.
There's a book about it. http://www.amazon.com/The-Year-Without-Pants-WordPress-com/dp/1118660633
Funny thing. A place I'm working now (not as a sysadmin, though) builds intelligent transportation systems for buses (dispatch systems, passenger information, and the like) - half of us are spread all over the place. A lot of us live pretty far from the home office, and spend most of our time working from home; then there are all the folks on the road doing sales; and the deployment teams working on-site at customer locations. About the only folks who are actually in the office a lot are the design engineers and the folks who build hardware. Works pretty well - though proposals get kind of interesting (which is what I mostly do these days). The problem isn't so much remoteness (email, audio bridges, and webex work well enough) - it's finding blocks of time for meetings - everyone is juggling too many things - kind of organizational ADHD. Personally, I think there's a lot to be said for actually having everybody in the same physical place - makes those impromptu hallway conversations a lot easier. Cheers, Miles -- In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is. .... Yogi Berra