The newly hired CEO of Yahoo, Marissa Mayer, is already making waves - and I would think from her employees' perspective, not in a good way.
She recently sent out a decree that basically said Yahoo'ers would no longer be allowed to work from home (you can read the actual Yahoo internal memo here).
While this might only affect 250 or so full-time remote workers (and will certainly spill over into the "remote 1 or 2 day a weekers"), it seems to be an about-face to the Gen Xers and Mellenials making up a large percentage of their "dot com" the work space.
For these sorts of employees the line between work and play has not only been blurred, but it's pretty much been obliterated. Having access to information on mobile devices and working wherever and whenever they want has become their right of passage.
It's not so much viewed as a benefit but rather they're coming into the workforce with this level of expectation. They expect to be able to work whenever and wherever they want. They expect to access the company's information on whatever device they choose (can you say "BYOD?). And they expect this without question.
It's interesting to see that while much of the SMB world is catching up to the "dot coms" in remote access and remote work styles, is this the beginning of some of these leading edge companies reverting back to environments where intimate, one on one communication is being promoted?
With all the technology that's out there to help to close the gap between the physical and virtual work worlds (ie: web conferencing, video conferencing, remote access, etc.), it's nice to see at least some value is being put back on the human relationships - which sometimes can only be made face to face.