Here is an interesting study from this Microsoft Presspass article: Remote Working Now a “Business Imperative” This chart demonstrates both the progress we’ve made in making it easier to work from home and where we are just not quite there yet.
I note that if you don’t have a college degree and are working a minimum wage job, there are basically no real options for you. I mean it’s near impossible to sell a Starbuck coffee or a McDonald hamburger from your home. I’m just sayin’…
My fav part:
“This type of remote working – dubbed “work without walls” – allows for greater productivity, customer satisfaction and employee satisfaction, Markezich said. Remote working technologies enable people to conduct business from anywhere in the world at any time, putting employees in front of their clients and customers, and accelerating the pace at which business results are achieved.”
Note: As I’ve said repeatedly, this blog is mostly for me to find stuff going forward. Now I can pull this article at a moments notice should any of my managers have any questions about my Work at Home Wednesday mentality.
The Bis Key Chronicles 
>”I note that if you don’t have a college degree and are working a minimum wage job, there are basically no real options for you.”
Just want to suggest that not every service-oriented job is for the non-college-degreed, minimum-wage worker. Whatever one’s issues might be with Starbucks, for example, they treat their employees pretty decently (certainly via the standards of the food industry), and going up through the ranks of Starbucks would, for many college graduates, be as good an option as any white-collar job that their major in theory prepared them for.
Other jobs that you can’t phone in, so to speak: construction; retail; healthcare; emergency services; military. None of these are unskilled jobs or are necessarily jobs that pay poorly.
Yeah, I toyed with throwing in a qualifier like “most” but then decided against it. There are people who make a living from blogging for example. No, really!
When I first started working from home, I put on a suit and tie every morning, scheduled my work down to the last 15 minute block, and stuck to my schedule. But after I got the hang of it, I was able to drop the trappings and still meet the deadlines.
All I can say is that my little corner of Microsoft is very unfriendly to remote work. It’s not that it’s difficult, just damaging *politically*. I’m looking forward to seeing that in my rear view mirror.
Greg, I think that is how mediocre teams lose great employees. Inflexible policies enforced by inflexible managers is so lame.
To be clear, it’s not a *policy*. No one has ever told me not to do it. But I got strong hints several times from people that members of the team pay a real price is paid politically for not being physically present when expected, even though the expectations are never made clear.
Kind of sounds like my first marriage.
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