Every week brings news of another bone-headed return to work requirement. Is management deliberately trying to stifle productivity? Are they that stupid? ¹ I was the most productive staff member on every publication I worked for at CMP Publications. I could prove it if any copy of any of them still existed (except this one) .²

Remarkably, I was writing about Work From Home five years ago, despite the fact that there is only one correct answer: yes, whenever possible. I am not asking for a pat on the back, just living proof of the fact that an employee you trust can be a productive employee.

I know that neither the singular nor the plural of anecdote is evidence. I worked from home and the company benefited. You can and should, and management should celebrate it.

Below is my July 2021 item. Take a look at my CV: for a person who was rarely in the office³ , I did OK. I received annual raises at CMP and Ziff-Davis [however briefly]. I never had a bad review. I did not miss out on promotions. I was offered several better jobs at company headquarters in Manhasset, Long Island, N.Y. which I declined⁴ because I had already lived on the East Coast for six years, and that was plenty. There were technical challenges, but they were not insurmountable.⁵

And now, a demonstration of my prescience:

Work From Home

June 27, 2021

As the debate on working from home roars on, it is time for me to weigh in. Apparently 70% of employees want work from home, 70% of CEOs do not. I am on the side of the employees.

I worked from home for most of my 20 years at CMP, including several years during which I was the only WFH employee.  I know some of my fellow employees (including a couple of readers of this column) resented the “deal” I had, but it worked out well for the company. It is a matter of verifiable fact that I wrote one-third of the copy in InformationWeek during the tumultuous August of 1985.

It came about in an amusing way. I moved to Orinda, CA in April 1979 for a job in Cupertino, CA. I chose a town an hour away because that’s where my future wife owned a home. For my first six months, I worked three days a week in Cupertino, spending two nights at a Motel 6.

The situation was untenable. So, on a visit to headquarters in Manhasset, NY (in pre-PowerPoint days) I prepared a flip chart presentation for Computer Systems News’ lanky, sweet and daffy publisher, Tom Cooper, explaining why it was OK for me to work at home.

When I entered his office with an easel, his reaction was immediate. “What do you want?”

“To work from home,” I replied.

“If you don’t show me the flip charts, I’ll let you do it.”

In 20 years at various CMP publications, I spent many hours on I-680 driving to Silicon Valley for interviews and news conferences, and many more hours on planes to visit vendors all over the West. What I didn’t do was spend hours each day commuting to an office so I could eat bad food/snacks and drink too much coffee. I never missed a deadline―and I never missed a soccer game or school play.

1. 1. Every year after the annual report to the employees, my milkman father would come home and say “Everyone in management is an idiot.” Apparently, still true today ↩︎
2. 2. They were all lost/destroyed when United Business Media took over CMP. No archives please, we’re British ↩︎
3. 3. One week ever at PC Week ↩︎
4. 4. As recounted in Cupertino Star ↩︎
5. 5. Japan’s national broadcaster, NHK, came to my home in 2004 for a feature on the computerized home office ↩︎