Telecommuting or Hell-ecommuting?
MSNBC.com has a long story about telecommuting (i.e., goofing off at home rather than at the office) portentously named "The Quiet Revolution":
Today, upwards of 12 million employees telework more than 8 hours per week, up from about 6 million in 2000, according to Gartner Dataquest. The number will hit nearly 14 million by 2009. Caroline Smith, an analyst for Gartner who expects the number to continue to grow, says the rate of increase has been steady for a number of years even though telecommuting hasn't been getting a lot of publicity in recent years.
Reason Foundation, the nonprofit that publishes reason and operates a think tank, was an early adopter of telecommuting and I've been phoning it in (so to speak) since 1996. Maintaining a virtual office has its drawbacks but so does having to see the goddamned people you work with every goddamn day. Overall, telecommuting has been a great boon to this here magazine and website, allowing us to keep people we want regardless of location and other issues. So I for one welcome our telecommuting overlords.
However, I'm also not blind to "The Terrible Truth of Telecommuting!" and have been known to spin a few "Tales from the Cache" (with help from Terry Colon) as long ago as 2001:
