That's what makes folks complicit capitalist slaves, like the majority of the "legitimate" tech community. Part of the reason being an entrepreneur is so damned hard is because we live in a system that MAKES it hard for the outsider to succeed, encouraged by institutional structures (like healthcare and its related costs) and by ideological compensation (I work 70 hrs a week, but so long as I can buy my beemer and my ipod, I'm worthy of being human). It's not Starbucks or any other business specifically that needs to change, its people's attitudes toward business, and the worth of their work, that will keep us from cruising toward oppresive monopolies that run our lives by stomping out any other liveable source of income.
On a serious note, why would the employee bother to go to a regional club event when none of their coworkers or management lived in their region? To hang out with a bunch of people they don't know, and that don't know them from Adam? That doesn't build a stronger work group. Then again I never believed in that "let's network:D" crap in the first place.
I had traditional office and was booted out as part of a company cost saving measure. Coworkers that sat on company sites or at customer sites were also asked to work from home. Sometimes working from home is NOT a personal choice, and it has its positive or negative ramifications for the employee and his or her family, the customers and the company. It's a myth that working from home always brings you better work/life balance -- it often negatively affects work/life balance, in that your home is your office, and you never seem to get to leave it. It's especially bad for those people who just can't turn their minds off at the end of the day OR are on 24x7 call -- you can easily go from working a 40 hr. week to working 50 or 60 without ever getting out of your pajamas. It becomes a corporate expectation, and about the time it gets personally ridiculous is when you start having to manage the details of your life ("been on the frigging phone since 5am, I guess I'll take a shower between my 10:30 and 11am call?") around your work to keep the global outsourcers from clawing after your job... which they'll do anyway if you're 100% remote.
I admit that working from home gives employees *some* flexibility in their schedules, depending on their job roles, but I think a lot of people put in more hours at their kitchen table or desk than at the office in conference rooms or around the water cooler (figuratively speaking), not to mention the commute time. It torques me to hear people complain about home office workers like they don't do $#!% all day while they're yukking it up in somebody's office, wasting their own little 9 to 5 away.
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That's what makes folks complicit capitalist slaves, like the majority of the "legitimate" tech community. Part of the reason being an entrepreneur is so damned hard is because we live in a system that MAKES it hard for the outsider to succeed, encouraged by institutional structures (like healthcare and its related costs) and by ideological compensation (I work 70 hrs a week, but so long as I can buy my beemer and my ipod, I'm worthy of being human). It's not Starbucks or any other business specifically that needs to change, its people's attitudes toward business, and the worth of their work, that will keep us from cruising toward oppresive monopolies that run our lives by stomping out any other liveable source of income.
On a serious note, why would the employee bother to go to a regional club event when none of their coworkers or management lived in their region? To hang out with a bunch of people they don't know, and that don't know them from Adam? That doesn't build a stronger work group. Then again I never believed in that "let's network :D" crap in the first place.
I admit that working from home gives employees *some* flexibility in their schedules, depending on their job roles, but I think a lot of people put in more hours at their kitchen table or desk than at the office in conference rooms or around the water cooler (figuratively speaking), not to mention the commute time. It torques me to hear people complain about home office workers like they don't do $#!% all day while they're yukking it up in somebody's office, wasting their own little 9 to 5 away.