We focus on what we measure.

From What’s an Idea Worth? – NYTimes.com.

…the billable hour was undercutting [Blumer’s] value — it was his profession’s commodity, suggesting to clients that he and his colleagues were interchangeable containers of finite, measurable units that could be traded for money. Perhaps the biggest problem, though, was that billing by the hour incentivized long, boring projects rather than those that required specialized, valuable insight that couldn’t (and shouldn’t) be measured in time…

…the Bureau of Labor Statistics directly measures the productivity of only 60 percent of U.S. industries, which means that nearly half of our economic activity is unknown, including almost all of the fastest-growing sectors…

Maybe if the BLS figures out how to measure productivity accurately and effectively, telecommuting will seem less onerous to employers.