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|In: Business Ethics|Last Updated:

This would be funny if it was funny.

A satirical piece I published in InfoWorld (“10 sure-fire ways to kill telecommuting,” 3/30/2009) mentioned that some promised savings would not materialize. In particular, reductions in office space lease costs often won’t materialize for years, because once you’ve signed a lease you pay until it expires.

The column also “recommended” pushing all home office costs onto remote employees as a great way to encourage ergonomically unsound furnishings, rely on consumer-grade networks, and cause employee resentment.

The timing was perfect: The following, provided by a KJR subscriber, is paraphrased from an internal memo posted on a well-known company’s intranet just last week:

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|In: Business Ethics|Last Updated:

Ready for ugly?

Unemployment has reached 7.6 percent, up from 4.9 percent one year ago.

Ignore this statistic. It counts only those actively looking for work — not a particularly useful metric. More interesting is the employment level, down 4,218,000 adult Americans in the last year.

It’s interesting if you’re among the unemployed, less because misery loves company than because who needs this much competition?

And it’s interesting if you’re a CIO, because with this many people out of work, there have to be opportunities to hire great people.

Hire? In this economy? I’m kidding you, right?

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