It’s not just a women’s issue.
Granted, that’s how many of us are framing last month’s decision by Marissa Mayer, CEO of Yahoo! Inc., to end telecommuting and require all employees to report to the office. It ignited a firestorm of controversy over whether Mayer, a working mother herself, has backstabbed the sisterhood. Columnist Kathleen Parker called it the latest iteration of the “mommy war.”
But there’s another reason we should be debating Mayer’s policy: some people simply work better alone.
My colleagues are rolling their eyes now, so let me rush to provide full disclosure. I’ve worked mainly from home for more than 20 years, going into the office just enough that they don’t give my desk away. I don’t do it because it’s more convenient. I don’t do it because I hate the commute. I do it because I’m an introvert.
The word is not a synonym for “shy,” though as a boy, I was that, too. But where shyness is an outsized fear of other people’s disapproval or of social embarrassment, to be an introvert is to be inward turning, more at home in small, intimate groups than large, boisterous ones. It is to prefer the quiet to the loud, reflection to exhortation, solitude to socializing.