Today there are more than 26 million U.S. workers that telecommute. According to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, one in six Americans work from home at least once a week. By 2010 that number is expected to grow to 40 million. With the spread of high-speed Internet, geography and business success are becoming distantly related.
From “location, location, location” to “where do I want to locate?” Some proponents of telecommuting point to a rebirth of small towns and an increase in neighborliness as one of the side benefits of telecommuters. Communities have actively courted telecommuters with promises of high quality of life.
I’ve been a telecommuter for the past 11 years now. The benefits far outweigh the detractors in my mind. Of the six homes on my side of the block, there are three full-time telecommuters among us.
The new V1 Magazine online venture has meant a need to tap into the vast number of distributed knowledge workers. Aside from the core telecommuting partners in Denver (me) and Berlin, Germany (Jeff Thurston), we’ve tapped into contract help in South Carolina, Kentucky, New York, Munich and elsewhere.
A side benefit of this distributed geography is the stretching of time zones. Jeff and I are a full eight hours apart, so we have a minimum of a 16-hour workday between us.
Telecommuting is a green decision, with fewer commuters there are less cars on the road and subsequently less pollution. While you may not have seen a major impact on your local roads yet, as energy and fuel costs rise so will the number of telecommuters and their positive impact on the environment.
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I’ve been telecommuting for about 10 year and have been in 2 houses during that time. I’ve never had neighbors who also were telecommuters. They always looked at me like the luckiest guy in the world when I tell them that I do.