Commuting to the second shift

A busy time here at InfoWorld, which has taken a beating on my fledgling effort here in blogspace.  I'm about to be on a serious traveling spell through several time zones, so I've been making sure that I have all my tools in order to keep up with things back at the office.  When you get down to it, "place" doesn't really matter that much anymore, especially if you do software development.  If you're not in management and the tasks you have to perform every day are well-defined and relatively stable, I don't know why anyone should come into an office every day. 

The reservation agents at JetBlue aren't coming in -- they use VOIP phones to handle incoming reservation calls.  I've been a JetBlue flyer since their first week in business and I have yet to hear a dog barking or baby crying in the background.  I don't know why more businesses don't embrace this sort of model, at least with some types of employees.  Instead, we cram onto trains, burn gasoline in our cars, and engage in a frustrating commute, all to get to the office that our companies pay a pretty penny for.  The coder in me just thinks "inefficent!"

When a lot of work needs to be done, I've always enjoyed working the "second shift" -- that glorious time between after dinner and midnight where my thinking is clearest and the distractions are few.