Remote Island

A great post from Rob Sanheim describing his experiences of working from home. I agree with most of the points that Rob makes, productivity goes up, but there are still those distractions such as the family pet trying to jump onto your lap.
The closing paragraph should sell it to anyone…

All in all, for most knowledge workers it just makes more sense to work from home. I think in ten years we may see a good third or even half of all programming work done by workers from home as more companies figure it out and realize that “eight hours in an office” doesn’t equal “eights hour of productivity”.

The guys over at 37signals prove that another advantage accepting the remote working ethos is the ability to hire from wherever you like. This was the attitude of a company I used to work for. They hired some of the best software developers and programmers from around the UK and we worked together in a remote environment. Dare I say it, worked rather well.

In traditional office environments, everyone needs to travel into work every day. This means that you either recruit from around your location, or offer relocation packages. It really cuts down on your choice when hiring new staff.

Members of the BBC try out the Norwich Wi-Fi network for remote working. It makes very interesting reading and it sounds like they had a lot of fun.

In the future, I see people working in their local cafes, connecting to it’s WiFi network, drinking fine coffees and working away from their offices! I just wish my local Joe’s would upgrade their router to a decent one so my laptop could connect.

The article can be found here. [bbc.co.uk]

Last post for the next two weeks. Spending some quality time away from anything electronic, but probably catching up on my ‘technical bookshelf’ instead!