If I Work But Nobody Sees Me, Is It Still Work?

from joneshousecreative.com

Yahoo!’s CEO Marissa Mayer set off a firestorm with the company’s recent mandate that they will discontinue telecommuting. Today, it appears that Best Buy will also follow suit.

I’ve been reading Internet commentary on the issue with interest, as I’ve worked from home for the past seven years. I go into the office for certain meetings, and when my manager calls a team meeting, but if I don’t have to, I happily avoid the 90-mile round trip jag between my home and a desk in Reston.

As you wade through the various responses and theories (one interesting speculation is that Yahoo! is doing this to encourage employees to quit, rather than announce layoffs), a rational observation is that telecommuting works in some situations and doesn’t in others. But to say that collaboration and effective work can only happen when everyone is in the same place is, in my opinion, untrue.

I have seen the area of the company that I work for succeed with a workforce that is scattered across the country. We utilize teleconferencing a lot, and we instant message and text as well. I’ve never been unable to get an answer to a problem or customer issue because someone wasn’t sitting at a desk.

Personally, telecommuting is a lifesaver. We absolutely cannot afford to live in Northern VA, and now that I have children, that 75-90 minute commute each way would be hell. I am praying that Ms. Mayer’s mandate remains an exception, and never again becomes the workplace norm!

[word count: 250]

Advertisement

We Didn’t Win the Lottery :-(

The other day I received the following email:

the you-didn’t-win email

Needless to say, while I was disappointed, I hadn’t really expected to win.  A chance to take the boys to the White House and possibly meet the Obamas?  Those kind of things don’t happen to me!

What I was pleasantly surprised about was that the National Parks took the time to respond to the losers!  I expected to receive notification if I’d won, but didn’t expect to receive anything if we weren’t selected.  Getting the notification let me know I could put *my* hopes to rest (since, as parents know, you NEVER tell toddlers about any event that you do not have COMPLETE CONTROL over, because of the weeping, wailing and recriminations that occur if you can’t deliver.  So the boys were clueless about their potential meeting with Sasha and Malia).

from beyond.customline.com

When I’m job hunting, I wish people who received my resume would respond to me if I didn’t make the cut.  I’d be happy with a form letter that let me know Company A wasn’t considering me.  What I’d like even more is if I made it to the interview phase, but lost out to someone else, they’d send me a note saying *why* they didn’t pick me.  We’d all be much sharper interviewees if we could correct the mistakes we made in previous interviews.  Wouldn’t this also benefit companies that are hiring?

Just my two cents – I’ll put them toward a lottery ticket!  🙂

[word count: 243]