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Why Working Remotely Needs To Make a Comeback
silentbrad writes sends this excerpt from a blog post about the history of working from home:
"Remote working has existed for centuries. And now is the perfect time for its comeback. ... Prior to the Industrial Revolution, goods were manufactured by contracting individual craftsmen who worked out of their homes. The merchant would drum up sales, and would coordinate the production with at-home sub-contractors. ... This all changed with the Industrial Revolution: production was centralized in factories and cities. For merchant capitalists, this made sense: it was cheaper and more efficient to produce goods in one place, with machinery. ... We've been in the Information Age for at least 25 years. We've made huge leaps in technology. Many of us would describe ourselves as Knowledge Workers: we don't work in factories, we work at desks in front of glowing screens. We don't make goods with physical materials, but rather things made out of bits. The great thing about bits + the internet is that the materials and means needed for production aren't dependent on location. But here's the funny thing: the way work is organized hasn't changed. Despite all these advances, most of us still work in central offices. Employees leave their computer-equipped homes and drive long distances to work at computer-equipped offices. ... CEOs, like Yahoo's Marissa Mayer and Apple's Steve Jobs, think that a central office fosters more innovation and productivity. I think they're wrong. We're still early in the research, but recent studies seem to dispute their claim. ... Managers have developed centuries worth of habits based on the central workplace. The hallmarks of office work (meetings, cubicle workstations, colocation) need to be seen for what they are: traditions we've kept alive since the Industrial Revolution. We need to question these institutions: are they really more innovative and efficient?"
Working from home requires a certain work ethic.
Not all of us possess this.
I've also heard from friends who do work from home that they struggle to distinguish between work/home and personal/business. It seems that the physical acts of leaving for work and coming home from work are required for some people to be able to keep the two (mindsets?) separated.
I personally prefer having that "divide" between work and home. I dislike the idea of working at home - that's not what it is for. Yeah, can I? Sure, but I absolutely hate it. The travel time to/from the office I also appreciate. It gives me that time to decompress from work - I turn up the radio, sing like a madman that doesn't care that they are out of tune, and by the time I get home, any of the days of "work stress" is gone. I can enjoy the time with my wife, children, grandchild unimpeded.
When working remotely at home, the stresses of work become integrated as part of your home. The wife, the kids, extended family and friends pick up on that. You have a @#$%@ day at the remote home office and that @#$%@ day sits at dinner with you and your family - your mind and thoughts are at work, not with your family. There is something to be said to have that clear delineation between work and home.
Now if your traveling all over the place, as a part of your employment, the remote office makes sense. But I don't want my boss's or corporate lack of planning to constitute and emergency in my own home with the stress felt within my whole family system.
To me, it looks like a corporate grab to save money on the facilities. If already maximizing the number of people in a building by reducing the size of a cubical isn't doing enough for the bottom line, let's kick our workers out our space, and we can invade theirs. This works for corporate and sounds great to them. For me? Not so much. Am I getting compensated for the space that corporate is taking up in my home, my bandwidth, power, utilities, and the intrusion into my family's space? I'm sorry, saving 2 hours of travel time isn't enough to compensate for that. Many view travel time as time wasted - for me it is my stress decompression time, self-care, or me time.
I completely disagree with the win/win which is in short, a collaborative process (Our way). For some, yeah, it may be win/win. For me, it is coercion (Their way) - a win/lose; corporate wins, I lose.
How accommodation with the flexibility to work with both styles?