Home office

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Saying Goodbye to the Home Office

Posted by on 18 May 2007 | Tagged as: CareerMustard, Home office, Meaningful Work, Satisfying Work, working from home

Sometimes it’s hard to say “Goodbye.” About three weeks ago, I told my boss and friend I was going to be saying “Goodbye.” We had worked together to help build his small agency into a pretty impressive creative shop. The catch for me was that I was doing my part from 300 miles away in my home office.

The home office is a beautiful thing and has many, many benefits. And, by using technology like video chatting, instant messaging, and email; you can really do quite well.

But it’s hard to replace regular face-to-face contact. Some of you may be saying “Geez, I’d love to replace my face-to-face contact with some peace and quiet!” I understand.

But, as someone who was to help develop the agency both in terms of new business and internally by developing our staff, it was extremely difficult to do that solely over iChat, email, and phone.

As I wrapped up my work with Morsekode, I finished a couple projects for one of our large global clients. The team on the client side was entirely distributed. Some in the UK, some spread throughout the US, and some in Germany. Some of the meetings we had were quite good, but none as good as when we all got together in one room for 2 days and hashed out what really needed to happen.

Technology can do many things. And, do many things well.

But I don’t think it can completely replace the experience of working together in person.

Not yet anyway.

Goodbye home office. I’ll visit from time to time, but, for now, I’m leaving you for the old-school-gotta-face-the-commute-office-with-a-desk-and-actual-people-downtown.