3. Telecommuting Doesn't Work for Every Individual

Happy telecommuters are the first to tell you that the lifestyle is not for everyone. Telecommuters need to be self-starters. They need to find alternate ways to interact with peers, and they must believe that the advantages (such as working with a cat on one's lap) far outweigh the disadvantages (such as missing out on those "brownies in the second-floor kitchen" e-mail messages, or at least on the brownies themselves).

Some managers are resistant to home-based work arrangements because of a bad experience they had in the past. They may have let someone work from home who lacked the necessary self-motivation to telecommute and were burned by it. IT professionals who telecommute wish IT managers understood that one bad experience shouldn't be a reason to prohibit it entirely. "Different people thrive in different environments," says Kimberly Kohler, a Chicago-area manager and software developer. "Just because telecommuting doesn't work for you (or your wife, husband, sister, best friend) doesn't mean it can't work for anyone."

One apparent solution is to view telecommuting as a reward for productive office workers. However, it doesn't work that way. Some people need the hustle and bustle of an office environment to function at their best and would pine away from loneliness when "rewarded" by working from home.

Instead, telecommuting is simply an option that needs to make sense to the IT professional who is aware of the best environment to inspire his productivity. Steve O'Hara-Smith, a UNIX developer with 27 years in the trade, wants managers to make telecommuting an easy choice whenever it's feasible, instead of "requiring extraordinary circumstances" before permitting it. Telecommuting shouldn't be limited to situations in which the office is flooded, the IT professional breaks a leg and can't drive, or a railroad strike keeps people from getting to company headquarters. The only reason why O'Hara-Smith could begin telecommuting was that he faced his own extraordinary circumstances — family health problems. "Now that I am established telecommuting, and everyone is happy with the work I do, there is no pressure to stop it," he says.