羡慕soho? 如何说服老板让你在家上班

Dear Annie: I work at the headquarters of a Fortune 500 company in a major city. The suburb where I live is not that far away as the crow flies, but the horrendous traffic (even in the predawn hours) means my commute often takes more than an hour each way, and it is a huge drain on my energy. Then, when I get to work, my day is so full of stupid little interruptions that it's hard to focus on one thing long enough to finish it.
亲爱的安妮：我在一家财富500强公司的大城市总部上班。我住在郊区，离公司总部的直线距离并不算太远，但可怕的交通状况（甚至在黎明时分）意味着，我上下班一个单程往往就需要花费一个多小时，这极大地消耗了我的能量。当我终于抵达公司，开始一天的工作时，各种愚蠢之极，非常琐碎的干扰，又让我很难保持足够长时间的专注度，进而导致我无法完成工作。

For both of these reasons, I would be a lot more productive if I worked from home at least a couple of days a week -- no commute, no distractions. The problem is my boss. When I have approached him about this, he always says, "If I can't see you, how do I know you're working?" He says it jokingly, but actually I think he means it. Also, he has brought up the fact that Yahoo (YHOO), Best Buy (BBY), and HP (HPQ) have limited or banned telecommuting, and expressed concerns about data security if people are working from home. Any ideas about how to persuade him to let us try it anyway? -- Roadblocked
出于这两个理由，我认为，倘若我每周至少有一两天在家办公——无需上下班，没有分心之事，我的工作效率肯定会大幅提升。问题在于我的老板。每当我向他提及此事时，他总是说，“如果我看不见你，我怎么知道你在工作呢？”他说话的口吻像是开玩笑，但我觉得这其实是他真实的想法。此外，他还提到雅虎(Yahoo )、百思买(Best Buy)和惠普( HP)等大公司都限制或禁止远程办公这一事实，并且担心大家都在家工作或将危及数据的安全性。请问我究竟该如何说服他呢？——受阻者

Dear Roadblocked: Next time your boss brings up Yahoo, Best Buy, and HP as paragons of policy, says David Heinemeier Hansson, you might point out that "all three are in trouble, so they need all hands on deck. Why would any company want to join that club?"
亲爱的“受阻者”：下一次，当你的老板把雅虎、百思买和惠普奉为政策典范时，你或许有必要援引大卫?海涅迈尔?汉森的看法，向他指出，“所有这三家公司目前都陷于困境，所以他们需要全体员工各就各位。为什么还有公司想要加入这个俱乐部呢？”

Far more relevant is that telework has quietly become the rule, rather than the exception. According to a survey this past July by HR trade group WorldatWork, 88% of U.S. companies now allow or encourage telecommuting. Some, like IBM (IBM), insist that most of their people work remotely most of the time. In a new book, Remote: Office Not Required, Hansson cites a white paper from Big Blue that estimates telecommuting has saved the company more than $100 million in real estate costs.
更中肯的理由是，远程办公已悄然成为业界规范，而不是特殊案例。据人力资源团体美国薪酬管理协会(WorldatWork)今年7月份的一次调查，88%的美国公司现在允许或鼓励远程办公。以IBM为代表的一些公司始终坚持大多数员工在大多数时间内远程工作的做法。汉森在其新着《远程办公革命》(Remote: Office Not Required)中援引了“蓝色巨人”( Big Blue，IBM公司的绰号)发布的一份白皮书。这份白皮书预测称，远程办公已经为该公司节省了超过1亿美元的房地产成本。

Remote is packed with other compelling reasons for telecommuting's rise. Cutting out commutes is better for the ozone layer than having millions of people sitting in traffic jams, spewing carbon monoxide, for hours on end. It allows companies to source top talent from anywhere in the country or the world, without regard for how much face time they can put in at the office.
《远程办公革命》一书还为这种工作方式的崛起列举了其他一些令人信服的理由。相较于让数百万人堵在路上，连续数小时不停地喷涌一氧化碳，省掉通勤显然更有利于保护我们的臭氧层。远程办公可以让公司广纳天下英才，并且根本没必要考虑这些来自美国或世界某个地区的精英们能够在办公室停留多长时间。

Working from home or on the road, at least some of the time, also tends to make people more productive. Hansson agrees with you that "the modern office has become an interruption factory, and interruptions are not free. There is a cost in productivity to constantly demanding people's attention immediately for little things that are not really urgent," he says. "People who can't concentrate for more than a few minutes at a time are almost certainly not doing their best work."
此外，至少在某些时候，在家或旅途中工作往往使得人们的工作更富有成效。与你一样，汉森也认为，“现代化写字楼已经成为一个纷纷扰扰的工厂，但干扰并不是没有代价的。不断要求人们立刻注意一些其实并不紧迫的小事情，的确会拖累生产率，”他说。“无法持续几分钟以上集中精神的人，几乎肯定做不好他们的工作。”