[umjames]

Thank you, I'm glad I'm not the only one who sees the benefits.

It's true, some jobs are soul-crushing enough that you'd rather not be there. You might have family and/or financial responsibilities that make you have to keep such a job. You may be bootstrapping a business on the side so you can escape from such a job, but in the meantime, you still need your regular paycheck.

Not every job has you working with self-motivated co-workers and great bosses. Some jobs put you in a cube farm in a room where everyone fights over the thermostat. Sometimes you have to head a weekly meeting where you have to explain to other programmers why you get NullPointerExceptions on line 5 when line 4 initializes the variable to null. Some jobs still make you use CVS. The office talk at some jobs is never about learning anything, but it sure is loud and distracting.

If you were offered a chance to work from home and avoid a lot of that, I'm sure you'd also jump at the opportunity. Getting a promotion in such a job isn't worth it.

[monksy]

That can actually turn into a good thing. When you're not facing the other person, you should become better and better at communicating what exactly is the issue. At the very worse this leaves a paper trail that can indicate "see I worked on this"