In one of my early post-college jobs I landed at a small startup. We had something like 6 employees at the time. As my wife was still in PhD school, I was comm

In one of my early post-college jobs I landed at a small startup. We had something like 6 employees at the time. As my wife was still in PhD school, I was commuting a pretty good distance. So I figured: "I'll just start every day at home, make the drive after rush hour and leave for home before rush hour hits." I was essentially in the office for about 5 hours a day. Lasted about a week before the MBA in the building pulled me aside and told me that wasn't going to work. The reason: the customer support guy also lived a long way out and he thought it wasn't fair that I was doing this. Of course, one of the very reasons I was drawn to programming in the first place was the flexibility it came with as a job. I could be productive from almost anywhere... and why shouldn't I be? From my perspective, if he didn't like it, well he should think about a career change. Now this was early 2002, which some might remember was a terrible time for actually finding jobs... so I reluctantly gave in. My commute went from roughly 30 minutes each way to 1-2 hours. I was miserable. That all changed after about a year as the company grew and I gradually slipped back into a better driving schedule. It's still something that sticks with me today. Now that I own the company, I promote a results oriented environment that gives everyone the flexibility to come and go as they please. Sure we sometimes have to get everyone together for meetings, but it's hardly been an issue so far.