Despite my intention that this blog be chock full of meaty technical solutions for my legions of readers, I’m going to break my content selection rule on the very first post so I can introduce what is hopefully a new term to the world: ESFW

I left CNET after seven years in mid-January.  My new job with 42Lines is full time work at home.  Everyone at 42Lines works from home.  Well, they can work from anywhere; I assume everyone is usually working from home.  For all I know they are in a cafe or on a boat.  One co-worker was signed in one day from an airplane.  This type of company was very difficult to pull off fifteen years ago when I started my first company.  I remember longing for someone to build what we now call VoIP phones so I could cover our support line from home, rather than sitting in the office by myself on a beautiful mid-summer Saturday.  Now with IM, video chat, screen sharing, wiki, JIRA, etc. we can run an organization in a fully distributed fashion.  The key innovation, however, are outsourced HR companies.  When I started my first company, there were consultants that would help you with things like health plans and 401K.  But payroll was the only task you could entirely outsource.  Now 42Lines has a company that handles all employee HR functions which allows management to focus on hiring the right employees regardless of where they might live.  Want to hire an employee in Idaho and know nothing of that state’s insurance, taxation, and payroll laws?  No problem, it’s just a flat fee to add Idaho to your HR account.

Where was I?  Oh, yes.  People send me links all day and sometimes they are tagged “NSFW”.  I just chuckle at this outdated phrase as now Everything is Safe For Work in my home office.  I do suppose that one day a NSFW tag will save me some embarassment when I finally get around to working from that hypothetical cafe.