By Debbie Weil
Aug 96, Number 2

So what’s this about millions of Americans working out of home offices? Is there really a new cadre of entrepreneurial professional padding from bedroom to office in slippers and sweats, coffee mug in hand? No commute, no overhead, no fixed hours - and all made possible by the tools of computer, fax, modem, copier, e-mail, voicemail and the newest tech-toy, a corporate-looking Web site.

Is home office a fancy name for high-tech freelancing & consulting - a _cover _ for those who’ve been down-sized or who are otherwise unemployed - or is it a new phenomenon: the virtual corporation?

I’ve worked this way for the past several years and can offer you my own perspective. But listen to the statistics. Jennifer Doctor, executive director of SOHO America, a Minneapolis-based non-profit providing resources to the growing Small Office/Home Office market, says there are "over 43 million people" working out of home offices.

She gets her figures from IDC/LINK, a New York City market research firm (formerly called Link Resources), which estimates the number of home offices will be 43.5 million at the end of 1996 (up from close to 41 million in 1995).

The "work-at-home universe" continues to expand for a number of reasons, according to Robert Straus, an IDC/LINK research analyst specializing in small business and home offices. The type of work that is "information intensive" is increasing, he said. Professionals can choose occupations which are "independent of location" and can demand more flexible time and work place options.

"Five years ago, if you worked out of your home as a consultant, people said, ’Oh, she lost her job,’" said SOHO America’s Doctor. "Today they say, ’Cool, how can I help you?’"

"The previous model has always been to work for a company, then go out on your own and do the same or a similar thing," Doctor added. "Now, people are choosing a more direct route to entrepreneurship."

In an article on students starting companies in the August, 96 issue of Inc. Magazine, writer Hal Plotkin notes that "more students feel they are going to have to invent their own careers." While "uncertainty" is one side of the equation driving student entrepreneurship, writes Plotkin, the other side "is an abundance of opportunities (in) technology."

On a more serious note, policy analysts are giving serious attention to this new phenomenon. Allow me to digress (it’s August; everyone’s on vacation... ).

"Policy analyst" is a typical Washington job description. I’d never heard it before moving to D.C. about 15 years ago. A new friend told me she worked in such a capacity. I didn’t know what she was talking about, but pretended I did.

Now I know. There are hundreds (thousands?) of _policy wonks_ toiling for the think tanks and associations headquartered in the nation’s capital. I’ve begun to believe that some of them actually do productive work, cogitating over the consequences of the social policies set in motion by Capitol Hill.

(I told you there was an "inside-the-beltway" virus. "Do policy wonks do anything? ... Yes, Virginia." I keep trying to shake it.)

One such analyst is Jeremy Rifkin, president of the Foundation on Economic Trends in Washington and author of the book, "The End of Work," subtitled The Decline of the Global Labor Force and the Dawn of the Post-Market Era. The paperback, published by Putnam, is described on the back cover as an international bestseller. A recent book-signing at a D.C. bookstore called Politics & Prose drew a capacity crowd.

In a nutshell, Rifkin says that the Information Age has arrived and has brought with it some unintended consequences: Whole job categories have been eliminated along with millions of jobs (the "substitution of software for employees"); "dramatic technological advances" have not produced trickle-down technology, which was going to reduce costs, create new markets and put more people to work in "better-paying, new high-tech jobs and industries;" and finally, says Rifkin, there is a "disturbing relationship" between permanently displaced workers - the technologically unemployed - and what he terms "the rising incidence of crime and violence around the world."

As a solution, Rifkin argues, intriguingly, for a a third or volunteer sector of the economy in which people would give their time to community projects in exchange for "shadow wages." That is, the government would provide a tax deduction for "every hour of volunteer time given to legally-certified tax-exempt organizations."

The master of the one-liner, Rikfin says that, "Redefining the role of the individual in a society absent of mass formal work is, perhaps, the seminal issue of the coming age."

Interviewed at the book signing, Rifkin sighed when asked if the "work at home" option might solve some of the problems he alludes to in his book. "It’s a complex thing," he said. "You do have more time for your family or your community, but you’re hustling all the time if you’re freelancing. You’ve got to be available all the time... I have no answer."

He doesn’t use the Web or e-mail, he admitted. "I don’t go online. I have no more time in my life except for my wife and my dog - when I’m not working."

Time - and how it is valued in today’s marketplace - is something Rifkin lingers over. He quotes other philosopher-economists, including Japan’s Yoneji Masuda, who suggests that "free time" will replace "material accumulation" as "the critical value and overriding goal of society."

My own experience of working out of a home office has been very much defined by time. Lots of it - and with no clear boundaries. Just ask my husband, who kept wondering what I was doing "up there" (on the third floor) when I went up to my home office after dinner to browse around on the Web.

Before I brought my surfing addiction under control (of course, all that exposure helped me gain a first-hand understanding of the new medium) I could pass three or four hours in a trance, clicking from one site to another into the wee hours of the morning. To me, it was CandyLand.

Another provocative writer on the subject of the changing workplace is William Bridges, author of JobShift, subtitled: How to Prosper in a Workplace Without Jobs. Bridges is a California executive development consultant whose clients include Intel and Apple. He writes about "the demise of the office" and about the psychological impact of "dejobbing" - namely, the loss of identity and along with it a core network of relationships; the time structure provided by a job ("without it life can feel... vast and empty"); and how a job in an office "is a primary source of meaning and order" in people’s lives.

Luckily for those who work out of home offices, there are some great online resources. Home Office Computing magazine is one of my favorites. There’s also Inc., which I mentioned above. A site called Business@Home is wonderfully subtitled "Making a Life While Making a Living." If you’re an America Online subscriber, you can go to keyword: SOHO.

The popular author & consultant team Paul and Sarah Edwards ("Working From Home" and "Getting Business to Come to You" published by Putnam) have a site, HomeWorks, which includes audio tips on such subjects as "Five Top Business-Getting Strategies" and "Making Money in the Information Business at Home."

The Home Office Association of America has a site called SoHo Central: Home Office Resources. (SoHo, if you haven’t guessed by now, is not the hip area in lower Manhattan but an acronym standing for Small Office/Home Office.)

You can read a useful article by syndicated personal technology columnist Larry Magid. He offers advice on hardware and software, including computers, copiers, fax machines, scanners, voicemail systems and all the techno-gadgets needed to set up a virtual corporation in your spare bedroom. Magid is an entertaining writer and has his own Web site, Larry’s World, which I’ve plugged in an earlier column.

Besides green tomatoes (you really can fry them; try using corn meal for the batter), here are a few URLs I’ve been meaning to pass along. The NetMedia 96 conference, held in London in June, has a site worth perusing. Then there’s something called Strong Opinions On Success, an eclectic site which includes Electronic Money Tree Magazine (described as "A Netrepreneur’s Digest.")

You can send it to me at: debbie@wordbiz.com.

Seeya