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免除员工上下班途中的奔波是一项很有吸引力的福利，不同的调查都发现，大部分人对此都很感兴趣。同时，不用开车上下班也具有环保效应。对于46项调查的综合研究发现，远程办公能带来更多的工作满意度，降低离职意愿，而且在一定程度上并不影响到工作场所的员工关系质量。在另一项研究中，杨百翰大学(BYU)的研究人员分析了IBM分布于75个国家的24,436个雇员，试图发现到何种程度才会导致25%的员工报告工作与家庭生活之间的冲突。在家工作、同时有权自主设定工作时间的人们每周的工作时间达到57个小时的时候才会有相当一部分人感受到工作与家庭问题之间的压力。而那些必须在规定时间内在办公室上班的人们，38个小时就会达到上述水平。
But there are downsides, too. Karen Finerman, co-founder and president of Metropolitan Capital Advisors and author of Finerman's Rules, tried working from home. "For me, working from home was literally the worst of everything," she says. There were fewer boundaries, with work bleeding into non-work hours, and kids -- she has four -- interrupting at the most inconvenient times.
不过，在家工作也存在弊端。对冲基金公司Metropolitan Capital Advisors共同创始人兼总裁、《费尔曼法则》（Finerman's Rules）一书的作者卡伦•费纳曼曾经尝试过在家办公。她说：“就我而言，在家工作什么也干不好。”家里的功能区分较少，工作时间会被非工作事务侵占，而且孩子们——她有4个孩子——也会不合时宜地打断她的工作。
As a boss, she says she understands if people need to work from home sometimes, but "it is not my first choice".
作为一个老板，她表示，她理解人们有时需要在家工作，但“这不是我的首选”。
"If there's something very timely we need to talk about right away, not having to track someone down is helpful," she says. "Serendipity is important, that interaction." She's also found that "it's hard to manage people virtually," likening it to what gets done in a classroom when there's a substitute teacher.
“如果有一些紧急事务需要立刻讨论，我们不需要到处找人在哪儿，”她说。“共处和互动很重要。”她还发现“远程管理很困难，”就像一个代课老师要管好课堂秩序一样。
Mayer's change at Yahoo was widely debated, and it's hard to determine its impact. In its most recent earnings statement, Yahoo reported that earnings are up significantly, year-over-year (though revenue is slightly down). Best Buy (BBY) ended its ROWE policy in early 2013, shortly after Yahoo ended its telecommuting program.
梅耶尔在雅虎的改革广受争议，影响也很难确定。雅虎最近的业绩报告显示，公司的净利润同比出现了显著的增长(虽然营收略有下降)。不过，2013年初，就在雅虎宣布结束远程办公计划后不久，百思买也终止ROWE政策。
But the working-from-home vs. working-from-work debate "kind of misses the big issue," says Alan Gregerman, a business consultant and author of the forthcoming book, The Necessity of Strangers. "Both of these approaches kind of miss the notion that we can be most successful when we connect with more people." There's "a lot that's cool about collaboration" -- the thinking behind work-from-work policies -- but if employees "don't have enough fresh ideas to collaborate around, they kind of miss the point," he says. "Our companies need to encourage us to regularly get off our butts and explore the world around us." Organizations need new ideas, after all. "We're not as likely to get those new ideas if we simply hang out at the office or work from home."
但是，企业顾问、《陌生人的必要性》(The Necessity of Strangers)一书的作者艾伦•格雷格曼表示，单纯讨论是“在家工作”、还是“在办公室工作”，“有点迷失了更重要的东西”。“这两种方法都没有抓到本质，当我们能与更多人联系在一起时我们能够做到最好。”“合作非常重要”，这是主张在办公室工作的主要理由，但如果员工“没有足够的新点子来达成合作，他们还是不得要领。”他说：“我们的公司需要鼓励人们定期站起来，探索周围的世界。”毕竟，公司需要新的点子。“如果我们只是在办公室里混混日子或者是在家工作，同样不可能获得这些新点子。”
To that end, Gregerman often leads teams on adventures to museums, city streets, markets, and other places. The day before I interviewed him, he'd gone to the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery and the American Art Museum to study (among other things) folk artists, and how they felt about themselves and their identities. He's also been known to take clients to zoos to study animal behavior and asks them to come up with observations that might be helpful for dealing with customers.
为此，格雷格曼经常带领团队探索博物馆、城市街道、市场和其他地方。我采访他的前一天，他刚去了史密森国立肖像馆(Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery)和美国艺术博物馆(American Art Museum),研究民间艺术家(以及其他事情)以及他们如何看待自己和自己的身份。听说他也会带客户去动物园研究动物行为，然后请他们谈谈观察心得，这样的观察可能有助于应对客户。
"At the beginning of all these things, people look at me like, 'You are the weirdest person on the planet,'" he says. At the end, he often hears "Whoa, that was awesome. I never even imagined I could think in those ways. It's just by getting out of the office."
“开始时人们都会看着我，仿佛'你是这个全世界最古怪的人'。”他说。但是等到结束时，他总是会听到“哇，太棒了，我从没想到过我会用这样的方式思考。而且只要走出办公室就可以实现。”
