
The Rise and Fall of Working from Home - apress
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-07-10/the-rise-and-fall-of-working-from-home?utm_campaign=news&utm_medium=bd&utm_source=applenews
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danjoc
The Telecommuting Trap, by danjoc J Anonymous.

Big Co decided to join the telecommuting craze to compete with scrappy
startups. Employees seemed to like the idea of not spending hours in a car
generating pollution each week so they went for it.

Then the trouble started. Instead of facing a regular 8 hour day like normal
office workers, they faced round the clock emails and calls from work. Their
privilege, it turned out, was more of a curse. Server hiccup at 2am? Fix it
from home, sleepy head.

Not only were they worked round the clock with no overtime pay, but the lack
of face time with management had a knock on effect. It turns out those who
stayed at the office got to be better friends with management. Got better
perks. More raises.

While those telecommuters... they received suspicion. Disdain. "What do they
even do all day? Why am I paying them? Sure, the servers keep humming, but
that's just normal behavior. They must be taking advantage of my good will!!
Lazy telecommuters!"

Secretly though, management harbored impostor syndrome. If telecommuters can
work from home and can manage themselves... who is there left to manage? Gulp.
What happens to my job?!

In the end, the paranoia of management led them to kill the program. The work
was done just the same, but at higher cost and to more dramatic effect.
Management watched the work happening again, justifying their own existence.
But since everyone had been set up to work from home already, workers could
still be expected to put in off hours too! It was truly the best of both
worlds now.

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ystrdytmrrw
I really believe working from home isn't suited for everyone. I find it hard
to focus and with limited space in my flat, I don't really enjoy working from
home. Whenever I have appointments or different runs. What companies to be is
flexible with allowing ad-hoc requests to work from home.

