Telecommuting

Recently a Silicon Valley giant announced that it was going to recind all agreements with employees who have been allowed to telecommute. Normally my mostly technical posts in this space required me to take some time to note this giant step backwards.

Computer companies have helped enable telecommuting. It is through the possibilities of the internet that workers can collaborate whever they are located. Whether this be across town or across the world. Bringing workers to a central location on a daily basis, leads to longer days due to the amount of time spent in commuting. Commuting can easily take between 2 to 4 hours out of your day.

Corporate leaders, please ask yourself, are your employees ready to work hard and in a good collaborative mood after a two hour commute battling increasingly bad traffic? If workers are lucky to have a good public transit system does it get them to work in a reasonable amount of time? My own personal commute goes from 2 to 4 hours when I switch from automobile to public transit.

I keep hearing that public tranit is the solution, and that government must pour billions and trillions of dollars into it to make it work properly. Well whenever I take public transit, even in a city like mine, which is known for it's relatively good transit system, the experience is often lacking. The systems are setup to move people into the center of the city. More and more people are living and working in the perifery of the city. Commuting in from far away from the center of the city, to no where near the city. Some from south of the city to north of the city. What are the public transit options for these people. Practically non-existant.

So people use cars, and our roads get further jamed up everyday. So why not let employees telecommute one or two days per week. Result, less traffic, happier employees, less gasoline consumed. Sounds good to me.