Re: "face time" at the office

[Janice Gelb <Janice -dot- Gelb -at- Sun -dot- COM>]

Cardimon, Craig wrote:
> << The rest want the all-important "face time." ... Most want your butt
> in their chair every day, for reasons I cannot fathom. >>
> 
> Until and unless we invent an electronic version of face time,
> telecommuting will remain a privilege granted on a case-by-case basis. 
> 

My company strongly encourages telecommuting.
We have five major geographic locations: three
in the US (California, Colorado, Massachusetts)
and two not (Bangalore, India, and Grenoble, France).
Therefore, most meetings had many telephone
participants and eventually became phone-only,
and most communication about projects has to take
place by email/Internet.

While this was very lucky for me when I moved from
the US to Australia last year, I think something
is lost when almost no one comes into the office.
I have been missing just being able to drop by my
co-workers' offices, or hang out in the break room,
or have a chat in the hallway. However, I visited
our US main headquarters last month and found
that hardly anyone is coming into the office most
of the time anyway. It was very spooky to see
empty hallways and offices and although on a personal
basis telecommuting is great, I do think that you
lose some sense of camaraderie and shared purpose.

-- Janice

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