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Working for a technology company has many perks. Probably my personal favorite (besides traveling around the country) is the ability to work from

anywhere. While on the road, I work from my smartphone, in my hotel room from my laptop, and in an airport with my MiFi. How about when I am feeling under the weather and I ask to stay home? There is nothing worse than one infectious employee spreading a cold that runs through all your departments. Working in IT and having technology readily available, I can work from my laptop in bed with a cup of tea if I’m feeling sick.

Recently, two major companies (Best Buy and Yahoo) have decided to cut back on this “freedom.” Yahoo, mainly because it’s bleeding right now and in order to survive, needs to take some drastic measures. Best Buy’s new focus is “all hands on deck” (http://mashable.com/2013/03/05/best-buy-flexible-employees), wanting their employees to collaborate with each other face-to-face. Yahoo is axing the work from home policy while Best Buy is simply encouraging working at the office more and more (also known as flexible employees).

Now, that brings the question of what should we as small IT companies do? On both sides (ARRC and CharTec), we have remote employees, even remote managers, all living quite a distance from our home office. Not sure how far this trend of bringing people back to the office will travel, but it is something worth looking at. I want to open this up for discussion; what are your thoughts on working from home? How does this benefit your business and your employees? How does it hurt?