Oh! what a lovely response -- and I agree with almost all of it. I just handed in the article, and hadn't seen your message, but you'll be glad to know that I ended up with a whole sidebar about the costs that a telecommuter may bear. That didn't include the travel and hotel outlay, though it might have, since I just spent $400 on plane tickets to Boston for next month, and I won't be reimbursed for them until after the trip. (The devil's advocate piece of that, however, is that I don't pay for gas to commute to-and-from the office, either, which never is reimbursed. One side effect of telecommuting is that I have to put fuel in the car only once a month.)
Anyway, my sidebar focused on the more direct questions of "what does the company cover?" Many of them don't have right or wrong answers, but there ought to be a policy in place before either the telecommuter or the accounting department have a fit. (If a telecommuter wears out her office chair, who pays for it? The usual answer is "the telecommuter" but is that really fair? If I had a cube in the office, they'd get me a chair. Maybe a junky one, but there would be a facilities budget to cover it.) I think you can tell that I liked what you wrote. I'll be sure to let you know when the article is published. Esther -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
