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免除員工上下班途中的奔波是一項很有吸引力的福利，不同的調查都發現，大部分人對此都很感興趣。同時，不用開車上下班也具有環保效應。對于46項調查的綜合研究發現，遠程辦公能帶來更多的工作滿意度，降低離職意愿，而且在一定程度上并不影響到工作場所的員工關系質量。在另一項研究中，楊百翰大學(BYU)的研究人員分析了IBM分布于75個國家的24,436個雇員，試圖發現到何種程度才會導致25%的員工報告工作與家庭生活之間的沖突。在家工作、同時有權自主設定工作時間的人們每周的工作時間達到57個小時的時候才會有相當一部分人感受到工作與家庭問題之間的壓力。而那些必須在規定時間內在辦公室上班的人們，38個小時就會達到上述水平。
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.
不過，在家工作也存在弊端。對沖基金公司Metropolitan Capital Advisors共同創始人兼總裁、《費爾曼法則》（Finerman's Rules）一書的作者卡倫•費納曼曾經嘗試過在家辦公。她說：“就我而言，在家工作什么也干不好。”家里的功能區分較少，工作時間會被非工作事務侵占，而且孩子們——她有4個孩子——也會不合時宜地打斷她的工作。
As a boss, she says she understands if people need to work from home sometimes, but "it is not my first choice".
作為一個老板，她表示，她理解人們有時需要在家工作，但“這不是我的首選”。
"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.
“如果有一些緊急事務需要立刻討論，我們不需要到處找人在哪兒，”她說。“共處和互動很重要。”她還發現“遠程管理很困難，”就像一個代課老師要管好課堂秩序一樣。
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.
梅耶爾在雅虎的改革廣受爭議，影響也很難確定。雅虎最近的業績報告顯示，公司的凈利潤同比出現了顯著的增長(雖然營收略有下降)。不過，2013年初，就在雅虎宣布結束遠程辦公計劃后不久，百思買也終止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，企業顧問、《陌生人的必要性》(The Necessity of Strangers)一書的作者艾倫•格雷格曼表示，單純討論是“在家工作”、還是“在辦公室工作”，“有點迷失了更重要的東西”。“這兩種方法都沒有抓到本質，當我們能與更多人聯系在一起時我們能夠做到最好。”“合作非常重要”，這是主張在辦公室工作的主要理由，但如果員工“沒有足夠的新點子來達成合作，他們還是不得要領。”他說：“我們的公司需要鼓勵人們定期站起來，探索周圍的世界。”畢竟，公司需要新的點子。“如果我們只是在辦公室里混混日子或者是在家工作，同樣不可能獲得這些新點子。”
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.
為此，格雷格曼經常帶領團隊探索博物館、城市街道、市場和其他地方。我采訪他的前一天，他剛去了史密森國立肖像館(Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery)和美國藝術博物館(American Art Museum),研究民間藝術家(以及其他事情)以及他們如何看待自己和自己的身份。聽說他也會帶客戶去動物園研究動物行為，然后請他們談談觀察心得，這樣的觀察可能有助于應對客戶。
"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."
“開始時人們都會看著我，仿佛'你是這個全世界最古怪的人'。”他說。但是等到結束時，他總是會聽到“哇，太棒了，我從沒想到過我會用這樣的方式思考。而且只要走出辦公室就可以實現。”
