[serichsen]

I think that this study fails to address that they may confuse cause and effect. What is the reason for a telecommuting arrangement? Why doesn't that person just move closer to the job location? The answer is often that he has family ties. I would suspect that telecommuters are significantly more likely to have families, and that may have a pronounced effect on their views of their work life.

[jasonkester]

I don't know, my reasons for working remotely have never had anything to do with family. Even now that I've got the wife & kid, they're not the reason I'm remote.

To put it bluntly, nobody has an office at the beach. Certainly not the beach in the tropics where I want to be. If there was a Google campus on a remote reef pass in the Mentawais, I might consider taking a seat in a cubicle. But there's not.

We're living in the future, where laptops weigh two pounds and good wifi is everywhere. That means my office can be anywhere I want it to be. As it turns out, I don't want it to be in an office park in the suburbs. Fortunately, it's 2011, so that's not an issue.

[CodeMage]

I'll add my own bit of anecdata. I love my family fiercely, but trying to work while they're around is very distracting for me (often this is through no fault of theirs at all) and is likely to have an adverse impact on my productivity. That doesn't mean I never choose to work from home based on family-related reasons. It just means that, everything else being equal, I wouldn't choose to work from home in order to be closer to my family; in that case, I'd rather simply spend less time at the office.

Here's what does make me choose to work from home, usually one day a week, in no particular order of importance:

# Avoid driving. Santiago is a jungle on wheels and even one day of not having to deal with it helps immensely.

# Wake up later than usual and/or have a short nap after lunch. It might make me spend less time doing my work, but I'll be a lot more focused on it.

# Listen to the music I want, on my speakers, as loud as I want (within reason, of course). At the office I use headphones, to avoid bothering my co-workers, but it's really not the same thing.

# My coffee might suck compared to Starbucks, but it's a lot cheaper than it. And it's infinitely better than the free coffee at the office.

# My home computer has no annoying web filters. I can hook up my company laptop to its VPN and use my home computer for browsing in those idle moments.

# Hot water! Believe it or not, Chileans don't have a habit of washing hands with hot water. It probably has to do with the fact that they use mainly gas to heat water. Whatever the reason, being able to say "and now I'm going to wash my hands with hot water" is a really pleasant change ;)

In short, it's creature comforts that drive my decision to work from home. Most of that stuff could be improved by living closer to the office or the company providing better "stuff" on their premises, but those solutions seem rather inefficient compared to giving employees freedom to choose to work from home.

[cmurdock]

Bleh I find most coffee to be better than starbucks. Barring of course the free coffee I get in my office. That stuff tastes like hot mud.

[ams6110]

I'm not following the logic on the hot water issue. What does heating it with gas have to do with it?

[CodeMage]

It's just my theory, but after 12 years here I haven't found anything to replace it.

You see, the vast majority of homes use tankless gas water heaters. I'm not sure why, maybe it's the most efficient or most economic solution when your primary source of heating is gas.

Whatever the reason for, it's the reality and one consequence is that nobody likes to keep it turned on for longer than it's absolutely necessary, both for safety reasons and to avoid racking up the gas bill. So everyone is simply used to washing their hands with cold water at home. Since that's what they're used to at home, they don't expect anything different anywhere else.

[marquis]

Many countries don't have gas piped in, so a pipe is connected to a tank of gas sitting outside and often only used for cooking.

[chopsueyar]

It is probably difficult or non-sensical to run a gas line or store natural gas on-site at an office building simply to heat the water for washing hands. I assume the same office building does not have hot showers or baths, either.

My questions, though, does his home hot water heater use gas or electricity to heat the water?

[vaksel]

I think the biggest roadblock to moving closer to work, is that a lot of people are home owners.

And selling a house is a pain in the ass and is a huge commitment.

Which would be fine if there was job security, but in this day and age, you won't be working for a single company your whole life

[sixtofour]

Even renting, moving for work is ridiculous. If you work in The Metro Area (whichever one that is) jobs can be all over the place. Wherever you move, most of the jobs are not there. Not to mention the expense of moving; I wonder how long it takes to recover the cost of a move?

Add a family and kids and now you're uprooting everyone in your house from their schools and relationships and jobs.

[r00fus]

We just bought a house within biking range of both of our offices. Yet we both really like spending 1 day a week working from home.

1) getting away from coworkers and the office allows you at times to focus on the actual work you're doing.

2) we have a kid and extended family who live nextdoor, so having family around is good, but they're distracting.

3) change of pace ... nice to be able to do yoga at lunchtime without worrying about changing/etc.

[technomancy]

> I think that this study fails to address that they may confuse cause and effect. What is the reason for a telecommuting arrangement?

From another angle: companies that are open to the idea of remote workers are more likely to show healthy levels respect and trust for their employees.