
The joys and drawbacks of being able to work from anywhere - maurycy
http://www.economist.com/specialreports/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10950378
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osipov
Great article. I do all my work entirely from home and up until this point I
couldn't pinpoint precisely what was missing. The article uses an excellent
phase I was trying to articulate: "casual serendipity". Effectively, this is
about casually describing your work to random people and finding serendipitous
connections to other projects or learning unexpected, but relevant
information.

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jrockway
> Effectively, this is about casually describing your work to random people
> and finding serendipitous connections to other projects or learning
> unexpected, but relevant information.

I work at home, but I find that IRC is a fine outlet for this. There is a much
bigger pool of people to draw from when you're talking about a worldwide
network as opposed to a few people in your office.

The real problem is that when you work at home, it's very easy to go for days
(or weeks) without talking to anyone in real life. It's not bad in general
(communicating on the Internet is not that different from communicating face
to face), but it is difficult to meet girls :) (To be fair, it was like that
when I worked at a big company too. I'm 22, everyone else was in their 40s. I
would rather be alone than to have to talk to those people :)

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yters
I wonder if US culture's attitude towards introverts is going to change now
that we're starting to be the new entrepreneur. I think it's been biased
towards extroverts because people consider extroversion to be necessary for
making the US great, i.e. cowboys. Not that cowboys were all that extroverted
anyways.

~~~
yters
Are most of the entrepreneurs here not introverts? I remember seeing a
personality type question, and quite a few were Is of one sort or another.

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Flemlord
I feel strongly that "virtual" startups dramatically increase your chances of
failure. You need everybody in the same place, bouncing ideas around and
sharing the workload. And many people simply don't have the discipline to work
a full-time day without being surrounded by peers. I am one of them--I thrive
on the shared energy and, without it, my interest fades and I get distracted.

~~~
dangoldin
I think you may have a point with this for startups where each employee is a
huge contributor and innovation is required. But if you have a large company
with multiple corporate levels it may not be that horrific to let a few
employees work from home. If they are spending more time with their family
they may be happier and more motivated to work.

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donw
One really intelligent thing is his rule forbidding more than two people to
share office space. Oftentimes, I've noticed that the telecommuters often
suffer at the hands of their in-office colleagues, due to that whole
insider/outsider problem.

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CHIEFARCHITECT
In terms of insider/outsider politics, the key factor is developing trust,
collaboration and accountability from the start

