Slashdot Mirror
Ask Slashdot: Why Do We Still Commute? (citylab.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Over the last year, many companies have ended their liberal work-from-home policies. Firms like IBM, Honeywell, and Aetna joined a long list of others that have deemed it more profitable to force employees to commute to the city and work in a central office than give them the flexibility to work where they want. It wasn't supposed to be this way. In 1975, when personal computers were little more than glorified calculators for geeks and the Internet was an obscure project being developed by the United States government, Macrae, an influential journalist for The Economist who earned a reputation for clairvoyant prophesies -- including the fall of the Soviet Union and the rise of Japan -- made a radical prediction about how information technology would soon transform our lives. Macrae foretold the exact path and timeline that computers would take over the business world and then become a fixture of every American home. But he didn't stop there. The spread of this machine, he argued, would fundamentally change the economics of how most of us work. Once workers could communicate with their colleagues through instant messages and video chat, he reasoned, there would be little coherent purpose to trudge long distances to work side by side in centrally located office spaces.
I can't speak for others, but I for one enjoy slowly growing old one day at a time in a small tin box that slowly moves through stop-and-go traffic for hours at a time. All while considering merits of being dead over my current situation.
One of the reasons I'm at my current job, my "commute" is about ten feet and pants are optional. Working at home alone does seem to result in a high level of work place sexual harassment however...
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
Found the manager!
#DeleteChrome
And we'll be able to go outdoors into the courtyard every other Sunday.
That's not mandatory is it?
If you're not physically there... the boss tends to notice.