Desk for Success

  Career Development  

Some years ago, I was thrilled when our new training director encouraged us to work from home on days when we weren't conducting a training session. He considered it a perk, and I enjoyed it for about a day and a half. Today, I consider it a liability...one that I am weighing in the balance as I face my own possible job loss.

When I wrote Prepare for a Possible Career Gap, I was drawing on my layoff experience at MCI WorldCom. I had no idea that the company where I am happily re-employed was in the midst of negotiations. As of this writing, the deal should close in 60 to 90 days, so I am, ahem, researching and writing this article series for you and for me.

Since I am still in the contemplating/organizing stage of my home office setup (writing this with an old desktop on a used military-metal desk), I asked my contractor co-worker Dave, whose last day at the office is Friday, to e-mail me a quick list of his own home-office preparations. He enjoys working from home, which he will be doing full time one week from this writing.

Home Office Set-up, Dave-Style

"I've kept my home office strategy very simple…Low cost, low maintenance:

• I bought an external USB hard drive and made a full backup of my laptop.
• I put a brand new hard drive into my laptop and loaded it "clean" with all the software I'll need, including new Anti-…

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