There are times I want to be in the office. There are times I want to be at a coffee shop. There are times I want to be at home.

As an executive, I feel like it's my job to provide as much flexibility to my team as I possibly can. Inspiration can strike anywhere, in any environment. I want to capture that for my business. I find that people really appreciate it as well.

Really it comes down to meeting management. Limit the requirement for face-time and structure the company in a way that you can minimize how often people have to collaborate. I find this makes the voluntary (and spontaneous) interactions even more valuable.

The Yahoo decision really bothers me in a really visceral way. My team is made up of highly skilled professionals who deserve to be treated like adults. Forcing them into the office is the opposite of that (at least to me).

As far as I've seen, there is little inspiration involved in most programming environments, just a lot of thinking.

I'll just leave it at this. Isn't inspiration often the end-result of careful thought?

I don't see what about an office makes it the right place for the thinking you see in programming environments. I've solved more hard problems in the shower than I have at my desk.

I know there are many people like you that somehow intuitively capture these abstract concepts, and I respect that. I just find it amusing that you can notice these things even when the person is out of work. That's when you differentiate the manipulative managers from the true ones.

My point wasn't particularly focusing in offices. Being pragmatic and rather emotion-less, I find programming requires more logic and method than feelings.

Certainly there are many dull development jobs that require no inspiration or even much thinking - I worked in many of them before I got bored to death and started my own business.

If you are in one of those dead-end jobs, you're not the kind of person that enjo is talking about.

Sadly, the company I work for is based in a place I couldn't stand to live, but it's telling that even despite that, I'm genuinely thinking about moving there.

Telecommuting is not for everyone, but being new to the industry, your perspective is likely to change over the next few years if you stick around. I'm not saying it'll reverse -- you may find that your first impression was right -- but your point of view will be altered by your experiences, and without those experiences to draw on, you cannot expect to have a well-formed impression of this arrangement.

Not liking working at home is not a good reason to move to a place where you won't like going outside.

Once I'm there, I don't know what I'm gonna do. Probably program at a cafe every day.

Let me know if you still feel that way in 20 years.

But it helps a lot if company policy doesn't force you to come in every day, or be in at 9am. And of course if the people involved are people that you like to work with.

Actually, this statement sounded so out of purpose, that I am having a second thought that I maybe have lost something here.

I have been fortune enough to have always had my choice of teams to work with, so far that has meant great coworkers and very challenging work.

If I'm not pounding my head against a wall I'm not having fun. :)

At any rate I think the optimal situation for me is a mix of both.

You see awesome offices in places like Google, Facebook et al where workers have plenty of space around their desk, and other areas in the building where they can work/socialise/relax.

Unfortunately most businesses are not like that, they cram as many people as they can into vast open plan offices where desk space is at a premium and you can forget having a quiet space to work.

Plus if you have decent colleagues, it makes the job more enjoyable.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber_duck_debugging