I was at lunch today with a friend when I noticed on the TV that yet another company, this time Best Buy,was canceling its work flexibility rules. last week it was Yahoo. In other words the people who were working at home are being asked to come back to the office to do their jobs. I remember just a couple years ago that flexible work options like working at home were the latest in employee accommodations. The employee gets flexibility with his or her work, gets to spend time at home, and the employer saves on things like heating the office. The idea was to make a more flexible, more global, more relaxed workforce. In fact, in most cases the opposite occurred.

We have lots of people sitting at home staring at the wall during teleconferences walking and caring less and less each day about their mutual tasks. i see it every day… It's not that people don't care, it is that the lack of socialization and the lack of face-to-face interaction Subtly undermine your emotional attachment to your work. Don't get me wrong, I and many of my colleagues love what we do. It's just a lack of flesh and blood interaction takes its toll. There's a great study cited n Jonah Lehrer's book Imagination that correlates the likely importance of a technical paper to the distance between the primary authors. The study shows that collaborators that are in close physical proximity are far far more likely to write an important paper than people collaborating at a distance.

Even before this new back to work craze I found myself missing real interaction. I've been working at home for almost a year now. I go into work perhaps once every two weeks… But I had independently decided to start driving in more and more often. I've been doing that the last couple of weeks and while I do waste time on the drive in and back, If you hallway and her actions that I have now more than make up for lack of access to the fridge. Not only that but I'm less likely to wear the same clothes I ran in for three days running as i sometimes find myself doing here at home.

I wonder if that's too much information… I'm sure my readers will let me know

Night all, night sam
– Me

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The first tuesday of march is sacred here in Vermont. Its the day that most Vermont towns hold their town meetings. Its when most of the town gets together to debate.. And sometimes even agree on the issues facing the town

And some times those are things like banning nukes… This year i don't think we had that much esoteric.. But then again, i wasn't listening that closely, i go for the community. There are folks there that i only see at town meeting,, as i looked around today i saw many of the same folks id been seeing on that same day having basically the same conversations for 31 years… Pretty amazing.. No ? Its democracy at its most basic and perfect.

Questions from the crowd

As i sat listening i was thumbing through the report.. I found an old picture of

The town bicentennial picture at the round church. There hidden in the picture was

A picture of diane max, sam and i…

A nice reminder of our deep connection to this place…

Nite all, nite sam

-me

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Hey it’s March 4, the only date that is also a command…

Today I been thinking about an article that my friend Rod sent me it’s called stabiles and volatiles.

http://www.randsinrepose.com/archives/2012/11/14/stables_and_volatiles.html

The author suggests that there are two kinds of people in an organization the stables that like the status quo and the volatiles which one everything to change all at once. Stables value clean running process, predictability, and evenness of work. While the volatiles want to leap ahead, Code now think later… The two types are constant war with each other. The volatile’s look at the stables and blame them for a lack of innovation and a general malaise about the business. On the other hand the stables look at the volatiles and accuse them of prototyping wildly and leave the cleanup to other people. (Yes, I know … I am a volatile)

We all know both types in our work. That was no surprise. What i did find interesting was that the author said rather than trying to make peace between these two types it is often in the company’s best interest to let the battle rage. He claims that dynamic tension how to balance rapid change with the need for stable growth. Okay I can believe that. What was more interesting however was that the author claims that most stables were at one time volatiles themselves. They are just now protecting the processes they thought so hard to bring in.

I found it interesting because I often found myself lately protecting an earlier decision. For example it might be a software architecture or a Programming language choice or Hardware architecture choice. A perfect example is the advent of the raspberry pi. It’s an amazing and inexpensive small computer designed for hobbyists. I am so familiar with its predecessor, the Arduino, that I was reluctant to try the raspberry pi for fear I might fall in love with it.… Which I subsequently did. I guess I’m just a failed stabile.

I guess it’s just like Marx would say… That the revolutionary of today is the bourgeois of tomorrow…

I guess I’m just bourgeois… Whatever that means.

Night all, night Sam
– JC

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