Working from home or not?
Interesting article about working from home for some of the Internet companies…
In my last two and a half years at EarthLink and Yahoo!, I’ve learned that most companies aren’t set up for this. They don’t have the decentralized network. They don’t have a culture who understands what it’s like for the person on the other end of the phone who can’t see the whiteboard. They don’t understand that during a 3 hour planning meeting, the person working from home without a speaker phone is getting a very sore ear and a tired arm from holding their handset. If you’re the only person telecommuting, you’re also the only person missing out on hallway conversations, technical talks, fun lunches and more. You miss an entire half of the work experience. Read the whole story…
About 50% of our company workforce is located in one centralized office in Las Vegas, NV. The rest is working with us over Internet, ICQ, Skype and telephones. We are very small company (up to 20 people total), but I cannot imagine accomplish the results without the mix of people working from homes and in the office. We couldn’t work as only traditional company or only telecommuting company. The mix is bringing advantages, which make the whole company very competitive. But we don’t have problems described in the article. It seems to me that problems arise when trying to take brick and mortar business model and apply it to telecommuting workers. Instead of spending hours on teleconference hours there must be different way of communication through web based project management, emails or ICQ. If the work requires to be in the office, then such worker should be in the office. If the work can be rather independent then such worker can easily work from home. It also depends how the works is organized, but solution doesn’t have to be costly.
