On 07/26/2014 04:29 AM, jim deleskie wrote:
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.
Having done about every conceivable combination, I think the sweet spot
is, unsurprisingly, somewhere in between. Telecommuting is great if you need
a lot of undisturbed time, but it's horrible if you need interaction
with coworkers.
So for me, at least (primarily a dev type) having an intersection in the
middle
of the day a couple days a week at least is the best balance.
That said, I think that part of this might be solved with technology
somehow.
A big problem, IMO, is that we use tech much too formally in that meetings
get scheduled instead of just interrupting somebody at their desk which
often
blows things way out of proportion to their actual import, and worse delays
resolving issues.
Maybe the webrtc stuff will help this by making ad hoc communication trivial
and pervasive and wrest it from the hands of these bloated, overwrought
conferencing-as-business-model abominations we have to deal with.
Mike
