My last blog entry got me thinking about where people work. The ClickNwork site has profiles of a number of people that work with us, and some of them have added pictures of the view from their office window. You can see them by clicking the the profiles for the individuals at http://clicknwork.com/profiles.asp.

They are very different: from the busy Chennai street market scene seen by Ravi to the sort of vista you would design for yourself (if you had the opportunity) that is enjoyed by Dave in New Zealand.

They could be working on the same project, doing the same sort of work, while all around them their very different lives are carrying on. I find it fascinating – perhaps I need a hobby? – and it underlines how rapid  communications have brought the disparate parts of the world together, to some extent.

I thought I’d add a picture from my window – just to prove that the sun does shine in England. The outlook is a bit short-range when you compare it with my colleague John’s view from his 17th storey office window, overlooking Central Park in New York. But he doesn’t have a shed!

The point is, you can work pretty much anywhere, but I would have thought that there would need to be some fairly specific reasons for the working environment arrangements below to be appropriate!

I love working from home, but I have to confess that sometimes I wish the office was a little more difficult to get to, and with a slightly better vista.

My office is at the back of the house on the ground floor and I can’t resist checking emails if I’m anywhere on the ground floor of the house.

My view from the window isn’t horrible, but could be improved with slightly better positioning.

Having the office outside in the garden has been on my mind ever since I saw a friend of mine use a large wood cabin as his office in his garden.

I like the idea and the look of it. The company claims it’s environmentally-friendly, in reducing CO2 emissions, and provides an extra room (if you’re constrained for space in the house) away from any distractions in the house. It’s not as cheap as setting up a desk in the house, but if that’s not an option, then maybe this is.

The OfficePod

So, I started looking around for other similar products, such as the range of buildings from Kithaus.

And there’s the Qube too.

Actually, there are lots of “garden sheds” that I wouldn’t mind working in either!   

With swine flu, rising travel costs, higher unemployment, and the tougher challenges in just in making ends meet, many people are turning to work-at-home opportunities.  The upside can be great but please be very cautious about who you deal with. Too often work-from-home schemes turn out to be work-from-home scams.

Consumer Reports in the US recently ran an article about current scams being. The FBI also  recently gave guidance on what to look out for.

The Federal Trade Commission has since 2001 warned of the dangers of work-from-home scams and provides a categorization of work-at-home schemes (nicely using the term ‘flop-potunities’), but people are still being caught.

Two essential pieces of advice:

1.       Don’t pay upfront, whether it’s for inventory or “how to” information; most scams require you to pay for something that usually turns out to be worthless.

2.       Avoid network building and multilevel marketing schemes.

It’s so easy to be seduced by promises of a fast buck, pound, euro, or yen, especially when you need to earn money, so always have in mind the time-honored maxim: if it looks too good to be true, it is.

The only money we receive is from the clients whose work the ClickNworkers deliver, and also a little bit of advertising revenue, since we put Google Ads on the site.

If you know of a scam and want others to know, please contribute to the comments.

Oh, and don’t do this…