Remote Dedication
A surreal thing happened to me last night as I logged into my home computer for some work at 11:00 pm. I realized I wasn’t alone. It seemed that everyone and their mother was doing the same as I: spending a quiet Wednesday evening working in front of their PCs.
My work night started with a little email. Quick replies came from both my project manager and the project tech lead. I sent an IM to a coworker that was mired in tasks to complete. His response made it clear that he wouldn’t be clocking out anytime soon. I assigned a problem to another coworker. A response to the issue was immediate. A little later a software problem report landed on my desk (figuratively, of course). It was entered by one tester and edited by another — all after the stroke of midnight. I was by no means alone. In fact, my virtual workspace was a little crowded.
One interesting aspect of the whole thing was that many of the folks I interacted with that night were in the comfort of their own home. The wonders of telecommuting mean that a view of the office is no longer a requirement of actually performing work. People could contribute their time without having to factor in their actual location and many took advantage of the opportunity.
I can’t say I was surprised — I’ve worked with several of these folks for a while and have no doubts of their dedication to the job — but color me impressed. I didn’t really expect the virtual workplace to work so smoothly and my coworkers again demonstrated why I hold them in high regard. That’s pretty cool and I’m always looking for cool things when 1:00 am is quitting time.
