Ever since my former employer (a major telecommunications manufacturer) generously loaned me an IBM-3101 terminal back in 1983, I had steadily increased my working hours at home. Those days, I didn't mind staying up late to write Hypertext Groupware and Electronic Democracy applications using the IBM REXX language on the mainframe. It was very painful at 1200 bps, but later modem upgrade to 2400 bps and then to 9600 bps made it bearable. I consciously increased my telecommuting time up to the point of 1 full day and most nights per week in 1989, with an unofficial blessing by the management. In fact, it was understood that I was making a better use of the limited mainframe computer resources by working off-peak hours.
My work also involved Integrated Circuit Simulations and Cell Library Builds. I wrote a series of batch programmes to automate the process and ran them on the mainframe while I would babysit the operation. During the day, I was goofing off, sunbathing and watching the trial of Loreena Bobbit live on TV. Later in the day, I would continue to check the status of the simulation once in a while from the terminal and analyse the results, sometimes until 02:00. I was effectively communicating with my colleagues to discuss the simulation results via internal E-mail. Although it was quite impossible to measure the number of working hours to claim any overtime, I enjoyed such a lifestyle.
In 1990, I transferred to another department where the environment was extremely hostile to telecommuting. The middle management was preoccupied with presenting an image of hard workers in the laboratory, especially to external visitors. I promptly left the company for good :-).
Now I work happily for myself at home in my own virtual corporation on the Internet as President & CEO, systems administrator (webmaster/postmaster), programmer, secretary and janitor. Any time I have an idea to explore, I rush to my Power Macintosh computer in the basement. My present income is less than half of what it used to be, but I would rather starve to death than to go back to a corporate office environment!
Thank you very much for your attention.
P.S. If you decide to publish my comments, I would appreciate your including my E-mail address.
