Meh. Just had this discussion in my Business and Technology class. Dinosaur is an apt description for what you are, that much is true.

I just spoke to one of my supervisors; it happened to have been the one who was actually there (the other one, admittedly, is working, but from home). The guy happened to be around, we got to make a decision about a certain point in one of these conversations that just "happen to go in a certain direction", he takes responsibility for it, end of story. That's how decisions are made if you ask me.

My parents refuse to work at home (well, unless they practically get to choose between working at home or getting fired) because they want to make sure they don't end up 'just finishing this' the entire weekend.

I suppose they've got a point, although I think working at home would be pretty relaxed if you don't just have the discipline to keep working, but also have the discipline to stop.

Doesn't it sort of depend on what the work is? I mean, I'm a fundraiser. If I weren't at the museum daily, meeting with donors in person, showing prospects around our ongoing restoration projects, and observing our education programs, I'd be useless.

That said, our PR/Graphic Design/Marketing person lives three hours away, and only spends about 4 hours in the office a month. She's pretty easily able to share drafts and get comments and revisions remotely. So... yeah.

I think we're talking about not-too-important office work here. Like, work you do at a computer with a mobile phone and a printer and for which you don't really need anything else.

Work at home, like all things in life, has plusses and negatives. Our company has remote workers located hundreds of miles away from the office. They come in once a month for meetings and face time, but we use tools that make communication perfectly feasible.

The example of talking face to face with a supervisor... Use web cams and skype/lync/IM of choice. We use MS Lync for ours. We all have web cams and high speed interent so it isn't a big deal and it acutally *helps* when doing document sharing as everyone's input can get recorded on the document and we record the session for later review.

Techn ology today has allowed us to do this *if* we know what technology to use *and* we go get what is needed for it. Maybe backwater places with dialup connections and no real tech experts who can set up the appropriate systems to record and replay televideo conference calls have a harder time. But with a properly configured system, the virtual office is great.

Now, it does take discipline and not everyone has that discipline. And in some cases which involve physicasl filing and such (like an accounting clerk), the virtual office isn't feasible. But for most professional people of an office type (developers, graphic artists, sales and marketing, etc) the virtual office can be a great way to stay connected and work from home or on the road.

And I'm sure it's a language thing, steephie, but "not too important" hardly describes the software developers at a software company. Without us there is no product.

I do work from home when I'm preparing a big mailing or doing data entry, and sometimes when I'm writing grants. You know... if it's the type of thing where I'm on a deadline and other people are more likely to distract me with unrelated requests than provide valuable input.

Didn't we have a thread on this exact topic, featuring extensive contributions from redhouse and Draugnar, about 3 months ago?

That's actually very well possible.

"And I'm sure it's a language thing, steephie, but "not too important" hardly describes the software developers at a software company. Without us there is no product."

The emphasis should be on *too*.
I mean, the president of the USA and whoever mans the red buttons of mass destruction shouldn't be working at home.

(Well, unless you count the white house of course... Bad example... But you know what I mean...)

I love working from home.

"Didn't we have a thread on this exact topic, featuring extensive contributions from redhouse and Draugnar, about 3 months ago?"

I think you can save this message as a template and re-use it. ;-)

"I think you can save this message as a template and re-use it. ;-)"

Same counts for this one no doubt.