Before 2020, you could be forgiven for thinking that working from home was as dead as Jimmy Hoffa. The idea of telecommuting was doing just fine, thank you, until 2013. It was at that moment that Yahoo’s new CEO, Melissa Mayer, declared that there would be no more working from home at the company. Do keep in mind that in 2013 Yahoo was still a reasonably living company, as opposed to the barely noticeable sub-sub-subsidiary of Verizon that it is now. Its days as a tech darling were not so far behind it, and people still cared what “the CEO of Yahoo” had to say.
Working from home fell out of favor in the ’10s as things like “spontaneous interaction” and “de facto task forces” invaded the world of modern business thinking. People at home in their own bubbles discouraged innovation, it was said. Perhaps so in the days when 5Mbps internet seemed fast when your IT department didn’t allow you to have e-mail on your phone.
And then, 2020
Do I even need to talk about why working from home roared back in the ’20s? No, I didn’t think so. All of a sudden everyone who could, did. Simple as that. And that caused a huge disruption in the supply chain for things like webcams and big monitors. Even power strips were hard to get for a while.
So, faced with bigger concerns, we all just bought what we could. And we lived with it. That’s a pretty accurate statement, since the feeling is that working from home did save lives. Eventually, though, things got to the point they are today. A lot of folks are back to the office, but a lot of people are not. Even in those workplaces that value time spent together, there’s still a group of folks who learned that they’re just happier at home.
Of course I should mention that in some parts of the country, gas is about $7 a gallon as I write this and if you can avoid spilling two gallons of the stuff on the way to work, you probably are going to do that. It’s driven a renewed interest in working from home. That means it’s time to look at your home-based rig. Is it really what you need? Was it ever what you needed?
Time to atone for the mistakes of the past
Did you buy the only webcam you could find? Are you working through a nest of USB cables because the longer ones were the only ones available? Chances are you made some decisions in 2020 thinking that things would be better in just a couple of weeks. Here were are two and a half years later, and you’re still suffering under the weight of bad decisions. Now’s the time to buy what you couldn’t buy in 2020.
Shop at Solid Signal for the things you really need. Whether it’s the right sized cable, a monitor mount that really works, or even the microphone you wanted and couldn’t get then, we’re here for you. Chances are we have a better price than that other web site everyone goes to by default. Even better, we’re here to let you ask the questions you want before the sale. They may have free and easy returns, but we make it easy to buy the right thing in the first place.
Let’s be honest with each other. Working from home isn’t going away. You’ll need a good setup when winter comes or if people start getting sick again. Now is the time to make it happen, and Solid Signal is here to help.
