Comment by anigbrowl | Hacker News Reader

Comment by anigbrowl | Hacker News Reader

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I call BS; $10 says they won't exist by summer. Initiatives like this are usually announced when it's time to cut costs. While a virtual office can be a wonderful thing, it imposes significant problems too: how are you going to train new hires? existing issues can perhaps be handled by teleconferencing, but do you really want to have brainstorming sessions and involved discussions about future strategy via IM (or whatever)? How do you keep your contributors from thinking to themselves 'I'm practically freelance anyway' or handle the work-life balance issues?

I'm not saying it can't work - I've been an enthusiast and advocate for telecommuting ever since I got a modem. But it's not a panacea, and it doesn't work in every employment context. Color me very skeptical.

To clarify: This is not a cost-cutting measure--and it wasn't introduced by managers. (I, humble writer that I am, proposed it.) It's a month-long editorial experiment that I will be writing about in the April issue of Inc. magazine. But yes, we will have to face all of these issues you describe. Hopefully that's what will make the story interesting. Would love to hear your thoughts on what you think will be the pain points. (I'm at mchafkin at Inc dot com).

Well, in that case I have to eat my words, and wish you luck with it - I'm afraid I'm so skeptical of management-speak that I read your Inc. article as a CYA. I'll shoot you a brief email during the afternoon, and apologize for my skepticism.

"I call BS; $10 says they won't exist by summer. Initiatives like this are usually announced when it's time to cut costs."

Statements like "...we’ve decided to conduct a little experiment..." and "For the next month, anyway." don't really make me think they're doing this for practical reasons.

Yes, it's only going to last a month.

The traditional way companies like DuPont have trimmed their workforce is to close a factory and move it 60-100 miles away to a new one. Those who are tied down will heavily weight the cost of commuting vs finding a new job (in a good economy - in a poor economy, commute becomes less of a factor).

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