“You started out with an interesting column, but now it’s just spam. Click.”

Usually I don’t even pick up calls with no caller id. At least it wasn’t a RoboDialer (now called, as I recently learned, “agent-less proactive contact”).

The call was, most likely, in response to my recent InfoWorld article, “10 sure-fire ways to kill telecommuting.” Everyone’s a critic. Not everyone is so succinct.

When InfoWorld asked me to write about telecommuting, my knowledge was superficial at best, so I asked KJR‘s subscribers to share their experience and insights. 350 replies later I’m officially an expert.

Starting with a realization many discussions don’t make clear, which is that telecommuters come in five distinct flavors (I doubt this is original, although I couldn’t find anything like this breakdown when researching the subject). They are:

Sometimes logic takes you places you’d rather not go.

Take, for example, the four fallacies of metrics described in the KJR Manifesto: Measuring the right things wrong, measuring the wrong things (right or wrong), failing to measure important things, and measuring employees.

I’ve been pondering the connection between fallacy #4 and the financial meltdown. It’s a pretty good connection. Fixing it, though, takes us into strange territory. Here goes: