Rich, In principal I agree, and I've said this many times, for years I've telecommuted myself, mostly effectively. I'd work much longer hours, but not always worked as efficiently during all of those hours. When I started my own company, with $$ be in short supply like all start ups I I planned to have as many folks telecommute as possible. In some cases it worked out, in others it was a terrible failure. Maybe it was my hiring choices, maybe it was being a bad "manager" but without people in the office it was harder to tell. Also with "most" people under one roof now, I also see the on going information sharing that isn't as possible with a mostly remote office. -jim On Sat, Jul 26, 2014 at 8:04 AM, Rich Kulawiec <rsk@gsp.org> wrote:
On Fri, Jul 25, 2014 at 05:35:45PM -0700, Scott Weeks wrote:
One day, hopefully, telecommuting really takes off [...]
It often strikes me as incredibly ironic that companies which *would not exist* were it not for the Internet are among the most resistant to the simple, obvious concept that telecommuting allows them to hire the best and brightest regardless of geography.
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. Asking net admins to do stupid, wasteful, expensive things like "commute 3 hours a day" and "live in areas with ridiculously inflated housing prices" is a good way to filter *out* the employees one would most like to have.
---rsk