“It’s not in your best interest to work at home,” says Malcolm Gladwell, per the New York Post. “I know it’s a hassle to come into the office, but if you’re just sitting in your pajamas in your bedroom, is that the work life you want to live?”
[Looks at self sitting in pajamas in my basement, able to do the same kind of work I did in a fabric-covered box out in the desert, while not having to get up at 4:30 am for a 75-minute commute by bus.]
Yes. This is the work life I want to live.
If Gladwell wants to work in an office -- and apparetnly he does, in a home-office steup in Hudson, New York -- that's fine by me. If he wants his employees in the office, that's fine by me too. However, he has no business making blanket statements on what is or is not in my best interest. He doesn't know me. He doesn't know my circumstances. He doesn't know that even when I was in the office, 90 percent of the work-related interactions I had with my co-workers were by phone or email. He doesn't know about me no longer having to get up at 4:30 am to catch a bus for a 75-minute commute on each end of a ten-hour workday.
He can speak for him and his. He doesn't get to make judgment calls for me.
I already give 40 hours a week to my job. Working from home has allowed me to give more time to myself and to my family. I'm no longer going to work in the dark and coming home in the dark when it's winter out. I'm happy. I have an office with a door and a window that occasionally entertains me with shenanigans from grasshoppers and cats chasing the grasshoppers.
And I still get my work done. I still fee like part of a team. I still am, in some ways, micromanaged even. Don't have to be at work for that.
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