commentary

Cutting Back on Telecommuting

Recently, I discussed people who (gasp!) don't want to telecommute. But what about people who do want to, have been doing so successfully, and are about to lose the ability?

This nearly happened to me at my previous job. (My employment was terminated, along with that of 30 other people, while I was still resisting the mandate to come into the office every day). But I didn't work at HP.

Hewlett-Packard, the Silicon Valley company known for pioneering flexible work arrangements four decades ago, is canceling telecommuting for a key division of the company.

While other companies nationwide are pushing more employees to work from home to cut office costs, HP believes bringing its information- technology employees together in the office will make them swifter and smarter.

The decision shocked HP employees and surprised human resource management experts, who believe telecommuting is still a growing trend.

[ "HP cuts back on telecommuting Some Key Workers Will Have To Come To Office Or Find New Jobs", by Nicole C. Wong, San Jose Mercury News, Jun. 03, 2006 ]

Ouch.

Where Do You Prefer to Work?

My preference is to work from home as much as possible. I have a large, airy, quiet home office, ergonomically comfortable and optimally configured for working productively. I have a Power Mac G5 with 4 monitors, a Balans kneeling rocker, a keyboard table at a comfortable typing height and distance, printer and scanner close at hand...

And have I mentioned that it's quiet?

Frame of Reference

I enjoy "collecting" personalized license plates. Some, I "get" right away. Others, I figure out over time. And some, I never understand.

Of the latter, I have decided there are two types. First are plates that I, or someone else, can readily understand out once we discover the "trick", such as the one that was meant to be read in a rear-view mirror (YWYMTUO) or the one that was in French (QUOI SUR). Then there are the plates which, I assume, convey an "inside joke" for the person whose car it's on.

The thing you need to understand what you're seeing is the proper frame of reference. With the license plates, I'll never understand the "inside jokes" because I don't have (and can't acquire) the proper frame of reference.

This came back to me in a recent conversation I had.

Are You a Blogger?

I've been meaning to post this essay for a long time and simply haven't found the tuits. Tonight I decided to post it, (finally!), both here and on my website.

Are you a blogger? Before you answer no, consider this:

...There has been plenty of buzz around blogging over the past two years but, as some observers have pointed out, blogging is just writing that's shared with others using software that makes it all very easy.
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