When you told people you worked from home in the ’80s, it was usually a euphemism for “housewife” or “stay-at-home mom.” Today, roughly 1 in 4 Americans work from home. At the close of 1979, IBM started an experiment. They selected five employees to be remote workers. The experiment was such a success that just three years later, IBM had more than 2,000 remote workers on their staff. Then and now, working from home is not all dog cuddles and soap operas, but on the cusp of the computer age, working from home wasn’t as cool as it sounded.
#1: Dial-Up Internet (If You Were Lucky)
You were one of the lucky ones if you had internet access to your home … but maybe not that lucky. Dial-up internet was the only game in town in the 1980s. Work was stymied by slow and glitchy connections. Aren’t we all still triggered by the sound of the modem connecting?
