I hadn't darkened the environs of the IFSC for months and then ended up in my old stomping ground twice in the one week on a couple of unrelated visits.

The good news for the incumbents is that there are (finally!) additional sandwich bars to queue at during the lunch hour; the bad news is that there's so many more people milling about that there probably still aren't enough.

But at least there's more variety and - as I mentioned in those far-off days when the Spar was the only lunchtime outlet - you can get very, very tired of a cheese sandwich.

On the increasingly rare occasions when I find myself in an office block these days I find that I still have an unaccountable urge to pick up the ringing phones and look through all the files. I want to know who people are and what they do and whether they're any good at their jobs. You can take the girl out of the office but, clearly, you can't take the office out of the girl!

Despite my efforts to become a bit more bohemian (my hair is two inches longer because I don't have to have it dry in under five minutes in the mornings), the scars of my time in the private sector still remain.

One of the things we used to talk about quite a lot in the office environment was the whole idea of teleworking. In theory it's something that shouldn't be too difficult for people in financial markets to do because so much of the work is carried on by phone or by electronic messages of some kind or another. And practically all of the information used in the markets is gathered electronically too. But the one thing that people felt a little worried about was the fact that you couldn't bounce ideas off each other.

Communicating by keyboard (even if your entire message is in capitals) isn't the same as having a screaming match across the desk.

Sitting at my desk in the home office the other day, I looked through a few Internet polls and - according to one done by monster.com - the best perk for a company to offer a prospective employee would be the chance to telecommute. Forty per cent of the respondents had put that ahead of beer bashes every Friday, a lease on a snazzy car, a free week at the corporate condo in Aspen or a weekly massage.

The interest in telecommuting remains strong and not just among IFSC workers. The biggest single benefit of working at home is not having to hurl yourself into the commuting maelstrom. Being in control of your time means a massive reduction in stress levels. And, when you're trying to get something done quickly, the peace and quiet of your own room is hard to beat. (That's until the guy next door starts doing some DIY with the jackhammer he's leased from the hire shop up the road!)

In a similar survey, the benefit that the majority of people thought would make them happier at work was, not surprisingly, more money (55 per cent of respondents) followed by more time off, a different boss and an easier commute.

So despite our increased productivity and despite pages of newspaper and business magazine articles about people who work 24/7 (which means, apparently, 24 hours a day seven days a week) there's a whole heap of people who'd really rather not. And who'd rather work from home when they are working at all.

Attitudes towards how and where people work continue to shift. Apparently in the dot.com sector, once the darling of the highly-qualified twenty somethings who wanted to work hard and then a bit harder in the hopes of big payouts, prospective employers are now finding that more and more candidates are saying "no thanks" and choosing to join established technology companies instead. They're looking for regular hours and a career path - a kind of slow and steady journey instead of being rocketed upwards on day one.

In another survey, this time of college seniors in the US, the students thought training, health care, pension plans and annual bonuses were more important than stock options. Pension plans - how very un-dot.com!

The main reason people are turning from the dot.coms is that the working environment is too stressful. People don't want to throw everything into their jobs and find out that they've missed out on actually living their lives. Especially if the IPO doesn't happen or raises significantly less than they would have expected, which has been all too common of late.

It seems, though, that many dot.coms are becoming more traditional in their pay structure approach because they've begun offering more salary and cash bonuses while continuing to provide certain levels of stock options. Given the fact that most dot.coms have performed so badly since the beginning of the year, the stock options haven't been the lure they would have been 12 months ago.

Interestingly, more and more chief executives are leaving too.

Last month 21 chief executives left dot.com companies in the US. And the consensus is that a lot of these moves are stress-related. Neither board members nor investors will wait for someone to bring in big profits or turn a company around. If it hasn't happened quickly then they've no compunction about forcing the chief executive to go. Part of the reason in the dot.com sector, of course, is that the chief executive might well have set up the company and have had the drive to get things moving, but could be totally lacking in long-term management skills. And investors, though they want short-term price performance, have to look to the long term.

But it's not just the technology sector. The 21 dot.com deserters were joined by 118 other chief executives - which is a massive 250 per cent increase since last year. Financial services and software companies were the other featured sectors - why am I not surprised!

The struggle between work and self is always an interesting one. So many of us define ourselves by what we do and there's still such a huge fuss made of people who've garnered vast fortunes in business that we tend to ignore those who've steered mid-sized companies though changing times without managing to hit the headlines.

It's hard to believe that slow and steady might actually win the race but it's a comforting thought to anyone who believes that 7/5 is more than enough!