Mark’s got a piece he wrote available here. I often think of some of these fringe workstyles that I’m currently involved in as less of a destination than a protest of sorts. A lot of people are clearly not happy with the way companies are being operated. They may, or may not, have voiced that opinion but ultimately they’ve decided to leave and create their own community.

I fall into that category and I’m disappointed in myself because in a lot of ways that’s the easy way out. I left a toxic environment instead of sticking it out and helping to repair it. It’s the same reason two tiered school systems are a challenge. If all the passionate, concerned parent’s are pulling their children out of public schools and placing them into private ones then who’s fixing the public system?

There are a lot of people working independently these days. I don’t think the answer is that corporations will no longer exist and we’ll all be freelancers. I think the longterm answer is that companies will learn from what we’re doing and right themselves. At some point the smart companies will have to start asking themselves what they need to do to attract these people back or keep the ones that will otherwise leave in the near future. Or they could just phone us and we’ll tell them?

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 18th, 2007 at 4:05 pm and is filed under Office Gossip. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.